CA - Community Annihilation :P

[reivanen]

When reading the CA thread one thing becomes very clear; there are many CA players who are not happy with some of the changes the CA developers do. Still the changes are being adopted, even though the majority of the playerbase and even many of developers disagree.

The CA developers have stated clearly that its not playerbase driven development, and it never was intended to be. I think the players should decide how the mod is developed - just think about the scenario of a commercial game developer not listening to the players that bought their game and how that would turn out.

Since spring is free, we have an option here. Through Springdownloader, a module could be made that copied the CA commits, and for every commit there would be a vote yes/no, and voting status at the time of the next ca commit would decide if it was implemented or not. On top of that at every stable, there would be a vote at the forums that ensures even people not actively using springdownloaders module could be part of the decisions.

Ofcourse all credits would be given for the CA developers work, this would just be the communitys voice of what they want to adopt of the developers' ideas. Ofcourse this exact framework is already in place and could be used in CA development if they wanted to.

[Wolf-In-Exile]

Idealistic, but unrealistic and impractical.

There is a saying, "too many cooks spoil the soup", and another "you can't please everybody".

I think the players should decide how the mod is developed

So what happens when everyone has differing opinions on how a certain thing should be developed?

just think about the scenario of a commercial game developer not listening to the players that bought their game and how that would turn out.

Happens. All. The. Time.

[TheFatController]

It's like a giant bowl of drama waiting to happen.

Imo great things could be done if you just took CA from around revision 1200ish (pre-economy centre, pre-normalization scripts) before it started to go downhill and turn it into what it should have been - a proper effort to improve and add exciting new features to the AA/BA line of mods.

[lurker]

Should? Don't we have enough TA clones? 2-3 is fine with different goals, but the current count is ridiculous.

[Forboding Angel]

AA was player driven, and got really really good, then took a nosedive into the shit.

[Licho]

How would devs be motivated if their hard work can be reverted by knee jerk reactions of public player who dont understand broader concept or refuse to test it properly..

If you want to impact mod development, there is easy way for everyone - start contributing, the more you contribute the greater say you have..

[jK]

Seems like they don't want development, they just want another BA ... (keeping the old)

PS: Please, stop accuse us (the ca devs) for being at odds. We agree over the problems very well! We just differ in the solutions! Also we are very happy with the current state of CA.

[Otherside]

I dislike many changes in CA but some are livable but tbh im not content with CA's current development and trying to point that out got me muted and removed from CA dev team.

As much as CA dev's say they listen to the players in all reality they dont

and the whole ticket system is used to distract/discourage people because it takes effort to do so and most of the time they are ignored so people cba to make tickets. And dev's dont follow there own guidelines.

Right now its in a stage of tyranical development between a number of dev's and a spin off/player driven version would be a vast improvement imo.

The ammount of hypocrisy in CA development is lolers ;}

in before det...

this does not apply to the whole dev team just some individuals who ruin it and dont listen to there own advice

[TheFatController]

Well if they kicked you off the dev team at least they made one good decision for the mod.

[Pxtl]

I thought CA used a publicly-writeable SVN? Doesn't that let anybody force the issue?

I mean ultimately, if you want a free mod, that'd be the way to go. Pick a major mod, fork it into some public SVN, and give players the address. If you like, you can occaisionally merge in changes from CA.

[Licho]

Lol tickets being useless and used to distract/discourage? Most are actually from CA devs I make like 1 per day!

You just refuse to read them... your fault..

[reivanen]

How would devs be motivated if their hard work can be reverted by knee jerk reactions of public player who dont understand broader concept or refuse to test it properly..

If you want to impact mod development, there is easy way for everyone - start contributing, the more you contribute the greater say you have..

How about making CA test releases playground for the devs, their ideas would be tested and an opinion could be made by everyone, and then the vote would take place at stable releases. Stables could be made less frequent for extensive testing of new ideas and balance.

Since the introduction of springdownloader and tasclient integration, new test versions are 100% hassle-free to get, so everyone could participate in testing, or just play the community voted stable releases.

[Licho]

I think you overestimate number of players CA has and their willingness to contributes..

[reivanen]

I think you might underestimate the playerbase growth if the players actually feel its a joint project they are actively part of.

I for one would like to take actively part in gametesting, helping developers to test out their ideas and code. But i would also like to have a vote when it comes to what of the changes are ultimately taken into the rarely released stable CA.

Many ppl think a drawback of ca is that it changes all the time - the above mentioned development strategy would give these players the tested and community voted stable release which stays the same for a month or so.

[Crayfish]

I am against the idea of constraining the developers by the players whims. This is especially true considering that they are dealing with a tiny player base compared to what they could have in the future, and that the current players are probably skewed towards views that may not represent those of the eventual (possible) target audiences.

Nevertheless, on the other side of the coin, it is good for players to put across their viewpoints. Formal compulsion would simply be a bad idea and would probably alienate the people doing the work, leaving no development at all.

[Hobo Joe]

Do me a favor and visit the Team Fortress 2 forums. (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/f ... y.php?f=80)


Now tell me it's good to let players decide what's best.

[imbaczek]

99% of the players don't even know what they want, but they're happy to moan about it anyway.

[Jasper1984]

I like CA for being very different from BA gameplay-wise, that is afaik part of what they are trying to do, and what annoys people sometimes. The gameplay is just much more under development then that of BA. I also like it for actually using new models, instead of promising to do so one day. Although maybe that is just the role of BA in spring, being stable.

I think CA devs should just make the choices like they are used to, if you dislike it, just read what they write about it or ask questions or make suggestions. These should be specific, respectful and well-written. Try find other suggestions of the same too. Read a lot of stuff at caspring.org first.

[manored]

I think that then people are working for free what they do in their free work is their choice, and their choice only :)

[smoth]

It's like a giant bowl of drama waiting to happen.

I giant bowl of drama floating in the sea of drama that is this forum.