Almost everyone, in this forum, is very quick to blame and complain about the “Devs” or developers.
As a computer programmer/developer, let me assure you that we are not responsible for everything. As a matter of fact, there is very little we have control over.
As with any job, we have supervisors, and they have supervisors, … on up until someone with a 3 letter title that usually starts with a C (ex. CFO, COO, etc.) ,and then they all report to the CEO, who also report to the shareholders.
No individual, or group of developers, are part of the true decision making process in any game, program, or app.
We are given very strict instructions on how things are to be done. We either comply with those instructions, quit, or get fired for not following those instructions from the “higher-ups” in charge.
As we all know, corporations, and their shareholders, only truly care about PROFIT, period!
Devs are helpless to change anything without being directed to do so.
Ultimately, all of you have the most power in forcing change, in this game.
That is by forcing change by methods that directly affect theirprofit margin.
One example is if everyone banded together and quit purchasing for a single day or two.
Suddenly, they would be extremely more interested in us as players/consumers of their game and be willing to listen to us to implement those changes, so that we start spending again, and their profits margins increase.
So, please stop blaming the “devs” and start blaming the CEO, and/or start doing something that will truly force them to listen to us.
Sure, you can blame chief execs for the direction the game is taken into.
Sure, you can blame the designers for making terrible design decisions.
But who do we blame for delivering such a buggy game?
Software Development was never and will never be free of Bugs.
Sure, a big part of the Bugs is a direct result of work not done properly by the Devs, but I wouldn’t go so far and put all of the blame on them.
There is also the Quality Assurance, which has to be done properly. I don’t know if it’s any different in Game Development, but it’s the first department which is understaffed in the software projects I was involved in.
Then there are Milestones which have to be met and are enforced by the project management, even though the Devs clearly tell them, it’s not possible in that timeframe.
Being forced to work faster, without a feedback loop on how good the product works, because of very little to none time of it being tested, makes it hard for us Devs to deliver proper Software. Which in turn increases the technical dept after every iteration. The more complex the software gets, the harder it gets to add new features while not breaking the working ones. It’s a vicious circle which can’t be broken easily, if not all departments are able to commit themselves of going that way.
Again, the Devs are definitely part of the problem, but a whole lot of people and processes are responsible for the end product.
Which they clearly do not do.
They also have players with early access to content, who report issues.
Despite this, we have lots of stuff, reported during early access, that gets through to live.
Well, that was kinda my point. The devs are of course at fault to introduce the bugs in the first place, but if those aren’t found or ignored before going live, they can’t do much about it. Most of the time, it’s not their decision, how to handle them after they are discovered.
From a Dev point of view I‘d say, that most of us would gladly fix those. But from a business point of view, you’d have to decide if those are bad enough to affect my bottom line and if it’s necessary to use up resources for a fix.
And as we can see for example with the Path of Blood Shadow Quest line, this decision was made in favor of keeping it in the game for now.
Heck, how about the fact that Pyl’s Remains, a quest item required for the questline that allows a hero access to Hell 1, can still be salvaged? This quest cannot be repeated. The item cannot be re-acquired. If you salvage this at the Blacksmith, your hero can never get out of Normal difficulty. You have to start a new hero. I reported that bug, that literally renders your hero worthless, over two years ago now. All it would take to get around this would be for them to flag the item as non-salvageable or to make it re-acquirable. Two years, and they still have a bug that leaves the player with a choice of starting a new hero from scratch, or leaving the game entirely when they realise this stupidity.
Bugs that cause people to quit in frustration due to their stupidity effects the bottom line directly. But as with most companies they are more focused on old money than new.
They actually changed the questline. I just recently did it with a new character and was able to complete it without slotting any remains into the Helliquary. Just opening the window where you select the remains, was enough to progress it.
And if I remember correctly, you had to do an Elder (or Challenge?) Rift to fight Pyl and get his remains. Now you only fight him directly in Westmarch and go straight to the Lassal fight. After that fight and having his remains, you can slot them or not. Hell 1 is still unlocked and you have full access to the Helliquary.
So no more stuck heroes there.
The ‘developer’ that people talk about is not a ‘developer’. ‘Developer’ refers to a ‘game company’ and ‘a game company employee’.
We hope that any complaints or suggestions will be delivered to someone at the game company and dealt with, but the someone doesn’t necessarily have to be a developer.
This is not very realistic.
We just hope. We spend a little bit of typing energy on the Internet and we just hope that our opinions will be delivered to the game company. Without actively spending energy.
Behind active opinion-voicing activities, there will be a lot of passive opinion-voicing activities.
Also, there will be people who do forum activities for fun. I’m a bit like that. Love for games + fun of forum activities.
Don’t take it too seriously.
good to know … for me is different … for my nature I try to give my opinion in a thread in order to let’s try to find the best possible suggestion/solution … let us to hear your voice … like in a Referendum
We don’t blame them for everything. Game design, game direction, admin, etc is responsibility of the parent company.
But devs are front and centre responsible for creating bugs but more importantly, not tracking and resolving bugs in an efficient manner when they are highlighted. DI is terrible for both new bug creation and also for bug resolution in a timely manner.
Quite often in game programming, or any programming, the company initially outsources to a separate development company, who programs the bulk of the initial software. This is more cost effective, in their viewpoint, in using an outside source to get the software up and running quickly.
The outsourced company already has programmers, graphic designers, etc. in place. That company’s employees are under a tremendous time crunch to produce code as fast as possible, so the company’s profit is greater. Since they have the money to hire and maintain a large workforce of employees.
The programmers that are writing the code are split into groups to write code for very specific functions. For example, quests, blacksmith, armory, dungeons - which could even be split further for each individual dungeon, heliquary raids - also can be split further like dungeons, etc.
Each piece is then put together, often with issues on getting them to play nice with each other. This is no different than how a car is put together. Graphics can also be outsourced to a totally different company who specializes in just that, which of course can further exasperate the end product.
There are then a few options that the main company can implement.
One option, although it doesn’t usually happen, is that the main company keeps paying the outsourced company to fix and maintain it’s original code.
This usually never happens, since the main company is very expensive to keep paying in perpetuity.
Another option is that the company then hires it’s own programmers and graphic artists to maintain what others have built. Although again a separate graphics company could be used as stated above.
The programmers then have a difficult time figuring out any bugs and trying to fix them, since they didn’t write the initial code and have to figure out how everything is put together and then figure out how to fix it.
This is aggravating for the programmers, since they are under an enormous time crunch to get things mostly working, so the main company can start making profit. The company will address bugs, only if deemed important enough by the money people.
Every game company used to employ software testers, who would thoroughly test the game, find the bugs, and notify the programming team. The programmers would then fix those bugs and send it back for testing. This process was repeated until there was a good quality software.
This practice has since gone away, as the money people decide to let he users find the bugs and then the game company will fix those bugs, if and only if, the cost-analysis projections showed that there was enough of an issue that the cost of fixing them versus the cost of losing customers was greater (or any other comparison that the money people ask for).
With this particular game, it was introduced as a live beta version to totally bypass any realsoftware testing and letting the future customers be the software testers. A very economic decision, which many game companies now utilize.
To further complicate, all of this, the game has been LIVE since the original beta version.
With a game that is not live, you can easily test individual bugs thoroughly by changing code and seeing the difference without it impacting anything.
In a live game, any little change can have a drastic effect on players.
Such as them losing equipment, gems, etc.
Fixing bugs in a live environment is much more difficult, especially if you haven’t wrote the initial code.
I, along with all other developers, wish that this was true, but sadly it almost never is.
Again, it is strictly up to the money people on how much time any one employee is allowed to work on a project, an individual bug, or anything else.
To put it simply, PROFIT is king, no matter what. Even if someone wants to spend more time fixing, changing, or polishing a game, at he end of the day, if it is not profitable, it will never be allowed. Devs are employees.
In my viewpoint, anything that you truly care about, can be improved if you spend energy and time to actively improve it. Oftentimes, a single individual, can start a movement towards making things better, whatever it is.
Simply hoping that minimum effort will bring about change, I do not feel is realistic.
Very little change will happen, especially when money is involved, without a concerted effort from more than one person.
One person can bring attention to and highlight something, but it takes enough people to pull together and force change by utilizing their ultimate power as a consumer against any corporation.
There are some grandiose topics being exchanged on the game forum.
Why think so complicatedly?
We are simply expressing dissatisfaction and opinions toward a single entity—the game company.
Do we really have to consider whether there are people inside the company who have difficulties or not?
Of course, being considerate of others’ difficulties is a good love-for-humanity attitude, but do you always think deeply about others’ situations in every case in your daily life?
It’s enough that we only think about what we need to think. Internal issues within the game company should be handled by the company itself. Those are their problems to solve, and they have a duty to provide good service to customers.
All of us have hardships in our own social lives. Sometimes we are topdogs, and sometimes we are underdogs.
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Also, don’t assume they always make the right decisions in the direction of maximizing profit. They are not perfect beings, just like us.
What seems to be in the direction of profit may not actually be in the direction of profit.
They may chase small, immediate profits without thinking about larger, macroscopic profits.
The expression of one word “profit” encompasses many complex things.
Profit can be money itself, or it can be image, or it can be trust.
The fun of the game can be profit, the quality can be profit, and consumer fraud can be profit.
What appears to be chasing profit might not be, and what appears not to be chasing profit might actually be.
How could we, who are outside the game company, possibly know in which direction the future’s true profit lies?
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The key is the size and importance of the issue.
There’s no need to waste energy on small, unimportant problems.
If it’s a large and important issue, then, as you said, action should be taken.
Also, in the past three years, when people’s voices were loud enough on Reddit and this forum, the game company has listened. various past updates…
If it’s a large and important issue, I agree with what you said.
Of course, you should be the one to decide whether “this/that problem” is important.
I never said that a specific problem is important or not important.
You don’t seem to be a native English speaker like me, and sometimes I don’t really understand exactly what meaning your words are trying to convey.
For comfortable and accurate translation, I recommend ChatGPT to you.
I’m used to write in English and then use google translator to my mother language in order to check if correspond to the thought I want to share with you
Any business or corporation, is interested in profit, otherwise what is the purpose of a business? This, of course, excludes non-profit, charities, etc.
I don’t feel that I’m assuming, that is a pretty well known fact that businesses want profit or they quit existing.
Of course, there area few who have other motivations, as well. But profit is still key.
You are giving a very general definition to the word profit. A definition that the two main companies involved with game, in my opinion, are not considering.
I was talking about the word “Devs”.
According to https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dev, it shows these definitions:
noun
a software developer:
a game dev;
a web dev.
adjective
software development:
The programmers and animators on the dev team worked late into the night.
You may be referring to the game company, but it is common practice to refer to an individual or group of individuals.
I believe you may be missing my point. I wasn’t asking for people to understand devs difficulties, instead I was trying to inform people on who is ultimately to blame for bugs, imbalance of characters and PvP activities, etc.
That being the game company/companies that are involved in the game, one starts with a B and the other with an N, along with any corporation that owns them or conglomerate that owns those corporations.
Also, I am letting people know that the most effective means to influence those corporations or conglomerates, is through their profit or lack of it.
I agree.
What I meant to say was: “don’t assume they always make the right decisions.”
Please focus more on the word “right”, not on “decisions in the direction of maximizing profit.”
These sentences also mean the same thing. “they can’t always make the right decisions”
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I think the discussion has gone off-topic a bit.
Let’s get back to the main point.
When we usually criticize a product, do we refer to specific individuals or specific groups within the company?
No—we criticize the company itself.
Do we criticize by considering in detail who inside the company is responsible?
No—we simply treat the company, which is a group of many people and departments, as a single entity.
Think about a case of a tangible product other than DI.
Just because we use the word “devs,” do we literally believe devs handle everything?
We don’t need to think about who is really to blame.
Consumers don’t have to consider the company’s internal structure or broken systems.
They just see a flawed product and think, “The company is at fault.” That’s it.
It doesn’t matter whether the word ‘devs’ means real devs or not. It just makes it more or less inconvenient for devs to see those posts.
It seems like you’ve become a bit sensitive because your job is a dev.
