Can devs make something new and stop changing the old. [Merged]

[kharmin.7683]

10 hours ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

 

 

You aren't wrong wrong on a legal level, Kharmin, but I would argue that on an ethical level Arenanet would absolutely be in the wrong to SELL us digital items that have a specific look and function prior to the sale and to then change those items after getting our money for them, even years later.  If I can't trust Arenanet to NOT change something that I have given them money to access after the fact then I don't see why I should take the risk at all, especially now as money starts becoming a lot tighter for a lot of people.

Not sure that I agree about it being ethical or not.  It being wrong to change something like this is subjective and I can understand why some people would be upset.  However, it is a business decision that, as you point out, can only affect the financial bottom line.  Anet has weighed the risks and decided that this particular change has more positive benefits to them in the long term. 

[The Greyhawk.9107]

20 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Not sure that I agree about it being ethical or not.  It being wrong to change something like this is subjective and I can understand why some people would be upset.  However, it is a business decision that, as you point out, can only affect the financial bottom line.  Anet has weighed the risks and decided that this particular change has more positive benefits to them in the long term. 

Arenanet may have weighed the risks and the like but that doesn't mean they've made the right decisions.  Its not uncommon for companies to utterly Screw themselves over, blowing enormous amounts of cash, whatever goodwill they may have with their customers, and sometimes forcing their own closure.  As an example Warner Brothers just shelved a finished Batgirl movie that they'd spent over $70 million dollars on.  That kind of thing doesn't happen by accident, people screwed up, made bad decisions despite probably thinking that they were in the right.  Same kind of poor decision making can happen at Arenanet, so their weighing of risks and allegedly making positive long term decisions isn't something I'm going to rely on.....especially if that decision isn't in my best interest.

[kharmin.7683]

6 minutes ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

Arenanet may have weighed the risks and the like but that doesn't mean they've made the right decisions.  Its not uncommon for companies to utterly Screw themselves over, blowing enormous amounts of cash, whatever goodwill they may have with their customers, and sometimes forcing their own closure.  As an example Warner Brothers just shelved a finished Batgirl movie that they'd spent over $70 million dollars on.  That kind of thing doesn't happen by accident, people screwed up, made bad decisions despite probably thinking that they were in the right.  Same kind of poor decision making can happen at Arenanet, so their weighing of risks and allegedly making positive long term decisions isn't something I'm going to rely on.....especially if that decision isn't in my best interest.

I agree in that this is entirely subjective.  I don't think that makes it unethical.  Also, in your movie example, the studio may have decided that it was in their best financial sense in the long run, to which I alluded earlier.

None of us know what factored in to this decision by Anet.  If it didn't make good financial or business sense, then I doubt that they would have made it.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

1 hour ago, Tukaram.8256 said:

Exactly!  It is about boobs & butt on a poorly drawn robot.  On the plus side, if this is a major game issue - then the game must be doing well ha ha  😎

Strawmen, strawmen as far as the eye can see.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

4 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

I agree in that this is entirely subjective.  I don't think that makes it unethical.  Also, in your movie example, the studio may have decided that it was in their best financial sense in the long run, to which I alluded earlier.

None of us know what factored in to this decision by Anet.  If it didn't make good financial or business sense, then I doubt that they would have made it.

Maybe I should have been clearer with my Warner Brothers example, by poor decisions I didn't necessarily the actual shelving of this Batgirl movie, though it still could be, but if not that then all of the decisions that went into making that movie apparently so bad the test audiences hated it.  They won't even just put it on HBO Max even though that service has DC's other stinkers like 1984's Supergirl and 1997's Steel readily available.  Its that bad apparently.  Someone or several someones, despite trying to make the best decisions while making this movie seemed to have instead made the worst.

And again, just because something might have made good financial or business sense, doesn't mean it was a good decision.  Humans are Fallible, companies are just groups of humans and are no less fallible.  Even while striving to maximize profits there is the probability that they'll look at whatever information and come up with the wrong answer, the wrong course to go on.  Plus, there exists the trend in recent years for many companies or portions of companies to have an ideological bend that doesn't even focus on profits but on other things like Messages.  Inevitably this gets corrected because corporations do still exist to make money but in the mean time said companies might do things that are not in their customers interests.  It remains to be seen if this last bit applies to Arenanet.

[Dawdler.8521]

5 hours ago, The Greyhawk.9107 said:

That looks like a player character designed to imitate Jennah and not the actual NPC Jennah, as such would have no relevance to the discussion on hand.

And your reference to the old town cloths has a flaw: they changed how they worked (which people did get rightfully pissed about at the time) but not how they looked.

Oh let them believe what they want. By changing the watchknight the game has been cleansed of the male gaze.

Now excuse me while I go play my supermodel Human thief in a tight leather outfit showing her underkittens or my stately Norn mesmer dressed in strings and feathers...

... or my giantess of a Charr engineer showing her furry belly.

I'm not picky about my gals.

😘

[The Greyhawk.9107]

11 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Oh let them believe what they want. By changing the watchknight the game has been cleansed of the male gaze.

Now excuse me while I go play my supermodel Human thief in a tight leather outfit showing her underkittens or my stately Norn mesmer dressed in strings and feathers...

... or my giantess of a Charr engineer showing her furry belly.

I'm not picky about my gals.

😘

No gremlin girls or salad ladies?  Bigot.

[Kalavier.1097]

On 8/6/2022 at 5:45 PM, Hashberry.4510 said:

The original had a creepy twisted garishness to it, I can see why folks are alarmed when something unique like that had to be hammered into place as the culture changes. 

The original looked okay.. if Scarlet was the creator. Not so much as "officially made by DR under Jennah's orders."

On 8/6/2022 at 5:57 PM, Einsof.1457 said:

Okay real talk. It doesn't matter if I like it or you like it. It's not about that. It's about anet complete changing design of enemies nearly ten years later for ...some reason? Do we really want them going in and changing the way stuff looks willy nilly with no reasoning for it? Can we agree it sets a bad precedent at least? For nearly ten years it was fine but now it's not? Why? What crime against humanity did the old watchknight commit?

On 8/6/2022 at 9:30 PM, Einsof.1457 said:

So it took them ten years? They (anet or players) never once mentioned any problem in that timeframe. 

Simple. The watchknights got changed when Paviolion came back (the mark 2 watchknight). The originals weren't touched because they featured in a one time only event, being S1.

They, and the marionette, got a facelift model wise when the Marionette battle was brought back, I'd assume it was planned to return S1 at that point, so they updated those. Much like those opening world boss model changes that just happened recently.

It's not some huge thing to explain. "Hey, we are bringing back season 1. These models are a little dated, can we refresh them since they'll now be a permanent enemy in story journal?"

 

On 8/6/2022 at 7:07 PM, Lottie.5370 said:

They obviously thought it was worth changing, especially since they brought back the Living Story episode at the same time (which they also revamped minor things in). I think the newer model looks much cleaner and higher res, and the face is less... creepy.

My thought process is the first time around they were probably designed first as part of the Scarlet twisted watchwork army, and then the basic model was made and used as the "Item that gets stolen".  So that's why the original "mark 1" matched the twisted watchwork, insane nightmares themes more then anything in DR. Then after S3, we got the mark 2 model.

When they went back to remake/fix S1 to be replayable, they probably did a pass through the content and decided to redo the Watchknight to be more fitting to the theme of "Officially commissioned with Scarlet having no part of the design" and thus similar to the Mark 2, but less refined. So we got a more military looking bot vs the other one.

 

On 8/6/2022 at 11:25 PM, Labjax.2465 said:

The impression I get is for some people, it's the precedent they are worried about. GW2 gets called fashion wars for a reason. Imagine you take months getting certain armor pieces unlocked, you spend hours trying different looks until you find just the right thing. You love what you made and how it all works together just right. Then Anet comes in and changes a piece of it in a way that ruins the look and you can't do anything about it. I think that's kinda what people are afraid of.

I get that fear, but in this case it's a bit... overblown. As there isn't any statements about why the watchknight got changed, or anything implying they'd do more.

If it was purely because sexual aspects well...

On 8/7/2022 at 10:46 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Now excuse me while I go play my supermodel Human thief in a tight leather outfit showing her underkittens or my stately Norn mesmer dressed in strings and feathers...

... or my giantess of a Charr engineer showing her furry belly.

I'm not picky about my gals.

😘

This applies heavily. It's why I laughed at people trying to use that reasoning on reddit. "Ah yes they change this tonic that isn't that visible on a grand scheme, but didn't touch T3 norn femaly heavy or t1 human light armor, or starborn outfit, etc."

 

I'd be more concerned with setting precedent over actual armor piece changes, instead of pretty much free tonics from events.

[Naxos.2503]

To be honest I feel like time could have been better invested making dungeons more interesting or relevant. Anyone else noticed how 90% of the LFG on dungeons is permanently empty because nowadays you can literally spam the shortest/easiest one to get the currency ?

As much as simplifying the gear access is a good thing, it literally killed activity on most of the larger and late dungeons. 

Old content being revisited I dont mind, but : 

First, PRIORITIES. Gameplay over appearances first.

Second, Really ? That couldn't have waited ? What happened to the policy of not wanting to disturb past employees work ?

[Katsugankz.7156]

1 minute ago, Naxos.2503 said:

To be honest I feel like time could have been better invested making dungeons more interesting or relevant. Anyone else noticed how 90% of the LFG on dungeons is permanently empty because nowadays you can literally spam the shortest/easiest one to get the currency ?

As much as simplifying the gear access is a good thing, it literally killed activity on most of the larger and late dungeons. 

Old content being revisited I dont mind, but : 

First, PRIORITIES. Gameplay over appearances first.

Second, Really ? That couldn't have waited ? What happened to the policy of not wanting to disturb past employees work ?

That's some impressive whataboutism my dude. Read the post above you and then keep reading it until you realize your post is stupid.

[Naxos.2503]

2 minutes ago, Katsugankz.7156 said:

That's some impressive whataboutism my dude. Read the post above you and then keep reading it until you realize your post is stupid.

Except I'm not quoting the post above me, and adressing the issue at hand in the thread. I'll disregard the "stupid" and "whataboutism" remark made against the statement on account that you didn't know what I was refering to.

I'm refering the overal decision of alterating an existing design when redoing old content, rather than change truly old content that is almost Defunct. IE it doesn't work well anymore. Appearances, such as they are do nothing for Function.

Edited August 8, 2022 by Naxos.2503

[Katsugankz.7156]

Just now, Naxos.2503 said:

Except I'm not quoting the post above me, and adressing the issue at hand in the thread. I'll disregard the "stupid" and "whataboutism" remark made against the statement on account that you didn't know what I was refering to.

I'm refering the overal decision of alterating an existing design when redoing old content, rather than change truly old content that is almost Defunct. IE it doesn't work well anymore. Appearances, such as they are do nothing for Function.

Oh, no, I know exactly what you're talking about and it's still wrong. You have no idea how game dev works and you're operating under an assumption that you can't have one without the other, which is pretty dang stupid. Do you really think that because they changed one model they're "disrespecting" the people that worked on the original? 

Stop trying to draw sweeping conclusions just because you're upset they removed an ugly titty robot model and replaced it with a better looking version.

[Naxos.2503]

8 minutes ago, Katsugankz.7156 said:

Oh, no, I know exactly what you're talking about and it's still wrong. You have no idea how game dev works and you're operating under an assumption that you can't have one without the other, which is pretty dang stupid. Do you really think that because they changed one model they're "disrespecting" the people that worked on the original? 

Stop trying to draw sweeping conclusions just because you're upset they removed an ugly titty robot model and replaced it with a better looking version.

I honestly could care less about the robot tbh. I just find the focus on it odd. Even if I understand what you mean regarding Teams of devs (and yes I know how devs work thank you very much), that still doesn't explain why some areas or equipment who lack the texture work and polish that later works have received didn't get dibs compared to this relatively small part of the game. I'll stand on the statement and die on that hill. The time and effort could have been better invested elsewhere, rather than on an enemy/npc encountered at most a couple of times. 

And I maintain that if they wanted to revisit old content, dungeons need priority, not the storyline.

Btw : Sweeping conclusion about my "interest" on the robot heh ? Let's call it quit, less it turns into a pot calling the kettle black. 

Edited August 8, 2022 by Naxos.2503

[Kalavier.1097]

13 minutes ago, Naxos.2503 said:

I'm refering the overal decision of alterating an existing design when redoing old content, rather than change truly old content that is almost Defunct. IE it doesn't work well anymore. Appearances, such as they are do nothing for Function.

But I may ask, how does this statement literally not describe the Watchknight change?

We aren't talking about the Marionette and the watchknights being changed by themselves. Both were altered in the effort to bring LITERALLY defunct, completely unusable content back into the game as permanent fixtures. The Marionette model change also apparently included a file size reduction, which could have been purposeful as well in the performance or background areas.

I also would have to wonder how much time people truly think went into the redesign in the first place. The Watchknight mark 1 model is a copy paste of the Marionette changes. So there was only one change. How long did it take them to make the new model or concept it? I don't know. But I'm going to bet it wasn't nearly so long as to deprive other areas of support or work.

[Naxos.2503]

1 minute ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

But I may ask, how does this statement literally not describe the Watchknight change?

We aren't talking about the Marionette and the watchknights being changed by themselves. Both were altered in the effort to bring LITERALLY defunct, completely unusable content back into the game as permanent fixtures. The Marionette model change also apparently included a file size reduction, which could have been purposeful as well in the performance or background areas.

I also would have to wonder how much time people truly think went into the redesign in the first place. The Watchknight mark 1 model is a copy paste of the Marionette changes. So there was only one change. How long did it take them to make the new model or concept it? I don't know. But I'm going to bet it wasn't nearly so long as to deprive other areas of support or work.

Now if the change Did include a size reduction in file, we could have a different conversation. It would bring some practicality to the change. Though I must admit I cant judge whether or not that would have been noticeable, especially on a small scale (only one model in an entire game is rarely heavy), the process would have to be done to many other models for it to be consequential. 

In that case, I'd very much like them to take a look at older pieces of equipment (Gladiator armor - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) comes to mind) to bring them up in term of texture quality or modeling for example, whether that brings performance up or down though, I must profess I'm not tech savvy enough to know, I know some textures Can be refined and made lighter, but that depends on what tool was used to do it.

[Kalavier.1097]

34 minutes ago, Naxos.2503 said:

Now if the change Did include a size reduction in file, we could have a different conversation. It would bring some practicality to the change. Though I must admit I cant judge whether or not that would have been noticeable, especially on a small scale (only one model in an entire game is rarely heavy), the process would have to be done to many other models for it to be consequential. 

In that case, I'd very much like them to take a look at older pieces of equipment (Gladiator armor - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) comes to mind) to bring them up in term of texture quality or modeling for example, whether that brings performance up or down though, I must profess I'm not tech savvy enough to know, I know some textures Can be refined and made lighter, but that depends on what tool was used to do it.

At least according to this, the change did result in a file size tweak. One reply of his mentions that only three models are larger, Aurene, Zhaitan, and the Mouth of Mordremoth.

[Smoky.5348]

 

On 8/6/2022 at 8:23 PM, Sunchaser.9854 said:

 it's not even a playable race.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about because the Watchknight is a Combat Tonic. That is the closest thing to a playable race an NPC can get. It stays active in combat and can even be used in WvW. The fact that there are times l go several weeks straight using the Olmakhan tonic makes it statistically probable that there are people who preferred to wear the Watchknight tonic just as often.

On 8/6/2022 at 7:18 PM, Lini.2698 said:

I don't see them updating old models as a problem, and it's not like the watchknight and marionette are the only ones to have gotten facelifts. The great jungle wurm and shadow behemoth amongst other bosses have gotten updates just recently, and those are very old content too. Yet I see no topic or mention of you complaining on those re-designs? 

 

 

There is no transformation tonic of the Great Jungle Wurm or the Shadow Behemoth. No duh we aren't bringing them up because they're not part of the player's wardrobe. (And if they were, they wouldn't be Combat Tonics)

On 8/8/2022 at 12:09 PM, Kalavier.1097 said:

But I may ask, how does this statement literally not describe the Watchknight change?

We aren't talking about the Marionette and the watchknights being changed by themselves. Both were altered in the effort to bring LITERALLY defunct, completely unusable content back into the game as permanent fixtures. The Marionette model change also apparently included a file size reduction, which could have been purposeful as well in the performance or background areas.

I also would have to wonder how much time people truly think went into the redesign in the first place. The Watchknight mark 1 model is a copy paste of the Marionette changes. So there was only one change. How long did it take them to make the new model or concept it? I don't know. But I'm going to bet it wasn't nearly so long as to deprive other areas of support or work.

I feel like that is not an excuse to completely redesign a model. There are ways to optimize a model and keep its original look. No, ANET had some sort of grudge against it, as far as l can fathom since they can't say anything specific.

As for the time it took away from development of other areas, that can't have been a literal copy-paste, right? That'd mean multiple boss-quality models on screen at a time. So, l can be sure that's not entirely the case, so they must have spent some time on it...and no matter when they did it, there's always something more important for ANET to put their time into. There's never something that doesn't need actual fixing.

But, maybe that's a moot point. After all, we know they felt it necessary to waste time rewriting dialogue instead of just rerecording it (remember Mai Trin?). Honestly, l'm more concerned they felt compelled to "optimize" a boss model, but they can't be bothered to fix all the clipping issues in EoD or alleviate the poor optimization the expansion maps and Lion's Arch have.

Edited August 14, 2022 by Smoky.5348

[Kalavier.1097]

13 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

I feel like that is not an excuse to completely redesign a model. There are ways to optimize a model and keep its original look. No, ANET had some sort of grudge against it, as far as l can fathom since they can't say anything specific.

"Anet has a grudge against this model but I have zero evidence or proof besides the fact it got changed."

Why would they have a grudge against it? Seriously this is grasping as conspiracies.

13 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

As for the time it took away from development of other areas, that can't have been a literal copy-paste, right? That'd mean multiple boss-quality models on screen at a time. So, l can be sure that's not entirely the case, so they must have spent some time on it...and no matter when they did it, there's always something more important for ANET to put their time into. There's never something that doesn't need actual fixing.

The overall model is the same, though the Marionette has a lot more coding and added parts (the chains holding it up, the unique animations and attacks, the airship above it and the cutscenes).

Much like how I imagine the mini for Tequatl is much less of a file size then the regular tequatl, as it doesn't have all the animations.

This also assumes the people involved in doing the model tweaks are also doing... bug fixes or other things. They have separate teams you know? Most game companies do. The concept artists don't also code boss fights.

13 hours ago, Smoky.5348 said:

But, maybe that's a moot point. After all, we know they felt it necessary to waste time rewriting dialogue instead of just rerecording it (remember Mai Trin?). Honestly, l'm more concerned they felt compelled to "optimize" a boss model, but they can't be bothered to fix all the clipping issues in EoD or alleviate the poor optimization the expansion maps and Lion's Arch have.

This assumes there are singular teams working on every single aspect of the game, IMO.

"Optimize a boss model and fight" because It was literally BEING REVIVED FROM DEATH. It was done, and gone, and wasn't playable anymore and they got it working again as a repeating boss fight. Same with S1. These things were never meant to be replayed which is why they weren't touched for so long because it would take effort to get them working properly.

So a team is told to make Marionette work. In the process they tweak the model coding/file side, and the art team does up a tweaked look.

I'm still amazed at people still going "How dare they do this, when they hadn't done this before!" when the tweaks came as these boss fights/content were literally being restored back into the game and story journal.

[Linken.6345]

40 minutes ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

"Anet has a grudge against this model but I have zero evidence or proof besides the fact it got changed."

Why would they have a grudge against it? Seriously this is grasping as conspiracies.

The overall model is the same, though the Marionette has a lot more coding and added parts (the chains holding it up, the unique animations and attacks, the airship above it and the cutscenes).

Much like how I imagine the mini for Tequatl is much less of a file size then the regular tequatl, as it doesn't have all the animations.

This also assumes the people involved in doing the model tweaks are also doing... bug fixes or other things. They have separate teams you know? Most game companies do. The concept artists don't also code boss fights.

This assumes there are singular teams working on every single aspect of the game, IMO.

"Optimize a boss model and fight" because It was literally BEING REVIVED FROM DEATH. It was done, and gone, and wasn't playable anymore and they got it working again as a repeating boss fight. Same with S1. These things were never meant to be replayed which is why they weren't touched for so long because it would take effort to get them working properly.

So a team is told to make Marionette work. In the process they tweak the model coding/file side, and the art team does up a tweaked look.

I'm still amazed at people still going "How dare they do this, when they hadn't done this before!" when the tweaks came as these boss fights/content were literally being restored back into the game and story journal.

Yes and people complained when it was done before aswell so there is that.

[Smoky.5348]

On 8/14/2022 at 1:51 PM, Kalavier.1097 said:

"Anet has a grudge against this model but I have zero evidence or proof besides the fact it got changed."

Why would they have a grudge against it? Seriously this is grasping as conspiracies.

I've said before that this "only can be" a grudge because there's no way to get any evidence because ANET doesn't say anything about it. But okay, l'll recount the best idea l have: They made the Watchknight Mk.II in an attempt to introduce the retcon, and now that they successfully ignored all the complaints about the Twisted Marionette, they're forcing it onto the MK.I since it's been out there for awhile. That's it. Because ANET's not very open about their ideas, and they wouldn't talk about this anyway. lt's not a great deduction, hence why l act skeptical towards it myself, so don't jump down my throat for saying it. Only reason l think it is because l see no other explanation that makes sense.

Hm, and since you said l'm "grasping", nearly 90% of the people who are fine with the change have grasped at their own straws and had ridiculous takes in this very thread. You're one out of, like, three people who have had reasonable takes, so that's not a jab at you.

 

On 8/14/2022 at 1:51 PM, Kalavier.1097 said:

This also assumes the people involved in doing the model tweaks are also doing... bug fixes or other things. They have separate teams you know? Most game companies do. The concept artists don't also code boss fights.

Did l say the art team has to code boss fights? There are plenty of model-based things that ANET's art teams need to fix. As l already said, there are clipping issues in EoD all over the place in Seitung and New Kaineng that they could be fixing. Lots of optimization they could do as well by making new building models instead of slapping two together and hoping the added polycount doesn't hurt.

 

On 8/14/2022 at 1:51 PM, Kalavier.1097 said:

"Optimize a boss model and fight" because It was literally BEING REVIVED FROM DEATH. It was done, and gone, and wasn't playable anymore and they got it working again as a repeating boss fight. Same with S1. These things were never meant to be replayed which is why they weren't touched for so long because it would take effort to get them working properly.

So a team is told to make Marionette work. In the process they tweak the model coding/file side, and the art team does up a tweaked look.

It wasn't lying in death, it was lying dormant. They didn't delete the files from the client, they merely disabled them from access. The coding and interactivity did need a revamp to suit its updated context, but a model's look has nothing to do with that. Since the model was still lying around ready to use, I see no reason to change it in such a context. Can't say it was for optimization when other models are more complex and l haven't lagged out on Zhaitan.

 

On 8/14/2022 at 1:51 PM, Kalavier.1097 said:

I'm still amazed at people still going "How dare they do this, when they hadn't done this before!" when the tweaks came as these boss fights/content were literally being restored back into the game and story journal.

There are two facets to this. First, old models being changed—not updated, but changed—is a bad thing to do, and people did complain then after all. Second, those past changes did not affect the wardrobe; the Watchknight in particular does. Changing something in the wardrobe is a really bad thing to do.

Unless...what you're saying here is an extension to your previous point about the content being revived? In that case, it's like l said, it wasn't revived. The content was never dead to need reviving, only its events needed repurposing so the still functional models could be used again. It's not like they changed the model format in an update that broke Season 1 models, did they? No, can't be, because the Watchknight stayed the same until recently.