You're talking about something different from what the GP was talking about. If testing is uncovering bugs, but engineering isn't fixing them, the problem is neither a lack of code review or testing quality, it's an organizational problem that no technique is going to fix.
It really depends on the situation. I worked for many years at a small, company that grew relatively slowly where all of the developers were fairly senior. We all had experience, we had been at the same company for a while, and it was pretty clear that none of us was doofus. We did end up with some different coding styles but we all wrote relatively clean code and it wasn't a big deal to glance at someone else's code.
Not to mention that since the company treated us as human beings and not as replaceable units, people stayed around. It's not a big deal to handle turnover if you're only losing a person ever few years. As a contrast, when we were bought out, the new parent company treated people like crap, and their turnover was unbelievable, something like a couple of programmers a month.
Basically we had what is sometimes called "weak code ownership" where it was clear that each module was "owned" by one or two people, but anyone was free to examine the code, or even modify the code if they discussed the changes with the owner. It's a really pleasant and productive way to work, and I highly recommend it, if you can find the right company.
It's an interesting idea, it has potential, but it also has potential for disaster. Just to enumerate a couple: . viruses . breakage . hacked one way or another to become unusable . kids viewing "objectionable" material (may be porn, might be that "evil-lotion", either way parents get pissed). . cost of school materials that get loaded (which will not, repeat not, all be free of charge... if they were, cost of schoolbooks wouldn't be an issue).
The whole reason the Gubinator is talking about online books is because CA has a budget deficit that is bigger than the GNP of a lot of countries. It's a pretty safe bet they aren't buying each kid a laptop. And before someone trots out "oh, it's only a one time expense of $250 or $300", remember, the books are neither going to be free to buy or freely redistributable, and you are dealing with children who are pretty good at losing stuff, forgetting stuff, and trashing stuff. This is one of those "look at me I'm tech savvy" feel good initiatives that is either going to go absolutely nowhere, or is going to further the gap between the haves and the have-nots
You know, you might want to pay attention before starting your rant. The post I replied to said that ALL computer users are enthusiasts. I was merely pointing out that that isn't true.
And by the way, being interested in computers doesn't mean you have higher intelligence, it means you are interested in computers. But if it makes you feel superior, go for it. I suppose everyone has to have something to hang onto.
I would hope that all desktop OS's are used by enthusiasts.
And this attitude is exactly why linux remains marginal on the desktop. 99% of computer users do not use a computer because they are "enthusiasts". They use them to get tasks done. Browse the web. Read email. Watch videos. Do research. Run spreadsheets. They aren't "enthusiasts" any more than I am an auto enthusiast because I drive to work each day. The computer is a tool, not an end in itself.
Other odd jobs, I'm sure. Remember, I'm replying to a post about kids too young for full time work. It's not like kids that age need to support their family.
Well, once LDoN came out with instanced dungeons all I did was dungeon crawls, and I agree, that was infinitely better. Way more fun, way faster experience, and you sometimes picked up a bit of loot, and you picked up some rep or currency with a particular faction... don't recall the details.
I know there were some dungeons before then but since they were open-world there was always the issue of competing with other groups. I did a bit of that but it just wasn't as much fun. Not to mention the hassle if you died deep inside and you had to do body recovery. And it seemed like whenever I pugged a group it was always "let's camp this spot or that spot". As far as I know, pre-LDoN that was basically what people did.
And now I'm flashing back to the horrors of "hell levels", like level 30 that required several times more experience than a normal level. So that meant sitting in the same spot even longer. When I think about this stuff, its amazing I played as long as I did.
And as far as raiding goes, when I left, there wasn't any danger of losing your gear, your corpse just popped at a graveyard, or you had someone summon it. And you got your 99.999% rez, and guess what, that death cost you... nothing. Death in WoW is actually more expensive than death in EQ, because you take gear damage. In EQ, unless they've changed things quite a bit, even a 90% rez pretty much eliminated XP loss, and they've probably given just about everyone the ability to rez now... or put "rez stones" in PoP.
I played EQ1 from 6 months after launch till a little after EQ2 came out. So I'd say I have something to judge by. I'm sure EQ1 raids have gotten more complex. Guess what, the WoW raids aren't getting any easier either.
And as far as the non-raid game, EQ1 is NOT more difficult than WoW. The old EQ1 was certainly more boring than WoW. Find a good camp. Pull the same mobs in the same sequence as long as you can take it. Certainly not difficult at all. Way slower than WoW, but not harder. Unless you count idiotic stuff like having to stare at your spell book when you meditated... that was a real gem.
And once LDoN hit, EQ1 leveling wasn't even slower than WoW. I started doing LDoNs in my low 40s, and I was almost embarrassed at how quickly I leveled. It was 2-3 LDoNs per level. Even when I got up to level 60, it was about 10 LDoNs per level. FASTER than I leveled those same levels in WoW, on blue XP.
Re:The game is fine; public opinion needs fixing
on
Age of Conan, One Year On
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· Score: 3, Insightful
At launch the game wasn't finished and complaints were grounded in reality. But the fact that Funcom has worked hard on the game for a year, fixing problems, adding content, rethinking bad design decisions and actually ended up with a polished, *genuinely good* MMORPG has gone completely unnoticed.
The problem is that the initial impression from launch is the impression that people are left with. It's a constant problem for all MMOs, not just AoC. Releasing a buggy, incomplete MMO pretty much guarantees failure, because the people who are excited about it are going to jump into it and come away very disappointed. It's not hard to predict this, anyone who is familiar with the industry understands this. That's one reason that WoW succeeded where other games have failed... it worked well, right from launch. I got into it about a month after launch and one of the things that made it work for me was that it just... worked. After playing EQ1 for years and just accepting the fact that the world was buggy, having a game that you could just play and enjoy was quite a revelation.
PvP was supposed to be the main selling point of AoC. That was what they pushed when they first advertised the game. Big battles, sieges, etc. That was where the marketing campaign was aimed. So it makes sense that by adding it they are going to get and retain the players that their marketing has targetted.
If EQ1 is the baseline, WoW is EQ1 with training wheels, and AoC is somewhere in between. And I'm thinking of the relative level of skill required.
I played EQ1 for years, and in terms of actual skill, WoW requires way more skill than EQ1. The more serious boss encounters in WoW require that everyone in the raid know what to do, when to do it, how to move, and if just ONE person screws up, it's a wipe. What WoW cuts out is not skill, but a lot of sitting and waiting that EQ1 requires. For example, the stuff where a boss in the open world spawns only once every week or so and then guilds have to rush to get to see who can kill it isn't in WoW. Some people may miss that sort of competition, but I sure don't.
I played Conan briefly, but when it comes to quality and creativity I don't think you can rate it ahead of WoW. The world just did not feel "open" to me. It felt like you were very constrained as to where you could go, what you could do, and how you do it.
I love it... saying that not voting is the same as "none of the above" gets modded +5 insightful, saying that it's the same as being too lazy to participate in the process gets modded down as a troll. I wish people could occasionally be consistent.
Well the first thing the National Socialists did when they came to power was shutdown all the Christian Democrat and Socialist newspapers and arrest their party leaders.
So when this private social networking site takes over Germany and shuts down the Pirate Party, you'll have a valid comparison.
Home computers do not run on the internet. Just because a page won't load doesn't mean your computer's gonna freeze. Oh wait, maybe for those still running Windows 3.1
One more take on the "grind" thing. First, having played and mostly soloed in Everquest pre-LDoN, I know grind. In WoW I do not spend lots of time grinding, and I do get to raid, so I'm not sure what your problem is. And to just get some numbers on the table, I spend about an hour a week either fishing or gathering herbs, and perhaps another 2 hours a week doing some daily quests to pick up reputation. All of my gear is quest gear, instance drops, or Naxx drops, and those drops are not from running the same instance over and over again. If I run 2 instances in a night, that's quite a bit for me. So again, I'm baffled as to the "I have to grind for gear" argument, because in my personal experience, it just isn't true.
I won't call bullshit on you because I don't know you, though I suspect you're a civilian from that 30 years of programming experience and I'm veteran, which means we probably have little in common anyhow, including our definitions of work and fun.
Ah, the "I'm a vet" card... well, I go with Mark Twain's definition of work. It's the only one that makes sense. Having run a few marathons, I suspect my definition of "fun" may be a bit different from yours.
From your comments I can see you either don't understand or more likely are so biased that you won't understand. WoW, as it is with Wrath, has fixed quite many of the issues that originally plagued WoW. You may not see them, but obviously others, including Blizzard have. Now, it's not too difficult to get to the endgame and see the raids
That is exactly what I'm saying... WoW has made it easy to get to the endgame and raid, without buying gold, getting powerleveled, or paying dollars for in-game items.
Don't take any offense to this (or do if you will), but your statements either match someone you're claiming not to be with your experience, or you're just making things up in a defensive posture. You've turned every quote around and answered something else.
Well, if you post something that's obviously wrong, and I feel the need to do so, I'll correct it. You claimed that I was obviously a kid who had never worked. I'm not sure how pointing out that I've worked for 29 years is "turning every quote around". Don't take any offense, but if you are what you say you are, and you have experience playing MMOs, you know full well that there are players of all ages and backgrounds playing... teenagers, college kids, guys playing at work during late night shifts, parents who have to afk in a boss fight because their kids just started fighting. One guy I know in his 70s who doesn't want to run with groups anymore because his eyesight is failing. When you claim that all those people raiding must not have families, you are just plain wrong, and again, I'm going to point that out.
One thing I'll agree with you on, if a company can come up with a way where the people who want to bypass part of the game can do so without impacting the other players, I'm fine with that. If it's on another server, I really don't care how screwed up the economy gets, or whether everyone is running around in tier 7.5 without even know what half their spells do. Just not on my server, please.
I think the original version of Star Wars Galaxies did that. It was much more of a sandbox game where you could pretty much do what you wanted to do. My wife loved it. She had some sort of crafter / trader who couldn't fight but was much in demand because she could build stuff that people needed. Unfortunately from what she said the game was an incredible bug-fest, and then got massively nerfed and re-nerfed to the point where she finally gave up on it. It's too bad because the original game clearly wasn't going to be a huge hit but had captured a nice niche. If they had settled for that, the game would have done ok.
The best I can come up with is that your analogy sucks and it's more like paying someone to set up the chess pieces for you before a game and pack them up for you afterwards
That's another bad analogy. Buying gold is like having a chess master come in and play the opening 30 moves and get you a big advantage so you can just play the last two move and checkmate.
(I can't figure out how to work the traditional car analogy in here... maybe you also paid the taxi to bring the chess master in?)
as far as buying your way to the top, you don't think that people sitting at home all day aren't doing that?
No, I don't. They are doing what's called "playing a game". Don't you think there's a difference between playing basketball and paying off the ref to declare you the winner of the game?
find out how much gold bored teens can grind in an hour and scale the price of gold to how much the average teen gets paid working part time. This prevents the vast majority from using their money buying gold
If you think that being able to buy gold is such a good idea, why price it so only people with real world wealth can do so? Just say that for 25 cents, you can just specify how much gold you want, and it's credited to your character.
And if your problem with my proposal is that it would screw over prices and the economy so you couldn't buy stuff, guess what, that's exactly what gold selling does.
The thing is, the game IS fun to play (at least, WoW is fun to play). You NEVER have to grind. What I see when I see people paying for gold are spoiled children who just want to hit the "I win" button. They haven't learned that there isn't really any satisfaction in just being handing something.
Slashdot Mirror
You're talking about something different from what the GP was talking about. If testing is uncovering bugs, but engineering isn't fixing them, the problem is neither a lack of code review or testing quality, it's an organizational problem that no technique is going to fix.
It really depends on the situation. I worked for many years at a small, company that grew relatively slowly where all of the developers were fairly senior. We all had experience, we had been at the same company for a while, and it was pretty clear that none of us was doofus. We did end up with some different coding styles but we all wrote relatively clean code and it wasn't a big deal to glance at someone else's code.
Not to mention that since the company treated us as human beings and not as replaceable units, people stayed around. It's not a big deal to handle turnover if you're only losing a person ever few years. As a contrast, when we were bought out, the new parent company treated people like crap, and their turnover was unbelievable, something like a couple of programmers a month.
Basically we had what is sometimes called "weak code ownership" where it was clear that each module was "owned" by one or two people, but anyone was free to examine the code, or even modify the code if they discussed the changes with the owner. It's a really pleasant and productive way to work, and I highly recommend it, if you can find the right company.
It's an interesting idea, it has potential, but it also has potential for disaster. Just to enumerate a couple:
. viruses
. breakage
. hacked one way or another to become unusable
. kids viewing "objectionable" material (may be porn, might be that "evil-lotion", either way parents get pissed).
. cost of school materials that get loaded (which will not, repeat not, all be free of charge... if they were, cost of schoolbooks wouldn't be an issue).
The whole reason the Gubinator is talking about online books is because CA has a budget deficit that is bigger than the GNP of a lot of countries. It's a pretty safe bet they aren't buying each kid a laptop. And before someone trots out "oh, it's only a one time expense of $250 or $300", remember, the books are neither going to be free to buy or freely redistributable, and you are dealing with children who are pretty good at losing stuff, forgetting stuff, and trashing stuff. This is one of those "look at me I'm tech savvy" feel good initiatives that is either going to go absolutely nowhere, or is going to further the gap between the haves and the have-nots
You know, you might want to pay attention before starting your rant. The post I replied to said that ALL computer users are enthusiasts. I was merely pointing out that that isn't true.
And by the way, being interested in computers doesn't mean you have higher intelligence, it means you are interested in computers. But if it makes you feel superior, go for it. I suppose everyone has to have something to hang onto.
I would hope that all desktop OS's are used by enthusiasts.
And this attitude is exactly why linux remains marginal on the desktop. 99% of computer users do not use a computer because they are "enthusiasts". They use them to get tasks done. Browse the web. Read email. Watch videos. Do research. Run spreadsheets. They aren't "enthusiasts" any more than I am an auto enthusiast because I drive to work each day. The computer is a tool, not an end in itself.
Other odd jobs, I'm sure. Remember, I'm replying to a post about kids too young for full time work. It's not like kids that age need to support their family.
Weird... the kid who mows my lawn for $20 seems awfully young. I'm not sure pre-schoolers are ready to work.
Well, once LDoN came out with instanced dungeons all I did was dungeon crawls, and I agree, that was infinitely better. Way more fun, way faster experience, and you sometimes picked up a bit of loot, and you picked up some rep or currency with a particular faction... don't recall the details.
I know there were some dungeons before then but since they were open-world there was always the issue of competing with other groups. I did a bit of that but it just wasn't as much fun. Not to mention the hassle if you died deep inside and you had to do body recovery. And it seemed like whenever I pugged a group it was always "let's camp this spot or that spot". As far as I know, pre-LDoN that was basically what people did.
And now I'm flashing back to the horrors of "hell levels", like level 30 that required several times more experience than a normal level. So that meant sitting in the same spot even longer. When I think about this stuff, its amazing I played as long as I did.
And as far as raiding goes, when I left, there wasn't any danger of losing your gear, your corpse just popped at a graveyard, or you had someone summon it. And you got your 99.999% rez, and guess what, that death cost you... nothing. Death in WoW is actually more expensive than death in EQ, because you take gear damage. In EQ, unless they've changed things quite a bit, even a 90% rez pretty much eliminated XP loss, and they've probably given just about everyone the ability to rez now... or put "rez stones" in PoP.
I played EQ1 from 6 months after launch till a little after EQ2 came out. So I'd say I have something to judge by. I'm sure EQ1 raids have gotten more complex. Guess what, the WoW raids aren't getting any easier either.
And as far as the non-raid game, EQ1 is NOT more difficult than WoW. The old EQ1 was certainly more boring than WoW. Find a good camp. Pull the same mobs in the same sequence as long as you can take it. Certainly not difficult at all. Way slower than WoW, but not harder. Unless you count idiotic stuff like having to stare at your spell book when you meditated... that was a real gem.
And once LDoN hit, EQ1 leveling wasn't even slower than WoW. I started doing LDoNs in my low 40s, and I was almost embarrassed at how quickly I leveled. It was 2-3 LDoNs per level. Even when I got up to level 60, it was about 10 LDoNs per level. FASTER than I leveled those same levels in WoW, on blue XP.
At launch the game wasn't finished and complaints were grounded in reality. But the fact that Funcom has worked hard on the game for a year, fixing problems, adding content, rethinking bad design decisions and actually ended up with a polished, *genuinely good* MMORPG has gone completely unnoticed.
The problem is that the initial impression from launch is the impression that people are left with. It's a constant problem for all MMOs, not just AoC. Releasing a buggy, incomplete MMO pretty much guarantees failure, because the people who are excited about it are going to jump into it and come away very disappointed. It's not hard to predict this, anyone who is familiar with the industry understands this. That's one reason that WoW succeeded where other games have failed... it worked well, right from launch. I got into it about a month after launch and one of the things that made it work for me was that it just... worked. After playing EQ1 for years and just accepting the fact that the world was buggy, having a game that you could just play and enjoy was quite a revelation.
PvP was supposed to be the main selling point of AoC. That was what they pushed when they first advertised the game. Big battles, sieges, etc. That was where the marketing campaign was aimed. So it makes sense that by adding it they are going to get and retain the players that their marketing has targetted.
If EQ1 is the baseline, WoW is EQ1 with training wheels, and AoC is somewhere in between. And I'm thinking of the relative level of skill required.
I played EQ1 for years, and in terms of actual skill, WoW requires way more skill than EQ1. The more serious boss encounters in WoW require that everyone in the raid know what to do, when to do it, how to move, and if just ONE person screws up, it's a wipe. What WoW cuts out is not skill, but a lot of sitting and waiting that EQ1 requires. For example, the stuff where a boss in the open world spawns only once every week or so and then guilds have to rush to get to see who can kill it isn't in WoW. Some people may miss that sort of competition, but I sure don't.
I played Conan briefly, but when it comes to quality and creativity I don't think you can rate it ahead of WoW. The world just did not feel "open" to me. It felt like you were very constrained as to where you could go, what you could do, and how you do it.
I love it... saying that not voting is the same as "none of the above" gets modded +5 insightful, saying that it's the same as being too lazy to participate in the process gets modded down as a troll. I wish people could occasionally be consistent.
Not voting is essentially the same as "none of the above".
No, not voting is the same as "I'm too lazy to participate".
Well the first thing the National Socialists did when they came to power was shutdown all the Christian Democrat and Socialist newspapers and arrest their party leaders.
So when this private social networking site takes over Germany and shuts down the Pirate Party, you'll have a valid comparison.
Home computers do not run on the internet. Just because a page won't load doesn't mean your computer's gonna freeze. Oh wait, maybe for those still running Windows 3.1
Fixed it for you
One more take on the "grind" thing. First, having played and mostly soloed in Everquest pre-LDoN, I know grind. In WoW I do not spend lots of time grinding, and I do get to raid, so I'm not sure what your problem is. And to just get some numbers on the table, I spend about an hour a week either fishing or gathering herbs, and perhaps another 2 hours a week doing some daily quests to pick up reputation. All of my gear is quest gear, instance drops, or Naxx drops, and those drops are not from running the same instance over and over again. If I run 2 instances in a night, that's quite a bit for me. So again, I'm baffled as to the "I have to grind for gear" argument, because in my personal experience, it just isn't true.
I won't call bullshit on you because I don't know you, though I suspect you're a civilian from that 30 years of programming experience and I'm veteran, which means we probably have little in common anyhow, including our definitions of work and fun.
Ah, the "I'm a vet" card... well, I go with Mark Twain's definition of work. It's the only one that makes sense. Having run a few marathons, I suspect my definition of "fun" may be a bit different from yours.
From your comments I can see you either don't understand or more likely are so biased that you won't understand. WoW, as it is with Wrath, has fixed quite many of the issues that originally plagued WoW. You may not see them, but obviously others, including Blizzard have. Now, it's not too difficult to get to the endgame and see the raids
That is exactly what I'm saying... WoW has made it easy to get to the endgame and raid, without buying gold, getting powerleveled, or paying dollars for in-game items.
Don't take any offense to this (or do if you will), but your statements either match someone you're claiming not to be with your experience, or you're just making things up in a defensive posture. You've turned every quote around and answered something else.
Well, if you post something that's obviously wrong, and I feel the need to do so, I'll correct it. You claimed that I was obviously a kid who had never worked. I'm not sure how pointing out that I've worked for 29 years is "turning every quote around". Don't take any offense, but if you are what you say you are, and you have experience playing MMOs, you know full well that there are players of all ages and backgrounds playing... teenagers, college kids, guys playing at work during late night shifts, parents who have to afk in a boss fight because their kids just started fighting. One guy I know in his 70s who doesn't want to run with groups anymore because his eyesight is failing. When you claim that all those people raiding must not have families, you are just plain wrong, and again, I'm going to point that out.
One thing I'll agree with you on, if a company can come up with a way where the people who want to bypass part of the game can do so without impacting the other players, I'm fine with that. If it's on another server, I really don't care how screwed up the economy gets, or whether everyone is running around in tier 7.5 without even know what half their spells do. Just not on my server, please.
I think the original version of Star Wars Galaxies did that. It was much more of a sandbox game where you could pretty much do what you wanted to do. My wife loved it. She had some sort of crafter / trader who couldn't fight but was much in demand because she could build stuff that people needed. Unfortunately from what she said the game was an incredible bug-fest, and then got massively nerfed and re-nerfed to the point where she finally gave up on it. It's too bad because the original game clearly wasn't going to be a huge hit but had captured a nice niche. If they had settled for that, the game would have done ok.
The best I can come up with is that your analogy sucks and it's more like paying someone to set up the chess pieces for you before a game and pack them up for you afterwards
That's another bad analogy. Buying gold is like having a chess master come in and play the opening 30 moves and get you a big advantage so you can just play the last two move and checkmate.
(I can't figure out how to work the traditional car analogy in here... maybe you also paid the taxi to bring the chess master in?)
as far as buying your way to the top, you don't think that people sitting at home all day aren't doing that?
No, I don't. They are doing what's called "playing a game". Don't you think there's a difference between playing basketball and paying off the ref to declare you the winner of the game?
find out how much gold bored teens can grind in an hour and scale the price of gold to how much the average teen gets paid working part time. This prevents the vast majority from using their money buying gold
If you think that being able to buy gold is such a good idea, why price it so only people with real world wealth can do so? Just say that for 25 cents, you can just specify how much gold you want, and it's credited to your character.
And if your problem with my proposal is that it would screw over prices and the economy so you couldn't buy stuff, guess what, that's exactly what gold selling does.
The thing is, the game IS fun to play (at least, WoW is fun to play). You NEVER have to grind. What I see when I see people paying for gold are spoiled children who just want to hit the "I win" button. They haven't learned that there isn't really any satisfaction in just being handing something.