In Light Of Recent Distrust

Pretty Polly said:
To be honest I don't really care for the childish games some seem to be playing. All I care is that the POTCO we know and love returns. If the chaps of TLOPO don't want to tell all then surely we should respect that decision? I'm not going to throw my rattle out the pram because I don't know everything they are working on, or because they hold content back. I'd rather not play a game that breaks at every occasion because things were introduced to quickly because the community were champing at the bit and demanding more and now! Remember they do this for no financial gain. That to me says enough. They do it for the love of the game and the community who want it back in their lives.
another remake didn't gel with a lot of us in the community (I'm talking my veteran POTCO playing friends). I even said I would never play any remake of POTCO again, and I meant it, but TLOPO seems different. I am excited again at the prospect of playing as I'm sure others are. Remember a lot of us weren't kids when we started playing, we're old and bolds. I was in my early 40's when I started playing. I've been around long enough so I've learned how to wait lol So HURRY UP! No... just kidding :D The chaps ARE doing a good job, let's let them get on and do that. They need our support not our criticism.
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Great post Polly! :)
 
katnypp said:
Actually they do it at a financial loss as they are paying for it themselves for the community to enjoy.

https://tlopo.com/help/
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This fact scares me. How are the developers planning to keep this game going in the long run? Do they expect this game to stay small enough to be funded by another job? Speaking from personal experience (Used to help some friends out with a decent sized Minecraft server that had absolutely no source of income), its hard to expect a completely profit-free MMO the size of POTCO to last long, unless some wealthy philanthropist is dedicating their wealth to a random online game.
 
Jat said:
This fact scares me. How are the developers planning to keep this game going in the long run? Do they expect this game to stay small enough to be funded by another job? From personal experience, its hard to expect a completely profit-free MMO the size of POTCO to last long, unless some wealthy philanthropist is dedicating their wealth to a random online game.
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It isn't SUPER expensive to run the game. In the long run we'll all have jobs and will be pretty financially stable.

I'm not concerned about money.
 
Mike Wass said:
The reason why I was hostile is because the people in that call have caused nothing but trouble in the past for us (why is it always the same clan of people causing trouble?).

I have worked closely with @Tom O'fury in the past and frankly am not thrilled with my experience with him. He's arrogant, aggressive, and likes to bully people. The ONLY reason he brought up a privacy policy is because he was terminated because of messages sent in a whisper(the only reason I will disclose this is because Jacob has said it publicly many times already). This is not something special for TLOPO, Disney read whispers/guild chat/crew chat/public chat, etc. There was no expectation of privacy on POTCO with the chat system. TLOPO is actually more lenient about the chat system. We DO log all chat messages, but we don't review every single one. We respect the privacy of our users and most of the time will only review those messages if there was a report submitted. Even if we wanted to read EVERY single message said in-game, it'd take up a month to get through one release. There's a large number of messages sent over the server, like 10,000 a day? So if we have a version out for a week or so, that's about 100,000+ messages to review. yeah.... no. Not gonna waste time reading those(which is why we love when people report issues!! This way we know exactly what to read and not waste time reading things that are perfectly fine).

In the logs panel whispers are not separated from public messages, they are listed in chronological order sorted by each account that sent the message(s); and when a player is reported we have no of knowing whether a whisper was the reason why somebody was reported or not. So, when somebody is reported we review their entire chat history for the session. If we find anything bad we check off that message and click a button that says "Add Ban". That then brings up an email prompt and we can then modify the canned email to the situation(i.e more info/ban length modification), or just ship off the email as-is. The canned email response is for a 24 hour chat abuse ban. Due to those being most common. Trust me, we don't sit there and read messages just to snoop on people. We don't care about the stuff people are talking about in-game so long as they are following the rules. If somebody isn't, we'll get a report and then we'll look at the messages.

Somebody brought up that we were kicking people after the boss was discovered in Misty Mire. We are not ready to release enemies because there are a few exploits, we as the developers are working as hard as we can to get these things released. Most of us put in easily 8+ hours a day working at TLOPO (FOR FREE!). We have an internal date in mind for when they'll be released, and that date is coming up fast. Before you know it you will all be sailing on the seas and looting trying to find the lost sword again.

We just released clothing, and have other updates lined up. To put something in perspective, Toontown Rewritten released their alpha in late October and ended it in mid-April. They then brought beta back early-mid May and released the PlayLine/PlayTime system June 3rd.

Their alpha lasted just about 6 months. Our alpha has been going since 9/11/15, which is 5 months. We have a TON in store for all of you, and it will definitely be worth the wait.

This whole show is ran by 1.5+ million lines of code, almost 40 hours a week by almost every developer, about 30,000 monthly followers on our website. This whole thing is ridiculously huge, I would've never expected that many people to be following us. I'm truly thankful for being able to be involved with all of this.

Below are some stats on TLOPOs in-staff progress.

Game src commit number:
View attachment 66765
That means there were 3,016 individual edits to the repository, that's a huge number of commits. We've made about 1,500 commit since alpha started.

View attachment 66766
This shows our overall activity since the creation of the repository.
(I just noticed this while looking it up, this repo was made exactly one year ago today. Happy Birthday src repo).

So, what does this graph say? Says at one point we had 150 commits a day. and in recent times we're averaging about 40-60 commits every day. That drop-off at the end is just because those stats aren't done being made yet. They're updated every couple days or so if I remember correctly.

Here's the site commit number:
View attachment 66767

Here's the site graph:
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Notice the bumps before September, and also around November and December. Remember when there were quite a lot of site redesigns? We were fixing site bugs and enhancing usability. The site has come a loonnnng way from when it was originally released.

I have a screenshot of what it was going to look like, what we released it as, what it was redesigned to, and yet redesigned again to(current site).

This is the launcher repo commit number:
View attachment 66769
This is the launcher repo graph:
View attachment 66770
There are spikes around the time of each update. The launcher was pretty easy to make, it's all C++ and is made using Qt. the bump around the 2016 number is from OS X support(which was very painful to release, lots of weird bugs).

This is the deployment repo(automation for backend stuff for releasing stuff):
View attachment 66771

This is the runtime repo(the compiler that generates the secure client you download):
View attachment 66772
Most of the security is in the runtime/server. We have never had any security vulnerabilities exploited, but we constantly role-play as hackers and try to find exploits. If we find one, we patch it. Most of the recent updates are just cleanup and optimizations. Or commits of each versions configuration.

We have a developer server that's turning into more of a QA(quality assurance) server. We've invited some of our closest friends onto it so they can test big features before their official release. Every tester on QA has been very kind, and we like em' a lot.

When we do penetration testing on the game, we do it on a locally setup copy of the server/runtime, or just connect to QA and have fun. QA is set up exactly as the main production server everyone logs into from the public. So if something breaks on QA, it'll break on prod. So it gives us a feel for what the game will be like when we deploy something. (There HAVE been issues where we deploy stuff and bam it doesn't work, even though it works fine on local copies.)

I don't know if I'm even allowed to show these graphs or give this much of an in-depth look, but oh well. This is how active we are, this is how much we're working at to get this out to you all. Don't be super upset over us taking out an enemy, we will have them back on there soon. The reason why they were taken out was a good reason.

We have a ton in store for you all, just be patient and stay tuned.
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:fo::fo::fo:
 
Sparky Wonderwolf said:
Well I understand, but if what is said about them is true according to katnypp-that they have to maintain the image of its predecessor (POTCO)-shouldn't there at least be some patience with the community, and being former POTCO Players, a bit of understanding that some of us don't necessarily trust right away or will ask constructive questions on matters that concern us? Considering the fact that Disney & DIMG messed with us for a while, my point I am trying to make is shouldn't there be some understanding? Some patience? I am sure we have all felt the same way on the same page or that others have felt the way some of us feel now. Where is the crime in perhaps patiently answering, or giving a somewhat honest answer at certain times? I would like to at least feel that my voice is going to be heard because I am like everyone else here someone who played POTCO. Someone who like everyone else has been jerked around all the same. Some of us are a bit more weary than others... and for that we ask questions in as mature as we can way.
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Kate Goldwalker said:
Patience has to go both ways. We seem to be seeing all the questions from those who lack patience. OR from those who are stirring the pot of controversy.
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I agree that the community needs patience, but I don't understand why we're lacking it. I mean...we were pretty patient when Disney literally went years without updating POTCO (not counting clothing/cosmetics).
 
Flint said:
The Perspective of a new Member

As a reasonably new member of this community (Learned about the revival of POTCO about a month ago) I'd like to share what my experience is with the communication between developers and the community and the progression of the game. It might differ from the experience someone had that has been a member of this community for a long time, or not.

Compared to other titles, the communication between the developers and the community appears to be very transparent to me. I think it's at the place where it should be. I love the fact that you're easily able to contact developers either in irc, ingame or on the forums. This atleast to me gives the feeling of trust and safety. Since they're recreating a Disney game, I think the way they handle things should be mostly the same, and they seem to be doing that. However, I do think maybe some automatic bans in the chat can be quite harsh. (Accidently swearing, talking in caps etc.) Maybe a warning message or simply censoring the specific words (Maybe like in World of Warcraft something like: ''%&*#$&@") would be a solution for that, and it might leave people less agitated. Of course when someone keeps breaking the rules there should be the right penaltys for doing so.

The game's progression seems to be top notch. Almost every week there is an update to the alpha, and sometimes even more frequently. Compared to other MMO titles this is simply great. The Developers are simply doing a great job. As Michael said above, the amount of work they put into it is incredible (without even being paid!). People who keep demanding more features in the game should be more patient. Clearly they don't understand the process of developing this game. I think all in all my experience so far has been positive. I'm really exited and grateful that I'm able to play this gem of a game again. And I love being able to make videos about it too!
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They can't censor the IRC, everything is just thrown directly out there. That's why they can only act after the damage has been done. The reason they ban is to prevent further harm (even if it means just a 30 minute ban to "make you think about what you've done"). I think what they have going is working pretty well for that.

Sparky Wonderwolf said:
Well I understand, but if what is said about them is true according to katnypp-that they have to maintain the image of its predecessor (POTCO)-shouldn't there at least be some patience with the community, and being former POTCO Players, a bit of understanding that some of us don't necessarily trust right away or will ask constructive questions on matters that concern us? Considering the fact that Disney & DIMG messed with us for a while, my point I am trying to make is shouldn't there be some understanding? Some patience? I am sure we have all felt the same way on the same page or that others have felt the way some of us feel now. Where is the crime in perhaps patiently answering, or giving a somewhat honest answer at certain times? I would like to at least feel that my voice is going to be heard because I am like everyone else here someone who played POTCO. Someone who like everyone else has been jerked around all the same. Some of us are a bit more weary than others... and for that we ask questions in as mature as we can way.
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The problem is that they do "patiently answer or give somewhat honest answers at certain times". The problem is that if they answer one question, there's 300 more lined up behind that. They see it all because it comes to them, where as we might not as much, because we only ask our own questions and see a couple of others asked as well.

It's hard to patiently answer questions when they come in the form of a rushing river :2 cents:
 
The thing is that I think we as a community need to put some trust in the developers. They are literally fighting a labor of love. They are losing money, have no hope of financial gain, and are just a crew hoping to restore our former livelihood of plundering and fun. Hiccups and not meeting deadlines would cause them to lose credibility, and sometimes I think they dance around deadlines and questions because they really don't know! I've done some basic video game programming, and it is probably absolutely nothing compared to their task. I appreciate what they've done and what they hope to achieve. I just have to put my faith in them, because I'm certainly not the one rebuilding the game. Cheers!
 
jzfredskins said:
I honestly don't mind them reviewing everything that is said in-game. I'm not on there talking about my deepest secrets or any other confidential information. TLOPO isn't the place to be having those discussions anyway.
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I understand what you're saying, but the issue of "freedom of speech" and "privacy" and all of that still comes into play. (I know the game is/was rated E10, so there's a filter and whatnot, just saying)
 
TorchTheWallet said:
I understand what you're saying, but the issue of "freedom of speech" and "privacy" and all of that still comes into play. (I know the game is/was rated E10, so there's a filter and whatnot, just saying)
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"Freedom of Speech" is a constitutional right, which is not present within private enterprise. In a private setting, such as a video game, any rules regarding speech moderation may be set and enforced.

Feel free to read up on it a bit more: http://lifehacker.com/5953755/what-...-speech-and-how-does-it-apply-to-the-internet
 
Christofosho said:
"Freedom of Speech" is a constitutional right, which is not present within private enterprise. In a private setting, such as a video game, any rules regarding speech moderation may be set and enforced.

Feel free to read up on it a bit more: http://lifehacker.com/5953755/what-...-speech-and-how-does-it-apply-to-the-internet
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I understand where Freedom of Speech applies. I wasn't saying otherwise. I was saying that it all comes into play because some of the community believe it's their right to say whatever they want in games.
 
TorchTheWallet said:
I understand where Freedom of Speech applies. I wasn't saying otherwise. I was saying that it all comes into play because some of the community believe it's their right to say whatever they want in games.
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Hmm.. That's called entitlement. I find it very interesting how the role of entitlement plays out in the community. No comment on that, though.

EDIT: Actually, this link does sum it up well: https://piratesforums.co/threads/tlopo-and-our-attitude.11303/
 
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Christofosho said:
Hmm.. That's called entitlement. I find it very interesting how the role of entitlement plays out in the community. No comment on that, though.

EDIT: Actually, this link does sum it up well: https://piratesforums.co/threads/tlopo-and-our-attitude.11303/
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I think I commented on the wrong thread, whoops!

TorchTheWallet said:
I understand what you're saying, but the issue of "freedom of speech" and "privacy" and all of that still comes into play. (I know the game is/was rated E10, so there's a filter and whatnot, just saying)
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Freedom of Speech only applies in public settings, TLOPO is by no means a public setting. As far as privacy goes, there is a rule of thumb about the "Expectation of Privacy." The leading example goes like this: If you live in a one story glass house, and someone takes your picture, you can't sue them for violating your privacy because you cannot expect to be private in a glass house. When TLOPO's Terms of Use sates: "TLOPO reserves the right to read all messages of any type that are sent across our network." Your expectation of privacy becomes zero.
 
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freedom of speech applies to being a citizen of the united states via its constition. last time i checked, tlopo wasn't annexed into the union. freedom of speech and privacy are plainly courtesies which a group/organization/etc abides/honours in due respect of their customers.

with my bout of mickey temp-banning me for my pms is when i shared the swtor site/forums and told my then pirate friend how to create an account and how we could still communicate. i called customer service, in which they said i was in violation of some kind by directing a possible minor to another site which Disney had no control or couldn't safeguard the -- again -- child. in addition, my current player friend got temp-banned for sharing their contact info within a pm and they informed him of the same thing.

on both counts, it was done in the name of safety. however, you are using their communication services so if worse came to worse, someone could sue them if a $ex predator solicited any player to any degree -- even if disney doesn't condones or promotes that activity.

..in regards to tlopo, even IF some dev were to be malicious, they can infiltrate your trust/safety via the program download .. so them reading your private message is meaningless.
 
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It's very interesting to read what you posted and get a scope for the amount of commits that are made daily to TLOPO. A big thank you to the amount of work that the TLOPO crew does. @Mike Wass
 
I don't feel that the major problem with the community vs the devs is that there is a lack of trust. I feel as though an amount of the people that are in charge around here are just rude and disrespectful. I'm not saying that anyone that has authority on the forums or in TLOPO acts this way, but from some of the people that I have seen in my somewhat short time here; there is a general hate among some people. To the Devs, I understand that you all are constantly asked "When will the game be done?" or "Can we play the game yet?". You can't yell at us for being curious about this. We all want to play the game again, and are very eager to start our pirates again. It has been a while since the game was closed, and we just wish it was a shorter wait. The Mods/Admins/Members/etc, the forums are run very well but not very efficiently. If there was a simple suggestion for the forums or TLOPO, there is NO support on that thought! Why does that happen! They are trying to make their's and possibly other people's experiences better. This has actually happened to me. I suggested an idea for TLOPO and the first comment was saying that it was not a good idea, along with 4+ other people agreeing with the person. It took a while for me to see someone that would support my idea. This is not a great way that the community is run. I'm not saying that you guys suck at your jobs, but It seems as though you don't want to take in others ideas for reasons unknown. Another thing that I have seen is that people on the forums (Not just those who rule the forums, but members as well) is that if someone is having an argument with someone else, they MUST make it public to everyone. How childish must you be to do that. Take your problems keep them to yourself, if you need help with them then ask someone who will not forward it to others. If you have a feud with someone, that is your problem, not the entire communities'.
 
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