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sunspinecity · 9 months
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i havent wanted to comment on the sandsurge drama bc i think it's insane but like. anyone who says that staff "isn't very communicative" has never played another petsite in their life. Turn back time spend 3 years on neopets and then we'll talk about communication bro..
like there is literally an entire Dev Status Sidebar that shows you what they're saying about whats going on that they update pretty regularly and they do dev updates + stay in contact with their playerbase and closely watch their reactions to updates to see where they messed up and what can be improved on. Like what on planet earth are you talking about. genuinely
the only agreement i will give to communication issue is that the wording on aeq's post regarding the fact that it would be a gem breed took me 7 tries and i still dont get it bc it reads to me as "2nd breed will be treasure, 3rd will be gems"?? which is obv not true. I genuinely can't see what ppl mean by this being a confirmation. but thats not a communication issue it is a Confusing Wording issue. don't complain about communication unless you've played literally any other petsite bc i guarantee you this level of transparency and care you will find in very few other places.
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toasttz · 5 years
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How to make games: MMORPGs
Hey, you! Does your current job not fill enough of your life with soul-crushing misery? Have you ever stopped to consider 'man, I wish I could get into a line of work that involved me wasting more time away from home and friends but I would have to pay infinity dollars for the experience'? I have to say that's a very particular set of tastes, but I play Mei in Overwatch too, so I understand having a weird sadist/masochist relationship with our gaming experiences. I'd also say that it sounds like you're in the market for an MMORPG, which is good because that's what we'll be talking about today! Making an MMORPG is easy, since it requires literally less effort than the last two genres we've covered: no one actually expects you to innovate past the good-old WoW standard of gameplay. So steal the most generic Tolkien stereotypes you can bring together, but leave out all that "Jesus" and "patriotism" stuff that accompanied Tolkien's work, because our primary market is going to be east-Asian countries and 13 year olds with money burning holes in their pockets. Making a character creator is as easy as going through the process of making one yourself, as you start with the obvious stuff like species. Species should include, but never exceed: Humans who are neither good nor bad at anything (but called some kind of stupid fantasy name), Elves for sissy magic users, Dwarves for your tanks, some kind of dragon hybrid for the fucking furry degenerates, and the obligatory Sexy Race which you'll slap all over your ads that show up on the sides and bottoms of webpages when viewed by morons who don't know what AdBlock is for. If the above doesn't address it, you should also pick a class, so just steal them from early D&D: Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief, etc. No more than that - gotta save room for those sweet, sweet expansion packs so you can fleece your players for "Monthly Server Maintenance Fees" in addition to the price of the game. Never mind that 'sever maintenance' is just ripping out old HDDs and putting in new ones and that HDDs are dirt-fucking cheap, you need to fleece these fuckers for gold like your name was Jason. (That's a smart joke.) Your art style should revolve around the most generic mono-themes you can steal assets for, preferably in the Unity engine since that won't make it look like unabashed shit or anything. For music, just hit royalty free music websites, because everyone's just gonna put Youtube in the background when they play anyways, so fuck it. We got money to earn and gameplay to digest, so let's get what your players can expect. Remember, making each class distinct is important as all members of a given party operate like different members of a family unit. For instance: DPS Roles are the family dog. They get excited easily and rush into situations without regard for life or limb, usually making way more noise than they have earned any right to make. They think they're the leader of the party since they insist on being front and center of every encounter even though they are not. Tank Roles are the Asian helicopter moms. They feel the need to live vicariously through their DPS compatriots because the damage they dish out is, frankly, paltry and any time the situation isn't about them - they make it about them somehow. They believe they are the leaders of the party, though they obviously rarely have control over the most immediate threats, let alone the entire party of sociopaths. Support Roles are the stern fathers. They can't immediately intervene on the behalves of the above roles no matter how much they want to, so they stand back and grant all the help they can muster and, at best, will be largely ignored despite the fact that their movements will dictate the pace, flow, and results of combat above all others. They will only be recognized for what they do when they fail in their tasks, which makes this metaphor hit a bit too close to home for most. Just remember: Supports who aren't active in their party are every Raid Boss's future wingman. Don't come crying to me when your DPS Daughteru comes home dating one of those degenerate dragon-people! Anyways, the pacing of the game is paramount, since making an "end" of an MMORPG is essentially illegal, so you need to make it so it's easy to get to somewhere between levels 30-50 before you just start scaling things on a logarithmic basis. For those who don't math good like what I do: your first three level ups should happen more or less instantly upon completion of the tutorial and the players should be able to make good progress over the next few dozen levels as they play with their friends and make larger parties for stronger instances. However, you're not gonna be wringing any monthly server fees out of these plebs if you make it that easy on them, so around level 40-ish or so, just start slapping higher multiplier values on the Exp. required to level up to the point where solar eclipses happen with greater regularity than the "LEVEL UP" chime. By the time players hit this wall, they'll make one of three choices: that they will persist through the grind because the game is literally all they do outside of work now, they will ragequit (and hopefully forget to cancel their credit card subscription to the game with some luck!), or they'll resort to the premium cash shop. What, you didn't know your MMO needed a premium cash shop? Well it does, wake up and smell the lack of ethics, game dev! For some paltry sum between 1 and infinity bucks, your players can buy some kind of in-game premium currency, as mentioned in my gacha explanation. In fact the comparisons here are apt as this, too, is morally dubious and really is for trying to wrench even more money out of your players for something that they can rest more or less assured that you aren't gonna update meaningfully until Halley's Comet passes through the solar system again. However, for some amount of this premium currency, they should be allowed super powerful weapons and armors that completely invalidate any sense of pacing up until the low 70s level range. This will help them play further into the mindless grind until they are playing at least for a few months (worth of fees) time. Once hopelessly addicted, they'll slog through the remaining 30 levels or so of grind, ideally. All other premium currency items should be cosmetics - preferably cosmetics with expiration dates so you can fleece them for their fashionista tendencies repeatedly. If you have any pangs that make you think this might be "not exactly on-the-level", hey, you're right! You're really getting the hang of modern game design! After that, it's time make expansion packs! The beauty of this is that not only have they paid for the base game and monthly fees, but now they get to buy the game ALL OVER AGAIN! Slap on a few extra islands and some quests to populate them and sometimes raise the level cap. The design is the easy part. The name is where you will likely struggle. However, using our advanced scientific algorithms, we have deduced that the ideal title should follow the template: "Adjective Noun Adjective" plus or minus a definitive article and a couple of "Of"s. Do you not know what those are? That probably means you're at the right IQ level to actively make MMOs! Or to play them! Oh yeah, every second expansion pack you should add an additional class - preferably one that invalidates the classes of an earlier build, so as to subtly 'encourage' making a new character. But the prereqs for getting these should be difficult to the point of patent absurdity. After all, you can't class change to a "Bumtickler" until you get that level 85 Pirate! Congrats! You're a soulless monster who cares naught for their fellow man. You are now a living example of gaining the world and losing your soul. I hope the Faustian bargain was worth it. You're welcome.
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britishaliengods · 6 years
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[Official] - TotalBiscuits future This is posted on behalf of TotalBiscuit by the subreddits moderation team. TB does not participate in Reddit anymore (we havent managed to keep him off /r/rarepuppers yet thats a work in progress) since he doesn't think that health related speculation is good for his mindset. Well-wishes can be sent to [email protected] where they'll be sent on by his PR guy.When I went into hospital a week or so ago, it was accompanied by the news that conventional chemotherapys effectiveness had been exhausted. My body has become resistant to all forms of it according to my oncologist. 46 chemo treatments, 138 days plugged into a pump. Let nobody ever say I wasn't stubborn. Unfortunately this was followed up a couple of days later with some more bad news. My liver is failing and its effectiveness has lowered past the point where the clinical trials I had been offered would take me on. Yes apparently there are things that are too dangerous for even the terminal. Obviously we're going to keep looking for other trials but I'm currently coming to terms with the fact that I don't have long left and right now at any rate, there is literally nothing I can do about it other than try to manage the pain as best as possible and stay as hydrated as possible to ease the pressure on the liver. There are quite a few pain management options left to try and the ones that I am using can be increased in dosage quite significantly if need be. The majority of the pain is being caused by pressure on the spine from hardened nodules in the liver and lung as well as fluid. We haven't fully explored the options for dealing with all of that, but its high priority so that my quality-of-life can improve.That's what it comes down to now, getting my quality-of-life to as good a standard as possible. Even though you don't really have any treatments to fight with any more, I firmly believe that the will to live is a very strong asset and that is much easier to maintain when you're not in crippling pain all the time.That will most likely be my last health update, unless some miracle happens or we do indeed find a trial that can do something despite the damage to my liver. I'd ask people not to speculate about how long I might have left. I've deliberately left out some details to try and reduce the behavior, though it might very well have the opposite effect. All I do know is that kind of thing is upsetting to some of my viewers that read it and I'd rather not encourage it. I've already exceeded the "usual" lifespan of someone with my condition so whatever numbers people come up with are just that.Its now a case of "what do I do with the time I have left?" Why am I telling you? Because if you're a viewer of my content, its relevant to you.Retirement, sort ofFirstly, I am retiring as a games critic. I can't do the job anymore. I'm under the influence of too much medication to think clearly and my schedule too unreliable to get coverage out in a timely manner. I've found it very stressful over the last year to try and keep up, knowing that I'm failing and watching my work (rightly) fall out of favour because there isn't enough of it, its not on time or its not of good quality. It doesn't make any sense to continue to try to do that job in my state and while it used to bring me a lot of satisfaction, now it's just the opposite.Does that mean I'm done with Youtube and Twitch? Nope, blokes gotta make a living. I have a family to consider and there's no such thing as "too much" when it comes to what I leave them when I go out kicking and screaming. I want to spend the rest of my time with the two things I love the most, my family and my work. I'm transitioning my Youtube and Twitch work over to gameplay with my wife. There's a bunch of co-op stuff I never really got around to playing and I have the perfect gameplay partner right beside me. When I'm having a good idea, I'll be doing gameplay streams and Youtube videos with Genna. If you want to know what to expect from that, well we've done it before, just not recently, there's some rather popular videos of it over on Her channelThis is something that will make me happy, spending time with my family but also getting job satisfaction. That's something all too easily overlooked by some, I'm a very work-driven person and one of hardest things of the past couple of years has been dealing with not being able to reliable do my work. It's brought on depression, uncertainty, anger, you name it. I hate it.The PodcastWhat about Co-optional? Well that's sticking around. The show must go on after all. We will be moving forward with our proposal to shorten the show to 2 hours per episode however. This is for health reasons but also because lately I've felt like 3 hours drags on too much, we find ourselves having to rely on way too much filler and its not been as enjoyable to do. Some might be disappointed by this though we found in a recent poll that quite a few people, more than those who said they'd be disappointed, actually wanted this change. There are only so many hours in a week. I'd rather have 2 hours of good, fresh content than 3 hours of discussion spread too thin, which the shows as of late have often been. As for weeks in which I simply cannot do the show (which hopefully wont happen but you can never be sure), Genna is going to be trained in production and will take on a host role, with the usual guests. Genna will be filling in for Dodger while she takes maternity leave anyway so, get used to hearing her voice.SupportWe've had A LOT of questions about donations, how people can help etc. That's always humbling to see. Some suggested a GofundMe. I'm not comfortable with taking donations when I'm still able to work and have income from several different sources. I dont begrudge anyone for using donations as a form of income, its just always seemed inappropriate for us when we have several other ways to making money that result in both parties getting something. If you would like to help, do the things you've always done. Watch our videos without adblock or with Youtube Red (yes Red helps, a lot, much more than watching an ad).Support our podcast sponsors, Squarespace and [Audible at [(https://ift.tt/2HDqc2a] - they've both been very good to us over the past couple of years and let us pay Dodger and Jesse a salary for doing the show rather than just "exposure" (though they got a lot of damn exposure, let's not sell ourselves short here").Watch our streams and consider subscribing. There'll be more content coming on Twitch than there has been for a while with streams with Genna. Our subscription is a service, giving you instant access to VoDs rather than having to wait for them to hit Youtube (in the case of Cooptional, thats 48 hours afterwards), no Twitch ads, 50 chat emotes, access to the subscriber only chat and a 10% discount on our t-shirts and hoodies. We've done our best to make subscribing a service model, not a donation model and we're going to try and keep it that way, including more features and discounts if we can.Speaking of merchandise, yes the purchase of a shirt is very helpful. Margins on t-shirts are ridiculous, that's why everyone and their mother wants to sell them to you. [https://ift.tt/2zKjDqA] is where we sell ours.We have a games retail partner in [http://chrono.gg/tb] that sells a different game every day at a big discount. We get a cut of each sale, so if you see something on there you like and pick it up under our link, that helps.We do have another partnership in the works as well, with a company you should be quite familiar with.Lastly, I'll be taking the occasional brand deal here and there. Even though I'm not a critic anymore, I still fully believe in disclosure, honesty with the audience and only taking deals for games you actually like. People can see right through the fake bullshit anyway, so why waste your time and I'd quite like however many videos I've got left in me to be fun. I'm not playing your crappy game, no matter how much money you try to slip me, so you can take me off those mobile mailing lists please.These are all better than asking for donations. We're still running a business and I want to keep acting like it. All that said, if something goes horribly wrong, if my insurance stops paying out for whatever reason or if faced between draining all savings and leaving my family with nothing but our physical assets and asking for help, you better believe I'll be asking for help. The family comes first.What we leave behindIt goes further than that though. When I leave this world I want to leave something my family can use to help them earn. Not only would I be ok with Genna taking over my channels and assets once I'm gone, I'd be delighted if she did. I've been encouraging her for years to create more content for Youtube, hopefully as we make a bunch of fun videos together over the next however-long, that confidence will grow. I fully expect The Co-optional Podcast to go on and I love the thought that once I'm gone, the channels will go on in my absence, hosted by the person who knows me best and has been with me for the better part of my adult life.If this is all a bit brutally honest... well, it is me. I want you to see where I'm coming from, I always have and I really believe that's what made me an effective and useful critic. It's been a privilege, thank you all for letting me into your life and do something so important as to have an impact on how you spend your hard-earned money. Thankfully Youtube is thriving with great review and critical content now, there's plenty of awesome choices and considering most of my critical content has been reserved for the podcast over the last year, many of you have most likely found the places you can rely on.TL:DR - Conventional treatments ineffective, liver too damage for clinical trials that we know of. I'm retiring as a critic to spend whats left of my life sharing my love of gaming with my wife and all of you via co-op videos and streams. The podcast will continue every week, with a streamlined 2-hour format. We have no plans to launch any kind of donation campaign and suggest above a list of ways to support us if you would like to.Thank you for reading, watching or listening and I will see you soon, along with Genna, on a stream or YT channel near you.
0 notes
Link
[Official] - TotalBiscuits future This is posted on behalf of TotalBiscuit by the subreddits moderation team. TB does not participate in Reddit anymore (we havent managed to keep him off /r/rarepuppers yet thats a work in progress) since he doesn't think that health related speculation is good for his mindset. Well-wishes can be sent to [email protected] where they'll be sent on by his PR guy.When I went into hospital a week or so ago, it was accompanied by the news that conventional chemotherapys effectiveness had been exhausted. My body has become resistant to all forms of it according to my oncologist. 46 chemo treatments, 138 days plugged into a pump. Let nobody ever say I wasn't stubborn. Unfortunately this was followed up a couple of days later with some more bad news. My liver is failing and its effectiveness has lowered past the point where the clinical trials I had been offered would take me on. Yes apparently there are things that are too dangerous for even the terminal. Obviously we're going to keep looking for other trials but I'm currently coming to terms with the fact that I don't have long left and right now at any rate, there is literally nothing I can do about it other than try to manage the pain as best as possible and stay as hydrated as possible to ease the pressure on the liver. There are quite a few pain management options left to try and the ones that I am using can be increased in dosage quite significantly if need be. The majority of the pain is being caused by pressure on the spine from hardened nodules in the liver and lung as well as fluid. We haven't fully explored the options for dealing with all of that, but its high priority so that my quality-of-life can improve.That's what it comes down to now, getting my quality-of-life to as good a standard as possible. Even though you don't really have any treatments to fight with any more, I firmly believe that the will to live is a very strong asset and that is much easier to maintain when you're not in crippling pain all the time.That will most likely be my last health update, unless some miracle happens or we do indeed find a trial that can do something despite the damage to my liver. I'd ask people not to speculate about how long I might have left. I've deliberately left out some details to try and reduce the behavior, though it might very well have the opposite effect. All I do know is that kind of thing is upsetting to some of my viewers that read it and I'd rather not encourage it. I've already exceeded the "usual" lifespan of someone with my condition so whatever numbers people come up with are just that.Its now a case of "what do I do with the time I have left?" Why am I telling you? Because if you're a viewer of my content, its relevant to you.Retirement, sort ofFirstly, I am retiring as a games critic. I can't do the job anymore. I'm under the influence of too much medication to think clearly and my schedule too unreliable to get coverage out in a timely manner. I've found it very stressful over the last year to try and keep up, knowing that I'm failing and watching my work (rightly) fall out of favour because there isn't enough of it, its not on time or its not of good quality. It doesn't make any sense to continue to try to do that job in my state and while it used to bring me a lot of satisfaction, now it's just the opposite.Does that mean I'm done with Youtube and Twitch? Nope, blokes gotta make a living. I have a family to consider and there's no such thing as "too much" when it comes to what I leave them when I go out kicking and screaming. I want to spend the rest of my time with the two things I love the most, my family and my work. I'm transitioning my Youtube and Twitch work over to gameplay with my wife. There's a bunch of co-op stuff I never really got around to playing and I have the perfect gameplay partner right beside me. When I'm having a good idea, I'll be doing gameplay streams and Youtube videos with Genna. If you want to know what to expect from that, well we've done it before, just not recently, there's some rather popular videos of it over on Her channelThis is something that will make me happy, spending time with my family but also getting job satisfaction. That's something all too easily overlooked by some, I'm a very work-driven person and one of hardest things of the past couple of years has been dealing with not being able to reliable do my work. It's brought on depression, uncertainty, anger, you name it. I hate it.The PodcastWhat about Co-optional? Well that's sticking around. The show must go on after all. We will be moving forward with our proposal to shorten the show to 2 hours per episode however. This is for health reasons but also because lately I've felt like 3 hours drags on too much, we find ourselves having to rely on way too much filler and its not been as enjoyable to do. Some might be disappointed by this though we found in a recent poll that quite a few people, more than those who said they'd be disappointed, actually wanted this change. There are only so many hours in a week. I'd rather have 2 hours of good, fresh content than 3 hours of discussion spread too thin, which the shows as of late have often been. As for weeks in which I simply cannot do the show (which hopefully wont happen but you can never be sure), Genna is going to be trained in production and will take on a host role, with the usual guests. Genna will be filling in for Dodger while she takes maternity leave anyway so, get used to hearing her voice.SupportWe've had A LOT of questions about donations, how people can help etc. That's always humbling to see. Some suggested a GofundMe. I'm not comfortable with taking donations when I'm still able to work and have income from several different sources. I dont begrudge anyone for using donations as a form of income, its just always seemed inappropriate for us when we have several other ways to making money that result in both parties getting something. If you would like to help, do the things you've always done. Watch our videos without adblock or with Youtube Red (yes Red helps, a lot, much more than watching an ad).Support our podcast sponsors, Squarespace and [Audible at [(https://ift.tt/2HDqc2a] - they've both been very good to us over the past couple of years and let us pay Dodger and Jesse a salary for doing the show rather than just "exposure" (though they got a lot of damn exposure, let's not sell ourselves short here").Watch our streams and consider subscribing. There'll be more content coming on Twitch than there has been for a while with streams with Genna. Our subscription is a service, giving you instant access to VoDs rather than having to wait for them to hit Youtube (in the case of Cooptional, thats 48 hours afterwards), no Twitch ads, 50 chat emotes, access to the subscriber only chat and a 10% discount on our t-shirts and hoodies. We've done our best to make subscribing a service model, not a donation model and we're going to try and keep it that way, including more features and discounts if we can.Speaking of merchandise, yes the purchase of a shirt is very helpful. Margins on t-shirts are ridiculous, that's why everyone and their mother wants to sell them to you. [https://ift.tt/2zKjDqA] is where we sell ours.We have a games retail partner in [http://chrono.gg/tb] that sells a different game every day at a big discount. We get a cut of each sale, so if you see something on there you like and pick it up under our link, that helps.We do have another partnership in the works as well, with a company you should be quite familiar with.Lastly, I'll be taking the occasional brand deal here and there. Even though I'm not a critic anymore, I still fully believe in disclosure, honesty with the audience and only taking deals for games you actually like. People can see right through the fake bullshit anyway, so why waste your time and I'd quite like however many videos I've got left in me to be fun. I'm not playing your crappy game, no matter how much money you try to slip me, so you can take me off those mobile mailing lists please.These are all better than asking for donations. We're still running a business and I want to keep acting like it. All that said, if something goes horribly wrong, if my insurance stops paying out for whatever reason or if faced between draining all savings and leaving my family with nothing but our physical assets and asking for help, you better believe I'll be asking for help. The family comes first.What we leave behindIt goes further than that though. When I leave this world I want to leave something my family can use to help them earn. Not only would I be ok with Genna taking over my channels and assets once I'm gone, I'd be delighted if she did. I've been encouraging her for years to create more content for Youtube, hopefully as we make a bunch of fun videos together over the next however-long, that confidence will grow. I fully expect The Co-optional Podcast to go on and I love the thought that once I'm gone, the channels will go on in my absence, hosted by the person who knows me best and has been with me for the better part of my adult life.If this is all a bit brutally honest... well, it is me. I want you to see where I'm coming from, I always have and I really believe that's what made me an effective and useful critic. It's been a privilege, thank you all for letting me into your life and do something so important as to have an impact on how you spend your hard-earned money. Thankfully Youtube is thriving with great review and critical content now, there's plenty of awesome choices and considering most of my critical content has been reserved for the podcast over the last year, many of you have most likely found the places you can rely on.TL:DR - Conventional treatments ineffective, liver too damage for clinical trials that we know of. I'm retiring as a critic to spend whats left of my life sharing my love of gaming with my wife and all of you via co-op videos and streams. The podcast will continue every week, with a streamlined 2-hour format. We have no plans to launch any kind of donation campaign and suggest above a list of ways to support us if you would like to.Thank you for reading, watching or listening and I will see you soon, along with Genna, on a stream or YT channel near you.
0 notes