Update Procedure

[Fortunato]

neither icon change was a small change.

To be fair, the icons revision was up for discussion for almost half a year before making it into the game, see here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17401

[SriNitayanda]

Yeah, i know this disscusion and i already told i saw it on testing, did you know when it is going to be implemented to the game? do you see any notice of it on the forums?
yes last post says they are release candidates still there were updates before the last one and after this post, so i could only gamble which upadte will be the icon update. if it would be implemented at all.

Edit: anyway. i even knew item behavior change would be implemented a bit before the udapte, cause i already noticed its behavior on testing i wanted to report it as bug on testing and some non existing bug on testing also, but i deleted this post (Elanore: NitaRama: Report: i am an idiot). still like you see here, most people didn't know.

Anyway this post is derailing to flamewar any second it exists causing more grief amongst dev and players i hope we'll know better about next update, o11c said that the mob behavior change didn't go through the regular update procedure so i can just hope it'll be better next time even if the procedure is not going to be changed.

if none other wants to comment on this, you can lock this flamewar XIIIII.

[Crush]

TMW needs more equipment variety. And even when it sounds unintuitive, level requirements on items increase variety, not decrease it.

Without level requirements, everyone will just use the highest equipment tier they can get. Whole tiers of weapons would exist in theory, but see next to no use in practice.

[bell chick]

TMW needs more equipment variety. And even when it sounds unintuitive, level requirements on items increase variety, not decrease it.

Without level requirements, everyone will just use the highest equipment tier they can get. Whole tiers of weapons would exist in theory, but see next to no use in practice.

i can see where you may be right. what it does though is take away variety of what one can fight at any given level. a warrior who is only allowed to equip a chainmail and wooden shield isnt going to be abl to fight skeletons or poltergeists even if his stats permit it. it saps open endedness from the game and forces us to play only the way devs want with less creativity and strategy on the player end

[AnonDuck]

This type of constructive criticism makes me happy. Let me tell the story from the other side though:

I'd like to point out that the development team is fairly small and doesn't have the resources to do everything as properly as they'd like to. It's not out of malice that things get pushed without much feedback. It's not out of absent-mindedness most of the time either.

It's a time issue. People quickly lose motivation if they cannot see the results of their hard work in action, so pushing new updates is always a priority. The TMW developers work for free, and they need to get some gratification out of what they do in order to continue doing it. As much as everyone who develops for TMW would like to be more precise and thorough, that just doesn't work with so few team members. Doing so would slow development to a crawl and de-motivate everyone involved.

Can improvements be made? Sure! There's always room for improvement.. But when coming up with suggestions please keep the above in mind

One thing I would like to see is the "tmw testers" group actively tracking development instead of waiting to be asked to do something. I think that would be a big help. Get on IRC and into #themanaworld-dev guys.Testing and feedback is very important, and we hardly have any at all!

[blackrazor]

TMW needs more equipment variety. And even when it sounds unintuitive, level requirements on items increase variety, not decrease it.

Without level requirements, everyone will just use the highest equipment tier they can get. Whole tiers of weapons would exist in theory, but see next to no use in practice.

Two points about this:

1) Fashionistas.

Lots of players prefer their looks, and they want to look unique. They won't choose an outfit based on stats, they will do it based on looks. You can go further with this, from a programming perspective, by having two layers of clothing. One layer is the functionality layer, wear stuff here for the bonuses, if you have the level for those bonuses. The other layer is the "Just For Show" layer, for how you want to look; for how you want others to see you. The same article of clothing can be in both layers, or you can program it so the Just-For-Show layer visually overrides the functional layer, but if nothing is in the JFS-layer, then the functional layer will be displayed, instead. If both are empty, well then you're naked

2) Lateral, not linear bonuses.

One big problem right now, is we have mostly linear bonuses on items. Which is to say, one set is progressively more powerful and higher leveled than the one before it. The biggest drawback to this system is that eventually, only the topmost set will be desirable for the top leveled players. By contrast, a lateral system of bonuses presents players with choices, none of which are clearly "better" in all situations. One set might give a huge crit-rate vs. Skulls, but little else. One set might have a 5% chance to do 10x damage vs. Jackos and Yetis, but little else. One set might have some +strength stats, while another might have some +agility stats. One set might give +vitality and much shorter and less severe poisonings. Etc. As long as you make each set very desirable to some situations or some playstyles, then you will always have a variety of what players will take into combat with them.

[Freeyorp101]

TMW needs more equipment variety. And even when it sounds unintuitive, level requirements on items increase variety, not decrease it.

Without level requirements, everyone will just use the highest equipment tier they can get. Whole tiers of weapons would exist in theory, but see next to no use in practice.

Two points about this:

[...]

2) Lateral, not linear bonuses.

One big problem right now, is we have mostly linear bonuses on items. Which is to say, one set is progressively more powerful and higher leveled than the one before it. The biggest drawback to this system is that eventually, only the topmost set will be desirable for the top leveled players. By contrast, a lateral system of bonuses presents players with choices, none of which are clearly "better" in all situations. One set might give a huge crit-rate vs. Skulls, but little else. One set might have a 5% chance to do 10x damage vs. Jackos and Yetis, but little else. One set might have some +strength stats, while another might have some +agility stats. One set might give +vitality and much shorter and less severe poisonings. Etc. As long as you make each set very desirable to some situations or some playstyles, then you will always have a variety of what players will take into combat with them.

I agree wholeheartedly here. Nonlinear comparisons are far, far more interesting.

---Freeyorp

[Hello=)]

I'd like to point out that the development team is fairly small and doesn't have the resources to do everything as properly as they'd like to.

Right. But nothing screws up things as much as lack of ambitions and large-scale plans. For TMW it has always been an issue that devs usually "fixing" things in easiest (and dumbest) ways, at expense of gameplay and players experience. Then, since issue is "less daunting", there is less traction to actually fix it in better ways. The result? Nearly all long-standing issues are worked around in hackish/half-working/dumb ways, this plagues game here and there for years. And since most of devs do not play it, and it looks "less daunting", nobody is motivated enough to improve state of things at all. Result? Well, I've attempted to show TMW to some friends and learned the very same things I know myself. Unfortunately these things do not sound too nice for TMW devs. I think it could be better, eh? Such a stockpile of efforts from different people deserves better perception by humans, IMO.

It's not out of malice that things get pushed without much feedback. It's not out of absent-mindedness most of the time either.

But it's still some lack of responsibility and failure to understand such actions can affect quite many people around. Who could actually care about what would be thrown on their heads. If it happens to be far from expectations, churn and grief takes place. It could be expected, no? Both too-dev-centric and too-consumer-centric approaches suxx equally bad. It only rocks when it's more or less balanced.

It's a time issue. People quickly lose motivation if they cannot see the results of their hard work in action, so pushing new updates is always a priority.

Sounds reasonable. However, there are test servers to see how it performs "ASAP". Then, why not to call some players from testers group to test "new good things" and then collect feedback on how it feels from players side? This would be responsible and would also allow to notice things you've missed yourself. I've got nice example myself, missing really obvious bug. You see, I've got bug even if it has been simple thing and I've done some testing myself. Good example why it's nice to have feedback from others. Nobody is perfect.

The TMW developers work for free, and they need to get some gratification out of what they do in order to continue doing it. As much as everyone who develops for TMW would like to be more precise and thorough, that just doesn't work with so few team members. Doing so would slow development to a crawl and de-motivate everyone involved.

Right but still it's a bit question if devs should be able to do completely arbitrary actions, screwing up players and causing grief, making players to leave their homes, going to servers/projects with better, more friendly climate. When everyone stops caring about community around, it would follow ManaServ's fate. Which maybe not so bad technically, but it failed to keep momentum and mostly abandoned by content makers and players. Up to degree ManaPlus stopped supporting this protocol at all.

Can improvements be made? Sure! There's always room for improvement.. But when coming up with suggestions please keep the above in mind

And when you think it's okay to throw arbitrary chunks on players heads, keep above in mind too. Unless you want TMW to follow fate of ManaServ. I think it should be more or less balanced approach where devs and players views are mixed to make something really nice.

One thing I would like to see is the "tmw testers" group actively tracking development instead of waiting to be asked to do something. I think that would be a big help. Get on IRC and into #themanaworld-dev guys.Testing and feedback is very important, and we hardly have any at all!

Somewhat true. And proper place to remember about time again, isn't it? Fully tracking all development requires some time and most of time WIP is not really okay to test. Most notably, future changes would negate most of testing results anyway. So unless it's something more or less ready, it's rather waste of testers time. It's possible to get some improvements this way, but here we come to fact testers aren't full time employees either. On other hands, throwing one message to testers group does not takes much time and then it's easier to notice there're some things to chew on. Also, if testing something for a while, from my experience testers tend to lose freshness of their sight. To be honest, as QA I can admit best testing happens when you encounter something for 1st time in your life. In this case you feel exactly like some new user would do. So it's just a matter of taking into account things which make you unhappy and being able to describe them. Repeated testing requires testers to be able to "switch roles" between development and testing. Very few mortals possess this rare skill (not everyone could be good QA, can you imagine that?) and even then it's not as efficient as looking on something new with fresh eyes.

P.s. also I think now I'm finally got why corporate nuts are so inclined on their damn "deadlines", even if it often harms quality of software a lot. It turns out some devs can tell something about "alpha" versions even after 10 years of development. So I guess someone invented it as "watchdog timer" to prevent such insane things from happening.