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General Discussions / A letter to potential developer
« on: May 27, 2016, 06:06:43 AM »
I'm still reading forum and has been recently triggered by "TRIGGERED: FONLINE" thread. Who locked it and why? Is AoP free of speech is only for insults and not for sharing opinion on the game state? Becoming closer and closer to true fonlines!
So I couldn't stay aside and decided to finally come back to post my opinion on AoP state from a perspective of ex-developer-tagged.
Back at my start I was playing the game from the beginning of the previous session October 2014. There were a lot of issues, bugs and stuff to work on, and it didn't feel like developers had time and priorities to fix some of them, which affected my gameplay. I felt in love with revolutionaty compared to other fonlines gameplay design, was sure that I will stay for long and decided to help out. I was ready to invest quite a lot of time and believed that I wish the same type of game as original developers. After minor fixes and with some experience of how stuff works, I was able to implement my old dream for fonlines - more efficient mouse controls. It wasn't hard, but it opened my eyes on how much more I can do to make user experience better, which was my main job through all time I was in team. I didn't interfere much with Cirn0-John plans and I actually liked them most of the time. They did mess around from time to time, used reasoning for changes as they never played the game that much, I did try to prevent some of such stuff (like armour being heavily damaged on death), but even if it didn't work out, those were minor inconveniences.
After a year I had decent in-game and developer experience and solid opinion on most of the stuff, including community. I felt like invested something important into AoP and have a right to directly effect some of development decisions. I can't disagree with Mantis about community burning itself out. Developers are those who let it happens, without enough support, basic moderation and rules and right values enforcing. I also had stable opinion on what the game should be like so I personally enjoy playing it, which is communication and teamwork, equality in access, balance and fairness were always on the first place, due to the fact I had much less time working fulltime, ease of access in a sense of amount of time required to effectively play was extremely important.
I had to fight for some of it, the most noticable part is on the forum in Open Petition for Free Rerolls thread, but rest of discussion were in developer IRC channel. I cared a lot about it, Cirn0 agreed with me. I felt like my interests are secured. I kept working on improving some parts of the game I was going to play, although couple more things bothered my at that time.
I didn't feel comfortable in the developers team of Cirn0 and John. I had quite a lot of disagreements, communication problems and hostile feelings with John. I think it's safe to say it started when he was much more senior developer compared to me, I was tring to stay away, with a time he acted only more harmful to me. Rest of occasional developers didn't really participate in game development on regular or design concepts manner. So I was communicating mostly only with Cirn0, and Cirn0 with John communication had a lot of possible decisions which I didn't participate in. I was working on a lot of out of the question stuff, that didn't even require communication with Cirn0. Cirn0 himself wasn't the one often initiating that talk and involving me into his work. I started to break away.
After some silence, Cirn0 said payed rerolls were planned. Stalker as someone directly opposite to my idea of what community should be like and getting away insulting me as developer was granted extended game access. Some other minor bullshit happened which I didn't like. I was less and less sure that game is going the way I want it be played. I wrote a PM to Cirn0 explaining my frustration and questioning my position in the developer team, and got answer that my resignation was expected. Honestly I expected more that than from him. Someone wrote "promote aop on reddit", I wrote that a lot of stuff will be untested, one of the usually non-present devs said that team members shouldn't criticize own work and as I already resigned, let's make it official. I freaked out and went emotional sending PM between all members of the team explaining situation and hoping for somebody to support me. Didn't really work out. I decided, that I said everything I could and it's time to go through.
It's been a couple of months since, I can make some conclusions. My developer experience wasn't that great, I didn't fit in team. I expected more of a collaboration, coordination and communication. I couldn't show others what and why I didn't like, couldn't involve them into experiencing game by playing it. Their plans and development direction has been left uncomprehended by me after a year and a half.
If you ever consider investing your time into AoP having similar to my mindset, learn from my mistakes.
P.S.
> So its wise to let a guy do changes to the server while claiming not to play?
What, none of developers play the game. It's how most of the things done in AoP from the start. But you still do enjoy the game, right?
Sincerely, Paragonid.
So I couldn't stay aside and decided to finally come back to post my opinion on AoP state from a perspective of ex-developer-tagged.
Back at my start I was playing the game from the beginning of the previous session October 2014. There were a lot of issues, bugs and stuff to work on, and it didn't feel like developers had time and priorities to fix some of them, which affected my gameplay. I felt in love with revolutionaty compared to other fonlines gameplay design, was sure that I will stay for long and decided to help out. I was ready to invest quite a lot of time and believed that I wish the same type of game as original developers. After minor fixes and with some experience of how stuff works, I was able to implement my old dream for fonlines - more efficient mouse controls. It wasn't hard, but it opened my eyes on how much more I can do to make user experience better, which was my main job through all time I was in team. I didn't interfere much with Cirn0-John plans and I actually liked them most of the time. They did mess around from time to time, used reasoning for changes as they never played the game that much, I did try to prevent some of such stuff (like armour being heavily damaged on death), but even if it didn't work out, those were minor inconveniences.
After a year I had decent in-game and developer experience and solid opinion on most of the stuff, including community. I felt like invested something important into AoP and have a right to directly effect some of development decisions. I can't disagree with Mantis about community burning itself out. Developers are those who let it happens, without enough support, basic moderation and rules and right values enforcing. I also had stable opinion on what the game should be like so I personally enjoy playing it, which is communication and teamwork, equality in access, balance and fairness were always on the first place, due to the fact I had much less time working fulltime, ease of access in a sense of amount of time required to effectively play was extremely important.
I had to fight for some of it, the most noticable part is on the forum in Open Petition for Free Rerolls thread, but rest of discussion were in developer IRC channel. I cared a lot about it, Cirn0 agreed with me. I felt like my interests are secured. I kept working on improving some parts of the game I was going to play, although couple more things bothered my at that time.
I didn't feel comfortable in the developers team of Cirn0 and John. I had quite a lot of disagreements, communication problems and hostile feelings with John. I think it's safe to say it started when he was much more senior developer compared to me, I was tring to stay away, with a time he acted only more harmful to me. Rest of occasional developers didn't really participate in game development on regular or design concepts manner. So I was communicating mostly only with Cirn0, and Cirn0 with John communication had a lot of possible decisions which I didn't participate in. I was working on a lot of out of the question stuff, that didn't even require communication with Cirn0. Cirn0 himself wasn't the one often initiating that talk and involving me into his work. I started to break away.
After some silence, Cirn0 said payed rerolls were planned. Stalker as someone directly opposite to my idea of what community should be like and getting away insulting me as developer was granted extended game access. Some other minor bullshit happened which I didn't like. I was less and less sure that game is going the way I want it be played. I wrote a PM to Cirn0 explaining my frustration and questioning my position in the developer team, and got answer that my resignation was expected. Honestly I expected more that than from him. Someone wrote "promote aop on reddit", I wrote that a lot of stuff will be untested, one of the usually non-present devs said that team members shouldn't criticize own work and as I already resigned, let's make it official. I freaked out and went emotional sending PM between all members of the team explaining situation and hoping for somebody to support me. Didn't really work out. I decided, that I said everything I could and it's time to go through.
It's been a couple of months since, I can make some conclusions. My developer experience wasn't that great, I didn't fit in team. I expected more of a collaboration, coordination and communication. I couldn't show others what and why I didn't like, couldn't involve them into experiencing game by playing it. Their plans and development direction has been left uncomprehended by me after a year and a half.
If you ever consider investing your time into AoP having similar to my mindset, learn from my mistakes.
P.S.
> So its wise to let a guy do changes to the server while claiming not to play?
What, none of developers play the game. It's how most of the things done in AoP from the start. But you still do enjoy the game, right?
Sincerely, Paragonid.