EI and the Future of Horizons

[Nalrach]

.... when deciding on which direciton to take our development of Horizons. .

Exactly my point .. "the direction to take our development"

I know that I've been short on details, .......
We're putting our development plans together and once we have them nailed down, you'll hear about it. Until that time, I'm going to continue being vague because I'm not going to make promises that we can't or won't be delivering on.

Hey Hey short on details, but honest. I like your attitude about broken promisses, and as long as your straigth forward (with what you cn say .. ie: the hiring prosess, not for you to comment) with us, I think the communauty will support you and EII team.

Keep the good work and chanel open.

[MadDwarf]

Nalrach,
Your list an excellent example of the current issues we're trying to tackle. We're also putting together plans for the future, which include further development of the game. Settlements wasn't nearly as deep into development as was indicated and we're definitely going to be taking those promises into consideration, when deciding on which direciton to take our development of Horizons.

Vlisson,
I don't have more information about the development team that we're building. I've not been, and will not be, involved in that hiring process because I know absolutely nothing about game development. What's more, even if I knew who we were considering hiring, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to disclose that information in the forums. When I get news, I will certainly pass it on to you guys.

Tantalyr,
Your timeline is pretty accurate. Talks began at E3, but the deal wasn't really made, in earnest, until right before the sale. This is why, in defense of both EI and Tulga, there was very little indication of the sale prior to it happening. I'm going to go ahead and head this particular topic off at the pass and say that I don't know many of the details of the sale and I'm not going to be discussing it further, as I don't feel that is would be relevant to this discussion.

Everyone,
I know that I've been short on details, regarding our plans for Horizons content and development. The reason for this is that I want to be honest with you guys. The whole point of me being here is to deliver acurate information and squash rumors. My starting rumors would sort of defeat the purpose.
We're putting our development plans together and once we have them nailed down, you'll hear about it. Until that time, I'm going to continue being vague because I'm not going to make promises that we can't or won't be delivering on.

ok thats the response I was looking for. Thank you

[Jayne]

Hummm, I am looking at Dremora's question in a more positive and educational stand point. And what I see would be instead of the question

What are you guys actually doing in maintenance?

Perhaps it better to ask, What exactly is maintenance and what does it take care of?

What happens when maintenance is conducted. Is it like defraging, etc.

I know I dont have any idea what happens when maintenance is done.

Jayne

[Bulgrim StoneCleaver]

I've noticed much more lag lately after only an hour or two - which wasn't the case some time ago. I'm curious if there is more to maintenance than what is being done atm.

I can understand the fact that working on HZ code is like learning a foreign language for the new guys atm. Do those performing the maintenance have any idea if there was more being done during the downtime (besides the obivious patching)?

P.S. I don't really think that Dremora should be ripped apart because of her "tone" - it wasn't that bad and she did ask a few questions.

[Kulamata]

It's worth remembering that some development was attempted after the layoff a month or so before the sale. Working conditions must have been very difficult. I don't think the usual quality standards applied, and they'd always been a bit erratic anyway.

And it was not that unusual for performance to vary from patch to patch; so my suspicions are that the problems went in with the last patch or two. It's possible that a memory leak was introduced, or that the algorithm for dropping unneeded models from memory on teleporting got borked (again).

[Balthizar]

Nalrach,
Your list an excellent example of the current issues we're trying to tackle. We're also putting together plans for the future, which include further development of the game. Settlements wasn't nearly as deep into development as was indicated and we're definitely going to be taking those promises into consideration, when deciding on which direciton to take our development of Horizons.

Vlisson,
I don't have more information about the development team that we're building. I've not been, and will not be, involved in that hiring process because I know absolutely nothing about game development. What's more, even if I knew who we were considering hiring, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to disclose that information in the forums. When I get news, I will certainly pass it on to you guys.

Tantalyr,
Your timeline is pretty accurate. Talks began at E3, but the deal wasn't really made, in earnest, until right before the sale. This is why, in defense of both EI and Tulga, there was very little indication of the sale prior to it happening. I'm going to go ahead and head this particular topic off at the pass and say that I don't know many of the details of the sale and I'm not going to be discussing it further, as I don't feel that is would be relevant to this discussion.

Everyone,
I know that I've been short on details, regarding our plans for Horizons content and development. The reason for this is that I want to be honest with you guys. The whole point of me being here is to deliver acurate information and squash rumors. My starting rumors would sort of defeat the purpose.
We're putting our development plans together and once we have them nailed down, you'll hear about it. Until that time, I'm going to continue being vague because I'm not going to make promises that we can't or won't be delivering on.

Thx You Nagafen thats what I whanted to know too and try not to be so thin skinned your the main guy that talks to us in here so you will more then likely get most of the ? fired at you becouse you answer when others dont even when its not your topic to deal with they just hope you pass it on or get an answer for them. And differnt people ask in differnt ways there not trying to be rude or make a misses of things for ya kk take it easy

[Chaldor Itieles]

Your list an excellent example of the current issues we're trying to tackle. We're also putting together plans for the future, which include further development of the game. Settlements wasn't nearly as deep into development as was indicated and we're definitely going to be taking those promises into consideration, when deciding on which direciton to take our development of Horizons.

Just a word from my side:
Plz don't decide to develop to the wrong side.
From my point of view, the “Settlement” was not only a plan for an expansion, it was one of the things Hz was planned to have from the beginning, but never had been finished till release or in the first 2 years, like the lairs.
Lairs take a fundamental part in Hz because they belong to the housing of the dragon race.
The "Settlement" is itself the fundamental part of housing for all the other races in Hz.
ATM we only have the Human buildings and a few old racial ones.
But none of these objects are in a good development state.
Many of them have bugs of interaction with the world-environment, there are known bugs in some textures with specific graphic drivers and also these old house models are one of the big reasons, why the Hz client has a so little performance.
"Settlements" is one of the huge development states for this game that it needs to get a step further to the baseline finished state.
Without a complete and bug free/not resource - eating housing system, Hz will never leave its "old beta status".

Plz keep that in mind when u start to decide which way the game will go.
Thx

[Garfonso]

Further more, from a marketing point of view, selling the "Settlements Expansion" as Expansion set is a good idea, I think.
It will get the game back to the shelves and in the press..

But you should keep TG's policy and keep it free for us oldtimers..

[Nagafen]

We've not made any changes to the game itself, since the purchase. So any lag issues that you're having must have already been there, when we got it.

I asked Dark Enigmaa what exactly game maintenance entailed and he explained it to me, in great detail. In the end, I understood that game maintenance was necessary to keep Horizons up and running. That was about all I understood. The rest was very complicated.

I apologize if my reaction to Dremora's comment seemed extreme. I believe that we've taken more than our fair share of criticism in recent weeks. I recognize that we set ourselves up for some of it, but other critics were kicking us because we were down, and I've grown a bit weary of it. The developers and world managers on the EI Horizons team had as much to do with the sale as the Tulga employees who were laid off. They have done nothing wrong and I believe it is unfair to level criticism at them for circumstances that they didn't control. I know that there are still some of you who are hesitant to trust EI and I know that you wanted new content and bug fixes yesterday. I assure you that we're working hard and doing the best we can. I want you all to be honest with me. If you don't like something we've done, let us know, but please be respectful. We're human, just like you.

[Kulamata]

Nicely put.

Returning to an earlier comment; one reason you should be reviewing technical problems/complaints is that when it becomes possible to address them, prioritization will be required, and that is something that marketing should be involved in. Knowing that a problem affects one loud complainer as opposed to knowing that another one affects ten sullenly mutinous players is information to feed into the process.

And technical people can sometimes minimize or dismiss some problems, for whatever reasons, and you may need to occasionally press the need to address a specific problem. So I'd suggest that your function is best seen as a two-way channel.

[Cobal]

Strangely enough I did not notice this thread until half an hour ago.

Just like to say welcome to you Nagafen, what you have written here so far has rekindled my hope for horizons and I certainly don't regret that I came back to Unity the moment I heard the game was sold.

[snickel]

(...) I believe that we've taken more than our fair share of criticism in recent weeks. I recognize that we set ourselves up for some of it, but other critics were kicking us because we were down, and I've grown a bit weary of it. The developers and world managers on the EI Horizons team had as much to do with the sale as the Tulga employees who were laid off. They have done nothing wrong and I believe it is unfair to level criticism at them for circumstances that they didn't control. I know that there are still some of you who are hesitant to trust EI and I know that you wanted new content and bug fixes yesterday. I assure you that we're working hard and doing the best we can. I want you all to be honest with me. If you don't like something we've done, let us know, but please be respectful. We're human, just like you.

I agree that you have taken more than a fair share of cristicism in recent weeks. Things got very emotional. I think that the fact that you are here as a kind of spokesperson will help to improve things.

But since you are asking outright if we don't like something that you (meaning: the one in EII who made the respective decisions) have done, I shall state some things that I do not like at the moment:

Two concern forum management:
1) please bring the goodbye forum back
2) please do not delete all previous posts from a banned poster. This policy crosses the line between protection of the community, the company and the forums into censorship and is bad for your reputation.

Another concern of mine is the way decisions are 'sold' to the community:
An example is the introduction of ingame-advocates. Much of the uproar could have been avoided, if you went at it in a different way. Open a discussion/suggestion and ask the community what they think about game advocates. The questions and criticism give you the chance to clarify what you expect from them and what measures you'll take to keep them in check. Mind you, the decision whether to implement them or not is still yours, but the community does not have to feel left out and disregarded.

We all know that there are lots of unspoken rules that have been established in this community. Give yourself the chance to get to know them.

[Dremora]

I believe that we've taken more than our fair share of criticism in recent weeks. I recognize that we set ourselves up for some of it, but other critics were kicking us because we were down, and I've grown a bit weary of it.

Take a look at other gaming forums; you won't see devs making such a big deal over critisism. Whether an MMORPG or not, you can't expect people to just stop being critics of your work. Whether rude or polite, you've got to learn to deal with it.

My point being, don't freak out on us!

[MadDwarf]

Take a look at other gaming forums; you won't see devs making such a big deal over critisism. Whether an MMORPG or not, you can't expect people to just stop being critics of your work. Whether rude or polite, you've got to learn to deal with it.

My point being, don't freak out on us!

whereas I preach patience and tolerance well said here.

if you want such tone's to stop Nagafen you guys really need to get something as amazingly simple as billing under control here. Then people would have more faith and you will find yourself not being put up against the ropes here. You are the front line and you will take the frustrations of the playerbase. Such is the life of every MMO community rep out there. You guys and gals live and die by the performance measure of your dev team and confidence factor of the playerbase.

[Nagafen]

whereas I preach patience and tolerance well said here.

if you want such tone's to stop Nagafen you guys really need to get something as amazingly simple as billing under control here. Then people would have more faith and you will find yourself not being put up against the ropes here. You are the front line and you will take the frustrations of the playerbase. Such is the life of every MMO community rep out there. You guys and gals live and die by the performance measure of your dev team and confidence factor of the playerbase.

In our defense, the billing is far from simple and we do have it under control. You do make a very good point, though. We are making every effort to build players' confidence in this game and repair the injuries this community has suffered, in recent weeks.

Take a look at other gaming forums; you won't see devs making such a big deal over critisism. Whether an MMORPG or not, you can't expect people to just stop being critics of your work. Whether rude or polite, you've got to learn to deal with it.

My point being, don't freak out on us!

I apologize for my overreaction. We've been on the defensive for so long that it can be difficult to relax back into the swing of things.

Two concern forum management:
1) please bring the goodbye forum back
2) please do not delete all previous posts from a banned poster. This policy crosses the line between protection of the community, the company and the forums into censorship and is bad for your reputation.

Another concern of mine is the way decisions are 'sold' to the community:
An example is the introduction of ingame-advocates. Much of the uproar could have been avoided, if you went at it in a different way. Open a discussion/suggestion and ask the community what they think about game advocates. The questions and criticism give you the chance to clarify what you expect from them and what measures you'll take to keep them in check. Mind you, the decision whether to implement them or not is still yours, but the community does not have to feel left out and disregarded.

1) The replacement of the goodbye forum is, and has been, in discussion. It was pulled at a time when the forums were an all out flame fest, because it was being used as a means of throwing final insults at the game and EI as people left. At the time, nothing positive was coming from the goodbye forum. However, the climate has clearly shifted and the forums have settled back to normal, more or less. I don't know if or when the goodbye forum will be back, but I can tell you that we're still considering it.

2) The deleting of previous posts, from a banned user, is not our common policy and instances where that occured all had very unique circumstances. I cannot stress that enough. The wiping of previous posts only happened as a result of extreme situations and we don't ever intend to make it a common practice.

We have not yet made a final decision about the roles of in-game advocates. The thread that Dark Enigmaa started was intended to begin a discussion, with the community, about how they felt about the idea. We have been paying close attention to your reaction to the announcement and considering it in our decision about advocates. If we weren't looking for input, it would've been an announcement, not a thread. I realize that it sounded as though we'd already decided, but I assure you that was not the case.

[snickel]

Thank you Nagafen for your answer.

I am quite happy with it.

[MadDwarf]

well said in that last reply Nagafen.

[LexDivinia]

In our defense, the billing is far from simple and we do have it under control. You do make a very good point, though. We are making every effort to build players' confidence in this game and repair the injuries this community has suffered, in recent weeks.

1) The replacement of the goodbye forum is, and has been, in discussion. *snip*

2) The deleting of previous posts, from a banned user, is not our common policy *snip*

We have not yet made a final decision about the roles of in-game advocates. *snip*

This post has been one of the most informative yet!!

Thank you!!!!!!

[Aria]

Nagafen, will we be seeing you post in other threads on the forum also? To date I believe this is the only place I've seen your name, although I'm not much of a lurker .. so if you have done so already my apologies

hehe nvm, just saw the post in Massive Mag *big grin*

[algenon]

Hi, welcome, and good luck Nagafen!

Could you please give us European players an update on the progress being made to bring Unity some much needed lovin'

Cheers