It's his game and you have to respect that.

I do. However, we're his consumers. Consumers make choices.

At the end of the day, there are things that Fizzer can do to make his game more palatable to the consumer. I'm just outlining what I think they are.

mail fizzer

He's ignored the only message I ever sent him, unfortunately. He doesn't seem to check. :(

But let's not make this personal. This isn't about me. This is about the game. Call me hostile/whiny/whatever you want, but at the end of the day that doesn't make a difference. I'm saying this because I think Fizzer is doing things wrong (at least from my consumer and 3rd-party developer perspective), not because I want your communication advice. Thanks, though.

Edited 7/10/2015 17:24:29

Knyte,
We have a roadmap. That roadmap has about 20+ updates/versions on it right now. Each update takes a week or two, sometimes more.

We are not outlining what is in the full plan, that said we know the clan system needs attention. But fixes to a system that might be replaced are not productive.

If the system works but is not broken it is not a top priority. Things that are broken get the most attention.

On the subject of broken things, expanding the game to handle millions of players of all skill levels is a top priority.

So tutorials, single player expansion, and reducing complexity are on the software roadmap.

The "nice to haves" for expert players must take a backseat to the priority of growing the game. The "Nice to haves" come after.

Sit down with a player that finds the game for the first time, watch them play the game. That is where we have spent a lot of time planning. 90% of new players think the game is too hard to understand or give up once they reach the end of the single player campaign. If we can make a dent in this problem there will be twice as many players.

Our goal is the same as yours, we want all the "nice to have" features. Prioritizing how we get there is what we work every day on.

Hey mercer. How do you think the single-player requests went? What have they yielded? Asking because that's something I've thought about for a while and it was cool to see.

Thanks for the explanation, Mercer. I was looking at it from the perspective of a non-newbie, but your behavior makes sense now that you've explained your priorities. I didn't even think about expansion.

That said, my offer still stands. If I ever get the opportunity to implement the "nice-to-haves" myself, I'll do it for y'all without charge since I probably want the features more than most.

@Lolowut
You really must stop eating so much Cheerios. There are other edible products out there you know.

@knyte
I get where you are coming from. But, I really think we have a lot to be grateful for. Fizzer has at least given us some public APIs to work with. He could have just refused access outright.


I would second Lolowut's opinion. It is his game, and his right to decide what features get implemented. However, I do encourage you to keep persisting with ideas on how Warlight can be improved. In some way it does contribute to his thought process.



p.s - I would also like to contribute and add new features to WL if ever given the chance

@Lolowut
You really must stop eating so much Cheerios. There are other edible products out there you know.

How can I ever enjoy my Cheerios when people keep pissing in them!? ;-;

Yeah, definitely my fault here. I was completely blind to one aspect of development goals. :/

Ah well, given these realities, my quest continues to figure out how to implement what I want as a third-party dev.

This does come down to what I keep saying which is that a little more communication is needed.
It really does help in the long run.
Just a little :)

The Mercer arguments makes a lot of things clear, yet one issue seems quite confusing - I can agree with the idea, that from the Fizzer perspective WL has more important things to do than "nice to haves" and that they are very busy on other things, yet I must also agree for some point with knyte - if Fizzer only asked community to help him with solving some of this "nice to haves" I am sure he would find more that dozen volunteers capable of doing it properly and for free.


Edit: there is a 2nd feature tagged as "PLANNED" meaning we should soon (I hope) acquire
"Partial history : see what only one player could see" !!

http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1920689-partial-history-see-what-only-one-player-could-s

Edited 7/10/2015 22:26:46

Edit: there is a 2nd feature tagged as "PLANNED" meaning we should soon (I hope) acquire
"Partial history : see what only one player could see" !!

http://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1920689-partial-history-see-what-only-one-player-could-s

OH YES!

i think folks just get frustrated with new developments taking so long. i'm sure fizzer and mercer are also in that boat but there is not much they can do about it except following the roadmap and hoping the game grows enough to be able to support hiring more developers.

regarding what knyte said specifically about open sourcing: i'm a strong advocate of open source, but it takes real commitment to make an open source project successful and it's a different way of developing a project, i don't think it fits what fizzer wants to do for warlight.

"Partial history : see what only one player could see" !!

awesome

(...) we know the clan system needs attention. But fixes to a system that might be replaced are not productive.

Correct me if I get something wrong, but should I conclude, that clan system will be completely replaced ?
Because in my opinion it doesn't work now at all.

Might be.

EDIT: I made this reply without realizing I was still on the first page! So I missed the whole second page of replies. So my comment probably isn't so relevant. I'll keep the text here anyway though.

I actually think knyte has some great points, if you step away from the details and look at the big picture. Fizzer has prioritized new features over maintenance and usability.

My personal main complaint: Fizzer's communication with the community with respect to development has been rather poor. Uservoice is a broken system: it's so annoying from a user's perspective that I gave up using it. The 2v2 ladder was ruined thanks to a hamfisted poll and implementation done in such a way that EVERYONE got pissed off, even the people who wanted the change. That Warzone fiasco (which Fizzer seems to have thankfully quietly backpedaled on). These were things that were *obvious* from a community perspective but somehow Fizzer doesn't realize these things?

When giving criticism it's easy to be overly negative, and I do apologize for doing this, I tend to do it in all aspects in my life really. :x But knyte isn't just being negative, he's offering tangible solutions. He's obviously being negative out of love for Warlight. And as a fellow developer I know how utterly frustrating it is when you *know* things could be so much better but there's nothing you can to do help fix it.

I don't think I really have a point, other than... don't dismiss someone's opinions just because they're negative. knyte has lots of great ideas.

Edited 7/13/2015 05:53:47