2020-06-29 12:13:29

@295: Whoa. Come on now. We really didn't need to go that far man. Let's not start any more fires about me. I am not brushing off anything. Let me just tell you guys the problem that we devs are constnatly going through.
Okay. We add a machine gun. Right? There are people who really appreciate that we added it. Everyone's happy. Yay. Great.
Then out of a sudden, out of nowhere, a couple of random people start complaining their asses off that the machine gun causes lag, is overpowering, and unfair. Okay? So we remove it, right? No big deal.
Except, that's the problem, right there. We remove it, and the other people who loved the thing, just lose it.
I'm going to fuckin leave this game now because they removed this damn machine gun! Reeeee!
And then we devs are like, erm. So what do we do. Do we add this machine gun back, or do we remove it for good? Because we're clueless. We don't know who we're supposed to satisfy. And if we try to satisfy one side, the other side is dissatisfied. And vice versa.
Our goal is to try and satisfy both sides. But we can't do that if one side doesn't agree on the opinions of the opposite side. So Mohamed and I have no clue what to do at this point. We don't even know if we should just stick to one side's complaints. Because if we keep doing everything for one sdie, the other side will start complaining.
Also, lets get some of these things out of the way.
@Nocturnus: Sorry, that wasn't directed at you, it was directed at the people who had the audacity to compare this to TK and Constant Battles, which isn't our goal.

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2020-06-29 17:42:09 (edited by mohamed 2020-06-29 17:43:37)

and now we removed the wand.

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2020-06-29 19:16:35

oh no, add it back, no? I'm leaving. :-D

allow me to speak more,
catch me on Twitter
or, Mastodon

2020-06-29 19:52:19

i'm sorry for comparing this game to a clone, and I feal really bad about my self now thinking about what I sed, the fact is you guys are stil listening for your players is just great, and i'm downloading the game now since I was too laizy to do so smile

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2020-06-29 20:10:55

It's hard to make everyone happy as a game dev because, you plainly, just can't. At that point, you try to listen to the majority of suggestions and go from there.. Perhaps it's time to put up a pole.

Jonathan Candler, A.K.A, Jonnyboy

2020-06-29 22:40:06

I tried this a bit ago and promptly left. This tries to be SBYW, STW, and RS at the same time. It doesn't work IMO. Best of luck on your future projects.

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2020-06-30 04:18:14

@301 and other devs of this game.

I aknowledge my post last night wasn't so constructive, or even as civil as i wanted to do, so I'd just thought I'd try and give you guys some clearer advice, as a player, and someone who's always tasked with managing projects in real life.

Its a fact that you can't please everyone. And to attempt to appeal to everyone is downright stupid, and takes away time from you doing other things. But consider the following.
Let's take the wand, you add it, and you have 2 groups. The group that says, they like the wand, and the other group that says fuck it, remove it.
You have two options, and you can consider this in pretty uch any group/consumer based aspect of your life.
Option 1, is to meet everyone in the middle, which you did, and I commend you for this. However not all the time meeting in the middle will work to solve your problems. Hence why I suggest you use...
Option 2. Now, this option is a multi-step process, but trust me, yule definately see much better and fruitful results in the long term.
Step one: You analyse the problem.
Step two, play the game! And I mean, play the game not as a developer or admin or even a manager! Just play as a average player.
Step 3. Now, after doing some market research, you have some more substeps to complete.
Evaluate whether or not the feature in question would work in the type of game/project you're making. Again, this goes back to what Nocturnous and I were saying. You have to have a vision or direction where you want to take the game. Take for example you wouldn't add in nuclear bombs in a game set in the year 2 AD with trolls and and knights and wizards and all that stuff.
Nextly, yule have to examin the possible reprocussions of adding or removing said feature to the game. Be it to the players, game mechanics, or even more technical things ike the server. Because lag is a very important factor in online games.
Nextly, after doing that think up a sollution to the problem. You can either change the mechanic to make it more fair, possibly keeping the mechanic, but tweeking it a bit to make it more suitable or just scrap it completely.
Nextly, discuss with your playerbase. Se what they think of the change. Even though there will be differing opinions, sometimes when yu put them together you may just ind the solution.
And lastly,
Step 4. Make your decision. That's explains itself.


I do hope you guys do get something out of those steps, because it took me a good while to write it up. This isn't just aplicable to game development only, you can use the method in other tasks, or uses.

Again though, Bloodstorm is still the last game we have, and the only true game with devs who actually listens, so guys, keep it up

You ain't done nothin' if you ain't been cancelled
_____
I'm working on a playthrough series of the space 4X game Aurora4x. Find it here

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2020-06-30 05:07:32

@Jaidon, that's what I'm talking about.  Keep it up and you'll be good at public relations at some point in the future.  Perhaps that, right now, is not a skillset you care much for, but believe me, you keep along the road that led you to post 307 in this topic and, in less than 10 years you'll be happy you did and you'll think of me and how much you really did hate pineapple pizza to be honest... :d :d
I   yaamaag oooon!

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

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2020-06-30 09:38:53

I didn't get it, add the food? congratulations, you tried to be like stw, even though there's a huge difference in both of them. oh we have weapons here? well done being like red spot. shhh, ignore all the differences,

allow me to speak more,
catch me on Twitter
or, Mastodon

2020-06-30 10:24:49

I do think, at least in the beginning, this game really did try to be CM, and that was because the dev of CM was working on the thing. He was probably hoping he could use this game to effectively legalise his clone. It has certainly taken pretty big steps forward since though, so that's something to be commended.
Take this from someone who's ran an online game before and who's assisted with plenty, this game included for a time. You can't please everyone, in fact you can't please most people. That's the sad reality of your situation. The best thing you can do, IMO, is to follow your own vision for the game. It's all too easy to make change after change to satisfy the masses and lose sight of what you actually wanted your project to be.

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2020-06-30 12:15:51

Alright so here's my thoughts...been playing on and off for a while.

I'd like to see the following that I feel could work better:

1. A way to eat/drink on the main map. I like the idea of animals being on it you'd get food from, and a canteen that you'd need to refill at times. Yes I could buy 50000 burgers and such but why?

2. Scale the hunger/thirst system way back. It's unrealistic you'd drop dead instantly/ Instead if you reach 100 hunger/thirst, lose HP till you die

3. Add food stores to the map (If this is in I've not figured out if you can buy stuff in the potato bar)

. Info on weapon ranges. I've not worked out for example what's best to hit somebody 50 tiles away versus 5 tiles away

6. Fuel for the chainsaw, if it has no fuel, it doesn't fire up

7. I'd much like to see the emphasis on being on the main maps, not hording coins by killing animals. I ran into a situation twice when it was just me on the main map.

Overall, I like the concept, it's actually pretty fun and reminds me of 90s era SNES games with the responsive controls and feel of the game. I just feel like it neeeds to decide okay, am I a shooter/explore or a survival game? Personally I'd go with the first bit and if I were in charge I'd ditch the hunger/thirst entirely since it adds nothing to the game, really.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

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2020-06-30 14:30:48

The hunger and thirst system isn't there to copy other games. Let me just put that out there. It was just to add more realism. Personally I believe you can't just keep on fighting without at least getting hungry or thirsty. I mean but that's just my opinion.

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2020-06-30 14:49:39

You say you want realism, and yet we can carry an unlimited amount of items.
You say you want realism, and yet we can jump without getting tired.
You say you want realism, and yet we get coins for killing animals.
You say you want realism, and yet you added a wand.  It doesn’t matter if it’s gone now, if you wanted realism in the first place you should not have added it in the first place.
I think the  realism ship has long since sailed.

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2020-06-30 14:49:46

, one thing you need to know that this game is far from reality. From carrying 10 weapons without any effort to carrying a large amount of items. So the hunger and thirst systems doesn't make any sense I'm not meaning to offend the game by this post so please don't jump on me. I actually like this game and just giving my suggestions.

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2020-06-30 14:57:16

Then, as a thought, if it's to do with 'realism' (note the air quotes), why not making it the more hungry/thirsty you get the slower you move then?

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

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2020-06-30 15:14:17

Fact.  You do get hungry.  You do get thirsty.  I don't like it either but it's true.  So it only makes sense that you should be hungry and you should be thirsty on this thing.  I'm convinced this is honestly one of the better aspects of the game; yes it is annoying, but not everything can be thrilling.
And now for some opinions.  I don't see any issue with killing other things that are for all intents and purposes NPC related.  it's not like this is swamp where you have a hundred players logged in at any given moment in time, thus there has to be some way to gain coins and pointage other than killing people.  Furthermore?  Not everyone wants to kill people all the time!  with that being said?
1.  Include more varying NPC's on the main map that act like humans.  Have them carry and use our weaponry.
2.  have them carry ammunition and other items you can take from them once they're killed.
3.  Have items spawn randomly throughout the main map.  they shouldn't be all over the map or spawning every 30 seconds or anything of that nature, but enough to where one would want to go collect them.  Perhaps doing something like, say a box of 100 antibiotics or a crate of 50 robots every 20 or 30 minutes just, randomly placed somewhere on the map?  Mek sure the items are sellable so a person can decide whether in fact they want to keep them or sell them and perhaps use those coins to purchase things that are more beneficial to them.  Maybe even just have treasure chests full of coins?
4.  I saw you guys do this once but didn't participate because I was just learning the game, but there was this mode where you guys had it set up to where players had to go kill all the bots on a map.  Consider making that a sort of mission you can sign up for if, A, you have enough players to join you and, B, you have enough coins to be transported there?  I wouldn't even mind if you have certain missions you can do solo while others would obviously have to be group based.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

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2020-06-30 15:26:29

As for everyone complaining about the realism aspect of things?  If it were more realistic I think you'd play it even less.  If you're annoyed right now because you need to eat because your hungry and drink because you're thirsty, you'd be more annoyed if they tweaked it to make it to where for every point added to your hunger and thirst you did in fact move slower or jump less.  Fact is?  while those things do make sense in real life, there has to come a point where you distinguish between playing a game and doing real life.  This is a game; obviously, if you were a hundred percent hungry or thirsty in real life you would be dead.  I think that's what it means to die of starvation and dehydration, you know, to be a hundred percent hungry and thirsty.  I'll grant that I've never seen such a system where a shooter of any kind is concerned, and I'll also grant that as things stand right now I feel like eating and drinking are a rather spammy thing because you have to spam over and over again just to eat and drink.  It doesn't hurt to check your hunger and thirst though, anymore than it hurts to check your HP or how much ammo you have left.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

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2020-06-30 15:37:40

tunmi13 wrote:

If we really wanted this to become like any of the games you guys mentioned, do you really think we would be here right now? No, the moderators probably would of closed this topic in under 3 days. We're trying our best here. The sad part about this is some of you expect things that other people don't like, and vice versa. One side: Add a wand! Other side: Nooooooooo! Dont' add a wand! And then when we do what one side says, the other side gets all reeeeeeeeee up in your faces, screaming this and that about how this is too overpowering, or how this isn't right.
The sad part about this is that you can never satisfy people. If one side says sure, add it, the other side immediately explodes.
We never forced you guys to play this game. We are attempting to make it as unique as possible. In fact, we have a massive overhaul coming up pretty soon. But comparing this game to clones, isn't going to bring any good vibes, especially to a game like Bloodstorm where two devs are trying to manage a database of over 250 players.

you know what i have to say to that? Bullshit. Even if one side was like add a wand, add a wand, and the other side was like "add a wand and its you who will suffer" but then you add a wand anyway, you could of balanced it out at least a little bit. It wasn't really the dammage that was a problem, or the lower cost of mana, it was the spam at least for me. You could spam spells while standing still, and just sit above people nad spam as they get close. That was at least my problem with it.

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2020-06-30 15:55:31

I want to put it out here that I have only read the last twenty or so posts. I'm not weighing in with an opinion on this whole thread. I've also never played the game. Nevertheless, I feel moved enough to say three things.

1. Many MUDs use hunger and thirst for "realism", and I feel it's just one more command you have to spam, one more thing to track. I believe its original point was so that you, the player, would think of your own hunger or thirst while playing, but I feel like maybe that ship sailed a long time ago. As a long-time MUDer, I can tell you that I've never felt the urge to drink or eat when my character does; I've also never dealt with the sort of crippling game addiction which could cause me to literally become starved, dehydrated or dead from it, so take that as you will. I also realize this game isn't a MUD. Most of the time, I feel like hunger and thirst just end up being another mechanic, spam for the sake of spam, but sometimes it works. I don't know if this game pulls it off or not, but perhaps food and drink items should be rarer but also restore much more hunger? After all, if you die at 100% hunger, you shouldn't need 40 burgers or whatever to go from 99% hunger down to 0. That would kill you outright, lol. Honestly, some foods can literally keep you alive for days (starvation is an extremely slow process), and if you drink properly (i.e., don't gulp, don't slam an entire bottle of water), you can rehydrate yourself pretty well on only a smallish amount of water. So yeah, maybe a compromise here, if it's even needed, is to increase how much food and drink items replenish, but make them rarer/more expensive?

2. Vision. Oh boy, I know a lot about this one. I work for a browser-based RPG where we run into this all the time. I do think it's important not to screw your players over, and not to listen to everyone yowling the same yowls about unfairness when something that was broken got nerfed. At the same time, I feel that the only responsible way to develop a game is to have a strong idea of where you're going first. Unless you're deliberately trying to have your players make your game for you - which is usually a bad idea, I'll get to this later - it's often best to have a fairly solid vision of what you want before you even start. If you don't, then figure it out fast, and then build on it. If that means powering up some stuff, do it. If it means nerfing, then nerf away. If it means removing stuff outright because it doesn't fit your vision, sometimes that has to happen. You are going to lose players sometimes because of decisions that you make, and that might suck but it's one of those unavoidable pitfalls of game development. You're also hopefully going to gain more players who appreciate the cohesiveness of your vision and come to really respect both your product itself and the work ethic that drives its continued improvement.
Now, to hit on players and their opinions. I'm going to piss off a lot of players when I say this, probably; they won't want to hear it, but it doesn't make the observation any less true. I'd say eighty to ninety percent of players don't know the first thing about the nuts and bolts of good game development. They have opinions on what they like. They know what they don't like. Many of them can even tell you why. But most players can't help but take a change that isn't in their favour personally to some degree. If they loved the machine gun, and you removed it due to lag, they'll get angry because something they loved was removed, and never mind that it was wrecking the game. So what I'm getting at here is that if you make a poll for players to vote, and you get feedback thereby, you aren't actually going to get much of anything useful from it, I'm afraid, because players don't think like good developers. They're selfish, shortsighted and often entirely ignorant of what goes into game creation and development. I respect the hell out of players, since without them, a game is absolutely nothing; in that sense, they're the lifeblood of any project, and they deserve respect, courtesy and integrity. But please don't kid yourself about how good most of them are at actually improving your product. On the game I help run, we get player feedback every day, and I'd say seventy percent of the suggestions we get are busted from point 1. The ones that aren't, though, are often startlingly good, and we're always willing to listen or talk about stuff.
So my philosophy here is this. If player A makes a suggestion to you, ask them for details. Engage them in conversation if you can, if you have the time and resources to do so. This will quickly give you an idea of how much thought has gone into the player's feedback, and should give you a guide-post as to how much you can put stock in that player's opinions down the road. A poll, by its nature, doesn't make players do this; it just tabulates votes, which is not a good measure on whether or not you should or shouldn't do something.

Okay, enough out of me for awhile.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

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2020-06-30 16:31:42

I think you could have a machine gun with less network lag if you didn't spawn each and every bullet into the game world as its own object. If you instead, spawned every fifth bullet, then piggy-backed the remaining four after that one, pulling from the real one's speed, minus an offset, and coords and stuff of that nature. So you'd have one real bullet for every five, and four simulated ones. The damage would still be done for the four simulated ones, they just wouldn't become entities in the game world, thus, less the client and server need to communicate about.

That's just speculation with no real backing though, I don't know the first thing about networking. Maybe it would work, and maybe it wouldn't.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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End division
Become united

2020-06-30 16:34:04

@Jade: FWIW the only drinks are alcohol which if it's suppposed to be realistic, actually makes you more dehydrated and holy shit I want a beer bottle that gives me 60 beers...

You're exactly right. Hell on my game I help on we've knocked stuff back because we, the admins on it, can see the nuts and bolts, and see how it works and what a suggestion will entail code wise (never mind the code we use is godawful and hard to fathom even if you've wrote it because hello spaghetti code)

I also think the chainsaw needs a huge nerf. Tried it out earlier, and I can literally spam space and kill people, it needs a delay, or fuel, or something to balance it out as right now, just hit shift+enter, spam the space bar and cut through shields and everything

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

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2020-06-30 16:58:27

@Jayde, here come the yowlers again...  I liked everything in post 319.  I think the problem lies with people who want a game that will handhold more than it'll challenge.  while there's times when that kind of play is acceptible, I do not believe multiplayer games are that time.
@JaceK, funnily enough, I find the chainsaw mostly useless, so I'm not sure how you're using it.  IN fact, I don't know how most people are using it.  Every time I try I get mega attacked.  I still prefer the throwing knives myself, but for as much as I like them I run into the issue you described above with the chainsaw.  Yes, I like them; no, I don't believe that was the right way to implament them, because you can just mash the spacebar and throw them as fast as a machinegun shoots bullets.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

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2020-06-30 17:21:38 (edited by JaceK 2020-06-30 17:23:44)

@Nocturnus:

I've had people just run at me. Which makes it all the more hilarious when they run into my minefield however. I find it difficult to jump over chainsaw users, though having them run off a ledge and go splat is way funnier than it sounds.My problem with the chainsaw is it's so loud it drowns out all the other sounds like jumping or running, and if you get knocked down with a chainsaw hit and don't realize, you're done for.

Alright who are you on there? I probably ran into you.

EDIT: Nocturnus, it's literally run at somebody mashing spacebar is how people use it, and don't get me going on just mowing down every animal by mashing space and getting a ton of coins that way. Personally I prefer thte sword, grenade launcher or cannon/sniper or crossbow and oh yes, mines, too.

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

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2020-06-30 19:36:15

ok, chainsaw speed is down a bit, also with some weapons like the handgun

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2020-06-30 21:37:05

@JaceK, if you don't see Nocturnus, chances are I'm not around.  That goes for more or less anywhere.

When life gives you oranges, demand lemons since everyone else is obviously getting them.

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