Game Development: Ghost Apple Gelatin

[BoxingRock]

We can't run every idea we have before a grand council. The latency is too high, the noise-to-signal ratio is way too high, it makes us too reactive and input driven, and it spoils the fun of discovery. We have tried stuff like this in the past, councils, feedback requests, even test servers, but our experience is that they generally fail to capture problems arising in the minutiae of actual implementation. The quality of the feedback, in my experience, increases significantly if we simply push changes and take feedback. I am not saying we could never do something like this again, but I am saying that it isn't some free panacea.

Fair enough if you've tried it before and it was more cumbersome than occasionally retreading the previous week's patch. Still, if there's something you guys are unsure of the implications of, you could literally pop into the discord for three seconds and say "thinkin' 'bout beans" with no context, and come back an hour later to 5k lines of rabid autist arguments over if beans are a good idea then ask for somebody to summarize it all to you in 11.5 word or less.

Are you trying to imply that jorb is so wishywashy that there are aspects of the game development he is not 100% sure about?
Like he doesn't know his own passion project?
Like you wouldn't just feed him a line of bologna in order to try and get something implemented that selfishly suits your own needs disguised as objective feedback?


S

M

H

[Naimad]

Fair enough if you've tried it before and it was more cumbersome than occasionally retreading the previous week's patch. Still, if there's something you guys are unsure of the implications of, you could literally pop into the discord for three seconds and say "thinkin' 'bout beans" with no context, and come back an hour later to 5k lines of rabid autist arguments over if beans are a good idea then ask for somebody to summarize it all to you in 11.5 word or less.

I guess you know everything better. maybe you should make your own game yourself.
Since something is introduced, it is definitely a well-thought-out decision of the game owners.
Time will tell if it's good or not, I think time is more important than one player's opinion.
Maybe this change is part of something bigger, something better? Nobody knows that except programmers. We can only wait and believe they want the best in the game and think about the players, not just themselves like you @snuggleSnail

[BoxingRock]

Fair enough if you've tried it before and it was more cumbersome than occasionally retreading the previous week's patch. Still, if there's something you guys are unsure of the implications of, you could literally pop into the discord for three seconds and say "thinkin' 'bout beans" with no context, and come back an hour later to 5k lines of rabid autist arguments over if beans are a good idea then ask for somebody to summarize it all to you in 11.5 word or less.

I guess you know everything better. maybe you should make your own game yourself.
Since something is introduced, it is definitely a well-thought-out decision of the game owners.
Time will tell if it's good or not, I think time is more important than one player's opinion.
Maybe this change is part of something bigger, something better? Nobody knows that except programmers. We can only wait and believe they want the best in the game and think about the players, not just themselves like you @snuggleSnail

AMEN BROTHER

Imagine thinking that the DEVS don't make PRECISELY CALCULATED decisions!

anybody offering their opinion is practically slapping them in the face and telling them that are not making well-thought-out decisions about their OWN GAME

[Apocoreo]

Since something is introduced, it is definitely a well-thought-out decision of the game owners.

[Phaen]

I feel like this is a good suggestion, also maybe when just talking and not working on something you could instead spectate players that agree to be spectated on stream

it would be quite entertaining to watch Jorb react to some of the ways people play this game that subvert their design intentions

[JohnBolognese]

We're very open to discussing or taking feedback on anything. We have thick skin. This is not a "heavily moderated safe environment", lol.

If there's anything in particular anyone would like to see discussed, you can always make a thread and/or PM me. I try being somewhat accessible. Early last year I tried having an answer-everything policy on Discord for a spell, but that implied spending three hours on discord every day, which I do not want to do. I try to answer PMs on here, and I am grateful for any input. Even if it's not immediately actionable ideas for whatever reason, I can still take general points with me, so war-stories without further comment are perfectly fine.

We can't run every idea we have before a grand council. The latency is too high, the noise-to-signal ratio is way too high, it makes us too reactive and input driven, and it spoils the fun of discovery. We have tried stuff like this in the past, councils, feedback requests, even test servers, but our experience is that they generally fail to capture problems arising in the minutiae of actual implementation. The quality of the feedback, in my experience, increases significantly if we simply push changes and take feedback. I am not saying we could never do something like this again, but I am saying that it isn't some free panacea.

Idk. Generally, if you give us good ideas well formulated, we do try to act upon them. There is very little prestige or w/e involved in our internal process, and our discussions are nigh on exclusively centered around formulating good mechanics.

Well said.

[Apocoreo]

We're very open to discussing or taking feedback on anything. We have thick skin. This is not a "heavily moderated safe environment", lol.

I feel like every communication idea was out of scope for a team of two. Maybe if you had a more robust team of mods with a communication link that's more hands-off for you and Loftar, but it seems you prefer the hands-on approach.

My suggestion, and forgive me if you've already tried this, is vague roadmaps. Produce a long-term and short-term roadmap, pretty much just titles and any features you want feedback on, no dates, especially anything you think might be dicey with the playerbase. These could be anywhere between monthly or even every 6 months. Just work together to make a simple flow chat, post in its own announcement thread, skim the responses weekly. Because it sucks to invest a lot of time into this time-consuming game without know where its going, especially when you don't like an update.

[shubla]

Everyone knows that devs just smoke blunt in their weekly dev sessions and come up with dumbest ideas that they can for lols, and then implement them for even more laughs when the community reacts to them!

[SinJin]

Very kind of you to say so! They will be back as a regular feature. Pinky swear.

The Dev streams were a cool treat !

[97tba]

All tiles drop boulders?
More boulders = More fun