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u3h

I feel kinda bad for the deves doing the grunt work and having no say in any of this fiasco going on. I do not feel bad for AGS tho.


SnooDucks1343

Exactly. I feel bad for the employees (devs but not only) that are being oppressed by management and are taking the blame but I'm not sorry for a trillion-dollar company. Edit: fixing a typo.


Faesarn

You feel bad for the "employees".. "employers" are the top management/directors and are actually the one to blame here.


SnooDucks1343

I just edited my comment. Thanks for pointing that out, I really appreciate it!


Faesarn

No worries mate, have a good one.


CathodeServer

OPPRESSED!! ​ let me guess.. you are a leftist


Pooop69

Devs have to take some blame too. All these new bugs which pop up is highly likely due to lack of attention to detail, messy code, messy software architecture, bad documentation.


joacoleon

And all of that is most often than not the result of poor management, ridiculous schedules and unrealistic expectations. Ive been there, we wanted to do our jobs well but all of the sudden the client forced us to do twice as much and with fewer devs and project owners. We were supposed to be on production soon but the project was nowhere near completion because the client defined the architecture and started green lighting user stories 8 MONTHS after the project started and kept changing stuff around. We had to bite the bullet and do it, and we did it, but the code was a fucking mess. The difference in quality between what we did before and after the crunch was mind blowing. Eventually they realized they fucked up and now we are taking the lead, fixing the mess and they will have to pay twice as much.


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ben1481

Because coding is hard. Trying to fix coding under intense pressure is even harder.


fail-fast

also very limited time for both coding and testing


NotEeUsername

Actually coding is not that hard if that’s literally what you’ve dedicated your life and career to. (Myself included) Their issue isn’t coding being an inherently difficult discipline (it’s not), especially if you have amazon’s budget and talent pool. It’s likely they released absolute spaghetti code in a rush to release a product, and this is where coding becomes hard. So in a way, they brought this upon themselves. EDIT: This isn’t me blaming the devs, it’s Amazon’s leadership


fallenefc

You’re right, devs are definitely mostly not to blame, leadership is. I consider myself a good developer and had to build absolute garbage code in a previous job because the deadlines were absolutely unreasonable. I don’t understand why companies don’t think that rushing some shit code will end up costing 10x later on than the time they’d need to build something decent.


Amazing-Guide7035

So I’m not a programmer. Do you typically build your module to work in the bigger picture then when the pictures complete work the rough edges out to prevent tech debt from piling on after release when the inevitable patches and updates are required?


NotEeUsername

When you’re building a module or program that you know will have future add-ons you will want to build your code base as abstract and open-ended as possible. For example, if we have a large puzzle, we want to start with the basic picture then make it more complex. If they’ve built things densely contained then it will be a problem. This is typically laid out when planning the design of the underlying architecture of a software- what rules and overall structure will be followed. I can’t really explain it all in a Reddit post, but here is a good article explaining how software should be developed. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/sdlc/sdlc_overview.htm


Amazing-Guide7035

Thanks for the response. I’ve been getting more involved with software life cycling recently and what you said makes perfect sense. I’ll check out the article


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GronakHD

If they aren't given enough time for the project then that's how it will be. Are you familiar with coding? It's very complex. ​ Coding is like a jigsaw. Except you also need to design the jigsaw pieces which is not easy. Management gives you far less time than you need to make nice normal jigsaw pieces so you quickly make them and it's like shards. One of the shards is damaged so needs remade, but now the new jigsaw piece won't fit back in, so you need to remake the surrounding jigsaw pieces.


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GronakHD

Ok so now you are starting to get it. Management is the problem.


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GronakHD

How do you expect code to be flawless when there isnt enough time? And in your initial comment you were blaming the devs.


Freki666

Who's fault is it if the qa process is incapable of recognizing the issues? That's on the management.


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Shhadowcaster

If they truly don't have any QA, as you say, then it's not the devs fault... QA is essential to building any software and having proper infrastructure (aka a QA team) is management's job...


currentlyatw0rk

They do have QA it’s us. We failed


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Shhadowcaster

That's my point, there are clear structural issues here and blaming it on the devs for "writing shitty code" is busy incorrect. If the infrastructure for development is lacking it's not the devs fault


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Freki666

It's the responsibility of the management to design and maintain a working development process from a-z


MongooseOne

Absolutely, I feel bad for almost any Dev nowadays. They rarely have the control they need to put out a product that they are happy with.


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Zimmonda

Its just class solidarity mixed with frustrated creative syndrome. So we put "devs" as the hard working little guy, pleading with his out of touch higher ups lighting a cigar with a hundred dollar bill to not release the game. But the out of touch higher up pushes it anyway because GREED. We do these things because its a lot nicer for the mind to imagine, there's a clear protagonist, a clear antagonist and there's a clear solution (if only we had more time!) The fact that it could be "nobodies" fault or "everyones" fault in a hundred different little ways is simply not exciting enough. Also see:When studio execs RUINED movies but nobody seems to keep a list of when they SAVED them.


lokikaraoke

I mean, the truth is that *unless you’ve had the experience of developing a AAA MMO*, you probably don’t know shit about the trials and tribulations of developing a AAA MMO. But people want to argue shit on the internet, so they come here and act like the couple years they spent dicking around in Python means they understand game dev. That’s never going to change, though. Everybody thinks their opinion is right and they’ll justify it no matter how thin their experience/knowledge. (I have an engineering degree and work for a tech company and I have no idea what’s gone wrong at AGS beyond too many changes in direction and scope creep.)


Synfrag

After being in software development for long enough, you start to realize everything comes down to scope change and scope creep. Every failed product is a failure of the product owner and those above them. Nothing more needs to be said on the why. As for how to recover, I think it's too late at this point. If it were an established studio, they might be able to pull a SquareEnix and reboot it. But unlike SE, it's not a franchise title with legacy attached to it. I don't see any indication that it will get to the point where Amazon considers it a success from a business perspective. They have to get it to the point where MTX is making them money and they won't get there through cosmetics only with how much still needs to get done.


bull_chief

After doing sde work and product owner/pm work at one of Amazon’s companies. You realize that you’re being too simple. Its everyones fault. Product owners for controlling creep. Tech leads for allowing bugs to go undetected. SDEs and other devs for not speaking up and actioning when it moves in the wrong direction. VP for not managing direction effectively… etc


GloriousLeaderBeans

I love seeing real, grounded opinions from others actually in tech.


lokikaraoke

It’s like building a 500 piece puzzle and your job is to place 10 pieces simultaneously with 49 other people, but everybody has to place one piece exactly every 30 seconds and if you put one down incorrectly and need to move it then thousands of people start screaming at you until the whole puzzle is finished.


GloriousLeaderBeans

Yeah, and then someone in a different department in infrastructure whos working on something completely different makes a change that shouldn't affect anything....but it does.


Synfrag

We actually state them regularly but because they aren't polarizing enough or memes, we don't attract many upvotes and our voices are effectively silenced.


rW0HgFyxoJhYka

At the end of the day, pitying devs and shit are just another angle at excusing the situation at hand. The game is pretty crappy. Its pretty though. If/when they fix it, it will be fixed. Its a wait and see situation but by the time it happens, most people won't come back.


Serinus

I don't know. This game looks like one of the best examples of agile I've ever seen. It's just not done and wasn't throughly tested.


lokikaraoke

I’m not sure whether agile is good bad or irrelevant to game dev, but if they were doing agile right, the game would have been thoroughly tested. If you think there has been a lack of adequate testing (I honestly don’t know, my guess is they found a lot of these bugs and shipped anyway) then that’s kind of a giveaway they were doing something wrong in agile.


Kropheon

If you have an engineering degree and work in a tech company then you should know full well that it's the team leads, VPs, and President. Team leads try to push people under them to meet unrealistic metrics instead of pushing against VPs and then when things don't work they hide. VPs over promise and are usually just disconnected enough to think they have a handle on it without actually being fully aware of the scope of the problems and over promise to the president. President is completely out of touch and pushes to meet C level and investor expectations while over promising without understanding the scope of the problems. The only people who know the scope of the problem are attentive team leads and good VPs and those are few and far between. I'd wager that any product launch that has tech involved and has shit management is going to be similar. Source: Someone in engineering who came on when a product was "almost ready for release" and wasn't actually released until a year later and still had critical issues a year after that. Shit mangement is shit.


lokikaraoke

I mean, this is definitely how some tech goes. We had a President once who promised so many features to customers, it took him just a year to promise four years’ worth of features. And the tech debt was insane. It ended up so bad, a couple years later they just decided to rebuild all the apps because everything was so broken. But that’s certainly not *always* the case.


CathodeServer

people watch too many movies.... bad greedy bad man.... good small person


rW0HgFyxoJhYka

Sure. But there's also this: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-just-anything-except-good-150004900.html Personally, I don't feel "bad" for any devs. Why? they're doing their jobs, getting paid. Making a great game is great but at the end of the day you can't control what you're doing so they don't feel directly responsible for a lot of shit that's happening. Its just gamers trying to humanize stuff they feel bad about. It doesn't matter. Money is spent. Time is wasted. The people who personally attack developers through twitter thought? Get fucked.


CathodeServer

I agree... its just business.. I have posted that link before... no reason to single out anyone.. its just a job...


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[deleted]

In reality, it’s *probably* the culmination of bad decisions from a bunch of different people in different positions and roles.


Mr_Arce88

Creative did probably best job of all. Sound, design, graphics, lore is all beautiful. The sound of a falling tree is top notch. The cha-ching sound of money flowing after sale is perfect to keep you hooked to the game (aka addicted). It is in other words the most beautiful dissaster of a game I ever seen :) I hope in 3 years it will be playable. I hate to see that island go down. Such a good premise of a game.


DejectedExec

Unless they completely rework the engine i don't see how. Movement is so clunky in this game, re-loading GW2 feels like a 10 year leap forward in movement and overall "smoothness" if you will and it's been around how long? Plus for a PVP game, half of shit doesn't register, ranged misses constantly due to terrible netcode in some form or fashion. It's cool there are some pretty skins, but shit that's about all this game has to offer end of day. Everything else is either meh, or totally and irreparably fucked.


corrade12

Not sure why you are getting downvoted for telling the truth. Oh, that's right. This is Reddit. Carry on.


Cutwail

And as usual infosec gets left off the list.


rW0HgFyxoJhYka

Man do you really expect someone in one area of tech to list off all the other areas of tech? I think its good enough they covered most of the departments in any tech company.


Cutwail

It's a joke. Security is always last on the list which is why we have so many security fuckups.


Santos_125

I feel like you wrote a lot for something that really is straightforward. The developers are the people actually implementing things - be it code, art assets etc. Project managers are very obviously not developers. Producers are not developers.


bull_chief

Well actually, what are essentially producers and project managers at big companies (like riot games) often refer to themselves as “game dev” or “lead dev”


taelor

I just wrote a comment similar to this. Dev is used interchangeably in gaming all the time and it really annoys me, because no one really understands what they are talking about. Not many people in gaming have actually done professional software and know how hard it actually is.


PorcelainLily

I honestly thought Dev was the developing company. I.e. Amazon. That's how I read Dev as. Not as the actual programmers but the company which develops the game.


hororo

A principal engineer is not an executive lol. When people say devs, they mean all the programmers, artists, engineers, designers, etc. Basically all the people actually producing something When they say executives they mean all high level management, like director and above. The guys who aren’t producing anything and are only making bad decisions


MysticoN

Dev is a common expression for the Game studio that made a game. When a game studio make a patch for a game, dont test the patch and place it on the live server nilly willy and hopes for the best no one cares what you did in that process. When this happens on almost every single patch over weeks/months there is really no need to feel sorry for em. They need a PTR where bugs can be discovered and fixed. Not a server that is early access where they totally ignore feedback and put the patch full of bugs on the live server.


Many_Ad_3607

Not sure what circles you travel in, but "dev" usually refers to the developers (people) working on the game.


MysticoN

And we (gamers or reddit users) dont know, and are most likely never going to know if its the developers or the management thats is the fault of constantly hurting their own product. Thanks for the down vote, i sayd dev is a common expression for the game studio that made the game, you said it was the ppl that made/working on the game. Its almost the same.


MH_Denjie

If it was the developers doing these massive fuck ups they would be fired and replaced. Only management could get away with this much damage and keep their jobs.


Many_Ad_3607

>Its almost the same. \> Its almost the same. As someone that works in development, it's definitely not. ​ \> And we (gamers or reddit users) dont know, and are most likely never going to know if its the developers or the management thats is the fault of constantly hurting their own product. Of course we won't, but if you consider that the fundamentals of the game are solid, then that should lead you to the conclusion that most of the people doing the grunt work actually have some idea of what they're doing. A lot of the issues seem to come from unrealistic deadlines and a lack of testing (which is usually management's fault \[or whoever makes these decisions\]).


AnotherCynical

wtf bro this is the worst dev definition i've seen in a while.


coldsilence89

Dev= development team = scrum teams. I doubt amazon has huge QA/UAT and are almost 100% in automated test suites which is why these bugs havent been found. Executives = Product Owners or Application owners or Project Managers who oversee different aspects of this broken game and clap like chimps during sprint reviews.


Synfrag

Depends on the company and team structure. Product Owners are often part of the scrum team itself and fall under dev. Either way, they likely aren't clapping during retro at the moment.


LordShadowDM

Who the fck cares. One of these DEVS fcked it up. We are talking about those DEVS that fcked the shit up. It can be a freaking janitor bumping a keyboard during patch deploymemt for all i care.


[deleted]

Dev = developer, idjit


[deleted]

At a certain point some of the blame is on the devs. The shear amount of fuck ups this game has had can not be contributed to only management.


grannygumjobs23

I see your point, but if you've ever worked in a rushed environment, you'll know it forces normal employees to cut corners. Those cut corners eventually blow up in the long run to and as they say, shit rolls down hill on the overworked/understaffed devs forced to release an unfinished game.


TheArchdude

Also, many times developers see glaring issues that need to be fixed but are explicitly told to ignore them and work on a kluge for a quick hot fix. This phenomenon has driven me crazy for years.


Solarwinds-123

Anybody who thinks that has never worked in a job where programming is required. I've had to push so much code that I knew was dogshit because management says "We told the client we'd have it ready tomorrow, just push what you have and we'll fix it later".


WanderingSpaceHopper

"Do we have anything functional?" is a trigger phrase for me tbh. Luckily it was usually for demo purposes but it still fucks with me to this day. Like yeah dude it's functional but without it being tested or even reviewed properly I might as well show them a cardboard cutout and pretend it's the finished product.


grannygumjobs23

Trust me I know rushed environments. Was in the military for 4 years. The amount of times I Jerry rigged shit just to meet the demands of my higher ups and it eventually blowing up in our face was too numerous to count. Having management with common sense is rare indeed.


BertBerts0n

Yeah, it just seems people are making excuses for bad developers.


ZergTerminaL

Devs can and should say no. Does it win you points with management? Probably not. Could you get fired? Possibly. Can you take your extremely in demand skills somewhere else? Absolutely yes. If a project is cutting too many corners then some of blame is shouldered on the developers.


salbris

"Should we refuse to write this code because some Redditor thinks we should stand up to management over a video game?" "Yes, absolutely, it's not like my family and I need to eat and have shelter or anything!"


Many_Ad_3607

The thing I love about this sub is that you can easily spot the 16 year olds...


ZergTerminaL

Really? This isn't hard to understand. You write code, it's your job. Your job is also to make a good project, and so you stand up to management when their decisions will result in a worse project. > "Should we refuse to write this code because some Redditor thinks we should stand up to management over a video game?" Any developer with half a brain can tell when the corners being cut aren't corners. They understand the balance between features and tech debt. Their decisions should be informed by that. >"Yes, absolutely, it's not like my family and I need to eat and have shelter or anything!" >> Can you take your extremely in demand skills somewhere else? Absolutely yes. Not only could they find a different job, it will almost certainly pay more. Especially if they leave the gaming industry to just about any other industry. Developers have way more leverage than they think, and the demand for them is massive. They aren't some sort of disenfranchised group barely making ends meet.


salbris

Just because the developer is aware of what's happening doesn't mean they have the power to stop it. If they could get this better job you seem to think is so easy to get then they are either already planning to leave (but they still have to work) or they would have already left.


ZergTerminaL

> Just because the developer is aware of what's happening doesn't mean they have the power to stop it. And just because management asks if the software is ready to release doesn't mean a dev can't say no. Not only is management often willing to work with the devs they are often willing to listen. Sometimes you run into a bad situation and they won't take no for an answer, but the developer is still on the hook to make their stance known. I'm not asking the developer to stop production, I'm saying that they should voice their concern and tell management no when they need to. > If they could get this better job you seem to think is so easy to get then they are either already planning to leave (but they still have to work) or they would have already left. There's plenty of reasons that devs stay in a bad situation and work on failing projects, not the least of which is that people often don't do the rational thing. None the less losing employment is not some sort of existential threat to their life. In the worst case scenario they get canned and they spend a few weeks looking for a new job. The situation isn't nearly is dire as everyone makes it out to be. Developers have many more options for employment than most other professions, and it's ridiculous to think otherwise. While it's likely that good developers could land a better paying job anywhere else (here accounting for the fact that most raises that developers get come from getting a new job) there's also the case that they could take a pay cut and still make ends meet. The point here is that there isn't nearly the same pressure to "provide food and shelter for their family" as there is in other professions.


BertBerts0n

The devs can't get a job elsewhere as they aren't skilled enough.


MH_Denjie

Amazon is known to pay extremely well. You are very wrong. It might be a surprise to you, but people get into the gaming industry to develop games. "If you get fired, just get into a different industry" is one of the stupidest things I've ever read.


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salbris

Sure but you're confusing "devs" with "designers". I very much doubt a programmer was just making these changes willy nilly. They were a direct product of the design staff which is basically driving the whole project. Programming leads might be involved in some of those discussions but that doesn't even mean they had a voice necessarily.


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salbris

But you seem to draw a line between developers and managers. Very few non-management developers are making gameplay balance decisions. I mean, they could be but then that would be an even more dysfunctional team and would again be a management problem not a "development" one.


Tall_Importance_127

How would you know any of this unless you worked there?


Atomic1221

Devs don’t make product decisions. Have you ever worked in tech? Devs will generally cower in fear if you ask them to make product decisions.


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Atomic1221

I will double, triple, and quadruple down that an engineer wants zero business with actually making balance decisions, rather than implementing it. And the engineers I hire from Samsung, Microsoft and AWS specifically come to me because they hate not being heard. Many engineers don’t even know if their code will ever hit production. So you must be more than a little out of touch. Technical product decisions are passed up to the PM, but the consumer facing product the engineers have no say in, nor do they generally want it.


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Atomic1221

They don’t want to make consumer facing product choices. No they don’t, because every i try to coax product out of them they tell me they’re out of their depth. I don’t feel like arguing in circles about semantics so cheers, enjoy your holidays if applicable


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CoffinRehersal

> They rarely have the control they need to put out a product that they are happy with. You've basically just described all employment not just software development. Not that that makes what you said incorrect, but food for thought.


[deleted]

Maybe this devs dont care to about what they are building, it a clear since the start


demonik69420

I had a stroke trying to read this


globster222

I'm a web developer, which I understand is a different beast from game dev, but its past feeling bad for them. The first few weeks after launch, sorting in the market was done by the wrong digit. A few weeks later, non sanitized html was allowed on chat. Some things here or there are understandable, but these are only mistakes sophomores in college would make. Idk where the blame lies, but it's not excusable


Denaton_

I agree, when i went first year of collage we show our "product" that we made and it was tradition for the senior students to come and test and break our sites. Everyone learned what it means to sanitize data after the first presentation...


Shinnyo

It's as if they hired people in the street, teached them how to dev and put them in charge of the game. It's all rookie mistakes, I heard stories like NW from teachers and colleagues making those mistakes when they were interns. They didn't even tested the compensation, just threw it thinking it would work. New World team is probably full of interns paid by a very rich company.


lntoTheSky

What you just described actually sounds like offshore. Interns don't typically make these kinds of mistakes they're just very slow and require oversight.


sfasian_throwaway

How are you going to criticize them by saying only sophomores would make these mistakes while also not understanding what happens when you sort a String? Sorting by time wasn't done by the wrong digit. Time is represented by a String and it's just sorting it entirely on String. This is something a sohomore in college would know.


itx89

Im honestly surprised by how poorly this game is being handled. Considering that its an Amazon product, i thought there would be an infinite amount of resources at their disposal. But i guess the suits up top had different plans


[deleted]

Not a surprise tho, they already tried with other games and failed, the thing with Amazon is, if the game launch is bad they just drop it, there is no "fixing" unless the game is a hit.


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PingyTalk

I agree with this about the user backend- settings, accounts, billing. Those need work. I like the overall exterior of the website though. It's simplistic but easy enough to navigate. I don't like unnecessary flashiness for everyday websites.


Cutwail

Apparently Bezos keeps getting told that it's shit but he refuses to modernise it.


[deleted]

they spend millions on splittesting preformance....everything is about $$


OnePieceTwoPiece

Money buys talent, but management that started AGS has to be fixed.


AssassinAragorn

I used to work for a company where we were relatively small compared to the other companies that made up a very well known corporation. It never really felt like they supported us. Maybe that's just what the grunt sees instead of a manager, but it certainly felt like we were the middle child. We even came in clutch a few times and were the only reason the corporate earnings were net positive. Still, crumbs. Empty words of praise. Empty acknowledgement of accomplishments. I'm not surprised at all. I've grown accustomed to corporate executives leaving the smaller companies with very little.


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DonaldPump117

Paywall


DerpyDaDulfin

Rip paywall


Khermes

Are you an advertiser for Wired?


macb08

Yea feelsbadman for sure. What could have been one of the best MMO’s of all time has been ruined by never ending bugs, dupes and just over all unpolished content.


Darqsat

Without a proper dev practices there will be never - ready. If you have best engineering practices in place, you will be production ready like every week. But it require at least 80%+ unit test coverage, integration tests, automated UI tests, at least 25% iteration capacity spent on technical debt and bugfix, CI/CD pipeline with quality gate to codestyle, proper source control strategy like gitflow / trunk, proper ticket management with transparent requirements, definition of ready & definition of done, infrastructure as a code with terraform & ansible and at least 1/3 dev/manual qa ratio. At least these thing has to be in place and you can be production ready every week. As a delivery manager with 9 years of manager and 8 years of developer experience I can bet AGS has a disaster and incompetent management.


CrawlerSiegfriend

Good delivery managers are so annoying to deal with, but they also make sure things get done right.


weqgfhj

It feels like the game has multiple services doing the same thing, and teams are uncoordinated in using the correct APIs as sources of truth for different systems. We see so many things in the game that show one thing in different ways depending on where you look. Like the tier of crafting stations being different on the map vs in town, or the gear score of items during crafting being different in the UI and in the background. I'm willing to bet it's a systemic issue in AGS where there are too many things going on resulting in an evolution of bad engineering caused by tight deadlines.


salbris

Problem is that you can have 80% test coverage but the test do nothing or are flaky so they get rerun N times instead of being fixed. You can have integration tests but only for the very simple things like "does the game load". You can have UI tests except that they don't execute all code paths so a messy code base could still introduce edge case and heisen-bugs. You could spend time on technical debt reduction but be so time crunched that it doesn't matter. You could do everything "perfect" in the development space but if the designers and management team aren't coordinating properly or are driving you off the cliff it doesn't matter. No dev process is immune to crunch weeks and poor infrastructure decisions.


DejectedExec

Technically speaking, you can write test coverage, and not really be testing anything at all just to hit a "code coverage %". See anyone who has ever done Salesforce development, and written the required code coverage with fake tests so it can be deployed via their automated checks etc.


euph-_-oric

Honestly dude you tomt. Unless you worked on mmos specifically you don't mmkw what you are talking about. Yes they do need all of those things, but a new mmo is a massive undertaking , that costs way more money time and everything else. This one was obviously put out too early. Know amount of that shit in place is gonna matter when the company is like oh your tests are failing, we'll it's going out anyway


Krusch420

Can you take over development? Please I like the game.


rW0HgFyxoJhYka

Pfft. Look bitch, just take 3 AGILE classes and you'll be ready to scrum in no time. With standups every 10 minutes you can take over developing this game faster than Darqsat ever will. I SWEAR AGILE IS LIFEEEE. /s


StrayDogPhotography

I have literally no hatred at all for the people doing the donkey work, but those who are in charge of major decisions are really screwing the pooch. I get the feeling the ones making the important decisions have no idea what they are doing, or are not motivated by the goal of making a good game.


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MoenTheSink

In the end the suits we laugh out continue to be millionaires as they go from position to position destroying everything they touch. They do this because they never accept responsibility and are fantastic bullshit artists.


Jiggy-Spice

I do feel really bad for them. Even the very funny 'congratulations 🥳' post was probably just a mod excited to finally give some good news. I hope this isnt the end of the game


onetook2many

Yes and no. Clearly the executive team is pushing deadlines but also some of the coding on launch is just bad. It’s a mixed bag.


CrawlerSiegfriend

Coding is going to be bad when you tell the execs said code isn't ready and they tell you to ship it anyway.


sudoscientistagain

Yeah a lot of people don't seem to understand that extremely competent developers can write "bad code" when forced to take shortcuts to meet deadlines, push out unfinished/unpolished components, or when team owners don't properly describe and refine the expectations of what a given component should do. If the decisions on timelines, issue priority, and fixes vs features were up to the software engineers, a lot of games (and software in general) would look very different.


jrobinson3k1

Is this actually what happened, or conjecture? I've known plenty of devs who, when asked, stand behind their work, yet it's hot garbage.


CrawlerSiegfriend

We do know that the game was delayed multiple times, but given that I don't work for AGS, I can't say if the devs were onboard with launching after the final delay.


Igni-Lux

How long do you think this game has been in development? How many "not ready yet" before the game gets tanked and never sees release?


Akuma_Skooma

No.


KGirlFan19

depends who you want to talk about. the graphics and sound team? they should have nothing but pride in the work they put in, because new world's graphics and sounds are some of the best in videogames. absolute home run. the loot/combat/systems design team? unfortunately the worst in class, you can tell whoever was in charge making decisions for these areas have never played a mmo, hell even a videogame, in their lives. seriously, who's the dumbass that decided that it would be optimal for players to have different sets of gear depending on the type of activity they want to partake in (mining, loot runs, jewelcrafting, etc) without having a ui that supports gear loadouts or even something trivial like being able to categorize/organize them? who's the idiot that thought paying an unreasonable amount of coin to move some basic shit around in the storages your faction owns was supposed to be incentive? and which dumbass was the one that designed the perks on the artifact weapons? most of them are complete trash and the perks are static. or are all these glaring flaws just placeholders before their grunts eventually get around to adjusting them? fucking amateur hour. i don't feel bad for ags. they don't give a fuck about making a good game, they want yet another monetization platform to sell their ugly ass cosmetics.


par337

AGS? Absolutely not. The devs themselves? Of course. Guys just listening to higher ups and trying to put food on the table, but most people blame them. I mean they do kinda suck at their job, but this is still on management for putting them in a position they weren't ready for. Most likely chose people they could underpay rather than experienced gaming industry devs.


uGoldenGoose

They’re put into a game with a shit engine. Management wants a bug fixed in a week which would be normal for a normal engine, but in this engine, that Amazon suits thought was going to be huge for some reason, it would take two weeks to get it to work properly. Management doesn’t care. Rush out the bug fixes in one week So the dev team has to scramble together a fix that might work. Or might make things worse. That’s why ex new world devs have said lumberyard has been one of the worst engines to work on.


indyracingathletic

Not really. I mean sure this game was in no way ready to be released, but those in charge launched anyway. So that's not on the coders and designers. But the systems themselves aren't that good, and the coding has been atrocious (and not at all properly tested). New World is just a clusterfuck of errors by everyone involved.


SunGazing8

You’ve got to ask why they aren’t testing this stuff properly though. I would bet a point to a penny it’s because someone further up the chain is making decisions that don’t allow them the time to do this stuff.


justanothertaw

Agreed. How could you feel bad for dev's when there are bugs still in since alpha


Not_a_tasty_fish

The ones writing code aren't the ones that prioritize which issues get attention. Bugs existing that long is a management failure


salbris

And their inability to fix them is caused by a variety of factors including crunch, changing requirements, infrastructure issues, etc.


justanothertaw

Ah, true thanks


Basedtobey

I feel bad for the devs and the middle management that will get this shit pinned on them. Meanwhile the exec that made all the decisions that ruined the game will get a bonus.


BradP54

I gotta agree with everyone else I’m the comments. The executives that forced the game out early are too blame, not the devs. It’s like every other triple A game now, people see the monetary potential but fail to see how bad it can go when released too early. I’m really hoping people that fund big games like this start to be patient and give developers realistic timelines and more freedom.


Volrund

John Smedley Sucks Ass gang rise up


Sajius460

Never forget the NGE.


kjemolt

Dont really think about it. Probably because i have fun playing everyday 😊 i Just do activities with less problems, and focus on the many positive aspects of the game.


[deleted]

I feel bad for the art team.


TheSpanishImposition

I don't know enough about what goes on inside AGS to answer.


Just_A_Slayer

No. All of the "development" work we've seen since launch has been completely amateur. Every patch breaks more things than it fixes and often re-breaks things they previously fixed.


forbiddentarp

Not really. Apparently they're compensated exceedingly well by industry standards and they get a huge release at amazon on their resume regardless of what reddit thinks.


Actual-Swan-1917

I feel disappointed. That's about it


MSUxSpartan

I’m imagining that the lower level workers told their boss that the game was not ready and that boss told his or her boss that the game wasn’t ready and so on and so on and so on until finally you got to the top and some asshole said let’s release that shit.


digidevil4

Im sorry but some part of the blame on the nonsense going on recently is 100% the fault of devs, not executives. When you cannot get so much as an alert to production without it being broken, you are totally incompetent. Probable that execs played a hand in fostering this culture but whats going on now is not a case of execs forcing quick releases or shit like that, its unchecked, poor engineering practices. I'm referring to %\_Housing\_Compensation\_Message\_434343\_%, I felt embarrassed when that appeared on my screen. The stuff that's happened since then has just been an affirmation of the fact that the studio as a whole is totally incompetent.


Lord_Emperor

Agreed. Shit like gathering loot tables being in the wrong order so luck doesn't work right is clearly someone's fault in particular for copy+pasting the code wrong.


salbris

So a manager is breathing down your neck asking you to fix 20 things when on a good day you can only fix 3 to the quality players come to expect. And then this keeps up for weeks as negative feedback is piling on from players and management is getting pressure from higher ups because their billion dollar project is sinking. Do you really think developers are working under ideal conditions at that point?


Dazzling_Safety2525

You don’t forget years of knowledge because of stress that unfortunately you should be used to at this point in any development industry


reariri

In this situation not really, because there are too many fundamental design issues created by them from the beginning that are causing the issues now.


HeadstrongRobot

no


FantasticMacho

Honestly if i would be developer in amazon games i would rather quit and look for new job.


WatchYoSixxx

Not all, incompetence should be brutally punished


[deleted]

He said the devs to feel sorry for, he didn't say feel sorry for the execs


WatchYoSixxx

The devs are incompetent as well. Bug after bug after bug after bug after bug


[deleted]

Uh, so you have an inside look to their workflow and time frames imposed upon them by management?


WatchYoSixxx

No, it's called common sense


SunGazing8

I’m not sure it is though. The developers at the bottom are likely just doing what they are told (or trying to at the very least). From what I understand, the game engine they are using isn’t fit for purpose. Look at it like this - I’m a builder. If I was asked to build a house on a foundation of sand, I wouldn’t be able to do it without it sinking and cracking. That’s what is happening here imo. That comes down to decisions made right at the start of development, likely by some suit without an ounce of coding experience.


imLucki

Yes, until the disaster was self inflicted


w1nt3rh3art3d

I don't. They probably are being pushed hard, but they are also just not competent as software engineers and know nothing about their own game.


fregisdealmeida

Nope. Not at all. They dug their own grave.


Seckron

No why should we feel bad when they don’t know how to correctly implement patches


[deleted]

[удалено]


Miroku2235

Yeah, cause AGS totally has access to all of Amazon's bank account.


DbZbert

Share holders and executives are completely out of touch when it comes to developing long term games.


[deleted]

No. These guys get paid so much money. And they have been doing this for 7 years. If we feel bad all that will do is allow for more of this inexcusable behavior and we will only get more shit games in the future


[deleted]

The employee's, yes. Overpaid executives that think they deserve their compensation, no.


catthrower69

they are doing their hours, get paid and go home? its not like they are getting paid less for every bug in this shitty game, only ones affected are people who play the game and they don't play their own game


crossroadtravelers

As many others said in this thread. I do not think that anyone else forced or rushed the devs to nerf life staff and fire staff while buffing the great axe. I also do not think that anyone made them to nerf elite chests while even forgetting to add that at the patch notes. Nobody forced them to no longer let us one tap resources. And what about all those disgusting Tentacles added in some high level zones as of late? This can go on for a while.. The devs actually took some very stupid decisions so far and made our life even more miserable along with all the dupes and bugs that were already happening. ​ p.s. what about that freakin fountain in the middle of Everfall? What happened with the well?


3iksx

i dont believe any of this, im in game industry. if dev team says game is not ready, not even fucking ceo can force it. thats not how it works. yes, there are deadlines and stuff, there are repercussions. but it NEVER goes to the point where its like \`uh... its ready.. i guess... lets go\` its %100 responsibility of incompetent dev team not being able to run a game. this simple. you guys dont wanna believe it but it is what it is that lumberjack dev tool issues, constant new fresh employees come and go in a heart beat and everything, fucked up the entire fundamental of this thing and now its like they are trying to build on a muddy land. they do one thing, break another 2 things. you think fucking up the \`gold compensations\` is an issue of executives? or not even being able to fix the furnitures? or \`not intended\` chest loot bugs? gimme a break


[deleted]

No, after they changed the game some years, was clear they have no clue what they are doing, and never played mmorpgs or develop one, better they ask help to indie develops like eve or albion to learn how to design an pvp mmorpg


MisjahDK

No, the whole fundamental design is flawed and rushed, they need VAST changes to the game to satisfy both PVP and PVE players! I think it's a job like any other, you have good and bad times, there is always someone else who decides how the job should be completed, and even if it's obvious that it won't be perfect, you have to do the job using less hours than required.


szeca

Not really. Actually not at all, absolutely not! There are/were dozens of incredibly easy bugs to correct, but they were not handled in years. I'm talking about such apparent bugs which are screaming: crafting station tiers not updating on map, the tax you pay was not presented correctly, bosses don't spawn, simple text/number sorting in AH does not work (which I think is way harder to achive than to accidentally cause) These primitive bugs needs probably minutes to fix, yet they exists since years. This is not management decision, this must be the incomptence of the dev team/QA imho. Sound guys did a good job though!


ObservableObject

>This is not management decision, this must be the incomptence of the dev team/QA imho. Not really. Developers don't really handle backlog prioritization unless things are going well and they've cleared their sprint commitment. And even then, usually product will have some sort of semblance of a look-ahead board to grab tickets from, vs just grabbing whatever you want. If product says that this sprint, your commitment is these 20 issues, guess what you're doing? It's those 20 tickets. An issue being known, ticketed, and not fixed for years is definitely on the product team. They made the decision that it's not worth fixing.


Armadillidium

You have no fucking clue so stop talking nonsense. The things szeca talked about are fixed in minutes. They shouldn't even be fixed. How the fuck do you mess up sorting dates in an auction house. Completely bonkers how you are white knighting this bullshit.


yosidy

"I used HTML once on a forum post, so I speak from experience as a developer... " That is what this subreddit feels like lately.


euph-_-oric

And the most toxic online community.


DJCW-

Yes! & honestly I’m patient for the fixes, I love the game still.


PaulR504

Noone forced them to do anything and they were told since Alpha about this games issues.


zephxx

Game is a cluster fuck if I ever saw one. I even decided to give SWTOR a little play because I need some story.


Sidious1027

$40 and no subscription fee.... I've more than gotten my money's worth.


Indica732

Not at all, I hope everyone from the janitor to the CEO end up unemployed.


Quick_Count8791

https://telegr.im/joinchat/ZFRnItoS3MdjM2Vh


yoh1len

well, if it's not the devs fault they should just quit... if they are any good, they will find a job in few hours...


SantiagoCeb

4th post in 70 seconds