Community Update 03/14/10

[Van]

I have to agree it seems like a huge chunk of the staff has been gone on vacation for awhile. The site has needed to be cleaned up for a good bit. I can understand everyone's frustration with the lack of a completed product after so long. Most of that frustration is misplaced though. It shouldn't be directed at the volunteer dev group. Trying to do this and having a real life must suck. People want to play the game again, but don't want to invest the character time with testing, especially since the current code is going the way of poop and getting flushed when the OR is done. I think once they can start testing the OR code it might make a difference.

As to forum manners, both frustrated people and avid supporters have been rude. The Internet gives everyone license to be a free form ass and most take advantage of it. This is where community managers, directors, and moderators need to step up and calm things down. I think you will never be able to calm every single individual down, but it's worth trying.

The more news the better. I check out Assembla every day, but many others don't. They check the main page and the forum front pages. They don't see anything new and then they leave. After awhile people stop checking in all together or get frustrated and want to know why no one is making a point to devulge information. Some don't take the time to look or just plain get mad about the fact they have to go look at lines of code to see what's changing.

I've been here since the start waiting, I must say that as time goes by I get just a little more sad. Not just by the time it is taking, but more so by the fact I really miss the game as it was Pre-CU. I can't blame anyone here though for the amount of time. I don't code so I can't complain, and even if I did my spare time would be limited. However the people who are community leaders need to step up and try to promote getting news out and keeping a positive tone on the boards.

It's slowly stating to degrade back to what it was in the old days which was a little more than any of us want to step back to. I know many of you remember the fights, arguments and the holders of the high post counts sniping at people for various reasons.

Anyway I've rambled for long enough. Keep on chugging along and you'll continue to have supporters. Don't let what Ramsey and the others did fall apart though. Don't let the community become a rage zone for every Internet fool to feed on.

[MiniMe]

I signed onto Emu in January of 2007. The game was very incomplete but I knew going in that this was going to be the case.

A little over 7 months ago I suddenly had trouble and I could no longer log onto my account. I searched the site, wrote emails and did not get a fix. Still in back of my mind I knew this was temporary and called on my ability for my complex brain to muster up some patience and decorum. Of those 7 months I spent the first 3 trying to log onto TC. The next 4 months I didn't bother, knowing that someday I will indeed be able to enjoy TC again and even the finished product! Sure enough, after doing various real-life and gamer activities elsewhere, the day came when I nervously clicked on my Launchpad Enhanced Icon which up to 6 days ago sat unused, patiently awaiting my cursor's brave double-click.

Eureka! I was able to create a new toon and actually log on. This was merely 6 days ago, and I cannot tell you how elated I am to see so much progress from just 7 short months prior! 'Excellent job, Devs!... really awesome!' I kept saying to myself, and to the imaginary developer I spoke these words of kudos to.

I was so excited to see SO MUCH had been implemented and improved upon that I got my husband to join me. The last time I was on TC there was no combat balance, no NPCs, no Crafting, no Training other than freebee trainers, no Schematics, no mobs to fight other than one bugged Kryatt and an occasional Syck, no bikes, no nothing. All you could basically accomplish was training from a freebee trainer and then travel to and from Mos Eisley to Theed or Bestine. Oh and watch freebee jedi PvPing or fighting that bugged Kryatt. I can honestly say, if I hear another light saber noise again it'll be too soon!

Thru these past 6 days, yes we've (my husband and I) had our dc's our crafting bugs, and some other minor happenstances occur, but I tell you as God as my witness that I am elated to just hear the familiar clicking sounds, or the combat music, or even the whale songs as you enter a tree'd area on Naboo much less being able to experience some crafting, bazaaring, banking, biking, fighting and all the other activities I've done in these glorious 6 days!

I will attempt every single profession available on TC despite the upcoming OR wipe if it helps them grow closer to the goal! I do wish there were a better way of defining what sort of reports you need from me but I'm hoping that will come in time, as my only mission is to help you help me.... and if that includes having some fun in-between then all the better.

Sincerly,

MiniMe
Aka Leelahfwek Flangermungel

PS: For any whiners out there, please stop already. It is due to whining we find more games being ruined rather than improved!

Whiners always want something for nothing, or for little effort. Whiners think they are entitled to an easier way. Whiners think THEIR ideas on how to improve the game's combat or PvP is the only idea that will work. Whiners are unacceptable, incooperative and socially inept at tolerating the reality set before them. Stop whining already and go to another galaxy far far away!

Side note: Yesterday I met a kid on TC. He said he just came from NGE which he loves! As we chatted, he mentioned to me that the older version of the game (pre-CU) would have been too confusing for him as he would have only been 10 years old. (can you say SOE Propaganda at work?)

At this my skin crawled and I shuttered with immediate feelings of mass emotion begin to well up..."I'm talking to the enemy..." I thought to myself. But instead of giving into those emotions, I simply wished him well and briefly went AFK.... to kick my precious doggy. You see, SoE's lame excuse for the NGE was "to make it more simple for a younger demographic". Supposedly this justifies the senseless murdering of countless pets, Bio-Engineers, Creature Handlers and Trillions of dollars worth of wasted components that one day were sitting in a factory waiting to be used in a stimpack and the next day were completely useless without warning! Okay I'll take SoE's "It's for the kiddies" excuse at face value... However I happen to know of several youth playing SWG with me at that time, who had found the pre-cu game mezmerizing because of it's complexity and unique craft system. Of course these younger folk had to actually LEARN the game. The fact that NGE took place was just insulting to the whole of society as SoE basically said we want to appeal to the moronic who are unable to read or learn, screw you who can follow instructions. Had SoE given a flying hoot, they'd have learned that many people taught others in-game and the populace was growing daily and with a strong loyalty, which was partly proven after thousands left due to the NGE.

My points are basic: be patient... accept what you've got... ask questions if you don't understand something. Someone in game is always happy to help explain a certain aspect, and don't assume nobody is hard at work on this game because that makes an ass out of YOU and only YOU.

Now, go away if you don't like something!

[odwill]

Anyone who thinks we don't pay attention to the community is sadly mistaken. We are very grateful for any constructive feedback that is given. Sure the "Awesome job guys!" posts are also nice but we DO value criticism when it is done in a constructive manner. However, if someone comes off in a fit of rage throwing around insults or a negative attitude..., well we pretty much don't take that seriously at all. Most of us have a limited time every day to work on this project and reading a bunch of "get this done! or you guys are terrible" posts without any real solutions is a waste of that time.
If you want to see something changed around here, do something to see it changed. Make a real effort to contribute to the community. Be a model member, help others, invest some of YOUR free time (much like we do) and make a real difference around here. I would be happy to sit down and talk to anyone who thinks they have some ideas conducive to community improvement.

Updates.... We've been trying to roll out updates about once a month or when we have enough content to talk about. As matter of fact, there is one in the works right now which I would rather be working on than writing in this thread. So I will say again, when we have enough to talk about we will have updates. If we had a weekly update people will still complain because they have nothing in them. It has happened before, just look back over this thread and you will see it. We are damned if we do, damned if we don't. You can please none of the people all of the time or some of the people some of the time.

Development... Yes we all would love to have things further along then they are but they aren't. That doesn't mean the work isn't being done. The developers are busting their back-ends. Anyone who checks Assembla will tell you as much. Want it to get done faster? We need more developers who want to code. We need people that want to get the job done but very few will rise to the challenge. Out of the 10 people I personally saw come into #opendev this week asking how to become a dev, only one person actually did anything. This has been going since the launch of this project. People say they want to become a dev but at the end of the day they don't write one line of code. Bottom line: People want the title but they don't want to do the work.

So the next time you may think we suck, we don't care, we don't listen, this is never going to get done etc... How about coming up with an idea or two to help us out and contribute to this project instead of just coming here and running us into the ground. To be blunt, criticism without a solution is just a bunch of hot air.

[kanespy]

Great post Odwill! This reminds me of before SWG was officialy launched and there were similar rage posts about how people wanted out of beta and everything fixed NOW.

Now, years later it's probably the same people complaining about it, but what they fail to realize is SOE had an army of paid developers working on it round the clock, compared to the handful that are working on the emu for free and in their spare time. Back then, people were complaining for release on a game that they had to pay for as well.

In my opinion I consider the work that the emu devs are doing as a favor to the people that loved this game, and once there is a fully functional Suncrusher, I will have no problem donating every month. That being said I believe the saying "no news is good news" does not apply here. Since this IS being done in the devs spare time from what I understand, not getting any news could be a sign of boredom or giving up. I'm not saying that's the case at all, but I think everyone here could admit it's possible. It would be nice to see more updates on the main page, but I know you guys are working as hard as possible.

I just signed up here and started playing the emu recently, but I've been following it for quite a while. I absolutely look forward to Suncrusher, and I do appreciate the hard work.
Being unemployed at the moment, it makes me wish I knew coding since I have a lot of time on my hands, but if there's any way I could volunteer, I'm here to answer the call.

Keep up the good work guys!

[Bulbous]

Also, I think it's definitely counter-productive to get into the "don't alienate the community" mindset. Swing that ban-hammer hard! Those of us who are appreciative of your efforts will be patient. Everyone else will get tired and move on, anyway - and who needs 'em?

[MiniMe]

Excellent Post, Odwill! I second, third AND fourth it!

Some people are just unappreciative and rude by nature and I for one am sick of it!

Before I sign off.. any way we can get more than 5 min notice of server shut down? I spent 2 hours running all over looking for a buff, no kidding 2 hours! Finally found a guy to buff me and ran to starport to go get some missions and the message 5 minutes til server shutdown came before my faint eyes. That was my last 15k but luckily someone tipped me.

[Van]

Originally Posted by Bulbous

Also, I think it's definitely counter-productive to get into the "don't alienate the community" mindset. Swing that ban-hammer hard! Those of us who are appreciative of your efforts will be patient. Everyone else will get tired and move on, anyway - and who needs 'em?

That's part of why we are waiting on the emu.You don't ever alienate your community, the community is what makes or breaks a game.....free or not. And quite simply put you need the community. Otherwise you will be playing by yourself, or on a server with 20 people. Love or hate them, people who moan and groan have their place in a community. If we all got along all of the time life would get boring, so would these forums.

[Bulbous]

Let me rephrase, then.

The thing to avoid is worrying about alienating people in general. Some people bring nothing to the table except misery and frustration. Such people, while members of the forum and account-holders, are not true members of the SWGEMU "community".

You could easily boot 20% of the people for a variety of reasons (hacking, spamming, complaining, griefing, or just general immaturity) and the "community" would be better off. This isn't a business - the goal here isn't to maximize subscribers.

[Van]

Originally Posted by Bulbous

Let me rephrase, then.

The thing to avoid is worrying about alienating people in general. Some people bring nothing to the table except misery and frustration. Such people, while members of the forum and account-holders, are not true members of the SWGEMU "community".

You could easily boot 20% of the people for a variety of reasons (hacking, spamming, complaining, griefing, or just general immaturity) and the "community" would be better off. This isn't a business - the goal here isn't to maximize subscribers.

Oh I agree with that, you will always have people that you can't tiptoe around, but "swing that ban-hammer hard" is not a good policy, except in cases of exploiting and cheating. Then in some cases those people are truly helpful at helping the devs find holes in their code to fix so those issues don't go live.

And you are also correct that this isn't a business, however you want to maximize your testers.....even the ones who are questionable. People who might actually test and do a good job at it might be turned off by all of the negativity.

[Rivin2000]

The big thing many people need to remember that TC, as it stands now, is in beta testing stage as far as content and game mechanics goes.

I've had the "pleasure" of beta testing several games, both free and to be paid for, and they've all had a large pool of paid staff members who were devoted to coding, customer service, advertising and even in game testing. SWGEmu does not have that. We have the pleasure of being able to play a game we loved, or a friend loved dearly and dragged us into, for free while they work out the kinks.

Yes, the project has been in the works for several years but, unlike the games pushed out by companies such as SOE, Blizzard, Mythic, EA, etc, this game has not had the devoted staffing that those companies have. I mean devoted in the, "this is my job I work on it 8 hours a day" way. Emu has been coded by many people working in thier spare time.

I mentioned all this to ask those who are ready to start jumping on the "you're not working fast enough," "I want and update," "You devs don't know what you're doing" band wagons to think back to how long before a game was released did they hear about it. I personally heard about the Star Trek Online game being in the works over five years ago and followed it through the various companies who worked on the project, the strikes, the scrapping of code, the loss of funding, change in direction, yadda, yadda, shmackity, shamckity. What happened with that game? It finally hit open Beta and there were a slew of complaints about how the game wasn't done and that they needed to fix this problem or that problem NOW. I experienced similar issues with CoH, DAoC, EQII, and even SWG. Concidering the changes in the Emu team's make up and the VOLENTEER nature of the labor, I'd say they've done a fine job of returning us to the game we loved.

The current code on TC is not being worked on anymore, as I understand it, in favor of the OR. I would loook at this as a minor set back in favor of the stabilization expected as well as the implementation of features such as housing, and the larger facilities.

Keep plugging away at it Devs. Toss us an update a little more often or maybe play with the main page abit but, keep it up. You're giving many of us back a part of our gaming youth we've missed.

[MiniMe]

Originally Posted by Van

That's part of why we are waiting on the emu.You don't ever alienate your community, the community is what makes or breaks a game.....free or not. And quite simply put you need the community. Otherwise you will be playing by yourself, or on a server with 20 people. Love or hate them, people who moan and groan have their place in a community. If we all got along all of the time life would get boring, so would these forums.

Oh please! Alienate a community by telling them to be patient and kind? Give me a break! We are all capable of human decency. There is NO reason to keep nay sayers around as there are lots more people who value every minute a dev puts into this game. They DON'T need us... we need them! Do you actually believe that when this project is finished only 20 people will be left to play due to banning the evil-spirited ones? *put the crack pipe down please* The day we accept bad behavior for fear of not being around bad behavior is the day we need to check into therapy! People who moan and groan for the sake of moaning and groaning offer NOTHING constructive. They DO give us insight as to how reprobate their need for attention is!

If we all got along life would be much BETTER! Get a clue!

[\/icious]

Originally Posted by MiniMe

Oh please! Alienate a community by telling them to be patient and kind? Give me a break! We are all capable of human decency. There is NO reason to keep nay sayers around as there are lots more people who value every minute a dev puts into this game. They DON'T need us... we need them! Do you actually believe that when this project is finished only 20 people will be left to play due to banning the evil-spirited ones? *put the crack pipe down please* The day we accept bad behavior for fear of not being around bad behavior is the day we need to check into therapy! People who moan and groan for the sake of moaning and groaning offer NOTHING constructive. They DO give us insight as to how reprobate their need for attention is!

If we all got along life would be much BETTER! Get a clue!

i can understand a little *****ing from ppl you throw coin each month but all and all you're on point. there is definitely more than 20 ppl that have the patience enough to wait. Hell you could ban every nay-sayer and when the live emu is released half of those guys will be itching to find a way back. I agree with ban the bastards that dont contribute and bring negativity. Btw is coding hard to learn lol. I would do it if i knew how.

[Zurian]

Originally Posted by \/icious

Btw is coding hard to learn lol. I would do it if i knew how.

Seek education and you shall learn

://academicearth.org/courses/introduction-to-computer-science-and-programming (i dont have 5 posts, i cant post the link, add the appropriate http in front of the ://)

stanford /mit computer science for beginners

[TurokIgnis]

Well... I think the community would be alot better off if we didn't feel as if we're bottle necked inside.

Yeah it's open-source, but who really wants to tamper with it and set a server up if it has a 1 hour time-limit or 20 player cap?

It honestly has felt that SWGEMU is just wanting to be as professional as possible, but pissing the players off in return because they could care less about that.

I for one, have supported the emulator from the day it was mentioned years ago. But when do we stand up and say? "Alright, charade's over... go home."

It's been well over 4 years now, at least. The game would make MORE progress with people who don't want to worry about the restrictions on the source.

Why are their restrictions anyways? From "party" servers? People want to play the game and host their own servers, not be forced into one without a subscription. Or are you guys worried that someone might take the code and claim the project as their own? Perhaps ANH? Or some other unheard community?

Honestly, we need to stop worrying about glory and respecting one another and just get this damn thing done already, or at least reliable source code that can probably test much, MUCH more than the "official" server could.

This is just my 2 cents, like it or don't. It's been many years now, I think we the community should get a bigger bone.

[tazman1701]

Wosa been several months now all I have been hearing is burbbling whining and crying about how nothing is getting done. I agree with those who say then get off your butt and help out if you have the time to complain then you have the time to code otherwise stop the whining.

Personally I find myself going on for about 2 hours every month in the games current state. Every time they release something new like the recent Corvette or the Boba Fett hunting. Other than that I have done all I can on my character for now however when Suncrusher goes live this game will have my full support.
Every day I have been checking the forums and gathering any info I can on the prgress the Admins are making I have to say good job to you all. Look how faryou brought us in just 1 year. last summer the only action was on Naboo there were gungans handing out free gear of all sorts no economy and nothing more than just a few million creatures to constantly destroy now we have a role playing element player run economy in 1 year this game has gone from just a test of the basic mechanics to looking and feeling like the game we all loved so long ago.
Of course the code is going to need restructuring and the admins are doing a great job at gettign things doen in what time they can spare. If I had the time and could code I would do so however I am more comfortable letting people that know what thier doing take that burden thus I give up any right for cokmplaints on it. Keep up the amazing job