I apologize then, as to me it felt like it was a dismissal of what I was trying to say, in a passive aggressive way.
This is so true on MULTIPLE levels. My biggest (but not only) problem is the secrecy that has arose since @Tom left. And anymore, this spider webs into a couple other problems I have with the dev team in general. Getting to the point, by biggest problem is that I feel like they’re treating us like we’re stupid, and that’s honestly my biggest pet pieve in life.
The reason I feel this way is because of all the indecisiveness showed on the forum. Just in this thread alone, @Brackhar, who’s supposed to be the lead developer, contradicts @Sweet. So who’s right? Go to any other thread that involves @Brackhar debating an idea, and you’ll get the exact same double talk, or when any of the devs are directly confronted, you get cherry picked vague answers. If they don’t want to answer, it’s pushed away as “an idea that’s still in the works”.
My second leading problem, is exactly what I asked above;
This forum is supposed to allow the users to voice their concerns with the direction the game is going, to in turn help better the game. But lately, all I’ve seen or gotten from anyone, even other users anymore, is that this is the new direction of the game, deal with it. Hell, @Sweet basically said it when he made the comment about Stonehearth’s style. So how is this about the users / players anymore?
I know I can voice my opinion, and as you’ve stated, I do. The problem is though that except for a small handful of other people, and even then on rare occasion, I’m the only one voicing my opinion. And because of this, it’s basically gotten to the point of “oh great, what’s he going to rant about this week”. If that weren’t the case, then why are my questions half the time ignored anymore?
As for anyone else, you tell me. Why is it no one else has a problem with the changes going on? Why is it that only 3 other people have stepped up to say that the lack of direction bothers them? And why is it that when people do voice their concerns about things, they tend to be indirectly told to shut up by other users, such in a way that @genboom is doing now?
Let’s take a look at the Kickstarter for a second, the pitch that I agreed to back.
In this first part, it states, “Starting from procedurally generated terrain with dynamic AI encounters, Stonehearth combines city sim and good old combat with infinite building possibilities.” Yet with this new building UX, we’re being told too bad on any building possibility that has angled or round walls, as (and I’ll keep quoting it), it’s not Stonehearth’s style. Sorry, but to me, these two ideas clash, and with the latter being the way it is now, that’s not the Stonehearth I backed nor the one I’ve sunk hours into.
The next part says in big bold letters, SANDBOX, RTS, and RPG. Yet how many times lately has it been said on the forum and in dev streams that they’re trying to get away from an RTS? That’s kind of a third of what the game is supposed to be. And if it’s a sandbox, then why am I being limited in what I want to do with possibly having to worry about what color house my Hearthling is going to like? Why am I being limited by the editor’s redesign? Why am I being told I have to play within a certain parameter?
Following that, again in bold, it talks about CO-OP and PvP. Now Co-op has been confirmed more or less, at least they’ve stated they’re working on it. But PvP has been danced around, and then last night’s dev stream, @Rabid_Llama and @sdee straight up said that PvP probably isn’t going to happen as that goes against the warmness of Stonehearth. So again…another part of the pitch removed.
Next part, stretch goals.
9 of these goals either have something in the game or are documented enough that they will (hopefully) be in there one day. That being said, I don’t know what the animal trainer would be (shepherd?) so I’m leaving that alone. And again, we’re back to PvP Raids that has been stated multiple times is off the table. Seasons has become a maybe, a very very soft maybe after it was talked about to death back in the day. And festivals was a suggested idea a few weeks ago that “would be nice to add”.
So all this said, the “new” direction the game is going in is cutting even more out of what us backers were promised.
Do I want to build a conquering empire? F%&K YEAH I DO!!! Oh wait…it’s a small town simulator now. Welp, can’t do that either.
So as it currently stands, almost HALF of everything I put my money towards has been thrown out the window for a dozen different reasons, and that list keeps growing. And yet I’m expected to be happy about that, because “change can be good”. This is why I say it’s becoming a different game that I didn’t back.
@Sdee stated a long time ago that she wanted Stonehearth to be basically your way of creating your own, living breathing version of Kariko Village from Legend of Zelda. Where you have the RPG shop workers, a living town, etc. Well that’s fine as that would fall under the sandbox part of what this game was supposed to be. But then in discussions like this one, when talking about ways to redo combat, you get a lot of League of Legends ideas being pulled in. I’m sorry, but when you run the numbers, and add “this group go here, that group go there, you go through the middle, and everyone activates their abilities”, it sounds a lot like a bigger version of LoL, but with one person controlling the whole side rather than 5. So that’s where that part comes in.
This is where my concern comes in though. Each time you draw a new square, the game is looking at it as it’s own room that can be pulled away, or has to be added to another room. So, as I said earlier, you’re up to 6 squares to make one corner, and with the history of everything else, do you think that’s going to go with Stonehearth? And that number will keep increasing as the size of the curve increases.
And your example works for small curves. What about a 32 voxel curve? It wouldn’t be just 3 or 6 squares. From my count, you’d have to have a minimum of 10 to make the circle, not including more if it’s not a perfect circle.
With the current editor, you don’t have to do as much, as well as with the auto-wall tool, it registers it as one entity / room, not multiple that have to decide how they intersect.
@MelOzone, this is the type of Yes Men I was talking about…
I don’t care if it looked like it was from Eve Online (though that could be an improvement…), my problem with it being copied from The Sims is that we were told multiple times that it wouldn’t be a copy of The Sims 4’s builder, but instead a tool designed for Stonehearth. Well…I’m not seeing the difference as it’s pretty much a 1:1 translation. I even quoted one of the times above.
Um…when @Sweet flat out says they’re not going to, because it’s not the style of Stonehearth, I’m going to say no to this comment.
Free-hand wall tool, or auto-wall tool? Having the free-hand tool does make it a little better than all squares, but the cherry on top would be keeping the auto-wall tool too.
And that’d be awesome if y’all added this. But from previous comments made by your team, it now sounds like you and your team aren’t on the same page as far as this new building UX.
And his example was about the engine of the game, not the steering wheel. The way the game builds the buildings, maps out how they should be built, etc., isn’t the concern here. The concern here is the player experience, in the way that they tell the game what to do.
Take our current builder UX for a second. If they were to fix the Undo bug that everyone hates (and breaks things more than not), and add the room / wall tool as shown in the new UX to it BESIDE everything that’s already there, what would be so bad about that? It’d still let people that are building monuments and such with the current one…well the current builder, but also add the kiddy gloves for anyone who isn’t familiar with it.
But they’re not doing that. In fact, it’s been stated MULTIPLE times that it’s too late to do that, even though they kinda want to.
Personally, haven’t, but I’ve heard the horror stories. That being said, I’m pretty sure the devs don’t hang out there either, as they try not to favor Humble Bundle or Steam.
Debatable. If you have the ability to stretch a corner out with a circle tool, then yes. But if you have to click each part of the wall and move it individually, then no.
The reason I see it that way is because of the lack of people voicing their thoughts or concerns with the game. If it were “YAY, awesome game, but…”, then I wouldn’t say it’s a bunch of Yes Men. Unfortunately, it’s only the first half of that though.
And don’t get me wrong, I’ve got 2200 hours into this game (probably a third of it AFK), and love many parts of it. @Albert’s progress on water is my favorite part currently, and watching @Allie do what she does with art is probably a close second. And if the development were coming close to an end, I’d be pissed and sad at the same time.
That being said, that’s why I voice my opinions so profusely. I don’t want this game to start hitting the same roadblocks Minecraft did, and anymore, I see one after another starting to form. The two biggest I’m currently seeing is this User Experience redesign (not just the builder) to make it more n00b friendly, as well as the “well if you want that, you can mod it in” statements. When it gets so easy to do things that it’s no longer fun for advanced players, it becomes a game full of children, as Minecraft became. The fun then kinda leaves it from there as the devs then turn to make it easier and easier for their “users” to use it.
Same with mod content. It’s been stated a couple times that they don’t want to add user content for legal reasons. That’s understandable. But at the same time, we’re not getting assurances that what people mod in won’t get it’s on Radiant version. So being that @BrunoSupremo made his archipelago mod, will we never see a fisher class now?
And I know I’m not the only one with similar concerns. So why aren’t people voicing that?