Moderator Edit: Editing title to be less ambiguous.
With great anticipation, we have waited for 3 weeks with a game, which, in it’s current state is really not much more than a glorified Building Simulator (even this has issues).
The team returns to work, hopefully full of enthusiasm and charge and get right back to work fixing all the issues in the game which for many, are ruining the experince. They take a look at the forums, read all the posts and complaints, maybe launch the game to see for themselves what all the noise is about, then get to it, working hard to come up with some solutions to the issues raised ?!?
Then yesterday I read this
## Patch Schedule for the next two weeks [31.07.2018]
Focus this week regarding patches will be the release of the latest DLC on all platforms. There are a few technical changes we need to patch in to make it available later this week.
I thought you were joking!
Now today the DLC is out, as expected, the forum is full of players reporting issues WITH A SKIN !
Until now, I’ve been dismissing the claims that Funcom is just Money Grabbing, but hey, what other possible reason would you have to put effort into a DLC whilst the game, and player count is on it’s knees?
I challenge you Funcom - Tell us your reasoning behind making the DLC a priority this week when there are so many other issues in the game if it isn’t just about the CASH ?
100% with you, FUNCOM is a money maker machine, they want money but don’t at least fix the bugs and the game, its sad because this game is so wonderful but the devs are ugly…
i remember you were protecting funcom when ppl was asking for fixes right after big patch was made, as you see it worked - they wont fix anything this was sense of all those “cry” posts - to make them to work atleast for reputation of company, but when they see that on forum most of ppl are ok with all bugs and still supporting them, they go in vacation and not bothering with fixes…
Someone in another thread wrote about how important is the perception here. In my opinion, it’s what all is coming down to in the end, just as you said, it’s a matter of how funcom is behaving that makes many percieve they have priorities different to what you can read in these forums, mostly complaints. The fact that they made such a statement about their priorities makes people percieve they have no interest in developing a stable game first, and only then, start releasing new content. That’s what I percieve gets you upset, and I personally think they should make a revision of their public relations and community management policies. They seem to be throwing rocks against their own roof (as we use to say).
Sincerely, I love this game, I think like 99,99% of the people here, otherwise we wouldn’t even care, just uninstall and find other game to play. My feeling is frustration, and I end up thinking that the exiles project is too big and ambitious for them, and that they can’t handle it. That IS my perception of course. The problem is that this perception plays a big part on the decisions I take. And that’s how it is.
I will keep playing because of the friends made online, and the fun we have rping, which isn’t affected by all the problems the game has at this point. Dlcs,mean little to me really when you can add quite a lot of content to the game through modding. As Long as that goes on, I’ll be ok I guess. That doesn’t mean I am still frustrated about my expectations with the game. I just live with it and have fun in other ways.
Lastly, I hope you’re right and devs manage to get a stable core game, but at this point I lost my faith. Will they surprise me? You bet I hope so.
Not taken any pills, nor am I crying and Ive never “protected” them in any way.
I see reason and understanding in most matters and will put people in their place when they talk s**t guys, but I do think they should explain their thinking on this one so as to prove the money grabbing claims to be false.
I think it is best to not go along with those here that are being vocal right now as well as those who are salty as i have seen the results and its not pretty and ends up making things worse off in my opinion as well as there must have been a reason other than money grab for their actions as well.
Yes, that was me. In a retail industry perception is very important. Even if issuing the DLC had no impact on bugs (it did), it was very important for them to reassure their player base that they care about quality and are focused on bugs. The DLC should have waited (and been tested) for just a few more days.
From watching pretty much all of the dev streams, I personally feel like the dev team is very passionate about this game. I have seen Joel cringe and get very defensive on the subject of the money grab. He has stated many times that there will be no loot crates in this game. I get the feeling that all of the issues with leaving early access too soon and pushing out buggy code is coming down from higher up. I read an article from an unrelated coder in the industry and he talked about how bad the pressure is coming down from the main office. Managers, owners and investors are the people that are going to completely murder this industry. Therefore, I don’t think we will get an honest reply from anyone here saying “the call to push the dlc was a money grab from the top” The people we deal with here on the forum and at the workstations love this game and want to see it succeed imho, but their hands are tied. This is why I am so quick to defend those at the lower end of Funcom.
I agree to a point, while ultimately it is the management who is responsible it is also very possible that they are receiving misleading reporting from below. If you would be really passionate about the game, you would hold down your legg. Not ready is not ready. DLC(with issues) when having major issue in the game… I have no words which are acceptable here to describe that…
Cosmetic DLCs are never a cash grab, so I don’t know whats wrong with you guys out there saying funcom is a money-grabber…
but it has sent a very bad sign to release this thing BEFORE fixing important stuff in the game.
I mean like for example, go on a server, walk some meters and you will realize and see there is something wrong with the complete NPC Mechanics right now, they dont attack ,they stutter or they are stuck under some tent, and this is a pretty urgent thing to fix as every player will see that!
for me the game is currently unplayable due to this stuff. it destroys the complete game atmosphere/immersion with animals and npc people doing weird stuff
I think the dev’s are pretty good but their priorities right now are a bit confused
Fortunately for me I am not seeing this bug. Unfortunately that means that the development team may not be seeing it either. This makes it more difficult to fix. I have a suspicion that a lot of these bugs are due to database conflicts with each bug fix. I think I heard somewhere that the devs test new releases on a fresh install which makes sense why they don’t see what others see on databases that have been running since release. My server was installed on June 20 and I am not seeing these bugs maybe because it isn’t getting hit as hard as the officials. Or if someone on SP is not starting fresh. IDK, but what I do know is that not everyone is seeing all the bugs which makes for quite the mystery.
I’m having a hard time not giving another jerky reaction. Don’t get me wrong here, I still love the game and I will buy the DLC. But not until the basic game mechanics are working and not before the actual DLC itself is fixed at least. You say DLC are never a cash grab, then Funcom just invented it. I’d say the 3D artists are very good and the devs suck bigtime. It needs just 1 honest caring about the game guy in the hierarchy to say: no even when the DLC is ready we should focus on the main issues first.
I am disappointed that they skipped Testlive and went straight to Live. There needs to be more testing done openly to avoid some of these mishaps, and the DLC and Meteor fix should have gone there first, but instead it’s still on the MOAP build.
After the MOAP debacle, with old bugs returning, many of us are committed to playing solely on Testlive in an effort to give feedback of what is and isn’t fixed (as well as what it breaks) with each patch so that Live servers don’t have to undergo mistakes. I agreed with the balancing that was done in our patch last month, but it did not fix fish traps or wells and really screwed up timers.
Perhaps Funcom can use fixes from the community? Many mods have been made that fix minor issues of all sorts, all for no profit and for the good of the game. We want this title to be as good as we expected at launch, so please let us help.
In my eyes there are 4 mini Funcom’s companies within Funcom.
Leadership (poor and cause of the downfall)
Community Managers (they are fine, living in hell)
Developers (where sometimes i have the feeling there is just one or few senior developer/s queued with all the bug flood. Supported by junior developers, which have no clue, or maybe its opposite?
Graphic designers (top quality enthusiast keeping the game alive and producing core for DLC’s)
For sure I am mistaken, its just my feeling about the status, updates, progress so far after release.
The game core have so much potential so people care about the game.
The current DLC strategy is ok (if You don’t have the money, You need to make them somehow). But it really troubles me that after each major patch a new dozens of bugs appears out. Community can help test it out, but it will be hard to maintain such a game if the code or engine is causing so much trouble. It might be easier for Funcom and Community relationship to just put their cards on the table, stating we have this amount of people, engine is bad, no resources and so on. Wasting resources for a new Conan game, instead of fixing current is sad strategy.
Challenge accepted by copying an answer I just posted in another thread
99% of the DLC content is art assets. Which means it’s 99% done by the artists. There are no new mechanics or code necessary other than some dependencies and numbers.
Creating these art assets is more or less straight forward. The art team knows what to do, they create it, make it look awesome and prepare it to be ready to be implemented. That’s not to say it’s not a lot of work. They have been absolute rock stars to create these assets for players who want them to enjoy in a very short time.
Content, such as the art updates for our DLCs, has to be prepared a few weeks before it goes through Sony and Microsoft Cert for technical reasons and to make sure everything in the back-end is ready for the store. This means the artist had to make sure these assets were ready before the break.
Now, many members of the dev team have been working into their break to bring you hotfixes right after the big patch. Addressing critical bugs that would keep players from actually playing the game.
Some people have even been working throughout the whole break (art and programmers). I am not mentioning this because I expect anyone to thank us for doing this but simply to mention that we have been and are on the case.
However, some bugs are unfortunately not as straight forward and hunting down issues and fixing them takes time. There will also always be a discussion between what issues the community deems critical and what we internally have to focus on for one reason or another.
What I would like to stress is that we are working constantly on improving all aspects of the game. That means, new content, new mechanics, fixing issues and working on stability and performance. Fixing existing issues is and has always been a priority for us. Our teams are working in parallel on different aspects of the game.
With that said, we have a TestLive patch next week that will address issues you’ve been reporting and we will keep working on addressing bugs down the line as we have always done. Additionally, we have the parity patch for consoles coming and we will have the new pet mechanics and dungeons available for testing soon as well.
this was sense of all those “cry” posts - to make them to work atleast for reputation of company, but when they see that on forum most of ppl are ok with all bugs and still supporting them, they go in vacation and not bothering with fixes…
