Why don't YOU help to develop the VBU?

[Pugnacious]

I checked - Just want to play and other, so to explain

This is real embarrassing but I have Zero tech skills. I turn my PC on and push the proper buttons, if something doesn't work, I get my friend over to help me out. Even when he tells me what went wrong , I rarely understand.

Heck, I just learned how to email this year

Also, I haven't been real excited about the upcoming VBU. The few things that I have thought should be addressed could be done without a full update. As far as I know, they also have not been include in the VBU. So I can live with the game as is.

[Aegohl]

I answered other, for clear reasons.
I had been aganist the VBU since it started, since the moment every single Illa resource went to its development instead of caring about the player comunnity. Since it started, the players are more scarse and worst rped, and everything points out that the VBU will aggraviate more the community than helping it. The dev community has showen a lack of maturity in all aspects of it, from starting flame wars at the begining of any critic to them to even closing the suggestion thread. The fact that there is not even considered that the POs might be aganist the current working of the staff in this poll options (when I know maaaaany POs that think like me) just point how obtuse they had been in this aspect.

That is my 2 cents, don't even try to start a flame war with me cause I will not reply back in this thread, though I do will answer critical PMs if they are mature enough.

I quit the GM staff just as the VBU was in it's initial planning stages, and yet the proposal board was already closed then for several months, so it had nothing to do with the VBU.

Sorry that the staff doesn't have the time to cater to your direct needs. Life must be pretty awesome for you outside of Illarion if you expect that. Must be nice.

[Drakon Gerwulf]

There is nothing wrong with that Pugnacious, I do thank you for being a good person just like Idrandal and stating why.

You have nothing to feel bad about for not have the skills or time to help the DEV team, We need more players in game more then anything that is the most help they can get beside doing something for the VBU.

The Dev's and Gm's would love to get in game and do more...Believe me I know they would rather be summoning Lichs then staring a screen trying to make a map, code or graphic work.

You the player base is what is the blood that keeps the game alive, The DEV's and people helping are just trying to make the experience better and fun. When you start jumping on them they look at it and really get hurt because all they want is that.

So I say you Vote with honesty look at what you want to bring to the game. Be it Player, Coder, Mapper, Quest or Graphics.

I am not a gifted coder, or map maker Zot can tell you that for himself. There is nothing and I mean nothing that you should ever feel bad about because you don't know how or don't have the time.

Just don't vote I don't give a shit unless you don't care about the game or community.

If you do now then it is clear where you stand and what you really want, then if the DEV's decide to quit or the helpers don't come crying that Skilling stinks or spells and maps don't work...because you know what you caused it.


Will retract my apology as well, if there are people who voted for it by mistake thinking it was for the betterment of the game you know I wasn't targeting you.

[Retlak]

"I give a shit" in English means you care about the said topic. Just to clear that up. That is what people originally voted for.

Now, it is changed to "I don't give a shit" which in English means you do NOT care about said topic.

Matt

[Aegohl]

Well, to be honest from working with the Germans here I knew what they meant and I meant that I don't give a smile. I don't play that often and I think that's an appropriate answer. I wish the best for Illarion and I count many of the staff as folks I care about, but I only even checked the forum because Fooser told me martin was pwning noobs old school style and that gives me the giggles like all get out. =)

In any case, I put my work in and moved on. I have the right to not give a smile. =)

[Djironnyma]

My Engish is just to bad for IG content. Furthermore its a problem of time and motivation, I work 10 to 12 hours a day after that the only motivation i have for illa is mostly to play it.

[Nalzaxx]

but I only even checked the forum because Fooser told me martin was pwning noobs old school style and that gives me the giggles like all get out. =)

Yep, he sure showed me. Im coding a thousand NPCs right as we speak.

Oh wait, no I'm not.

The title of the topic is: "Why don't YOU help to develop the VBU?" and not "How much do you appreciate the devs work."

I think it exemplifies the poor relationship between the players and the devs if the aim isn't to understand and eliminate the reasons we don't work on the VBU and is instead to 'pwn noobs'. I had two main objections; a.) I didn't like the direction. b.) I didn't like the attitude. The topic has helped to allay my fears somewhat about the direction of the VBU but if anything point B has been reflected in a number of the other answers.

Increasingly focus on the VBU has led to a complete abandonment of current illarion. This rather understandably annoys a great deal of the player population. Furthermore it makes it hard to be motivated about working for the VBU because it isn't working on illarion at all. It's working for a completely different game entirely. That's how its marketed, that's what we're told, that's what it is. You'd have exactly the same response if you asked people to go and develop for a completely unrelated game. And then we get shouted at for not appreciating all the hard work the devs are putting into it. It completely sours the already rocky relationship between players and developers. It might sound unfair, and I don't want to discourage any of the devs, but if they want us to appreciate their work we have to see it. Nitram has written thousands of lines of code for the VBU. That's incredible dedication. I can't even begin to imagine the effort that must have gone into it. Zot stuck a few spawns on the current map.

Guess which one the players appreciate more?

As for suggestions? I've already spoken to a number of devs about a few of them. I submitted a well drafted proposal on implementing PvP arenas awhile back, and I've spoken to a couple of devs outlining my ideas on static vs dynamic npcs and emergent gameplay in illarion. Infact just a few weeks ago I offered to write a whitepaper on a number of areas in game design I thought would benefit illarion. The response I got; "We don't want your ideas." So I'm not going to derail this topic anymore by turning it into a suggestion thread. It was designed to understand the reasons we don't contribute to the VBU. So lets keep it at that shall we?

[martin]

I get it now:
You are annoyed by the current Illarion and want it to change.
HOWEVER, you don't want to work on a changed Illarion, because, well, it is not the current Illarion (which, anyway, should be changed).
This seems highly logical to me.

You don't know what is exactly done, as you state, as we don't tell much, but you don't like the direction it is going. The direction, of course, you don't know, because we don't tell anything.
Again, I am amazed by that logical reasoning.

So, PvP arenas will probably be a solution to all of these matters. It will solve hyperinflation/mudflation, boredomness of players, cyber-sex troubles, torturing and rapists, players leaving the the game after 2 minutes.

This is what we were looking for. Thanks for that discussion.

[Nalzaxx]

I get it now:
You are annoyed by the current Illarion and want it to change.
HOWEVER, you don't want to work on a changed Illarion, because, well, it is not the current Illarion (which, anyway, should be changed).
This seems highly logical to me.

It isn't about logical reasoning. It is about motivation. Something which is emotional and psychological. The point I was making is that no-one is motivated to work on the VBU because they don't see any returns for their effort. Infact, they see less returns because the VBU has meant the current game is no longer supported. The current game that people play now, everyday, not some mythological vapourware that is already years overdue. I havn't made a rational decision not to work on the VBU for said reasons. I AM NOT MOTIVATED TO DO SO for said reasons. There's a difference, people are not machines who operate in binary.

You don't know what is exactly done, as you state, as we don't tell much, but you don't like the direction it is going. The direction, of course, you don't know, because we don't tell anything.
Again, I am amazed by that logical reasoning.

Again, I know a little of the direction, as do most players. What little we know many don't like. Yes logically that is insufficient data to make a rational conclusion about the direction of the game, but again, we are humans, not borg.

So, PvP arenas will probably be a solution to all of these matters. It will solve hyperinflation/mudflation, boredomness of players, cyber-sex troubles, torturing and rapists, players leaving the the game after 2 minutes.

You accused me of not sharing my ideas. I gave a couple of examples where I had and the reaction I got from it. I never claimed that they were a panacea for all illarions problems. Seriously, what kind of pre-school debating tactic are you trying to pull with this one?

This is what we were looking for. Thanks for that discussion.

Thanks, you're welcome. Now stop making strawmen just to get one over on me and maybe you stand a chance of understanding why, with all your perfectly sound logical thinking, still no-one wants to help with the VBU.

[Aegohl]

There's no deficit of people making ideas. However, there is a huge deficit of people making ideas into things.

[PurpleMonkeys]

I don't have much time, and my internet is really not good enough to do much of anything. Once I move I may help/contribute.

Also, I play Illarion for the interactions between other people, not NPCs. I wouldn't mind more quest NPCs though like the Irundar one where it actually brings players together, unlike a quest to go bring some guy a pipe and sibanac. I'd focus more on making the map bigger, making it look nicer, adding more craftable items, things to fight, etc. besides NPCs.

[Leva Beliu]

Dear PO's fellow-citizens,

I do not agree with Aeghol's last message, an antithesis which is a crude simplification.

PO's are having ideas and are working on them, I am sure.
For instance, my PO already (was) published a book about cooking and then submitted another one about monsters in Illarion many months ago (still unpublished), translated and all with the help of PO Harok .
For the time being, my PO is working on a new book (three volumes), almost finished, partly translated with the help of PO Deanna Tamilin.
Be that as it may, there seems to be no end to see our work being recognized in Illarion for some times... for reasons beyond our control.

So I would recommend that if you do not know a person, Aeghol, you better guess on respecting her/him in the first place.

Patience is what is needed. Maybe it should be included in the char's profile: “I have maxed my patience skill, Roland, so you can beat me as much as you want, I will not spit in your face anymore!”

We do help.

Yours unruly
Leva Beliu
PS: If you are out there, Harok, just send a dove.

[Drathe]

I did help with the VBU but not again. This is no grump or flame just my experience, reasons and thoughts.

I made some requested NPCs and was then given a task to complete with two others to make a quest. We fleshed out the story and I did some NPCs for that. All NPCS were submitted to the people who requested them. Were they used, were they not, did they need alterations, never heard anything more about it. So I asked around then abandoned the task.

After knocking about asking for tasks relivant to my limited skill set and trying to get access to the test server and giving up on the map editor to work. I was given a task to make ambient tiles. Having done a good size chunk of one of the maps I am told to stop, they won’t work because the code that handles that will change. So I asked around then abandoned the task.

I then finally got the map editor to work and at the request of the map maker made dungeons and locations. He was very pleased with the results but due the editor going tech, they were not used. So I asked around then abandoned the task.

I found the staff to be helpful and only too happy to give advice and help on how to get tools to work or how to get something to run. BUT a total lack of job description, task analysis, feedback and the pain in the butt to get some of the tools and functions of them to work if at all just wore out my patients.

I found it to be what it is, a collection of people working on differing aspects of a project. There was not a feel of an organised team with someone knowing what needs doing and what should be done, no one overseer or boss. Now I know that is the open and ‘democratic’ nature of the staff and some people thrive on working that way. I don’t and I didn’t like the not knowing, wasted work or lack of direction and solid oversight. As I hear a lot around here, deal with it or leave. So I chose to leave.

[Estralis Seborian]

Nalzaxx,
I totally understand your reasons, obviously, I don't share your point of view, but that makes it my point of view and your point of view is yours . What do you think we can do to improve the situation? What can we do to reduce the "vapourware" impression you got? Shall we show more screenshots, ask for more input on certain aspects (e.g. polls), post a development diary or give people access to the testserver to check out the state of the art (oh, wait, we already did this: http://illarion.org/development/us_npcs.php)? We want to find out the reason for the low input we got from the community - of course, many already helped and maybe this help wasn't appreciated enough. How can we improve in that field? Some sort of Hall of Fame perhaps?

Leva,
your book will, of course, be published with the release of the VBU. The handling of books is currently redone from scratch so you won't see the book ingame before the release.

Drathe,
I don't know who you sent your material to, but if you sent it to me via email, I never received anything maybe because of my spam filter. I do know that there is at least one NPC of yours on the testserver which I took care of and finalised. Perhaps you can re-send me your material and I'll gladly commit it to the repository. After your attempt to work on triggerfields, I took over and found a rather simple method to convert pure text to the most recent code. So, if you have any ambient messages, I can convert them to code in no time by now. On the absence of a boss; well, most developers are academics and are used to a certain way of working. My boss doesn't tell me what to do on a daily base. Actually, he never told me; I am a self reliant, self responsible and autonomous coworker and he even relies on me taking the right decisions and actions. There is a common vision for Illarion and the details are shaped by those who actually do the coding/writing. However, concrete tasks are also available, but those tasks may be limited to "Write a mule seller NPC." or "Write ambient messages for the desert."; the big innovations need individual initiatives and everyone is free to take them.

For everyone who sent material to a developer and never heard anything again,
please keep in mind that emails without a clear subject and an attachment commonly end up in spam folders. Personally, I excluded everything with the string "Illarion" in the subject from being marked as spam. Also, keep in mind that the development team has changed over time. So, if you want, you can always re-send your material to me (estralis@illarion.org) and I'll make sure it is considered. Or you use the Mantis platform which is your most direct way to the development process of Illarion.

On the question "when will you release the VBU?",
the release is currently stalled by the client development. Much effort is spent these days to develop a new GUI (windows, scrollbars, journal, skill display) but it will take another while. Many other aspects are "ready for release", others need some finish polishing. And there is still time to apply your ideas, even though things like the client are very important and pressing.

For everyone who heard rumours about the VBU and didn't like what he heard,
I'll gladly answer to those rumours in a private message. Since I do not know about any rumours, I cannot answer to them before getting informed about what you don't like...

[Aegohl]

Dear PO's fellow-citizens,

I do not agree with Aeghol's last message, an antithesis which is a crude simplification.

PO's are having ideas and are working on them, I am sure.
For instance, my PO already (was) published a book about cooking and then submitted another one about monsters in Illarion many months ago (still unpublished), translated and all with the help of PO Harok .
For the time being, my PO is working on a new book (three volumes), almost finished, partly translated with the help of PO Deanna Tamilin.
Be that as it may, there seems to be no end to see our work being recognized in Illarion for some times... for reasons beyond our control.

So I would recommend that if you do not know a person, Aeghol, you better guess on respecting her/him in the first place.

Patience is what is needed. Maybe it should be included in the char's profile: “I have maxed my patience skill, Roland, so you can beat me as much as you want, I will not spit in your face anymore!”

We do help.

Yours unruly
Leva Beliu
PS: If you are out there, Harok, just send a dove.

I honestly have no clue what you're talking about or how it relates to what I said. I'm sure partially it's language barrier both in translating what I wrote to read it and then translating your thoughts back, but you're also referencing stuff I obviously have no idea of as I've not been part of the staff for over a year. It's confused more with what I can only guess at is intended to be ironically flowery language, but things like "yours unruly" and "dear po's fellow-citizens" just convolutes an already hard to read piece.

If you're telling me that people are making ideas into things that aren't being used, that's a problem. Yes. A problem I can't solve and also one entirely unrelated to what I said. My point was mainly driven at an individual who earlier suggested that he had all sorts of ideas that the staff wasn't willing to read his writeups on and another individual who complained about the proposal board being closed some two years ago. The fact is that if there's an idea, someone has probably already thought it, and if not, there are already a lot of good ideas that simply there isn't time and manpower to accomplish.

This is exactly why martin suggests that if you absolutely want your idea done, it's best to learn to do it yourself, because there's no one with infinite time and lack of ideas. Estralis, bless him, on the other hand, is being nice, which is what Estralis does because he's awesome. But I suspect he'll only get trolled more because Nalzy has beefs and he wants to air them. And that has very little to do with the VBU.

Drathe, and I can only surmise you as well, have put in work and have had trouble seeing them get published. That's a problem. Illarion is developed via ad-hocracy and sometimes people have difficulty navigating those waters. That problem coming to light is exactly what this thread is for, I'm guessing.

[martin]

Drathe, and I can only surmise you as well, have put in work and have had trouble seeing them get published. That's a problem. Illarion is developed via ad-hocracy and sometimes people have difficulty navigating those waters. That problem coming to light is exactly what this thread is for, I'm guessing.

In fact, however we tried to adress this problem some time ago, as we noticed it ourself. The solution was published 2 months ago and can be found on this very board in this thread:
http://illarion.org/community/forums/vi ... =1&t=35766

There is a clear list what can be contributed, who to contact etc.; due to the structure of our team, there might of course be problems at times to "see" your results. But this has a rather logical explaination:
If we gave access to everything (testserver, testclient, database, script-repository, maps, mapeditor,...) who just says "I want to help", that' be first of all a LOT of work on our side. And most of the time, that's what we expect at least, it will not result in a line of code or script or whatever. Thus, we need some kind of "selection rules": Someone contributing in one way or the other will be given access after some time, which also means that she or he will be able to see his results on the actual testserver etc. Before that, everyone is on probation, otherwise we could have made everything open source.

Now, finally, I want to adress one topic that somehow bugs me:
There seems to be the myth that post-VBU Illarion is all about NPCs. Everywhere.
It is NOT.
Yes, we need NPCs to keep players busy, especially new players in their first minutes of the game because we have noticed and analyzed that the pipeline from "new to the game" to "playing the game" is, in fact, very, very leaky. In fact, we have around 100 new players each and every week, almost nobody of them stays. They log in, meet noone, don't know what to do, log out again and delete the client. If we could only manage to keep, say, 20% of them, we would get ~20 new players each week!
So, we asked ourselves: Why DO they log out and don't return? Because they don't know what to do. If they would only play a week or two, they would be in contact with other players already playing the game and actually, they wouldn't need anyone to give them something to do, as they will define their aims and tasks themself, like exploring X or become member of Y or visiting Z. However, a new player doesn't know all these things, thus he's simply LOST (insert music here). We already had all kinds of player-intervention on that side, guilds, newbie-"handlers", helpers -- but there are simply not enough players online in Illarion that this could possibly work.
Now, not having players dealing with newbies and in need of SOMEONE dealing with them, we came up with the idea of, for example, newbie island, which turned out not too good actually. But it boils down to:
We need NPCs.

The main aspects of the VBU are NOT NPCs! We just simply don't have anyone caring for them! We do have some NPCs already, however they are buggy, lack grammar and spelling or are not very newbie-friendly. The main aspect of the VBU is a technical one: Almost complete recoding of the client, a really huge amount of new graphics etc.,.

So please, stop spreading rumors.

Martin

[Drathe]

Thanks for the responses Estra, Martin.

Aegohl why are you surmising and summarising us? Why don't you used the time and those typing skills for some NPCS instead.

[The Returner]

Nalzaxx,
I totally understand your reasons, obviously, I don't share your point of view, but that makes it my point of view and your point of view is yours . What do you think we can do to improve the situation? What can we do to reduce the "vapourware" impression you got? Shall we show more screenshots, ask for more input on certain aspects (e.g. polls), post a development diary or give people access to the testserver to check out the state of the art (oh, wait, we already did this: http://illarion.org/development/us_npcs.php)? We want to find out the reason for the low input we got from the community - of course, many already helped and maybe this help wasn't appreciated enough. How can we improve in that field? Some sort of Hall of Fame perhaps?

Directed at Nally, but I offer my two cents as well....

Yes, more screenshots.
Yes, more polls.
Maybe a development diary.
Testserver, not a great idea.

What is in VBU? What does progress look like? What does the staff expect or want in terms of ideas? Big ideas? Little ideas? More books? We know about NPC's already, obviously. But Martin, Estralis, Others....All we hear about is NPC's. NPC this. NPC that. What do you want more then that?

All I personally have to go on about VBU is a short trailer that explains just about nothing, except that the game looks vaguely different, and some information that it "might but wont be similar to UO". Thats not a whole lot of community involvement.

[Djironnyma]

yeha mor polls,
more screens,
more diarys
and less devloping.

Plz devs use the small time you have for illa to care about me and discuse about my opinion. I m important, not the devloping of the game!

It is your dammed duty to inform me abou anything you do and ask me how you should make illa, becouse i PLAY the game for my own fun and you just spend time programming and money to host the server for me....

Serious guys i can understand if you say you are not motivated because you cant see a direct use if you would help. But to ask the devs to make less devloping and spend there time to informate you and care more about you - then you would maybe help them if you are pleased enough is paradox.

[The Returner]

yeha mor polls,
more screens,
more diarys
and less devloping.

Plz devs use the small time you have for illa to care about me and discuse about my opinion. I m important, not the devloping of the game!

It is your dammed duty to inform me abou anything you do and ask me how you should make illa, becouse i PLAY the game for my own fun and you just spend time programming and money to host the server for me....

Serious guys i can understand if you say you are not motivated because you cant see a direct use if you would help. But to ask the devs to make less devloping and spend there time to informate you and care more about you - then you would maybe help them if you are pleased enough is paradox.

I'm sorry Dji, but thats entirely wrong.

It takes a few moments to post some screens and polls. If you feel this is too much time for developers to spend on a community driven game...then thats just sad. Really, really sad.

Its not a paradox. I can't work on something, or offer anything, to something I know next to nothing about. We ARE here to play a game. If you want OUR feedback, then be pro-active. Don't expect your community to just 'know' to ask questions privately and volunteer time, without informing them of what needs to be done and whats expected of their ideas.

[Qeewee]

Perhaps this topic should be locked?

It appears to be giving the people already working on the VBU more demotivating negative comments
(and they have to waste time on writing long arguments against some of them, instead of working on the VBU)
than it recruits people to work on the VBU

I mean I'm all for people stating opinions, getting answers, recruiting people to work on the VBU and all, but this seems to be mostly arguing between a few certain people and wasting time that could be used on working on the VBU more than it appears to be helping the VBU in any way
(And if I was one of the people that have spent days working on the really tough VBU tasks, I'd feel pretty demotivated to continue after all the negativeness here )

[Kugar]

The most annoying and ignorant of voices will always be the loudest.

[MyNameHere]

Uhm...waste a lot of time on developing in order to have fun playing a game? Sounds like no deal to me. Everyone knows people are in it for the attention only. If you'd make the contributors' names public and gave them a public pat on the back, they'd flock to help out.

[Retlak]

It seems there is a lot of negative responses in this discussion. This needs to be corrected, of course everyone is excited for the VBU and appreciates the developers work. I for one am very excited for what comes, even some of the complainers in this thread tell me how excited they are, so do not let opinions be confused with lack of respect, this is a very important project to us all, even though most of us feel we are not capable of helping out.

Most of us have valid reasons for not helping with the VBU, however with language barriers and lack of ability to express ones-self in an understandable way to those of all cultures, these are read as insults it seems.

Whatever the VBU has coming, will be fantastic I am sure. There has been a ridiculous number of advertisements for NPCs compared to everything else, which is why the assumption is "VBU will be a NPC world with no effort on anything else!" Thank you Martin for clarifying that this is only because no one really works hard on this project currently. Now we can put that thought at rest.

On another note, I feel that many do not contribute to the VBU for the simple reason that it is the developers' "baby." We have never shaped Illarion before, we have never touched it, and how do we even have anywhere near enough skills to try and do anything worthy! To me, this is a project created by very talented computer science graduates. For me to step in and say "I'll try and make this" feels wrong and unnatural as I do not know the rest of the game nor the skills really. I was not there to work on it from the early stages. As wrong as it is to think - you would not love an adopted child as much as your own really. This development will always belong to the developers.

To push away from all this now, I would like to give a thank you to all the hard working staff that code the ridiculous amount of lines that they do.

Matt

[Alexander Knight]

I voted other.
I've helped with NPC and tried to take on more but at the moment life keeps me to busy to even play Illarion.
If that changes I will let you know but best of luck either way guys, I for one will take my hat off to you as I know there is a large team who is dedicated and use up a lot of their spare time to make this game better for us.
Though I would say for post VBU we may want to look at trying to promote the game and there for bring more new players into the community as in my honest opinion there is not enough at the moment and where we do in fact have a page (Mostly on MMORPG top 100 lists) it contains the OLD client screenshots and information.

[Aegohl]

We looked into changing those in the past but found that whoever made those early listings ran off with the password. I attempted to make new listings where I could and recorded the passwords in the staff wiki, but I have no clue if that's still in use.

If someone is willing to actually go through the trouble I wasn't and email each of those webmasters individually and request the deletion of the old listings so they can be replaced, I'm sure it would be appreciated, but most of those sites are as defunct as Illarion's old listing, just hovering graves in cyberspace.

[Estralis Seborian]

Everyone, please read the latest news entry: http://illarion.org/general/us_news.php