I think it is a fundamentally wrong approach to think what’s “possible”. It’s scifi. Anything the writer wants is possible. You can just retcon in ancient astronauts or a secret supertech human faction, if you choose to. Nanites could destroy the blob. In Star Trek there’d be a happy ending no matter how grim things looked at first.
The only relevant question is what the devs want.
To be clear, I’m not an advocate of a happy ending. My point was just that there are no technical limitations. It’s also in my opinion pretty pointless to refer to the current and apparent tech level of the game world as a reason why something cannot be done.
What I’m trying to say is that this is entirely up to the project lead. If they decided today the game needs an ending, an alpha version could be up before the end of the year. Having or not having and ending or happiness for that matter is entirely a matter of preference.
This is actually not a good position to take when the current tech level of the game is, for base game at least, “Current Day, with a handful of exceptions”. A whole design doc is publicly available covering a lot of spaces, including the technology level of the game, specifically to avoid this pointless argument. And mods like Aftershock are included specifically for “But I want exotic far future tech” in my game. And Aftershock has its own lore reasons as to why you can’t simply grab a ship and leave. The lore is not immutable, of course, and I’ve seen it change multiple times, but those changes have consistently been “away from sci-fi being the default of the world”.
This is also objectively false, on multiple levels. Even if they had a complete change of heart tomorrow and the personal time required to build the content, it is unlikely to be well received, and despite popular belief, CDDA is not a true dictatorship. If a controlling contributor goes rogue and starts shoveling shit in, the project gets forked, the new fork dumps the rogue additions, and the community moves on from there. Just because they have the paper power to force whatever lore changes and content changes through, doesn’t mean that every other contributor will continue with it.
Most Open Source projects that don’t see this and respect it don’t last long. The fact that the community has for the most part maintained a consistent long-life core group of people actually collaborating and not fighting over everything is all the indication we need to safely say that its not ruled by one singular voice, but by a fairly consistent vision.
I’m not trying to say it’s a dictatorship. Nor do I want any fancy future tech or a happier tone. I’m sure what you say is all very sensible.
My point and only point here was that it’s a work of fiction and the genre of scifi is possibly the most malleable one. And this game definitely is at least partly scifi. If the (multiple developing) people with power really wanted to make those changes, there wouldn’t be anything to stop them. And, if they became maniacs and wanted to devote all their time to it, something could happen relatively quickly.
I do get it shouldn’t happen and it won’t happen. And I don’t personally care at all, one way or another. My argument is merely academic, stating that the current lore cannot prevent its creators from retconning or adding more. Saying “I don’t want it.” is fine. Saying “The current lore makes such development absolutely and objectively impossible.” just isn’t true.
We have been very clear about the setting of the game for many years now, and saying it’s not reasonable to rely on the existing setting is disingenuous at best.
My intention is not to push for changes in this matter or offend people. The red flag for me was several comments implying there are grand forces at work beyond their control and preventing changes.
I know this has come down to the level of rhetorics and no practical progress can come from this discussion. Still I think it’d be more intellectually honest to clearly state, that the original reason for this setting is not anything complicated or obscure - it is the subjective preference of the developers. They could do things differently, but they choose not to. And that is all fine.
CDDA project lead has absolute authority, so one might call it a dictatorship and make no mistake. Forked project might be governed differently, have different goals and everything - thing is it won’t be CDDA, but some other project (like CBN).
Like I said earlier, I have no need to challenge the dev choices. I’m still a bit puzzled how you sound like this “dictatorship” is something you’re proud of.
Aren’t you concerned that this tone in the communication might make the players feel their role and feedback is not valued?
People would most likely to be more willing to share their insights and come back, if the core message instead was how much the devs respect their players and their opinions.
Can we maybe kick this whole discussion of how the project is managed to another thread?
You’re conflating, “how the setting came to be” with “how the setting is managed going forward”. These are very different things, and it is not “intelectually honest” to confuse the two.
No, and you are a hairs breadth away from convincing me you are here for no reason but concern trolling, final warning.
I have been patient, but you insist on being extremely confrontational. The new title you chose is insulting. I am not getting the feeling my input is appreciated here.
This is definitely not what I would accept as proper PR from my employees and I am under no obligation to keep on listening.
The nice thing about targeting realism, even though it is an impossible goal, is that there is an objective thing to measure against. It’s clear to me that the main game and the various mods stray deliberately far from reality, but if realism is an actual goal then debates can be more like courtroom presentations and less like a shouting match.
If you have a PR team you might want to get them in here to speak on your behalf. It’s time for damage control.
What kind of a mod did you want anyway? A world war 1 antarctic adventure might be fun. Travel through the tunnels and enter the inner earth with a platoon of soldiers and establish a base while battling with operatives representing competing national powers.
I do get your sarcasm, but I don’t think I’m the one being unreasonable here. I don’t need the ending to change. Nor do I care if the project lead wants to maintain the setting limits his options in the future development.
What I expect is to be treated politely. Many of the developers’ answers have reflected arrogance and lack of respect towards their players - for a long time. That is inexcusable. So, no. My PR team is not needed here. The project needs one to fix the attitude problem.
Does this have something to do with the spaceship part in the other Topic?
Seems like that suggestion just spawned this one since irl Earth doesn’t have to most effective space flight capability, considering how specialized of an occupation being an astronaut is.
I’m not sure what you’re expecting. Your the one coming in here, and trying to treat the reasoning for a labor of love as some logical argument that you can ‘win’. Your the one dismissing our reasonings for doing things the way we do as ‘intellectually dishonest’ as if we are attempting to deceive people on why the game is the way it is.
And now that your not happy that you can’t frame the argument the way you want and force it into a narrow defined line, and your angry that the people involved aren’t apologetic about pointing it out.
There are no employees, there is no PR, these are the positions and opinions of individuals, there is no Cataclysm Corp and there’s not really any interest in engaging with people who want to make it confrontational. I don’t speak for Kevin or anyone else, I’ve just been here since 2014 or 2015. My only position for half the things I’m saying is from all that time seeing how the projects been directed by its contributors.
Yea, I think this whole discussion has turned into an unfortunate fiasco.
I initially tried to present the chances offered by the scifi genre as a wonderful opportunity for the creators to change things if they wanted. Sadly, it probably didn’t come out right, since it was interpreted as an attack agaist their values. Then, when I got responses in what I felt was a downright unfriendly tone, I got triggered. Especially since I had been trying to bring up something I believed to be genuinely interesting and worth discussing.
In the end, it was not my place to tell people here how to do their jobs. I still don’t condone the attitude and behavior I had to face. I sincerely believe all people deserve to be addressed in a more respectful manner even when in disagreement.
Anyway, time to end this. No-one is going to feel better even if we continue and I got places to be.
Funny thing is, neither am I. So if you think you’ve done nothing wrong with all this nitpicking and bad faith arguments and telling people how to engage with the setting, it’s quite clear you don’t plan on changing your behavior, so you’re gone.
{quote=“Jandof, post:8, topic:28367”}
Aren’t you concerned that this tone in the communication might make the players feel their role and feedback is not valued?
{/quote}
No
The guy’s already suspended, bruv.