Realistic Expectations

[Bigbelly]

[EDIT BY minion79] "Blue Byte is working on both titles with 2 dedicated teams. A new game is being released and there is no change for TSO."



Please note that the following are pure speculation as the above statement is the only official information released on this subject by a BB employee.

[in response to following post]


There are a lot of good ideas in this thread but unfortunately a great many of the will never happen.
There are two reasons for this. 1. Money and 2.Game development life cycle.

TheSettlersOnline was created by a development team. The coders in this team have done their job and Manager-A now has them reassigned working on a new title. Making a new game can take years and deadlines are always tight. They wont be being reassigned back to this game to make changes just because you think something might be nice or will make your life easier. You are already playing their game and buying their gems which is what they want. The marginal return on adding suggestion-A is almost nothing. The only way those coders will be tasked here to make a change is if they have downtime for some reason, which is unlikely if Manager-A is doing his job correctly.

Right now we are in what is called a maintenance cycle. We stay in this until the game dies. BB make more money selling you a new game or shifting you to a new game, than they will from servicing this one with an ever dwindling population. After all who joins a game that is several years old when you can join that new one that was just released....

Don't get me wrong they haven't abandoned us, there is money to be made here, reputations to be maintained, and obligations to be fulfilled, which is why we will have a product manager, a community liaison, a couple of interns, and we will get allocated patches of time from designers who work out of sync to coders and so are often switched around titles as their work is evaluated / implemented.

These are the people who will be making the changes we are likely to see from here on out in this game.
This is the important part....Your suggestions therefore should be targeted at things that can be manipulated or influenced by these above mentioned people. It is almost certain that any suggestion regarding development will be ignored.

For example.
Most likely to see....
- New adventures. These are just maps and scripting reusing existing tools.
- New item objects or variable adjustments; such as buildings, buffs, generals, explorers. These are game variables that are added or adjusted and new art work added.
- Events that reuse existing code such as the Event Calendar. Alteration to an existing script.
- New Quests or changes to existing quests.

You are least likely to see...
- Land clearing. Involves development.
- Scale changes on the slider in the Barracks building. Involves development and affects game balance.
- New Islands for hosting new buildings. Involves development.
- New Tabs adding new properties to an existing building. Development and affects game balance.
- Stacking items in the Star Menu. Involves development.
- Island Planning / Hold area for buildings. Development
- Rubbish Bin for deleting items. Involves development and has customer service implications.

There may be a time when the developers are retasked or have a weeks downtime and in that case they may get asked to make one or two changes for us here or there, or it may be that one of those interns I mentioned earlier is a coder, but by and large any changes will be as I have described and will be those least likely to affect game balance.

Anyway... I am not making this post to discourage you from adding your suggestions but to try and shed some light on how software development works and to be realistic about what we can expect. I should know since this is my job.

I hope that by understanding this process any contributions made here can be more constructive and focused.

[Sharpielein]

Well, I know adventures are "just maps", but in the end, it's about the total amount of work invested.
Don't tell me Fairytales were less work than changing the maximum position of a slider in the Barracks.
Back where I work, sliders aren't done with "Magic Numbers", so changing something from 25 to 100 or 1000 is merely 1 entry in a config file and takes approximately 10 minutes, testing and deployment included.

The Fairytales, on the other hand, involved creating new buildings (Magnificient Residence, Gold Tower, Fairytale Caslte), new troops (Major, Quartermaster), new artwork, new game mechnics (buildings that don't produce anything until reaching a certain level) and don't tell me all of this can be done without any form of coding whatnotever.

If the total amount of work for the Fairytales adventures was LESS than changing a slider in the Barracks from 25 to 100, then frankly, those developers must SUCK a lot!

But yeah, I agree that it does seem like Bluebyte can easier produce an entire game map with artwork, items and everything associated than modify 1 line of existing code.

[Sharpielein]

One more thing:

- New item objects or variable adjustments; such as buildings, buffs, generals, explorers. These are game variables that are added or adjusted and new art work added.

- Scale changes on the slider in the Barracks building. Involves development and affects game balance.

Now, THAT is just, sorry, idiotic. If a new general or buff does not affect game balance, but a slider does affect game balance in significant ways, then someone hasn't understood the game yet.

[Bigbelly]

ok perhaps by using the words "game balance" I have been misleading here.

This is what I meant in general terms...

There is little resistance to adding new content but a huge amount to altering existing and viable content.

Consider the following....
To create a new buff, an intern could open a game editor, copy an existing buff and paste it as a new one. Then edit this new buff, change its name, change the icon for it, change it so that it only applies to say gold mines and set it 3x's value.... as an example. You can see how that is easy to do technically and whilst it does need a bit of consideration to make sure that it doesnt duplicate something already out there, and that it isnt over powering anything it is basically just an extension of what already exists.

On the other hand you have the alteration of an existing game mechanic, one that is central to all game play at all levels. Even if it is just a matter of editing the top end of the slider and increasing it from 25 to 250 there are other things to consider and it is these "other considerations" that are the important part you are overlooking.

- There is no delete option for a currently running build. What happens if someone puts on 250 crossbow men and then changes their mind. This is more than 8 hours of build time. Players will then be moaning about that and their lost resources.
- There is no reorder build option. If we lock people in to multiple 8 hour + builds will we be limiting their game access.
- How will being able to build max troops affect someone just starting out? Will it be confusing and lead to them creating an army of unwanted troops? Will this ruin their experience and make them quit?
- Some people want a change, others couldnt care less and are happy with the limit being 25. Will the change upset them or how will affect their enjoyment of the game?
- Will there be advantage to some players over others if this change is made? How will they react?
- Will allowing the building of such large troop numbers cause people to log off sooner. It probably will and BB dont want that. Their success is measured and yardsticked against other games by how often you log in and how long you play for. If you log off sooner it makes their game seem less desirable.
- Who on our staff is able to make this change if we wanted it done and what is their workload? How much will this cost us both in time and money?

These are just a couple of things that came to me as I was writing this, there will no doubt be a lot more if you think about it.
The point is, because it is a centralised game mechanic that involves serious issues they are unlikely to venture from the status quo because they have nothing to gain by doing so (only your perceived happiness and gamers are a fickle lot always moaning about something) but they do have a lot to lose.

I hope I am wrong, I get no enjoyment out of the RSI inducing rebuilds.

[Bigbelly]

The Fairytales, on the other hand, involved creating new buildings (Magnificient Residence, Gold Tower, Fairytale Caslte), new troops (Major, Quartermaster), new artwork, new game mechnics (buildings that don't produce anything until reaching a certain level) and don't tell me all of this can be done without any form of coding whatnotever.

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.

You just open that game editor, copy game object "Nobel Residence" and paste as "Magnificent Residence" and then load the new image(s), change various other properties and bam its done. Graphic designers did all the work here, not coders.

[Astraldimension]

bigbelly, make this a sticky

[IndianKid]

3 words....THEY DONT CARE.....
they didnt took any suggestion from forum...cant u see?

[Brayarg]

Thing is BigBelly, They have had more than enough time to create an achievement system, the entire collectable system, new skins for gold mines, granite pit and ewl pit (or whatever they are called) improved silo and stores, manors and new adventures, new graphics for the generals and countless other things. BUT they cant seem to get their communication right. There is never enough time in the day to be able to say

"sorry guys and girls this cant be done because of ........"
Or
"dev team are working on this eta 2014" "if this changes will keep you posted"

Now I don't blame the community managers, But its quite obvious that this company needs to work on their communication because it does cost them customers. I am certainly considering going back to EVE online.

A lot of people would be prepared to buy a new barracks, a super barrack if you will. Could be built from the merchant or a normal building from the expert build tab. It doesn't have to be an update to the existing barracks so I'm just not buying your unbalancing issues.

[SmurfAsH]

As I see it.. I think it's mainly a system failure in BB's organization.. It's TOO top-down managed..
Perhaps this is a result of the old-fashion german corporate culture, but it seems like almost every decision needs to be approved from the top.
We got a community team that can't tell (soon enough) things we need to know.. Sometimes because devs don't tell them (soon) enough, but what devs can tell must probably be approved in the first place..
Then feedback seems mostly used to confirm what the top already had decided...and here we are..

[Peajay]

I bet it took a lot of development time and code when they added collectibles. It does appear that some changes to the game were more costly than others, which didn't involve new buildings or adventures. So we know they can give some of the things that so many people have asked for on the forums if they wanted to.