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Author Topic: A letter to potential developer  (Read 22942 times)

temp

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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.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2016, 06:58:46 AM by temp »
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Wipe

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2016, 06:35:32 AM »

What's the point of this? You tried, you worked your best, it didn't work out (assuming that isn't some bored troll). Shit happens, wasteland is harsh, and so on.
That's where this story should end, y'kno?


Spoiler for PS:
Quote from: IRC
12:14 < V_guessWho|2> Wipe, post 9/11 was inside job there please
« Last Edit: May 27, 2016, 07:49:45 PM by Wipe »
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Wire

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2016, 06:36:40 AM »

I'll be a little offtopic here

You say
Quote
> 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!
(What?)
And then you say this
Quote
> 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.
Mister, you can't have both. (and what is wrong with you? enfocing right values? lot of good that did to USSR)
PS. TRIGGERED thread ended up in people calling each other retards, there was no meaningfull discussion continuing there, I just deleted those posts there. No idea who closed it tho.
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Komrade

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2016, 06:57:43 AM »

Damn nice post by paragon  :'(

He might be the one who was the closest to the idea of perfect AoP that I dream. Payed rerolls I still believe was just a troll attempt by devs and nothing serious.

That triggered thread was one of the best and more entertaining threads we had recently on the forums, I am against deleting and locking that kind of threads.

Wire USSR is best in case you didn't know.   
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temp

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2016, 06:58:24 AM »

Too detailed for troll, some of the things could be known only by involved in. Wire knew about this coming as well, can ask him.

Point is sharing of personal experience. People learn from it, you know. Story never ends when someone dies, there're others to follow.
Also some of my friends here didn't know detailed story, it will be fun to read.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2016, 07:02:12 AM by temp »
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Komrade

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2016, 07:07:29 AM »

Payed rerolls will completely change the way AoP is if they will be implemented. Don't see a reason to do a downgrade that will help who exactly ?

Also some of my friends here didn't know detailed story, it will be fun to read.

I am sure it will be, sadly I guess I am not counted as one of your friends  :)
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FrankenStone-MKII

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2016, 08:23:39 AM »

well, i can just agree with paragon... i think major problem this hobby game got is that theres no supervisor who got the last call like da us president who can throw a veto.

theres no discussion and if there is then just between original developers and majority except mostly john and cirn0 just comming around once, or a couple times more in the year, some just when wipe is near or right after and some when they got time... but serious even if you are a bizzy man irl you can always check irc atleast or share your opinions on things... theres even irc for android systems etc out there in our century.

furthermore

even if you play all day as a dev doesnt mean that your dream of what aop should be wud be the perfect game, the only way i can see this work out getting nice is with some active dev team that plays alot by themself and discussing stuff in a propper way instead of just memecoding or just i do what i want becasue its my server and so on ...

for outsiders like me its really better to stop playing and deving whatever, atleast i dont get headaches anymore about things that arent my own.
neither i have to ask anymore for simple documentation on selfmade hacks etc.

it feels really good. this aop aint the game i enjoyed anyway so its allright, just natural progress...

if others dont care why some outsider should, let them get their things together by themself if they care like they pretend close post and pre wipe times ;) i also think thats another problem this devteam got because in my opinion most stuff gets developed right now when playerbase is already killed and you got some more time, but then history will repeat itself and some older devs might come back to change stuff which worked or just becasue they can or for whatever reason else.
« Last Edit: May 27, 2016, 08:29:45 AM by FrankenStone-MKII »
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Niamak

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #7 on: May 27, 2016, 09:56:16 AM »

The forum has no rules just like irc channel. What did you expect ?
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FrankenStone-MKII

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #8 on: May 27, 2016, 09:59:52 AM »

whole game got no rules, just learn to read its a hobby developed game ... dis says all u need to know.
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Niamak

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #9 on: May 27, 2016, 10:14:14 AM »

whole game got no rules

Since you are talking to me, here are the game rules : http://fonline-aop.net/forum/index.php?topic=769.0

Enjoy reading.
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IIKM-enotsneknarF

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #10 on: May 27, 2016, 03:18:29 PM »

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.



You're too weak to play FOnline.

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John Porno

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #11 on: May 28, 2016, 12:34:48 PM »

The way aop dev works is that cirn and me sit on irc all day and literally shitpost. We've known each other for a long enough time now where we can tell when each other is being ironic and when he's serious. Paragon was always on the channel and I made it a point not to change the way I type just because someone else is on the channel. If youre on the secret dev channel, sifting through all the shit im posting is part of the experience.

As far as paragon is concerned, he rarely ever said anything on irc and since there was so little data to go by, it was hard to tell if he was being serious or not. The clear east-european accent shining through didnt help either.

When he did quit, the "devteam" didnt realize until like 2 weeks later cause he never was participating much anyway, even when I specifically asked him for his opinion or urged him to join the shitposting.

Now to get serious, the real serious dev is actually done on mumble discussions, which paragon, or anyone else whos not an "official" dev, never took part in. It wasnt like we explicitly excluded anyone either, we just went "hey lets mumble" - "ok" and went on mumble. In fact, the very few times I was on the vtec mumble and heard paragon speaking, I got a very different vibe from him and if we ever actually went on mumble together and talked, the whole thing would have gone down differently.

To summarize it, I imagine that paragon misinterpreted things that were said on irc for various reasons, e.g. not knowing our characters, not knowing the background and context of aop dev and also just the language barrier. At the same time though, I never felt like there was much of an issue since apparently paragon didnt complain. Until he suddenly left with a statement saying how he knows exactly why and how we dev and what we're like as persons and how we think about him and to me it really was just ????????????

Being the fatalist person I am, I guess paragon and me just weren't meant to work together, just not being on the same page or the same wavelength as we say in german, but I never had anything against him or tried to specifically piss him off. It's just that at this point, he already convinced himself that I hate him or something so there's not much I can do.


About deletion of posts and closing of threads: I'm strongly against any of that and the only time I removed posts other than spambots was when courier tried to troll my video on bursting, partly because he put a retarded image in his signature which I thought was a direct post, but of course when I noticed it he already kept trolling even more so there was no way back.

Aside from that I am strongly against political correctness and believe that anything goes on the internet. I dont know who locked the thread but if people want to make fools out of themselves by trolling each other then let them have at it. Still, it is not in my power nor my responsibility to tell those people with moderator powers how to do their "job" as the fact those people have gotten the powers in the first place expresses the trust of the rest of the team. I can only hope they use it responsibly and agree with me on this issue.

Multiposting or just spamming random gibberish to flood the forum is a different thing, but that thankfully hasnt happened yet.


As far as general dev is concerned, through the extended discussions cirn and me and the rest of the devteam had over the years, we don't need to talk every single thing through because we already know well enough how everyone thinks and where we want to go. It's just that public obviously doesnt know anything about that and can only speculate based on what we have published, which is bound to make them reach a different conclusion.

On top of that, it's only natural for every single player to have his own, subjective and unique experience of this game and his own ideas of what it should look like and his own assumptions of what the devs are up to and how games should be developed etc. It's the same thing with literally any other topic out there, music, politics, religion, whatever. People have different opinions due to different backgrounds and everyone thinks his own opinion is the superior one.

Let's take a typical example: "devs dont listen to players".
So what if we listen to guy A and implement his stuff but then guy B comes along and doesnt agree with it all and so we implement his suggestion instead which walks all over guy A's suggestions and then he's all pissed off and I guess you get the point already.

Apart from games not being a democracy in the first place, majority votes are not the most perfectest way there will ever be to handle issues as we can see every day. There are other ways of handling that like systemic consensing for example (which should be looked into by everyone reading this anyway) but such approaches also require more involvement on the part of the participants and for a project such as this, I dont see it happening. After all, we're still on the internet here.

An example I brought up on irc the other week talking with VVish about this issue, was the topic of music. Fans of bands dont expect their favorite musicians to listen to their suggestion on how to do things properly. Just because video games arent officially called art doesn't mean that they're not creative works that come to life in a similar process.

Extending upon that argument, and to adress the next popular issue of "game is free so you have no right to complain", I wonder if anyone ever thought that purchasing his favorite band's new album granted him any more rights to complain about it and suggest changes to the band. In fact, "selling out" doesn't seem to be what fans want their favorite artists to do.

Point is: The game is still in a very WIP state and will remain as such for a good while longer, until we have reached our own personal goals. Until then we can only hope that people think about our position, situation and motivation as people working on this game before drawing their conclusions and posting them publicly, because they will necessarily just be "opinions" and as such will most likely be discarded. Contrary to popular belief, our goal is not to be the most played game in the history of mankind which has to be achieved by any means necessary, but any suggestions, opinions or comments using this exact pretense will automatically be invalid.

edit: im taking the liberty of moving this to general discussion section.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2016, 12:49:01 PM by John Porno »
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RazorRamon

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #12 on: May 28, 2016, 01:15:43 PM »

I miss how changelogs looked when paragon was on the team:

 - reworks of game mechanics to pander to forum whining (cirn0)
 - nerfs to your favorite weapon (john)
 - quality of life updates like ~freeshoot to make 20 year old shitgame less painful (paragopnik)


Logically, only nerfs and reworks remain today
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Perteks

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #13 on: May 28, 2016, 02:24:51 PM »

TL:DR

Johny have action figure of pink hitler riding on pony
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Niamak

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #14 on: May 28, 2016, 02:25:36 PM »

Stories about team project are definitely pretty interesting to hear even though in this case the problem seems to be the most common one which is miscommunication or lack of communication.
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John Porno

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #15 on: May 28, 2016, 02:36:08 PM »

Paragon made a point not to join the actual devteam. He didnt want the forum access and NNY title, he didnt want GM char, he didnt want to take part in game design decisions. Everyone went about one's business normally until suddenly drama
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Count Matthew

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #16 on: May 28, 2016, 05:16:14 PM »

Interesting read.

I, personally am very happy to how the game is going - it's free, its fun and it's social.

Onwards and Upwards.
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FrankenStone-MKII

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #17 on: May 28, 2016, 08:31:35 PM »

Better write books .... cyka blyad xui
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IIKM-enotsneknarF

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #18 on: May 28, 2016, 08:33:08 PM »

Better write books .... cyka blyad xui

Go away imposter, as for I am the real Frankenstone!
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Stem Sunders

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Re: A letter to potential developer
« Reply #19 on: May 30, 2016, 09:14:21 AM »

I closed the TRIGGERED thread. It devolved into nothing more than a shit slinging contest. No point to it. People want to share opinions on the game, and that's great. But maybe do it in a dedicated thread in an unoffensive, informative manner?

Up until now, nobody even batted an eyelid at the closure of that thread.

I'm all for freedom of speech and yes the internet will be the internet. I too have been known to shit post with the best of them. But there is no need for actual insults stemming from the butt hurt caused by sneks or whatever else might be pissing people off today.

I guess John and I disagree on this part. Moderating wasn't something I was given a great deal of training on (in place of a better word) Or even told what I am and am not supposed to moderate. So far I have just been using personal judgement. Which may be wrong from some peoples POV, but without a guide to it that's all I got.

Johns points on this issue have given me something to think about, and perhaps it may warrant a discussion on IRC for further clarification and information on how to conduct forum moderation in future.

Be passionate and give people your opinions, but if they don't agree with it don't call them a fagtard for example and expect things to get any better. It just adds fuel to the flame.
I would rather see people spending their time and energy on some actual real discussion. I don't lock threads because it offends me. (A lot of posts I personally find hilarious) I lock them because its no longer productive in any way and only serves as a place for people to try and insult each other over topics that arguably have nothing to do with the threads intention.

I We could very easily just never moderate anything. But isn't that one of Paragons points?

On one hand there would be people who say leave everything up and open, no matter its content.
On the other hand, some people would say the forum needs moderating to avoid that kind of insulting language and behaviour. 

I'm interested to know what parts Paragon refers to when he calls for moderation on forums? What actions specifically warrant moderation in his opinion.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2016, 10:17:21 AM by Stem Sunders »
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