No members of 4J Studios are actually forum staff.
That's one of the reasons why I've been putting the word "staff" in quotes. "The staff' in the title could be interpreted to mean either 4J staff or Curse staff... or even perhaps Mojang or Microsoft staff (Of course, this might get me accused yet again of only taking what I want out of what was posted... lol)
That's one of the reasons why I've been putting the word "staff" in quotes. "The staff' in the title could be interpreted to mean either 4J staff or Curse staff... or even perhaps Mojang or Microsoft staff (Of course, this might get me accused yet again of only taking what I want out of what was posted... lol)
Ahh yes, I just now realized this. Fun fact: A large majority of the forum staff here isn't Curse staff at all. Most of them are volunteers to this specific forum. But yeah, the OP should really think about adding a little clarity to the title of this thread.
Ahh yes, I just now realized this. Fun fact: A large majority of the forum staff here isn't Curse staff at all. Most of them are volunteers to this specific forum. But yeah, the OP should really think about adding a little clarity to the title of this thread.
I meant 4J staff.
I thought it was very clear by what was being said.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I put my shirt on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.
I meant 4J staff.
I thought it was very clear by what was being said.
It is, but wasn't in the title of the thread. You would be surprised at how many people don't even read the OP before posting. Especially when the title is in the form of a question.
Personally think they should do a Q&A type thing on differrent social media outlets i.e. (facebooks, official forums, or twitter. not at the same time.). I fine with a few post here and there but when you have over 6 million users, using several different social sites, you can see why it may be hard to do what your asking.
Personally think they should do a Q&A type thing on differrent social media outlets i.e. (facebooks, official forums, or twitter. not at the same time.). I fine with a few post here and there but when you have over 6 million users, using several different social sites, you can see why it may be hard to do what your asking.
Why not on here.
Where all the easy questions can be answered by the community in a second.
And then that leaves the unknown for 4J.
If they don't know them yet... They can say that.
More companies need to play it to us straight IMO.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I put my shirt on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.
I I rephrase the question to...
In a perfect world would you like the 4J staff to be more active?
What would you say?
A lot of you are saying it would never happen and are not giving me what you as a minecraft consumer would like...
What more can we tell 4J than what we want right?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I put my shirt on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.
It seems they do reply to stuff until you start asking questions about why the world size is so small or other performance issues. They seem to not like telling people the answer is NO, so there is a good chance whatever your asking about simply isnt going to happen if they havnt replied.
Not saying this is the case every time, but they seem to be a little scared of telling people certain features are never going to make it into the game.
I think that's pretty much par for the course for programming companies... none of them like to ever say "this is never gonna happen... mostly because they themselves don't really know what they might be able to make possible in the future. If they say "it's never gonna happen" and then someday they figure out a way to make it happen, people wind up just calling them liars.
I I rephrase the question to...
In a perfect world would you like the 4J staff to be more active?
What would you say?
A lot of you are saying it would never happen and are not giving me what you as a minecraft consumer would like...
What more can we tell 4J than what we want right?
You make a point; sure; but where IS the line between supposing things about a "perfect" world and making a series of "real world" unreasonable demands on the company? I personally think that some factions in the Xbox community are a little jealous of the degree of influence the players get to make to the game itself. However, the Xbox reality is that it is 1) a port of that game so the design roughly follows the PC one; and 2) a port into a "closed source" environment... not an open one. 4J don't control that... Microsoft does.
It would be nice to see more of them, but I think it wouldn't be too bad if they answered some specific questions about the game mechanics (like animal spawn limits), which they sometimes do already.
keeping an eye on the forum, and posting regularly are 2 different things.
As much as the users might like to hear from the devs, most companies don't want devs talking to the customers. If for no reason other than they can't control how the devs speak, and thus might offend users.
It's usually preferred practice to hire people specifically for the job of managing social media communication.
Additionally, it takes time to craft well worded messages. time that most devs would rather be spending on fixing problems or adding features.
Anybody working in IT knows how frustrating it is to be stopped every 5 minutes for a status update by every tom, **** and harry about the server being down, when instead, if they weren't expected to answer, they'd be getting the server running.
It's the same problem in development. I can tell you what I'm going to be working on, or I can actually work on it. I can't do both.
the fact that any devs from 4J even communicate on here is amazing.
their health and activity isnt any of my concern..:P
I just want them to reply to the occasional message or post, not with a stiff, non-specific message, but actual sense of..participation. or express an opinion, or correct us on our grammar even.
their health and activity isnt any of my concern..:P
I just want them to reply to the occasional message or post, not with a stiff, non-specific message, but actual sense of..participation. or express an opinion, or correct us on our grammar even.
Anybody working in IT knows how frustrating it is to be stopped every 5 minutes for a status update by every tom, **** and harry about the server being down, when instead, if they weren't expected to answer, they'd be getting the server running.
Explain to me how not knowing if the server is ever going back up for a day.
Is better than knowing that now the server is going up in a day and 5 minutes because of the time it took to post?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I put my shirt on one leg at a time, just like everybody else.
Explain to me how not knowing if the server is ever going back up for a day.
Is better than knowing that now the server is going up in a day and 5 minutes because of the time it took to post?
this is the good question, framed from the perspective of a user. My answer is framed from the perspective of the guy fixing the problem.
First, off, it's not just you asking. Everybody and their dog stops me to ask when the server is going to be fixed. Regardless of whether I send a broadcast email or not, half the users won't read it.
Secondly, the reality is, when the server goes down, you are hosed. You can't work. Whether you know when it will be back or not, you are stuck for as long as it is down. You having the knowledge of "when it will be fixed" won't change a damn thing with regards to getting your job done.
Thirdly, any estimate I give you will be used against me, and in fact, I cannot know how long it will take to fix the server until it is fixed. Depending on where I am in the resolution process, I may not even know what is wrong or if my current theory is correct. If I reasonably think it the problem is X and I spent 20 minutes correcting for X, only to discover that the problem still exists, than the first estimate I gave you was worthless. if the server shuts down wrong (due to its problem like a Blue Screen), then when it spins up, it will have to do a disk check. I cannot tell you how long it will take to test its drives before it returns control back to me so I can continue debugging the problem. And in any event, it's out of my control, it will take however long it takes.
Fourthly, anbody with a PMP certification knows, you don't give time estimates anymore. Nothing goes according to plan, and few things involving computers are accurate to measure how long it will take. PMP's have developed a new language for communicating, and they all avoid % complete and time frames if they can help it.
Here's a real life example, Emails stopped being recieved or sent at my company. Outlook was prompting to login. How long will it take to fix this problem?
We don't even know what the problem is. is the Exchange server up? Is it pingable? is DNS working?
A few tests later, we know it's not pingable, and nslookup is returning the correct IP. The server might be down, have a bad NIC, or a bad ethernet cable or something. How long will it take to fix this problem?
We have a clue what the culprit is, nobody can talk to Exchange, but we don't know why. So we still can't answer the question.
When we access the console, we see the server is sitting at a prompt to install Windows. Huh? That's scary, how'd it get to that? Is there an install CD in the drive, and it got rebooted? How long to fix the problem?
You still don't know. It'll take a minute to check to make sure there's no CD in the drive, but you're at Microsoft's mercy on how long the reboot will take to see if it comes back up OK.
Potentially 5-30 minutes later, (30 if it had to do a drive check, because it did boot), we find that it failed to boot and is back at the install screen again. WTF!? How long to fix the problem?
This machine is a VM, it won't be obvious now, but the virtual drive is gunked up by a stale snapshot and VM Ware is trying to resolve the deltas to present a working drive, as a result, the drive appears hosed. If we do the wrong thing, we'll make things worse.
so instead of popping in the repair CD which would be trying to manipulate a potentially corrupted boot drive, we call VM Ware support and get a specialist to remote in and have him analyze the drive and integrate the snapshot into the VMDK file. How long to fix the problem?
We didn't know. You have no clue how long you'll sit on the phone on hold. Or how long it will take to integrate the snapshot back into the VVMDK. neither does the VMWare specialist, and neither he nor us knew what the problem was until we reached him and he looked around. So we couldn't send out estimates while sitting on hold.
But wait, there's more. Now the server boots. Exchange doesn't come up. VM Ware guy is done and goes away. How long to fix the problem?
Exchange's databases got goofed up with its AD entries. We need to repair that, and repair each user profile. How long to fix?
As it turned out, the entire problem took 16 hours to repair, from about 9AM to 2AM when I got the call that everything was back up.
Now, assuming you were my engineer who was hard at work on the problem, would you really want to be asked for time estimates, not knowing what the problem was or how long each part would take? Would you then want to be held accountable for not meeting your time estimate, even though there's jack taco you can do about it?
Let's just say, in the middle of a fire, getting asked for time estimates really ticks off the guy fixing the problem. The fact is, you are hosed. We know you are hosed. Stopping us and adding to our stress does NOT make the problem get better. Leaving us alone to think clearly about the problem is what makes the problem get solved sooner.
You won't get any ice cream until Daddy comes home from work, and you asking when that is, won't change a damn thing, because the ice cream doesn't happen until he gets home, so STFU.
So, the moral of the story is, unless your engineer is slacking off, you asking for updates is making his problem worse, and in fact making the solution take longer. Since whether you know when it will be done doesn't make the solution delivery arrive sooner, you are not relevant to the equation from an engineer's perspective.
Hmm lets see, how many millions of people write on the xbox forum,Answer Alot.
Steve: Ive read alot for x hrs of my day, responded to twitter for a few hours made notes on what is needed. When to I have time to answer? Answer Unless its really important I dont have the time.
Bug fixes, Steve, Ill read those and see if anyone has anything to contribute to the solutions needed and respond to those.
Steve now who do I get to fix these things? Wheres my timetable for the next fix and what plans am I making to move the xbox version ahead? Sorry community I love to read what you write but I really am stretched into doing what Im paid to do rather than what you would like me to do.
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That's one of the reasons why I've been putting the word "staff" in quotes. "The staff' in the title could be interpreted to mean either 4J staff or Curse staff... or even perhaps Mojang or Microsoft staff (Of course, this might get me accused yet again of only taking what I want out of what was posted... lol)
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Retired StaffAhh yes, I just now realized this. Fun fact: A large majority of the forum staff here isn't Curse staff at all. Most of them are volunteers to this specific forum. But yeah, the OP should really think about adding a little clarity to the title of this thread.
I meant 4J staff.
I thought it was very clear by what was being said.
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Retired StaffIt is, but wasn't in the title of the thread. You would be surprised at how many people don't even read the OP before posting. Especially when the title is in the form of a question.
Why not on here.
Where all the easy questions can be answered by the community in a second.
And then that leaves the unknown for 4J.
If they don't know them yet... They can say that.
More companies need to play it to us straight IMO.
In a perfect world would you like the 4J staff to be more active?
What would you say?
A lot of you are saying it would never happen and are not giving me what you as a minecraft consumer would like...
What more can we tell 4J than what we want right?
I think that's pretty much par for the course for programming companies... none of them like to ever say "this is never gonna happen... mostly because they themselves don't really know what they might be able to make possible in the future. If they say "it's never gonna happen" and then someday they figure out a way to make it happen, people wind up just calling them liars.
You make a point; sure; but where IS the line between supposing things about a "perfect" world and making a series of "real world" unreasonable demands on the company? I personally think that some factions in the Xbox community are a little jealous of the degree of influence the players get to make to the game itself. However, the Xbox reality is that it is 1) a port of that game so the design roughly follows the PC one; and 2) a port into a "closed source" environment... not an open one. 4J don't control that... Microsoft does.
As much as the users might like to hear from the devs, most companies don't want devs talking to the customers. If for no reason other than they can't control how the devs speak, and thus might offend users.
It's usually preferred practice to hire people specifically for the job of managing social media communication.
Additionally, it takes time to craft well worded messages. time that most devs would rather be spending on fixing problems or adding features.
Anybody working in IT knows how frustrating it is to be stopped every 5 minutes for a status update by every tom, **** and harry about the server being down, when instead, if they weren't expected to answer, they'd be getting the server running.
It's the same problem in development. I can tell you what I'm going to be working on, or I can actually work on it. I can't do both.
the fact that any devs from 4J even communicate on here is amazing.
I just want them to reply to the occasional message or post, not with a stiff, non-specific message, but actual sense of..participation. or express an opinion, or correct us on our grammar even.
I just want them to appear interested. thats all.
I would probably say that's close to what I want.
Explain to me how not knowing if the server is ever going back up for a day.
Is better than knowing that now the server is going up in a day and 5 minutes because of the time it took to post?
But there's one thing you must never, ever do… and that is to ignore them.
That pretty much sums up this whole thread.
this is the good question, framed from the perspective of a user. My answer is framed from the perspective of the guy fixing the problem.
First, off, it's not just you asking. Everybody and their dog stops me to ask when the server is going to be fixed. Regardless of whether I send a broadcast email or not, half the users won't read it.
Secondly, the reality is, when the server goes down, you are hosed. You can't work. Whether you know when it will be back or not, you are stuck for as long as it is down. You having the knowledge of "when it will be fixed" won't change a damn thing with regards to getting your job done.
Thirdly, any estimate I give you will be used against me, and in fact, I cannot know how long it will take to fix the server until it is fixed. Depending on where I am in the resolution process, I may not even know what is wrong or if my current theory is correct. If I reasonably think it the problem is X and I spent 20 minutes correcting for X, only to discover that the problem still exists, than the first estimate I gave you was worthless. if the server shuts down wrong (due to its problem like a Blue Screen), then when it spins up, it will have to do a disk check. I cannot tell you how long it will take to test its drives before it returns control back to me so I can continue debugging the problem. And in any event, it's out of my control, it will take however long it takes.
Fourthly, anbody with a PMP certification knows, you don't give time estimates anymore. Nothing goes according to plan, and few things involving computers are accurate to measure how long it will take. PMP's have developed a new language for communicating, and they all avoid % complete and time frames if they can help it.
Here's a real life example, Emails stopped being recieved or sent at my company. Outlook was prompting to login. How long will it take to fix this problem?
We don't even know what the problem is. is the Exchange server up? Is it pingable? is DNS working?
A few tests later, we know it's not pingable, and nslookup is returning the correct IP. The server might be down, have a bad NIC, or a bad ethernet cable or something. How long will it take to fix this problem?
We have a clue what the culprit is, nobody can talk to Exchange, but we don't know why. So we still can't answer the question.
When we access the console, we see the server is sitting at a prompt to install Windows. Huh? That's scary, how'd it get to that? Is there an install CD in the drive, and it got rebooted? How long to fix the problem?
You still don't know. It'll take a minute to check to make sure there's no CD in the drive, but you're at Microsoft's mercy on how long the reboot will take to see if it comes back up OK.
Potentially 5-30 minutes later, (30 if it had to do a drive check, because it did boot), we find that it failed to boot and is back at the install screen again. WTF!? How long to fix the problem?
This machine is a VM, it won't be obvious now, but the virtual drive is gunked up by a stale snapshot and VM Ware is trying to resolve the deltas to present a working drive, as a result, the drive appears hosed. If we do the wrong thing, we'll make things worse.
so instead of popping in the repair CD which would be trying to manipulate a potentially corrupted boot drive, we call VM Ware support and get a specialist to remote in and have him analyze the drive and integrate the snapshot into the VMDK file. How long to fix the problem?
We didn't know. You have no clue how long you'll sit on the phone on hold. Or how long it will take to integrate the snapshot back into the VVMDK. neither does the VMWare specialist, and neither he nor us knew what the problem was until we reached him and he looked around. So we couldn't send out estimates while sitting on hold.
But wait, there's more. Now the server boots. Exchange doesn't come up. VM Ware guy is done and goes away. How long to fix the problem?
Exchange's databases got goofed up with its AD entries. We need to repair that, and repair each user profile. How long to fix?
As it turned out, the entire problem took 16 hours to repair, from about 9AM to 2AM when I got the call that everything was back up.
Now, assuming you were my engineer who was hard at work on the problem, would you really want to be asked for time estimates, not knowing what the problem was or how long each part would take? Would you then want to be held accountable for not meeting your time estimate, even though there's jack taco you can do about it?
Let's just say, in the middle of a fire, getting asked for time estimates really ticks off the guy fixing the problem. The fact is, you are hosed. We know you are hosed. Stopping us and adding to our stress does NOT make the problem get better. Leaving us alone to think clearly about the problem is what makes the problem get solved sooner.
You won't get any ice cream until Daddy comes home from work, and you asking when that is, won't change a damn thing, because the ice cream doesn't happen until he gets home, so STFU.
So, the moral of the story is, unless your engineer is slacking off, you asking for updates is making his problem worse, and in fact making the solution take longer. Since whether you know when it will be done doesn't make the solution delivery arrive sooner, you are not relevant to the equation from an engineer's perspective.
Steve: Ive read alot for x hrs of my day, responded to twitter for a few hours made notes on what is needed. When to I have time to answer? Answer Unless its really important I dont have the time.
Bug fixes, Steve, Ill read those and see if anyone has anything to contribute to the solutions needed and respond to those.
Steve now who do I get to fix these things? Wheres my timetable for the next fix and what plans am I making to move the xbox version ahead? Sorry community I love to read what you write but I really am stretched into doing what Im paid to do rather than what you would like me to do.