Straylight patch poll

ZylonBane on 23/2/2010 at 15:23

Two things--

"Unofficial Patch" would probably be a less loaded name than "Community Patch".

Something I've seen other fan patches do is split themselves up into "purist" and "enhanced" patches. This does of course impose a bit more overhead on the patch maintainers, and is harder to pull off in some game engines than in others.

RocketMan on 23/2/2010 at 19:55

Quote Posted by Kolya

I don't know what you people think you are doing here. ADaoB is a mod, not a democracy. If you don't like it, don't use it.

Balancing has been an integral part of ADaoB since the very beginning and it's become extremely successful this way. It is the result of literally years of tweaking SS2 by a few talented individuals. Not by people who like to banter in polls.

Exactly.

If 10 ppl are stuck on a deserted island and need to decide what to do about it, some may want to try swimming to shore, some may want to sit on their asses and wait for rescue and some may want to build a boat. You can have a vote and the majority will win, whether that idea is the best or not. Usually it will not be the best idea because it's the few, not the many that tend to have the most insight and intelligence on a particular matter. The best course of action would be to pick the most qualified individual to make a decision that will benefit everyone, perhaps someone with a lifetime of experience surviving in harsh conditions or a scientist or w/e. You don't allow a group of people, consisting of a random percentage of morons, generally proficient individuals and gifted ppl to cast equal votes on an important decision.

blaydes99 on 23/2/2010 at 21:07

My answer to this is:

If you like the ADaOB "patch" and the changes it makes, install it.

If you do not, don't install it or make your own patch that modifies the game how you want it to be done.

You can always ask for something to be changed for your benefit, but don't expect to get results by causing trouble for someone who will be spending personal time to fix something for you.

A thread along the lines of "ADaOB - can you put a few things back in to make it easier for me?" would've probably worked a little better. ZB's idea of a split patch would work well, but you should expect to invest your own time and effort to make it come about.

Bluegrime on 23/2/2010 at 21:38

I voted to return the tools. Some of the things (lots of things) in SS2 needed to be fixed or tweaked. But intentionally limiting the player to strictly what they picked out as a career is just a cheap way to make the gameplay seem more challenging, and really dosen't make it more fun at all. Being able to occasionally do something skill related without sinking a boatload of modules into it is actually a nice touch, you know.

Edit - Wait a second I just re-read Ryu Connor's post. Is he serious when he says Kolya & Co. are recommending people dive straight in on the Straylight patch without doing a 'clean' playthrough?

Rainalkar on 24/2/2010 at 11:24

I voted that it stays as is, but I don't feel the idea of renaming it to any sort of a patch. Imo, a patch is something the developers do, not the players. ADaoB was always a bug fixer and the "most obvious imbalances rectifier", that is how it should stay.

Example: I played a bit of Heroes of M&M4 a long time ago. Everyone - I mean everyone - plays the game with the Equilbiris mod ((http://equilibris.celestialheavens.com/eng/news.html)), however, it is not called an unofficial, patch, community patch or whatever, it is called a mod/add-on. ADaoB isn't played by everyone, and naming it a patch implies that it should be installed every time, but this is false, for it is a mod, and will conflict with some others, while a patch never would, for mods would be built with the patch in mind.

Matthew on 24/2/2010 at 12:12

Quote Posted by Bluegrime

Edit - Wait a second I just re-read Ryu Connor's post. Is he serious when he says Kolya & Co. are recommending people dive straight in on the Straylight patch without doing a 'clean' playthrough?

I think what he is saying that calling the release a 'patch' rather than a 'mod' implies that it is somehow more necessary or required than if it was left as it is.

Zanderat on 24/2/2010 at 14:46

Quote Posted by ZylonBane

VTM:BL anyone? :angel:

ZylonBane on 24/2/2010 at 22:06

Quote Posted by Rainalkar

ADaoB isn't played by everyone, and naming it a patch implies that it should be installed every time, but this is false, for it is a mod, and will conflict with some others, while a patch never would, for mods would be built with the patch in mind.

I LOL'd.

Look, people-- SS2, even after the official patch is applied, still has some minor issues that need to be fixed. There should exist for the community an unofficial patch which first-time players can apply, confident that it will only fix things, not change the gameplay experience in any significant way.

blaydes99 on 25/2/2010 at 00:08

I'd like to think of this as a "Schrödinger's cat" type situation. If a new player applies the "patch" and plays the game, how will he ever know what he is missing or not missing until he checks into it?

New players don't know how rare or frequent certain object appear as they have nothing to compare it to. They either like the game or they don't. I'm playing through SS2 on Normal right now with the latest ADaOB and it feels right to me. I played the original game in 1999 as well. Nothing wrong with it now either. (The Fusion Cannon is a lot better too I might add)

Nameless Voice on 25/2/2010 at 00:45

Quote Posted by blaydes99

I'm playing through SS2 on Normal right now with the latest ADaOB and it feels right to me.

Normal still has almost the usual number of devices, though.
(It has one less French-Ep, one less ICE pick, and a few less Auto-Repair units than the vanilla game. There were a lot of Auto-Repair units originally).

It's only on Impossible where they are almost non-existent. Because, y'know, it's meant to be Impossible. And people playing on Impossible are expected to be able to go out of their way to find the few which exist if they need them.

I'm only a maintainer of Straylight's mod, not its original creator. My contributions have mostly been pure bugfixes and blocking out various cheats/exploits. I also don't recommend to people that they play the game for the first time using Straylight's mod.

If someone wants to make a "pure patch" variant of Straylight, they should feel free to do so. Straylight left a very detailed list of everything that he changed, so it should be a simple matter of undoing those changes which affect gameplay. However, this is a lot of work, and I'm certainly not going to do it.