I’ve been conducting experiments on you again. I do this pretty often, and I have many tools to measure the results… but relying on raw numbers alone is never a good idea. I like gathering more organic feedback to weigh against what the numbers-alone tell me. So today, I’d like to talk lotteries! Feel free to weigh in if you’ve ever used the lotteries, or even if you haven’t!

Making Lotteries

So you may have noticed some “wacky” lottery behavior lately as I measure baselines and so on. There are actually several methods that can be used for lotteries, and I’ve tried all of these on you since the introduction of the lottery system. Each style has an advantage and disadvantage for lottery participants. Numbers tell me how many people participate in them hoping to win something (and very obviously the better the prize the higher the participation)… but they don’t always tell me whether you liked the style of the lottery or not. I thought I’d take some time to review the types of lotteries we’ve had, and let you weigh in on which ones are your favorites (or banes as the case may be):

Named Lotteries

Named Lotteries occur at regularly scheduled days, always with the same title, and run during set times each week. They typically feature a “theme” of prize types, if not a static prize type. We’ll talk more about these in a moment.

Special Event Lotteries

Some lotteries span multiple days or several times per day in the same day. These special-event lotteries can be themed around holidays, Turbine promotions, or real life events & special occasions. Special event lotteries are generally announced on DDO.com, in the DDO newsletter, and/or through the Turbine Community blog, DDOUnlimited twitter, and facebook fan page.

Random Encounter Lotteries

Like any great D&D adventure, there may be times when you are ambushed by a random encounter! The same is true for lotteries. Random Encounter lotteries are rare and unique. Sometimes they last for as long as a day, or as short as an hour! They may appear more than once, or crop up unexpectedly and are never seen again. They could strike on a weekday evening, a weekend afternoon, or the mornings of multiple days. They are mysterious and might offer prizes to a broad selection of players, or to a very specific scope of race/class/level characters. They are spontaneous and unpredictable. They can literally be for any reason we feel like, and especially silly reasons - or no reason at all. Just “because”.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Every lottery style has benefits and downfalls for those seeking to enter them.

Special Event Lotteries

There are many advantages for participants of special event lotteries. They follow an “any excuse to have a party!” style, and the occasion that they’re themed after makes it easy to understand the prize selection. They’re predictable because they usually are over once the special event/reason concludes, and it’s reasonable to be aware that a lottery will happen as long as you know the real-world holidays and events that are upcoming. The only disadvantage is there isn’t always a special event to have one in honor of! Certain times of year, or even certain days of the week, are “slower” and don’t have as much public awareness.

Random Encounters

The up side of these is getting a pleasant surprise either:
A) When you check the lotteries and either realize you’re eligible for one. Or
B) You accidentally enter one when you hit the “enter all my characters” button, and are pleasantly surprised to find winnings in your in-game mail.
The downside is making someone feel like they have to watch the lotteries every second of the day hoping to stumble into one of these, or making someone feel like they have to meticulously review which lotteries (with what prizes) are available every time they try for it.

Named Lotteries

These are complicated because they can come in several forms. It can be a lottery that:

• Has the same name, always starts at a set time, with a set prize each time (e.g. Welcome Lottery)
• Has the same name, starts at different times, with a set prize each time (e.g. Server Pride Lottery)
• Has the same name, always starts at a set time, but with different prizes each time (e.g. Surprise Sunday Lottery)
• Has the same name, always starts at a set time, but with “similar” prizes each time (e.g. Mighty Monday Lotto, Friendly Friday Lotto, Sage Saturday Lotto - though to be fair I have experimented with static prizes on these named lotteries as well)

The benefit of the named lottery depends on the style of the above it is.

• In the case where a lottery has the same name and time but a random prize, people set their watch to “hey it’s such-and-such day, time to go check on the xyz lotto”.
• For lotteries where the name is the same but the prizes also stay the same, they get a feel for what the lottery is about and that gives them a clue of whether or not they’d like to enter.
• Lotteries with a set name and “themed” random prizes give an expectation but have unpredictable elements too. A caster might find that “mighty monday” generally doesn’t have anything they’re interested in, while “sage saturday” is their best shot at getting something they can use. But they may still check Mighty Monday on the off chance that there are healing potions.
• The disadvantage with named lotteries is: no variety to spice up life! When they’re “named” their reputation precedes them.

So what it ultimately comes down to is:

• Is “variety” stressful rather than fun?
• Is “sameness” secure or bland?
• Is there something comforting to being able to “set your watch” to a lottery?
• Is there something exciting about never knowing when something cool will ambush you?
• Is there room for all of the above or does it just overwhelm you?

Another huge thing I’m considering is: how much “advanced notice” do people like with lotteries? Is seeing a tweet about upcoming lotteries spammy or informative? Is it better to know or save it for the element of surprise when you hit a random encounter? Are only certain kinds of lotteries worthy of an advanced notice: do you care to hear about a “daily” lottery that routinely shows up vs a special event one that lasts for 3 days?

Even if you’ve not been able to participate in lotteries due to my.ddo bugs (which we’re hoping to resolve for even more of those who remain impacted) or disinterest (I don’t expect that every single solitary person “likes” lotteries at all, much less what kind they are), please feel free to share your opinions!

Oh and uh, I *may* have included some shinies in the lottery today in honor of feedback aggregation…

just sayin….

There’s been a lot of chatter about feedback, so I thought it would be fun to let you take a peak at some of our aggregation in a sort of unique way.

I’ve often mentioned that we keep a regular log of what the top community concerns are, and it evolves over time. An issue that could be piping hot today may not be so in a week…or even a day! That’s just the nature of community. Never the less, we index it and monitor how it moves up/down the hotness chart, as well as tracking when it is “case closed” or “cold cased”.

Cold cased is when an issue isn’t exactly “closed” but it also isn’t the focus of player attention for a considerable amount of time. It is uncommon that issues are ever *truly* tabled - strictly because they often polymorph into a new but related discussion! However, rarely I do get to tag certain ones as “case closed” rather than as a cold case.

Today I spent some time doing case closings. I thought it would be fun to list off some of the ones that were brought up as community feedback and brought to a close. Keep in mind that anything on this list means that at some point it hit our “top ten zomg” list - some longer than others. In no particular order, I present a short list of some of the DDO community  closed cases (taken as they were written in the reports):

• Add ability for caster of charm to dispell the affect at will
• Cinematic effects: Blow up Yar Yar’s ship
• Change older raids to not require repeated flagging to enter the pre-raid and raid
• In-game memorial tribute to Gary Gygax
• Flood control for accounts that flood tells & chat (spam)
• Trade chat channel
• Adjust the red screen in Rage, too strong
• Ability to change hair style. Also add new ones
• More forum avatars to pick from
• Evaluate lower end DCs on elite trap damage - too high? Several traps require the rogue to pass through to disable
• Keep devil assault permanently, don’t close it after the anniversary event concludes.
• Advertising for “welcome back” confusing, need to adjust promoted dates to be more clear
• Find a way for 28 point characters to upgrade to 32 point builds
• More character slots
• Skill respecs: players have no method to retroactively adjust skill/ability scores after chargen
• Air elementals working as intended?
• Path system is only using 28 point builds rather than32 if player has unlocked 32 point builds
• Mass Heal only heals 6 people
• Re-roll feature that doesn’t wipe the character’s inventory
• Add custom chat channels

I can’t wait for Update 7, as I will have more things to mark off my list… or at the very least to cold case! (I’m looking at you entry #DDOIACRSB471.10I1.10.2 “Inventory sort feature to help players organize inventory by… something, anything.” and entry #DDOSB361.1.A1.1.9 “Auctions House overhaul - better category structure” and #DDOSB51.10I1.10.1 “Keyword searchable auction house”!)

Recently a discussion came up on my twitter feed about giving people examples of good and bad bug reports that players submit to us. After all, bug reporting is similar to actionable feedback - it’s not something that is instinctive to the average consumer. Now I could cull through our bug reports and find some great and terrible player-entered bug reports to dissect, but I didn’t think that was fair. Instead, I’m going to pull a very special bug report. Journey with me back in time…

The year is circa the winter of 2006. The quest is Threnal, with the dreaded Coyle. And whose bug report do I see? My own. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to take a bug report that I wrote back when I was a player and critique it. We’ll look at what I did wrong, what I did right, and how I would do it differently now.

Below is my bug report. Some sections have been blanked out for privacy reasons. The important part to pay attention to is the text in yellow. The yellow text is the player entered data (i.e. that I wrote myself).

Tolero’s Awesome/Awful Bug Report

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BEGIN BUG REPORT - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DATE: December, 2006

BUG ####: Mephits in Hold for Reinforcements bugged in Threnal

Frequency: Always
Character name: XXXXXXXX
Character race: XXXXXX
Class/Level: Bard 9, Fighter 1
Location: Inside the instance for Holding for Reinforcements in any portion of the instance.
Server: XXXXXXX

Description: I’m well aware that the mephits were ‘beefed up’ recently, but I’ve run Hold for Reinforcements literally 14+ times tonight and each time with same result, with different groups. Mephits are spawning and walking through directly to Coyle past a blanket of the following spells all applied: hypnotise, web, solid fog, glitterdust, and fascinate with a 28 CHA on my 10th level character, while blind? This was on normal, not hard or elite. Once Coyle is dead, the mephits resume being fascinated, blinded, webbed etc, but only after Coyle is dead.

Steps to Reproduce:
Charisma 28 on 10th level character
Cast web; cast glitterdust; cast solid fog; cast hypnotic pattern - repeate indefinately or until mana is gone
Herd Coyle to opposite side of where Mephits are.
Start to play Fascinate targetting mephits and targetting myself (either way same result)
Mephits get the icon for blind and proceed directly for Coyle even before Coyle has attacked them.
Mephits do their area affect and kill Coyle, then immediate become fascinated afterwards… even though fascinate was played way earlier.
Same result with multiple groups.
Tried disbanning group and reforming, same result.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - END BUG REPORT - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now… I pulled my bug report up last night to see what I had to work with today for this blog post. Apparently it was the only bug report I ever wrote as a player. It’s been years since I wrote that. Reading it now… I have no idea what I was even talking about. So now it’s time to pick it apart!

Bug Writing Tip 1: Good titles

Bug titles are very important. If someone needs to read it quickly, it should tell them what is going on in a nut shell.  Think of a bug report title like a sentence that needs to be completed, like a madlib:
The ____ in _____ is ______
or even
The [noun] in [place] is [verb/adjective/adverb]

The way I wrote it is a poor way to write a title. I only hit 2 out of 3 needed pieces of important information.

• “Mephits” - ok good, something to do with the mephit monsters
• “in Hold for Reinforcements/Threnal” - ok good, this covers where the problem is in what specific quest, I can read the bug to figure out where exactly (I hope)
• “bugged” - BZZZT! Bad Tolero!

Describing something as “broken” “bugged” “not working” “needs to be fixed” “borked” “hosed”  etc. in the title is as informative as using unrelated words like

“The Mephits in Hold for Reinforcements like bananas”
“The Mephits in Hold for Reinforcements are pretty”
“The Mephits in Hold for Reinforcements read my fortune”

If the thing I was writing about was working as intended, I wouldn’t need to write the report would I? So saying that it’s “bugged” is redundant and uninformative. Instead, I should try to summarize what the mephits are doing that caused me to write the bug report in the first place.

Bug Writing Tip 2: Location, location, location

Where a bug is happening is important. It’s not just about what the quest is, it can be what part of the quest too! I clarify in my bug report that I experienced the behavior throughout the quest instance, and what the name of the quest was. That’s good to know. Always try to describe the where as best you can. What quest was it? What part of the quest chain was it? What part of the quest itself was it, was it the boss fight, or down a certain hallway? Do your best to pin point where it’s happening. This is important for the QA folks so they can go there and try to get the behavior to happen too. They need to be able to see what you saw.

Don’t underestimate location too. Very often people will write bug reports after the issue is passed or they have logged out for the night. You may not be standing in the same place that you were when the issue was happening! Always try to provide landmarks and locs.

Bug Writing Tip 3: Good Descriptions

My first mistake with my description was writing when I’m angry. I can tell that I was writing this immediately after a frustrating time questing. This means I’m prone to over exaggeration, leaving out important details, and generalizing. Always take a deep breath, step away from the keyboard, or rant to a friend to get it out of your system first before writing a post or a bug report to avoid saying things you’ll regret, or forgetting to say things that you needed to!

My second mistake is not describing what I expected to be happening instead. This could have been a user error issue - maybe mephits are immune to all those spells? No matter how bustificated something is, or how obvious you think the “right” way of something working should be, always include what behavior you expect to be happening vs what you saw happen.

I do at least include important details like what spells were involved, what my character abilities were, what the difficulty of the quest was, and what the mephits were doing. These are good details to include… sometimes it could be a particular ability or spell that is triggering shenanigans. I include it in the repro steps, but it’s a good idea to include any actions that helped (or didn’t help as the case may be) to work around the bug.

Bug Writing Tip 4: 1, 2, 3, observe, expect!

Now this part isn’t terrible on my part. Break it down step by step - what happened, what were you doing, what was the result, what should someone look for who is trying to see what you saw? In particular, call out the points when someone should notice the wrongness happening. A good call out word is “observe” followed by a description. This tells the tester when they should see the bad behavior, and what it will look like.

What I missed was including a report for the tester of what behavior was expected to happen after the steps are completed. This is important info! It often tells the tester whether it was user error or game error. For example, let’s try a very simple real world example of “steps to reproduce” and how knowing what the user “expects” can make the difference:

Step 1: Turn faucet handle.
Observe: Water will begin to flow out of the faucet.
Step 2: Place glass under faucet.
Step 3: Fill glass with the flowing water.
Step 4: Drink from the glass full of water.
Observe: The water is hot.

Now this bug report lacks some context without the following important piece of information at the end:

Expected behavior: The water should be cool and refreshing.

So seeing a bug report like this, it’s reasonable for a tester to assume that the problem is likely that the user turned on the hot water handle instead of the cold water handle. This is of course an over exaggeration example, but always remember that no matter how obvious something is to you, it is a good idea to specify exactly what you think should have happened.

If I had To Do It Over Again

If I were to rewrite this bug of mine, I would write the following instead:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BEGIN BUG REPORT - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Date: December 2006

BUG ####: Mephits in Hold for Reinforcements ignore crowd control spells

Frequency: Always
Character name: XXXXXXXX
Character race: XXXXXX
Class/Level: Bard 9, Fighter 1
Location: While protecting Coyle in Hold for Reinforcements anywhere in library room
Server: XXXXXXX

Description: The mephits in the quest are ignoring crowd control effects, even on normal difficulty. Spells such as hypnotism, web, solid fog, glitterdust, fascinate, and blind are being ignored by the mephits and they walk through the spells unaffected. The mephits go right for Coyle every time even though Coyle hasn’t attacked them. Once Coyle is dead, all of the crowd control effects kick in on the mephits that should have kicked in earlier. This happened no matter what class make-up was in the party. Happened in multiple quest attempts - was never able to complete the quest as a result.

Steps to Reproduce:
Step 1 - Enter quest on normal with a level 9 Bard. Boost spell save DCs as high as possible
Step 2 - Before fight begins, cast several AOE crowd control spells: web, glitterdust, solid fog, hypnotic pattern. Continue to cast these spells throughout the fight.
Step 3 - Herd Coyle to the opposite side of where Mephits are. Try to get him as far from them as possible.
Step 4 - Target a mephit and play fascinate
Observe - Mephit is not fascinated.
Observe - Mephit passes through the crowd control spells and heads directly to Coyle.
Observe - Mephits that pass through the glitterdust spell get the “blind” icon over their heads. The Mephit continues to go straight to coyle undaunted.
Step 5 - Continue to try and crowd control the mephits until they manage to kill Coyle.
Step 6 - Coyle is killed by mephits.
Observe - Mephits will now be affected by the spells that were already cast on them. Sometimes even after the spell should have expired already (fascinate).
Expected: Mephits should be hindered by the crowd control spells. If mephits are resisting the spells, they should have the “save” icon appear over their heads.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - END BUG REPORT - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

No one expects that anyone is ever “good” at writing bug reports in the same way that not every person is “good” at giving feedback. But it’s never too late to make adjustments and improve. Back then, I had no clue how to really write a bug report. I vaguely remember going to the forums and reading about how to write bug reports. It is something that is easy to learn though, and looking at the bugs I’ve written since, it’s much better than the days of “mephits bugged!”

I’m so excited! Look what the Festivult Jester left in my stocking…

om nom nom points cards! And yes that is a LOTRO shirt I'm wearing. I like to mix it up and wear various Turbine game shirts.

These little beauties should start showing up at gamestops soon! Besides the benefit of my non-credit card having friends being able to pick up Turbine Points now, I thought this was a great moment in DDOness. I can’t wait to see these at retail! As soon as I see some hanging on the rack I’m going to take a picture of them! It should be very soon (maybe even by the end of this month)! Ok this is such a spaz moment, but I can’t help it I’m so excited to see DDO spreading its wings and flying! if you happen to spot any at your local stores feel free to get pics of them for my general maniacal amusement!

Ok as I mentioned on Twitter last night I had something hilarious happen in a D&D game BUT… I’m going to be sneaky here and have useful and totally unrelated questions appended to this blog entry. Why? Because I can, and it keeps you on your toes mwuhahahaha! There was a point in time where Massively dubbed me “sneaky community specialist Tolero” so I have to uphold that title, right?

When Devs Get In Character

So as I’ve mentioned before, once a week or so a group of we Turbine folks gather for a tabletop D&D game campaign of one type or other. This week it was time for Flimsy’s home brew setting (you know, the one where Severlin got bit on the butt by a venomous squid). We got to a point where Eladrin’s alchemist character decided that he wasn’t strong enough to climb a mountain with the party, so he was going to brew his own strength potion. *pause* and test it on himself. *pause* right before the mission. A debate started among us on whether or not it was a good idea for him to drink it after the brewing resulted in something that smelled like the poison my character had brewed a short time earlier to poison a well (yeeeah my default answer for everything is to poison it).

So we’re going back and forth, and Eladrin has this water bottle in his hand, that he’s holding up like it’s his freshly brewed strength potion substitute, like “Drink? Yes? No? I’m gonna do it!” After some dramatic “Noooo” and “Doooo it!” from the group he goes “HA! I’m going to drink it!” and starts chugging the water bottle in a dramatic roleplaying fashion.

Suddenly water starts erupting from his mouth all over the place, splashing on Genasi, barely missing the game table, and he’s choking, sputtering, and staggering around. We’re like “whoa man, talk about getting in character! Did the potion kill you?” Turns out that when he started to slam the water he started laughing at himself, resulting in a great impression of the Old Faithful geyser. When asked of it later Eladrin’s explanation was “Roleplaying + Water + Laughter combined together to = 100 extra XP”  I’d say it is now among my favorite moments at the game table. What are some of your favorite “extreme” roleplaying moments?

And now for something completely different…

So on a completely different and utterly serious note, I’ve been very excited by all the Update 7 work around the office. There is one thing that I wanted to get some opinions on, so what I’d love to see is:

1. Read my questions below
2. Write a MyDDO blog post that explains your thoughts on it
3. Link to this blog entry somewhere in your post so it pings me and lets me know!

You can even copy/paste the intro below (exactly as it appears) and put it at the beginning of your blog post! It will alert me that you’ve written a blog about my questions. Just copy paste this to your blog post:

<a href="http://my.ddo.com/tolero/2010/07/15/your-favoriteyour-favorite/">Tolero asked about Auction House changes</a>, and here’s what I think!

Now let’s get started!

What Do You Think:

Naturally everyone is excited for the coming of a keyword search feature in the Auction House! There are some other great changes coming with this work, but I wanted to get some opinions from you. No promises on particulars, but if given the chance to be Dev for a day and you were working on the Auction House, what would YOU do? Tell me:

• What are some categories in the current Auction House that you feel are missing or could be broken down into better sub-categories? Example: Do you think “Ingredients” needs some work? Is “Misc” TOO miscellaneous? What’s your “dream” category layout?
• We all know the joy of a keyword search, but what are some other ways you’d like to be able to filter your item searches? By race restriction? By value? Sky’s the limits, what are your “dream” search options?
• Is there anything else about the Auction House that you’d love to see added or changed? Tell me about your “dream” auction house!

Looking forward to your feedback!

I think after all that maintenance, and to celebrate being able to get into the game tonight, we’ll have a Lottery! Tonight starting at 9 PM Eastern (-5 GMT) and ending at 1 AM Eastern look for the “Worlds Up Lotto” for a chance to win Greater XP potions! Are you a daytime player bumming about the downtime encroaching on your questing? Don’t worry, tomorrow morning beginning at 6 AM Eastern and ending a 10 AM Eastern we’ll have another Worlds Up Lotto for you too!

So this is perhaps a little bigger than a mere twitter question can hold, so I figure I’d make a post about it. One of the “little projects” I mentioned recently was an updated “game guide index”. I’m in the design phase of the index after doing some research and behind-the-scenes maintenance, so I’m looking for some feedback!

What is the “Index”?

So in the earlier days of DDO community history, an index was created to help players find some of the really great community created game guides. There were many guides written by players about a variety of DDO topics, and certain guides stood out as “must reads” for their respective subject matter - everything from loot guides to character creation guides (and more)! The idea was to house some of these spectacular “must read” guides in a central spot, and also to recognize the contributors for their hard work.

What’s Changing?

Over time, the index became outdated - not just because guide creators stopped maintaining some of the guides, but also because we branched out with more tools for players to make guides! In the early days people made them using bbcode in the forums, but now players make them in all kinds of ways! Everything from full html in their my.ddo pages and wiki in the Compendium to video guides, and more.  Creating the index in bbcode was also very restricting for us - there’s only so much you can do with a forum post format wise. So it’s time for the index to get an extreme makeover to be more up to date, include more outstanding guides, and take advantage of our broader range of tools.

The first major change is that the index itself will be moving to a medium that allows us to have a lot more freedom to manipulate and format it. So as I’m in the process of doing this, it occured to me that before I get too deep into the skeleton of it, I should take a quick pulse on what sorts of things players would find useful in a new layout.

Important

Keep in mind I have not yet covered WHAT is inside the index. Needless to say the guides listed in the original index are not all going to make it to “Index 2010″ (such as outdated or abandoned ones). I have some other plans around what guides you’re going to see in the index, but we’ll talk more about that later for now just think about this in an abstract sense of the index itself, not the particular guides in the index by name.

What do YOU think?

Imagine that I have complete and free reign to build an html-based page that will list some of the top guides. What are the most important things the index should be able to do for you as a player who wants to look through the guides? Here are just some of the different aspects I’ve been considering:

• Should the index allow you to sort the guides by more than just topic, such as sorting by what kind of guide it is (video guides, image guides, etc) or even who contributed to it?
• Is it important to see what awards a guide may have earned that landed it in the index in the first place?
• Is it more important to group guides by topic than to format them in a single sortable list?
• Is it more important to sort the guides by when a user might need them in their character career than to sort them alphabetically by topic? (Example: showing ‘newbie guides’ at the top rather than ‘classes’ if it were by alphabetical).
• Do topically-themed images help you to more quickly navigate to the subject matter you’re looking for as opposed to strictly text, or are they immaterial to your search for knowledge? (Example: Perhaps there is a header that says “reincarnation guides” vs a header that says “reincarnation guides” with an image of Kruz)
• Do you find it better to see wall-o-guides or categories that you drill down into deeper yourself?

These are the types of things I’m interested in hearing about. I already have data I’m operating around, but I’m still curious to see some more targeted feedback. The sky is the limit too, feel free to suggest crazy off the wall things like “I want the game guide index to show me a preview of the first paragraph of the guide when I mouse over it” or other really off the wall things. I can’t promise I can do them all, but you might be surprised what the webbies and I can come up with. Or sometimes your suggestion may spark an inspiration for us to emulate your objective in a different way! Remember that the overall goal of the index is two fold: to help players find the really great guides all in one easy spot and to spotlight the makers of those guides.

Feel free to send me feedback through any of the following methods:

• As a response below to this blog post
• As a tweet to @TurbineTolero
• As a blog post on your my.ddo page with a link back to this page. When you link to this blog post, my.ddo will tell me so that I can check it out!
• A 25 words or less message on my magic mouth spell on the left side of this my.ddo site

So every week we have a “play night” with the staff. It’s an important activity on several levels. It helps us to understand the game, it’s good for team building, and it can even help us catch tricky bugs at times! Party  members often keep a doc handy to write down notes from the evening’s session in case we run across things that need added to the “to do” list. Some nights it feels like it’s a “pug” because even though it’s all co-workers, you don’t necessarily run with the same co-workers each time. The funny thing is, after a while I can tell which kind of employee I’m grouped with before I even know their name. How they interact with the game and what they “notice first” or talk about the most is a tell tale sign of who I’m playing with. I thought it might be fun to talk about what team members do and what they’re like when they’re questing!

The “Content Dev”

The content devs are the quest makers. They build your dungeons, they manage the lore and story of quests, and they even handle all that landscaping in the public spaces or the adventure areas. They write all the speech that the NPCs say that you click past when you’re starting your quest. They’re the keepers (no pun intended) of Xen’drik and Stormreach.

I find that content devs are very prone to comment on the quest itself while playing. They get irked by the placement of objects, or the way lighting is playing on the environment. They question the flow of a particular part of the story. They scrutinize the DM text or the way that drama plays out in the fight, in a tone surprisingly similar to this awesome blog entry. They’re also the first to enlist party members as lab rats and say “hey come stand over here and do X for me real quick. Ok again. Again. Again.” Playing with a content dev is a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that they tend to like to run quests on the hardest difficulty you can open, and if something goes wrong they often can see why. The curse is that they are prone to get distracted in a fight analyzing the behavior of a monster or drama trigger. We have a house-rule about not talking “shop” on play  nights (I mean we’ve been at work all day who wants to talk more work right?), but content devs just can’t help themselves sometimes.

The “Systems Dev”

These guys are the guts of game play - as evident by how many questions we get to Ask the Devs that relate to “systems” topics. Sometimes it’s hard to not make the AtD the “all Eladrin and Genasi show!” But this is understandable in our game since the systems folks take care of your character’s abilities, spells, etc. They also take care of things like monster’s abilities, loot, and anything that has a “progression” in game play - like crafting, guild features, new races, etc. Since DDO has such a customizable character building experience, it’s only natural that players have a TON of questions around systems topics. I’d venture to say that players sometimes have questions about a game feature and they don’t even realize that it’s the systems team who works on it.

Systems devs reflect their work in their game play handily. They pay more attention to your chest pulls than you do! They’re the first to ask you what your character’s “build” is. A multitude of their comments while questing relate to particular spells, feats, or enhancements and what/who they are good/bad for. They’re also hyper aware while questing of what they’ll get at next level…or even what you’ll get at next level if they know your build. Sometimes the systems devs and content devs have to interact if a quest chain needs a system (like special loot or a particularly tricky game mechanic) so there is a lot of cross over talk between systems and content devs on play nights, such as a drop rate being too low or monster behavior that needs improvements. Grouping with systems devs is a night of number crunching, builds, and chest combing - especially since they like running content on tough difficulties for more of that sweet sweet loot.

The “Engineering Dev”

It’s sometimes easy to confuse engineers with the systems folks. If you think about it like a salad… systems devs take the lettuce, tomato, carrots, etc and figure out how to cut it up and present it as a salad. Engineers grow the veggies so systems people can even worry about making salads. They deal with the game on the coding level, and their work often helps the other team members to build the delicious salads they need for the DDO menu. (ok sorry, was writing this during my lunch)

They are perhaps the most “normal” people to PUG with. Perhaps it’s because they see the game in code so much that the visual and interactive elements are a welcome change of pace? I find them to be very easy going party members who react to the game exactly like a player in any other PUG … other than joining in the shop talk discussion. I also find they are the most likely to take a moment to admire a part of the game. Maybe it’s because all that coding just isn’t the same as seeing the fruits of your labor in action (mmm…fruit salad).

The “Art Dev”

They handle everything from textures to UI elements and even icons. They also help out the other teams with material for their quests and systems (like requesting a special look on a monster or a special object to fit the story). Sometimes they also help pitch in with environmental things like lighting placement/color, decorations, and offer second opinions on  how a dungeon “looks” as a whole composition.

Art devs naturally notice all things visual. They are quick to point out if the way a room is lit makes it too tough to tell where to walk next, or if a certain texture needs some tweaking. If you happen to have a team member in the party who built the quest you’re running, art devs are quick to compliment the visual strengths of the dungeon, or politely point out the weaknesses. Then the all time hilarious thing about art devs is when they notice some visual annoyance in the game and swear vengeance on it, like the way a piece of armor looks or a lack of a certain asset. If it’s something about a character or creature that quickly passed by them when they’re in the middle of something, it’s like watching Captain Ahab spotting the white whale.

The “Producer Dev”

These devs are your mid to top-level folks. They take several forms. Sometimes they’re the one beating the drum for the rowers, so to speak, making sure that all the OTHER devs have what they need to get their work done or tracking progress on dev work. They help to prioritize work and try to keep devs safe from feature creep. When devs get creative ideas for strange new things, they’re there to make sure we can pull it off and when - or to tether the dev so they don’t float away into the stratosphere. They also parlay between several other departments, including the “big bosses,” and handle franchisy type things on the business level.

The things a producer dev will notice in a dungeon centers around “big pictures” usually. They reflect on how a situation might affect a beginning player, or how a content pack performs on various difficulties. They’re prone to play experimental builds, or to try something because it is a “hot topic” just to experience it firsthand. Interestingly enough, they’re sort of 50/50 on whether or not they like being the group leader or just one of the party.

The “QA Dev”

Play time is particularly important to these team members. We have a lot of “cheaty” tools to help expedite testing, but it’s just not the same as running through content like a “regular” person. They test a multitude of things about the game - everything from how the game interacts with websites or the Store to playing a dungeon, or even putting on every kind of hair style on every race just to make sure they “work”. It’s a lot of ground to cover! They also coordinate with other teams to sort which patch/update bugs can be fixed in, and cull the player submitted bugs looking for extra information to help the team resolve bugs or smooth out rough spots in content.

It’s no surprise that a QA dev will point out bugs while you play, or take a moment to repro something for the team mid quest. If you just want to “play” for the night, the worst thing ever is to have a combination in your party of a content dev, a systems dev, and a QA dev. Left to their own devices, they won’t play and will instead get so absorbed in talking shop that you’ll never finish your quest! On the bright side, they take lots of notes together and escalate issues.

The “PR Dev”

So that’s folks like Tarrant and I. We aggregate feedback, garden the websites, speak with the public/press, and more.

We tend to be very “social” during play nights. It’s difficult to go a night grouping with us without hearing a response from us of “yes, players have been talking about that.” We tend to watch general chat and user chat channels in addition to our party chat while we play. We also play with experimental builds, and particularly focus on playing with things that players bemoan to help us gather extra insight into player feedback on why they don’t like something or why something is so important to a sect of players.

So beyond the more “traditional” roles that are franchise specific, there are also some extra categories of employee player:

The “Old Timer”

These employees have been playing DDO since it first breathed life. Grouping with them is hilarious because they will frequently show their “age” in their comments. “Back in my day, if the Kobolds destroyed the crate in Cartamon’s Shipping Warehouse, you failed the quest AND on top of that two flesh renders jumped out to kill you!” They will tell you tidbits of DDO history that even founders don’t know.

The “Newbie”

Brand new devs are great to quest with because everything to them is so new and shiny. It’s all the joys of grouping with a newbie, but it’s also a newbie who insists on trying to “learn” everything rather than being dragged through by the ear. They are determined to “figure things out,” and it’s fun to watch them try and work puzzles, or ask advice on builds, stumble into a trap, etc. You can tell that they’re doing their best to learn everything they can as quickly as possible.

The “Cross Departmental”

So some departments of the company are multi-franchise, because the work they do is needed across the board. This includes things like the NetOps team, CS, audio/visual,  and even Marketing. The best thing about playing with a cross departmental team member is they look to those of us who are more DDO specific as great sages. It’s a little different than a “Newbie” because they don’t have that same sense of “must learn everything NOW”. You could almost mistake them for an Engineer, except they ask too many questions to be an Engineer.

The “Significant Other”

Sometimes we bring our spouses along for quest night. There, they’re always inquisitive about what type of work other party members do so they can better understand what their spouse does for a living. For those of us with significant others who don’t fully understand gaming or D&D, we’re an opportunity for them to try and better understand what this whole thing is all about. You can tell these folks right away because they always come in pairs. You invite one person, and that is quickly followed up with “do you have room for 1 more [insert class type/level here]?”

Playing with co-workers is a huge amount of fun because it allows us to see each other outside our standard work environment. You learn more about each other, and it helps grow strong bonds across departments, and between employees. I would honestly recommend playing with co-workers as a team building exercise for any place, not just gaming companies! And at the very least, at least you can chuckle to yourself if your boss runs face first into a fire trap.

I’ve spent some time today working on Store release notes. I figured this was a little something that might be of particular interest to some folks….

This Friday extra character bank storage is coming for sale in the Store. Before we offered a “shared storage” expansion, but this time it’s a 20 slot expansion for individual character’s banks. Personally I can’t wait. I’ve sometimes been using my shared storage as character storage on my characters, so added bank tabs for some of my loot mongers will be welcome. I’m tired of my high level guys hogging all the shared storage slots while I’m trying to pass stuff between my lowbies who don’t even need that kundarak tab yet. The good news is this tab will also stack with the kundarak one! Just when I thought fridays couldn’t get any better.

I’m very excited for PAX East, and we’ve been busy getting everything ready for the show. One thing I’m getting ready for in particular is the PAXpocalypse. That’s what I call it anyway. This is when one of the four horsemen pulls into the neighborhood to check out the convention. His name is Pestilence. Usually he hangs with folks who couldn’t back out of vacation plans even though they caught something icky. Then he makes the rounds to the different booths meeting and greeting people and sharing the joys of plague.

So yes, incase you can’t tell, last year I was basically patient zero for the Turbine crew who attended PAX West. You don’t really think about how quickly illness can spread at a show like this until you get smacked upside the head with it and lay on your death bed during the launch of Unlimited. But I digress…

As a general public service announcement, I’d like to reiterate to visitors that for your (and everyone else’s) health, always be sure to do the following things during your visit:

• Wash your hands frequently. Hand sanitizer is often NOT enough to kill virus-based illness!
• Avoid touching your face and eyes after making contact with surfaces that have had a LOT of hands touch them (such as keyboards and mice)
• Cough into your elbow - it’s much more sanitary than coughing into your hand (hands which may reach out and touch things shortly thereafter).
• Stay hydrated. You’ll be on your feet a lot and running around, so it’s extra important to keep drinking fluids (water in particular)!
• Get a good night’s sleep! It’s so tempting to run around and party, but being run down during the show makes you much  more likely to get something other than swag… like an illness!

In other news, besides just the illness prep work, it’s a good idea to be prepped for convention going in general, so here’s more tips for going to a show like this:

• Wear good walking shoes! You’ll be doing a lot of walking, and often on hard surfaces, so you need to make sure your feet don’t wear out before you do!
• Bring a bag for swag. You’ll often get free goodies from companies or see something fun to buy. You need a place to stash it while you’re walking around.
• Have an idea of what things or people you’d like to see, and stay aware of what time frame you can check them out so you don’t have scheduling conflicts! Plan to do a lot, but don’t sweat it if you miss a few things, it’s bound to happen.
• It never hurts to bring a spare d20.

If you stop by the Turbine booth, be sure to say hello! My traditional pirate hat with red feather will be returning after a little convention hibernation. I figured it was appropriate to celebrate the upcoming guild housing system. Don’t worry… it will make sense later, just keep your eyes open for any news coming from the show floor! I will try to take some pictures again this year to post to my my.ddo page. I’m sure I can catch some good ones of Tarrant, mwuhahaha!

See you there, and if you can’t make it, we know you’re here in spirit!