WC3 Reforged
Higher Standards
Pick one.
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Even the most flawed and failed commercial releases have more work that went into them than you would care to acknowledge. And i’m beyond a doubt certain that the problems with Reforged were administrative in nature, not bad work done by poor development workers.
Again, you’re comparing apples and oranges.
Ok so lets go through what they have to implement based on what they said they wanted to implement.
Global matchmaking, instead of gateways. That exists, existed on launch. It’s horrible, but it exists.
MMR, it exists. Again it’s horrible, but it exists.
So what’s left? You have an MMR system, you have a system to find players based on that MMR, so they need to implement a system that gives points based on said MMR win/loss and a page in the menus to show said points? Because you know they’ve got all the metrics measured out already for them in SCR.
You think that should take 6+ months to implement?
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You’ve got multiple UI screens and systems, you have client server networking communication stuff, you have stats databases (it’s not just MMR), you have security issues, it is nowhere near as simple as you think or want it to be. Yes, they could get it “working” in the time given, but working completely with all potentially abusive issues and problems removed?
Stop pretending you know how software development works and how long it takes to make things. You don’t even know how many people are actively on the project at this time, how many of them are programmers and database enginners and UI deisgners, and how many other things they also have to work on beyond just the ladder system itself. Everything has to be tested and sent back and tested again, and btw this is all being done work-from-home style, which drastically slows down development. If COVID-19 wasn’t a thing maybe it would be ready now.
And yes: I know because I’m actively working with a studio on a game to be retail released. They are all working from home now and it is drastically slowing down their work, forcing delays they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
It is affecting all corners of game development. The next major patch for FFXIV, for instance, which was due to come out in june, is now delayed by a month, possibly more, because of the crisis. They and all software developers deserve more slack during this time. They’re lucky to still be able to work.
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Ah yes, the thing that existed in Blizzcon 2019 when they said ladder would be ready by launch, the same launch they pushed back an entire month. Covid-19 is what’s stopping it being out, yep.
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are you really that thick?
I’m beyond a doubt certain that if the development team had their way, the game would not have been relaesed when it was. That was activision/corporate/whatever.
You really are insufferable. I don’t give a blank what happened at blizzcon 19. The game wasn’t done at the launch date they were forced to commit to. neither you nor me nor anyone else knows exactly what state this feature was in on that date. And things have changed a lot since then. You’re either clueless or being intentionally obtuse.
I get it, you need something to be mad at. Everyone is mad, but it dosn’t change the fact t hat it wasn’t done at release and clearly other things, like the game not crashing or not working every 5 minutes, which was likely a higher priority than the ladder system. I assume you haven’t forgotten how the game was barely even functional on the release date. The last several patches were all just making the game itself more functional and presentable, so how much actual work was being done on the ladder system when programmers and whatnot were needed to fix the mountain of gamebreaking bugs is anyone’s guess.
(Just you think i’m in here to kiss blizzard’s behind, I’m not. I just know what working on games and software actually entails, I understand how they blanked up, and what they had to do in the month and a half after launch)
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citation needed
Blizzard said they’d have ladder at launch, they haven’t. Everything you’re saying is mere speculation. If Blizzard was more open about things, then maybe I’d try to understand, but atm, they’re full of broken promises and no communication.
It’s almost like you can implement Naga footprints AND tell people what’s going on with the ladder system. And no, saying “soon” then 7 weeks later saying “soon” again isn’t telling people.
Then don’t promise it.
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Rushed releases are always the publisher’s fault. Always.
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I haven’t seen where they promised exactly when the ladder would be ready.
See, this is another thing people don’t understand about game devleopment. The people who fixed those footprints are not the same people who make ladder systems work. Game development teams are called game development TEAMS for a reason, different people work on different things.
Should the art/graphics people stop working just because the programmers need to work on the ladder system? No.
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It’s literally in the link I posted earler.
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Notice how I said “TELL” and not implement.
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It’s not? “We’ll share our plans in the coming weeks” != The release date for this feature is X month Y day Z year."
https://gaming-tools.com/warcraft-3/reforged-blizzcon-2019/
" Warcraft 3 Reforged Multiplayer and Balancing:
- With the official Warcraft 3 Reforged Release the Ladder will also start."
If you want to shout me money for the Blizzcon vods I’ll go through and find them saying it out loud for you, but the sites covering it have them saying it.
We already know they missed the release date, what’s the point in trying to tell me that again?
I’m not talking about what happened before. I’m talking about what happened now.
As I said, this was a mismanaged project. It is not the developer’s fault.
Missed release dates are always the publisher’s fault. The only exception are self published indie titles, whom don’t have managers breathing down their necks.
You asked?
No, I didn’t ask about the original release date they missed. I asked about their plans going forward from there.
You and I already know that. There is no point in discussing that.
So in your eyes, they were forced to lie about their progress, on stage, to consumers, behind a pay wall, about where they were, how far along they were, what they were implementing, and now, when said consumers asks for ANY SORT of communication, the publisher is like “NO, HOW DARE YOU EVEN SUGGEST COMMUNICATING AND GETTING BACK POSITIVE PR” and they just limp away like a beaten dog and I’m meant to feel bad for them?
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No. In my eyes, they were forced to release the product before it was ready. That means certain features had to be cut/disabled to make the release or it would have been even more broken than it already was. This project was clearly mismanaged from very early on because they promised a release date (“on or before december 31 2019”) in the blizzard app and everywhere else when the game was first announced, and that date was so far out there would be no reasonable person who could say if the game would really be ready at that time.
The people at blizzcon who made the promises they did, didn’t own crystal balls and should not have been talking out their rears. This was a management failiure, not a developer failiure.
In any developer’s dream perfect world, all games would be released when they are ready, not when a publisher or guy on a stage says so. I don’t know a developer alive that wants to rush prodcuts to meet deadlines. Develoeprs never create the deadlines. It is always guys in offices that don’t do any actual development that make these decisions.
This is a simple truth of the industry. They were given a deadline and cut whatever they had to cut to meet the deadline. Then they take the fall for the game being busted even though it was the fault of management.
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They went on stage and promised these things November 2019, knowing FULL WELL they weren’t going to be able to live up to them.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If they promised ladder in November 2019, with a release date in December, that’s less than 3 months. And yet here we are now, 3 months on, WITH NO IDEA how far it is. How could they promise on stage, that ladder would be ready then?
Management as in corporate Activision or Blizzard or what? Because the classic teams design leads and project leads were the ones talking. We’re so far down the chain of command I think you’re actually thinking people are blaming a code monkey when they say “you guys” in post headings?
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That guy you saw on stage was not a developer. Developers never go on stage. Those are PR people, and they don’t know anything. They are talking puppets that say what the publisher tells them to say. To say they knew full well they weren’t going to make the release date is absurd. Sure, it’s entirely possible that the management/publishing staff knew this, but the PR people can’t say that if they value their jobs.
Again. This is not a developer problem. This is a activision/blizzard corporate problem. Stop blaming the devs for not meeting impossible deadlines and start blaming the people that created those deadlines. And even project managers are not developers. Managers are managers. They may be more aware than PR people, yes, but they still can’t say “we might not meet our deadline” and keep their job. That is the fault of higher ups.
The devs probably had to get on their knees and beg the higherups to give them even the 2-3 month extension they got (from the latest promised date of 12/31/19) And I would bet my soul t hat they asked for another extension and were denied.
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