Dev Diary #10

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Hey there, fellow ylanders!

Today I want to talk a bit about the feedback we‘re receiving from you, how we are processing it, what is that you complain about the most... and what we are going to do about it.

So, what happens if you post something on our forums?

Many people from our team keep checking the forum on a semi-regular basis, but it‘s our Community Manager‘s (Ane) duty to make sure no post goes unnoticed. Under normal circumstances (if we‘re not attending something big like E3) you should be able to see some reaction from our side pretty soon - although in general if the issue is not critical and you are asking about simple things, we sometimes wait to give the community the chance to step in. Players helping each other is something that we encourage, that is the community we want to see formed.

The suggestions you make are discussed during our daily "design talks." All the issues you report are put in our internal system - even if you don‘t get an update about the state of the issue you‘ve reported after some time, it didn‘t disappear. We still know about it, and if it‘s not fixed in the upcoming update, it can be because of several reasons. Even though more people are coming to our team, there are still hundreds of bugs and design issues to take care of, and that takes time. Also, some of your bugs can be related to systems that we know we‘re going to rework soon(TM), in which case we don‘t fix them - we just wait before the new system is in place and then test if the issue is still there. And, unfortunately, sometimes our QA/programmers are unable to reproduce the issue you reported (even after we ask for logs, etc.) - in that case we just leave it in our system and wait if someone else doesn‘t report it as well, hopefully with some additional information.

 

 

Issues, questions, suggestions ... we're always listening to what you have to say!  

 

So what are the issues that trouble you the most these days?

 

• dedicated servers stability - we‘re on it. With MP becoming a big thing for Ylands we take all issues like this very seriously
• various MP-related issues - the same as above. We‘re putting a lot of effort into fixing MP already, and with new programmers coming to our team in the near future you can expect things to go even faster
• game allocating a lot of resources even when it has lost focus / pausing your game when you enter the in-game menu (as long as there are no other players active there) - these will be fixed in one of the upcoming updates
• performance issues - there is still a lot of optimizing to be done. First, we will get rid of the rather sudden big fps drops happening when traveling in some regions of ylands, then we'll move over to optimizing the terrain, water simulation, loading times... 
•  you keep asking for features that would make exploration easier and more fun - before we hit Steam, we want you to be able to see the ylands even on the horizon. The map will be improved, and we will give you a compass. Eventually, we want you to have more objects active at once, so when the compass comes, you will be able to use it even while holding a torch, etc.
• the way the character is controlled (on foot and while riding a horse) isn‘t really good enough and will be improved

 

...there are obviously more things you‘d like us to change or add (there are dozens of them) but don‘t worry - everything is in our lists, and we‘ll get there. 

That‘s it for this week‘s Dev Diary so before we meet again - you have a great time, ylanders, and stay classy!

[WijkagentAdrie 384]

Thanks for reassuring Ylands is going in what many of us think is the right direction  Really happy to see that the right priorities are there!

Adrie

[A3_Melle 150]

Nice to see what is going on "behind the scenes" and that you guys have a daily talk about requests from the community! And @Ane much respect for checking each and every post, especially after the E3 your job got a lot more busy

[Achilles77 20]

The game is a gem, i can't remember having this much fun playing an early alpha game.

[John - NEXFER 111]

You guys are great game builders, bugs of this kind are almost inevitable, good to get them ironed out at an early stage.

I'm really looking forward for this game on Steam, and potentially, seeing the dedicated servers allow many more consecutive users, with decent multiplayer functions like trading, grouping and ownership further implemented etc.

A key system that would work on a boat's wheel would be great, as it's only really possible to lock away a ships wheel on a large boat, inside a building! Else I can foresee many potential issues usually known as "griefing" being the case, once it hits a much larger and perhaps more anti-social community such as Steam.

For example:

Ship stealing.

Base grief (building a wall in front of someone's door, digging under someone's house, building a bigger house around their smaller house, some other creative ways to annoy people etc.

Further, as bodies are still in game when people log off, can they be damaged / robbed? I haven't checked.

I think you guys could do what some of the other titles have done, adding a land-claim style block, central unit or tool cupboard etc, that can be placed to claim an area, so that only you and perhaps those with granted access, can build within it. Instead of perhaps allocating an owner to every individual block or item when placed, have a whole area assigned to an owner, and blocks or items that are placed within, are defaulted to the owner of the land / deny someone else from placing in owned land etc. This could also mean that blocks placed outside of an owned land area, could have no owner, and thus save some processing!

Good to nail things like stability, exploiting, abusing and griefing (and potentially hacking - server side checks for things etc), in the bud a long time before hitting Steam, a game on Steam with any or all of the preceding issues will likely be heavily reviewed and these issues pointed out on mass, potentially giving the dreaded "mixed" or "negative" status, when this game far deserves an "overwhelmingly positive".

Edited July 2, 2017 by Ylanders UK Dedicated

[WijkagentAdrie 384]

And don't forget there are quite a few explosives in the game as well

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Thanks for all those kind words!
 
@Ylanders UK Dedicated You, sir, are a topic stealer!  Exploitation, abusing and griefing is actually something I wanted to be the topic of one of the future Dev Diaries! But since you brought it up already let me just tell you that we are aware of these issues (we see that things like these are already happening here and there and some actions need to be taken). Actually, we already have some ideas how to address most of these problems (some of the changes/improvements will be present in 0.6, the update that is coming after "Rainy Roads" 0.5 ). 

As for bodies remaining in the game even after players log off - we will be adding an option for whoever starts the new game world to decide if the characters should stay in the game or disappear as soon as the players controlling them exit the game. Those who will want to have the game a bit more "realistic" will still have to make sure they are leaving their characters in a safe place, while the others will be able to log off right away knowing nothing bad can happen while they're gone.

[John - NEXFER 111]

4 hours ago, Aleš Ulm said:

Thanks for all those kind words!
 
@Ylanders UK Dedicated You, sir, are a topic stealer!  Exploitation, abusing and griefing is actually something I wanted to be the topic of one of the future Dev Diaries! But since you brought it up already let me just tell you that we are aware of these issues (we see that things like these are already happening here and there and some actions need to be taken). Actually, we already have some ideas how to address most of these problems (some of the changes/improvements will be present in 0.6, the update that is coming after "Rainy Roads" 0.5 ). 

As for bodies remaining in the game even after players log off - we will be adding an option for whoever starts the new game world to decide if the characters should stay in the game or disappear as soon as the players controlling them exit the game. Those who will want to have the game a bit more "realistic" will still have to make sure they are leaving their characters in a safe place, while the others will be able to log off right away knowing nothing bad can happen while they're gone.

@Aleš Ulm Keep up the great work! Sorry to jump-the-gun on that topic! I've just been watching another potentially decent game crash and burn from these issues (they didn't do any server-side checks and hackers took over on mass) - which was pretty disappointing, though they have addressed the issue now, the players had long since moved on etc.

As you likely know, launch / release time can often be a make or break moment, but you and your team know what you are doing so I can't wait!

Regarding the bodies left in-game - I don't see this being any real issue if a home base can be secured, anyone sleeping outside will have to risk being a victim!

I think some people will just live on ships likely, is it possible to place dirt on a ship and grow plants on it, in explore mode? Self-sustainable moving island with sails comes to mind! Another thing some people have mentioned would be being able to join two ships together, to make a larger catamaran style ship, I would do this for sure, though steering it might be difficult...

Edited July 2, 2017 by Ylanders UK Dedicated

[Aleš Ulm 1725]

Actually, I'm really glad you brought up those issues - it's always good to see we are focusing on what players find annoying or broken.  Also, you are right that this needs to be taken care of before we go to Steam. 

And as for the ships - we are far from considering this feature finished