Is Pangaea heading in a positive direction?

[Quintoz]

2 weeks or 5 months, hit that deadline right on.

viewtopic.php?p=147559#p147559

[Boris]

[Glarundis]

Hehehe.
I still wouldn't want to go through a timewarp of shitloads of months and lose all the skills i worked for. Wouldn't mind if there was a timewipe, I'm up for anything at this point (save for the timewarp. Besides, it doesn't even make sense, it can be done so as to give back the skills/stats to the players..)
But it's not really your call so far..I don't know if I should fortunately or unfortunately anymore

[LacedUp]

6mths for a response to get ig. do we even wonder if we get new players any more? it's obvious from reading forum that they have no interest.

[yuusou]

Eeeeeeevery time staff tries to do something there's always people complaining.
Theeeeeeeen they vote for new staff and get it.
Staaaaaaaaff tries to do something new and people complain again.
Alooooooong comes Boris and says he'll keep everything the way it was.
Theeeeeeeen Boris leaves again cause he can't deal with your whingy ass.
Rinse and repeat.


Lets be realistic here. UO is a dead game. A very dead game.
Consider yourselves lucky that there are people, the staff, that give even just 5% of their free time to indulge you.
If they have to spend that 5% of their free time answering to your complaining, then I'm not surprised if that 5% drops to 1%.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

I hear Ya yuusou but I don't think you understand the real frustration here, so not to flog a dead horse I will throw some bullet points as to some frustrations:

- Deadlines repeatedly set and repeatedly come and go.

- Weekly Update thread began and a majority of posts are players trying to get some information of what is going on because it has been 3-6 weeks since any update was given in a thread called Weekly Updates.

- To use an Obamaism, some people feel bamboozled because 4 of the classes, classes a lot of people have at least one of are and have been unplayable.

- Shard being launched without the religion system even being close to halfway done was not a good decision.

- The fixing of the adventurers guild some view as a pointless endeavour as that has always needed fixing.

That all being said, there are personal faults I find with Blckfire, I keep those mainly to myself as it doesn't do any good to air some of my personal issues as unless I'm prepared to step into a more active role other than map development, it does little good to air these. This is my major beef with many who just excoriate Blckfire, most of those people don't have a want or interest in learning how to script. For myself while I occasionally rant and rave, I try to be as respectful about it as possible though sometimes I'm guilty of stepping over the line.

To just make a final note about frustrations, I've been approached about launching a shard, I won't say who and as to my answer but it was not a hard no or a firm yes. I'm willing to still give the benefit of the doubt to Blckfire and the current staff, if I wasn't willing to do that I would not be working on the map. I've seen some work being done on his end. I think though that the staff did not realize the depth at which they'd need to delve to rewrite any portion of the religion system. I recall trying to warn the staff of the scope of this project and I don't know how much credence my word had as to most people I'm a mere player with minor scripting capabilities but to be sure, I know most of the shard files Pangaea uses including the religion scripts, you would know why if you've read some of my other posts elsewhere on these forums.

On the flip side, I don't think burying heads in the sand pretending everything is roses is a good call either, staff occasionally need push back in a respectful manner. It allows them to see that the villagers are disgruntled and might help motivate them and at the same time help weed out some faults in the decisions they may make that aren't that great for the player base.

Just my thoughts and apologies if you knew some of these issues people have.

[LacedUp]

if this poll was going to motivate them, it would have happened by now. obviously they dont give a shit because they never respond on forums.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Well I've seen work been done from a scripting side.

I think a majority of players and certainly the staff had little or have in terms of players little understanding of the scope of rewriting a religion system. It's a package the spider webs into many other different packages and scripts.

That being said I see people griping but no one appears to be willing to step up and offer any help scripting. I know one person at least who has but someone with zero knowledge of scripting/programming will more often than not be a hindrance if that person is expecting to learn much while a major pkg is on the table.

Personally I have offered but even I have catching up to do, map work to be done, an activish player with order obligations and with all these I have to brush up with a server to script on other than Pangaea so even then function calls vary enough, npcdesc files are different, there's a lot different in the distro I'm running from Pangaea, not to mention I'm running 099 where Pangaea is on 096 so there's even differences in the syntax such as changes in parameters or just new stuff altogether not present in 096 I'm sure.

[Vulcan]

This thread keeps going...

I know one person at least who has but someone with zero knowledge of scripting/programming will more often than not be a hindrance if that person is expecting to learn much while a major pkg is on the table.

Yes... Expect a few bugs coming up due to lack of endif/return/... when we finally start adding the things we have ready. There was a bit of a learning curve until I was comfortable enough with editing.

- Deadlines repeatedly set and repeatedly come and go.

Explained over and over. The timing was unfortunate but we also need to deal with it.

- Weekly Update thread began and a majority of posts are players trying to get some information of what is going on because it has been 3-6 weeks since any update was given in a thread called Weekly Updates.

Agreed. I would have closed that topic a long time ago, since the work being done script wise is not one that can be described in a weekly basis, rather smaller portions of huge scripts.

- Shard being launched without the religion system even being close to halfway done was not a good decision.

Voted by the players.

if this poll was going to motivate them, it would have happened by now. obviously they dont give a shit because they never respond on forums.

Actually, speaking for myself, I stopped reading forums because of these kind of topics. I'm indifferent to what you might think about new staff, you can flame all you want and even MIA personnel can show up and add up fuel to the fire, I don't care. I simply stopped reading because there's nothing valuable to read in them.


Lastly, we haven't lost faith in this project, although being first to admit it's slower than expected. And I hope that, when all of this beta stage is over and we finally have a complete shard again, with religions and everything, we look back to this stage and we, GM's and players, smile and realize that it wasn't for nothing and are actually thankful for the work done. That, at least, it what motivates me to keep going and spend my time in Pangaea.

[Cyrus Tegyr]

Cyrus Tegyr wrote:
- Weekly Update thread began and a majority of posts are players trying to get some information of what is going on because it has been 3-6 weeks since any update was given in a thread called Weekly Updates.


Agreed. I would have closed that topic a long time ago, since the work being done script wise is not one that can be described in a weekly basis, rather smaller portions of huge scripts.

Cyrus Tegyr wrote:
- Shard being launched without the religion system even being close to halfway done was not a good decision.


Voted by the players.

the Weekly update thread ought to be closed, but I would not say that work being done script wise could not be described in a weekly basis, I mean, there are three staff, two of those staff members could be doing so much more than just scripting, there are loot tables that can be worked on and that could be mentioned in there on a weekly basis, even if it doesn't go live. Npcdesc files could be looked at and cleaned up and in terms of scripting, ya things could be announced in a timelier fashion even if little is being done and most of the players won't understand what a function being announced as being completed will exactly do.

As for the shard launching without a religion system because the players voted on it, that is irrelevant, there were promises toward the religion system getting done much quicker then it has or sad to say is. The moon was promised to the players and all we have to show for it currently 2 years on is Charlie Brown's rock.

Cyrus Tegyr wrote:
I know one person at least who has but someone with zero knowledge of scripting/programming will more often than not be a hindrance if that person is expecting to learn much while a major pkg is on the table.


Yes... Expect a few bugs coming up due to lack of endif/return/... when we finally start adding the things we have ready. There was a bit of a learning curve until I was comfortable enough with editing.

This should not be an issue, you are compiling, the compiler spits out a warning that you are missing something such as an endif or return and will not compile which means whatever you are scripting will not work in game, it is not a bug it is a non existent script attached to whatever item or action being sought.

I have toned down the heat with which I had been throwing the staff's way both privately and publicly here on the forums in an effort to be more supportive where many are not, I have was asked to help script and offered my services though little as they may currently be, I am willing to learn but to do this effectively would need copy of Pangaea to work with so I had access to all the function calls I would need because Pangaea is not the same as grabbing some 096 distro shard, it has many custom features that are not present on many other shards but this was rejected even after I offered to give up my player status to become staff to cut out any conflict of interest, so I was told to script stand alone packages. I submitted one package 2 days after Christmas which I have just found out has gone no where to getting implemented despite only I believe three fuctions need to be changed inside the script to work with the housing system as I used a distro of pol 099 to get it up and running, I ended up rescripting more than half of it as it was already a pre-existing pkg but I rewrote the entire .src file and ended up heavily editing the .inc file. I by no means can promise an overnight success with me helping out but at the least I can get better by working on bug fixes, familiarizing myself with the shard file structure, familiarize myself with the custom functions that I might use in later projects.

I am currently working on the map blind because Argon has all but fallen off the face of the earth, the last correspondence I had with him was January 13. I am like a quasi staff member it feels like, inaction due to the staff has thrust some sort of mantle on me, I appreciate that players look to me for answers, but I am not a personal answering service for the staff when something goes wrong and I am messaged by various people "Have you spoken to Blckfire recently, XYZ has gone wrong and needs fixed." Due to inactivity by the staff as you yourself said, because at least you have stopped reading the forums on a regular basis I assume the other two staff have, I feel I am personally put in the middle as an answering service for you guys, if that is what I signed up for I do not remember reading that in any job description.

I by no means am trying to be a dick about this but one of the biggest complaints I hear about staff is not necessarily religions taking so long, it is inactivity, questions are posed. guidance sought, and ideas given with the staff no where to be seen for days or weeks on end. We all have busy lives we get that, it has been drilled into the player base for 2 years now, but it takes what 30 minutes tops to respond to someone, throw out updates on work being done or just even a single line with some sort of message that is hopefully somewhat positive without promising unrealistic things.