The Ghost of Christmas Future, II

[Potjeh]

Nah, for balancing FEP they just need to track stats on the server, ie how many instances of a particular food have been crafted in a given time period.

Anyway, Loftar, have you done any work on mapgen yet, and if yes what's the main differences compared to current mapgen? Also, what core systems do you still need to implement before you release?

[Kaios]

and if yes what's the main differences compared to current mapgen?

more advanced penis shape generation

[jorb]

Yeah, the worst part about those guys was that the devs were surrounding themselves with yes men who defended every terrible design decision with "this is what makes Salem unique and you're just not hardcore enough to appreciate it", where hardcoreness is basically having high tolerance for tedium. I can understand that positive feedback like that feels good, but it's totally useless as there's nothing to learn from it, and it makes problems with design seem smaller than they actually are. JLo, please don't let yourselves stray like that again, and always keep your eyes on the one true goal of game design - making it fun. Salem is forgivable because it was just for the $, but if you ruin Haven like that you'll have committed a heinous crime against art, because Haven has actual soul.

When have we ever surrounded ourselves with "yes men"? People like yourself and Jackard? Avu? Burg? Spiff? Who are you thinking of, more precisely, because I can assure you that neither Chief nor Darwoth ever-in-a-million years fit the bill, being two of the most opinionated people on the planet. Having different priorities than yourself does not make one a "yes man". Sucking up to us and taking anything we say for gospel would, perhaps, but no one I can think of ever did that, and I have the chat logs to prove it. If anything we are *much* too good at surrounding ourselves with manic-depressive defeatists who cannot even be bothered to share in that most basic sliver of optimism required to attempt to build anything.

Even your own argument very much disproves the point, because there was, indeed, and precisely, a general consensus in the initial testing group -- even throughout! -- that the game wasn't where it needed to be. Do you think that this somehow escaped us, or perhaps that we just sat idly by and twiddled our thumbs when we could have furthered the better interests of the game instead? Surrounding ourselves with "yes men"?

Interestingly enough you simultaneously accuse us of A) Not taking feedback into account, and B) Listening too much to feedback. I'm not saying that you couldn't weasel your way out of the glaring contradiction by qualifying the statements to mean that we should have listened to your feedback and thrown everyone else's out, but man is it there.

Whether or not we acted enough on the feedback you provided for Salem...

• We did not always know what to do about it. Pointing out that one gluttony system is bad does not automagically replace it with something better, and in fact even we didn't, until the last big gluttony patch we did, with which I was quite pleased, under the circumstances. Do you even remember the *very* first study system we tried for Salem? I do like to believe that we did make some use of some feedback.
• Development was on a schedule, and we did not have the luxury to sidetrack the whole thing for any length of time. We tried to deliver on the things we could deliver on -- functioning buddy systems, villages, blablabla, map generation, skill systems, proficiencies, every other little widget the game requires to operate -- rather than not delivering on anything at all. We continuously and throughout prioritized operational functionality whenever we were in doubt, and I stand by this priority fully, and would make the same decision again, as that is precisely what allowed Salem to make it to any sort of release.
• Purity could arguably have been yanked from the game once it was established that the setup was going nowhere, but for starters that conclusion took some time to mature -- by no means was it established conclusively at the end of the closed testing we did with you guys -- and also the "system" that was in filled at least some placeholder functionality, for which reason I felt -- and probably still would feel -- that some sort of quality system is better than nothing at all, or at the very least that inaction on the matter is better than spending development time simply cutting stuff. Again, we didn't know what to replace it with, and continued for a long time to hold out hope that we would be able to improve on it eventually.

Frankly I find this patronizing BS post about how we go for "good feelings" insulting, because I honestly can't quite remember when it was that I last got any sort of good feeling from reading the forums!

(Well, actually I can. Every once in a while I do get some quiet and sweet little PM thanking me for making the game. That usually feels good.)

Our morale has never been as low as it was toward the end of the first iteration of Salem development!

I also don't agree with you that positive feedback is useless. We need to have an idea as to what people like, and we won't unless they tell us. People usually miss this completely -- being, as they are, in their own heads and with their own complaints written in bold across the frontal lobe -- but it does help to have an idea as to what to develop further and what to (not) cut. Negative feedback is simply the norm (for good reasons), but it is not the only useful kind there is.

TLDR: I think that was a wildly unfair and inaccurate summation you just gave of our motives and development history.

[jorb]

I am not maintaining perfection, by the by. There are plenty of things I would have done differently today.

[jorb]

Generally speaking I find that what we will always need far more than "feedback" is our very own and undiluted voice and vision. Spending too much time among people tends to drown that out, which is why, indeed...

it just seems to me that you guys are laying down a whole lot of game without any player input/criticism

Nothing new there. There's a large part of me that likes this phase of development the most. ^^

... there's very much a case to be made.

This being said, I am nevertheless grateful for all feedback we get, and that anyone cares about what we do at all.

[Potjeh]

The thing I was specifically referring to was the sheer amount of grind, which Chief and Darwoth supported wholeheartedly. Strangely enough, Chief made some major cuts to it after he took over.

[adyroty]

Game is almost playable. Give us a few more months.

2 of them almost passed, what did you mean by few?

[Kaios]

If anything we are *much* too good at surrounding ourselves with manic-depressive defeatists who cannot even be bothered to share in that most basic sliver of optimism required to attempt to build anything.

You know, part of that is due to the fact that you neglect to respond to anything far more often than not. Seriously, a response that is even as small as, "shut the fuck up with that dumbass idea, move on to something different," I personally would appreciate so much more than just complete silence or disregard because it tells me that the content of what I'm giving my opinion on is more or less garbage or the ideas I am attempting to give are just not up your alley. Do you understand where I'm going with this at least? I do hope so but I find it unlikely when you're throwing around lame insults like "manic-depressive defeatists" as if you've just successfully classified every poster that doesn't agree with certain ideals you guys seem to hold on to so dearly.

Christ Jorb while I can't speak for anyone else I will say that in my case I'm a fucking horny 23 year old that doesn't get laid enough. I'm working more often than I'm relaxing and dealing with morons in real life (and on the internet) on a regular basis has caused me to become far too jaded at an age where I simply should not be, so I do apologize if there's a level of aggression that you dislike in my posts at times or I come across as bi-polar to you (pretty fucking rude statement by the way, there are people who actually struggle with these issues). The point being that while I can certainly come across as someone who seemingly holds no optimism with regards to the direction of this game, that is a statement you would be incorrect in making.

I won't say I have nothing but high hopes for the next iteration of Haven, that doesn't mean my doubts in certain aspects have caused me to lessen my expectations as a whole.

[jordancoles]

If anything we are *much* too good at surrounding ourselves with manic-depressive defeatists who cannot even be bothered to share in that most basic sliver of optimism required to attempt to build anything

Reporting in

[TeckXKnight]

2 of them almost passed, what did you mean by few?

Na, they said 3 months just over a month ago. They can take 2 more months and it would still be entirely consistent with their claim.