The "Bitch About Updates" Thread.

[Skanky Butterpuss]

Originally Posted by Ihmhi

He's onto something here.

To be fair, a lot of beta testers (including myself) were burned out on FF by the time it came out. When you guys just got it, a lot of us were playing it for 6-10 months already - with the same people, no less.

funnily enough, i was still on that shit like the crack rock for a long time. until, well, last week pretty much. now, the more i play, the more id rather be doing something else...

[puppychow]

lol...unfortunate tone but good delivery....

[richard nixon]

I feel ya there bro. 12 hr. days make me envy the deceased.

/offtopic

[myersjr]

Originally Posted by ViLE

i see maybe 6% of the people who posted here actually play the game from time to time.

count me in..but i got a job and kids man..not a whole lot of playtime.. :/

[Rutabeggar]

Well it always helps to come on to the only place for FF news and find threads pronouncing FF's eminent demise. The same things get said in every thread, every time one is posted, in some way or another, constructive or destructive. It's pretty obvious that the plight of the community is falling a lot of times on deaf ears because the people that have the actual ability to fix things are generally MIA. So why keep bitching if no one is listening?

As for school letting out and summer vacation approaching...you really believe that activity among the Devs will pick up by a substantial amount? Fact of the matter is, no amount of patches can fix the damage already done to the community and mod by the lack of inactivity on the part of the developers. We needed a training mode 8 months ago, Dustbowl needed to be fixed 8 months ago. 2fort should have been out upon release of the mod, while it's not the most exciting map, it's the most recognized. PR should have started 8 months ago. A donation button should have been slapped on the main page as soon as PR started. Don't say that the community wouldn't have donated either, half of these poor blokes care more about this mod than the people who created it.

Oddly enough, all these things listed above...have been bitched about, debated, cried over for almost as long as this mod has been out, so while this thread initially offered constructive criticism, it's like trying to get George Bush to STFU about terrorists, it just WON'T happen.

And don't get me started on clans and how they "benefit" to the community.

[myersjr]

Originally Posted by Dr.Satan

just can't toss the flag out of the window any longer

Doc, who made the map?? Maybe we can have them change this back to TFC form..?? I liked being able to dump the flag..gives the D something to think about..

[Nuk3m]

I can say for most of us that are on the 'inside' of this whole mod team, are starting to become annoyed with the constant bitching about how 2.1 will never come out, the devs have dropped support for the mod, etc. But when we analyze the situation as followed we understand more clearly how things have been working out:

-Fortress Forever released September 13th 2007 (8 months since release)
-Since, there have been 2 patches supporting it.(within 5 months of release)
-A third is imminent, and will arrive in due time.
-Most dev members have obligations other things aside from Fortress Forever.
-Fortress Forever is free, the devs are not paid to fuel your gaming addiction.
-Things are happening with 2.1, you don't see it cause your not on the 'inside'
-Bitching aggravates devs, making them care less about your patch.
-Nobody in the community that complains seems to want to help.

That appears to be pretty accurate. So just a reminder, 2.1 is being worked. Now please, for the sake of the mod, play it, don't knock it.

-I apologize if this seemed too hostile

[Ihmhi]

Okay, yeah... a bit hostile, but on the money.

I wish I could tell you more about what's going on behind the scenes, but the devs and testers are working on shit. You'll just have to take my word for that guys.

Hell, take my word and the word of every other tester on the team, 'cause that's what they'll tell you.

Mind you, we're not devs, so even we are not 100% privy to the inner workings of the mod. Each and every dev is probably working on some little bit of the game on the side.

[Agent Buckshot Moose]

how 2.1 will never out*

[Icculus]

Originally Posted by myersjr

count me in..but i got a job and kids man..not a whole lot of playtime.. :/

Ditto.

I do work from home though doing I.T. support so as long as the phone is quiet, I can usually be found in-game during the day (when the servers are fairly empty unfortunately).

-Icculus

[Circuitous]

Why... why in the hell do you keep suggesting donations?

It doesn't matter if everyone in this community could chip in $500,000. There's no reason for it to be used. Donations would not cover the potential income and missed schooling of all of the devs such that they could drop everything else and do nothing but work on FF, and getting ads on gaming sites doesn't cost so much that it would be necessary for an entire community to chip in - most of the best advertising we could get would, in fact, be free.

For everything else, well, there's nothing to say. The devs are busy elsewhere and there's nothing we can do about it. It's not like training and 2fort and everything else weren't being worked on eight months ago, it's that the people working on them up and flaked completely, and someone else had to take over. Because people just up and leave, everything has to start over, and if they don't happen to leave the most recent versions of their source files - or their version is just completely wrong - the team is stuck starting from scratch each time, as has been the case.

Basically... get off the team's nuts. You're not helping anything at all, you're just complaining for the sake of it.

[Hammock]

I don't think I'm one who's been complaining about the release of 2.1. It'll come when it comes, that's how I felt about the first 2 patches. But I can definately see where the people who are complaining are coming from. It's not that you guys aren't doing anything, it's that you're not really giving progress updates to stuff you're doing. Keeping your very small player base in the dark completely about everything makes them worry even more the mod will fail.

Look at it from their angle. Small player base to begin with, very little growth, soo small it might not even be compensating for the people who are on their way out from the mod. Absolutely no reporting of any updates made or being worked on in the forums gives the impression nothing is being worked on. Any company can continue to say "We're working on things please be patient".

I would describe this situation as trying to download a 1gig video online through a dialup modem without a progress bar/transfer rate... etc. Instead all you see is a window with two readings "Not Done" "Done" (how many of you would hit cancel 5 minutes into it? I would)

I understand the dev's side of the story too, but I understand theirs as well. All in all it's just one sucky situation.

[Dr.Satan]

lol that's a great analogy handym, but you have to understand that some devs barely have time to do what they are doing...which is working on shit for the mod.

Most barely have time to post in the beta section and 99.9% of the time, when a dev posts in the public section(s) their entire thread turns into poop b/c the community freaks out.

Look at the bots thread (Dr.Evil), the 3 - slot weapon thread(AfterShock), any of the thread where Jiggles has posted in the Tech Support section...almost every time they get attitude and knee jerk reactions mixed with a few guys who actually think about what they are going to say and post it.

TBH I don't blame them for not posting...that's why they have a mod team and a beta team, take it from us all when we say, shit is happening and think of it as another notch in that download bar.

[Phatman]

Thanks Nukem and Dr Satan. I've been growing tired of the whining. I play when I can and still enjoy the game, though having a good video card and enough ram makes HL2 run on high settings and kills my frame rates anywhere I go. :P

[FooL]

mabye a thread should be posted that only the devs can post in but let it be public for viewing so people can go cry about it in another place and mabye if the game gets popular and there is a tournement for money award the devs with some of the moneh ?

[Inceptor]

I am inceptor and I approve of this thread.

Quit whining about the tiny retarded details and appreciate how good it is altogether

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by Dr.Satan

lol that's a great analogy handym, but you have to understand that some devs barely have time to do what they are doing...which is working on shit for the mod.

Most barely have time to post in the beta section and 99.9% of the time, when a dev posts in the public section(s) their entire thread turns into poop b/c the community freaks out.

Look at the bots thread (Dr.Evil), the 3 - slot weapon thread(AfterShock), any of the thread where Jiggles has posted in the Tech Support section...almost every time they get attitude and knee jerk reactions mixed with a few guys who actually think about what they are going to say and post it.

TBH I don't blame them for not posting...that's why they have a mod team and a beta team, take it from us all when we say, shit is happening and think of it as another notch in that download bar.

I agree, some of those knee jerk explosive reactions from dev comments is just plain disgracefull, and it sure wouldn't make me want to post again if I were them.

I totally understand their position, personal life then...this. It's seriously a huge undertaking, I know and respect that, so I don't really complain about slow patch releases.

Other people on the other hand need some breadcrumbs atleast though. Stuff like "Fixed <enter bug here>", sure out of the progress bar from 0-100 fixing 1 bug maybe .5%, but none the less it does show some form of progress, which is what many people need to see. They don't care if it effects them or not, but just something to show something's moving inside

[StrYdeR]

So nukem. How do i get on your inside

[Stiffy]

It's invite only

[Iggy]

I don't think it was overly hostile. I think it was spot on. There is more going on that even the Beta Testers know. Some ideas that get tossed around would be cheered by half of the community, and called blasphamy by the other half. Some ideas are simply rediculous, while others gain serious attention and debate.

There is much we don't talk about publicly, but that doesn't mean things aren't happening. Consider this, as long as debates about progress keep happening, you can count on there being some made.