What happened to not releasing the MOD until it's perfect?

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#1

I’m sure you guys remember the devs excuse for taking so long with finishing the mod because they “wanted to make it perfect”. While the mod definitely exceeded my expectations in visuals, it’s pretty obvious that it’s far from perfect and a couple runs through the game play testing can make these faults glaringly visible. I’m not going to get into the faults of the game like the balance and jumping issues because those are easily fixable. But shouldn’t these things of been fixed before release if we were truly waiting so long because they were “perfecting” the mod?

Xen. Totally missing? That’s a pretty far cry from perfect. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another 8 years for them to release Xen. Going through another thread of Xen maps made by ONE user it shouldnt take very long for a team to finish.

Moral of the story, hey devs if you’re going to take another 8 years to finish making Xen that’s fine. Just don’t BS us lame excuses like your “perfecting” it. The game is really good so far… it would be a shame to not finish it.

#2

So you legitimately expected a modification playtested only internally by non-professionals to be perfect? There’s no such thing as perfect, someone (and probably everyone) will be disappointed with something.
Xen’s missing because it’s not finished. You should be happy they released what they had ready as they took a risk of going under fire, exactly like they have been. And that thread is simply decompiling Half-Life: Source maps and touching them up a little. That little bit reminds me of a comment made by Stides on the same user’s video. Is that you?

Great job trying to troll, though, Banned. You’re great at it. Go elsewhere.

#3

I’m not trying to troll I’m asking a legimate question. It was their words not mine that they were “perfecting” it. They might not be “professional play testers” but how can you deny they left GLARING flaws in the game that were easily fixible? IE (getting stuck places, poor balance). Is releasing the mod missing Xen “perfect”?

Like I said I think the game is great so far. All I’m saying is don’t tell us your “perfecting” it because that’s obviously not what you’re doing. I feel the Devs could be a little more down to earth. Stop with the mysterious crap and fill in the loyal 8 year community where they REALLY stand on the project.

#4

I think the balance issue is more based on the player. I for instance felt the game was difficult enough on Normal for how good I am at the game, and chances are through their years of working with it they already had an idea of how the game is and might have felt it was too easy. Sure there were a few oddities (icthyosaur’s low health, HECU’s amazing long-range accuracy,) but they were very mild and I for one thought it was nicely done.

They were saying for weeks (and hinted at for months) that they were releasing without Xen because they wanted to push the first half of the game out and into the player’s hands. I don’t see how this is really a valid point. If you’re a little bit more patient you’ll have the rest on your hard drive shortly. I recall somewhere they stated it’s not far off.

They weren’t mysterious, they just didn’t constantly update because they were tired of the shitstorm over every small detail somebody didn’t like and were tired of the empty speculation many made and got the uninformed all excited and uppity. It’s why you hear people talking about how they miss “many release dates,” even though they’ve only missed one vague one.
How often do you hear about other game developers constantly updating their community as to how much of a percentage is done, or what they’re currently working on?
You can’t expect the mod to be perfect. Every game has it’s quirks, and in their eyes it was good enough to meet their standards for releasing. Maybe knowing everything about the game skewed their idea of how the game would play in regular players hands which is more than forgivable.

#5

What jumping issues?

#6

Games are hard to make.
We worked on a game for while.
Take my word for it or don’t.

#7

Having to pull off crouch jumps like you did in the original, if the amount of people complaining about that are any indication. No clue what’s wrong with them if they can’t pull off such a simple maneuver, though.

Personally, BM is the closest thing to a perfect game I have ever played.

And it’s free.

#8

You do realize that “perfecting,” as per the English language, is more of an expression than an actual term, right? Seeing as everything that goes into video games, from visual design to gameplay balance is subjective on at least some level, it is firstly impossible to get anything to be perfect, and any perfection achieved may only necessarily apply to one individual’s perception of perfection.

If you literally thought the Black Mesa team were going to release a perfect game, then that was very stupid of you. When they said they were “perfecting it,” they didn’t mean it literally, they meant that they were making what they perceived to be the best product possible given their expertise, the time and resources available. And all things considered, I think they got pretty close. Xen was horrible anyway, and in my eyes its omission makes it more “perfect”. See what I did there? One thing you used as a criticism is in my eyes a positive. Go figure.

Your whingy post is really the definition of “entitlement,” as much as I hate that stupid buzzword. I think you’re deliberately being obtuse for the sake of it. Nobody could really think the devs were actually going to release a perfect game, did they? Do you know how difficult it is to develop something on this scale? As a mapper myself, I can confirm I’ve spent over 400 hours tinkering with one single map, only to still be highly dissatisfied with the results. Now think of the modelling, scripting, recording, etc, etc they had to go through. Does it seem so easy now? Now add the fact that they are, for all intents and purposes, amateurs. I really wish people like you would think twice before posting comments like yours.

Game design is an iterative process. This isn’t the finished product, it’s another iteration. There’ll be more after this. Perhaps they’ll update the game when it goes on Steam (they’re going to have to anyway to conform to some of Valve’s standards). They’ll certainly update it for Xen. Instead of whinging about how the devs have failed you, help them. Post constructively. The way you’ve posted will almost certainly get you ignored by the devs.

And I disagree with some of your comments anyway. Jumping problems? What jumping problems? I don’t get why everyone complains about all the crouch jumping in Black Mesa. It was a fundamental and basic part of the original HL, and is a fundamental part of pretty much any Goldsrc/Source game. ANYONE who calls themselves a fan should be able to crouch jump without any worries at all. I never found it a problem once, as I’m sure most vets did. Those who can’t, well they have scripts for it, or they can learn. It’s a useful thing anyway.

Balance wise there are problems, yeah. Marines being to OP (not absolute, but relatively) compared to Xen Aliens like Vorts and Grunts. Ichtyosaur being very weak. But these are things which can be solved, provided we let the devs know what we think, instead of blindly telling them they’re liars for telling us we were going to get a “perfect” game.

#9

I heard back in '09 they were working on/finishing up Xen…

my only real complaints are the fact you can’t jump, but that’s easily fixable by modifying the skills.cfg jump to 200 and crouch jump to 250, along with the very cluttered feel

too many boxes and crates everywhere, hindering progress forward

the rocket tripmine area in Surface tensions takes a heck of a lot more effort then it needs to

#10

And what in this world is perfect, i´ve never played a game that is perfect. The game is good, the best source mod ever released, Xen and minor additions to the game will come later… this journey IS NOT OVER, SO, NO COMPLAIN!!!.

#11

Guys…I think that’s enough of pummeling the original poster into submission…or maybe not.

But bannedforlife, seriously? First playthrough on BM, I NEVER got stuck, how anyone would get stuck is beyond me…and the jumping issues can be corrected with a simple console command, or if you’re so inclined, tweaking the skill.cfg file to your liking.
People like you are the reason why buggy games like Fallout exist - they want a gleaming product in their hands as soon as possible, but if the producers mention one thing about polishing it or holding it back due to a legitimate reason, they start bawling all over the place, so the company executives give them a deadline that prevents them from giving a decently running game, resulting in even more complaints. At least be grateful that these guys are doing this for practically nothing, nil or zilch.

#12

Less issues with BM than I’ve had with many AAA titles that have come out recently. How long do you think it would take a small group of unpaid decentralized developers to accomplish such a task? Many of the bigger companies take years to come out with a new game. I’m sorry you feel the team weren’t working hard on creating a polished game for us, but it sounds like you don’t have a firm grasp on the realities involved in undertaking such a momentous task.

#13

banned you obviously didn’t keep up with the mod during those 8 years. They did great in my mind. All you’ve done is set yourself up for flaming because you don’t understand these facts, A) the team is a small, unpaid team that have been doing this in their spare time. B ) They haven’t had official play testers, instead from what I understand (and don’t hold me to it) Play testing fell down to handing it to their family members and saying “here play this”

They tried to keep us filled in but it turned into people being misinformed, greedy, and jumpy thinking every time a new piece of information came out, that the mod was almost done. So asking that is just too much for the devs. So please, [COLOR=‘Red’]< I wouldn’t disagree, but let’s not be insulting please>, and become informed.

#14

I think that the OP problem is that you the Developers used the word “perfecting”, it would imply that you made a promise to make the game as “perfect” as humanly possible, and in his view he is right, this game is far from perfect, its an unfinished half of a mod. And the reason behind it i believe is that the Developers decided to release it as it is for us, to enjoy their work. So the only “fault” of the developers is that they started to care more about their fans and less about perfecting it, if that a bad/good thing, thats up for you to decide.
Sorry about the bad english.

#15

Sorry for not attacking the OP, but the mention of playtesting reminds be that BM: DM should have an open-beta release, perhaps “_”

#16

Most real playtesting occurs at the hands of the playing public, like it or not. A pool of even 40 playtesters doesn’t compare to 40,000. They are inevitably going to find things that the internal mini-team missed. So in that sense I firmly agree that it’s unrealistic to expect a bug-free game in the modern era, and that it’s far more constructive to help the process with flame-free bug reports than to launch broad-stroke criticisms.

When you say “Hey, I had x problem in y location and I think z could make it better,” you’re helping. When you say “you suck,” you’re not. There’s no way around that, so if you actually like the game and are a fan of the mod and yet you are basely critical, you are only contributing to dissention, low morale, and hard feelings. In essence, you are a problem; you are an anchor.

While I agree that the project could have used better communication with the public, it’s reckless and irresponsible and a little silly to say or imply that the developers knowingly and heedlessly released a game full of bugs. You really think that they worked on this for eight years with the mission statement of “we don’t give a damn?”

Any serious developer will accept criticism and even welcome it, because it helps to make their product better. But there’s a fine line between constructive criticism and bashing. Bashing helps nothing.

#17

They said “when it’s done,” not “when it’s perfect.”

The part that they released was a finished game. It had bugs, but it was finished.

#18

The game was pretty polished.

I think it was pretty clear to most that there were going to be bugs, as with any game. But I think Black Mesa had a special problem in that their play-testing was probably limited, so they had a narrower range of machines and configs. Even with that circumstance, I had just one game-breaking bug, which was easily worked around. The original Half-Life had more game-breakers and bugs in general. So, if you’re saying that the game isn’t polished because of bugs, I would say that’s not valid.

Regarding balance issues: there’s been feedback regarding various balance issues. Some of these seem valid, and some just seem like “the game was too hard!”. The devs take feedback seriously and I suspect they’ll make any tweaks they feel are necessary. I also suspect that they didn’t feel that these were issues before they released the game, and that they were satisfied with the balances they had.

In general, though, I think a lot of the feedback about enemy balancing and difficult combat is really just from people who are less-skilled players, and I think the obvious solution there is to play the game on easy difficulty until you can develop better gaming skills. I think it would be a different case if everyone or nearly everyone had these issues, but that’s not the case.

The same applies to crouch-jumping. Some players tweak the values to make it easier, some players didn’t like it at all. I had absolutely no problem with it. The default values were fine. The people that complained about crouch-jumping are clearly not fans of Half-Life. This is more an issue of some people lacking gaming skill, not a problem with the game. Learn to jump, it’s not difficult.

Most commercial games attempt to flatten the skill curve in order to make the games more enjoyable for a wider audience with a greater range of skill levels. If Black Mesa was a commercial game that sought to appeal to the largest demographic range possible, then it would be expected that the developers would compromise to the abilities and intelligences of the left of the the skill curve. But the great thing about Black Mesa being a free mod is that they don’t have to do that - they can make the game they want to make, without having to compromise to the demands of demographic segments. They don’t have to dumb it down too much.

I think, though, what this thread is really about isn’t a general complaint about the game. The game is great, despite some minor flaws that will likely be addressed. I think the OP is an expression of past resentments regarding some past PR issues.

That’s understandable. The team has made some public relations gaffes, not the least of which was the 2009 release announcement. I think they’re aware of their mistakes in public relations. They make games, they’re not PR guys. Obviously, they were making a game, so it’s not as if this thing was a troll. And their reasoning for releasing the game in 2 parts has been explained.

The implication from the OP is that the poster was miffed that the game hadn’t been released, and now he’s miffed that it has been released.

Are you stides? Because you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what that guy is doing vs what the dev team is doing.

Your complaint is essentially about PR gaffes leading to frustration and resentment, apparently. Yet, your solution is going the wrong direction. IMO, their mistake was not that they were too closed, but rather that they were too open. They probably shouldn’t have made the 2009 announcement. Individual devs probably shouldn’t have made statements implying near completion or spaghettios or “were pretty much done, were just fixing bugs now”, that kind of stuff… In other words, you’re complaining about a problem, and then suggesting the problem itself as the solution.

I can understand your frustration with the dev’s communications in the past. But Black Mesa has been released now. You have a cool game. One that, even without Xen, is a proper AAA scope. So, you get this game, and have an expanded Xen to look forward to in the future. This actually works out better than most people anticipated, don’t you think?

#19

Am I the only one glad about the Xen release being later? It gives me a really good reason to go back and replay the game later on (other then the fact that I want to replay it)

#20

@Zen, I disagree. I used to play Half-Life on hard often and had less problems in some aspects than with BM… it’s not about skill, suggesting that the majority of “complainers” should learn how to play and are noobies is ridiculous, while most of the folks around aren’t new to the series.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.