Why, and bye.

[Viserys]

Ok I guess I'll reply to this.

First of all, @LoU 's contribution to the mod, as I know it, cannot be understated. And I'm sure there's a lot I'm not even aware of from the past years. So thank you @LoU, on behalf of the entire community. That's a given, and doesn't change.

That said, I disagree with many points in LoU's post and the replies on this thread:

We are going on a circle stating the obvious: devs should do X, not Y, they should stop changing the same stuff, do new things, get organized, etc.
I can certainly see where this is coming from given MB2's history but since the first moment I became a lead the first thing I pushed for is to freeze the saber system and move on with new stuff, modes, models, maps, classes. I'm all for all this. Who's going to do it though?

All the people complaining must understand what @GoodOl'Ben best described here: working on MB2 after spending your day in your real work is hard enough. People's time, mood, energy, availability, and motivation changes. It's not easy to develop something based on a 100% voluntary team. People work when they are excited about something, if they don't like it, they won't do it. Everyone likes something different and we end up going in circles from rainbow sabers to flying rancors and back again.

All this is to be expected, and we try to manage it as best we can. I feel I'm explaining the obvious.

Speaking for myself, and I believe for others members of the dev team, we are more than willing to listen. I myself spent many hours coding and debugging the class limit plugin, despite having NO time for coding, to give players a more competitive gameplay, which I thought they wanted. Yes, it's not perfect, but it's something, right? And yet the servers running class limits are always empty. Why is this? Because I didn't try, I didn't listen, or because, you really are NOT interested?

I'm willing to take MB2 in the direction of Alderaan, the Moon or Kepler 584242, but tell me, WHO will do the work?

So please, stop complaining, and do something about it. Learn basic coding, modeling, whatever, join the dev team, support your mod. Or just stop bitching at those who do. It is really de-motivating, believe me. The community shares a great deal of responsiblity for developers losing interest and giving up across all years of development.

 

[vasya]

Why is this?

cuz class limit is bs, who wanted this? some sweaty tryhards? im playing for fun and i want to pick class i want. turns out I'm not the only one.

-------------------------

about saber system etc. - why in earth did u change it in first place? it was OK before 1.3.2+ and completely fckd up after 1.4, now it's like - turn ur mouse - pb\disarm\press LMB - absolutly brainless and boring. told this when it was released saying it now.
idea with MBlock without bp cost is like....i dunno who is this genious who introduced this.

u're telling about "we're spending our time for this mod". ok ok, my answer is - don't. we had pretty good, pretty fun mod which is dying because of your "innovations".
btw when running sbd and vibroswords will be released? can't wait to delete mb2 for good.

and u don't think that im an ungrateful shit, i love this mod. in my opinion its one of the best multiplayer games (not mods) ever made. and only one game i still play through years over and over.

so just stop rethink stuff and lets finish this endless alpha-test.

 

[LoU]

"Excuses".
/Drops mic.

 

[Pipexlul]

Well, I don't usually give my opinion on things, but I feel like I must do it this time, because it involves one of the things I love the most, which is MBII and it's future.

I've been a MB2 player for 7+ years and just in 2016, I became a dev, I know that makes me relatively new, but won't stop me from writing this post.
Now, I must say, while I agree with some of @LoU 's and @Helix 's points, I'd like to point out that not everyone should be put into the same basket. I'm not saying the MB2 team is this utopian perfect team where everything flows smoothly, no, I'm saying that the team has flaws, some of them worse than others, but saying that NO ONE wants to admit what is happening or saying that EVERYONE values their opinion above others is just not right. I can assure you there are devs who are conscious of the situation, and also, devs who want to work as a team, appreciating the feedback and opinions from others.

Now, there is something I agree, on the previous posts a magic word appeared: "Organization". If you ask me, directly, what I think is our biggest flaw, I'd say it is the organization with a mix of motivation. By organization, I mean, have more goals as a team, have direct assignments, have something similar to deadlines but not as extreme (because remember, MB2 is made with the passion and free time of people), etc. I highly think that would reinvigorate the development process of MB2.

I firmly believe that MovieBattles can get through any dark times it faces, because we have strong, loyal, and passionate people in both, the community and developers. So, in conclusion, this thread was super useful because I know it made people from both sides reflect on the current state of our mod, realize mistakes, and have better plans for the future.

 

[Damn Polak]

the servers running class limits are always empty. Why is this? Because I didn't try, I didn't listen, or because, you really are NOT interested?

neither of these reasons
the good servers are empty and the dotf 24/7 is full most of the time because of how players join the game
i noticed this pattern even in myself:

• you run the game
• look at the servers list
• filter results by ping, disregard anything above 90ms
• filter results by players, disregard anything below 2p (you don't want to be alone on a server do you?)
• end up joining some <BG>RTV or some rotation (best case scenario, you might as well end up with <BG>DOTF)
• play on this server until

1. someone griefs the shit out of it and you change servers
2. you get bored/tired/it's getting late and you quit
3. game crashes and you restart and find something more fitting on the server list

as you can see everything comes down to the social aspect of a mb2 player, a lonely padawan can't populate server on his own, and he's usually too insecure to go on discord or something to ask around if a group of 3+ ppl want to play competitive with him for 30'

hope this wall of text helps

and there's always that guy

class limit is bs, who wanted this? (...) and u don't think that im an ungrateful shit

"Balance getups? Nope. Balance weapons in each team? Nope. Balance classes by their perks? Nope, let's just make running SBD instead!

it's funny cos its true

My response to ( for more Real talk, the future of MBII and ... )
Skip this part if you want raw facts.
10 years ago, my brother who you may know him as -polaks-Ordo /AOL Ordo or simply Rex or Padawan showed me this game. I've never felt like uber superb fan of Star Wars, but yeah lemme try. I used to play many games, spent countless hours playing COD4, Sims, Tycoons, Fifa/PES.

The day I played MBII for the first time, was the first day of the last days of "LoU and Games". I stopped playing other games, stopped considering other games as "fun". Movie Battles was more than just a game, for me it was like... did i just discovered IRC in game? With bunch of nice people, trolls, fun. Yeah, that was MBii. The most unique game ever. I will never forget when i started beating my skill in HTML/PHP while creating first polish site about movie battles gathering 7 clans, and more than 200 players. Then I met @Nex and @GogettO , and even after these all years we are still in touch.

One day I was addicted to many games, the other I couldn't even imagine playing anything bout MBII. No matter of lacking skill, pure fun.

After RC1 came out, we had pretty big playerbase. After next 5 years, I started loosing my interest. And I will tell you why...

Please don't tell me this is the game's fault, it's too old and that's the only reason people gave up. No, it's totally our fault - DEVS, we fucked up, noone wants to admit it, hiding behind excuses or looking for compromise for fuckups.

Don't you think it's pretty weird to loose more than (i will focus on my example as polish player) 80 competitive players, 7 clans in just 2 years?
Is it purely because the game is old?
I DON"T THINK SO.

Why the F**k we have to change saber system release after release, not fixing exisiting bugs, or making improvements for other things.

MBII is not a casual game nor competitive, it's Frankenstein's Monster, mix of black and white. Can you be semi pregnant? No. Can you have two game styles in one piece of game? No.

The problem is, by fixing minor things, tweaking this there, a little bit here and again there we didn't ever look at bigger picture. Why are we doign this? Coz of balance? No that's not an answer, balance towards what? Noone knows, where are we going with this? WHo cares, let's make another change here and there.

LoU why are you talking about only about competitive game? Simply because competition is something what attracts people. BUT this is not my intention to force competition everywhere. We could have RP server, CTF, Competitive, Open modes, FA.

I lost my all hope for MBII that's why for the past 2 years I was in shadow just talking, with Sxx aboard I made launcher, I had a hope back then, development was more consistent.

I'm not against removing time limit for RolePlayers why the hell would be forbid them playing? Coz this game is about teamwork? Hahahaha -.-. It's not. It's totally not. Yeah, let's cut access to this mod for someone who don't want to play by our rules.

That's my open letter. I don't expect you to agree, I don't even care (no offense) . I might be mistaken, maybe it's me who don't see a big picture. Maybe it's just me who see current state of MBII as a problem, maybe reality is totalyy different? We have more players, noone whines about this game and love this mod more than ever. Maybe I'm too old, or it's only me who wants to see this mod differentl. Again, that's my opinion, an my goodbye letter

It was a pleasure working with you, laugh, even playing dotf. I don't hold grudge towards anyone, and with my goodbye I also want to apologize, Sorry to all the players who aren't happy with changes we did while I've been a Leader.

Love you all,
May the force be with you.
Bye. LoU ex gracz, only admin

this is so sudden, when i read that for the first time it sounded like some self-pity and depression, if i was my sister i'd tell you to stop complaining, but srsly i hope you'll get better (not implying you absolutely have to come back or something, you're just considered a really valuable asset)

 

[LoU]

this is so sudden, when i read that for the first time it sounded like some self-pity and depression, if i was my sister i'd tell you to stop complaining, but srsly i hope you'll get better (not implying you absolutely have to come back or something, you're just considered a really valuable asset)

My childhood is a one big lie ! haha. I probably won't come back to game, but as I said before, I will stay as long as I will be needed as techsupport.

 

[Viserys]

neither of these reasons
the good servers are empty and the dotf 24/7 is full most of the time because of how players join the game

The class limits were applied to DOTF servers, precisely for this reason. Still, when given the option between DOTF with limits and DOTF without limits, people seem to choose the second option.

it's funny cos its true

I did not code the class limit script out of the blue. People had complained to me, time and again, but how the game isn't competitive and class limits are required. Still, didn't see a surge on this.

In fact, Liniyka made a thread on these forums if class limits should be applied to open servers. The result was 50-50. Yet the population spread between class limit servers and non-limited servers is NOT 50-50.

 

[Viserys]

My childhood is a one big lie ! haha. I probably won't come back to game, but as I said before, I will stay as long as I will be needed as techsupport.

If competitive servers were populated, would you still play?

 

[LoU]

If competitive servers were populated, would you still play?

Bring back RC1 we can talk

I will be back if the game will suit me, I won't precisely say what should be done (it's my opinion anyway) because people would start rage
Some just sticked to their minds and won't change pov for hell.

Once change would be awesome: punish for each stupid move that applies to everything and each one of the classes.

FIrst of all think abuout this how this game is supposed to look like, otherwise we will have release every year with major/minor gameplay changes.

OR.

Finish what you had started with, release. Take a break. Work on totally new concepts, for each class, mode, weapon, force. Dont't look at this as "we can't change this, coz it wasn't intended to work like this" make new intentions.

And after a 6 months of only drawing sketches, share with community your ideas about...

MOVIE BATTLES 3​

 

[Jameson]

Bring back RC1 we can talk

I will be back if the game will suit me, I won't precisely say what should be done (it's my opinion anyway) because people would start rage
Some just sticked to their minds and won't change pov for hell.

Once change would be awesome: punish for each stupid move that applies to everything and each one of the classes.

FIrst of all think abuout this how this game is supposed to look like, otherwise we will have release every year with major/minor gameplay changes.

OR.

Finish what you had started with, release. Take a break. Work on totally new concepts, for each class, mode, weapon, force. Dont't look at this as "we can't change this, coz it wasn't intended to work like this" make new intentions.

And after a 6 months of only drawing sketches, share with community your ideas about...

MOVIE BATTLES 3​

Omg!

 

[Gumba]

The reason why the class limit servers weren't populated is cos the script was just bad. No offence to you @Viserys ofc you did what you could with the limits of server commands.

As long as its not properly in the code people will not play it for long

 

[Gargos]

I just want to put my couple cents in this topic of other modes of playing mb2 (I think @GoodOl'Ben already mentioned something about this).

It should not come as a surprise if class limit and competition are not so popular of an idea. Hell, what was to be expected when having any other map than dotf being a huge challenge for many. Why I think going for restrictive play is a bad idea is that WE ARE NOT MANY. If our gameplay population was three to five times more than what we had now, then these options would be valid (having both kind of servers; open and the competitive and restricted ones). But with how little we have, is it smart to split the community any further?

Do not get me wrong. I LOVE the competitive side of mb2. But with a little population like this we have NO OTHER CHOICE but to promote freedom, not restriction. If players are not able to play the way they want to play, they will quit eventually. For example class limit: sometimes I want to play forcewhore jedi but I do not dare if there are only 2 jedi per team. I would be selfish. In my opinion it is a lot easier to deal with spam from time to time compared to constant restriction in the way we can play this game.

What Vis was talking about whining though, she is absolutely right. You do not get to whine about bad devs if you're playing a free mod without contributing anything to the game itself. You have the right to feedback, but you do not have the right to outright complain if you're not doing anything at all yourself.

Seeing Lou leaving made me realize that mb2 is fragile. I have played this game close to 11 years and I would be proud to play another 11. This community and this game has been a huge part of my life, hell I've even met more than just a few mb2 players in real life and made friends with them. That is why I am sad if this game would die and I hope our coders still have the interest to go on.

Sometimes I agreed with you Lou, sometimes not, but you contributed to this game a lot and I salute you for that.

 

[Jorge]

just wanted to say we've been here with LoU before, and we've brought him back. As you all know, one can never leave MBII, it's just not possible. So after this bit of drama he will be back. Don't you worry. Next time we will put a bigger leash and more guards in his dungeon so just give it time. He'll be back

right?

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

Solution: Elect a leader that can organize development changes properly.

 

[LoU]

Solution: Elect a leader that can organize development changes properly.

"Change president because your country is poor" solution, never gonna work.

Just create and run proper gameplay "department".

 

[Rajive]

Ok I guess I'll reply to this.
Speaking for myself, and I believe for others members of the dev team, we are more than willing to listen. I myself spent many hours coding and debugging the class limit plugin, despite having NO time for coding, to give players a more competitive gameplay, which I thought they wanted. Yes, it's not perfect, but it's something, right? And yet the servers running class limits are always empty. Why is this? Because I didn't try, I didn't listen, or because, you really are NOT interested?

I see two main reason as to why people don't join class limit server:

First MB2 is not a real competitive game, there is no reward for the player who go to competitive server except being limited in the choice of his class. In games like Dota, League of Legend, Overwatch, you have competitive game mode with limitation to the character you can choose, but in exchange you get a rank at the end of the match, and with it experience, and when you got enough you can move from bronze to silver and then to gold... It motivate the ego of the player "Hey I'm gold, I'm of the top of the player of the game".

In MB2 you have nothing of this. I think Ben said some new stats maybe available to people who join competitive server. It would be a first step in this direction. If you get your stats and you can compare them to others player (maybe with a ranking) it will be a better motivation to play this mode.
I don't say this will be enough, I don't know if MB2 players have an interest in that, but right now there's no reason to play on class limited server, moreover if there is a lot of player on theme.

This is my second point. Let's say I want to play on class limited server because I'm bored of full jedi/sith team. I see your server with 10/20 people. I say ok there is still a good chance for the class I want to be free, and if not, it wont be long before it is available. Yet when I see 17/20, I will think twice before joining, there's low chance for the class I like to be available, there will certainly be only soldier and maybe commander. I want to play the classes I like, not to waste the little spare time I have waiting to enjoy MB2.
What would be better would be a server where, the more people there is, the more class slot open. For instance if we have 10/20 people on the server, there is only 2 jedi/sith slot open. But when we are 15/20 a third slot open. (The number are completely random). I don't know if this is possible however.

 

[DaloLorn]

Yet when I see 17/20, I will think twice before joining, there's low chance for the class I like to be available, there will certainly be only soldier and maybe commander. I want to play the classes I like, not to waste the little spare time I have waiting to enjoy MB2.

Amusingly, the class limit server that I found most pleasing was a 'Clone Wars RP' server, which limited the classes to something along these lines:

• A bunch of clones, an ARC and a Jedi
• A bunch of soldiers, an ET, a Sith, an SBD or two and a droideka

Between the virtual disappearance of snipers and the limited amount of saberists, I found it to be quite entertaining on either side of the battle.

 

[LoU]

First MB2 is not a real competitive game, there is no reward for the player who go to competitive server except being limited in the choice of his class. In games like Dota, League of Legend, Overwatch, you have competitive game mode with limitation to the character you can choose, but in exchange you get a rank at the end of the match, and with it experience, and when you got enough you can move from bronze to silver and then to gold... It motivate the ego of the player "Hey I'm gold, I'm of the top of the player of the game".

Doable in MBII.

 

[Damn Polak]

just wanted to say we've been here with LoU before, and we've brought him back. As you all know, one can never leave MBII, it's just not possible. So after this bit of drama he will be back. Don't you worry. Next time we will put a bigger leash and more guards in his dungeon so just give it time. He'll be back

right?

what did you fucking do? did you blackmail him? did you threaten to leak his nudes?

 

[LoU]

what did you fucking do? did you blackmail him? did you threaten to leak his nudes?

I came back to bring MBII back to life. Kinda twice

First time Sxx reached me whe jNive disappeared with all of our stuff (domain, hosting, files, repo etc)
Second time @GoodOl'Ben reached me when Sxx disappeared with all of our stuff (domain, hosting, files, repo etc - Downtime, Cause and Consequences )

Circle of life

edit: Just to make this clear, and don't sound like some kind of superhero, We all did it twice. I just clicked power on button on server.