Have the devs died?

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Taem
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ParticuLarry wrote:Anyway, this demonization of discord is what I have noticed back then with Taem already, which is the only reason why I even replied to him back then, to stop him from twisting facts in favor of a story that's wrong, which, if told continually, may degenerate into a much bigger but pointless discussion, which unfortunately still happened as we can see here. The attitude I saw in him back then is unfortunately very typical nowaday, since it has been brainwashed into us with advertisements all over our lifes.


I am touched you felt so strongly about my words to write a new chapter for the bible here. I almost didn't even catch my name in all that text... Look, opinions are not facts, just an expression of ones beliefs. I appreciate you trying to 'wake' me up and school me on the joys of using Discord, but it does not actually change my opinion of it in anyway and I am not going out of my way to be difficult here, I just prefer not to use Discord, period. All I have been really suggesting if you read between the lines, and other posters in this thread, is to see more activity from the devs on the forums. When I wrote about Laz, I was commenting on how he took the time to converse with his audience, which Marco used to do, but has done less and less of, but then he posted in this thread that it's because all of the dev's time is being sucked up by 2.0, so now I understand, but it would be nice to see a statement on their news feed reflecting this for other posters who may feel frustrated at the lack of communication, which again is a point I brought up about using the features already present on this website to communicate with the fans. And as I said, the lack of communication - in light of resurrection coming out soon - does raise questions to rather the mod will continue post D2R... Or at least it did initially until Marcos response. I am certain I'm not the only user feeling stressed about this, but it seems like such an easy remedy by updating the news feed, posting a weekly or bi-weekly blog on the announcements feed, something simple like, "still working on 2.0 guys! super excited, currently being play tested! you guys will fucking love it! best version yet! and we plan on d2r to actually bring more players to our servers and plan on continuing to support this mod until the money runs out, so keep donating", you know, something to that effect.
ParticuLarry
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Taem wrote:I am touched you felt so strongly about my words to write a new chapter for the bible here. I almost didn't even catch my name in all that text... Look, opinions are not facts, just an expression of ones beliefs. I appreciate you trying to 'wake' me up and school me on the joys of using Discord, but it does not actually change my opinion of it in anyway and I am not going out of my way to be difficult here, I just prefer not to use Discord, period. All I have been really suggesting if you read between the lines, and other posters in this thread, is to see more activity from the devs on the forums. When I wrote about Laz, I was commenting on how he took the time to converse with his audience, which Marco used to do, but has done less and less of, but then he posted in this thread that it's because all of the dev's time is being sucked up by 2.0, so now I understand, but it would be nice to see a statement on their news feed reflecting this for other posters who may feel frustrated at the lack of communication, which again is a point I brought up about using the features already present on this website to communicate with the fans. And as I said, the lack of communication - in light of resurrection coming out soon - does raise questions to rather the mod will continue post D2R... Or at least it did initially until Marcos response. I am certain I'm not the only user feeling stressed about this, but it seems like such an easy remedy by updating the news feed, posting a weekly or bi-weekly blog on the announcements feed, something simple like, "still working on 2.0 guys! super excited, currently being play tested! you guys will fucking love it! best version yet! and we plan on d2r to actually bring more players to our servers and plan on continuing to support this mod until the money runs out, so keep donating", you know, something to that effect.


I certainly didn't try to school you on the joy of using discord at all. I'm not using discord either. So yeah, that's not what my post was about.

What my post was about is the following topic that was brought up by Duysir0: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=60020&start=320

Where you said we forum-only users get sloppy seconds, which isn't true. We get the same pieces of information regarding the teasers in the "announcement" channel of discord in a time frame that's totally acceptable. I basically wanted to root out the wrongly told story before other people get influenced by it and start complaining about something that wasn't true, which would've ended in a pointless discussion about how people feel neglected, when all they need to do is to practice some patience and understanding for the team. But that discussion happened anyway :D

I agree that it would be nice to have some updates. I can understand though why they don't give said updates, which is the reason I'm defending the team here and seemingly had to give reasons as to why it is the way it is by explaining the normal marketing usage of the different community managing tools even though it was explained by Marco in less detail 3 days prior to my post.
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Taem wrote:
OverSky wrote:It's a bit weird that most info was announced on Discord only but not here on our official forum. Important announcements like beta access & patreon should've definitely also made here imo.


Absolutely, but it's missing from the "NEWS" page, which BTW last update was 5-months ago: https://www.median-xl.com/
It's missing from the "ANNOUNCEMENTS" tab on the forums: viewforum.php?f=25

One thing I liked about Laz is that he was consistent with his involvement with the community and responding to his audience, explaining ideas he had for his upcoming patches, rather he used them or not, and receptive to the desires of the community as a whole. In it's current iteration, there are some excellent moderators, but the forums feel mostly abandoned. I will occasionally load up Discord to see if there is anything interesting, but I don't care to sift through pages and pages of boring chat logs myself. I feel like they (the MXL team) is letting this mod die. Perhaps they lost interest/hope in it once Diablo Resurrection was announced and are slowly looking to leave this mod once and for all, giving us one final version, 2.0, before calling it quits!? That is what it seems like to me.


Man!!! I miss laz so much. I remember when this mod came out. He was such a great dude, I definitely had more fun back then. The forums were always busy, people always trading and sharing builds, discovering exciting things etc.. I sort of agree with you, a lot of that has been lost. I guess is just life and although I think this team is doing a good job with the mod (for the most part), I do feel like it has become a bit money hungry. I get that you gotta get paid, but this is where laz thrived. He just wanted people to have a good time. I remember that median xl was open beta and people just gathered together to report bugs, and he would be in the forums socializing, sharing his ideas and what not. Now you gotta pay 20 dollars a month and go through discord...but hey I understand it's life and I can't tell people how to run their business. Anyways I'm looking forward to the 2.0 version, hopefully it's good.
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Taem
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ParticuLarry wrote:
Taem wrote:I am touched you felt so strongly about my words to write a new chapter for the bible here. I almost didn't even catch my name in all that text... Look, opinions are not facts, just an expression of ones beliefs. I appreciate you trying to 'wake' me up and school me on the joys of using Discord, but it does not actually change my opinion of it in anyway and I am not going out of my way to be difficult here, I just prefer not to use Discord, period. All I have been really suggesting if you read between the lines, and other posters in this thread, is to see more activity from the devs on the forums. When I wrote about Laz, I was commenting on how he took the time to converse with his audience, which Marco used to do, but has done less and less of, but then he posted in this thread that it's because all of the dev's time is being sucked up by 2.0, so now I understand, but it would be nice to see a statement on their news feed reflecting this for other posters who may feel frustrated at the lack of communication, which again is a point I brought up about using the features already present on this website to communicate with the fans. And as I said, the lack of communication - in light of resurrection coming out soon - does raise questions to rather the mod will continue post D2R... Or at least it did initially until Marcos response. I am certain I'm not the only user feeling stressed about this, but it seems like such an easy remedy by updating the news feed, posting a weekly or bi-weekly blog on the announcements feed, something simple like, "still working on 2.0 guys! super excited, currently being play tested! you guys will fucking love it! best version yet! and we plan on d2r to actually bring more players to our servers and plan on continuing to support this mod until the money runs out, so keep donating", you know, something to that effect.


I certainly didn't try to school you on the joy of using discord at all. I'm not using discord either. So yeah, that's not what my post was about.

What my post was about is the following topic that was brought up by Duysir0: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=60020&start=320

Where you said we forum-only users get sloppy seconds, which isn't true. We get the same pieces of information regarding the teasers in the "announcement" channel of discord in a time frame that's totally acceptable. I basically wanted to root out the wrongly told story before other people get influenced by it and start complaining about something that wasn't true, which would've ended in a pointless discussion about how people feel neglected, when all they need to do is to practice some patience and understanding for the team. But that discussion happened anyway :D

I agree that it would be nice to have some updates. I can understand though why they don't give said updates, which is the reason I'm defending the team here and seemingly had to give reasons as to why it is the way it is by explaining the normal marketing usage of the different community managing tools even though it was explained by Marco in less detail 3 days prior to my post.


Everything you said makes perfect sense to me, so I do not actually think there is any disagreement between our opinions. I was being overly dramatic, to which I admit, when I refered to how deplorable the forums are treated, as sloppy second, and yet I still believe I have a valid point about a development update on the announcements thread, like many game companies do. You are correct that some mods have been cross posting, but when it's not all contained in an announcement thread or news feed but in different spots on the forums, it can get easily lost and then missed by users. That's really my only point. More updates. Personalize it. I watched a video on the fastest speed run of Super Mario Bros that detailed this man's exploits over some goal I couldn't even give a single duck about, but because he personalized it with his own story, it turned out to be an engaging story. I think we want to hear about some of these exploits, the good and the bad, otherwise it has this.... commercial feel about it, not like the mod community we all fell in love with.
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Taem wrote:Everything you said makes perfect sense to me, so I do not actually think there is any disagreement between our opinions. I was being overly dramatic, to which I admit, when I refered to how deplorable the forums are treated, as sloppy second, and yet I still believe I have a valid point about a development update on the announcements thread, like many game companies do. You are correct that some mods have been cross posting, but when it's not all contained in an announcement thread or news feed but in different spots on the forums, it can get easily lost and then missed by users. That's really my only point. More updates. Personalize it. I watched a video on the fastest speed run of Super Mario Bros that detailed this man's exploits over some goal I couldn't even give a single duck about, but because he personalized it with his own story, it turned out to be an engaging story. I think we want to hear about some of these exploits, the good and the bad, otherwise it has this.... commercial feel about it, not like the mod community we all fell in love with.


Yes, I don't think there's any disagreement between us either. This minor misunderstanding aside, I also fully agree to the posts you made in this topic, even if I don't know the Laz times. But these sound really nice from your narration.

The only thing I might disagree with is just an opinion though: I prefer less updates if that means I can play 2.0 sooner :D But of course I can understand the thirst for hype generating news. I only checked their discord and patreon because of that single desire after all :D
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Ruubel wrote:Easy there, easy. Goblin season is exactly what it is - a filler.

Totally agree, a filler. If Goblin season lasts for 2-3 months as a filler with high drop rate and relics abuse, then fine.
However, if it finally lasts for like 6-7 months or even longer as a filler, more than enough!
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diego11807 wrote:I do feel like it has become a bit money hungry

How so? If you do not mind me saying, I think you've lost perspective. When the mod was developed by Laz it had nowhere near the current infrastructure, it had nowhere near the current rate of development nor its scope. In the D2 modding landascape MXL excels in many ways and this doesn't come cheap especially when expectations are high, the playerbase so large and the mod has become so big. To put things into perspective, when 1.0 was released an unplanned 2k went poof just to fix bottleneck issues in MP due to the huge influx of new players. To be honest something of this magnitude would have been most likely the death of the multiplayer experience for any of the other D2 mods at the time if put in the place of MXL. 20$/month for full acces to the beta + all other patreon/discord/armory perks is the result of our decision to further gift the 3month+ 5$-tier supporters with acces to our beta, and to not disrespect those who put 15$ in the span of 3 months the price was put at 20$ to give a minimum value of 5$ to the "time" factor of their support (it wouldn't have felt right to allow people to buy-in at the same amount 5$-tier patrons were charged to support us during a 3 months timeframe). 20$/month is litteraly the lowest amount we could've come up with that checked all boxes. If we were even remotely "money hungry" we could have done as pd2 does and just put a price tag of 50$/100$ for 7 days of closed beta.
Also, comparing the good times under Laz's management to the current one makes no sense when the project and everything around it's very dissimilar and on a completely different scale... we too "just want people to have fun" and possibly, if we can help it, we want to keep open that door for players as much as possible instead of having to abandon the project for lack of resources or lack of planning ahead.
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Taem
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Also, comparing the good times under Laz's management to the current one makes no sense when the project and everything around it's very dissimilar and on a completely different scale...


I could be wrong, but I do not believe anyone is comparing the quality of the mod Requiem, that is absolutely not in dispute here. What has been brought up as a concern was the way Laz conversed openly with his community versus the way ideas are handled here. I couldn't say one is right or wrong, but definitely the former is preferred if this thread attests to that. I want to mention that most gaming sites I go to, such as Grind Gear Games, Grim Dawn, have news feeds updated every couple weeks just describing what is in the works or the state of the game. Those of us lamenting the "Laz" era are not wanting to return to his method of oversight, no sir, we are merely asking for more developer feedback because we get excited by it and it makes us look forward to this mods continued development!! I immensely enjoyed reading Whists blogs working on Sigma even though half the time, there really was not much to read but how many lines of code the new engine had, but every post got me more and more hyped for Sigma until it was released ! That, Requiem , is what is sorely lacking on these forums.
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RequiemLux wrote:
diego11807 wrote:I do feel like it has become a bit money hungry

How so? If you do not mind me saying, I think you've lost perspective. When the mod was developed by Laz it had nowhere near the current infrastructure, it had nowhere near the current rate of development nor its scope. In the D2 modding landascape MXL excels in many ways and this doesn't come cheap especially when expectations are high, the playerbase so large and the mod has become so big. To put things into perspective, when 1.0 was released an unplanned 2k went poof just to fix bottleneck issues in MP due to the huge influx of new players. To be honest something of this magnitude would have been most likely the death of the multiplayer experience for any of the other D2 mods at the time if put in the place of MXL. 20$/month for full acces to the beta + all other patreon/discord/armory perks is the result of our decision to further gift the 3month+ 5$-tier supporters with acces to our beta, and to not disrespect those who put 15$ in the span of 3 months the price was put at 20$ to give a minimum value of 5$ to the "time" factor of their support (it wouldn't have felt right to allow people to buy-in at the same amount 5$-tier patrons were charged to support us during a 3 months timeframe). 20$/month is litteraly the lowest amount we could've come up with that checked all boxes. If we were even remotely "money hungry" we could have done as pd2 does and just put a price tag of 50$/100$ for 7 days of closed beta.
Also, comparing the good times under Laz's management to the current one makes no sense when the project and everything around it's very dissimilar and on a completely different scale... we too "just want people to have fun" and possibly, if we can help it, we want to keep open that door for players as much as possible instead of having to abandon the project for lack of resources or lack of planning ahead.


Are you saying that you guys dont spend the donation money on booze and hookers? I aint donating any more then.
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ParticuLarry wrote:
Siosilvar wrote:Scosglen is fantasy Scotland. It's where the Druids come from, which is why that name is all over Druid abilities and items.



I hate to be Pedantic but in the British Isles, Druids were more associated with Wales. I'm Scottish (not that it makes me more knowledgable), but there is no great history of Druids here.