Forums » Suggestions
(Savet, fwiw, I've actually responded to identical threads in the past, that I am not interested in making a "medium" port, I'm not going to search for the thread right now, but I believe I responded in some detail before).
(Back to Lecter's commentary)..
Players requested a change, explained the basis for it as being preventing use of an energy interceptor as a bomber, you said how about getting to the same place by having it be S-port with an S-port variant?, we said great, S-port megaposi pls!, gave you a detailed post about what that'd look like right after the change was actually implemented...and now pointing out the fact half-assing your own goddamn approach to the requested change was lazy (however understandable things getting lost in two years of shuffle may be, it was lazy) is self-righteous embittered whining?
So, first of all, I honestly did not find the small-port megaposi thread that you linked, although I did earnestly search (at some length) for such a thread last night (in my post, I did leave open the possibility that it existed, but that I couldn't find it). I certainly regret not noticing it before; but obviously I never responded to it back in 2016, or any time since. So my lack of awareness of the thread, perhaps, should not be such a huge shock to you, or to anyone else.
Notably, my "goal" in the thread from 2016, was to find a path forward to alleviate the constant complaining and tickets about swarm-missile "exploits". That's it. My suggestions about small-port weapons were genuine, particularly when I thought the whole thing would be an easy change, but it was a side-issue to me and not remotely the main focus. Six months later, after a painful and lengthy development effort to get the L to S port change finally made, I'm not surprised my earlier "suggestion" had long since vanished from my memory.
Given that no one chose to revive or bump your later thread (apparently), or revisit the issue, it would have been kind of amazing for it to have crossed my mind again. So.. you can blame me for this all you want (ultimately, it's all my responsibility), but I'm not real surprised that it happened this way.
As to the rest of your "response", I could go for a point-by-point thing, but this may be better to address in terms of the "big picture", for the sake of other players who aren't you, since you're leaving forever.
1) We build and maintain a full-bore, cross-platform MMORPG, with a native engine and server technology, while pushing updates about every two weeks, and while handling every aspect of customer service and administration. We do this despite a team-size that would generally be considered a "flat-out impossibility" by the game industry.
But, unfortunately, the simple reality is that none of you really understand what that actually means, and your empathy is limited by your ability to "grok" that notion; so we end up with angry people like Lecter, who feel that their perspective and resulting behaviour are entirely justified by their personal disappointment, and who never question their own expectations.
It's been a recurring issue throughout the life of our game (and perhaps a curse of our being around so long). I try, periodically, to articulate what it's been like to keep us afloat, and why I have to run around doing 1000 other things, because I stubbornly won't give up on this specific game. But, again, that attempt at explanation is always doomed to fail, because it's like reading about anyone, far-away, who is having a really unfamiliar day-to-day struggle: most people end up saying "huh, that's a bummer, I guess?".
Lecter's commentary even starts with "I get you're all busy as Hell largely keeping this game alive for as long as you have", and then he proceeds to completely fail to comprehend the point of my message, and clearly demonstrates that he does not understand anything remotely about our day-to-day reality. Otherwise he would have been unable to type that without feeling like a complete shit.
2) You choose to play a weird, underfunded Indie game. It's super obvious we aren't Blizzard, or CCP, or whomever.
Of course, Blizzard would largely ignore anything you wanted changed, where we've tried to make it a core part of what we do (however delayed our actions/responses). But let's leave that aside for the moment..
Fundamentally, there is no way in the holy hinges of hell that we have enough time, or waking hours, to do all that is actually needed from us, no matter how well-organized we might be; much of which is genuinely mission-critical to the basic, operational status of this title. You should know that. Lecter should REALLY know that, especially by now.
So when I say things like "You really need to occasionally bump Suggestions threads that are really important to you, until I see them", the correct response is not to grouse like a ****ing child about the developers requiring "spoon feeding". If you want to go play a game where you will never, ever talk to the designer or have any impact on the game at all, then feel free to go play.. almost any other game? If you can't accept that this "Suggestions" system is based around a fundamental mechanic in which you get to assist the developers by shedding light on things, then.. perhaps this is not the game or community for you.
3) Some individuals will say "But I pay Money! I'm a Customer! Organization Is Your Problem! Get It Done! To which the simple, obvious answer (that doesn't actually have to be explained to a lot of people) is: THEN DON'T PLAY WEIRD, UNDERFUNDED INDIE GAMES. Because your expectations should be very different. And if you choose to stick around for 13 years, perhaps you should have picked that up at some point.
To make a Hotel analogy: this isn't the Waldorf Astoria, this is some dude's AirBnB, and he has an air-mattress on the living room floor for you, and the cat may randomly jump on you in the middle of the night.
For some people, the quirky interaction and development process are part of the point of playing an indie title like this. As soon as you start to say "Hey, I wrote a thread in 2016 that they never responded to, or implemented, obviously they're LAZY!", you're probably in the wrong place. You clearly don't get it.
Of course, if you say that to CCP or Blizzard, they may just silently boot you off their forums. Or, at least, all the other players will laugh at you. So, maybe a game developer doesn't actually exist who fits the expectations that are in Lecter's head. But, he can please feel free to go find out.
If that's your approach to this situation, I say go [love -W] yourself. I will not darken your game, your forums, or Guild Software's balance sheet with my presence any further. Good luck to you guys - parts of the last 13 years have been a lot of fun.
It is my approach to this situation, and to your abrasive entry into this thread, contending twice that we haven't made this particular update because we are "lazy". This happened in 2016, right? I didn't get paid a salary in 2016. At all. I was doing every goddamn thing I could to protect Curt and Ray's incomes and stability, and keep them as productive as possible, while I rushed around frantically trying to find revenue for us, and shake every bizdev tree that I could.
My world was a bit of a shit-show, and I'm sure I could have done everything better; but I wouldn't call myself "lazy".
There are some players who contend that, if we only had a Bezos-esque "obsessive customer focus", these issues would not occur and we would be fine and dandy. And, quite frankly, given the opportunity to function more like that, without the threat of imminent demise, that would be my preference. However..
My experience with trying to raise revenue through fulfilling customer desires and goodwill, via direct development, has actually been.. really bad! I specifically tried it at a previous point, really doubling down hard on Suggestions stuff and content changes, for a solid year, and we nearly went out of business. So, these days my answer is "Suggestions can wait; what can I do to keep the lights on?".
Of course, I come back to Suggestions later, because ultimately.. all I really want to do is make Vendetta Online awesome (that's actually why I started this whole..thing), and I actually care a lot about player feedback. But I can't do any development if we go out of business. And I can say, a million times in a million different ways "look how few game companies last more than 5 years", but neither you, Lecter, nor any other embittered player will ever take that seriously as a retort to your self-righteous, angsty disappointment that is fundamentally borne out of your unreasonable expectations.
I used to blame myself for those expectations, for telling people we would do too much. But that's why I DON'T PROMISE ANYTHING ANYMORE. And I sure didn't promise you anything in 2016 either. Yeah, I had an idea in a thread, and you liked the idea, and you made a thread (which was seemingly great), and I forgot about it or never saw it.
But you don't get to come on here and call me or Ray "lazy".
You are, by far, our longest-running toxic player. Oh, you've gotten "less bad" over the years, but your content still has to be modified by Whistler on a constant basis (as this thread demonstrates). You have the dubious honor of being the only person who, in the early days of the game, caused a large group of level-headed, veteran players to come together to offer to "buy-out" your entire potential multi-account lifetime value, so we would ban you, for the betterment of the game as a whole.
You are also the only individual who actually made me consider walking away from the company and quitting game development, from my old interactions with you on this forum. We've had a lot of trolls, but you're the only one who actually managed to push me that far, and I'll never forget that.
You frequently call out how "great" you were to try to support our ill-fated Kickstarter, with the offer of a possible $10k pledge, a gesture I did appreciate. But ironically you completely fail to understand that, to me, if you had covered the entire $100k Kickstarter, that would not have made reparations for the shit the you've historically inflicted on us with your abrasive, arrogant personality and bad behaviour.
Why then, didn't I ban you, long ago? To be clear, it was never a monetary decision (people offered to pay me to ban you! a lot!). Frankly, I'm an optimist, verging on pathological (I mean, look at what I choose to do with my life). My will to "endure" is even more steely than my optimism, and I fundamentally believe in people's ability to evolve. So I believed in yours, and I focused on your obvious passion for the game over your persistent bad behaviour. But all this time later, you're still just another self-righteous dick, and I'm out of patience.
I think it's wonderful that you had some fun here in the last 13 years. You have not been much "fun" for me.
To formally "retort" to your final commentary: Stay out of my goddamn game, and never come back.
(Back to Lecter's commentary)..
Players requested a change, explained the basis for it as being preventing use of an energy interceptor as a bomber, you said how about getting to the same place by having it be S-port with an S-port variant?, we said great, S-port megaposi pls!, gave you a detailed post about what that'd look like right after the change was actually implemented...and now pointing out the fact half-assing your own goddamn approach to the requested change was lazy (however understandable things getting lost in two years of shuffle may be, it was lazy) is self-righteous embittered whining?
So, first of all, I honestly did not find the small-port megaposi thread that you linked, although I did earnestly search (at some length) for such a thread last night (in my post, I did leave open the possibility that it existed, but that I couldn't find it). I certainly regret not noticing it before; but obviously I never responded to it back in 2016, or any time since. So my lack of awareness of the thread, perhaps, should not be such a huge shock to you, or to anyone else.
Notably, my "goal" in the thread from 2016, was to find a path forward to alleviate the constant complaining and tickets about swarm-missile "exploits". That's it. My suggestions about small-port weapons were genuine, particularly when I thought the whole thing would be an easy change, but it was a side-issue to me and not remotely the main focus. Six months later, after a painful and lengthy development effort to get the L to S port change finally made, I'm not surprised my earlier "suggestion" had long since vanished from my memory.
Given that no one chose to revive or bump your later thread (apparently), or revisit the issue, it would have been kind of amazing for it to have crossed my mind again. So.. you can blame me for this all you want (ultimately, it's all my responsibility), but I'm not real surprised that it happened this way.
As to the rest of your "response", I could go for a point-by-point thing, but this may be better to address in terms of the "big picture", for the sake of other players who aren't you, since you're leaving forever.
1) We build and maintain a full-bore, cross-platform MMORPG, with a native engine and server technology, while pushing updates about every two weeks, and while handling every aspect of customer service and administration. We do this despite a team-size that would generally be considered a "flat-out impossibility" by the game industry.
But, unfortunately, the simple reality is that none of you really understand what that actually means, and your empathy is limited by your ability to "grok" that notion; so we end up with angry people like Lecter, who feel that their perspective and resulting behaviour are entirely justified by their personal disappointment, and who never question their own expectations.
It's been a recurring issue throughout the life of our game (and perhaps a curse of our being around so long). I try, periodically, to articulate what it's been like to keep us afloat, and why I have to run around doing 1000 other things, because I stubbornly won't give up on this specific game. But, again, that attempt at explanation is always doomed to fail, because it's like reading about anyone, far-away, who is having a really unfamiliar day-to-day struggle: most people end up saying "huh, that's a bummer, I guess?".
Lecter's commentary even starts with "I get you're all busy as Hell largely keeping this game alive for as long as you have", and then he proceeds to completely fail to comprehend the point of my message, and clearly demonstrates that he does not understand anything remotely about our day-to-day reality. Otherwise he would have been unable to type that without feeling like a complete shit.
2) You choose to play a weird, underfunded Indie game. It's super obvious we aren't Blizzard, or CCP, or whomever.
Of course, Blizzard would largely ignore anything you wanted changed, where we've tried to make it a core part of what we do (however delayed our actions/responses). But let's leave that aside for the moment..
Fundamentally, there is no way in the holy hinges of hell that we have enough time, or waking hours, to do all that is actually needed from us, no matter how well-organized we might be; much of which is genuinely mission-critical to the basic, operational status of this title. You should know that. Lecter should REALLY know that, especially by now.
So when I say things like "You really need to occasionally bump Suggestions threads that are really important to you, until I see them", the correct response is not to grouse like a ****ing child about the developers requiring "spoon feeding". If you want to go play a game where you will never, ever talk to the designer or have any impact on the game at all, then feel free to go play.. almost any other game? If you can't accept that this "Suggestions" system is based around a fundamental mechanic in which you get to assist the developers by shedding light on things, then.. perhaps this is not the game or community for you.
3) Some individuals will say "But I pay Money! I'm a Customer! Organization Is Your Problem! Get It Done! To which the simple, obvious answer (that doesn't actually have to be explained to a lot of people) is: THEN DON'T PLAY WEIRD, UNDERFUNDED INDIE GAMES. Because your expectations should be very different. And if you choose to stick around for 13 years, perhaps you should have picked that up at some point.
To make a Hotel analogy: this isn't the Waldorf Astoria, this is some dude's AirBnB, and he has an air-mattress on the living room floor for you, and the cat may randomly jump on you in the middle of the night.
For some people, the quirky interaction and development process are part of the point of playing an indie title like this. As soon as you start to say "Hey, I wrote a thread in 2016 that they never responded to, or implemented, obviously they're LAZY!", you're probably in the wrong place. You clearly don't get it.
Of course, if you say that to CCP or Blizzard, they may just silently boot you off their forums. Or, at least, all the other players will laugh at you. So, maybe a game developer doesn't actually exist who fits the expectations that are in Lecter's head. But, he can please feel free to go find out.
If that's your approach to this situation, I say go [love -W] yourself. I will not darken your game, your forums, or Guild Software's balance sheet with my presence any further. Good luck to you guys - parts of the last 13 years have been a lot of fun.
It is my approach to this situation, and to your abrasive entry into this thread, contending twice that we haven't made this particular update because we are "lazy". This happened in 2016, right? I didn't get paid a salary in 2016. At all. I was doing every goddamn thing I could to protect Curt and Ray's incomes and stability, and keep them as productive as possible, while I rushed around frantically trying to find revenue for us, and shake every bizdev tree that I could.
My world was a bit of a shit-show, and I'm sure I could have done everything better; but I wouldn't call myself "lazy".
There are some players who contend that, if we only had a Bezos-esque "obsessive customer focus", these issues would not occur and we would be fine and dandy. And, quite frankly, given the opportunity to function more like that, without the threat of imminent demise, that would be my preference. However..
My experience with trying to raise revenue through fulfilling customer desires and goodwill, via direct development, has actually been.. really bad! I specifically tried it at a previous point, really doubling down hard on Suggestions stuff and content changes, for a solid year, and we nearly went out of business. So, these days my answer is "Suggestions can wait; what can I do to keep the lights on?".
Of course, I come back to Suggestions later, because ultimately.. all I really want to do is make Vendetta Online awesome (that's actually why I started this whole..thing), and I actually care a lot about player feedback. But I can't do any development if we go out of business. And I can say, a million times in a million different ways "look how few game companies last more than 5 years", but neither you, Lecter, nor any other embittered player will ever take that seriously as a retort to your self-righteous, angsty disappointment that is fundamentally borne out of your unreasonable expectations.
I used to blame myself for those expectations, for telling people we would do too much. But that's why I DON'T PROMISE ANYTHING ANYMORE. And I sure didn't promise you anything in 2016 either. Yeah, I had an idea in a thread, and you liked the idea, and you made a thread (which was seemingly great), and I forgot about it or never saw it.
But you don't get to come on here and call me or Ray "lazy".
You are, by far, our longest-running toxic player. Oh, you've gotten "less bad" over the years, but your content still has to be modified by Whistler on a constant basis (as this thread demonstrates). You have the dubious honor of being the only person who, in the early days of the game, caused a large group of level-headed, veteran players to come together to offer to "buy-out" your entire potential multi-account lifetime value, so we would ban you, for the betterment of the game as a whole.
You are also the only individual who actually made me consider walking away from the company and quitting game development, from my old interactions with you on this forum. We've had a lot of trolls, but you're the only one who actually managed to push me that far, and I'll never forget that.
You frequently call out how "great" you were to try to support our ill-fated Kickstarter, with the offer of a possible $10k pledge, a gesture I did appreciate. But ironically you completely fail to understand that, to me, if you had covered the entire $100k Kickstarter, that would not have made reparations for the shit the you've historically inflicted on us with your abrasive, arrogant personality and bad behaviour.
Why then, didn't I ban you, long ago? To be clear, it was never a monetary decision (people offered to pay me to ban you! a lot!). Frankly, I'm an optimist, verging on pathological (I mean, look at what I choose to do with my life). My will to "endure" is even more steely than my optimism, and I fundamentally believe in people's ability to evolve. So I believed in yours, and I focused on your obvious passion for the game over your persistent bad behaviour. But all this time later, you're still just another self-righteous dick, and I'm out of patience.
I think it's wonderful that you had some fun here in the last 13 years. You have not been much "fun" for me.
To formally "retort" to your final commentary: Stay out of my goddamn game, and never come back.
So, I'm going to lock this, in the best interests for the forum, because:
1) I'm not currently going to add a Large port to the Hound. I'm inclined to do something with the MegaPosi. Ironically, probably along the lines of what Lecter wanted.
2) Obviously the thread devolved into a much different discussion between Lecter and I about how we develop the game (or perhaps, how we don't develop it), and relative player expectations, which has ended with him leaving. Blah blah, distraction that is unhelpful to the overall tenor of the forum.
So anyway.. there isn't a lot of point in continuing to talk about Large Port Hounds, here. If there's a really strong argument somewhere down the road, someone can revive that in a new thread, but I don't think it's that pertinent right now. (Nothing is "ruled out" forever, I'm always open to revisiting stuff, but I think a small-port MegaPosi is the best strategy for the moment).
1) I'm not currently going to add a Large port to the Hound. I'm inclined to do something with the MegaPosi. Ironically, probably along the lines of what Lecter wanted.
2) Obviously the thread devolved into a much different discussion between Lecter and I about how we develop the game (or perhaps, how we don't develop it), and relative player expectations, which has ended with him leaving. Blah blah, distraction that is unhelpful to the overall tenor of the forum.
So anyway.. there isn't a lot of point in continuing to talk about Large Port Hounds, here. If there's a really strong argument somewhere down the road, someone can revive that in a new thread, but I don't think it's that pertinent right now. (Nothing is "ruled out" forever, I'm always open to revisiting stuff, but I think a small-port MegaPosi is the best strategy for the moment).