Testing 243: Smarter Stacks and Stability!

I’m a big fan of these changes. It must of been a pain to develop too, so thanks devs!

So just from my experience anytime I have asked a question @james has answered my questions. Sometimes it takes some time for a response but he generally answers. I am a nobody in the game and he answered my questions so either your not asking questions or your not asking the right questions.

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Are you fixing mixed stacks for shop stands and requests our also in storage shelfes? If you disallow rocks to color mingle in smarts tacks it would cure my problems

Our asking an over asked question :slightly_smiling_face:

Well I asked a rather simple question. “What happened to the hunter and shields?”

We dont need an ETA or anything, but something along the lines of “there nearly done but we got stuck because X was difficult to work around” or whatever reason would be nice.

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I think the problem is a lot of these things arnt a “this is 64% of the way”. A lot of the time we can work on things and just decide they dont work or aren’t fun and we go back a few steps. Not to say we give up on these things but sometimes we can get other things out first in parallel.
If it helps, i have spent sometime looking back at combat design for melee, but again this has been high level and does not equate to “4 months off” or “ready next week!”

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Does this mean no shields? I’m trying to future proof my storage area, would be nice to have a crystal ball which tells me how much space to leave for new items :smiley:

Well it’s good to hear something on the matter, and I thank you for responding to my query.

I do wonder how viable it would be for devs to post a bi-monthly or even monthly update on things they have been looking at, with a giant text disclaimer at the top saying that everything is WIP and not to expect anything anytime soon.

Really in the end I just like to hear about whats happening, because a lot of the time it feels like the only dev interaction I see is for the testing of pending updates, acknowledgement of bugs or when a new event is happening.

However in the end, as nice as it would be there isn’t any rush on the matter. I also understand the immense pressure there must be to continue working on the game and interacting with the community given current events, so I am thankful that the game is continuing to receive updates.

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We took it to PMs. The devs worked with me to replicate the bug, and are now doing what they need to do.
It is good now :+1:

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But have you seen how passionate people get here?

If suddenly something we liked needs to change or it ends up being impossible to balance there will be a lot of rage and disappointment.

Even with a disclaimer I’m sure there will be people demanding the things they saw in a “things we have been working on” post

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They are working on it :wink:

That wasn’t meant as a slight or anything I think the devs are careful in what they reveal and people might have to be more tactful on a question to receive an answer sometimes. I didn’t know what the question was referring to I guess I didn’t read close enough.

She wasn’t asking a question and what she said was fine/tactful/respectful :woman_shrugging:
She was simply reporting a bug and they took it from there. All is well :+1:

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100% viable I’d think. @james used to do a weekly or bi-weekly posts with what was being worked on and what the thoughts were around things. We used to see a lot of the awesome work that @jesshyland and @Minyi were doing in the form of art posts with proof of concept work or even gifs.

I fully fully fully agree with what you said that even just hearing something is nice, even if it’s something like “yeah shields are a little bit harder than we thought sorry, but in the meantime we’re working on X!” or “hey guys, Y is looking pretty polished and just going through a few more passes before hitting the testing server so keep your eyes peeled!”

Heck, even just hearing a “we don’t like the idea of titans/wearables/other races anymore, we’re focusing on other things at this time” or “we’ve decided to put hunters/groundbashers on hold at the moment until we can rework combat” or “stickers and trophies aren’t things we think fit the theme of the game so we’re exploring new ideas of ways to spruce up builds”…well, you get the idea. Just a statement on what’s no longer in scope and what’s replacing it would, honestly, be the best thing to come out of 2020 so far.

I totally get what you’re saying @rossstephens but I think there’s less of a demand for concrete dates and commitment to past ideas and more of a yearning from us (me, at the very least) for a nonzero amount of a transparency on the state of things. Something like what James used to do with his "weekly dev update"s even at a bi-weekly or monthly level and with less detail (so as to not eat up his valuable time) but with as much honesty and transparency as what you wrote here would be incredible.

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Compared to other games I’ve played these devs are already at an incredibly high rate of personal engagement with the community. I understand that you and everyone else wants more info but development isn’t always about sticking to schedules and roadmaps. Every time someone on the dev team comments about what they have planned they are, to a certain extent, locked in on that course of action. Speculating on what they want to do, what isn’t working, and what might or might not happen in the future is a good recipe for any dev team to disappoint a lot of their customers.

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In the past I would say my experience mirrors yours. Recently however, that’s definitely not the case. I don’t game as heavily as I used to but the few EA titles that catch my eye on the Steam (Kynseed, Foundation, Encased) or Epic (Surviving the Aftermath, Satisfactory) stores have frequent smaller patches or blogs about things happening. I’ve even seen a fair number of interviews with Watcher for Shadowlands to slowly build buzz for that release, not to mention the alpha iterations with testers that provide a cycle of feedback, design, and implementation.

I would like to point out that I did say a nonzero amount of transparency. Would a rough roadmap be nice? Absolutely. But really at this point I’d like any information possible about the state of past ideas that were presented as planned (titans, races, wearables mainly for me) and a look at what’s ahead. If that information isn’t possible, then I’ll agree with what you said…

…and instead ask that instead of nonzero transparency they become completely opaque. Why tease shields and lances with no plans for implementation? Why tease anything until it’s determined to be something that will soon make it to test and eventually production?

I get that things change, ideas shift, some concepts grow stale while others need to be tossed aside to make way for new. But I don’t think communicating about that with the community in any way locks them into something. On the contrary I’d think that it would show how fluid things really are while also keeping expectations low.

@anon64701652

I’m not demanding anything although I will cede that I probably do take the ability to directly tag devs on these forums for granted (though with no guarantee they read every post, so not sure how entitled that truly makes me here vs. with any other game company but that’s another conversation perhaps…). I’m merely making a request since it seems like more and more people are looking for an update. And the only reason I’m making such a request is because I believe so much in the potential of this game.

These are my personal feelings only but I am not a fan of the concept of Exos, I knew that as soon as the Chrysominter came out that it would be exploited at some point, and I dislike how RNG based forging is. So to me the only big thing that’s come out recently is farming. What I’m really hoping for is, well, personal hope. Hope that they’ll add in some solid PvE game-changing or game-adding mechanics or features here in the near future. Or if not hope, then closure. If titans won’t be implemented, let us know so I can at least get some closure on that concept and move on from Boundless :laughing:. (full disclosure that I know other people play this game for other reasons and enjoy the things that I might not enjoy. That’s wonderful! Just typing out my personal thoughts)

Also one final note that is completely off topic…

Please tell my past and current employers this! Maybe the reason I’m such an advocate for nonzero transparency is because I’m so fully immersed in agile now that anything resembling a waterfall framework is difficult to work with :rofl:

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Mostly I wanted to make it clear where I was addressing cjmarsh and where I was broadly responding to your post in a vague attempt to defend myself from your general, non-targeted response to his post…if that makes sense :sweat_smile:

In other words I didn’t wanna be lumped into “some players” here:

Sure, maybe I’m being a nuisance by making the same kind of posts asking for information month in and month out. But it’s only because I love the concept of this game so damn much :heart_eyes:. And I just wanted to make that clear to not only you but to anyone who might take the time to read what I said :).

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An exclusive work in progress shot, since you asked:

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We getting spaceships?

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