YankeeJim:
dedBuNNy: Part of the difficulty they face here is that the new version of the game wasn't rebuilt from the ground up, it's not a new game in the traditional sense
Just the guy I was looking for. I'm playing the game wondering how it could be vastly improved with minimal effort but don't know enough about how things work.
For starters, why can't the chat be like the Flash version located underneath the hole info on the left side? Smaller type and able to be seen while the game is progressing would be a huge fix.
Secondly, how do they make the online visibility available to everybody at the same time? When the host asks for greens, have someplace for waiting types to go see.
Thirdly, what does it take to downsize the Godzilla avatar and make it not look like some primitive overlay onto the game?
Fourthly, what does it take to get the dang aimer yardage marker out of the way on the putting green?
I weathered this game from its infancy, waiting patiently for the changes that made it great. Am I faced with that same slog all over again or are these changes easy enough to make? Possibly at the sake of the stuipdass apparel, ball effects and tee markers........
p.s., Your response determines whether or not I continue to think that the game developers are just high school students working for college credits or not. :-D
The short answer to all of those questions is - Nothing is stopping them from addressing all of those issues. Nothing except money, which is required to hire/contract competent designers, artists, coders etc.
Real game dev is expensive and really labor intensive and requires skilled people.There is no doubt in my mind that there is no real proper budget allocated for this game, it's being hammered together in a way that it can be made somewhat playable with enough features from the old game to keep the core group of paying players interested and attract new players to the game. The top 5%, the credit winners bring in nothing for TG in the way of revenue. That's not a knock or anything, it's just the way it is.
Someone seriously dropped the ball with this from a project management standpoint. Or they were simply told to 'Do what you can to make it playable as best you can, work with what and the staff you have'. Neither of those scenarios is good, not at all. This game never should have been released as a replacement for the Flash game in the state it's in.
My end of working with game dev is mostly in 3D design, I work with Maya, Blender, PS, ZBrush, Substance, CorelDraw, Rhino and a couple of things, but those are the main applications I use daily now that I've gone back into it. I know my way around C#,enough to test and debug what I'm working on in Unity. That's about all I need to know. I actually would not want to code, you need a 'special' brain to do that 20 hours a day... (no offence to those who do that reading this... ;) )
I'm not trying to dump on WGT/TG but none what is going on makes any sense to me, I would put this game as being in beta status at best, if I'm looking at all aspects of it. There is so much that doesn't work and is missing from the game it's no wonder the people who play AS Skins, MP are disappointed and annoyed.
What is not really very funny is the response from a lot of people, and it seems to be the attitude of TG/WGT, that 'well everyone knew Flash was ending so you should have been playing the new version and preparing as soon as it was available' The flip-side to that is,TG/ WGT has had more than two years to figure out a real plan and execute it. If this is what they came up with in that time frame? Well I'll leave it alone cuz, damn ... lol, I'm sure I'll be banned for the final time after posting this anyway, so.. ya.
Not sure I'd bank your continuing to play the game on what I have to say Jim, I mean if your goal is to play RG's and be competitive in winning credits, that part of the game is still very much intact. The rest is a mess for sure, no nice way to put that.
I will say this though, all the people bitching about the core functionality of the game, that it's 'impossible to play now' , need to watch Young46's stream to see how playable the game is. You'll soon get the idea that it's very playable and that if you can't play the new game? It's on you. The reason I suggest his stream is because he commentates as he plays, it's actually very helpful and after watching for a couple of days, if you can't take anything away and improve your game? Well hang it up, cuz you never will. There is not some new version of VEM making you play poorly.
That's my bit on the state of the new game...LOL! Personally I like the way it feels in game, I don't have any issues with how it plays, I even like the standard putting. The rest of the game is a dumpster fire, absolutely.