What happend to this GAME- RANT. Dont read if your a touchy feely person.

[RidgeBack69]

Or maybe EW need to figure out a core/base engine again and apply the features that way. To clean up the patch on patch structure. Sure, This mean a lot of effort from the devs but you'll end up w a more solid engine than the Jenga tower it us now with all the patching.

ideally a new start would be great but as this has been brought up so many times.the cost risk time it takes to make this happen isnt a easy decision to make.its alright us saying just make a new engine and transfer it over.it doesnt work like that.it isnt simple.it could cost millions for all we know.its easy to suggest things.making them a reality is a totally different thing.

i do in a way hope that there is a roadmap or thoughts to the future for classic.would love to see it either upgraded or start a new life.in some way or form.

I would love to see theHunter2 but as you said the cost would be high so in order for EW to monetize it everyone would have to start over. For me it would be fine. This game has cost me around $100.00 + usd a year (not sure of the exact number) for the 4-5 years I have been playing so I feel the game owes me nothing at this point so starting over would not bother me.
But some have much more invested than I have so it may be a problem for them.


For a game that has gone on for almost 10 years a lot has been done with it but at some point I think a call has to and will be made that we can do not more and IMO we are closing in on that point and I for one would rather see a new game ready to take it's place than to see the dreaded message that "EW is discontinuing support for theHunter classic" Then we will be left with COTW for how ever long it stays around.

[rhapsodaisical]

BITTERVET SYNDROME aside. I believe we all want the best experience of the game.

[jeff1963]

Also the BETA build should be the same build exactly, and not a build with collectibles still there from over 6 months ago, and God only knows what else. As
messed up as every release has been for so many years, one would think that somebody in authority would have learned something by now.

They did learn Tony, people will keep purchasing new equipment & features regardless of the new bugs implemented. There is not a lot of incentive to fix bugs when the world keeps turning. It's too bad that COTW has such a nice graphics engine, but such a poor game engine, it could be the next step with some work.

[Radamus]

Just to name a few , from last patch :
- Ropes vanishing
- Baiting system flaws
- Tower wobble .
- Animals going outside of limits . i.e. Polar bears / Dall Sheep out 150m at sea .

To be fair, these particular bugs have happened before with different patches/releases. The wobbles for example, was terrible at one time and then fixed to almost perfection, and some even complained it was too good ` I'm seeing the wobble in TS also. the polar bears going out to sea and laying on the bottom off the point of Crater Bay, I saw that exact thing when polar bears came out, used to P me off too. If you are observant enough and glass around enough it's common to see polar bears walking on the sea floor all over the place, I don't think they ever make it to land. Sometimes the bubbles on top of the water give them away. I haven't seen a sheep there but if a bear can go there so can anything else including fox (seen it lots). And baiting, well, that's been a rocky road over the years with ups and downs. I think we all got a lot of replacement bait at different times after they fixed it, I know I have.

I've been hunting and getting along, I just noticed today the first time, spawning at a tent, but had to walk closer to it for inventory - All my tents look like they were hit by a tornado and some TS's buried in the middle of trees but all is normal when I go up so no biggy.

I'm not going to make excuses, I agree with everyone, but when has it been any different in the past? This ERR is a big ass deal, I'm surprised it works at all quite honestly. The trick to this is how in the hell did they do it and how did it affect these other issues and how do they fix it? I can't believe it's still kicking their ***** but it is. In the meantime, we're going to do what we've always done, raise hell until it's fixed and move down to the next one in order. In a way, discussions like this are as important as the fixes are because with it, they aren't going to know and realize that lingering problems are bad for business.

So good talk as always and once again shows that even after all these years we're still as passionate as always and in the end, all we want is an EHR to be proud of and enjoy with all our friends and we will continue to exert our energy to helping them do a good job! and we do this free of charge

Oh, and if it's not already on the list, the 340 aimed at the heart on bears will not hit the heart. You can hit every other organ but not the heart. Maybe it moved and it's in their ass now? I'm not sure but it's not where it's supposed to be with that gun.

[DYEUZ]

Len ... I agree at some point with you Len , BUT , back in the days , we had small bugs , that did not affect the gameplay that much . Not like the bugs we have today .

- Remember the .50 ball of the muzzleloader outside the cannon while loading ? Pfttt ! who cared ! Still could go hunt .
- We had the heads of the animals sticking out of the ground at some point when dead . No big deal also ,did not affect the game play .Some even thought it was cool, funny and took pics like that .
- Not seeing your feet with the Alpine camo suit , while taking pics .Oh well. You still could run though .

Imo , the game play is way more affected today , than back then and that's a shame . Because what is this hunting game about ? Its all about game play .

[Radamus]

Had some funny ones man- One of my fav's was the spinning bow when you drew it back, that was a trip- and falling out of a TS. If you remember I made a video of it, took 2 medkits to hit the ground and you left a bloodtrail on the ground.

Yeah watching our animals sink onto the ground was a pain- So was seeing your arrow go 10 feet to the right if it got cloudy and snowed on Hemm. Or the tracking when all the tracks were 6 feet off the ground up in the trees

When they got the ball on the 50cal, that's how good it was that it was the biggest thing on the list. So yeah, We've had it good at times but the benchmark low of all time was WRR release- So it can get a lot more broken as well - But really, you're preaching to the choir man! I'm right there with you!

[Reggy]

10 years ago pretty much everything was different. What you did, how you did it, your life/job was not done the same then as it is now. (probably) You are using a different cell phone, TV is digital, PCs are capable of 128Gb ram, we have 6Tb HDD, 1Tb+ SSD, etc. In that time there have been many updates, even to php/MySQL which is used on this forum. The Devs a decade ago wrote the programs, or designed them, others maintained them. Almost all, if not all, are gone and have been for some time. There is a difference between a maintenance programmer and a IDK creative/design programmer. The programmers working on tHC NOW were at best in high school 10 years ago and probably have no experience with previous versions of code. College/university is a sterile environment not real world, not real users.

IMHO to fix this they are gonna have to find an old guy/gal, someone who was programming 10 years ago, to be able to convert the early reserves to new code, or at least change the band-aids. It seems to me, and I have only been playing a couple of years, that the new stuff breaks the OLD stuff. The newer stuff works OK, it's the stuff from the past with band-aid after band-aid that breaks. The ERR is a good example of changing current code without any idea how that will effect existing code or code written 10 years ago. You can't change scale and expect everything (bait barrels, xyz coordinates, etc) to remain the same. There are the things you know you don't know, but one should be aware that there are things you don't know that you don't know. You can plan for what you know you don't know, but there will always be something you don't know, you didn't know. OR, in other words, you should be prepared for a surprise every time with every change. But EW seems surprised that they get surprised. As a tech guy who has been doing this prior to Microsoft DOS V1.0, 10 years is a helluva long time in tech years. To quote Bill Gates ca 1988-90 "I do not ever foresee a need for more than 640Kb of RAM!" Example of what you knew then vs what you know now.

They have testing, lots of people on this forum have been Beta and/or Alpha testers but it's such a short closed window that you don't have time to test everything AND it's in a controlled environment. My suggestion would be something I've seen in other games. EW puts a test server online, copies all code & database (yes all of it) to the test server. Users apply and if accepted their character with all skills, equipment, etc is copied to the test server. ALL equipment is free or gm$ only on the test side, nothing from the test server per character is carried over to live. Every update is placed on the test server prior to being released and AFTER EW's internal testing. Limit the test server to 300-500 users or whatever is reasonable for the size of the user base. Let real paid members play on that test server for a week or more and most of these issues would be caught before release. The test server should match the live server in ALL regards, the only exception should be the beta release/update being tested.

It's a small expenditure (one test server + bandwidth). Copying user data could/should be automated, the criteria for testers could be automated. The idea is to have users playing at the level they are used to with the equipment they are used to and anything done on the test server does not count towards anything in the live version. NDA required, separate forums limited to those users. My 0.02$ or maybe 0.10$.

[caledonianblues]

Limit the test server to 300-500 users or whatever is reasonable for the size of the user base. Let real paid members play on that test server for a week or more and most of these issues would be caught before release. The test server should match the live server in ALL regards, the only exception should be the beta release/update being tested.

Whilst it's a good idea in principle, and I'm all in favour of anything that improves the quality and standard of releases, what you're suggesting wouldn't work. The first issue is that you would have 300-500 people all testing random stuff with little to no structure or methodology. Then there would be thousands of posts, almost certainly not organised in any useful way or adhering to a standard format that could be easily interpreted. But even if all that could be overcome, you would then have a list of bugs as long as your arm, and a project manager caught between a rock (we players that expect great quality releases) and a hard place (a board member demanding sales reports that demonstrate having met revenue targets). So even if all the bugs were reported, all that would happen is it would create more disappointment when releases were made anyway. People would demand to know a bug they reported was not fixed. They would want to know why Expansive Worlds released something even though they knew there was a bug. And the answer would be money.

I'm not making excuses for poor quality or suggesting that what we have now is fine. I'm suggesting that, once again, what seems like a great idea and the logical thing to do, is in fact totally impractical. Oh, and I bet 50% of the 300-500 people would just be on the test server to try out all the store items, so they could decide what to buy on their live accounts. Call me cynical, but last time there was an open beta test people were posting about how they got to try out items in the store with the em$ Expansive Worlds credited to their test accounts. Stuff that was not supposed to be tested.

Anyway I don't disagree with the notion. I'm just confident that a testing plan of this magnitude would be an unmitigated disaster of disarray and ultimate disappointment.

[Radamus]

Good points Reggy! and good ideas. Very true about the depth of knowledge and value of experience understanding how TH works. I'd venture to bet we have players who were beta testing before some of our current team was out of gamer school. With that, I can't believe a reputable school is focusing on techniques and systems/software that was in use when the foundations were laid for this decade old girl, who was at the time the latest and greatest advances in concept and execution for a game. I know very little of nothing in the realm, but it would make sense as this is standard in any industry. I relate it to my own history in the early 90's when civilian use of GPS systems were available for private industry. I worked for a company developing it's use in agriculture. I would spend days taking position data as gps lat/lon streams and writing page long equations to clean up, sort and apply applications for practical use. Today, the folks in that field know of those times and I imagine it's brushed over in Practical Spacial Applications 101 as a preface. Software and the advances in equipment and huge leaps in accuracy happen like magic compared to my days. I have to believe The Hunter is quite a similar beast.

And David, as always lays out the challenge, just the way it is. It's not that it can't be done, it's how can it be done profitably because end of the day, that is what matters.

And Davids comments on testers- Yepper- He knows, he's done it, I've done it and reading that it all comes back to me BRR is a good example, it wasn't ready, had problems, was not well thought out and 99% said it's not ready- released anyway because it had to. Looking back, I guess it doesn't matter what anyone thought of that because it did, it happened and imo, is one of the best reserves in the group today. Was it the right call at the time? Nope, not for thin skins but feelings don't put money in the bank and people don't work for free- I know I sure as hell don't

One thing we've always been able to do is have a lot of faith, and I credit Alena for putting a lot of faith in us that the job will be done just going to take time. I think we're in the same boat, they just need to throw us a bone now and then.

[J_Birdman]

And David, as always lays out the challenge, just the way it is.

Read; "And David, as always, utterly rips and shreds our hopes and dreams into oblivion."



It makes sense, but what if the limited amount of testers wasn't as high as that 500 example? What if it were more like 20, of some of the most "gameplay-knowledgeable players" around? Probably still the same results, I'm guessing? I would still love if EW chimed in and just talked to us, but that's probably asking a lot. Great posts Reggy and David, your thoughts made a lot of sense, thank you for the insight!