What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam? - Page 2

What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Various things about Spring that do not fit in any of the other forums listed below, including forum rules.

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Forboding Angel
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Forboding Angel »

raaar wrote: Most people who wrote negative reviews have less than an hour logged. The lobby needs to just work. If it doesn't people quit and never look back.
Ftfy.
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Silentwings
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Silentwings »

support ... half a dozen years ago
It is clear that there must be a cut-off point somewhere, or the demands placed on engine developers simply grow and grow over time - not feasible. The discussion relates mostly to how to handle people who are using mid-range machines/cards/specs from older than half a dozen years ago.

I don't think most of us content developers are in a position to judge the demands that pandering to "old" gfx cards places on engine devs - and those who are should join the technical discussion. Where game devs can be useful is by collecting information on what their playerbase is actually doing (as ZK has done), but the final say here goes to the engine devs - they are not going to ignore the demands of playerbase sizes & their current hardware, but it is far from being the only factor to worry about.
Google_Frog
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Google_Frog »

I learned (or at least had reinforced):
  • There has to be someone taking responsibility for the entire user experience, from when they press play on steam. Everything that users see is 'the game' .
  • The game has to look like a game, not an IRC program.
  • Players should have enough content to instantly start playing once the steam download is complete.
  • Battleroom multiplayer is not scalable.
  • There should be a really easy way to start a singleplayer game against the AI.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Forboding Angel »

Google_Frog wrote: [*]Players should have enough content to instantly start playing once the steam download is complete.
Nah. Most of the AAA games that I play require me to download tiny updates before I can play. Sc2, war thunder, bf1, pubg, etc. Having to download small updates before you can play is exceedingly common and since it makes for a better product, I'm a-ok with that.
hokomoko
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by hokomoko »

Forboding Angel wrote:Nah. Most of the AAA games that I play require me to download tiny updates before I can play. Sc2, war thunder, bf1, pubg, etc. Having to download small updates before you can play is exceedingly common and since it makes for a better product, I'm a-ok with that.
Games of higher calibre than spring games or games that you've paid more for, can allow themselves to put extraneous hurdles on the player.
With an unknown free game, the limit after which you give up, uninstall and go play LoL is much lower.
raaar
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by raaar »

Forboding Angel wrote:
raaar wrote: Most people who wrote negative reviews have less than an hour logged. The lobby needs to just work. If it doesn't people quit and never look back.
Ftfy.

ah so lobbies suck? Your game has it's own custom lobby. It's your lobby, and although i'm grateful for your enthusiasm and such, Weblobby is a source of problems. We spent the last half hour trying to help a player fix an issue where the weblobby thinks the game is running but it isn't. And springlobby people still refuse to show which lobby people are using, which makes debugging harder in general.

After all these years we have problems with the basics like managing spring settings.

I dunno what to say. It's like 90% of the work is done, but..

here's a joke:

Code: Select all

[00:50:06] <raaar> he started and then left on the other room
[00:50:09] <raaar> i wonder if it worked
[00:50:46] <Q9650gram> i dunno
[00:51:11] <Aukan> !start
[00:51:11] * nebula1 * Unable to start game, following players are not ready: Aukan,Q9650gram
[00:51:24] <Aukan> !start
[00:51:24] * nebula1 * Unable to start game, following players are not ready: Aukan,Q9650gram
[00:51:25] <raaar> ready up aukan
[00:51:33] <raaar> !balance
[00:51:33] * nebula1 * Balancing according to current balance mode: clan;skill (balance deviation: 8%)
[00:51:50] <Aukan> !start
[00:51:50] * nebula1 * Unable to start game, following players are not ready: Aukan,Q9650gram
[00:52:03] <raaar> click the "i'm ready" button
[00:52:09] <Aukan> !start
[00:52:09] * nebula1 * Unable to start game, following players are not ready: Aukan,Q9650gram
[00:52:16] * nebula1 * Aukan, you are not allowed to call command "start" in current context.
[00:52:26] <raaar> aha
[00:52:33] <Aukan> !start
[00:52:33] * nebula1 * Unable to start game, following players are not ready: Aukan,Q9650gram
[00:52:35] <raaar> sorry
[00:52:37] <raaar> hum
[00:52:43] <Q9650gram> !balance
[00:52:43] * nebula1 * Balancing according to current balance mode: clan;skill (teams were already balanced, balance deviation: 8%)
[00:52:45] <raaar> you need to ready up
[00:52:59] <raaar> there should be a checkbox or a button or something in your lobby client
...
[00:53:03] <raaar> which does that
[00:53:31] <Q9650gram> hmm
[00:53:39] ** Aukan left the battle ().
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Forboding Angel
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Forboding Angel »

hokomoko wrote:Games of higher calibre than spring games or games that you've paid more for, can allow themselves to put extraneous hurdles on the player.
With an unknown free game, the limit after which you give up, uninstall and go play LoL is much lower.
Asking the player to download 200kb of data before they can play is not some sort of hardship.
raaar wrote:Your game has it's own custom lobby. It's your lobby, and although i'm grateful for your enthusiasm and such, Weblobby is a source of problems.
This is misleading bullshit. My game has a skin that drapes over weblobby, that is it. SWL solves many problems. For one, it's the only lobby that is remotely consistent with downloads (but it has it's moments of fail). It's the only lobby that broadcasts status such as download percentages. It is the only lobby that has any sort of autohost integration.

Weblobby is a source of problems as Springlobby is a source of problems as x is a source of problems and y is a source of problems.

It seems the only lobby to date that actually solves issues instead of creating more, is chobby, and unfortunately, chobby isn't usable with uberserver yet.
raaar
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by raaar »

well, yea, calling it a "source of problems" is unfair. I'm just frustrated by the whole thing. Sometimes I ask users to change to springlobby to play stuff other than EVO and it fixes their issues. It also recurrently generates confusion when they say they're already using a spring lobby and i have to explain...

Chobby seems to be evolving nicely. The name is horrible though. Chobby?

I'm still inclined to keep recommending springlobby though as a generic client compatible with multiple games and engine versions and such. Lobby within game is something people expect, but in my opinion is not a requirement and has some drawbacks (performance seems to be one atm, but it's small).
Google_Frog
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Google_Frog »

Forboding Angel wrote:
hokomoko wrote:Games of higher calibre than spring games or games that you've paid more for, can allow themselves to put extraneous hurdles on the player.
With an unknown free game, the limit after which you give up, uninstall and go play LoL is much lower.
Asking the player to download 200kb of data before they can play is not some sort of hardship.
We're not talking about 200kb, although even small downloads can be a problem. If players think they have installed the game (ie. finished the steam download and autoupdate) then find out they need to download another 500mb you've added another point at which they may decide to give up. Also I doubt the Spring infrastructure can deal with that many players each requiring 500mb from the servers. This brings me to why even 200kb can be a problem, if all of the infrastructure collapses then players should still download enough from steam directly for a decent amount of singleplayer.

I'm not necessarily arguing that all of this is required by all games. This is just what I learned and the standard I have set for ZK.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Forboding Angel »

Google_Frog wrote:
Forboding Angel wrote:
hokomoko wrote:Games of higher calibre than spring games or games that you've paid more for, can allow themselves to put extraneous hurdles on the player.
With an unknown free game, the limit after which you give up, uninstall and go play LoL is much lower.
Asking the player to download 200kb of data before they can play is not some sort of hardship.
...each requiring 500mb from the servers...
You would have to be a complete moron as a gamedev to do this.

I am talking about 200kb because usually my updates are about that size. Occasionally needing a few mb. Anytime anything of size happens, the steam builds are updated.
Google_Frog
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Google_Frog »

Forboding Angel wrote:
Google_Frog wrote:
Forboding Angel wrote:
Asking the player to download 200kb of data before they can play is not some sort of hardship.
...each requiring 500mb from the servers...
You would have to be a complete moron as a gamedev to do this.

I am talking about 200kb because usually my updates are about that size. Occasionally needing a few mb. Anytime anything of size happens, the steam builds are updated.
Good, we agree. I'm not telling you to do something, I am just recalling that there were complaints from players that they had downloaded a downloader and I took this as a lesson.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Forboding Angel »

That's before I started packaging everything in Steam. I never expected so many people to join in such a little time and there was no mechanism in the lobby at the time to support including rapid files (SWL at the time was Dojo, whereas now it is Reactjs).
Google_Frog
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Google_Frog »

I'm not treating this thread as "tell forb what to do" and I hope nobody else is either. It is annoying to have people try to direct your work in progress when they don't know very much about the current state of things and are not likely to contribute. The thread seems to be about learning from evo reviews and most of them are quite old so we're talking about old things. I'm glad that we've all learned things and that things have improved.

Perhaps this thread is less good/useful than I thought.
Yes I am aware that some noticeable ones are made from 2014. However I do not know that some of the issues are revolved today, so please be patient with me if I didn't know that some of them have been fixed already.
Super Mario what are you intending to contribute?
Super Mario
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Super Mario »

Google_Frog wrote:]Super Mario what are you intending to contribute?
...Did you not read the rest of my post after you quoted? I already give my thoughts about this, I don't see how that is not contributing. Perhaps elaborating on what you mean by that?
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ThinkSome
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by ThinkSome »

hokomoko wrote:
Forboding Angel wrote:Nah. Most of the AAA games that I play require me to download tiny updates before I can play. Sc2, war thunder, bf1, pubg, etc. Having to download small updates before you can play is exceedingly common and since it makes for a better product, I'm a-ok with that.
Games of higher calibre than spring games or games that you've paid more for, can allow themselves to put extraneous hurdles on the player.
With an unknown free game, the limit after which you give up, uninstall and go play LoL is much lower.
I truly wonder why some key people here are so against charging money for spring games. In addition to raising the above barrier, it would also give the spring projects funds to properly advertise stuff (i.e. have a feedback loop)
hokomoko
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by hokomoko »

I don't think people are against paying for spring games.
Some people are against their own work being commercialised, that's all.
raaar
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by raaar »

ThinkSome wrote:
hokomoko wrote:
Forboding Angel wrote:Nah. Most of the AAA games that I play require me to download tiny updates before I can play. Sc2, war thunder, bf1, pubg, etc. Having to download small updates before you can play is exceedingly common and since it makes for a better product, I'm a-ok with that.
Games of higher calibre than spring games or games that you've paid more for, can allow themselves to put extraneous hurdles on the player.
With an unknown free game, the limit after which you give up, uninstall and go play LoL is much lower.
I truly wonder why some key people here are so against charging money for spring games. In addition to raising the above barrier, it would also give the spring projects funds to properly advertise stuff (i.e. have a feedback loop)
I think this is one of the key challenges for the future of the community: how to make money and how to distribute that money "fairly" across the stakeholders (engine devs, infrastructure, game devs, advertisers, top players...).

It can be toxic, though...
Super Mario
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Super Mario »

Who is exactly against making money here? We have a game named pure that does exactly that. Guess how that turn out.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Forboding Angel »

It only turned out that way because Argh was a dick and the entire spring community jumped all over his ass for going commercial. Other than being an asshole, he did nothing wrong, but he still got mercilessly shit on for taking pure commercial.

Don't try to rewrite history.
Super Mario
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Re: What can spring engine/game devs learn from negative reviews of evo rts on steam?

Post by Super Mario »

Forboding Angel wrote:It only turned out that way because Argh was a dick and the entire spring community jumped all over his ass for going commercial. Other than being an asshole, he did nothing wrong, but he still got mercilessly shit on for taking pure commercial.

Don't try to rewrite history.
Don't try to put words in my mouth Forb.

At the end of the day, it's entirely within his right to do, as he own the copyright regarding the art assets.
The point still being it is a game that has been sold for money, which the current situation of said game being completely abandon by author is not very encouraging. We can argue all day long regarding the reasons on why the author abandoned of the game, it does not change the reality of the current situation.
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