Duval Magic

daleweed · Jan 8, 2013

So I was just parusing through the GBX forums and Duval Magic, aka Randy Pitchford, just posted this in liu of the multi-pellet gun glitch and the responses to it...if you're unfamiliar with the multi-pellet gun glitch it has to do with how GBX handled (and, frankly, botched in many ways things that affect the game you may or may not notice) the balancing of the bee shield in the latest patch. The mistakes were discovered by many GBX forum users that do the hard science over and over and over. Anyways, just thought I'd repost Randy's response for posterity:

I posted the following in this thread a few minutes ago (http://forums.gearboxsoftware.com/sh...d.php?t=219987):

You guys are awesome.

Constructive people are good. Science is good.

As we have already proven, we'll make adjustments when we're sure things are wrong. We are likely to make more adjustments.

We have top men working on this stuff. Top men.

So we trust them generally. We also play our game a lot before releasing adjustments into the wild. When we feel good about something, we go for it with confidence. I trust our top men and generally defend them as knowing what they're doing.

Our statements typically are in our software. We tried to fix something that we messed up on. We did fix it, but this science shows there may have been other things that were affected in ways that don't seem right.

Remember that it's a human process. Check it out: You play the game much more than we do because you are millions of people and we are hundreds. So some among you might notice things we didn't.

Also consider: The game is super complex and the way it is engineered and designed makes strange things happen with the math sometimes. When we test the game, we don't sweat the math so much - we sweat the experience and the general range of possibilities. That approach is useful when trying to sweep through a big, complex game so you don't have to wait a year for any updates, but it's not as effective as what crowd sourced analysis and big data telemetry can produce with products released into the wild.

Now - while it's fun to do science and to figure this stuff out, try not to let the strangeness you discover inhibit your ability to have fun with the game. The game is complex enough where there are many approaches to combat effectiveness and all encounters are proven beatable even with strangeness with certain configurations. So don't forget to have fun in spite of any strangeness you discover now or in the future.

Thanks for being awesome if you're awesome. I see a lot of awesome constructiveness and it makes me proud and excited and it's also helpful to the Top Men. I also see some weak-sauce here and there around the forums and I think you know what I'm talking about. That makes me sad and makes me want to shut things down to make the weak-sauce go away. So, don't be weak-sauce. Be awesome. I don't mean to make a threat, please do not take this sentiment as one, but I do think it's responsible of me to give you some fair insight into my very human emotional response to some of the behavior I see sometimes. I think you know what I mean. So be cool

Critical thinking and science is awesome, btw, so I'm quite happy if you keep doing that if it turns you on.

So what does all this mean?

Well. First, thanks for the science! Second, try to have fun regardless of what the science shows you. Third, we've got Top Men doing great things with lots of awesome stuff to come and the science is noticed as work happens.

Thoughts: Sometimes some garbage (like an empty soda cup and some crumpled pieces of paper or something) flies across the field while you're playing soccer or something. If everyone stops and just focuses on the garbage, the soccer playing stops and you don't have any fun. Someone can (and should) say, "Hey - garbage on the field" and depending on how much garbage it is and how disruptive it is, it'll probably get picked up in the next whistle or period break. No one is stopping the game for it, though. It's just some garbage and garbage happens all the time. Besides, too many people are having a great time and aren't even noticing the garbage.

Now, some people are those kind of people that need acknowledgement for noticing the garbage. They think, "No one has noticed this garbage on the field! I have noticed it! I'm yelling about it and no one seems to care! The grass is so nice and green and that trash over there is just ruining it! IT'S RUINING IT! AARRGH! WHY DOESN'T ANYONE STOP THE GAME AND PICK UP THE GARBAGE?!? I'll yell LOUDER and LOUDER until they do! AARRGH!!"

We all have known those kinds of people. Some of them seem to come to our forums, lol. We should all be grateful for the garbage-pointer-outer-people. It's important to sweep the field and keep it tidy and we need to spot the garbage in order to sweep it up. So garbage-pointer-outer-people are helpful and their hearts are in the right place, usually.

But garbage-pointer-outer or not, when dealing with other people - especially people you hope to affect - It's all about attitude, rather than intent, motive or result. Humans are strange things - we tend to make decisions based on emotions and feelings, sometimes in spite of rationality and reason, oddly. Those of us who exist to entertain others seem to have a lot of emotional tuning built in, so keep that in mind too.

But we should also all remember that the whole point is to have fun and if people are having fun sometimes they don't want to be yelled at about garbage - especially when it's not a lot of garbage in the grand scheme, it happens to be on a part of the field they don't care about watching, and it'll probably get scooped up anyway in a bit and there is so much fun to be had just kicking that ball around and playing the game.

Remember - I've been saying "YAY!" to the science aspect of this. I'm just saying "you're doing it wrong" about certain attitudes that aren't constructive. Don't forget that if you're active here. Attitude is everything.

Also - It's been awhile since I've posted anything to the forums. I read them a lot, but I have to confess that I've been afraid to post lately - since before the game launched. I'm afraid that fear has gotten worse instead of better. I don't think any of us are happiest about that. But people take things out of context... Anyway, I love our community and want to participate more, but there's a lot of risk in it because of how some people are. Thank you in advance for not making me regret visiting and posting. And please don't behave in ways that might make one resent the forums all together. Most of you are awesome, but some of you guys are CRAZY! (Am I right?) But all of you are important, and you're why we do what we do. So try to be as awesome as you can be as you play here together with us. Stop every once and awhile and drink a nice, tall, cold glass of perspective and think about the kind of attitude the very best people in this world have and try to have that attitude. And, most importantly, don't forget to enjoy the game.

Anyway - I hope you guys take all of this in the best possible way and realize that I am VERY proud and excited that you guys care so much about what we've created that you spend your time here and in our game. I am humbled by the passion and it fuels me to want us to do better and better.

Please trust that our hearts are in exactly the right place - we just want to create joy and happiness through entertainment. But we are human and what we do is very rare and difficult and complicated and we go so fast because we want you to have our work as fast as we can. We know that if we make mistakes, people don't die. We're not programming surgery robots or tourist orbital platforms - we're making video games. So we go fast and we take risks and we do it in the name of entertainment. We want to make you happy and put a huge amount of ourselves into that purpose.

We think we did a pretty good job and we think we created a lot of joy. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is perfect so we try not to hate ourselves too much where there are lessons we've learned. Still - it kills us when some of you express vitriol in spite of all of the goodness we know we've created.

Evidence of joy we've created makes us work harder and motivates us. Evidence of hate is defeating and makes me want to give up or just move on to something else different. So spread joy and happiness - it's better that way!

Think about that.

For those that are awesome (There are a LOT of you), keep up the good science! You have my thanks!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

icewavex79 · Jan 8, 2013

After going to the GBX forum and seeing all the posts about "The Bee nerf must have been an accident" Seriously I am just as tired hearing about that damn shield as much as the mods are here. Sure it was fun for farming but it took the fun out of "earning" the rewards. I admit I ran with The Bee for about a week but got bored with it REAL fast. Even before the "patch" I was running either Impaler or Hide of Terra because there were better options with those. They made you get in to the battle instead of hiding out and doing suppresion fire so your shield didn't go down. Personally I love the fact that getting in to the middle of everything and seeing a spike, nova, maylay damage occur at once is a great thing. Just with the Hide of Terra I lvl 5'd 3 things in BA rankings at the same time all because I understood what that shield was about. High capacity for defense but when depleted, becomes an offensive weapon. I just cant believe after 2 months, people are still whining about The Bee. Personally take the damn thing out of the game and be done with it. Has anyone noticed only the Gunzerker is the only one with ammo regen? Remember BL1 where you never really had to buy ammo anymore? I could go ALL day with that Siren and not spend a dollar on ammo or respawn. Just saying when something becomes TOO strong....its time to fix or remove it.

daleweed · Jan 8, 2013

Ummm...this wasn't about bee shield love/hate. Actually it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the math behind how they "fixed" it. The bee nerf needed to happen, thats not the point. The point is that they messed up how the math effects other items, mostly shotguns but also "times x" items, class mods and shields. Most people don't realize this. I just posted Randy's response to this because its one of the first times GBX has admitted they messed it up, and in parts Randy conveys this quite well. I appreciate his candidness to post on a forum, you don't get that from many CEOs. That's why I posted this. Not because I want the old bee back, because I don't. In fact at this point I wish it was never in the game.

Judas · Jan 8, 2013

@Daleweed: thanks for posting this one mate

Well, Randy really takes it personally which shows his utter dedication to this game. For that reason I respect him. It takes guts to come out like that as being a CEO. He has his whole heart in the game and that's probably one of the reasons why this game is as awesome as it is.
Of course there's been a lot of questions, moaning and cursing about the changes. Most of it is about The Bee which used to be my favorite shield as well. His comments are totally legit. Some people showed a really ugly attitude (childish and even nihilistic sometimes). It was a bug and they did a fix for it, and hey, they are totally entitled to do so. The thing that well never change though, is the fact that people who react like a jerk will not change and probably won't even understand what Randy is trying to say. I am glad to be part of a forum with people who are not like that

Charlie232323 · Jan 8, 2013

I really like everything he had to say. They do love the game they are making and so does pretty much everybody who plays it. I have worked in the video game industry and have seen many games put out that have no right to be released because they were made by money hungry idiots who could care less about the people who are playing them. Gearbox cares about us and it shows through their game.

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