fiki574

I can see you have 0 clue about whatever your blabbering is about. The sole reason we went into this open stress test is exactly so these kind of issues would surface and we can solve them. NONE OF CURRENT ISSUES were present in Closed Beta Test with 50+ players at peaks, but now when it came to 200+ players at any given time, problems have surfaced and we can't fix them any way other than having you (players) try to login massively and break everything.
In the end, it's a TEST, not PLAY, get that through your head and don't be edgy cause you haven't been lucky to enter the game properly.

Oh I do remember you well, don't make me tell moderators to pull out chat logs since lots of stuff would surface what you've said about us and lead to your play prohibition.

Wait, weren't you the one shitting on our work, calling us scammers, fakers, incompetent and so on about a week ago? Yes, you were.
How the tables have turned, you're lucky you can even download the files, let alone try to get in the game

I can see you have 0 clue about whatever your blabbering is about. The sole reason we went into this open stress test is exactly so these kind of issues would surface and we can solve them. NONE OF CURRENT ISSUES were present in Closed Beta Test with 50+ players at peaks, but now when it came to 200+ players at any given time, problems have surfaced and we can't fix them any way other than having you (players) try to login massively and break everything.
In the end, it's a TEST, not PLAY, get that through your head and don't be edgy cause you haven't been lucky to enter the game properly.

It's 200, stop complaining.

It's 200, stop complaining.

I don't have anything against hobbyist developers, in fact I do think it's an admirable thing you're doing there, just try to communicate clearer and try to refrain from using very, very suggestive comments about how the project is nearing a state where everyone can access the game; I've been following this project since the beginning and frankly, I've seen more broken promises here than in a teenage drama show.
Re-introducing the progress bar is a great idea; to be honest, apart from knowing there's probably a lot going on behind the curtains I don't have the slightest clue about how close or far we are from a properly functioning game. This may be due to my own damn ignorance or simply bad communication. The progress bar at least gave us the illusion that we were heading towards something that is going to be working one day - eventually.
Lastly, I don't want to come down as an ungrateful brat. Despite my comments here I really think this whole project is something cool and will ultimately end up in us getting to enjoy our favourite game again - thanks to you.
Amen

#3 was what I really intended to address with this post. Over the years, I've come to really care about this project (Even though I'm not a moderator/dev or *cough cough*even a tester) as if it were my own. It sucks to see something you care about go downhill.
I personally think the log is a good idea. It's there if you want to see it, but there's nothing telling you that you have to go look at it. For those who are interested (Me sometimes, but others I really don't care) it's a really nice perk to see that continual progress is being achieved. That's really important to more people than you think.
As far as professionalism from the devs... I don't feel that is as big of an issue as people are making it out to be. I think the mods are a much bigger issue. The mods are here to moderate the community, therefore should be 100% professional, and I feel they seem to migrate toward the "White Knights'" side when there are issues within the community.
@fiki574Hang in there and keep your head high. From the initial push out of the finish date... I have a lot of respect for you to come out and say... "It's our fault, we screwed up". Especially for your age, that shows me that you not only care about this project, but you are trying to do the right thing.

It's almost like some people expect the devs to be Community Managers, and I have to break it to them: They aren't.
They're devs. If they want a moderator to wipe things clean for them, they can do that, but once things get to that point, devs have a tendency to stop listening to any other opinions, and often become insular. The gaming community as a whole has become quite vitriolic over the years, but that's just a side-effect of gaming becoming mainstream, and particularly competitive gaming allowing such angry behavior to fester.
Overall, I think that while things around here could definitely be handled better, there is only so much you can expect when the same people who are developing the game are also trying to deal with a community. At least they talk to us. They could be insular and our only information could come from Fiki's weekly update.
People definitely need to chill out though. Things have been getting a tad ridiculous.
 
Edit: Oh right, and as for the "LEARN 2 SPEAK ENGLISH!" crap: People can stop that. That's just bloody rude. Be happy they can talk to us at all without requiring google translate (which can have hilarious results, but still.)
As for professionalism: What exactly is professional about a bunch of volunteers (particularly students) trying to revive a game for free?
I've actually been surprised at how they've been trying to keep everything handled. It all could have been a lot worse.

The poll thread you're indirectly referring to here has been closed as the replies to that very thread went downhill in means of becoming just another memery.  Treat others how you yourself want to be treated. Being disrespectful and blatantly calling us out won't result in us patting your back. There isn't a message I wrote that got understood correctly, I always turn out to be aggressive or hostile towards someone when in reality it's quite the opposite. I'm sorry you're getting the impression of hostility towards and inside our community, but the reality is a bit different, at least from my point of view. Also, there are many "wise" people who are oh-so-familiar with everything, from community interaction to game development. Then you have those that come , (again, from my point of view) only to provoke. Having two of the mentioned types combined results in a bit frustration, at least with me. Hence I stopped responding actively to pretty much 95% of the similar messages, posts or threads and left others to deal with cause my inter-human contacts tend not to go well and, as said previously, get misunderstood.
If you think that we're benefiting from having the beta closed and not opened, you're dead wrong. We, staff, want this out as much as you do, if not more.
 
EDIT: I'm saying this in general, not directly to you Tazermarks, just to make sure we bypass another misunderstanding.

The poll thread you're indirectly referring to here has been closed as the replies to that very thread went downhill in means of becoming just another memery.  Treat others how you yourself want to be treated. Being disrespectful and blatantly calling us out won't result in us patting your back. There isn't a message I wrote that got understood correctly, I always turn out to be aggressive or hostile towards someone when in reality it's quite the opposite. I'm sorry you're getting the impression of hostility towards and inside our community, but the reality is a bit different, at least from my point of view. Also, there are many "wise" people who are oh-so-familiar with everything, from community interaction to game development. Then you have those that come , (again, from my point of view) only to provoke. Having two of the mentioned types combined results in a bit frustration, at least with me. Hence I stopped responding actively to pretty much 95% of the similar messages, posts or threads and left others to deal with cause my inter-human contacts tend not to go well and, as said previously, get misunderstood.
If you think that we're benefiting from having the beta closed and not opened, you're dead wrong. We, staff, want this out as much as you do, if not more.
 
EDIT: I'm saying this in general, not directly to you Tazermarks, just to make sure we bypass another misunderstanding.

I support an open minded community, and open minds do not think alike, especially with over 20k people. The few dozens/hundreds that are active in my opinion are the patient ones, those that visit rarely tend to be disappointed as they don't see the progress go as the active part does. Of course, testers and staff - people with access to the game - are a different branch and I believe most of them, at least from my perspective, want to persuade the random visitors that there is a lot going on and not to lose hope. 
The poll that was opened and closed... well, I personally wouldn't close it because of a few random offtopic responses as there was still place for more answers from more people and perhaps some of the random visitors after reading the well formulated reasons why the game isn't out yet would be like "yea, perhaps they aren't lazy in there", but as I partly contributed to the topics closure with a response to a random thing, I am not the one to talk - though I said my opinion to begin with.
I agree with you both, but as an old timer on the forum - everyone should understand that certain things are just out of the question and are not going to happen. Even if a hundred or a thousand people voted "release the game in its current state", I believe the priorities of the devs are to make the server work close to flawlessly and it's not going to change. Same goes for repeated questions and demands, it gets tiring after a month or two, let alone literal years. People who aren't investing their time into this project should not be denied a say, but can't expect to have any real leverage on the decisions of staff. The long time supporters versus the impatient ones, as you called it, is just natural since the impatient ones won't be doing their own research and yet demand answers to FAQ questions all the time and long time supporters are tired of that, thus becoming impatient with the impatient ones. After years of answering the same questions over and over, you can't blame anyone for not being welcoming and cheery around people who genuinely can't be active and yet want to be a part of the community. There is no easy way to distinguish between members who are just lazy and those who are curious and want to know more. 
Seeing as you joined early after the project began, you perhaps remember that before Tech Alpha started, the community was much more united, mostly because we have all been around for relatively short time and noone had access, we were all equal and just wanted to play the game. Over time it grew to the point where newcomers were being informed by active members, then by a bot responding to frequent keywords. All that is left now is the header text above chat, since most active members are partaking in testing and don't visit the Forum much, or can't be bothered to answer anymore (my case, I'll admit I am just lazy and tired to do repetitive stuff for so long) while new people keep pouring in and random visitors from the past stumble back here just to find out there are people playing while they are not. Unfortunately, there is no real way to fix this. Noone can make me be patient except me, noone can force anyone who stumbles by to read the entirety of the FAQ or even the header. I would be glad if the community was at its 2015/16 state, but that's unrealistic. Perhaps the best we can hope for is the game coming out and everyone being hyped and wanting to cooperate. I will make no further comments about the moderation teams decision/s as that's currently not related and not fitting the point I am trying to make.
My ramble went a bit random at times for quite too long, but hopefully the message got through - shit ain't perfect, but we all can do our best and it's not anyone's fault, its the natural way of things the way go. 

The poll thread you're indirectly referring to here has been closed as the replies to that very thread went downhill in means of becoming just another memery.  Treat others how you yourself want to be treated. Being disrespectful and blatantly calling us out won't result in us patting your back. There isn't a message I wrote that got understood correctly, I always turn out to be aggressive or hostile towards someone when in reality it's quite the opposite. I'm sorry you're getting the impression of hostility towards and inside our community, but the reality is a bit different, at least from my point of view. Also, there are many "wise" people who are oh-so-familiar with everything, from community interaction to game development. Then you have those that come , (again, from my point of view) only to provoke. Having two of the mentioned types combined results in a bit frustration, at least with me. Hence I stopped responding actively to pretty much 95% of the similar messages, posts or threads and left others to deal with cause my inter-human contacts tend not to go well and, as said previously, get misunderstood.
If you think that we're benefiting from having the beta closed and not opened, you're dead wrong. We, staff, want this out as much as you do, if not more.
 
EDIT: I'm saying this in general, not directly to you Tazermarks, just to make sure we bypass another misunderstanding.

I understand the voting thing, and I have seen your posts about apologizing for the over-ambitious dates that were set. (Very commendable) I was mainly talking about the community aspect (moderators). We need to make it clear that negativity never breeds positivity. I pretty much browse the forum everyday, minding my own business, looking around at what's going on, and I see all these people whining about how the game isn't out, and I kind of find it humorous that at least once a day when I pop on I see someone asking about the beta, when it clearly states that it's in closed beta. But the main thing is... I keep my negative comments to myself, and move on. I don't feel the need to say something negative, and every once in a while (when someone hasn't beat me to it) I refer them to the top of the chat page where they can see what they need to. Our other actives need to take note that negative comments are poison to our community, so I can't sit around and watch "our" community keep poisoning ourselves.
Please if you're active, don't think I'm talking about you specifically, (I literally have no one particular person in mind) I'm just saying to all of them out there, be cautious of how we treat our other members. Let our mods take care of the negative ones, and let's boost up those who are having trouble staying on the HYPE train.

@Tazermarks Unfortunately, we cannot influence on who votes on what and why, it's actually free will not orcestrated by us in any means. There is a difference in criticizing us and blatantly bashing, but i will not get into that much now. Also, I as lead dev and we as team apologized and took responsibility for all fails in the past so I really don't know what else is expected to be done or said in order not to get called out every other day.
I have removed "first of all" and similar sayings from previous post, now that you mentioned it it sounded bit rude. 

Let's get real for a second (throwing out the politically polite hat for a minute)
@fiki574 The thread that I referred to is just the NEWEST thread that was closed due to this same situation happening. I know exactly why it was shut down, but the mods should have not let it get to that point. The bullshit about every time someone says something that isn't in favor of the mods/devs, they get HUGE backlash by the very active members of this community, even if it's not derogatory in any way, and that is completely unacceptable. The "actives" should have left that post alone or played by the rules of that post and let the people that wanted to participate respond. That's the start of what went downhill in this particular instance. The mods and devs need to take accountability when things aren't going happy-go-lucky. They are the "leaders" of community and they really need to step up and say... "you know what this is our fault". As a leader that is the golden rule. "When things go right, it's your teams fault, when things go wrong... its yours"
Next, and I see you are currently trying, is try to read your messages a few times from different people's eyes. I have pretty thick skin, so what you type doesn't get ever bother me, but I do misinterpret your messages quite often. Like the above example, I thought it was toward me until the very end. Also, I know we're from a lot of different parts of the world, but from my perspective, it's very rude to say things like "First of all" "Second of all". Reading it usually is interpreted in a negative way. Use less verbal pauses in your text, as there is less possibility for misinterpretation.
@all others reading this post, c'mon everyone, lets get our act together! enough with the bullshit, enough with the negativity ESPECIALLY TOWARD ONE ANOTHER. Read Fiki's text above! Disregard the first of all second of all words, and it has GREAT meaning. If you make a post, the last thing you want is someone bashing it. Treat each other like we want to be treated. Lets come together and talk cards, strategy, forge things again.
(Politically polite hat back on)

Hi, my name is Michiel
 
This is my first topic, and i just wanne say I don't care how long it takes i keep supporting you guys I was there in the very beginning and i wil keep supporting you guys until the end!
Keep making progress and you wil reach it!
 
I hope you guys wil see this.
Michieltje300

Correct.

Despite the hate of some people, be happy about all the support that you get and remember that there are a lot more (want2be-)players who are spectating your progress quietly and are happy about what you do and what you invest into this project.
Am personally not posting much for example but I'm checking the status here pretty regularly since early 2016. By doing some Web-programming in my spare time I know how timeconsuming bug-searching can be.
Everytime I visit this forum or the devplatform I am happy to see that you're stil working on the game's development and hope that we all will be able to play together asap.

Ooooh, so that's how you're doing the project.
Yeah, with Ragnarok Online, the emulation code was all written from scratch, which then made full use of the original files as written (as far as I remember things working).
The best part was, people weren't rewriting the original code or messing with it at all (at least as far as I remember). Instead they were screwing with the software that interacted with those files. For mob stats, the emulator used it's own files based on everything people knew about the original games. Then people made programs that let private server owners alter the emulation files with more ease (which is how I ended up making custom content, though others went the distance with completely new sprites and everything).
In the end, I just find all of the different approaches quite interesting. Shame we can't just interact with the original files in the old way.
Honestly, RO's private server stuff and the legal shenanigans that happened over it are worth looking in to, even if only for sheer curiosities sake.
Anyway, best of luck Fiki and team. Looking forward to playing someday soon

Not outside of the game itself.

No one lost interest in this game at all. So many friends of mine are waiting and no one is disapointet at all. This game died a long time ago and EA don´t cares wich means without this project there is no chance of it`s revival so the best thing is just to wait. 
Did you every wrote a programm? Sometimes it`s realy tricky and a problem occur then you have to re-code lot´s of things because you can´t get arround. No one can predict some of this thing. Skylords devs had to re-code to an other language to our advantage in terms of speed, reliability and supported players. So yeah the delay is huge but who cares, only people wich don`t get the work behind this and don`t care about it.
Dev post getting short is nothing bad at all. They are informative as allways just not us much details as before but for some good reason so who cares?

The aforementioned questions are important to have answered, and Kiwi has explained well how everyone in the team would answer them.
I would like to add to your second point that alongside the programming department having issues with setting up realistic deadlines for the work they are doing (taking personal time into account), this is not your average game development process you're looking at. What we are doing is reviving a pre-existing game through the same game files and code. Now, normally programming is already an unpredictable task, in which bugs are like hydras; one gets fixed, 2 more appear. In this project, it's like fighting an army of hydras while having no idea where they come from. We did not write the code that our server code needs to interact with, and we do not know the game's code or files inside-out, no matter how much we figure out ourselves. Not only does this make coding highly difficult, but also extremely unpredictable. Where you may be able to expose patterns in your own code's flaws, BattleForge is a labyrinth, and bugs may take minutes to fix, or may take days, weeks or months to fix. That is the margin of error we work with here, and it's not pretty.
Combine this with the fact that people have other duties, jobs, and lives to maintain, and there we get a massive uncertainty level for this project's level of progress. We do progress, but the speeds at which we do so varies depending on all these circumstances; it all adds up. You can't expect the team to work steadily and come across as little bugs as possible, you can't expect us to spend all the time we have on this project either. We're never getting paid for this, we don't always have time, and we're all not capable of working constantly. And as much as we all hate the wait, there is no other option than to progress in the way we currently do. If we were doing a complete remake of the game (which would definitely get the project killed), or if we would know every detail about the way the game was originally programmed, we would have a higher probability to make realistic deadlines, but the fact of the matter is that we don't. And with this absurdly high level of uncertainty, we stopped making deadlines, because we would only hurt the community by doing so for no good reason, and we do not want to disappoint you with yet another wrong prediction.

1. It's been underdevelopment for so long because we do this in our spare time not 24-7. We had to reverse engineer everything before we even started working on anything else, then we had to re-code from C# to C++ which took more time than we thought, we tried hosting the server on windows and that made too many problems do had to go back to Linux, there is more than just the simple "coding" that everyone seems to think is being needed. The code that EA left behind is a mess, as in it basically shouldn't even work but it does and the developers have to work it all out and change it into something they understand. If you see streams now you can see game play (Both PvE, PvP and rPvE games, Auction House, Mail, Direct Trade and Forge) so no, it's not just the Forge still. The only main issue is freezes, crashes and 12 player maps not being playable due to as I mentioned already the coding being such a huge mess.

2. Mistakes where made and the developers thought they could get it out in time but in the end couldn't because problems got in the way like they do in game development all the time, we apologized and that is why we no longer give set dates or times regarding Open Beta.
3. We get money from the project in a sense yes but it all goes towards server upkeep which we barely manage to reach (good servers aren't cheap) and we literally have barely any spare left over (the spare is being saved up for other things that we might need in the future like more servers etc). We also do not force people to donate nor do we expect people to donate. Considering all the staff have jobs I am not sure what we'd spend it on plus the amount we have left over wouldn't even buy a pizza. Keep in mind, some staff have even donated their money into this project themselves (Not that anyone seems to care of course). Finally I'd like to add we LEGALLY can't make any money from this game if we do we risk it being closed down and we don't want to risk that so why would we "spend" the money left over? It would mean a waste of these 3 years of blood, sweat and tears. I can tell you I have not been paid $0.01 since I became Moderator for this project, that's why I have two jobs just to get by.
4. Most people who think we're a scam have been around usually a month or even less and just assume that because they've been here 30 days or so and it hasn't been released that we're a scam. That or the fact when we do giveaways and they don't get access to Closed Beta they throw little tantrums and call us all names under the sun. They don't need to be here to see the streams or updates, it's all on our discord we have a stream channel and a channel for development updates (which is easy to see and have access to). If they don't read stuff before speaking not much we can do about that sadly.
I get why people are losing hope I truly do and I don't blame them, but if they where true fans would they give up? Take the World Cup for example, you want your team to do the best they can and sometimes they don't get to the finals but they at least tried right? and regardless of the outcome you're always there. Well we're trying our asses off, how do you think it makes the staff feel to see people dragging this project in the mud while we're here for free doing this for everyone asking for nothing in return. I can tell you it's pretty shit, we made mistakes I get that but we all do, we're human it's what we do right?
Anyway sorry about this huge wall of text, I hope I responded to all of your questions. If you want to ask anything else please send me a pm and I'll happily take the time to reply to you. So we can keep this thread on topic. Thanks.

Yes, that's true, and it backfired on us - no one's denying it I went over the line with hype build-up.