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GM Stormcrow View Drop Down
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Points: 3820 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote GM Stormcrow Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 Mar 2014 at 01:40
Originally posted by asasama asasama wrote:

After listening to this livechat, I think that you guys have a lot of really good ideas for AoA.  I understand that systems developed for AoA can be co-opted to enhance illy, but my concern is about the timeline of these releases.  You are about to go into an alpha for AoA and launch a kickstarter in order to finance the majority of the game.  If the funding comes through, you'll have at least a year (and probably more) of development before AoA can be completed.  After that these systems need to be adapted into illy which will also take time.  In illy we've already gone near a year without a tournament and longer without a major content update.  I know you won't comment on exactly when new content is coming to illy, but from today's interview I can only conclude that we will have more of the same for years to come.  We play this game because we love it, but if we aren't thrown a bone once in a while I really fear for the future of illy.  

I get this, asasama, I truly do.

atm we're fixing things in illy, and working on AoA at the same time.  

If the funding comes through we can hire more people to work on AoA things (which are largely also illy things).  I don't think you should look at things linearly, however.  Whilst I'm extremely conscious of not wanting illy to become a "testing ground", if there's (eg) a proven, robust, scalable, cloud-based crafting system built for AoA that's ready to go, we can port the data across and it can go in illy before the rest of AoA is completed.

SC
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Originally posted by Epidemic Epidemic wrote:

I respect your honesty, that is something extremely rare in online gaming.

I listened to the podcast  and really like the idea with AoA. I took from it that the professional help you get with AoA would also be used to improve and update Illy, am I correct in assuming this?

We also heard you comment on alliance limits being a bad idea that should be fixed. I'm not sure if an alliance of 600 crows is a good thing, but I can see that getting rid of alliance limits could be a good thing, ofcourse it could be a bad thing as well.
Thanks Epi.

The illy codebase isn't perfect, as you all know.  But it's no better or worse than it was last month either, so I do hope people bear that in mind.

On your first question, absolutely.  The work that's been done on AoA - even on ostensibly unrelated systems - has been a bit of code epiphany for us in terms of writing scalable code, and that's going to directly help illy from today (or, in fact, 2 months ago) onwards.

On the alliance front; I'd love to get feedback on this from you guys.  Is there a big difference between having 6 alliances of 100 players, or 1 alliance of 600 players?  I understand that it might make communications a bit more difficult etc, but that seems like a kinda artificial constraint.  Is there a good reason why we shouldn't raise the cap on alliances (in AoA, or indeed in Illy).  I'd love to hear thoughts on this.

Best

SC
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GM Stormcrow View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Daefis Daefis wrote:

Thanks for the response but I think you're alienating a huge number of current and by default future AoA players by not addressing the current problems in Illy. Simple question... When is broken lands happening? or many of the previously just around the corner upgrades.

Hi Daefis,

Think it would be helpful (possibly to you more than me) if you could mentally separate and practically catalog the "....current problems in Illy" from new things as-yet-unreleased such as the Broken Lands and upgrades.

These are very different things with very different priorities.

Best,

SC
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I respect your honesty, that is something extremely rare in online gaming.

I listened to the podcast  and really like the idea of AoA. I took from it that the professional help you get with AoA would also be used to improve and update Illy, am I correct in assuming this?

We also heard you comment on alliance limits being a bad idea that should be fixed. I'm not sure if an alliance of 600 crows is a good thing, but I can see that getting rid of alliance limits could be a good thing, of course it could be a bad thing as well.


Edited by Epidemic - 09 Mar 2014 at 01:30
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After listening to this livechat, I think that you guys have a lot of really good ideas for AoA.  I understand that systems developed for AoA can be co-opted to enhance illy, but my concern is about the timeline of these releases.  You are about to go into an alpha for AoA and launch a kickstarter in order to finance the majority of the game.  If the funding comes through, you'll have at least a year (and probably more) of development before AoA can be completed.  After that these systems need to be adapted into illy which will also take time.  In illy we've already gone near a year without a tournament and longer without a major content update.  I know you won't comment on exactly when new content is coming to illy, but from today's interview I can only conclude that we will have more of the same for years to come.  We play this game because we love it, but if we aren't thrown a bone once in a while I really fear for the future of illy.  
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Originally posted by GM Stormcrow GM Stormcrow wrote:

Originally posted by Daefis Daefis wrote:

We simply want to know if any of the last few years worth of good intentions are actually really in the pipeline or are we just being strung along with false promises whilst you develop a new game? AoA doesn't personally hold much interest for me, but Illy is something i did actually hope has a future.... or not (you know the answer at least be straight with us)

Yes, these things are in the pipeline.  

The amount of work that's gone into creating the map, topography and biomes of the Broken Lands last year - and the factions within BL, with their behaviours and backstories - represent a huge investment (certainly in our small indie game dev terms) of time, effort and money.  That's not being thrown away.

I'm quite good at building prototype demonstration systems - and part of the problem has been that these prototype systems have generally found their way into the production code environment.  And that's not good in a broad sense for a system as complex as Illy's. Code should be more robust than the code I write, because I'm not really a proper coder, and it should be properly regression tested against the codebase before it goes live.

I don't want people to think that the sky is falling, because it isn't.  The illy codebase is no better or worse than it was last month, or three months ago (with the exception of last week's NULL bug, which - in all fairness to us - was not our fault, and which we're still trying to get patched by the db vendor).

Illy absolutely has a future.  There's a reason Age of Ascent is being released by a game studio called "Illyriad Games": we're extremely proud of illy and we want it to thrive and grow.  And illy's development future becomes ever brighter, more consistent and more robust with whatever we develop for AoA.

Best,

SC

Thanks for the response but I think you're alienating a huge number of current and by default future AoA players by not addressing the current problems in Illy. Simple question... When is broken lands happening? or many of the previously just around the corner upgrades.
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GM Stormcrow View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Daefis Daefis wrote:

We simply want to know if any of the last few years worth of good intentions are actually really in the pipeline or are we just being strung along with false promises whilst you develop a new game? AoA doesn't personally hold much interest for me, but Illy is something i did actually hope has a future.... or not (you know the answer at least be straight with us)

Yes, these things are in the pipeline.  

The amount of work that's gone into creating the map, topography and biomes of the Broken Lands last year - and the factions within BL, with their behaviours and backstories - represent a huge investment (certainly in our small indie game dev terms) of time, effort and money.  That's not being thrown away.

I'm quite good at building prototype demonstration systems - and part of the problem has been that these prototype systems have generally found their way into the production code environment.  And that's not good in a broad sense for a system as complex as Illy's. Code should be more robust than the code I write, because I'm not really a proper coder, and it should be properly regression tested against the codebase before it goes live.

I don't want people to think that the sky is falling, because it isn't.  The illy codebase is no better or worse than it was last month, or three months ago (with the exception of last week's NULL bug, which - in all fairness to us - was not our fault, and which we're still trying to get patched by the db vendor).

Illy absolutely has a future.  There's a reason Age of Ascent is being released by a game studio called "Illyriad Games": we're extremely proud of illy and we want it to thrive and grow.  And illy's development future becomes ever brighter, more consistent and more robust with whatever we develop for AoA.

Best,

SC
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Originally posted by GM Stormcrow GM Stormcrow wrote:

Originally posted by Le Roux Le Roux wrote:

Hate to admit it, but advertising the promise of a new toy to the fans of the old toy, when the old toy has been slowly falling apart for lack of attention from the maker, is liable to generate some ... well negativity... 

Ed. --  Let me alter that a bit..  perhaps hostility?  Think we will see an increase on the number of alliances at war with the Band of Devs....    and a steeper decline in prestige purchasing . . .

I really do get what you're saying here.  

The illy architecture is very unusual, and the codebase equally so - largely my fault - and for certain (broadly game agnostic) subsystems it makes a hell of a lot more sense to rewrite from scratch (without my kakky-fingered coding that no one understands, including me) than trying to patch.

And that includes new (promised) dev areas as well.  I think I understand the challenges of implementing pathfinding (and hence naval things for illy) and I've even made a pretty good stab at it.  But it's buggy as hell atm, and I'd be much more confident if we could hire someone who was an acknowledged expert in this area to write it from scratch.

There are some truths here about illy's current codebase and current scalability that really need to be addressed - just as much as the promises of shiny new stuff (in either game).

I hope that makes sense as a direction, and if it generates ill will in the short- to medium- term, I do understand why.

SC

We simply want to know if any of the last few years worth of good intentions are actually really in the pipeline or are we just being strung along with false promises whilst you develop a new game? AoA doesn't personally hold much interest for me, but Illy is something i did actually hope has a future.... or not (you know the answer at least be straight with us)


Edited by Daefis - 08 Mar 2014 at 23:54
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A leap of faith the new will make the old work better faster and be more effective thats your premise  

questions 
1/will the space opera be bigger or rely on the the current user population 
2/you want all of us in on it because we like the style of play
3/is that true 
4/ will you spend the right amount of time on those who will not enjoy the new endeavor or just move on to the more profitable enterprise and I don't apportion blame I understand your ambition 
5/will we be left with a gutted Illy as at the moment due to the lack of tournament and new content an inevitable war is going on that has resulted in a change in the nature this game is being played 
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Whatever 1900GMT works out to be in your timezone. 

Luna


Edited by GM Luna - 08 Mar 2014 at 20:52
GM Luna | Illyriad Community Manager | community@illyriad.co.uk
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