RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (Full Version)

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8x -> RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (4/23/2016 15:08:32)

quote:

Either ways, I won't really comment more on this incident, the liaison we are talking about won't deal with ED community either ways, so I don't know why they are searching here.

The last Liaison wasn't from ED community and people didn't seem to like that (especially you). That is probably why they are searching here.



Lord Machaar -> RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (4/23/2016 16:29:54)

quote:

I agree, it's very clear as explained in Nightwraith's design notes post that it takes long to complete things for ED since they are still focusing on BioBeasts. Mecha Mario's skills at multitasking has nothing to do with it and adding a new testers, moderators or a new liaison to the team will only help with what their position entails, but it won't help at all with development since they aren't software developers.

I'm talking in a larger scale, not specifically the current ED. Mecha Mario has been the only tester for quite awhile now. And when I speak about development, I'm not speaking about feature-wise only, we all agree that there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to balance especially, hiring more testers that wouldn't cost the company a single penny would have helped, in the end all of the staff members are volunteers. So while having 10 - 15 guest artists, it would be great to have 4 - 5 testers, wouldn't that help?

But either ways, Mecha Mario remains a great guy who gave a lot to the community and ED, but we must let go of that community contempt and give other members a chance. In the end we all have a brain and we all can make good decisions not just a handful of individuals out there. Because to me it looks like positions are being inherited by different staff members, leaving 0 chance to other members.

quote:

The last Liaison wasn't from ED community and people didn't seem to like that (especially you). That is probably why they are searching here.


Therril Oreb was picked before NW made the chilling announcement about ED. Maybe if they searched here back then, before things on ED looked plus or minus better, it would have been great. But that's just an ED thing. Trying to search for a liaison in the ED community after the game was officially announced dead is a waste of time. Maybe if we were told we can give suggestions concerning members who can fill up the liaison position before Therril was picked, maybe then things would have been different.

The guy would have perfeclty filled the spot now since he wouldn't be talking much about ED, as he used to before, when many hot topics were on (War fix, LGOW nerf, etc...).
As of now, there is no reason to search here, as it's too late, especially (and as I mentioned before) after the 20th of april DN's, which is the second chilling announcement by NW.



Battle Elf -> RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (4/23/2016 16:49:16)

@Machaar

Adding more Testers doesn't necessarily fix balance or allow more features to be implemented. There's a limit to what volunteers can accomplish versus paid developers. While testers can make sure the game is running smoothly, they can't create new game code.

I test release content and hunt down bugs. Testing for those is pretty much as efficient as it can be, adding more testers wouldn't cause bug fixes to go live earlier. If Mecha were overwhelmed, he would submit a call for more testers.



WhiteTiger -> RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (4/23/2016 16:57:21)

Battle Elf pretty much covered what I was going to say, but please note that testers != balance team. Observe that a tester's job is to "address any bug reports and test the game before it is updated to ensure no issues are present" and nowhere in that description does it say that testers are in charge of the game's balance. While it is true that all staff can make balance suggestions, most if not all of the suggestions are taken from the balance forums. I feel that it is a very common misconception that testers are supposed to be in charge of maintaining the game's balance and should be playing the game 24/7 with every class and every build and every game mode when in reality that is not what their job is.

quote:

But either ways, Mecha Mario remains a great guy who gave a lot to the community and ED, but we must let go of that community contempt and give other members a chance. In the end we all have a brain and we all can make good decisions not just a handful of individuals out there. Because to me it looks like positions are being inherited by different staff members, leaving 0 chance to other members.

Speaking from my past experience of inviting Ranloth to join the wiki team, who was a guest artist/tester at that time, he was just a great opportunity for the wiki. I knew that since he was selected as a guest artist/tester, he was already vetted throughly and by looking at his public profiles, he would be a good representative of the wiki. As a tester, he also signed the NDA and has access to the development server, which is great for the wiki, so it seemed like a perfect fit. I can definitely hire from outside the ED Team, and I did for the most recent wiki staff member, but it usually requires more time to properly vet the person. I don't give preference to existing staff but sometimes a great candidate comes along that happens to be an existing staff member and I'm not going to veto someone because of that.



Lord Machaar -> RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (4/23/2016 17:38:18)

You are basically speaking from 0 experience. ED never had more than 1 tester. Since when ED had 5 testers to say it wasn't much different from having one tester?
Sure, maybe theoretically for you having more than 1 tester won't work, but have devs tried doing so and adding more testers to see how that goes?
You simply judge before trying or giving others a chance.

quote:

Adding more Testers doesn't necessarily fix balance or allow more features to be implemented. There's a limit to what volunteers can accomplish versus paid developers. While testers can make sure the game is running smoothly, they can't create new game code.

I test release content and hunt down bugs. Testing for those is pretty much as efficient as it can be, adding more testers wouldn't cause bug fixes to go live earlier. If Mecha were overwhelmed, he would submit a call for more testers.


You probably didn't read my reply very well as I stated:
quote:

I'm talking in a larger scale, not specifically the current ED. Mecha Mario has been the only tester for quite awhile now. And when I speak about development, I'm not speaking about feature-wise only, we all agree that there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to balance especially


I'm not saying that testers will help devs introduce features in a faster scale. I'm saying that testers do have the power to fix balance problems that wouldn't require much "coding and programming skills", as all devs have to do is switch some numbers here and there based on the testers' recommendations. I'm also not talking about testing for updates or searching for bugs, since we don't have much of those lately, but I'm talking about balancing what we already have, notably, classes, skills, war system, legendary system and many more... we know each one of these fields can be revamped or at least changed to a better state, it's just the current testing team of 1 person is what making you guys think it is impossible.

quote:

Battle Elf pretty much covered what I was going to say, but please note that testers != balance team. Observe that a tester's job is to "address any bug reports and test the game before it is updated to ensure no issues are present" and nowhere in that description does it say that testers are in charge of the game's balance. While it is true that all staff can make balance suggestions, most if not all of the suggestions are taken from the balance forums. I feel that it is a very common misconception that testers are supposed to be in charge of maintaining the game's balance and should be playing the game 24/7 with every class and every build and every game mode when in reality that is not what their job is.

So basically you are telling me we don't have a balance team? If Mecha Mario takes care of Testing, then who takes care of balance? Fairies maybe?
ED is not a game with 200 staff to have handful amount of people dedicated to balance and handful amount of people dedicated to testing.
We must not lie to ourselves, Mecha Mario, plays both roles, and when I say testing, I'm not specifically saying testing for the updates, I'm saying testing players' ideas, balance suggestins, potential fixes and whatnot.

It would sincerely make me laugh if I start talking about balance team in one paragraph and testing team in one paragraph when both of us know there is one person in charge of all of that.

quote:

Speaking from my past experience of inviting Ranloth to join the wiki team, who was a guest artist/tester at that time, he was just a great opportunity for the wiki. I knew that since he was selected as a guest artist/tester, he was already vetted throughly and by looking at his public profiles, he would be a good representative of the wiki. As a tester, he also signed the NDA and has access to the development server, which is great for the wiki, so it seemed like a perfect fit. I can definitely hire from outside the ED Team, and I did for the most recent wiki staff member, but it usually requires more time to properly vet the person. I don't give preference to existing staff but sometimes a great candidate comes along that happens to be an existing staff member and I'm not going to veto someone because of that.


My idea is pretty clear, when 1 person holds many positions, guess what happens when that person leaves or quits the team. Ranloth's retirement is a great example, leaving a huge gap in the team, since he served as a liaison/balancer/wiki member. Imagine if Mecha Mario quits, we will lose a moderator, AK, forums moderator, tester, balancer (ehm), guest artist, guest writer, bug liaison, bug tracker, wiki member... that's just one person leaving the team. If we hire more members which will cost none of you guys a penny, we would avoid having such breakdowns in the team.

PS/Note: Just to clear up something, when I speak about testers, I mean balancers as well, since currently I would be acting schizophrenic if I split both jobs while they are both currently done by the same person. In EDs case Balancer = Tester and Tester = Balancer. I don't think devs would fancy recruiting members just for solely testing updates that do not actually exist, or balancing the game, so for me both tasks are look alikes especially for such a small game.



WhiteTiger -> RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (4/23/2016 19:12:34)

Lord Machaar, I'm going to address all the things you mentioned in this post. I won't be quoting you because I'm on my phone, so I hope you will read this and have a better understanding of what the reality is.

When Mecha invited me to join the team as a tester, there were many other testers on the team and I can confidently say that it did not affect the speed at which updates were released because there was only Friday testing (and sometimes Thursday), depending on when the development team finished the release.

Mecha Mario is leading the balance team along with Rabblefroth and at one point in time that meant something, but currently it doesn't mean much at all because every staff member is free to suggest balance improvements.

There is no dedicated balance team in the sense of staff members playing different classes, game modes and builds. The "balance team" is what I described in the previous paragraph.

The testing team is not in charge of balance, they are in charge of testing the new releases and bug reports. Once again, they are not the ones that are playing different classes, game modes and builds because that team does not exist. The balance changes that have occurred are either suggested in the balance forums, or by other staff members (who may or may not be testers).

Yes, Mecha Mario holds a lot of titles, but that doesn't mean he dedicates many hours of his day doing each position. It also doesn't meant he splits his time between every position, thereby not doing a good job at any role. I'll address all of his positions right now.

As the wiki team lead, I can tell you that his responsibilities are not time consuming. I'm fine with that and am not removing him from the official team listing because it's not a big deal for me. He doesn't deal with a lot of public forum related matters because there are AKs and Battle Elf available, not to say he does nothing but there are other people that can deal with forum issues. Same thing goes with the in-game moderator position. He leads the testing team and so he makes it clear that he is on call to test whenever a new release requires to be tested, but he has Battle Elf to help him and I can also help if both of them are out of service because testing a release doesn't take much more than a few hours and officially I'm still a part of the testing team.

Ranloth's retirement did impact the team but not as drastically as you make it sound. It just meant less storyline content, Battle Elf filling in as a tester and I've already hired a new wiki staff member.

You wouldn't be "acting schizophrenic" if you thought that the testing team and the "balance team" are distinct because that's exactly the reality of the matter.

I hope this post helped you better understand the situation and while not ideal in any way and not what anyone on the team or not desires, it's the reality. Battle Elf can probably explain more in detailed way why hiring more staff isn't as easy as you probably think it is since he works more closely with the devs for hiring and I pretty much just hire for the wiki based on my own set of requirements.



Lord Machaar -> RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (4/23/2016 20:39:56)

quote:

There is no dedicated balance team in the sense of staff members playing different classes, game modes and builds. The "balance team" is what I described in the previous paragraph.

Yes this post really helped me realise why balance in-game is this much awful. There isn't a balance team. The fact that you're saying "anyone can suggest stuff about balance when they feel like it", meaning that balance comes in a second place.
It's a normal thing that the game will never be balanced as long as balance updates only occurs when the forums is flipped over with players begging devs to fix X or Y thing. But when a player suggests a fix in a civilized way, it doesn't get much attention, or let me phrase this correclty, it's not enough to bother someone from the team to dedicate a little of his time into doing some balance tasks and investigate the matter.

Features like legendary system, or even classes, need maintenance, therefore a dedicated balance team to look monthly for potential flaws. Simply saying there is no dedicated balance team means balance only occurs when the game is on the ledge, otherwise if there was a balance team to do mini regular fixes, we wouldn't have this amount of complex balance problems.

quote:

Ranloth's retirement did impact the team but not as drastically as you make it sound. It just meant less storyline content, Battle Elf filling in as a tester and I've already hired a new wiki staff member.

You didn't mention Ranloth's contribution to balance, nor his contribution to communicate devs with players. Me and Ranloth worked closely to bring Underdog mode to life, Plus Ranloth did answer on many occasions to players' concerns about many many stuff. When Therril took over, he couldn't reply to 25% of what Ranloth used to cover.

Hiring more testers/balancers doesn't mean they should directly work with devs. There can be a head balancer/tester to coordinate with different members, and then coordinate with Rabblefroth to see what's and what's not implementable.
There thousands of ways to simplify things and life, but there also thousands way to complicate things. Anyone can choose to simplify or complicate things.



Front45 -> RE: =ED= April 14th, 2016 - Power Weekend War and More! (4/24/2016 5:39:58)

please understand all ! they stopped and quit balance changes update because of ranks. they guess, that don't matter change in balance anything, because 1 vs 1 100 rank player can always defeat 1 rank player. until there are ranks in the game, balance is dead. no matter do anything



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