I'm only gonna express MY thoughts here, but if anyone else feels the same or wants to add his 2 cents, go ahead.Dear chadz and the Item team,
Stop treating us like shit, please.
Now that you have another thing going for you (wink wink), i think it'd be nice if you could spend a couple of minutes , read this , and possibly even reply.
We all are your loyal supporters. Pretty much everyone who still plays this mod is your loyal supporter. That's the playerbase you'll have to rely on many times in the days to come and i'm sure you know it. I could point this out more frequently and explicitly in this topic but certain agreements restrict me from it, so i only do this once.
Some of us are more vocal than others, some may support you more actively, but we still are one group of people who share similar interests and admire your work. We all are interested in seeing your Projects get better and expand in various ways.
I'm getting to the point, don't worry.
You have extremely talented and active coders on your team, including yourself. You have enthusiastic people with great (most of the time at least) ideas. You aren't afraid to experiment and try out new things. You as a team also have your own unique way of communicating with your players and i personally can respect that too, after all we haven't paid a cent for this game, except for some individuals who donated.
Crpg has many unique things that made it such a popular mod , including this one -
ITEM VARIETY . Eventually it went from just quantity to quantity AND quality, but it took quite some time.
Why ? Well let's figure it out together shall we ?You don't have any modellers or texturers on your cRPG team. In order to add new items to your mod's arsenal , you had to rely on either OSP packs from independent artists or enthusiasts from your own community to make them.
And BY GOD this is a long history of treating your most loyal fans, the ones that actually moved a finger to help you get your mod better, like crap.I remember back in the days when the Shogunate still existed, we still had the native pink strange armors in the mod. Holy hell that looked horrible didn't it ? And guess what, if not for the community, we'd still have a gazillion of crappy items in the game with a few exceptions here and there that came out of OSP packs.
Every time the community creates something for you, getting it in the game is like driving a shopping cart through a Russian swamp. Now i wouldn't feel i had the right to make these kind of statements if the issue was some random obnoxious crap that players randomly make and than demand being put in the game.
I don't in any way support this kind of way of working with the CRPG team.In the last couple of years i've personally dealt with and watched others communicate with the CRPG Team. Without a doubt, most of the times it looked more like human torture than two civilized groups discussing things.
For those of you not in the know ,
the process of adding your new items in the game that has the most chances to succeed usually looks like this (spoilered to save some space) :
step 1) come up with an idea
2) find someone who can do it, either a clanmate/friend of yours or an artists whom you are willing to pay for the work
3) talk to the crpg team about adding your new items in the game. show them reference pictures, explains what items would look like etc. 99 % Of the time you'll have to find and discuss this with Shik.
4) get greenlit by crpg team, start working on the items.
5) try to keep the devs updated on the item status and show them WIP in case they don't like something
6) show the finished items to the crpg team (i keep saying crpg team, but in my case it's always Shik) , get the final approval
7) wait. you can trying asking when approximately the items will get in, but it's kinda pointless.
Now, seems alright on paper, doesn't it ? It's ok , except for the fact that every single time there are numerous obstacles . In short, i'd name it the Dev Apathy Syndrome.
I could start pointing fingers at certain dev team members , but i don't want to . First , i'm done trying to figure out how your damn item adding system works, you tell us. Second, it's called a team for a reason, i don't think one person should take all the blame.
So to conclude - dear Crpg Dev Team, here are a couple of questions i'd really like to see you answer :- Why does it take you months to add items brought to you on a silver plate, tested, polished, formatted AND , most importantly - approved by your item team ?
- Why is it almost every time these new items get added you manage to mess something up and than it takes you another couple of months to fix it (latest e.g. zitta bascinet, the horrible glitch on the chinese armor) ? All this while your coders do a tremendous job of making the game better, doing small upgrades almost every day.
- Why are you so apathetic about adding new QUALITY armors to the game, even when they are made by or for your most loyal supporters - your playerbase ?
- Why do you refuse to state at least an approximate date when the items get in the game , even though your item team representative clearly said they WILL get to the game? Do you realize that the process of making these new items can not only cost money for your players, but also a lot of energy and time. No offense, but possibly more energy and time your entire item team can spend on the mod in a couple of months.
- Do you even want your players to help you and bring new items for the mod ?
These are my questions. I believe they are simple enough and many people who have previously approached you on similar matters can relate to these questions. The frustration is growing.
It's pointless to hide it now, i personally paid for the last item commission , but it's not even about that. Me and Zimke literally worked day and night on some of those items , with both enthusiasm and joy. When Zimke was finally done with the commission i think he had like a 2 day nap.
And i'm sure it was the same for the many other times players were working on new items for the mod. It's just every single time their enthusiasm hits this brick wall of dev Apathy and, if you ask me, it's disrespectful. One of the most disrespectful things you can do to a person is ignore his hard work, especially when it's made FOR you.
To conclude - i don't want a 24/7 community manager to lick our asses. I don't want every stupid new item suggestion to be approved so we get a billion retarded low quality items in the game. I just want good work that is brought to you to be appreciated. If 3 months ago when me and Zimke started making the new items i approached the devs and asked when the items get in and they would've replied "in 3-5 months", would we still make the items ? It's a long wait , but yes, we would.
But if back then i knew that we'd have to rush it cause Shik said "it'd possibly get in in the nearest December patch " ( thanks for that btw, i felt like a retard on the day of that "patch") and than we'd be in the dark for the next 3 months ..... nah, probably not. I hope you can get the difference. It's all in the attitude.
I can't imagine what other players who's got their projects that are still not in done earlier feel..
All i'm asking you to do is read this and just think about it. This is not a rage post, rather a frustration post. I just want you to understand this frustration that possibly many other players may feel too.
Regards,
Ujin.
P.S. deja vu tells me i've made a similar long post a while ago... the irony.
