Caliya
Strong in the Force
People fight to gain things they can't take with them in the end
Posts: 2,121 
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Post by Caliya on Nov 21, 2015 12:18:50 GMT
Well, it's too late for me, being banned because it was not public and I discussed it in public. But they did listen at least this time. The original discussion was here on Steam: steamcommunity.com/id/wbz115/recommended/326160/Here is the update: Going Public With SotA Daily Standup NotesHere's what it says: "As many of you know we strive to be as transparent as possible to our backers through weekly updates, monthly releases, and quarterly schedule updates. We also post our Daily Standup notes to the Founder section of the forums. That read only forums section was created to satisfy the Founder pledge reward of “Developer Blog Access” which promised: “You will be privy to the game development progress before it is live! As concepts are created, screenshots are taken, and news is delivered for the game, they will be posted to a private Developer’s Blog page to which you will have access.” Among other content, this was the place we put our Daily Standup Notes. This unfortunately placed them behind a $65 paywall (a $20 increase from the base pledge). On top of that, because this section was Read Only the only way our backers could discuss the standup notes was to be Dev+ which put conversations about standups behind a $550 paywall. "After some very pointed feedback from our backers, and some serious soul searching, we believe that our standup notes should be public information and not behind any paywalls. Additionally, discussion about them should be available to all those with forum access ($5 and above). To that end, effective immediately, we are eliminating the Founder section of the forum and removing the “Developer Blog Access” reward from Founders pledge. All content in the Founder section will now be relocated to the “Shroud of the Avatar Announcements and Dev Posts” Forum (formerly “Community Announcements”) and our Daily Standup Notes will be posted there as a Read Only thread (to make it easier to go back and read each day if you have been away for a bit). We take very seriously the removal or expiration of any reward but we feel the increased level of transparency this will bring is better for the project." |
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Nov 21, 2015 12:44:16 GMT
Hehe, I hope nobody bought into the tier especially to read these "special" dev information releases.
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Caliya
Strong in the Force
People fight to gain things they can't take with them in the end
Posts: 2,121
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Post by Caliya on Nov 21, 2015 15:03:47 GMT
Ya, as if the Stand Up is worth anything, even public. At least a person can discuss it in public now, and they can duke out how much time developers are actually spending on things.
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Nov 21, 2015 15:44:59 GMT
Ya, as if the Stand Up is worth anything, even public. At least a person can discuss it in public now, and they can duke out how much time developers are actually spending on things. I wouldn't go that far, they don't really disclose how much time is spent, just that person 1 is working on thing 2. |
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jackjack
Strong in the Force
Playing Fallout 1
Posts: 102 
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Post by jackjack on Nov 21, 2015 16:53:13 GMT
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Post by nemolives on Nov 21, 2015 20:52:23 GMT
This is a genuinely good move from them, and I think we should at least acknowledge that; especially as it does challenge one of the core Pledge rewards, one that required a fairly heavy financial investment to get... It shows courage then to tackle it, and I think we should welcome the move without any sniping. Not saying anyone here is doing so, but let's resist, eh?  It'll be interesting to see how the community reacts however. I hope they have the sense to also work towards the wider good of the game, and not howl about a perk which, from what I can gather, was largely pointless anyway except for an ego boost. |
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Post by chodekiller on Nov 21, 2015 21:11:04 GMT
Interesting that even though they still put a spin on shitty work they do. It still reflects how much Richard Garriott does jack shit for the game yet pays himself far far more than anyone else. Basically he steals crowdfunding money to decorate the fucking office, travel around, just play the game, or literally do nothing at all on some days.
Oct 23 Richard Garriott: Playtesting & Jiras in and out
Oct 27 Richard Garriott: Traveling & Bugs & Playtesting & Community in-game events
Oct 28 Richard Garriott: Leads meeting & Decorating office
Oct 29 Richard Garriott: (Office) Interior decoration & Jira issue entry & City talks
Oct 30 Richard Garriott: (Office) Interior decoration & Playtesting
Nov 2 Richard Garriott: (Office) Interior decoration & Playtesting & Bug writing & Story meeting
Nov 3 Richard Garriott: Leads meeting & General management & Playtesting
Nov 4 Richard Garriott: Jira issues in and out
Nov 5 Richard Garriott: Bugs & Math talk
Nov 8 Richard Garriott: Jiras in and out
Nov 9 Richard Garriott: Travel day
Nov 10 Richard Garriott: NA
Nov 11 Richard Garriott: Jira work & Art direction for game maps & Lighting and electrical work
Nov 12 Richard Garriott: Decorations & Jiras in and out & Leads meeting
Nov 15 Richard Garriott: Office decoration
Nov 16 Richard Garriott: UT videogames meeting(Not SotA related) & All-Town player gathering & Office decoration
Nov 17 Richard Garriott: Kingmaker
Nov 18 Richard Garriott: Office decoration & Design meetings
Nov 19 Richard Garriott: Travel & Patching & Bugs
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Nov 22, 2015 1:33:57 GMT
yet pays himself far far more than anyone else. lawl. Again, I don't think we can access Port's salary information, but I'm going to take him at his word when he said he isn't getting paid dick until they make a profit. If he was sucking down all the cash now, that would indeed send a poor message and RG despite what anyone thinks of him at this point is way smarter than that. So unless you have some hard evidence, you can say it, it just looks bad on you bro! |
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dodgy
Strong in the Force
Posts: 1,171
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Post by dodgy on Nov 22, 2015 3:36:36 GMT
yet pays himself far far more than anyone else. lawl. Again, I don't think we can access Port's salary information, but I'm going to take him at his word when he said he isn't getting paid dick until they make a profit. If he was sucking down all the cash now, that would indeed send a poor message and RG despite what anyone thinks of him at this point is way smarter than that. So unless you have some hard evidence, you can say it, it just looks bad on you bro! He's still got a salary dude. |
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Joviex
Strong in the Force
PERMABANNED
Posts: 123
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Post by Joviex on Nov 22, 2015 5:20:30 GMT
Ya, as if the Stand Up is worth anything, even public. At least a person can discuss it in public now, and they can duke out how much time developers are actually spending on things. I wouldn't go that far, they don't really disclose how much time is spent, just that person 1 is working on thing 2. to be fair, that is all a standup is about. To be frank to the spirit of their KS about "open development", its bullshit cause it provides next to useless data. You don't know how long, or even in some case the context. And, lets be real here, that was one person on Steam, that Starr got so desperate that single sales (read FUTURE NEGATIVE REVIEW putting the game under 70% on steam) mean so much that it drove him to change something people have asked for over years? You see folks, its not about catering to backers, its solely about catering to people with money. They need it, constantly, so they are willing to bend and break where ever, when ever, what ever they said previous, to make the next person fork over the cash, cause.... - After figuring out your shit was paywalled? (LOLWUT?!) as if you needed to be reminded
- After being told numerous times over years by backers
- After leveraging it to help ban a community member over it
-- Touting the "look how open" we are with development? I laughed for five minutes straight and nearly peed myself. Sorry, I left my crazy pills in Jonestown. |
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Post by kb on Nov 22, 2015 11:35:58 GMT
Starr was just doing some damage control after Chris put his foot in his mouth on several different negative reviews. The fact that so many latched onto the blunder, and made a valid point about the idiocy of Chris chastising the reviewer for not reading something locked behind a paywall, forced Starr to take steps to divert the attention away from the real issue: their abject lack of transparency and ham-fisted approach to dealing with dissent. As for RG taking a salary... We'll never know the details, but he could be paying himself $1 a year for all we know and that still technically counts as a salary. You can't conclude that he's getting a little or a lot based on the info out there. Just that he earns something (which is a necessity for them if they are to count him as an employee). CEOs often pay themselves peanuts until their startup shows itself to be profitable. Even if he earns something in line with the industry, or even a symbolic high dollar amount at port relative to the other employees there because he's the legend (like say he gets $2 more than whatever Starr and Chris' earn, and $1 more than Dallas), I bet if he and Dallas really earn anything, the lion share of it comes on the back end as some kind of percentage of the sales or just a share of whatever money port might make from all of this, if they survive beyond episode 1... Even so, I wouldn't expect that amount to be huge considering the slice likely owed to the venture capitalists (from ultimate collector) who port still probably has profit sharing deals with and the like... In all truth, Dallas and RG are probably quite wealthy from their earlier work and founding port and doing the whole ultimate collector/sota stuff was likely just a last go at the game industry so as not to leave on the sour note that was tabula rasa and ultima ix. Either that or they want to leave an even bigger pile of money for their progeny than they already will (which I find doubtful to be a motivating factor). To a lesser extent, I think they probably wanted to take care of their former employees too like Starr, Chris, bzus, lum, fl, etc in light of how difficult and cut throat the gaming industry is. Anyway, tl;dr... While I deeply disagree with their funding model, and do agree with some of the quips about RG phoning it in (though seriously, the guy is most useful and valuable to the project as PR tool and idea guy), I really think this whole thing is mostly about the legacy of what they'll leave behind and less about unbridled greed. Furre, I honestly think their intentions are not all bad, though I think they are extremely out of touch with the real pulse of gamers/consumers after spending too many years on the inside of the industry and having attended too many parties and conferences where people worship them. I think the execution and implementation of everything has been too ad hoc and way too conventional and overly colored by their own obsolete sense for how things should be done (especially when it comes to marketing and things like bank slots/rares/limited housing/etc). Now they are struggling mightily with developing such an ambitious game in a fishbowl of their own making (while being haunted by their past successes and failures), but to me, this is not all the fault of RG or Dallas or Starr or Chris or any one individual. It's simply a "toxic" combination of all of them plus their backers, both sycophants and detractors, and the ever changing nature of gamers and the industry. All of it combines to make a perfect shit storm... But, if they manage to make anything that's half decent, I think a big portion of what pushed them in that direction has come from the often unwelcome and shunned trolls that they've sadly ostracized and pushed to the periphery. Not to say that their party faithful don't give good feedback from time to time, but I still think many of us who were banned or just left voluntarily were speaking our minds from a desire to see the ship righted, not piloted straight into an iceberg. Ooh well. Rambling as always. This is what insomnia gets me. Should be sleeping so I can get some shit done today, but instead I'm showing I still care too much about a game I'm convinced is dead on the vine and a dev team that saw fit to ban me, call me disgruntled/toxic, and ignore much of the earnest feedback I gave because it wasn't said with the servile manners of a supplicant. Fml |
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Caliya
Strong in the Force
People fight to gain things they can't take with them in the end
Posts: 2,121
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Post by Caliya on Nov 22, 2015 20:15:31 GMT
I wouldn't go that far, they don't really disclose how much time is spent, just that person 1 is working on thing 2. to be fair, that is all a standup is about. To be frank to the spirit of their KS about "open development", its bullshit cause it provides next to useless data. You don't know how long, or even in some case the context. And, lets be real here, that was one person on Steam, that Starr got so desperate that single sales (read FUTURE NEGATIVE REVIEW putting the game under 70% on steam) mean so much that it drove him to change something people have asked for over years? You see folks, its not about catering to backers, its solely about catering to people with money. They need it, constantly, so they are willing to bend and break where ever, when ever, what ever they said previous, to make the next person fork over the cash, cause.... - After figuring out your shit was paywalled? (LOLWUT?!) as if you needed to be reminded
- After being told numerous times over years by backers
- After leveraging it to help ban a community member over it
-- Touting the "look how open" we are with development? I laughed for five minutes straight and nearly peed myself. Sorry, I left my crazy pills in Jonestown. Somehow they "seemed" or "behaved" as if they didn't "realize" the paywall was that high just to discuss posts that are, and have always been, and continue to be, read-only. It's easy to make it public now that I got banned over it. The last of the mischief makers are gone, and only the whales or those who don't cross a certain line, are left in the forums. Those that come along now, with the same voice as some of us had, are banned almost instantly and without warning. We all know Stand Up is ridiculous, a joke. You can't tell how much time anyone is actually spending, and it's not even a full list of what they spend their time doing. They just mumble out some shit to get the meeting over with. We've all been there (well, many of us), knowing how boring these required meetings are. None of the whales gives a shit about the truth of Stand Up and what they really do with their time. The minute I seriously questioned it, I got banned. |
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Nov 23, 2015 3:52:32 GMT
I wouldn't go that far, they don't really disclose how much time is spent, just that person 1 is working on thing 2. to be fair, that is all a standup is about. I totally agree, but then you shouldn't get some douche with a weird name on staff saying things like: We post our stand up notes every day so you can see exactly what each and every person on the team is working on. If you have other suggestions for transparency into what the team is spending its money on, please suggest it. If you want intelligent people to respect your opinion, keep it to the features in the game instead of trollish speculative talks about the dev team.  |
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jackjack
Strong in the Force
Playing Fallout 1
Posts: 102
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Post by jackjack on Nov 23, 2015 4:12:09 GMT
These are not intelligent people, in terms of the industry standard, nor are they capable of a shred of respect for their fellow human being, making that last statement particularly aggravating.
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dodgy
Strong in the Force
Posts: 1,171
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Post by dodgy on Nov 23, 2015 6:42:25 GMT
We post our stand up notes every day so you can see exactly what each and every person on the team is working on. If you have other suggestions for transparency into what the team is spending its money on, please suggest it. If you want intelligent people to respect your opinion, keep it to the features in the game instead of trollish speculative talks about the dev team. Yes I pointed this quote out in another thread. I feel this sums Chris up for me. His tears in the review threads betray the amateur nature of the devs |
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Caliya
Strong in the Force
People fight to gain things they can't take with them in the end
Posts: 2,121
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Post by Caliya on Nov 23, 2015 17:02:30 GMT
His tears in the review threads betray the amateur nature of the devs I don't know if I'd go that far - devs are human beings, first and foremost. We all revert to blubbering kids when we have fights in games, and crap talk people who beat our ass. lol |
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Joviex
Strong in the Force
PERMABANNED
Posts: 123
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Post by Joviex on Nov 24, 2015 5:35:06 GMT
His tears in the review threads betray the amateur nature of the devs I don't know if I'd go that far - devs are human beings, first and foremost. We all revert to blubbering kids when we have fights in games, and crap talk people who beat our ass. lol except he is not in a game doing it. Nor should he given a pass on the umpteenth time he has done it. Just because Port is tolerant of all manner "bad choices" does not mean the facing public has to be as blind. Arrogant? Sure! I can deal with that. Incessant jerk to people because they dislike or disagree with your opinion? Yeah, that shows us what you really think of yourself and others. |
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Nov 24, 2015 6:56:04 GMT
Where is the community management? Where is the community manager? Why are the devs wasting their time reading and replying to social media?
Ideally since they are so late, maybe they should be working on a game and have the community manager bring things up during short scrums that they can provide info on and then they can feed that back? Or is that how non-trailblazers do it...
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Caliya
Strong in the Force
People fight to gain things they can't take with them in the end
Posts: 2,121
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Post by Caliya on Nov 24, 2015 9:56:13 GMT
Just because Port is tolerant of all manner "bad choices" does not mean the facing public has to be as blind. Totally agree with that. He shouldn't be posting anything on Steam. He's a dick and has a thin skin. If he can't take it, he should leave it to someone with diplomacy. |
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Caliya
Strong in the Force
People fight to gain things they can't take with them in the end
Posts: 2,121
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Post by Caliya on Nov 29, 2015 21:12:51 GMT
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jackjack
Strong in the Force
Playing Fallout 1
Posts: 102
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Post by jackjack on Nov 30, 2015 1:28:43 GMT
I'm surprised I don't see "reticulating splines" anywhere.
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Caliya
Strong in the Force
People fight to gain things they can't take with them in the end
Posts: 2,121
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Post by Caliya on Nov 30, 2015 11:10:58 GMT
I've never played the Sims, and had to look up what you meant. lol |
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