D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

[satheron]

D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

So I could be wrong, but it seems to me that blizzard is slowly getting out of touch with the diablo 2 community.

I'm getting this idea after reading this following post from bashiok on the 1.13 patch issues;

"Thanks. One problem we're running in to with some reports at the moment though is that people are using slang terms for issues because they've been around for so long. We still need detailed steps on how to reproduce all bugs, especially long standing issues."

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=21730648024&pageNo=1&sid=3000#17

And I'm not really talking about Bashiok, I realize he is the messenger for the programmers in-charge of older projects.
And yes one could say that TPPK is an issue isolated to hardcore, and its not something the entire D2 community plays.



Now, when I read this post, that says to me that they didn't even know what something like TPPK is, and they are just now educating themselves on the subject?

Are the Programmers really that off base with the games they are in charge of changing?

What do you guys think about this?

 

[Robobaby]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

Why should they be familiar with d2 abbreviations and slang? The average player barely speaks English in this game and when someone says something along the lines of this:

'Fix c/c sin cuz wb is broken and blocks smite.'

I fully expect any normal human being to say:

'What?'

If you can't be bothered to spend a few seconds parsing your sentences, if you can't be bothered to articulate yourself in a clear and concise manner then Blizzard employees shouldn't bother to listen to you.

Anyway its the legacy team thats handling the 1.13 patch. They work on several old Blizzard relics and in the case of this game I can say almost for certain that there are no original Diablo II developers on this team. Having just reacquainted themselves with the incomprehensible garbage that the average Warcraft III player spouts, I feel deep felt sympathy for the poor schmucks that get a hard time from people like you because they haven't yet reacquainted themselves with the incomprehensible garbage that falls out of the frothing mouths of the average Diablo II player.

 

[ancalagon]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

Why should they be familiar with d2 abbreviations and slang? The average player barely speaks English in this game and when someone says something along the lines of this:

'Fix c/c sin cuz wb is broken and blocks smite.'

I fully expect any normal human being to say:

'What?'

If you can't be bothered to spend a few seconds parsing your sentences, if you can't be bothered to articulate yourself in a clear and concise manner then Blizzard employees shouldn't bother to listen to you.

Anyway its the legacy team thats handling the 1.13 patch. They work on several old Blizzard relics and in the case of this game I can say almost for certain that there are no original Diablo II developers on this team. Having just reacquainted themselves with the incomprehensible garbage that the average Warcraft III player spouts, I feel deep felt sympathy for the poor schmucks that get a hard time from people like you because they haven't yet reacquainted themselves with the incomprehensible garbage that falls out of the frothing mouths of the average Diablo II player.

Actually all feedback on the official forums regarding patch requests was in understandable format, I agree with you ingame some kids just speak gibberish abbreviated talk, but it seems to me like you got some personal agenda going on here.

 

[Robobaby]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

If it was all in an understandable, clear and concise format then why on earth would anyone ask you to stop using slang terms? You see the disconnect here right?

 

[satheron]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

If it was all in an understandable, clear and concise format then why on earth would anyone ask you to stop using slang terms? You see the disconnect here right?

Well there is another disconnect that can be noted, the one where blizzard asked for feedback on what players wanted in the patch, and got close to 1000 responses, a lot of them being clear concise answers explaining what the problems were.

You can't say that 100% of the community went "LOLWTF MAKE TPPK GO BY NOAW THX LOL WUG ELSE IN PATCHS?!"

 

[Kretschmer]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

To me this sounds like trying to save face.

There were hundreds of players chomping at the bit to explain imbalances, exploits, and bugs in excruciating detail for eight solid months. Hundreds of clean-English posts have carefully explained the steps to recreating many of these bugs in the past few days; some of these posts have 3 or 4 pages of concurrence.

There has been eight months to read and ask for clarification. How could someone parse the Test Realm forums for more than half an hour and not know how to reproduce TPPK, drop-barb, etc? We know that there's internal Blizzard documentation on TPPK due to the changes that made hydra, guided arrow, etc disappear upon portaling to town.

I'm left with an overwhelming impression of laziness and sloth.

 

[Locohead]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

What is this game "Diablo 2" of which you speak?

- Coders

 

[vdzele]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

I mostly agree on what Robo had to say, perhaps a bit strong language for my taste…but accurate enough.

I just have to add that these programmers are probably new to this game, remember that North Blizzard is out for a long time and they could have change few sets of programmers since it was originally coded.

I know for a fact that it’s 10 times harder to change some ones code when the job is finished. It past 10 years since this game start coding and that is light years in programming. Every programmer\team has their own unique way of thinking and I think they have a rough time in understanding “what the hell did say in this code list”. Especially if they gave a job for just few of them.

 

[Lorg1]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

Why should they be familiar with d2 abbreviations and slang? The average player barely speaks English in this game and when someone says something along the lines of this:

'Fix c/c sin cuz wb is broken and blocks smite.'

I fully expect any normal human being to say:

'What?'

If you can't be bothered to spend a few seconds parsing your sentences, if you can't be bothered to articulate yourself in a clear and concise manner then Blizzard employees shouldn't bother to listen to you.

Still, (IMO ^^) anyone who has applied, let alone gotten a job at blizzard as a game programmer,should be fanatic blizzard fan and therefore should have played d2 so much that abbrevations and d2 slang is second nature. Let alone the fact that tppk could have been googled and mystery solved in what 5 seconds?

 

[ancalagon]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

Still, (IMO ^^) anyone who has applied, let alone gotten a job at blizzard as a game programmer,should be fanatic blizzard fan and therefore should have played d2 so much that abbrevations and d2 slang is second nature.

Agreed! I Would kill for even some crappy temp job at Blizzard!!!!

 

[stillman]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

^You wouldn't smuggle any plastic explosives in there, would you?

 

[Qveasd1]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

Still, (IMO ^^) anyone who has applied, let alone gotten a job at blizzard as a game programmer,should be fanatic blizzard fan and therefore should have played d2 so much that abbrevations and d2 slang is second nature.

I would have thought being a good programmer to be more important.
But I agree on google part.

 

[superdave]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

lol noobz!

http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=127257

 

[ancalagon]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

lol noobz!

http://www.purediablo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=127257

lol XD

10chars

 

[krischan]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

I'm quite sure that the current D2 programmers will jump for joy, start crying and then pass out when D3 is out. It must be a nightmare to do any kind of development for an 8 year old software system on which several generations of developers were used up on. It's like having a table full of billard balls and a blind and deaf person has to squeeze in a new one. You can be sure that another one will drop from the table. The problem is that you will only notice it if you are lucky and it falls on your foot.

 

[angiras]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

I seriously doubt that there is a "team" that worked on the patch. The job was probably given to the janitor, who was asked to make the patch on his lunch break. Seriously, any half-witted modder could have made these changes in less than one day. Its not frikkin rocket science. The truth is that Blizzard could care less about D2, which probably accounts for less than .0001% of its total current revenue, and it would really like to drive all D2 players into WoW, out of sheer frustration.

 

[Runestar]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

I am thinking that perhaps it is not actually coding the changes which took so much time but rather, deciding on what exactly to change in the patch.

For all we know, maybe simply deciding on increasing the damage for say, corpse explosion took weeks to first agree that a change was warranted, and what the final values should be.

Just because we didn't see any change for say, TPPK may not mean this issue was not even considered at all. Maybe the designers did in fact bring it up, try to think of a viable solution, but eventually rejected it after much debate for whatever reason remains their own.

I do not want to know how long it took them to debate over what names the barbarian mercs should be changed to though. :whistling:

 

[Robobaby]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

I seriously doubt that there is a "team" that worked on the patch. The job was probably given to the janitor, who was asked to make the patch on his lunch break. Seriously, any half-witted modder could have made these changes in less than one day. Its not frikkin rocket science. The truth is that Blizzard could care less about D2, which probably accounts for less than .0001% of its total current revenue, and it would really like to drive all D2 players into WoW, out of sheer frustration.

Then you go and fix all the problems in this game if any half witted modder could do it. Of course you haven't done it yet because you can't and never could. Theres something incredibly wretched about people that get free handouts, complain incessantly about them because they are not exactly what they want and do nothing to try and get what they want. Either fix the game yourself, give constructive assistance and encouragement to the people that are trying to fix the game for you or just stop talking because your opinion is less than worthless.

 

[ancalagon]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

Then you go and fix all the problems in this game if any half witted modder could do it. Of course you haven't done it yet because you can't and never could. Theres something incredibly wretched about people that get free handouts, complain incessantly about them because they are not exactly what they want and do nothing to try and get what they want. Either fix the game yourself, give constructive assistance and encouragement to the people that are trying to fix the game for you or just stop talking because your opinion is less than worthless.

Chill out man, here's a glass of Chillaxed and Coke. Drink up.

 

[Robobaby]

Re: D2 programmers out of touch with d2 community?

I aint angry at all. Just at a loss for describing people like him and you. 'Wretched' sums it up pretty well but I suppose you should probably get back to blasting Bashiok in this thread. Save the Chillaxed and Coke for yourself eh?