Duct tape, staples and bandaids

Aeroplane

  The lack of hot fixes in this game is starting to show that they're hesitant to touch the jenga tower. I've just played  3 events without seeing my teammates coalition scores, teammates not being able to use the chat room , cards not displaying pics, objs not working correctly, and the good ol' crash and burn.
 At some point they need to start from scratch and do an overhaul to the whole system. They should announce that they are planning a quest 2 , but with such a small company I can't see the resources for this. I've gone back to puzzledragons and I realized a smooth game with quick load times and no glitches trumps a better game with a janky system .

FindingHeart8

It's sad really.  The problems aren't going away, people are leaving and the powers that be don't seem to care.  

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Azerack

starfall said:

Maybe they're diverting all their resources to Marvel Puzzle Quest?

I thought a different team of Devs were assigned to Marvel?

bk1234

Azerack said:

starfall said:

Maybe they're diverting all their resources to Marvel Puzzle Quest?

I thought a different team of Devs were assigned to Marvel?

Different company. Remember D3Go! outsources their development. Marvel development is outsourced to an entirely different company. 

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bk1234

starfall said:

bken1234 said:

Azerack said:

starfall said:

Maybe they're diverting all their resources to Marvel Puzzle Quest?

I thought a different team of Devs were assigned to Marvel?

Different company. Remember D3Go! outsources their development. Marvel development is outsourced to an entirely different company. 

D3Go pays MPQ devs. D3Go pays MTGPQ devs. If they pay one less they can pay the other more.

Perhaps each has an operating budget depending on the money each game takes in? (Quite likely) Or based on usage? Or the outsource fees are paid upfront? Lots of ifs. I doubt, however they just flow money to either company without limits or thought.  

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Azerack

bken1234 said:

Azerack said:

starfall said:

Maybe they're diverting all their resources to Marvel Puzzle Quest?

I thought a different team of Devs were assigned to Marvel?

Different company. Remember D3Go! outsources their development. Marvel development is outsourced to an entirely different company. 

Team/Company, pretty sure people knew what I was talking about.
Okay, I thought a "team other than Oktagon", how about that?

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Back to the point, since it's different games, the code is different so they can't really trade off one team(/Company)'s resources to the other, I'd wager. They would need to get Okta' to hire more people instead, or whomever works on Marvel would have to hire more for their team(/Company).

It will be interesting, though, to see what happens between M20 and Throne of Eldraine if the VIP money helps spin up their production or we end up with another dearth of updates once M20 finally gets out. 

Personally, as much as this game has been a hassle, I would still like to see the former over the latter. 

bk1234

Azerack said:

bken1234 said:

Azerack said:

starfall said:

Maybe they're diverting all their resources to Marvel Puzzle Quest?

I thought a different team of Devs were assigned to Marvel?

Different company. Remember D3Go! outsources their development. Marvel development is outsourced to an entirely different company. 

Team/Company, pretty sure people knew what I was talking about.
Okay, I thought a "team other than Oktagon", how about that?

----------

Back to the point, since it's different games, the code is different so they can't really trade off one team(/Company)'s resources to the other, I'd wager. They would need to get Okta' to hire more people instead, or whomever works on Marvel would have to hire more for their team(/Company).

It will be interesting, though, to see what happens between M20 and Throne of Eldraine if the VIP money helps spin up their production or we end up with another dearth of updates once M20 finally gets out. 

Personally, as much as this game has been a hassle, I would still like to see the former over the latter. 

But who’s to say D3Go! controls who Oktagon hires? They are their own company. I venture to guess they control the number of employees on their own payroll. They aren’t a department of D3Go! If they can’t make do with what they have, D3Go! doesn’t get to tell them how to run their business, they sever the relationship for breach of contract and find new developers. 

Outsourcing 101: We pay you x amount of money to do this, this and this — you determine how to do it with the money we pay you. If you can’t, we end the contract and find someone who can. 

Also I think it’s noteworthy that Demiurge, the developers of Marvel have been with them quite a long time — if D3Go! wanted them to take over the game, wouldn’t they have asked them to do that when Hibernum left? Or why not just develop that from the beginning? Or maybe they just have no interest in this concept. 

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Brigby

@Aeroplane Rebuilding the entire game, so that Oktagon is 100% familiar with how it's structured and coded, would certainly be ideal. That option was not lost to us when they joined us to work on MTGPQ.

Unfortunately we also knew that the reality of taking that option meant there would be months and months of nothing changing in the game. When I say nothing changing, I don't just mean a lack of new content, like card sets, Planeswalkers, and events. Nothing changing would've potentially also meant no events being scheduled, no booster pack rotations, no Planeswalker rotations, no special offers, and worst of all, no bug fixes.

We also couldn't split up our resources to address both daily maintenance, new content development, and rebuilding the game at the same time. Instead, we decided to go with the option of having Oktagon learn Hibernum's code as well as they could, and then continuing to build on top of that. This of course presented us with its own set of challenges, challenges we are still figuring out solutions for, but out of all the options, we felt this was the most manageable.

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FindingHeart8

Brigby said:

@Aeroplane Rebuilding the entire game, so that Oktagon is 100% familiar with how it's structured and coded, would certainly be ideal. That option was not lost to us when they joined us to work on MTGPQ.

Unfortunately we also knew that the reality of taking that option meant there would be months and months of nothing changing in the game. When I say nothing changing, I don't just mean a lack of new content, like card sets, Planeswalkers, and events. Nothing changing would've potentially also meant no events being scheduled, no booster pack rotations, no Planeswalker rotations, no special offers, and worst of all, no bug fixes.

We also couldn't split up our resources to address both daily maintenance, new content development, and rebuilding the game at the same time. Instead, we decided to go with the option of having Oktagon learn Hibernum's code as well as they could, and then continuing to build on top of that. This of course presented us with its own set of challenges, challenges we are still figuring out solutions for, but out of all the options, we felt this was the most manageable.

They really change the events manually??  And if so, it takes a significant amount of time?

I didn't think it was that complicated. I've got buddy's who design online games and (like starfall said) have code that automatically performs the process of alternating through previously designed daily events, but even without the coding they could adjust the content manually in minutes.  Granted this was for PC games, but a lot of other mobile games alter content daily, mtgpq is not unique in this feature.

Just wondering what the hangup is:low budget? understaffed? never fully familiarized with the programs? Something else?

I appreciate your clarification @Brigby.  As we are all stakeholders in mtgpq, it is beneficial to this community to know the challenges the developers face, and can help generate more empathy and understanding when we understand *why* the progress slows.

Mburn7

Brigby said:

Unfortunately we also knew that the reality of taking that option meant there would be months and months of nothing changing in the game. When I say nothing changing, I don't just mean a lack of new content, like card sets, Planeswalkers, and events. Nothing changing would've potentially also meant no events being scheduled, no booster pack rotations, no Planeswalker rotations, no special offers, and worst of all, no bug fixes.

Seriously?  There is not way to have the app rotate stuff and re-run events automatically?
I may not be an expert in app design, but that definitely doesn't sound right.

Also, if you guys chose to go that route and clearly communicated your issue ahead of time I highly doubt the playerbase would object to taking a couple months off to get a more stable and less buggy app.  I know I wouldn't.

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Brigby

Yes. Currently game aspects such as Booster Pack, Planeswalker, and Event rotations are manually scheduled.

They're clearly capable of improving the way in-game adjustments are done though. (For example, they made it so event schedules can be adjusted via data pushes now, instead of the original method of via a build update.)

With their current tight development schedule, I'd speculate it's more a matter of whether they have the bandwidth to development the automation, rather than if they've thought of the idea or if they are able to. They're a small team (I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but it's less than 15-20 employees), so allocation of resources can definitely be a challenge.

Narcoticsagent

Brigby said:

Yes. Currently game aspects such as Booster Pack, Planeswalker, and Event rotations are manually scheduled.

They're clearly capable of improving the way in-game adjustments are done though. (For example, they made it so event schedules can be adjusted via data pushes now, instead of the original method of via a build update.)

With their current tight development schedule, I'd speculate it's more a matter of whether they have the bandwidth to development the automation, rather than if they've thought of the idea or if they are able to. They're a small team (I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but it's less than 15-20 employees), so allocation of resources can definitely be a challenge.

I love info like this. I think that in the last 2 days you've shared more about the dev team than in the last 6 months. Thanks for sharing.

Machine

That also explains why it's possible that, let's say, a Trial of the Planes event won't run on any particular day. Human error... 

Mburn7

Narcoticsagent said:

Brigby said:

Yes. Currently game aspects such as Booster Pack, Planeswalker, and Event rotations are manually scheduled.

They're clearly capable of improving the way in-game adjustments are done though. (For example, they made it so event schedules can be adjusted via data pushes now, instead of the original method of via a build update.)

With their current tight development schedule, I'd speculate it's more a matter of whether they have the bandwidth to development the automation, rather than if they've thought of the idea or if they are able to. They're a small team (I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but it's less than 15-20 employees), so allocation of resources can definitely be a challenge.

I love info like this. I think that in the last 2 days you've shared more about the dev team than in the last 6 months. Thanks for sharing.

Seriously.  More of this insight please

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