09/11/2008    |    Devlog    |    Daeke    |    Discuss

Who doesn’t want to work in gaming these days? It’s a huge industry, there’s always plenty of room for growth, and it’s just plain fun. Sitting around, playing games all day? Sounds like what I do anyway, so why not get a job doing it? Well, probably because it’s not all fun and games. Just mostly fun and games.

This summer, I got invited to join the Flying Lab team as the Community Intern. The internship was an opportunity both to learn more about community management (i.e. follow Aether around on a daily basis) as well as learn about each individual team and what they do. I mean, obviously ArtCo does the artwork, but what does that actually mean? How much work goes into designing a town? (Answer: A lot.) Why does it seem like features that are promised don’t get implemented for six months?

Well, being on the inside has taught me a lot about why things happen, and as a player, I can now see why things look the way they do to players, while something completely different may be happening within the company. I’m hoping that I can share a little bit about that with you to understand more about the development process.

One of the tasks I took upon myself this summer was to delve through the forums every day, and pass on a list of the threads I felt were good suggestions for features/changes to our game. Each day, I’d compile the list and hand it to Aether, who would then sort through it and pass the ideas to the appropriate designers. It was very hard for me to do this, both because I don’t like saying “No, this idea is a bad one”, but also because I knew that even if I passed on five awesome features, it was possible that none of them would ever get implemented.

It’s obviously not because the designers ignore ideas, it’s because we have finite resources, a common theme I’m sure you’ve heard before. Speaking hypothetically, should we focus on improving PvP, or should we add more content for those who like missions? Yes, we want to do both, but we have to decide what our priorities are.

A common statement you hear throughout the MMO industry is that only around 10% of your playerbase is active on your forums. What that means to us is that when a very vocal thread pops up about some feature that is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO THE CONTINUING ENJOYMENT OF THIS GAME, we don’t know how important it actually is. What do the other 90% think about this feature?

That’s why we started doing the milestone surveys after each patch is released. With a much higher percentage participation than the forums, we can take those results more to heart in order to understand who our players are and what they want.

Now, clearly I’m not saying we ignore the forums. I already pointed out that I went through them each day to pull out the good threads. Following discussions on the forum are extremely important to us, because it allows us to see the broader point of view on an issue where it’s possible we’ve become narrow-minded. Many times I’ve posted for help in the Boarding Party, just to get multiple opinions on something that we’re simply not sure about.

It’s so great to have a huge resource such as a forum to post thoughts, and get feedback from so many different points of view. And it’s always important to remember that just because a developer hasn’t responded to what is considered “an important thread”, that definitely doesn’t mean they aren’t listening.

There are a huge number of reasons why there might not be an answer. We could be working on a new feature that we don’t want to talk about just yet, we might be waiting to reveal the answer in a devlog, we might be discussing the options internally before we let you know what we come up with, or we might not even be aware that the issue exists. Which is why I drop in often to pull out the issues we aren’t aware of.

One of the other common misconceptions I’ve experienced as a player is seeing the list of new features for a milestone and saying, for example, “Well, why are they wasting their time on redesigning the towns instead of fixing ganking?” And, well, from this end of things, the question doesn’t make any sense. The question translates to “Why is ArtCo doing art instead of writing code?”

We split our developers into teams for a reason, to maximize efficiency. So ArtCo’s development of new animations or towns, doesn’t affect the UI team’s revamp of the Port Status window, which in turn doesn’t affect our progress on PvP changes. They’re all done by different teams, and therefore no one is “wasting their time” on anything they wouldn’t normally be able to do anyway.

Take a look at Milestone 7, for example. Some of the features we have include Mission XP increase, done by ConCo, Camera changes, by DevCo, Luxury Clothing, by ArtCo, and new tutorials, by UI/ConCo. Each team has their own task, and none of them “delay” any of the others.

So, what have I gotten out of this experience? I guess I’m walking out with a new appreciation for game developers, as you’d expect. FLS is doing their damnedest to make Pirates of the Burning Sea great. They are working around the clock nonstop to constantly improve the game even further. We’re never going to be able to make everyone happy, that’s a given. But what we can do is continue to polish and expand the game and to really fulfill its potential. And we can hope that you’ll follow us along for the ride, because, well, who doesn’t like seeing Aether force a pumpkin on my head as part of the development process?

09/11/2008    |    Devlog    |    Daeke    |    Discuss