11 replies to this topic

[spoonheb]

Recently the Runescape channel uploaded a video entitled Behind The Updates.

If you haven't seen it yet, here it is:

The description reads: "Paul M cornered Mark to ask about how he chooses what content his team of trusty developers will be working on this year."However I notice Mark just so happened to have a microphone tucked into his collar, Good cornering Paul.

Since this video isn't exactly a regular behind the scenes video it is somewhat confusing to me. The main things I want to bring up are when Mark say's something along the lines of "we look at what hasn't been updated for awhile and work on content for that" it shows a quick clip of a player farming. Do you think this means there will be a farming update soon, or was it just an example? I could see if there is a farming update it would have to be a pretty sizable update as the skill doesn't lend itself to much unless they just add a new tree or something boring.

Also, I'm no programming or developer expert but when he says it takes them up to 12 months to develop a grandmaster quest such as The Brink of Extinction. that scares me. How does a company that puts that amount of time and resources into one piece of content which isn't even that great stay profitable or sustainable.

He also mentioned how they enjoy taking suggestions from players and those are often things they want to see in the game as well. I hope they take more player suggestions at things such as Runefest and the forums because those often become the best pieces of content.

Some random things mentioned:

Spoiler

He also says they look at bugs and problems with the content. (lol, just like saga's and all that dead content?)
Why bother reworking Demon Slayer, it isn't even that bad IMO.
He also said they all play Runescape as well. I highly doubt this because some things are just so apparent and never get fixed.

Mod Mark lost in thought:

Spoiler

Edited by spoonheb, 12 January 2013 - 11:58 PM.

[Defender17]

I don't think 12 months of development necessarily means that the quest specifically received the undivided attention of Jagex.  I'm sure they divide their workload into small separate teams to produce different content, meaning a quest that could be done in 3 months instead takes 12, but at the same time loads of other content is released at a steady rate.

As for not discovering bugs, I play tons of other games and rarely, find any bugs/glitches.  If I watch a YouTube video or visit a forum, I discover the existence of one for the first time.  Unless it's something that interferes with day-to-day playing, I most likely will have an experience that is the developers were hoping for, simply because I am not trying to break the game.  If they're playing the game to have fun, which I hope they are, then I think they mostly discover glitches and bugs the same way I have been finding them - through the community.  Now, discovery and patching are two separate things.  If they're not fixing a famous problem, then they probably have bigger problems to fix.

[dark knight]

In terms of the development time that was mentioned, I work as a administrator at a company and was previously a developer. I still actually do development from time to time but not as often as I had. I am an additional resource if needed.

At any rate, it comes down to what he means by development time. Chances are development time doesn't only mean time that they code. Development time also includes time that it takes to go through the rest of the software development lifecycle. That is the time to gather requirements, design an update, code the update, test the update, and eventually release it. When creating applications in general coding should be the smallest amount of time in the best of all possible worlds. It could be they spend more time gathering requirements about what the update should do and should look like then designing that. There are different methodolgies to appoarch this. It depends on it if they taking a waterfall approach to their application development or an agile approach. Each approach builds time in along the way for different phases of creation of the content.

The last project I was on for the company I work for it took us 18 months to get an online credit card payment system online. That is mostly because of the requirements changing, scope of the project changing, and finally rework that has to be done.

I agree with Defender that they probably have small teams working on pieces of content so that they can maximize the amount of content they are working on at any one time. That makes sense considering the frequency of updates and the time it typically takes to go through the SDLC. That team that is tasked with a certain update probably goes through the SDLC for that particular update.

[spoonheb]

Defender17, on 12 January 2013 - 09:45 PM, said:

I don't think 12 months of development necessarily means that the quest specifically received the undivided attention of Jagex.

dark knight, on 13 January 2013 - 08:56 AM, said:

I guess this seems like a bit much to me because in terms of development time versus actual game play time the development far outweighs how long the piece of content is relevant for.
Also in some company and industry reviews employee's say they frequently work overtime, so I somewhat expected shorter development time (in terms of days/months) because of that.

[5 x]

I'm glad Mod Mark is still in charge of the content-designing team. The state of the game would be much, much worse if he didn't run the place: at least he knows the lore and helps maintain the game (quite) consistent... or so I hope.

[Nebbo 67]

5 x, on 13 January 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

I'm glad Mod Mark is still in charge of the content-designing team. The state of the game would be much, much worse if he didn't run the place: at least he knows the lore and helps maintain the game (quite) consistent... or so I hope.

He is pretty much the reason the game is in the state it is... All of his great ideas have been utterly retarded and he keeps dragging the game in the wrong direction... Remember his grand plan for BH? That was a hillarious fail.

[Blackenese]

5 x, on 13 January 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

I'm glad Mod Mark is still in charge of the content-designing team. The state of the game would be much, much worse if he didn't run the place: at least he knows the lore and helps maintain the game (quite) consistent... or so I hope.

Not sure if srs...

[ToeJam]

Blackenese, on 13 January 2013 - 02:32 PM, said:

5 x, on 13 January 2013 - 12:15 PM, said:

I'm glad Mod Mark is still in charge of the content-designing team. The state of the game would be much, much worse if he didn't run the place: at least he knows the lore and helps maintain the game (quite) consistent... or so I hope.

Not sure if srs...

If you disagree... then explain why please

[Blackenese]

ToeJam, on 13 January 2013 - 02:38 PM, said:

If you disagree... then explain why please

Basicly what nebbo said, he clearly didnt listen to what the players asked for instead went off and did it his own way which turned out very successfull didnt it?

[ToeJam]

Blackenese, on 13 January 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

ToeJam, on 13 January 2013 - 02:38 PM, said:

If you disagree... then explain why please

Basicly what nebbo said, he clearly didnt listen to what the players asked for instead went off and did it his own way which turned out very successfull didnt it?

What Nebbo referred to was strictly wildy content and that is something that's been on the down turn for ages. Believe me, I'm frustrated as a clanny too that our community has not been listened too.... but whether you like it or not, we're a minority group. Saying he 'clearly didn't listen to what players asked for' is not strictly true since the majority of players are skill/pvm based.

[Blackenese]

ToeJam, on 13 January 2013 - 03:04 PM, said:

Blackenese, on 13 January 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

ToeJam, on 13 January 2013 - 02:38 PM, said:

If you disagree... then explain why please

Basicly what nebbo said, he clearly didnt listen to what the players asked for instead went off and did it his own way which turned out very successfull didnt it?

What Nebbo referred to was strictly wildy content and that is something that's been on the down turn for ages. Believe me, I'm frustrated as a clanny too that our community has not been listened too.... but whether you like it or not, we're a minority group. Saying he 'clearly didn't listen to what players asked for' is not strictly true since the majority of players are skill/pvm based.

Why listen to the skill/pvm based players about a pvp content that thier not gona use?, its easy for the minority to stay the minority when they dont get any new updates it was the other way around once upon a time but then only having pvm updates changed it.

[5 x]

Nebbo 67, on 13 January 2013 - 01:46 PM, said:

He is pretty much the reason the game is in the state it is... All of his great ideas have been utterly retarded and he keeps dragging the game in the wrong direction... Remember his grand plan for BH? That was a hillarious fail.

Yeah well, they seem to have no ideas for enhanced player-killing in general but that's one of the lone examples.

Generally I find most of the updates as well-fitting into RS setting/lore (except for the micro transaction ones which are horrible but I don't think it's Mod Mark's department), the quest storylines are well thought-out and there's (debatable) balance between new content additions/old content revamp.

It's not like I'm 100% optimistic though...