Topic: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

Dear Devs:

You don't have the playerbase to test gamma islands before release, there are so many issues that could go wrong that it's not even funny anymore. Can you guarantee there won't be another wipe or changes?. Any small changes done later to balance, will force players to change their MPC design. Balancing gamma is really hard even for a AAA mmo backed up with 100s of Devs and testers. Don't just develop and hope for the best, it did not work before , its not going to work now.

Gamma islands does not work for a low player base, it needs certain amount of activity to really shine. At least battles of +100 vs +100

What you need is keep on improving the game, increase player retention and balance risk vs rewards first. Qol improvement etc. Hopefully, once you have a good stable player base you can think about testing gamma further and introducing it again. The work done now won't be a waste you can continue once the game has improved to a level that retains more players. You don't have the resources to do gamma properly without wasting half a year on it, concentrate on improving the game now.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

I think as a bare minimum just put t1 structures in so you get an idea of balance before people spend a fortune.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

3 (edited by Celebro 2014-08-18 18:11:14)

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

Jita wrote:

I think as a bare minimum just put t1 structures in so you get an idea of balance before people spend a fortune.

That's another good point , no one is going to build a full blown gamma costing 100s billions + 1000s of man hours just to test, and balance the game. We already did that once!

RIP PERPETUUM

4 (edited by Kaldenines 2014-08-18 20:54:10)

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

At some point I remember a gamma vet asking on these forums:
What do you want us to do on gamma?

Have we seen any answer to this question yet?

I would go further and ask:
What do you want us to do on Nia?

+1
-Confucius

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

At this point these threads are pointless.

Gamma 2.0 will still be released with all the new flaws and the player base will find a way to "break" things. The first corps out on gamma will be able to be the first to think outside the box and crap in everyone else's sandbox. There will be more crying on the forums about game breaking and then we will have some more mechanic changes. Those first corps will need to tear down their base, re-design and then rebuild.

Same ***, same game.

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

We strongly suggest you to test on the public test server. We put a large chunk of energy into this patch. Lots of changes and new features.
We listen.

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

No you didn't, you recycled old content.  And you took out the best feature, terraforming.

And tbh, why test it?  Not like your going to listen to feedback.

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

To be fair to them the reason it is taking so long is they are adding much of the features that were asked for at the gamma round table.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

I'm being harsh and I'm sorry for that CRM.  But how do you as a developer envision players to attack a base?

Terraforming is terrible in its current form.  Not the interface but the lack of ability to make walls.  Which is what drew 90% of the people to gamma.

There's only a tiny incentive to go to gamma. 

Standard T1 buildings are easily killable.  Simply by out ranging turrets.  T2 & T3 bases aren't.  So the only people who have a chance at survival are the people with stockpiles. 

So these people who venture out to gamma will have to farm their *** off to get T2/T3 mpc units built to hold territory.  Meanwhile the enemy is camping tps and ghanking people.  LOL.  No entity will be able to survive that .  Look at the map/ intrusion events on the live server and you, the developer, are telling me everything's fine?

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

Allow me to be harsh too. Terraforming is only "terrible" because you know what it was like before. Now we took away an overpowered toy, and noone likes that, which is understandable.

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

That's not harsh.  I respect that statement.  But as I've already pointed out two months ago, we need cover during seiges.  Buildable walls, energy shields, something.  We as players aren't going to risk billions of assets for a half *** payout that nets less than 10% of the total utilized cost of the siege.

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

ok so i just returned to game and all i see is the devs are wasting time on a patch thats gonna introduce something that wont improve the population but make new players realise how dumb and time wasting gamma is how about u spend your time doing something useful or atleast sell this train wreck to somebody who cares about their game base

dont forget we paid for this game and have tolerated this for *** knows how many years

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

Crusader wrote:

That's not harsh.  I respect that statement.  But as I've already pointed out two months ago, we need cover during seiges.  Buildable walls, energy shields, something.  We as players aren't going to risk billions of assets for a half *** payout that nets less than 10% of the total utilized cost of the siege.

That goes against "why would I risk billions and build a gamma base when it can be destroyed easily"-argument.

It's always so black and white on the forums, but somehow it never is really.

1. Noone goes to gamma because nothing's there.
2. Noone goes to gamma, it's risk-free to build and live there, whoo!
3. Wait, there are people on gamma, we need to hit them up for... reasons!
4. ...

Also:

Corp A: It's too expensive to build bases, it needs to be hard to destroy them, otherwise it's not worth it!
Corp B: We gain close to nothing from destroying bases, it needs to be easy to destroy them, otherwise it's not worth it!

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/106651/#p106651

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

zoom this game is going backwards....just saying

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

DEV Zoom wrote:
Crusader wrote:

That's not harsh.  I respect that statement.  But as I've already pointed out two months ago, we need cover during seiges.  Buildable walls, energy shields, something.  We as players aren't going to risk billions of assets for a half *** payout that nets less than 10% of the total utilized cost of the siege.

That goes against "why would I risk billions and build a gamma base when it can be destroyed easily"-argument.

It's always so black and white on the forums, but somehow it never is really.

1. Noone goes to gamma because nothing's there.
2. Noone goes to gamma, it's risk-free to build and live there, whoo!
3. Wait, there are people on gamma, we need to hit them up for... reasons!
4. ...

Also:

Corp A: It's too expensive to build bases, it needs to be hard to destroy them, otherwise it's not worth it!
Corp B: We gain close to nothing from destroying bases, it needs to be easy to destroy them, otherwise it's not worth it!

Thank god I'm not working at MMO development. lol

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

What do you want us to test?  What is the first thing you want us to do on the test server?

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

I want to test the new missions once they are released on PTS

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with gammas, it just won't add new players.

Perhaps some gamma islands could be PVE with flag only mechanics? Bases could still be assaulted but would only flag vs PvP flagged people? Would that bring new players in?

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

20 (edited by Syndic 2014-08-19 18:28:39)

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

The real argument is;

"Why would I risk billions and build a gamma base when I can get the exact same sh*t on Beta?"

Followed by;

"Why would I risk billions and capture a beta base when I can get the exact same sh*t on Alpha and make more money farming spawns on top of it?"

None of this sh*t is going to work until you balance the risk-vs-reward correctly.

[18:20:30] <GLiMPSE> Chairman Of My Heart o/
CIR Complaint Form

The Imperial Grand Wizard of Justice

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

I think I already said this somewhere, but you should accept the fact that no single feature that we do or don't do will bring in new players. It's sales and publicity that does this.

You may not agree with the order of how we do things, but with gammas out, there is a big chunk of the game missing, basically the whole thing that's currently meant as endgame. After much consideration we have decided to do gammas first, so we can focus on PvE again after it's done. Trust me when I say that if our opinion was that this would mean the death of the game then we would have chosen a different plan.

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

*edit: Offtopic. - DEV Zoom

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

DEV Zoom wrote:

I think I already said this somewhere, but you should accept the fact that no single feature that we do or don't do will bring in new players. It's sales and publicity that does this.

You may not agree with the order of how we do things, but with gammas out, there is a big chunk of the game missing, basically the whole thing that's currently meant as endgame. After much consideration we have decided to do gammas first, so we can focus on PvE again after it's done. Trust me when I say that if our opinion was that this would mean the death of the game then we would have chosen a different plan.

Fair enough. From a PVE point of view do you have a timescale? I really think there is a lot that could be improved in a short amount of time before you spend the months needed for the eventual overhaul.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

so zoom......how about these tests u want done?

Re: Gamma needs months of testing- please stop development!.

I'm writing up what you need to know right now.