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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#151
/RANT
Hello everyone once again after a few years of lurking. I will say this only once. You and you alone are completely responsible for what you create and how you percieve your experience in this world. The devs say words. They make promises to post information on a certain date and then consciously choose for whatever reason to not actually do what they SAY they will do. Not just this once, but it has been repeated many times in the past several years. So it is now an established pattern of not having to follow through with what is said. So why do the devs continue this pattern? Obviously, words are just that: tonal utterances that WE give the meaning to. The devs wil say whatever they wish to say in order to please the masses and perhaps ease their own conscious. Trust is built upon the security of knowing that what is said, or thought, or acted upon will result in a match of those words, thoughts and actions manifested in this world. Whenever I hear mention of gameplay being developed, or development logs being posted at a certain date and time, from ANYBODY on this development team, I do not believe for one second that they will actually follow through and take the time, care and professional dedication to see it through. This of course is my personal opinion and may or may not resonate with anyone else. I am only venting after several years of seeing promises made and then not followed through. So Adam, why? Lindsey why? Josh, why?
Why do you waste our time making PROMISES of an update and getting our hopes up when you obviously cannot ultimately deliver upon your words?! Is it really important for you to simply FOLLOW THROUGH and give the community a sense that you mean what you say? What is the real message you give us when you cannot deliver on the most basic of promises? No wonder many of us are deflated and are struggling to continue to believe. Make us believe again. Not just make believe like it has been. In my world, you would make us believe again by being consistent and following through with what you say you would do. Is that important at all to y'all?!
/EndRant
Last edited by YroehtTimil on Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#152
Why would you expect to engender rage from us? We all agree with you. The devs say they are going to release a devlog on a certain day, said day passes without a devlog. I think those of us who would rage at such a situation have long since left, as we've been through this exact situation... How many times now? At least 100. I was hoping that Soon™ was just a Josh thing, but apparently it's contagious. I'm not angry, just disappointed.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#153
I was thinking that as well, Hyperion. You're completely fine, YroehtTimil, and you're right. It's important to stick to promises you make, among other things. Lindsey said she would post, so she needed to have posted.

On that note, I'm really sorry, guys. I'm doing the best I can to poke, nudge, and prod as per my job, but communication has been sparse on all fronts lately. Adam said earlier that it's partly because they're working quite hard at the moment. Communication is important. So is keeping promises. I can't promise a devlog, but I can certainly promise I'll do my very best to make sure that someone posts one this Friday - even if it's just a paragraph or two about "Here's what we're working on".
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#155
Tal, you are the main reason I continue to follow Limit Theory. I cannot express my deepest and most profound gratitude that you give so much of your energy, time and passion to keep this community together.

You bring many gifts that I have been so privileged to receive over the years. You have every reason to get up each and every morning having the full satisfaction of knowing that what you give of yourself comes back to you magnified and fulfilled.

Thank you Tal for being a gift to all of us.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#158
Talvieno wrote:
Wed Mar 28, 2018 3:20 pm
even if it's just a paragraph or two about "Here's what we're working on".
I wanna say this is all most of us expect anyway -- indeed, my own boss just expects a bulleted list and/or two or so brief paragraphs on what we've been working on during the week.

The theatrics and screenshots are nice and all, but while I appreciate those efforts, I would be content with a list.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#159
I honestly believe you're absolutely right in that, Grumblesaur - at least for the people still here. It's not about making a show - it's about showing what you make. A bullet list does that just fine. :)

(And thank you, guys, for your kind words. :) I just want to do right by the community and LT. If I can do that, I'm happy. )
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#160
Hello.

I have been lurking the forums for a very long time. Since before "The Dark Days" began. Back when we had videos logs on a schedule. I have been tempted to post many times and never did, but I just have to now.

Josh, what I am going to say isn't a fluff piece, for sure, but it also isn't a judgement on you. I ask you to take what I am going to say seriously but not take it to heart.

There are a lot of really passionate people on this forum that believe in what you're doing and want to see it come to its conclusion. No matter how long it takes. And there are a lot of people like myself who have no interest in engaging with the community but want to see this game brought to life. But that passion to see this project can only go so far for some people. Now many, like myself, are too invested to not at least check on this project. We want to see it. But I am sure there are just as many, if not more, who have written it off. Written you off. Not because of your lack of work ethic. Not because of a sense apathy. But because you're so inconsistent. And they're right.

We believe in you, Josh. We believe you can pull this game together and bring something really cool to life. But I have to say... I don't believe you. I believe in you but I don't believe what you say to be precise. Time and time again we have said, the community that is, that all we want is just a bare minimum of consistent communication. And we get teasing of that, a promise or a declaration, some time of consistency, then that fumbles. And the community starts to get anxious again. Like right now.

We have had both extremes. Scheduled analysis on work and roughly two years of little to no communication at all. We just want consistency. We get it, you were going through some tough times. We're all past that. And we all realize we aren't going back to the video logs. That's fine. But can you blame us when not only you but Adam and Lindsey go dark? We start seeing writing on the walls. We don't know what's going on behind the curtains, we can only go off of the experiences that we have had between you and the community.

Too busy to make a Dev log? That's fine, just drop a post on the forums like you guys did a few months ago.

"Josh is teaching and really busy, but we'll have something soon".

Tells us all we need to know. Don't have the time to write a full Dev log because you're crunching out code and about to have a team meeting?

"Hey guys, really busy this week. I'll throw out some bullet points to show where the most progress has been made.
  • The cow level has been added.
  • Nerfed Mercy's Ultimate 'Valkyrie'.
    • Removed the instant rez bullshit.
  • Ships are removed from the game. Permanently.
Sorry for the cliff notes guys, hope to have something more substantive and in depth next time!"

Fast, easy, gets the point across, and most importantly provides the consistent communication the community has asked for since "The Golden Days".

And that goes for Adam and Lindsey too. We were all so happy when you guys joined the team. Not just because Josh wouldn't be making the game alone anymore. Not just because there would be more cool and insightful people to chat with on the forums. But because we all wanted things to be different. To be better. And it has been, but we don't want that to change now. Not with all this progress being made.

I could go on for a whole other post on this whole topic. I have had a lot to say over the years, but this is what is important now. As it was then and as it will continue to be.

As a final note, I agree with the others in this thread. Thank you, Tal. If not for your dedication to this project after this long I am confident many of us wouldn't still be here, I probably wouldn't. It was frustrating enough when Josh went dark but if we didn't have anyone trying to bridge that gap then it would have been much easier to just write this project off as abandonware that didn't even get the dignity of release.

I hope everyone has a splendid day.
Last edited by Forsaken on Fri Mar 30, 2018 1:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#162
If the situation of LT development is becoming more and more financially risky (I suppose the kickstarter funds must have ran out or very low by now), maybe its time to think about changing strategy, and actually move towards an early access model.

Selling early access packages could give the team the needed financial cashflow to secure a stable development, and also allow the game to gain more awareness (youtube videos by players) outside the narrow nice of this forum and the few other channels it is present.
(Of course while giving the former backers a decent exclusive headstart, and have them helping to fix the most immediate technical issues)

Here the existing engine could be set up in a basic sandbox mode (minus the complex tech such as long term planning ai entities, emergent events or an economic simulation), and have players give feedback on the core mechanics of procedural content creation, controlling ships and basic (spawned) battles.
If the modding is actually as good as always advertised, that can serve as the needed creative and content boost, during the time that the more advanced simulation systems are still in development.

Other games do exactly that, and can survive through very long development cycles, while keeping a presence in the (now much larger than 2012) indy-games-market, and actually be able to fund the developers.

The thing is: when the funds run out, its completely understandable that Josh and the others will have to take up other jobs or contracts to pay for the bills, and that can push LT to be more and more to be just a side project with little development time to spare.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#163
It is so sad to see this game again (still) struggling with this kind of thing. Anyhow, I think that at this point, reinforcing how untrustworthy LT's development plans have become is just beating on a dead horse.

Instead, I will list the 3 rather specific things that have worried me the most in the last days:

1) much worse than the repeated lack of commitment to any promises is Tal saying that lately, communication has been scarce even with him. Well, first of all what is the point of having someone as great as Tal doing a job as great as hie is if you are not willing to give him consistent and regular contact access to the team? Second, why would the team suddenly diminish such contact? Makes no sense to me.

2) I find Adam's hypothesis (reported by Tal) to be particularly problematic. He said something along the lines of the team being mostly working too hard at the code. Seriously? Are we going down those bland, generic, PR routes? All gamedev teams have to code hard. I find difficult to see that consistently missing deadlines, derailing into yet another tool building and not even caring to come here to post a note as being remotely justifiable because coders are doing hard code (I'm a professional coder as well).

3) the team's timing to derail could hardly have been worse. After a month of sickness that seemed to have prevented proper communication on the part of 2/3 of the team, followed by Josh's new episode of tools addiction, why on Earth would Josh choose to remain silent for 20 days and Lindsey would think it would be ok to miss deadlines in a row without any notice specially given the history of problems with that in LT's development? You can't throw fuel on fire and then complain about the flames...

Anyways, I'm certain that Josh and team will soon have a devlog that blows our minds with cool stuff and such, but it won't decrease too much of my sadness to see this recurrent pattern over and over again. Promises, promises not fulfilled, increase in expectations about next devlog given the unfulfilled promises, then more pressure and thus less promises fullfiled...
Damocles wrote:
Thu Mar 29, 2018 6:22 am
If the situation of LT development is becoming more and more financially risky (I suppose the kickstarter funds must have ran out or very low by now), maybe its time to think about changing strategy, and actually move towards an early access model.
...
Where did you get such an idea from? There's a lot of assuming there.
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Re: [Josh] Friday, March 9, 2018

#164
Where did you get such an idea from? There's a lot of assuming there.
Thats called "math".
The kickstarter earned $187,865,
the project now ran for over 5 years. (now with 3 developers).
that budget would be around $36000 anually.
Compare that with the average salary that could be earned in another tech job...
Last edited by Damocles on Thu Mar 29, 2018 9:45 am, edited 2 times in total.

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