The new Expanded Inventory View design

[Tiraelina]

...

Are we supposed to be happy and understanding that despite shutting down the servers these problems are still biting them? You can't rely on a flawed core if you want to keep growing. We're struggling to have the responsiveness that WoW had back in 2004 in a lot of areas still. No, shutting the servers down again won't fix it faster, they just have to actually work on it.

The wonders of these kind of games mostly having a skeleton crew between expansions.

[Krotoan]

Are we supposed to be happy and understanding that despite shutting down the servers these problems are still biting them? You can't rely on a flawed core if you want to keep growing. We're struggling to have the responsiveness that WoW had back in 2004 in a lot of areas still. No, shutting the servers down again won't fix it faster, they just have to actually work on it.

The wonders of these kind of games mostly having a skeleton crew between expansions.

And we have features that work well where other games don't.

I'm not going to tell you how to FEEL , but when someone gives you more info and people have been complaining constantly they give us NO info, instantly responding with "that's a stupid reason, besides you should have done it this way" seems a bit counter productive. Common decency is what I'm asking for, it's that too much to ask? I'm pointing out that even when we get what we want, an explanation, the response isn't any more even-toned or reasonable, if anything it's more hostile and dismissive.

[BillyKaplan]

snip

It's amazing and incredible they came in here to offer us such a detailed explanation. It's horrible and unacceptable that after years of blaming it all on the PS3, we're left with the same hands-tied-behind-their-backs situation where nothing is ever really possible. If anything, the explanation came as proof of where the real problem is and everyone here are simply asking them to address the issue at the core of the matter. No one was overly rude, no one was overly out of line (that I saw), and a lot of people, myself included, have the relevant professional experience to weigh in on this. It just so happens I'm currently working on a similar project for another company where if they want to do ANYTHING it's an outright nightmare so I'm rebuilding their system from the grounds up so they have an easier time doing... anything, really. Sounds like exactly what this game needs and it's not like people have been complaining about the old code-base since this patch, it's long lasting.

[Rufalus]

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I think there are unique challenges in making an mmo with scope this large which many people do not appreciate. Large amount of complex processes, large character data even by this genre standards, server stress from hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users and gameplay experience to be considered where even a small amount of delay on interactions could be considered too disruptive. Without being an mmo developer on a game with millions of accounts it's hard to say how horrible they are at what they do. I enjoy the game and the efforts of the dev team and don't personally see the need to rebuild systems from the ground up... which of course would be very costly for a project of this scale. Dramatic rebuilds of the game to rise above current limitations would also alter the minimum spec and impact players on low-end systems like laptops who may be happy with things the way they are now. Parity with console builds is also something to consider.

[BillyKaplan]

Dramatic rebuilds of the game to rise above current limitations would also alter the minimum spec and impact players on low-end systems like laptops who may be happy with things the way they are now. Parity with console builds is also something to consider.

That's a baseless assumption given most limitations are born out of how badly the code is written, not any hardware or framework issue. Making the same system work properly without changing its functionality really doesn't mean any of that. It can be as easy as taking code out of a big class, putting it in a small class, and suddenly a lot of other places in the code have easy access to it with basically zero change to how the system operates, but now it's a lot easier to build upon. Small example off the top of my head, and I can't claim to know the first thing about how the system is built to know whether or not such things are possible, but the reverse is true as well - just because they should change things really doesn't mean it'll be as brutal as you say it is. Hell it might even cause a spec drop because the system will suddenly start working more efficiently. I managed to cut down a 10% cpu usage on this screen I worked on just by using a different data structure, it all depends on how the system is currently built.

[Rufalus]

That's a baseless assumption given most limitations are born out of how badly the code is written

My bad, should have used the word 'may' then instead of sounding absolute. But we'd also have to make assumptions to say the opposite, that their code is so inefficient that a rebuild from the ground up would see enough improvement to warrant the cost of doing so. Rebuilding systems in an mmo of course a very large-scale project not to be taken lightly and comes with associated risk and some downtime to the service they provide players. Personally I'm just confident in the decision-making of this dev team. I think they are very good based on what they've accomplished which I see as superior in most ways to other games on the market and that's why I'm still here. Their level of communication with the players such as the dev reply in this thread is something I also value.

[Krotoan]

and a lot of people, myself included, have the relevant professional experience to weigh in on this.... Sounds like exactly what this game needs and it's not like people have been complaining about the old code-base since this patch, it's long lasting.

A lot? I see maybe 3 people hinting they have some experience including you. The rest have been comments along the lines of "yeah, but fix everything"

I highly doubt the reason for the lack of rework is it hasn't been proposed or thought of. I'm not debating the need, they WILL eventually bump up against the limits of this older, complex, garbage system in a very hard way (if not already), but implying they're not aware of this is unnecessary. I bet the guys who work on this daily would give their left eyes to scrap or rebuild some of the systems they have to work with everyday, but their job isn't to set policy. It's to do what the higher ups say with what they're given. Someone who comes in here to say "here's why this was done" doesn't need the response of "your work wasn't wanted or needed, you should have been doing.."

[BillyKaplan]

but implying they're not aware of this is unnecessary.

And that's why no one is implying this. Bringing it up that it's important and that they should prioritize it doesn't mean we think they don't know. Those of us with experience in the field know that they know better than anyone how bad it really is and that they puke blood every single day making the game work as well as it does in the first place. But if they won't know it's as important to us as it is to them, they'll keep prioritizing other things. I've been in that mess before where infrastructure revamps were postponed because of new features and only when the clients settled down we could do the important work. So this is us, telling them, as much as the people in this thread can, "it's ok. Go for it. It's important to us too."

Someone who comes in here to say "here's why this was done" doesn't need the response of "your work wasn't wanted or needed, you should have been doing.."

They actually do. First and foremost, if the end product is something a lot of people hate and are dissatisfied with, it shouldn't have been done in the first place. Second, if you're doing a thing you yourself admit is half baked, that development time would've been better spent elsewhere. Third, uh, a developer absolutely should hear "this work wasn't needed or wanted" from their users. The biggest difference between my experience and what happens here is that I'm used to receiving the requirements from the client while here SE decides these things for themselves. If we don't give feedback saying "we'd rather you worked on the infrastructure before you make any change like this that will be half baked because of the broken infrastructure" they'll keep doing things that frustrate their playerbase and actually serves as anti QoL as is the case here. Going from seeing 100 of your items at once to seeing only 70 is a step back. And they could've given us more if not for their broken infrastructure. Ergo, if they don't fix the infrastructure, this change was absolutely better off not implemented. And the forum seems to be pretty vocal about its dislike to this change, at least the English section.
So if it's a change no one enjoys and was brought about in this way because of infrastructure, SE absolutely needs to hear they're doing the wrong thing. We're the paying costumers, we're the consumers of this game, and we should absolutely give them feedback, even if the feedback is "thank you, I hate it".

The fact SE did a thing does not mean we need to thank them for it and the time spent implementing it if it's not a step in the right direction.

[Krotoan]

And the forum seems to be pretty vocal about its dislike to this change, at least the English section.
So if it's a change no one enjoys and was brought about in this way because of infrastructure, SE absolutely needs to hear they're doing the wrong thing. We're the paying costumers, we're the consumers of this game, and we should absolutely give them feedback, even if the feedback is "thank you, I hate it".

The fact SE did a thing does not mean we need to thank them for it and the time spent implementing it if it's not a step in the right direction.

Alright. Wasn't seeing it your way. Sounded rude. If you truly think replying the way that people are is what will get it done, I stand to benefit as much as the next person.

[Vstarstruck]

Alright. Wasn't seeing it your way. Sounded rude. If you truly think replying the way that people are is what will get it done, I stand to benefit as much as the next person.

Does that mean you are going to apologize to me now and stop acting so hostile? You never thought you, your self is sounding rude to others? If you really want to better yourself in how you communicate, it is a good idea to see how others may view you. To me yu are just blindly white knighting without a cause, and all that does is impede progress in getting feedback to the development.