Agile development sucks ass

[Dynast]

There's some entertaining propaganda warfare going between the 0.0 guys, but truthfully, the fundamental game design problems with 0.0 remain; there is no meaningful activity between solo work, the occasional forced Incursion distraction, and sovereignty warfare; it's very much a scenario where you bring everyone, or you bring no one. The sheer throw-weight of capitals, combined with the lopsided distribution of ISK, are major contributors towards the gestation of today's, fundamentally boring, nullsec combat sandbox. There are plenty of battle reports, plenty of dead capitals, and plenty of dead super capitals. There are thefts, there are wheelings and dealings, there is treachery and there is deceit; aside from the ever evolving propaganda meta-game, there's essentially nothing going on that we haven't seen before.

Worse yet, an increase in scale is not viable; CCP game designed themselves into a corner once before, and it's less than advisable to do it again.

If there's a solution, it's a decrease of scale.. or rather, of power projection. A big part of why numbers count so much is because it's been made super-easy to have them wherever you want them, thanks to jump drives and jump bridges. Remove jump-everything, and much of the current cap/supercap strategy becomes unfeasible. Better yet, it completely destroys the "wait around until metagaming gets us a target then bridge/jump and rape" style of play, which is a big impediment to people wanting to take risks.. ever.

[elmicker]

also makes the game boring as shit

[Bartholomeus Crane]

Which it isn't right now you mean?

Anyway, the solution is obviously 'diminishing returns'. It is not an unheard of game design principle you know ...

I suspect that implementing it isn't the problem though. I rather suspect that the problem is that implementing it now means severely pissing off an already shrinking playerbase, who's apparent purpose in life has been to collect all these baubles.

So, it is much easier, safer, and cheaper for CCP to just kick the can down the road more with vague promises of change at some future undetermined time while they work on the replacement golden goose instead.

Anyway, I've been bitter enough for a while again, and this basically has fuckall to do with Agile Software Development. So, good luck with it ...

[Lusulpher]

Thanks for the update.

So, I guess, fundamentally, nothing has changed on the game design/gameplay front then. It just looks a bit better now. CCP still tinkering along the edges, concentrating on the presentation, with the heart of the gameplay still the same old boring stalemate as before. Sounds like no real change for one, two, even three years: blob, blob, blob. But I guess some of the remaining aspies crowing about how much they won or lost during yet another inconsequential blob battle no one really cares about is what goes for 'stories' now. OK.

Whatever. Seems to me the picture is still the same: CCP created this massive fundamental game design problem for themselves, and they haven't got a clue on how to deal with it. Or indeed, seem to have much inclination to do so. Still much easier to just add more shiny stuff, some MT swag, and more crud to complicate things even further. Agile or not agile, who cares, as long as it is short-term and looks good in a video. Couple of non-committal dev-blogs about some vague ideas for the far far future, and then there's no need to withdraw further funds from the myriad of things CCP is really interested in.

Fine, you lot have fun with that then ...

It remains to be said that my posts are nothing more than my opinion; I remain open to counterclaims from those who are actually playing in 0.0, especially if they are having fun.

How to fix EvE, quickly:
1) Cynos/Bridges are delayed reaction, up to 5mins BEFORE ships come through them.
2) Monthly Capital Taxes from Alliance/Corp Wallet
3) ENTIRELY NEW POS BUILDING and Dynamic Moon Distributions

When I see an expansion with those changes, EvE will be the fun, strategic, SKILLFULL meta-game it used to be.
Until then, I expect all games to shit on their own potential.[WoT ]

They want customers but they don't want fun for starting warlords...counter-productive. More so, than AGILE.

[Rakshasa The Cat]

How to fix EvE, quickly:
1) Cynos/Bridges are delayed reaction, up to 5mins BEFORE ships come through them.

Cause only entrenched defenders should ever be able to cyno into a system in order to facilitate a more dynamic battlefield.

2) Monthly Capital Taxes from Alliance/Corp Wallet

Cause only entrenched alliances with fat wallets should ever be able to maintain a capital fleet.

3) ENTIRELY NEW POS BUILDING and Dynamic Moon Distributions

Cause that is so not what CCP has been talking about for years and lately been revving up to implement after turning around the company and getting most of the low-hanging fruits done.

[Andrea Griffin]

My company is making a shift to Agile/SCRUM/Test Driven Development.

There are a few things to like about it; we do two week sprints and it's nice to schedule things in two-week blocks. It also helps when HAPPY SALES GUY runs over and says, "OMG, I sold this product we don't really have, we need to make it now!" Since we already have things planned out and scheduled, it's easier to see what we need to bump to accommodate the request - or tell him to stop selling things we don't have and making an emergency every week.

Basically, the GOOD thing is that it forces people to plan and schedule work. Yeah, you're supposed to do that anyway, but now it's kind of mandatory and you can't side step it. So... If the guys at my company think we need Agile to do that, well, whatever, at least we're finally doing it now. Previously, my work schedule was dictated by whomever was screaming the loudest.

As far as no documentation goes, though... We're pretty strict about documenting things. Company-wide wiki is kept (mostly) up to take with everything, and every significant project has documents from the architects et al. So I really think that's a case of people being dumb if they have no documentation.

However, with this new push toward TDD... In "proper" TDD, the tests are supposed to be good, robust, and in depth enough to serve as documentation. I think this is pretty terrible, because now people are saying that we don't need detailed architecture docs and whatnot. Sorry, but having to read tests to figure something out that could be easily explained in a paragraph or two somewhere is not optimal. And what if your tests are bad? I'm not looking forward to the dark times ahead.

Sigh.

Well, it's better than that whole fiasco a few years back when the company spent a million bucks on ClearCase and related software / training from IBM or whomever does that stuff. I've never been so unproductive in my life as I was during the three months we experimented with that, then wrote off the whole thing as the giant mistake that it was.

I'm also convinced that the ClearCase+Extras was the reason our health care plan was swapped to something cheaper and crappier.

Sorry for the minor 2-day necro on the thread but I feel better now that I've bitched a bit. : >

[erichkknaar]

My company is making a shift to Agile/SCRUM/Test Driven Development.

There are a few things to like about it; we do two week sprints and it's nice to schedule things in two-week blocks. It also helps when HAPPY SALES GUY runs over and says, "OMG, I sold this product we don't really have, we need to make it now!" Since we already have things planned out and scheduled, it's easier to see what we need to bump to accommodate the request - or tell him to stop selling things we don't have and making an emergency every week.

Basically, the GOOD thing is that it forces people to plan and schedule work. Yeah, you're supposed to do that anyway, but now it's kind of mandatory and you can't side step it. So... If the guys at my company think we need Agile to do that, well, whatever, at least we're finally doing it now. Previously, my work schedule was dictated by whomever was screaming the loudest.

As far as no documentation goes, though... We're pretty strict about documenting things. Company-wide wiki is kept (mostly) up to take with everything, and every significant project has documents from the architects et al. So I really think that's a case of people being dumb if they have no documentation.

However, with this new push toward TDD... In "proper" TDD, the tests are supposed to be good, robust, and in depth enough to serve as documentation. I think this is pretty terrible, because now people are saying that we don't need detailed architecture docs and whatnot. Sorry, but having to read tests to figure something out that could be easily explained in a paragraph or two somewhere is not optimal. And what if your tests are bad? I'm not looking forward to the dark times ahead.

Sigh.

Well, it's better than that whole fiasco a few years back when the company spent a million bucks on ClearCase and related software / training from IBM or whomever does that stuff. I've never been so unproductive in my life as I was during the three months we experimented with that, then wrote off the whole thing as the giant mistake that it was.

I'm also convinced that the ClearCase+Extras was the reason our health care plan was swapped to something cheaper and crappier.

Sorry for the minor 2-day necro on the thread but I feel better now that I've bitched a bit. : >

Jesus, Clearcase... I feel your pain :brofist:

[Daneel Trevize]

Likewise. /o\

Also, IT thread in Tech subforum -->

[Waagaa]

My company is making a shift to Agile/SCRUM/Test Driven Development.

There are a few things to like about it; we do two week sprints and it's nice to schedule things in two-week blocks. It also helps when HAPPY SALES GUY runs over and says, "OMG, I sold this product we don't really have, we need to make it now!" Since we already have things planned out and scheduled, it's easier to see what we need to bump to accommodate the request - or tell him to stop selling things we don't have and making an emergency every week.

Basically, the GOOD thing is that it forces people to plan and schedule work. Yeah, you're supposed to do that anyway, but now it's kind of mandatory and you can't side step it. So... If the guys at my company think we need Agile to do that, well, whatever, at least we're finally doing it now. Previously, my work schedule was dictated by whomever was screaming the loudest.

As far as no documentation goes, though... We're pretty strict about documenting things. Company-wide wiki is kept (mostly) up to take with everything, and every significant project has documents from the architects et al. So I really think that's a case of people being dumb if they have no documentation.

However, with this new push toward TDD... In "proper" TDD, the tests are supposed to be good, robust, and in depth enough to serve as documentation. I think this is pretty terrible, because now people are saying that we don't need detailed architecture docs and whatnot. Sorry, but having to read tests to figure something out that could be easily explained in a paragraph or two somewhere is not optimal. And what if your tests are bad? I'm not looking forward to the dark times ahead.

Sigh.

Well, it's better than that whole fiasco a few years back when the company spent a million bucks on ClearCase and related software / training from IBM or whomever does that stuff. I've never been so unproductive in my life as I was during the three months we experimented with that, then wrote off the whole thing as the giant mistake that it was.

I'm also convinced that the ClearCase+Extras was the reason our health care plan was swapped to something cheaper and crappier.

Sorry for the minor 2-day necro on the thread but I feel better now that I've bitched a bit. : >

Agile is not an excuse to not do architecture. It's never in issue in projects that I run, because I simply don't allow not having an architect / tech lead.