The "Fire Aeralik" Petition Thread

[Azleya]

Definitely an interesting post from Lockeye. I'm sure some would read it and pine for the old days of Lockeye as mechanics dev, and based on his post he is probably much more qualified than Aeralik is, but iirc Lockeye was just as unpopular when he was in the position as Aeralik is now, and he got a lot of shit from all sorts of people (including me) for various actions or inactions (KoS ranger situation comes to mind for me personally).

Looking back at Lockeye, observing the situation with Aeralik now, and thinking forward about having a new lead mechanics dev leads me to ask some fundamental questions about the role of mechanics dev in a MMO. On the one hand, while there are certainly plenty of whiny retards on forums, there are also some reasonably intelligent people who play the game seriously and who, imo, are often able to make basic and legitimate observations regarding problems with current mechanics or incoming changes and even make suggestions regarding how to do things differently from a perspective that isn't narrow-minded or stupidly ignores problems with what they're suggesting. One would think that the lead mechanics dev, being presumably a professional, would be able to at least match and most likely transcend this level of thinking and observing and thus be able to devise and implement changes that at least match this level of thinking. On the other hand, from what I've seen, these devs frequently fail at satisfying the upper echelons of intelligence within the community (I'm presuming the lower echelons are impossible to satisfy because they are retarded) by implementing bone-headed changes or leaving shit broken for too long.

So what gives? Are the people who get hired to these positions just not very bright or qualified? Lockeye doesn't seem to fit into such a category based on his post. Are even the more intelligent players just missing major complications with the job or problems with what they suggest be done differently? Obviously trying to satisfy everyone is extremely complicated, but, again, there are major issues that the intelligent player base largely agrees upon but which are left unaddressed. Do these devs just not have enough time and/or resources to do things right? Do they not actually play the game enough? Are they perhaps too buried in their numbers to open their eyes and observe what the real practical problems are and what can be done to fix them? Wtf is up with the role of mechanics dev in a MMO?

If anyone has examples of MMO mechanics devs who did a consistently good job from the perspective of the game's intelligent player base, I'd love to hear them because I sure as fuck don't know any. =p

[Ceriados]

Originally Posted by mafoe

Dude, for real. Any replacement would have no clue for like coupla months and maybe suck even more. Exchanging people from a big project is a risky thing. I say FUCKING NO. Even if he does crappy stuff sometimes.

But that's perfect. For a few months....no nerfs. Once the 'learning period' is over, fire that one before he can make any changes, and start over.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by Azleya

Definitely an interesting post from Lockeye. I'm sure some would read it and pine for the old days of Lockeye as mechanics dev, and based on his post he is probably much more qualified than Aeralik is, but iirc Lockeye was just as unpopular when he was in the position as Aeralik is now, and he got a lot of shit from all sorts of people (including me) for various actions or inactions (KoS ranger situation comes to mind for me personally).

Looking back at Lockeye, observing the situation with Aeralik now, and thinking forward about having a new lead mechanics dev leads me to ask some fundamental questions about the role of mechanics dev in a MMO. On the one hand, while there are certainly plenty of whiny retards on forums, there are also some reasonably intelligent people who play the game seriously and who, imo, are often able to make basic and legitimate observations regarding problems with current mechanics or incoming changes and even make suggestions regarding how to do things differently from a perspective that isn't narrow-minded or stupidly ignores problems with what they're suggesting. One would think that the lead mechanics dev, being presumably a professional, would be able to at least match and most likely transcend this level of thinking and observing and thus be able to devise and implement changes that at least match this level of thinking. On the other hand, from what I've seen, these devs frequently fail at satisfying the upper echelons of intelligence within the community (I'm presuming the lower echelons are impossible to satisfy because they are retarded) by implementing bone-headed changes or leaving shit broken for too long.

So what gives? Are the people who get hired to these positions just not very bright or qualified? Lockeye doesn't seem to fit into such a category based on his post. Are even the more intelligent players just missing major complications with the job or problems with what they suggest be done differently? Obviously trying to satisfy everyone is extremely complicated, but, again, there are major issues that the intelligent player base largely agrees upon but which are left unaddressed. Do these devs just not have enough time and/or resources to do things right? Do they not actually play the game enough? Are they perhaps too buried in their numbers to open their eyes and observe what the real practical problems are and what can be done to fix them? Wtf is up with the role of mechanics dev in a MMO?

If anyone has examples of MMO mechanics devs who did a consistently good job from the perspective of the game's intelligent player base, I'd love to hear them because I sure as fuck don't know any. =p

Seriously, if I were a mechanics dev and had to listen to the plethora of whiny, self-serving bitches this game has on a regular basis, I'd fuck them over too. Just becuase I'd get a kick out of it.

In other words, if the business model and heirarchy allows me to interact with the community the way SoE allows it, you're going to run into this no matter who you put in the position because dealing with a customer base in this way is horribly inefficient and completely confrontational.

[Argyuile]

Originally Posted by Vainamoinen

Seriously, if I were a mechanics dev and had to listen to the plethora of whiny, self-serving bitches this game has on a regular basis, I'd fuck them over too. Just becuase I'd get a kick out of it.

In other words, if the business model and heirarchy allows me to interact with the community the way SoE allows it, you're going to run into this no matter who you put in the position because dealing with a customer base in this way is horribly inefficient and completely confrontational.

Ya I doubt I'd listen to a bunch of asshats on the Forums telling me how to do my job.

[Deson]

Originally Posted by Locke

Stuff that should be a must read

Sig'ed.
Wow, From the outside it was clear things weren't great but this puts a whole new perspective on all my WTF? questions with EQ2. Thank you for posting your history.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by Argyuile

Ya I doubt I'd listen to a bunch of asshats on the Forums telling me how to do my job.

I don't want to seem biased... I'd mindf0ck the nut-huggers on the Official Forums, too.

[Rezikai]

Originally Posted by Locke

I had to wait for a year after submitting my resume after college before a QA spot opened. Two bachelor degrees with programming experience in C, I made $10 an hour (My college buddies working for Nokia, Microsoft, or Lockheed-Martin in Usability engineering or programming were making $60-80k at this point), no benefits, and mandatory 6 month contract with stiff penalties for leaving, and locked me from moving into any other position within SOE or being hired directly by them. Meanwhile, I was still doing volunteer work as a class team lead for Dark Ages of Camelot (Mythic) on their internal message boards (Thanks Sanya/Tweety!)

As a tester, I found the most bugs on the game, and made suggestions directly to the development team for EQOA (which the team had great communication with its testers relative to other games). I ended up working on UI shortcuts at the dev studio as overtime pay toward the end. At the end of 6 months, I told the QA manager that this job was BS for my qualifications, so a month later when a position opened, I was made a QA lead, and a full time employee with benefits starting at $15/hour.

While there, Planetside was in Alpha/Beta. For my own amusement, I wrote a program with spreadsheets to completely dissect the game in terms of weapon-armor-vehicle analysis of every possible scenario, including blast area, damage over time, damage degredation over range, armor types, and COF hits/range DPS ratios, all pre-launch. I showed that to the QA manager who said "you don't belong here".

The Planetside team invited me to talk mechanics, and they were going to hire me as a mechanics designer for the combat system. Not too long thereafter, budget cuts closed positions that were opened and I was stuck in QA. An invite from the EQ2 development team (we're talking 2003) to the rest of the company invited anyone to submit there ideas and work as assistant designers (not designer pay, but work part time in the dev studio).

I was hired early before the wave from CS/QA came in. I was assigned as the scripting designer and my first assignment was to design the boat tutorial around the story for it. Expectations were low, get a tutorial that guides a player how to move, learn some basic shortcuts and windows, and some simple combat. Instead, I scripted every single lively gesture of the characters, even during mid-sentence (which was not done anywhere else in game). I had many in-between assignments and used my college background to teach the other designers how to script, and even wrote a manual on how to do so specifically for the game. I almost lost my job because of it: not all leads are thrilled by that kind of initiative. I don't know if it was punishment, but I was assigned to work on basic population for ALL the city zones (all the hoodies, all the south/east/west/north sides, both cities). I added a lot of scripting to move the people and animals about town, and made sure to include something extra interesting about one or more of the characters that was scripted for each zone. Finally, I was hired as an associate designer, with no increase in pay (note: this was pre-Gallenite leading). In fact, I made less because as a QA lead/assistant designer, I made overtime pay, but I was salary once hired as a full-time dev. I had various other assignments and tools I've made between the time I finally landed myself as spells/combat mechanics dev a full 2.5 years after I was first hired into QA. The first 4 years were ridiculous amounts of overtime, and a good amount of it self-induced to improve/fix things because I was passionate about doing the right thing overall.I thank Gallenite's ability to prove that quick development cycles = slower increase in subs and my last year was not riddled with OT like the ones previous.

Once you're in, you're in. I've turned down mechanics offers from various up-and-coming MMORPGs at the time. I interviewed for the mechanics dev for WoW (the OG left post-launch), but I just wanted to see the offer since I already knew I was applying to graduate school. In the overall scheme of the video game industry, it's still new, and it's tough to get past anyone responsible for hiring that hires among friends first, then within company to land a spot for a design position, regardless of qualifications/degrees outside of the game industry.

EDIT: Office savoir-faire (street smarts) go a long way. Fresh out of college, I believed naively that one's skill in a field determines there success. In hindsight, had I been more relaxed, focused on making friends with the right people, I might had advanced faster through less working and with more pay as I saw a few others do around me.

1) this i find comforting to hear. as EQoA still has decent dev/customer communication... with all 500 ppl left playing it.. its sad to it at one time was my favorite MMO.

2) i didnt agree w/everything Gal did, but spanning out the dev cycles was a better call, remembering the fiasco that was DoF and 5 months later prepping for KoS was rough. If he had to fight others at or above him within SOE shows the lack of foresight and disconnection between those and the playerbase, Gal at least tried to understand/be part of that base.

3) Its sad, and true, that many of the devs "in charge" dont have the experience or knowledge of the product they dev for, yet waste the dollars on frivalous changes and/or radical shifts of resources to a system destroying a comfortable medium with their customers.

I'm not touting your work Lockeye by any means, some of the changes made i dont agree with but some were needed. Massive change though is sometimes worse then helpfull, because people see their TIME more vauluable more then anything, you talked about the massive amounts of if you spent in hours and years at SOE, now think about suddenly, after all that time spent when entering grad school they pulled the rug from under you, and all of a sudden the time spent at SOE and getting into grad school was wasted b/c a small group of people decided to take it away without much cause for consideration, and your told tough.. pay us anyways.

Time is money,.. and when customers/players loose alot of time due to change,.. they see it as loosing money, i know i do. So when someone directly reflects poorly at the paying customers with changes/ideas that cost them vast amounts of time.. you can see where this is going.

[Illuminator]

Yeah, I think anyone who spends 1000 years of game time a year, $180 a year per account and $50 to each server that isn't plagued with game-induced guild collapse should feel just a little, oh, "SELF-INTERESTED". Fucking faggots, you act like we owe ourselves to EQ2 like this is the fucking Peace Corps.

[Vaanir]

Missed this...

Originally Posted by Locke

I lasted for 2.5 years after I was assigned to mechanics post-launch and immediately went into a self-induced crunch (no hourly pay), 12-16 hours/day and weekends (100+ per week) for 4 months until the LU13/DoF launch (including full Achievements/50-60 spell designing). That's a long time for any MMO to have the same mechanics designer. I wouldn't be surprised if he moved on as the result of burnout, which occurs to the devs that are passionate about what they do when the vocal reaction can be overwhelmingly crass.

Burnout? It's solely due to Flames and this thread!

And I do remember that time since you barely raided you slack Ass.

[Manic]

Locke if eq2flames was around trust me you would have had a shit storm heading yourway.
but thanks to the offical fourms and you know this all those "wtf are you doing" threads were removed but i'll say this you were better dev then the assclown in office.