Two years of changes: Behind the scenes

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Cherek
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Two years of changes: Behind the scenes

Post by Cherek » 09 Jan 2023 06:45

Hello everyone,

So, in another thread Quantum asked a few question that I answered, and in turned into a pretty long answer about what happened behind the scenes when it comes to the major changes we have seen the last 2 (almost) years. Since similar questions pop up now and then, I decided to post my answer here instead, so more people see it.

I hope this provides a better idea about why we decided to change things in the first place, and also why it ended up taking so long, and why the changes have been so erratic and "back and forth". Some of you may perhaps feel these are excuses and that it's proof that we are just as "incompetent" as you think we are. However, I hope most of you will see it as an informative post about the struggles and ups and downs of trying to run a game like Genesis with a bunch of volunteers with very different backgrounds and varying levels of programming knowledge.

Below is a pretty complete explanation about all the major changes the last two years.
Quantum wrote:
08 Jan 2023 21:38
So why the massive change to white hits in the first place if things are later rolled back, changed, almost as massively?
Well, this was of course not anyone's intention. Genesis is, as you all know, run by volunteers, and volunteers come and go. The big white hits change was something initiated by Carnak (with my approval). We had a number of goals with that change. The main goals were:

- Even things out between white hits and special attacks, because before the change your special attack accounted for a very large portion of your total damage, which came with a lot of problems and made all non-DPS guilds and roles rather useless.
- Make melee players more potent compared to casters, since casters were regarded as clearly superior to melee players (which was for the most part true).
- Make more guilds playable (instead of mainly only those with good DPS).
- Make the game harder and more challening overall by increasing white hits (which NPCs usually rely on), and in the process make more roles than just DPS more valuable. For example healers and tanks.

The above things did happen, which was great. However some things ended up being too extreme the other way around. Melee players became more powerful than casters, heal and evade become too valuable, and while the game did become more challenging in some ways, it also became possible to kill stuff much quicker if you overcame the new challenges.

These were things me and Carnak observed quite soon, and things that needed adjusting. We started with trying to fix the caster/melee balance, which was what most players were understandly the most unhappy with, since balance now had flipped completely. However, this turned out to be harder then we expected, and midway through this, Carnak left Genesis. This wasn't something anyone had planned, and definitely not something he had planned. But, this is the risk with Genesis development, and especially when we do global changes. People come and go for various reasons. Stuff happens in RL, motivation run out, people burn out, etc. Now, Carnak _was_ this project. While I shared his vision and we talked a lot about ideas and plans, I am not a very good programmer, so there was no way I could continue without him. So, the project froze in a semi-unfinished state. Now, just to be clear am NOT blaming Carnak at all. Sometimes stuff happens that is beyond our control. I won't go inte detail about why he left, since that's a story for him to tell if he ever returns and wants to. Regardless of reasons, the end result was of course that development stopped for a while.

So, with Carnak gone, what should we do? Well, me and Arman tried to pick up the pieces. I re-assigned Arman to AoB (a role he never really enjoyed, but he took it anyway because he really wanted to help out if he could), and I took over his role as AoD, which was a role I had tried to give to someone else for a long time, since I had too many roles already. It was of course a demotivator for us, as it meant double workload for me again, and Arman returning to something he did not really enjoy doing. But we had no choice but to try to fix things as best we could. Arman, being the only serious programmer between the two of us tried his best to figure out what Carnak had been doing. Now, a new AoB of course also meant a new vision about how to fix things, and a new project was started to sort out caster/melee balance (magic enhancers). Luckily for us, after a while, Zizuph arrived and we quickly realized he was a super-skilled programmer who could help out. He and Arman worked tirelessly for a long while, and for each fix new issues were uncovered, and the caster/melee project grew bigger and bigger, eventually needing big tweaks to all the individual caster guilds. When it finally finished, Arman was, understandbly, so tired that he resigned from the admin, and he is still on vacation from Genesis development.

So, again, we lost our AoB. At this point, Ckrik had reappeared in Genesis after a long semi-slumber, and he also had helped out with the magic stuff and other AoB things for a while. After Arman left, Ckrik became the new AoB. With the caster/melee issue finally fixed, we could then move on to trying to fix the other two things - speed of combat/progress and heal/evade being too good. That also took some time, but I think we have it in a much better state now, although speed of progress may have been a bit "over-nerfed", we'll see about that one.

All in all, fixing the issues that did not work out as intended with the white hits change took WAY longer than it was supposed to of course, and nobody is happy with that. But, now when you all have the full story, perhaps you will understand a bit more about _why_ it took so long. It was a combination of people coming and going, and new people having to start over each time, and also that Genesis is kind of like a archeological excavation. When you start poking around you uncover new things all the time (usually problems), which means a project that seems relatively small often quickly grows.

In hindsight, it's possible me and Carnak were a bit overly enthusiastic. I was new Keeper, he was new AoB, and we both had a lot of energy and motivation and wanted to improve Genesis and fix a number of things. Perhaps we should have done more testing and not made such a dramatic change in one go? Carnak actually did want to take it a bit slower and test more, however, I knew from being in the admin for many years that if you don't make a move when you actually HAVE a motivated and very skilled programmer around, things may never happen and just fizzle out, which has happened many times in the past. So, after a few weeks of testing (mainly me and Carnak playing mortals on the test server) I pushed to make the move, and decided we need "live testing" on a much bigger scale in the real game, and we would deal with issues as we notice them.

Good or bad? We'll never know. It sure caused a lot of issues, and even though we had assumed there would be unforseen issues, there was of course more than we thought. Could some of these issues have been prevented with more testing? Perhaps a whole team of mortal testers? Yes, possibly, but on the other hand, had we continued to test it on the test server for months, perhaps one or both of us had lost interest, become busy iRL, and nothing had happened at all. It was a risk either way. I decided to go for it when we had the chance, and I do think we're in a better place now compared to before the white hits change - even if it was, and still is, a bumpy road.

I think it's important to also remember that before the white hits change a lot of people were really REALLY unhappy with various things, and especially the state of caster vs melee balance, and it was something we really needed to fix. When I saw a chance with a motivated and skilled programmer who also wanted to fix that, I decided to roll the dice and go for it.

Now, just to be clear. The white hits change has NOT been rolled back. That is a misconception. We tuned down the speed of combat (and progress), which were unintended side-effects of the white hits change, but many of the positive effects of the white hits change remain:

- There is a much better balance between white hits and special attacks. A good special attack definitely isnt everything anymore.
- We have a better balance between casters and melee, and there is no really clear winner I think. At least if you ask different players you get different answers, which is a good thing. Is it perfect? No, it never will be, but far better then before the white hits change, where a caster sometimes could burn through some grinders at 4-5 times the speed of melee fighters(!).
- More guilds are definitely playable now, even the Secret Society(!) and other previously deemed more or less unplayable guilds.
- DPS isn't everything anymore, and both tanks and healers now have a bigger place in Genesis. We hope and believe that with the recent adjustments the healers and tanks aren't _too_ good, though.

It's probably hard to remember exactly how the game was before the white hits change, but the above things are in my opinion much better now, and it all started with Carnak's original white hits change. And it has not been rolled back. Me, Arman, Ckrik, and Zizuph (and others) have worked hard to fix the issues with the original white hits change, issues we identified 1.5 years ago and of course wanted to fix much quicker. But, better late then never.
Quantum wrote:
08 Jan 2023 21:38
If things are to be changed, could they be changed incrementally? Small baby steps instead of tsunamis? Sometimes these changes might be easier to digest if they weren't so massive.
Thoughts?
Yes, that's definitley possible, and in a professional development environnment, perhaps that would be the better way to do it. However, for us, where a key person can disappear at any moment for any reason, it's hard to accomplish. Changes tend to come in rather erratic "waves" in Genesis depending on which wizards happen to be active. Now, it's my job to be in charge of the grand plan and get wizards to work in the same direction, but, it's quite hard. Wizards have very different levels of programming skill, so any sort of big changes rely on we actually having someone with the skill to do it, which is not always the case. And since people come and go all the time, it's very hard to stick to a long term plan, since every new admin member, liege, AoB, etc, has their own vision and their own ideas. And since this is all volunteer work I can't really "order" anyone to work on stuff they don't believe in or don't feel motivated to work on. So, its about finding compromises, and/or focus on the things we agree on, and leave the ones we don't agree on be. After all, wizards want to have fun and do things they like and believe in. So, big stuff tend to happen when the "right" people happen to be active at the same time, and when they happen to agree about what to do.

I can totally understand that it feels like we just throw massive changes at you all of a sudden, and then a while later throw another massive change in the other direction to hopefully fix the issues with the first change. And the reason it feels like that is because that's how it is :)

Wow, this became long, but if anyone actually read all of it, you perhaps know a little more about why the changes the last couple of years happened the way they did.

Quantum
Adept
Posts: 131
Joined: 22 Aug 2019 19:33

Re: Two years of changes: Behind the scenes

Post by Quantum » 09 Jan 2023 14:16

Thank you for the openness and information. It is appreciated.

zelie
Beginner
Posts: 12
Joined: 02 Jan 2023 16:33

Re: Two years of changes: Behind the scenes

Post by zelie » 09 Jan 2023 21:14

This was awesome to read. Thank you Cherek for writing this up, and all wizards for all that you do!

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