Announced Features
UnluckyHydra
Posts: 32 ✭✭
Would everyone rather wait an undisclosed amount of time knowing Adventure Sync and now Gifting are coming to the game or would you rather they just drop the feature as a surprise, when it's ready, and announce the details afterword? I guess I'm more for the surprise because the anticipation of coming soon makes me more impatient. I'm sure I'm not alone but I would say there are others who probably just like the announcement even if they have to wait forever. What do you think?
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I would rather wait for properly tested functionality than get an early but buggy release
Not intended as a slam against anyone - as a software developer myself I am usually under pressure to hit deadlines instead of releasing code when it is properly tested
A strange sound echoing through deserted corridors, slightly distorted by unnatural angles, flickering and crackling torches : "SoOoOoOn!"
Grand promises worthy of electoral campaigns, with similar results.
Better not announce interesting features "soon", leading people waiting for months, and instead launch them when really ready, possibly as a surprise. In the case of Adventure Sync, the question remains : HPWU is very similar to Pokémon Go, with identical mechanics. The option to avance in the game without draining the battery and data plan seems... interesting?
Niantic need to sort out their priorities. Cosmetic changes, profile picture features and photo ops are NOT what should be dealt with first. Especially when they are part of the assets to download (please bring back the red dot) that bloat the app, which goes over the 3.3Go mentioned when downloading.
@DubiousAffairs usually those minor things are tasks given to new team members to help them acclimate to the code base. You don't want to plunge new people in with something important. Movement on such minor things means they likely have hired some new people who are getting up to speed before working on the real stuff. It really is a good indicator not a bad one.
@Ginnungagap making sure that new hires have something to do that also counts as training is good. Bloat isn't, not when the bloat gets some trumpets when it is announced, while there is still a need -very visible from the last community day- for some basics like a decent countdown to events. And, all together now, "In-app communication".
(New hires might explain the animations for the Dark Witch and Dark Ministry official, but wouldn't explain how those were used before being fixed to look like human movement)
Wouldn't frames and face-tracking be their own part of the HPWU code anyway? Photo ops are, ok, a way to animate the models that isn't game-critical. But how many of those do they intend to add ? How much space will the app actually require in a year's time ? Earlier in the month, it was well over 4Go.
Latest news : "Gifts" are coming. What people wanted was the ability to send some of their surplus to friends. What they get are presents that they will receive from POIs and be able to send to their friends. More bloat, instead of a way of sharing those excess ingredients that they'd rather not delete. (But oh, look, if you want to avoid "wasting" those, you need friends. Go forth and try to convert people into new players.)
attention niantic & @HPWUTeam ...
do it right or else don’t do it all (please, we’re begging you) !!!!!
what does “it” refer to? everything.
thank you
@DubiousAffairs just because something seems like it should be simple doesn't mean it is. A counter for events probably would require a rewrite of that entire component. I believe they actually have been doing just that piece by piece but it takes time. The reason why we can see completed items and that community day was visible is likely due to them working on getting that to work as has been asked. Unfortunately I don't think times were part of the data that was expected which is why it was awkward for community day and there is no count down. Putting a time in their is complicated but that is likely one of the next things they are working on. People working on animations and models are separate from the developers so that wouldn't really have any effect. Developers piece would simply be to toggle the asset so that it's known to exist and is triggered. So part of what you are seeing is that they have animators staffed and they need to feed them work to do. The team will have artists, designers, programmers, sound engineers (possibly farmed or use existing WB assets), testers, community liaisons (the people we see here who gather and filter information to/from the team and the players). Personally I think the biggest issue is that they skimped on the game designers and instead keep pulling that work from Pokemon go. Shrugs
As for the gifting, again this was clearly pulled from Pokemon go due lack of resources. However, it is nice that they allow us to choose the type of gift. By getting gifts at inns you can give energy. By getting gifts at fortresses you can give runes. By getting gifts at greenhouses you can give random ingredients. It's not much but it is more flexible than the system existing in Pokemon go.
The parts for the counter are there. During the event we see the "gift" button and the "event" button on the map page, with a countdown timer to the end of their availability/end of the event. So countdown buttons on the map screen are a possibility.
The countdown to the event exists, but is hidden in the menus.
Community day remains problematic. (But hey, they could save themselves some trouble and make it a full day (since it's called Community Day), and give people a calendar. Why that was not done in the context of people recruited by a big administration is beyond me.)
The strange part with particular hours is that the game uses the proper (official) local hours for sunset and sunrise. So there is some kind of access to local time there too. (It could be purely phone-side, but wouldn't people have pointed that out as a way to catch doxies?)
@DubiousAffairs that's a completely different component. Didn't say that it's impossible, but that it requires a rework of the component and the data that fuels it.
Dawn/dusk is actually handled in an odd regional way. It helps to do that regional anyway. Two houses can be a block apart but their local time is an hour apart. However, their Dawn obviously will be at the same time. Local time and especially DST is incredibly difficult. I don't think server based local time will ever be that feasible world wide. However our phones local time is not trustworthy. Best to just carve up simple regions and be consistent to when it is in that region. People would be able to know what their time is relative to a close similar place. That is why Microsoft Windows explains time in reference to major cities. Then a user says I'm the same as city X so I know my time relative to it. Anyways, trying to declare time worldwide will always be very problematic.