Weekly Updates

[Argon]

Ye I totally understand your concerns, but all I can say is that we have to wait for Blckfire to do his thing. We often talk about progress, but unfortunately for us all, his time is being quite limited nowadays. Hope he gets enough to finish some main stuff. One thing however that for me is working quite well, the shard is stable :P


Argon

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Oh I get it, my comment was mainly intended toward the notion that people shouldn't voice their frustrations or concerns because it may hinder or discourage the staff from work on the shard.

I know for me when I'm involved in something for example though really not comparable, when I push out a new version of a macro or just a new macro, it's important to hear complaints or concerns with the ineffectiveness of it or a feature set I put in there. If as players we don't voice our concerns or frustrations, as staff, you may not be motivated to do better cause you may not know something can be done better or that there is something wrong. That was my point, I look at my views on various discussions as the one person who takes an out of the box view and I routinely take a different point of view and just going along to get along because you may hurt someone's feelings or discourage work is a terrible idea, safe spaces are a terrible idea .

Sorry I know way off topic but wanted to let you know the main reason for my previous post. Time has bested blckfire, we've all been there when time rears its ugly head to intrude on our hobbies but if as players we bottle up our concerns there will be even less activity and may cause more permanent damage than we have now.

[tennmiller]

We're all adults here I think it is justified for people to question and voice their concerns or frustrations at where the staff is at on the project at hand especially if there's been little or in this case no chatter about it's progression. Personally I am glad we have a place to play uo but felt at the time it was way too early to launch if there was no semblance of a working or semi working religion system in place.

[Malron]

Everyone is short on "time".

The truth is we make times for things we want to do. Key word want.
I don't want to come off as a super rude demandy player but there is a point where "I don't have enough IRL time" is not a valid excuse.
Even at 20 minutes a week we would be extensively into having some updates fixes and features released.
Maybe it is time to seek outside help or pass along the torch?
There are others willing to help with packages and coding.

I have 3 kids, a depressed and chronic migraine suffering wife, I own my own business in the construction industry and have a 4th child in the oven. I also find time to fix and sell computers on ebay, romance my wife, spend time with my kids and play UO daily, whether its 20 minutes or 2 hours. Let's not forget about sexy time at night!

It is not my intention to point a finger and say anyone is failing or avoiding the "work" intentionally.
Let's just call it what it is and figure out a new plan, or start seeing a clear and concise time stamped plan that is followed.


My concern about continuing to invest time in a dying shard with "no time" is that at some point the plug will be pulled on the server if there is no attention towards it.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

I agree with the gist of your post, there is an issue, who in this community is willing to step up and work on scripting in a language I'm fairly certain most of the player base has not seen? New blood is tough to find and if you do not believe me there are countless threads and posts on the official pol forums asking for a scripter for this or that shard to which 99% go unanswered. Most new blood or outside help for a shard is not necessarily outside help because most people who have taken the time to get relatively proficient with escript specifically to script for pol want to run their own shard and thus do so.

In the past my name has come up from time to time by hopeful players because I have a few macros out in the public on the forum, it's flattering and I've had some experience with scripting for a pol shard but in no way was I a head scripter, this was close to 13 years ago I'd say and what little I knew then I have since forgotten. I personally would not be prepared to be thrown in the deep end of taking on a massive overhaul of a package such as the religion system, it would only serve to frustrate players and staff alike as I'd have to learn everything in terms of the language exc pt maybe the real basics as I have knowledge of how for instance if statements work as an example.

To clarify why I bring up the previous point, as someone who has scripted on three different shards albeit in a very minor and limited way, the little bit of experience I do have rifling through scripts and packages I know first hand how overwhelming it can be and how quickly someone can get burned out. Now, when you take a shard such as Pangaea which in its 12 year history had multiple scripters, including at least three which did work for two other shards (World of Dreams which Pangaea was born from and consisted of at least 2 of the 3 scripters and Journey's End which the religion system was taken from as well as the Necromancy package which was adapted for World of Dreams pre Pangaea's existence), when you've got at the least 6 different scripters' work and you've decided with the consent of the rest of the staff to rewrite a major package from scratch which has tentacles that reach into other systems, you've got a serious chunk of work on your hands. I suspect the staff did not realise what they were getting themselves into and when I spoke to one of the staff members early into the relaunch of Pangaea I pointed out that some of what they intended for the religion system could easily be borrowed code wise from other packages or scripts. The response was in short, the religion system was going to be completely redone from scratch. This is fine but only if you know exactly what you're getting yourself into.

I am probably not being 100% fair because I do not know for certain what version this current staff was given of Pangaea, I know it was not the final version that went down 2 years ago because there were and still are some glaring bugs that I have and have not reported (fear not the unreported ones are not being abused). So they may have had to play catch up though I do believe there were some shenanigans going on inside the crafting scripts where items were not being reserved anymore when this was never an issue since the days of Repsak.

I don't know, it's nigh 0300 here and I guess the short of it all is, if you're willing to step up and want to learn how to script, feel free but saying we just need outside help or someone to step up is not good enough. Outside help is just an impossibility and unless someone can dedicate the time to learning how to script in blckfire's stead while he is absent and not make what has proven to be appeasing remarks in terms of when this or that will be done, we're stuck with what we've got for the time being.

And yes another very unpopular post yet again by me.

[Glarundis]

Like malron, i wouldn't want to be wasting time training a bit here and there only to realize the shard won't go through
Could the staff realistically tell us when they're gonna have time to work on pangaea, or tell us if it's simply not a possibility in the next months, and in such a case, we could perhaps find a way to make sure ppl could be playing again a bit more actively? I think someone mentioned boris somewhere. Of course, whenever the current staff has free time again, they would once again be put in charge..

I know blckfire said in his last post here, that he wants religion the latest by september, and it's still just may. But you know us players, we want constant updates, even if it is to tell us we advanced 5%

[Argon]

Guys the project goes and is not forgotten but time is limited and after sex, after work, after family and after after there is not much left for Pangaea. But one thing is certain, we are still here but we do depend on scripting time. If anyone has proven reports of knowing about it we for sure won't be wasting that experience and will gladly see what can be done to release a bit the Blckfire's shoulders. But keep in mind that if its just a bit of knowledge, that won't be enough because his limited time rather go on scripting than teaching and cleaning the mess.

To sum up, we opened too early... yes we did, but must I remind that when we first asked for files, our objective was to make Pangaea Pol099 and not open as it was. I also remind that when we rushed to open we had staff members that are not present and somehow we were convinced that it would be a good idea to open since this was all dead.

Im glad we did open the shard, it is still undone, but its here and its being worked (slowly at our pace). Sorry if its not fast enough, but again, if someone wants to step up as scripter that actually knows what this is and is capable of helping and not other way around we are always open for ideas, until then, gota be with that we have... a very busy scripter which is better than none :-)


Argon

[Tyrion]

Search for volunteers to develop content for the server. That takes less time that writing a New York Times OPED .

[Argon]

Let them be heard :-)


Argon

[Glarundis]

atleast for me, i don't think the staff should be worried about having opened the shard too soon and now ppl are not playing..if the shard was closed ppl wouldn't be playing either
ppl could be playing, they don't play because they're not willing anymore, because we're all too focused on religions and robbers destroyed the motivation of whoever was playing..