For those new players I'm talking about the needless climb to Battlemaster or the unrewarding rune collecting. The high council of Pox Players that are in league with the Greens. Runes are not static and are defined by the Devs as variables (I'm putting words in their mouth because they don't ever speak for themselves, only when provoked) or it's two years down the line and they're like "oh Bane Shift we haven't made any announcements, better say some garbage about what we did the first year we took over" 1. Needless Climb - you will get player after player saying ranked does not matter; each player will still tell you to play the game but the game you're playing is not always the same. If I were to play a match right now it would be either the same exact bg I've been playing for the past year, because there has been nothing released, or I would try something I haven't tried before and therefore rank in and of itself is irrelevant to me. Now I may not be speaking for everyone but I am...at some point or another every player has been at this point with Poxnora and I'm strictly speaking about the past 3 years with DOGz 2. Unrewarding rune collecting - what is the point of collecting something that based on the discretion of the Devs, which admittedly I really really don't like them rn, they aren't doing anything and if they care they will hire someone to speak on behalf of them. Hire your wives as green speak but really whenever Sok replies he cant get his foot out of 2015...idk what Senshu even replies about. Let's just say that their are categories posts fall under, this goes for greens and players. All of these categories can be seen as beneficial or unproductive, hostile or complimentary. However I'd say it is the players that evolves their posts while the Devs have become stagnant. Comment/Response - Devs are always right, players could not possibly fathom what it is a Dev does, because the Devs don't respect themselves or their community to wear loosegooses hat. That's Sok saying he's not a programmer so he doesn't know anything. This just means he can't communicate to his programmer and vice versa to understand the roles and tasks the other is working on. Balancing/Lore - balance gets hard to discuss when there hasn't been any concrete lore or content created for this game in...? Don't get me wrong the player made expansion will be great but because this game is built on numbers and not a story idk what will come of Pox after the player made expansion. There is no rhyme or reason for why much of anything is being worked on...oh wait balance. Sok hasn't defined balance, @LooseGoose can you define balance for us? If the game was bounded at 5/6/7 speeders but now it can have 8 speeders does that mean that all 8speeders have a debilitating ability like Stasis on base? Do you guys even have these kind of discussions? Does anyone at DoGs working on Poxnora have any idea of how this game is bounded? Or is that a foreign word to everyone? @anygreen do you see how Runes can be generated by a dice roll and that ability sets can be voted upon in mass by the community so that literally zero of the work day is spent on brainstorming? Instead it would be all used to fix bugs or create design content rather than adjusting it. The mystique of what to do has been given to the community cause hello we know exactly what to do and I could care less of the job title a person has. I'll pose this question, can a game developer plataue to a point that the peaks and valleys for a gamer is more than that of the developer, i.e. Can the player be right and the developer be wrong? *gasp* its such a novel idea! @Sok always responds with a sense that only he and the greens can know the answer or precise course of action. I don't see him talk about game mechanics, I see him talking about balance, which if you're trying to fix a wall of cement with more wet cement, youlll never finish the wall. Let the damn thing dry and run it in with a bulldozer if you built the wall in the parking lot... Poxnora needed balance, now it needs something else. I'm actually optimistic for @Sokolov to make a change since his balance crusade is still going on and if we can get him to add another pillar to that crusade then maybe we will get better content. Re-balanced content is not content it's just wool over the eyes and @sok cut that Bane Shift out now. Same with you @Senshu, you guys need to respect the community more and stop with these tricks. If Sony hasn't told you what they want from you then tell the community what you want from PoxNora, cause you have our game, idc if any of used to work for octopi because none of you are developing as if you were. Who is project manager anyway...?
Climbing the ranked ladder and rune collection are both only small, single facets of what makes PoxNora the game it is. Most players do not let these two aspects of the game define the entire game for them. The devs are like politicians. Only a small fraction of the people playing the game care what they're doing, until the changes they make to the game impact them personally. Another aspect of PoxNora is that it has always and will likely continue to evolve. However, evolution is slow, and there are long periods in between of slow development processes. It is something you have to decide on as a player if you want to stick with it for this process, or move on, or at least take a break for a while. I think most of us are fairly frustrated at the delays present with the PS4 launch, since again, it doesn't matter to most of the players, yet it feels like we're being punished by a cessation of new content and certain balance or value adjustments. Many of us are probably torn, knowing there are other games out there, yet knowing none of them will be what PoxNora is to us. Many of us likewise have probably moved on, and when and if the game continues to expand, we might return to get another taste. It can be argued whether or not this evolution is successful. I guess that's another discussion for another time. I feel the game has come a long way from what defined it in its past. But I also feel the frustrations of a seemingly random system of multiple changes, and what has become an extremely long expansion stall. In answer to your question: If you think you can do better than the current development team, make your own game. There are many niches in the market for various games of any theme you can imagine.
Does the council even exist anymore? Swear all the old council members quit or take a long break from pox.
Actually the posting helps me get the kinks out of my game, in a sense this is me meditating. That and being in my garden of course helps. I guess I just have expectations, I wanted biweekly patches/updates and it was expressed that's not feasible but at least bimonthly would be nice, if DOGz keeps up their record they will count the new client release as an expansion since it is technically content and not release the game till winter this year or next. Really if the game comes out later this year there's nothing wrong with that, I'm just saying that the trickery of "oh hey check this out...*four months later*...oh hey check this out" has got to stop, and I'm not the only one who feels this way. Poxnoras content is great that's why I like the game, even though it is frustrating to have these lulls. Again, if the release is delayed because the content needs just a bit more fine tuning I'm not complaining. I will complain about the degree of fine tuning though...I didn't really encounter bugs that took the wind out of playing but all this rebalancing and constant change takes the wind out of my sails. Gameplay, Collecting, Role Playing there is no other reason to play this game. I consider hanging with friends and sociallizing while playing this game as RP since the dialogue can be based off of the content/community (forums posts and ingame banter) even if those people are talking about the real world, in which case they'd be playing for the gameplay or to collect. Gameplay is Deck building - I prefer to theory craft than start a game these past few years, you can say it was when Dampen was removed. But I also play runes that have been changed from one way or another while under DOGz development, at some point they need to take their grubby hands off of the previous Runes and leave them as constants, idk how anyone disagrees with that. We can only communicate using constants, if my alphabet was variable to yours how would anything be understood. PvP or PvE - it's becoming an issue when the game used to be equally Split but now the game gets balanced around one facet of the community Player knowledge is dependent on consistency. DOGz and a lot of the players expect player knowledge to be learned from gameplay which is not a problem; learning how to utilize knockback is rewarding and is a positive in the game. However playing the game for X amount of time trying to learn the ins and outs and then have everything changed is not productive of a knowledgeable community. I'm not sure why people can't see that having constants in the game makes for a better game. Perhaps start rolling out legacy runes/expansions where certain runes become 'printed' or otherwise static so that is any change needs to be made to those runes; the change can be made to create a new rune while still keeping the original rune design in the game. It's then dependent on limiting factors and normal checks and balances to keep the runes in line, which is why I advocate for more varied rune limits. ...text rants can be relaxing, especially when I'm mulling this same stuff over for my game. I'm certainly not taking the process lightly, cause if one aspect is procedurally generated that just means the players are looking at the content it is generating. Plus procedural generation either needs a lot of blend shapes or a good artist to look good which is the flip side of this creation process.
Sure I would really like one person in the Devs working current game, it cant be more then a few hours / month to clean up dead games, disable buggy runes from pvp, plan for different seasons/ladder for the year, have planned patches bi-monthly with the fixes that are doable. If they just had someone maintaining the game while the others did work on the new version and new expansions it would probably help keep the new players coming. But no idea on how many that are actually working at DOG, but they dont even got the time/resources/will to keep their company website updated. if i see right there are total of 5 persons involved at DOG, of those are 3 nontech, so its 2 tech left and they work on the new client or something else as CIO and CTO so no wonder they dont have time to do anything with the current client/game. Iam happy on the other hand that the game is still playable, and there are alot of fun people to chat with and fight on the battlefields
Yes all in all can't deny that the game is playable. I still enjoy deck building more than gameplay, but I am ready for new content to get back into the game. I'm doing all this on my own, art, code, game theory, definitely not easy. I think it was 2014 I said I would make 3D models of every race...yeah that's still in the works so really I'm well aware of how long it takes to make content. Even if I were to just copy the classic Races/Classes archetypes it would still be a task. It's just that from the time SONY funded the new client DOGz should have made a business plan for Pox which should be shared with the commmunity. If they were to make a Kickstarter there would still need to be projections of what they may do; the Cactar Crate is great but that has some pretty large scale stuff and then a lot of minor fixes which is what's i mean by wool over the eyes; Heroes have been on the crate since last year but there has been no active discussion about it. Let's just say DOGz is waiting for the new client and PS4 release to make a kickstarter to further fund Poxnora, not joking about Pox2.0, really what would be expected as stretch goals should their kickstarter get funded? What would the kickstarter even be for? New campaigns? Another player made expansion? More staff? New servers? Pox novelty items...?
