Lessons Learned

ArchivedUser

Dygz said:

Who did not understand all of that before Bless?

There was a prominent You tube personality that essentially gave rise to this line of thought with his PAX East review and impressions.  From that video spawned a good number of people who basically held the viewpoint that Combat/Graphics still looked the same, therefore no progress was made (dismissing the Network/Infra work).

ArchivedUser

dracdoc said:

Dygz said:

Who did not understand all of that before Bless?

There was a prominent You tube personality that essentially gave rise to this line of thought with his PAX East review and impressions.  From that video spawned a good number of people who basically held the viewpoint that Combat/Graphics still looked the same, therefore no progress was made (dismissing the Network/Infra work).

That's actually a completely different point than what I'm asking.
Players should have been expecting all of the optimization and login problems associated with day one/week one of Early Access.
Just talking about what the Ashes devs are currently focused on doesn't tell us anything about what day one/week one of Alpha 1 will be like.
Nor, perhaps especially, whether day one/week one of Ashes launch will be free of optimization and log-in issues.
We can only hope.
But, really that is a wait and see... and praise once we know for certain it all went well.

What we've seen at PAX is irrelevant.
And, I agree, I think, that the super-hype for what we've seen at PAX is really over the top Steven charisma. And has very little to do with demoing the features that will really be breaking new ground for the genre.
So far, all we've seen for Ashes development are typical features for RPGs that Unreal 4 makes possible.

ArchivedUser

Dygz said:

dracdoc said:

Dygz said:

Who did not understand all of that before Bless?

There was a prominent You tube personality that essentially gave rise to this line of thought with his PAX East review and impressions.  From that video spawned a good number of people who basically held the viewpoint that Combat/Graphics still looked the same, therefore no progress was made (dismissing the Network/Infra work).

That's actually a completely different point than what I'm asking.
Players should have been expecting all of the optimization and login problems associated with day one/week one of Early Access.
Just talking about what the Ashes devs are currently focused on doesn't tell us anything about what day one/week one of Alpha 1 will be like.
Nor, perhaps especially, whether day one/week one of Ashes launch will be free of optimization and log-in issues.
We can only hope.
But, really that is a wait and see... and praise once we know for certain it all went well.

What we've seen at PAX is irrelevant.
And, I agree, I think, that the super-hype for what we've seen at PAX is really over the top Steven charisma. And has very little to do with demoing the features that will really be breaking new ground for the genre.
So far, all we've seen for Ashes development are typical features for RPGs that Unreal 4 makes possible.

I see the problem.

My original comment wasn't actually directed at you, but to the original thread.  So yes, it is a completely different point than what you are asking.  

ArchivedUser

Cheap said:

So if you guys have surfing around on the inter-webs, you would of heard of a certain MMO that was hyped but isn't going to well.  I won't say its name that would be uncalled for.  I do however think it's a BLESSing in disguise that this is happening from a developers point of view.  It shows how quickly a hype can go south with in just a day.  They even had selected content creators as the emissaries for the game.  Those few selected people felt BLESSed, but many are not holding back on reviews and some are just ruthless.  On the good side it really gives a true perspective of what players consider unacceptable, and is not covered by sugar hype coating.  This is the reason our community needs to really work with the DEV's on giving input and not letting things slip from hype.  Let's work hard and make this game really shine.

I agree. MMORPG players are savage and devs cant mess around. Its sad but its the blunt truth. Some community members may not like our rough opinions and they may come out harsh, but i believe it is necessary for the dev team to get the cold heart opinions so they can at least take a look into it.

ArchivedUser

Lets not forget that ... the player that uses the item only allows the player to not be attacked ... they can still feed information to other players about where the opposing faction is located on the map. (and other things)

Factions are still in itself bad, tbh. 

just no 

ArchivedUser

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqORjZpAkv0 

ArchivedUser

@Dygz

Without saying anything about the game itself, I wanted to give you props for the voice acting.  Honestly, didn't know you had it in you.  Nice way to immerse yourself! 

Side note:  At the 2:48 mark, when you jumped onto the edge of the oncoming elevator...I was hoping you would miss. 

ArchivedUser

I hate reading long forum posts for some reason just want to add, that alot of people expected stuff from Bless that wasnt even close to possible. So yes Bless failed, saw it coming. But so many people are overreacting over it that i find it meme worthy atm.

You have to remember Steven put Intrepid in a Situation where certain things can not happen, like going pw2 and such. Of course at launch the game might have some server issues and so on. People will compare it to tripple A studios and WOW and so on, just a reminder this is the first game from a Studio that is brand new.

And btw screw eastern mmorpgs

ArchivedUser

BCGiant said:

I hate reading long forum posts for some reason just want to add, that alot of people expected stuff from Bless that wasnt even close to possible. So yes Bless failed, saw it coming. But so many people are overreacting over it that i find it meme worthy atm.

You have to remember Steven put Intrepid in a Situation where certain things can not happen, like going pw2 and such. Of course at launch the game might have some server issues and so on. People will compare it to tripple A studios and WOW and so on, just a reminder this is the first game from a Studio that is brand new.

And btw screw eastern mmorpgs

That last part made me chuckle more than it should have ^^

ArchivedUser

So, not to derail the conversation by any means, but to return to the topic's title, what do you people think are the lessons our lovely friends at Interpid should take from the whole Bless ordeal? Both the good parts (I mean it must have done something right to get the attention warranting such backlash) and the bad parts.

Personally, I'd say that it has been made clear how desperate the MMO community is for the next "big thing", for good or worse, being ready to both elevate, and crucify  a project at a moments notice.  So maybe go easy on the hype generation?

No reason to leave an autopsy half-way done no?

ArchivedUser

I went into playing Bless with near-zero expectations, since the only reason I did so was because a guildie cajoled me to try it.  I was never hyped for it, and knew next to nothing about it.  I did enjoy playing up until they throttled everyone's attack power (my main is a paladin, btw) and progress slowed down immensely.  Mobs respawn faster then you can clear them out.  It certainly needs quite a lot of work, like better group finding tools for certain.  The whole racial-balance group buff thing for gathering and crafting - kinda weird.  No fall damage - that is also weird but not in a bad way.

Meh, at level 31 and I am getting bored with it.

Bored Online.

ArchivedUser

Companies that launch a horribly buggy game while telling the players to have patience because it will be fixed soon(tm) should be ashamed of themselves and can only hold themselves for the games failure. Spend the money prior to launch or risk players not buying your game after.

This is why alpha needs to be used for its intended purpose; find all the killer bugs that will give reasons to those most ill inclined to scream "DOA" within 24hrs of release.

One example of a boring but necessary alpha test was in MechWarrior Online - We were told to hop in small, fast Mechs and run around a small area firing all the lasers we could as often as we could. Why? Because the devs needed to test the netcode.

This was exceedingly, mind-numbingly boring but absolutely needed. Did we understand better as the testing went along? Yep. Changes were made and the netcode eventually became better.

Alpha is not "Play the game earlier than beta testers". It's "Find-a-bug, replicate it, report it in detail, and when marked as fixed try to replicate it again."  Bug exploiters need not apply.

Players that do not clearly and concisely communicate their concerns to the devs and devs that do not listen to those concerns put the game at risk of failure on launch.

This is why the open communication Steven and crew has with this community gives one hope that the game will launch "well" (somewhere between "just okay" and "great") and that general QoL improvements, not game-breaking bug fixes, will be the norm.

ArchivedUser

freespiryt said:

@Dygz

Without saying anything about the game itself, I wanted to give you props for the voice acting.  Honestly, didn't know you had it in you.  Nice way to immerse yourself! 

Side note:  At the 2:48 mark, when you jumped onto the edge of the oncoming elevator...I was hoping you would miss. 

Hahaha!!  Thanks!!
Yes. I am an actor/singer/dancer.
The whole point of RPGs is RPing an interactive story.
When I was young, my day job was as a localization manager for Activision.
But, my real job was:
https://youtu.be/tOmAb34w1eg

(And, yeah, after that, Russian is my 4th language.)
[I was expecting to splatter at the bottom my first jump. 😜]

ArchivedUser

Haha.
My 2nd game for Activision was MechWarrior II: NetMech.
We in QA left at 2AM with 2K+ open bugs.
We returned 8 hours later to discover only 100 open bugs.
The rest were flagged Not A Bug or Will Not Fix. We were asked to release the game with the promise of a first day patch that would fix the majority of the bugs.
And that was Launch/Launch!
Not Early Access/Alpha launch.

Early Access is going to be a mess.
Especially logging in the first couple of days.
If you haven't learned that by now... that's really on you.
The whole point of Early Access is gaining access to a buggy game.
If you want a game that is supposed to be locked with few to no forthcoming bug fixes, wait until Launch.

I'm still having a blast playing through the story.
My main is Level 26 in the first week.
And that is playing a few alts plus a couple of other games that launched last week.

None of the communication with Steven allows us to know whether Ashes will have similar log-in issues at launch.
We will have to wait and see what actually happens Launch day.

ArchivedUser

Not to derail the topic....but Wow @Dygz … and in Hair!

ArchivedUser

@Dygz do you ever miss the Age of Aquarius?


I've also yet to see an MMO launch without any problems on launch day. I feel the readinalre oeoppe will understand that, and the players who leave over that aren't goung to stick around long anyway. 

I think WoW had one of the worst launches ever and look at that game.

What I feel is different with Bless is its not as advertised and it bodes poorly this is their third attempt a market.

ArchivedUser

4th. Korea, Japan, and Russia all failed.

ArchivedUser

Yeah. I'm not sure what people were hoping for.
Bless Online is an excellent casual, PvE-centric, themepark, solo-friendly MMORPG.
If you wanted something else, you will be woefully disappointed.

Since it has an endgame, it could only be a tiny snack to temporarily whet our hunger while we wait for games like Ashes of Creation and Chronicles of Elyria.
I dunno why anyone expected it to be vastly different than what they've seen in the Japan and Russian versions. 

ArchivedUser

Played Bless on the Korean servers, saw horrible game design everywhere. Uninstalled in about 2 hours. Was not excited for the NA release but figured maybe they improved on the trash pile and bought into everyone telling me it HAS to have improved since you played it.....

Nope..... only thing that changed was combat which was worse than before. The English patch in korea was better than the translation we got here. The optimization was just as horrid as I remember. And they didn't even have the 2 classes I wanted to play. And I had to pay money for the game instead of it being free in Korea. Garbage devs who didn't communicate with their consumers.

That's the AoC difference. These guys actually talk to us and consider what we have to say. We're connected to these developers unlike any other MMO I've played. They are always just names behind developer handles on the forums dismissing 90% of suggestions in most mmos I've played. But not these guys. They respond to DMs(when they have time). They chat with us in voice chat. There's no company I'd rather support. And if these guys let us down. I'll probably never support another company before the game is released and polished.

ArchivedUser

Flameblood said:

So, not to derail the conversation by any means, but to return to the topic's title, what do you people think are the lessons our lovely friends at Interpid should take from the whole Bless ordeal? 

To keep the answer focused and not to meander everywhere, it'll be only on having a most smooth launch possible.

The mistakes Neowiz made were:

1. No purchases allowed until the soft launch itself. I call it soft launch because let's face it: Early Access is just a ruse. There's no intent to wipe progress made during turbulent times, and that to me qualifies as an intent to have a retail launch.
2. Promising one megaserver for each region similar to Elder Scrolls Online, but actually only offering one WoW-style realm with WoW-style capacity at launch.
3. Related to #2: Splitting guilds and communities by download speeds because the first ones to login only have one server to go to. Server #1 suddenly gets overloaded, character creation gets shut down and those who download the client or get home later are now stuck with no game to play.
4. Failing to test Auth Handshake between Steam and Bless Launcher at scale before launch. This was the cause of the infamous Splash Screen Stuck issue.
5. Overly aggressive chat filters which potentially make ingame announcements incomprehensible: 
   

Issues #1-5 were absolutely avoidable. 

Issue #1 could have been solved by allowing players to purchase the packs one week before soft launch and allowed them to play with character creator/customization to a) get players engaged with how their characters can look like, b) give youtubers and streamers something to gab and post about while getting a fair estimate of how many servers to open up to accommodate the forecasted number of players.

Issue #2 is just fuckin' weird. Why promise a megaserver during the preview event when there's no megaserver, and they can't deliver on it? Don't promise what you can't deliver. It's possible they didn't understand what a megaserver was, and meant to say "two regions with separate servers".

Issue #3 could have been solved by the solution for Issue #1. Plan how many servers are going to be open at launch, have communities announce which one they're going to, and all the drama of being stuck at queue for 4+ hours on the first server could've been avoided.

Issue #4 could have been avoided by having an affordable VMC test who hire gamers to test this en-masse from all over the world. 

Issue #5 is a bloody no-brainer.

ArchivedUser

dracdoc said:

I would just like to point out something that Bless Online just taught us that some people truly didn't understand before.

Server performance, optimization, infrastructure.  

Bless was an example of what happens when it sucks to high hell.

This in a nutshell is why what Stephen and crew are focusing on now matters so much.  It may not be the prettiest thing to show off or the most flash, but its absolutely VITAL to any MMO's success.  I don't care what you design, if it's built on a house of cards (crappy infrastructure, network) it's going to come tumbling down and all those other systems no longer matter.

Agree

ArchivedUser

@Davlos

I agree... however I believe steams ToS prevent your #1 and #3. I believe steam EA require an accessible and playable product at the time of purchase so they can't pre-purchase, and consequently, can't get a gauge of how many players and servers they'd need.

There are other ways to gauge their playerbase so they really don't have a good excuse of only putting one server up at a time until it is full. Having a usable character creator would have been great. It was suggested to them and it seemed like they were on-board (unless I'm thinking of another game).

ArchivedUser

Yes, the devs are very much on board with a character creator before launch.  Yipee!