The Great Debate (Timelimit)

[Defiant]

Malice is being attributed to us where none exists. I used to be a pretty hardcore role player in Star Wars Galaxies - so there is no philosophical element to it. Im not saying there will never be features added that would be beneficial to people who want to use MB2 for that type of gameplay, but I cant see us ever going out our way to introduce features at the request of role players. The reason is simple - If it's a decision between adding those features and say finishing conquest, or fixing pugmod, or adding new classes, then the features core to the gameplay will be what developer and testing time is spent on.

At the end of the day MB2 is what it is, it's like asking us to design our motorbike so it can carry 20 passengers and their luggage. Sure you could make massive additions to your motorbike to accommodate it, but what your left with at the end is something that isn't a motorbike any more, and is pretty poor at carrying those 20 people. What really was needed was a bus not a modified motorbike.

 

[Tylenol]

Don't know the idea that Roleplayers are a large enough group to be pandered to in MB2. The playerbase is already small enough. Its a bit like designing a game to be accessible to disabled people, it would be nice but its not significant enough to make a difference.

 

[k4far]

Don't know the idea that Roleplayers are a large enough group to be pandered to in MB2. Its a bit like designing a game to be accessible to disabled people.

 

[Faux]

lewd things

modify my motorbike daddy

 

[SaucyMonkey]

If you're really that concerned with Role Playing, etc. Create your own mod and spark interest into it instead of leeching off of this one to make it fit your needs. Stop putting squares into triangles. I don't really have any polite way of saying this so I apologize ahead of time if it comes across as rude. As a suggestion... maybe consider paying someone for their time to create the mod for you? Or convince some poor soul who is passionate about it to do it for free.

Movie Battles 2 has it's flaws but it is designed as a team objective game with very stringent rules catered for it. Does it fit all gloves? No. It's just primarily built on the siege mode from the original JKA.

And to add onto the OP's point about coming in and seeing complaints all of the time... that's just the nature of a community; especially one built specifically around hyper-competitive game play. JKA is an old, old, old game. It's growth potential is next to nothing. But... people come and they go all of the time. As i'm writing this i'm in a practically full server and generally never run into an issue when it comes to playing on a decently populated server. This mod is not going to last forever; nothing does. I'm willing to bet when all the chips have been played the Dev's will likely change their mind on the direction of the mod but as it stands it seems relatively fine. People are playing and at the end of the day that is what matters for the scope of a project like this.

However, I think it's fair to say that the Dev's are not interested in turning this project into something else. I also realize that this was a complete waste of time to write this out and won't convince any hearts and minds but... it's FRIDAY NIGHT and I died at the start of the round so to heck with it!

 

[Phoenix]

meatball

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

You know, I'm just confused by this entire thing. I quit lugormod for mb back in the day. And not because I was banned for flying x-wings into council circles of 16 players repeatedly. 430 kill count, huhu. Don't blame me. I might have been Asian in another life.

And that was rp heaven. What happened? It died.

Mb2 continued to thrive and live.
That's it.

And now the maggots that were festering on the corpses of mods tailored for rp are trying to attach themselves to mods that emphasized action, not chat. Really? Begone, cockroaches! Scuttle away into your dark corners and crevices under kitchen sinks and behind refrigerators. The Light...is NOT FOR THEE!

Point being, there have been plenty of rp mods. Their still are. They just want to fuck with mb and siphon players to keep ego trippin. Fuck those divas.

 

[noel]

I do believe you underestimate the amount of people that could potentially get a lot more enjoyment out of the game by simply adding two updates Tempest has already made/made progress on

Tempest has already coded 15 minute, mid round rejoining duel servers - so it can't be hard to add a server cfg to make them longer.

Tempest has already coded/attempted to code a distance based chat type in MB2.

Push those two updates and RPers will have the bare essentials to work with, how is that POSSIBLY time consuming in comparison to finishing Conquest/working on the core experience like the devs are saying?

You don't want to do that? Then give MB2 what it's always demanded, the ability to host custom servers with more control/use their own scripts without being removed from MS list. No one is going to stop playing the core game because custom servers get added, people will play what they enjoy - if Dev's are really worried that people are going to enjoy an unintentional aspect of their game then that is, imo, a hurrendous general principle.

 

[Defiant]

Push those two updates and RPers will have the bare essentials to work with, how is that POSSIBLY time consuming in comparison to finishing Conquest/working on the core experience like the devs are saying?

Because you are making the mistake of thinking that having coded it is the end of the process - it isn't. Before it goes live it has to be code reviewed, tested, merged into our release branch and tested again. And it doesn't end there.

Any time we touch anything related to chat or round timers or game modes we have to then retest that we haven't broken those features, and it adds extra things to code and design around. And it doesn't even end there.

Hotfixes are done for game breaking bugs. If such a bug occurs in features we add for RPers then is that hotfix worthy? Half the community would say yes, the other half would say no - but from our perspective its something we support so would be, and we just made half the community patch and update their servers for no real gain on their part.

Finally, it creates the expectation that we support that kind of gameplay and will add new features to it over time.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

Since I've been tagged as a proponent who then changed his mind, I'd like to go over why.

People grow up and learn things as time goes on. I was 18-19 back in 2009, so I had a very different frame of mind than I do as a 28-year-old. During the past 10 years I've paid close attention to how product development is carried due to personal and professional interest. A key component for providing a good service is to find your audience and tailor your product to suit their needs. The cost of creating an amazing experience for some will always come at the cost of detracting it from others. In the case of Movie Battles, this comes at the price of limiting our gameplay to focus on straight-up PvP. This is what most of our players come here for. This is what they hear about it. As a result they should receive what they expect when they hop on.

This is not to say that you shouldn't have the right to do RP. That's some cool shit. I really liked that 2006 era vid some dude linked. That looks like genuine fun to me. Sadly this is not fun to everyone and is structured based on consensus that is not enforced by game systems, so it's difficult to manage and provide reliably. It does not work for MB2 as a whole.

I would like to point out that Jedi Academy is a free space for all developers to do what we have done with MB2. Especially for smaller RP communities! Create your own mod and build something amazing for like-minded people to enjoy. If you lack the skillset to program, perhaps you can still find a more suited mod to use as a foundation? I'd like to point my finger towards the Galaxies and Open Jedi Project mods. Both tremendous projects and really do deserve a lot more love from the general JKA playerbase than they have received over the past years.

While MB2 distributes a lot of these models and maps under the whole thought that they are "ours". There's no force really preventing you from making good use of them elsewhere. JKA's modding scene is very lawless and the worst thing you can do is hurt somebody's feelings if you copy work without permission. A courteous mod compiler will still go very far as many of the mappers and modelers want their work to be enjoyed as many as possible, so they tend to gladly give their stuff away for others to work with.

Jedi Academy's modding scene is still lively, amazing and very open source. I would like to point you towards jkhub.org to find like-minded people. Build something cool together. Keep on rocking in the free world!

 

[noel]

Because you are making the mistake of thinking that having coded it is the end of the process - it isn't. Before it goes live it has to be code reviewed, tested, merged into our release branch and tested again. And it doesn't end there.

Any time we touch anything related to chat or round timers or game modes we have to then retest that we haven't broken those features, and it adds extra things to code and design around. And it doesn't even end there.

Hotfixes are done for game breaking bugs. If such a bug occurs in features we add for RPers then is that hotfix worthy? Half the community would say yes, the other half would say no - but from our perspective its something we support so would be, and we just made half the community patch and update their servers for no real gain on their part.

Finally, it creates the expectation that we support that kind of gameplay and will add new features to it over time.

why do RP features have to undergo rigorous testing when changes to core mechanics (ie sabering) get released with two beta tests on the wrong gamemode (1.5.1)???

I can understand the argument about breaking the game, but I'm pretty sure from speaking to Helix and Tempest that adding a server side cfg which allows distance based text is a case of almost one line of code. The code of which Helix managed to find online.

The expectation of developing RP based features isn't there, people will put up with the bare minimum, look at games like runescape/habbo hotel which have a similar
bare minimum of support, yet they have very much alive RP communities - the difference is is that these games don't cuck RPers, they don't make it ideal but they don't cuck you either

Ngl i won't play MB2 RP because my love for the game has started to fade dramatically but I did wish for the aforementioned features to be added whilst I was active, and I still wish they were just because i know it will help the game's dwindling population

Oh and also, if you don't want to dev RP servers let server hosts customize their server without getting cucked (like i said before)

 

[jango40]

Making shit like the Time Limit not hardcoded would result in tons of custom servers that would inevitably split the community apart, and it is small enough as it is

If you want to RP why not download the Open Jedi Project or any of the RP mods? There are a few, choose a mod, get a group, set up a server, enjoy.

 

[Def!led]

Fun times were spent on Sk1nn3r's RP RC1(I think it's been a long time) server. It's a shame that the dev team made it their personal goal to destroy it.

 

[Templar]

Making shit like the Time Limit not hardcoded would result in tons of custom servers that would inevitably split the community apart, and it is small enough as it is

If you want to RP why not download the Open Jedi Project or any of the RP mods? There are a few, choose a mod, get a group, set up a server, enjoy.

Implying anyone will even join a server that isn't [tR]Deathstar.

 

[Defiant]

why do RP features have to undergo rigorous testing when changes to core mechanics (ie sabering) get released with two beta tests on the wrong gamemode (1.5.1)???

Stassin did a few tests on it. I did a few tests on it post merge.

I can understand the argument about breaking the game, but I'm pretty sure from speaking to Helix and Tempest that adding a server side cfg which allows distance based text is a case of almost one line of code. The code of which Helix managed to find online.

Ok - and how does that work with the TK system, or RTV? Do SMOD admins get to see what everyone is saying everywhere in order to be able to admin their servers? It's all this stuff and more that you havnt thought about, and that you havnt considered what we'd have to code around and design around. There will be barriers that wouldn't even be foreseeable until someone did the code. You just think theres one line of code we can magically add and everything will work perfectly.

The expectation of developing RP based features isn't there

Uhhhhhhh….What is this thread asking for and saying that we should add?

Oh and also, if you don't want to dev RP servers let server hosts customize their server without getting cucked (like i said before)

We've had this discussion already, there's no reason to have it again.

 

[noel]

Stassin did a few tests on it. I did a few tests on it post merge.



Ok - and how does that work with the TK system, or RTV? Do SMOD admins get to see what everyone is saying everywhere in order to be able to admin their servers? It's all this stuff and more that you havnt thought about, and that you havnt considered what we'd have to code around and design around. There will be barriers that wouldn't even be foreseeable until someone did the code. You just think theres one line of code we can magically add and everything will work perfectly.


Uhhhhhhh….What is this thread asking for and saying that we should add?


We've had this discussion already, there's no reason to have it again.

So people are asking for RP features when theres none in the game already therefore give them them and they'll shut up

 

[Defiant]

So people are asking for RP features when theres none in the game already therefore give them them and they'll shut up

"Attract more roleplayers, don't give them features and enjoy the silence". That's an interesting hypothesis.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

It's just bs. Nothing's changed.

You don't want to do that? Then give MB2 what it's always demanded, the ability to host custom servers with more control/use their own scripts without being removed from MS list. No one is going to stop playing the core game because custom servers get added, people will play what they enjoy - if Dev's are really worried that people are going to enjoy an unintentional aspect of their game then that is, imo, a hurrendous general principle.

Always demanded? Yeah, a handful over the years that stuck around on the forums and try to pass off their minority opinion as if they're the mouthpiece for the community.

Quit pretending. But then, that's a bit of an obstacle in the case of rpers. Lulz.

Fact. There are several rp mods available.
Fact. Most of them are dead.

Question. Why?

Here's the truth. Mb still has a community, still has people updating and working on shit and you want to subsume that into your rp fantasy that many people have tried and got bored of.

Roleplay in JA in the end was a failed product. Hence, Ergo, Mb2 lives where all those other shits have long passed into dust.

 

[Blazer]

I want to ask a question here:

A lot of people say "oh well if you want to rp, then just go download another mod!" or "We can't let you have your RP features because that would/will kill the mod!" or "the rp community would split the community!"

I'm curious, if the people who play this game only want to rp, and you don't want to give them the power or assets to use or do that in fear of the splittage of community or the death of this game, what's the point? Giving power and the assets to the The people who only want to RP would not only increase player size, but increase the communtiy as a whole, and increase the friendship and closeness this community has.

@Chaos the Chaotic earlier you said
"Was your server that retarded one with npcs wooks running around? Where people spent, well, far more than 5 minutes, chatting to set up a little scene for a stage production? Lulz.

Reality. Rping has been looked down in this community for the better part of the mods life by both devs and community. The reasons range from gameplay, desire and just sheer aversion. I believe Acidus actively hated you lot.
And the history of rping in mb2 is a sad one, indeed. Most rp servers were just a breeding ground for smug, little shits to lord it over others.?

This whole argument is insensitive and rude. You're calling out people because they want to play the game a certain way and not the way it was exactly meant to play? What the hell man? No one has to play exactly how you like it.

@Chaos the Chaotic You also said
"The point of the mod is to battle. Theater productions at this point and time - serve nothing other than the ego of desperately small-minded individuals. It's the gameplay that brings people back, for good or ill.
Not people playing pretend, spamming chat, or god forbid, some voice chat. "

Uh, that isn't the point. I hate to bring something like this up, but when Valve made CS:GO, they didn't mean for thousands of people to make surf servers, or servers that had custom skins and shit like "zombie survival" servers. But it happened, and the community thrives and grows because of it. And now the people who paid/or downloaded a game to play a competitive gamemode, can now get on to have a close relationship with friends who want to do some stupid shit like hiding from zombies or surfing around really cool maps. The argument that a game should only be used for it's made-purpose is a very ignorant and not thought through very well.

Hell, if I made a game to be competitive and my community started making cool shit like new skins and NPC's and different game modes, I'd be suprised, and hell I'd be happy that my game could grow into things I never imagined.

@noel said "The mb2 dev's anti-RP attitude is literally unexplainable."
I like the devs of this game, they seem cool and competent, but this is true. The people who truly just want to rp, just give them the assets to do so, there's no point you shouldn't.

What I'm trying to get across, is there's probably tons of people who want to RP and not play the base game as much, so by limiting/cancelling and ability to RP or do things that could grow that area of the game, you're literally doing nothing but hurting the community as a whole by not allowing them to experience something different, but especially putting a killing blow to the whole RP community.

And for the record, I don't RP, but I care very much about the state of the game and how others want to play.

 

[Chaos the Chaotic]

Hahahah, wtf? You think you're growing the community by splitting it?
You're not growing the game by splitting up players that play mb2 the mod, vs mb2 the rpers wannabe circle-jerk.

A lot of people say "oh well if you want to rp, then just go download another mod!" or "We can't let you have your RP features because that would/will kill the mod!" or "the rp community would split the community!"

I'm curious, if the people who play this game only want to rp, and you don't want to give them the power or assets to use or do that in fear of the splittage of community or the death of this game, what's the point? Giving power and the assets to the The people who only want to RP would not only increase player size, but increase the communtiy as a whole, and increase the friendship and closeness this community has.

If they want to use mb2 assets, then they have to play mb2. It puts the lotion on its skin. Haha.
That's keeping the community intact
I don't understand your hippie crap. Wasn't mb the most toxic community anyhow? Now you really are playing pretend!

This whole argument is insensitive and rude. You're calling out people because they want to play the game a certain way and not the way it was exactly meant to play? What the hell man? No one has to play exactly how you like it.

Too bad. If they want to rp, then they should play one of the dozen failed rp mods or make one of their own instead of trying to subvert the work & resources of another mod.

Uh, that isn't the point. I hate to bring something like this up, but when Valve made CS:GO, they didn't mean for thousands of people to make surf servers, or servers that had custom skins and shit like "zombie survival" servers. But it happened, and the community thrives and grows because of it. And now the people who paid/or downloaded a game to play a competitive gamemode, can now get on to have a close relationship with friends who want to do some stupid shit like hiding from zombies or surfing around really cool maps. The argument that a game should only be used for it's made-purpose is a very ignorant and not thought through very well.

That was their choice. This is a mod, you realize that right? You want to mod the mod? Lulz. Devs werent getting paid to make a last man standing, siege type mod. They're not raking in any cash doing this. But they did it anyway. I think you're spitting on years of hard work by claiming they're irrelevant to whatever whiney rpers want now.

Hell, if I made a game to be competitive and my community started making cool shit like new skins and NPC's and different game modes, I'd be suprised, and hell I'd be happy that my game could grow into things I never imagined.

Yeah, someone takes your shit and does crap you don't want regardless of your permission, another Kotf.

Again, there have been and are, literally several times a dozen rp mods available. So, why arent you playing them? Reality. You just want the community. Our warm bodies to fill the roles of whatever server miester shithead is running around playing god.

Nothing stops you from assuming a role right now in the game. Because it's not about rp, but control.

Fascists begone.