Monthly Development Update - 2nd April 2014

[Grandpa]

That's actually something that should have been picked up in QA testing - which is another division on FC and not part of the AO team. Granted, a coder can be held to blame for it's existence, but a coder relies on QA to attempt to break things in order to "proofread" his work so to speak.

That's kind of like blaming a typo solely on a writer, when it can technically be considered the editor's fault for not catching it before final publication. In such cases the editor is often held accountable for the mistake.

Yes, there are mistakes and mistakes.

If you forget your cellphone and your wife is mad that she couldn't reach you, that's a mistake.

If you forget to do a vital part of your job and cause damage or injury, that's incompetence!

[Traderjill]

I agree with Grandpa.. the guy's post is legit if he would've redirected his concerns to funcom at whole and not specifically at the AO team. But even if he would've said Funcom, his post would've met about the same reaction. I always state Funcom in my critical posts and I still get people all over me about just the fact that I am voicing a complaint at all. Apparently some feel that players should just be grateful that the game is still running regardless of whether or not it is a service that players are paying to access.

WTB next monthly update.. the arguments in this thread are getting more and more ridiculous by the day.

[Psikie]

Interesting - I think I viewed dexiecane's post differently.

Yes, his rant was off-target.
Instead of attacking the Devs, he should have focused it more on the managerial layers of the company.
But it shows just how mismanaged FunCom really is.

I think from a managerial perspective we have been on borrowed time for about 6-7 years, as AO was never intended to run this long.

So from a mangers perspective, why should they bother reading forums or even worry abot updates for a game that has up to this point been kept on life support by the good will of the devs and coders/programmers?

To bash and thrash anyone about what amounts to a discontinued program would be a Pyrrhic victory to even get a response IMO.

Management is doing exactly what they need to do to keep the game profitable, if it is not making money THEN management could be called into question. Managements job is NOT customer satisfaction, but to maintain profitability. If everyone hates the product or company but it is making money, then I would say they have a successful formula that many companies would emulate lol.

[Gunforhire]

Yes, there are mistakes and mistakes.

If you forget your cellphone and your wife is mad that she couldn't reach you, that's a mistake.

If you forget to do a vital part of your job and cause damage or injury, that's incompetence!

So what is your point here ? Is it that all the devs at AO are incompetent, or everyone at AO is incompetent, or everyone at FC is incompetent or...

[Traderjill]

So what is your point here ? Is it that all the devs at AO are incompetent, or everyone at AO is incompetent, or everyone at FC is incompetent or...

lol, I spit out my juice reading this.

[Gunforhire]

I agree with Grandpa.. the guy's post is legit if he would've redirected his concerns to funcom at whole and not specifically at the AO team. But even if he would've said Funcom, his post would've met about the same reaction. I always state Funcom in my critical posts and I still get people all over me about just the fact that I am voicing a complaint at all. Apparently some feel that players should just be grateful that the game is still running regardless of whether or not it is a service that players are paying to access.

WTB next monthly update.. the arguments in this thread are getting more and more ridiculous by the day.

I for one am grateful that the game is still running and will continue to be so as long as it is running. I will also continue to pay for the game. When it eventually passes in to history I will be sad but I will move on because that is how things go. I take it you feel that is wrong by your post. I'm not attacking you just helping you see that not everyone is unhappy with the situation even though you may think we should be.

[Traderjill]

I for one am grateful that the game is still running and will continue to be so as long as it is running. I will also continue to pay for the game. When it eventually passes in to history I will be sad but I will move on because that is how things go. I take it you feel that is wrong by your post. I'm not attacking you just helping you see that not everyone is unhappy with the situation even though you may think we should be.

No, I don't think it is wrong. I think that's within your right. I'm saying that there are people who feel that the view you expressed is the only legitimate one and that when someone has complaints they should just quit the game rather than say something.

See how you just said "even though you may think we should be"? Why'd you say that? Nothing in my post said anything about people that are happy about the game. I address a specific faction of the population that gets upset when someone utters a negative word related to the game. It's like if a person doesn't like something about the game, its development staff or game development company all sorts of undesirable and often invalid thoughts get applied to them. I'm never against players.. well unless they're being internet bullies. I'm generally expressing concerns specifically directed towards Funcom.

On the rare occasion that I've had a specific issue with the actions of a dev or game director they've gotten a PM about it directly because I wanted to make sure it wasn't lost in 50 pages of posts.

[jorricane]

Yes, there are mistakes and mistakes.

If you forget your cellphone and your wife is mad that she couldn't reach you, that's a mistake.

If you forget to do a vital part of your job and cause damage or injury, that's incompetence!

Fair enough

What about if I forget my cellphone, my wife can't reach me, and causes me damaging injury as a result?

[jorricane]

I think from a managerial perspective we have been on borrowed time for about 6-7 years, as AO was never intended to run this long.

Good point there - I think we are well beyond the "epic 3 year story line" that the was advertised back when I started.

[Grandpa]

Fair enough

What about if I forget my cellphone, my wife can't reach me, and causes me damaging injury as a result?

LOL, I totally know what you mean!

[Grandpa]

Management is doing exactly what they need to do to keep the game profitable, if it is not making money THEN management could be called into question. Managements job is NOT customer satisfaction, but to maintain profitability. If everyone hates the product or company but it is making money, then I would say they have a successful formula that many companies would emulate lol.

Psikie, you describe a small business, not a publicly traded corporation.
My grandfather had a bakery, and he would say "as long as it pays the bills, business is good".

But a publicly traded company is expected to grow - that's the whole point of buying their stock.

Distressed companies often "cheat" in the quarterlies, by cutting overhead (people) to make the bottomline look better.
That works for a while, but not indefinitely, because eventually they run out of people, and without people, they cannot maintain, improve or make new products. Hence, business will ultimately decline even further.

Every stockholder would agree, just maintaining a status quo is not what corporate management should be doing.

But this discussion has gone far enough, time for a new monthly update - gee, I can't wait...

[erozc]

Yes, there are mistakes and mistakes.

If you forget your cellphone and your wife is mad that she couldn't reach you, that's a mistake.

If you forget to do a vital part of your job and cause damage or injury, that's incompetence!

Doctors and surgeons make mistakes and bad calls every so often, which sometimes ends up in people getting killed, yet the doctors and surgeons end up keeping their job and not getting sued - or even if they get sued, not penalized at least.

Why? Because it's a tough spot they're in and nobody could be expected to do any better. The only way out is not to do anything and wait for the inevitable fatal result which then is nobody's responsibility. Not trying is tantamount to a fatality anyway.

I believe that the above may not apply fully across the Atlantic (looking at you Brave New World people), but over there I guess the philosophy of medicine as well as philosophy of responsibility is quite different.

Either way in my world view trying, doing, and not succeeding is acceptable and could be due to any number of varying factors, not flat out pinned as "incompentence" which I find to be quite a repulsive idea. Doing a bad job on purpose or due to negligence -as you suggest in the quoted text - is quite different and in my opinion cannot be compared to this context, not unless you know something I don't know.

[Sephiroth56]

It's too late for me to address the whole posts, so I'll just do two points:

But it shows just how mismanaged FunCom really is.

No it isn't. Anarchy Online is barely viable. Anarchy Online is the smallest part of the company. It is a risk. So long as the profit margin is bigger than the calculated risk, it'll remain up. After that, not at all. We're on borrowed time. If we do stupid things like "protest quit", the game will soon not be here. If Funcom shuts down AO tomorrow, it would not be mismanagement. I pay a close attention to Funcom as a whole, so I can tell you that. I read their quarterly reports. I even attend the quarterly investor briefings every now and then. I've spoken with the CEO about stuff like this after such meetings.

If the Devs are entitled to vacations every other months, they should take them.
It's FunCom's responsibility to have enough people on staff to pick up the slack.

Well, yes and no. The point is that if you REALLY want AO to be run like this, the truth is that there will be no AO.

If the Devs, who are not trained to deal with the public, have issues interacting with the customers, it is FunCom's responsibility find people who are trained to do that.

If that is the stance you think applies, you will soon not have AO.

What exactly do the Devs "give for this game" that they have not:
a) contractually agreed upon when they accepted the job,
b) and are getting paid for?

I don't feel comfortable talking about these two things on the forums. In plain, they quite possibly literally bleed for this game. So, what they've done that's not contractually agreed upon? A ton.

What they haven't got paid for? That's not for me to say, but I'd say a lot. But that is my personal opinion and nothing else. I don't feel comfortable talking about it besides that. The thing is that the devs are going way above and beyond.

While most of the blame falls squarely on FunCom's management, the Devs are not without fault either:

If a coder forgets to check for negative numbers (gmi exploit), that's a fundamental mistake.
So we can rightfully call it incompetence, because truth is a defense to libel.

We all make mistakes. This isn't a mistake. It's an oversight. If you're a coder, you'd understand. Calling incompetence on someone for such a thing is ludicrous, also.

The thing to remember here is that AO isn't like other games. If we really want to demand and talk **** about the devs, which I'm sure we could find reasons to do, if we want to be belligerent and unforgiving, then we could topple AO very, very quickly. We could argue they should use more time writing vigorous testing routines so they don't ever, ever release something with a bug. But wait, then the engine would be delayed, so we can't have that. There's just no winning for the devs.. So, if you want to be on a high horse and do such unfavorable things as calling incompetence for an oversight, then go right ahead. It's just we won't have any AO to bicker about if we do. Now, I like AO, so I commend the work they do. Because if it wasn't for them, there would be no AO.

It's up to us.

[Pennypacker]

No it isn't. Anarchy Online is barely viable. Anarchy Online is the smallest part of the company. It is a risk. So long as the profit margin is bigger than the calculated risk, it'll remain up. After that, not at all. We're on borrowed time. If we do stupid things like "protest quit", the game will soon not be here. If Funcom shuts down AO tomorrow, it would not be mismanagement. I pay a close attention to Funcom as a whole, so I can tell you that. I read their quarterly reports. I even attend the quarterly investor briefings every now and then. I've spoken with the CEO about stuff like this after such meetings.

Why is quitting a game cause the only aspect of the game that was remotely fun suddenly isnt fun anymore a stupid thing ? And since AO is barely viable I'd say focus on the small things to keep it running instead of wasting 8 years on renewing it. If they would spend their time fixing the gazillion bugs and exploits that has been and might be things could actually be healthy run in my opinion. But then again, what do i know, I'm just a customer refusing to pay for this thing any more.

It's not up to me to keep AO running, it's up to funcom to decide whether they want it running or not and adress the issues that's being brought up for numerous years, and when they decide to release tidbits of information that says xxx profession that's already pretty op gets even more op without giving the customers the whole picture, it will cause an upset.

[Gunforhire]

Why is quitting a game cause the only aspect of the game that was remotely fun suddenly isnt fun anymore a stupid thing ? And since AO is barely viable I'd say focus on the small things to keep it running instead of wasting 8 years on renewing it. If they would spend their time fixing the gazillion bugs and exploits that has been and might be things could actually be healthy run in my opinion. But then again, what do i know, I'm just a customer refusing to pay for this thing any more.

It's not up to me to keep AO running, it's up to funcom to decide whether they want it running or not and adress the issues that's being brought up for numerous years, and when they decide to release tidbits of information that says xxx profession that's already pretty op gets even more op without giving the customers the whole picture, it will cause an upset.

If your not paying for it any more please go away and get on with your life we certainly won't miss posts made by someone who dislikes this game so much they come back just to troll the forum even though they don't play any more. "A gazillion bugs and exploits' give me a break! That's a ridiculous statement. FYI I play every day and this game runs just fine.

[Pennypacker]

If your not paying for it any more please go away and get on with your life we certainly won't miss posts made by someone who dislikes this game so much they come back just to troll the forum even though they don't play any more. "A gazillion bugs and exploits' give me a break! That's a ridiculous statement. FYI I play every day and this game runs just fine.

I reserve my right to keep on posting until my account runs out thank you very much. As for you not liking my posts, well, then feel free to ignore them. I honestly couldn't care less how blind you are where you can't see the obvious problems regarding this game. Take the security issues regarding chat servers as an example. Right now, if you kick a bot from an organization, the bot won't go away from the ingame org chat but it will not show up anywhere as being online or able to read and post in that channel, now, this will also have the same effect on a client like vha.chat.

[trousers]

If we do stupid things like "protest quit", the game will soon not be here.

Protest quitting isn't stupid - It's the only reasonable recourse a fed up customer has.

Whether or not the game remains online is largely irrelevant since the person who is quitting, well, quit.

[Freor]

We're on borrowed time. If we do stupid things like "protest quit", the game will soon not be here. If Funcom shuts down AO tomorrow, it would not be mismanagement.

Why on earth should people still pay for a game they no longer can play / have fun with? This isn't a charity - people expect to get something in return for their money. It's even one of the most expensive games out there. I feel absolutely no need to keep paying so the fanboys who refuse to see the faults of the game could still play - and continue bashing any negative comments on forum.

If I ordered a newspaper that started dropping in my box with only white pages (=unusable), I sure as hell would not continue to pay for that.

Trousers above got it right. At this point it's irrelevant for many of us whether AO survives or not. In it's current state it's not worth it. If somehow things change then it's a new situation, but I'm not going to pay for something that might happen at some point sometime.

[Encyros]

Doctors and surgeons make mistakes

Doctors obtain informed consent from their patients, and are nonetheless apologetic when something goes wrong. Doctors who mislead patients get sued.

Why those who protested by quitting have not sued FC I have no idea. A case would draw public attention to their issues, even if they are misplaced, and certainly put the company under more financial strain, and start getting the TSW people angry too.

There are a number of legal services available to those who wish to sue 'large' companies but haven't the means to do it themselves.

[Grandpa]

Doctors and surgeons make mistakes and bad calls every so often, which sometimes ends up in people getting killed, yet the doctors and surgeons end up keeping their job and not getting sued - or even if they get sued, not penalized at least.

I don't know where you live or what your laws are, so like you said, things might be different there.
My wife is a doctor and she carries 2M dollars in malpractice insurance.
If she messes up, she will lose her job and the board will strip her of her license to practice medicine.
It is similar in my own profession, I too would lose my license and have to close my firm, if I make a fundamental mistake.

Well, yes and no. The point is that if you REALLY want AO to be run like this, the truth is that there will be no AO.

If that is the stance you think applies, you will soon not have AO.

I don't feel comfortable talking about these two things on the forums. In plain, they quite possibly literally bleed for this game. So, what they've done that's not contractually agreed upon? A ton.

What they haven't got paid for? That's not for me to say, but I'd say a lot. But that is my personal opinion and nothing else. I don't feel comfortable talking about it besides that. The thing is that the devs are going way above and beyond.

Ok, all very cryptic. It seems to me you have inside information or perhaps know FC people personally?
That's nice, but irrelevant to the discussion, unless you want to divulge the details?

We all make mistakes. This isn't a mistake. It's an oversight. If you're a coder, you'd understand. Calling incompetence on someone for such a thing is ludicrous, also.

If you fail to do something correctly that you were trained to do and damage or harm is done, that's negligence and incompetence, not just an oversight.

Even I learned 25 years ago in basic C programming to check for negative numbers, and I'm not a programmer at all.

These Devs are trained.
They failed to code correctly or failed to QA the code.
Damage was done to the game that still remains uncorrected to this very day!
Hence, I call that incompetence and rightfully so.

But your post really points at a general problem today.
Nobody takes responsibility for their mistakes anymore, we make excuses for everything and everyone.
It's always the system's fault, the schools, the genes, the fact that Mommy didn't love him.

Cowardly and pathetic.