Anthony Valterra 11/14 clarification on last nights post

[Arnix]

Question: If you are run over by a car and every bone in both your feet are shatterd, then the doctor says "Hey, your two pinkie toes are healing fine" would you be happy?

 

[Therigwin]

Yes. Because they are healing.

My point was some things were fixed in the list.

It is a start.

It doesn't mean that I don't want the rest of the product fixed.

There are plenty of other things that need to be addressed, but for the most part those are feature requests and not bug fixes.

At least they are talking now and working on it rather than treating it like an bastard child of theirs that they were ashamed of producing.

 

[herald]

I would have to say, I wouldn't expect any new work until this patch is done. Therefore I say, bring on the beta patch, lets get this out of the way and lets get on with the new patch.

Personally I won't be happy until I can print a full monster stat block complete with discriptions. But I will take what I can get until then.

 

[Arnix]

The expectations were to fix bugs, not add new features. Thats one of the major requests for e-tools. People who see new functionality added, while known bugs are not addressed will become even more disgruntled.

The majority of the posts that I have seen were flames on E-Tools, whether they started that way or not. Many of those people complaining seemed to have legitimate complaints, though a bit over zealous.

Yes, I am glad that it is getting some attention.

Yes, I have faith that AV will do his best, he has on every other item that I know of him being tied to.

 

[EricNoah]

I've been thinking about what to do and what to say about this.

It's hard for me to express the depths of my disappointment at this revelation. All this time we were helping Fluid round up bugs, and for what -- for them to sit on them and use them as leverage in some battle with WotC? That's the only way I can interpret the situation. On the other hand, I know Scott -- he must have been in a very desperate situation to resort to something like this. I am not qualified to judge either side when I don't know what's truly going on. But I do know that we, the customers, have been caught in the middle like kids whose parents are divorcing. When I think personally about how much I tried to be a positive supporter of the project ... it just makes me feel kind of used.

And yet ... I still have hope. With the right people on this project, and the right people leading it, it could still go somewhere. Scott originally guestimated around 10 days between release of the product and the release of the first patch. If WotC has the resources to do it, I could easily see a similar timeline for a second patch for the major/obvious bugs. On the other hand, I know all too well that the west coast seems to be in its own little time warp -- "10 days" can mean 3 months. And I know that today's resources aren't a guarantee that they'll be available tomorrow.

I am curious to see some of the new enhancements. I'd pushed hard for a general "notes" screen and that appears to have been implemented. But to see something like that at the expense of, say, calculating a paladin's saving throws correctly ... it's just another in a long string of questionable choices when it came to priorities. Work on the mapper first? Work on graphics and sound first? Work on enhancements over bug fixes? The project has been done backwards from the beginning.

There's one ray of hope for me .... and that's Anthony Valterra. He's ever been a straight-shooter with me. I know he's trying like heck to do some things in the background to make the bug fixes happen. But I also fear -- that he may be facing an impossible task.

 

[jdavis]

It's getting hard to stay positive or upbeat on this when I keep getting let down. Let me make it clear, I like the program, I want to be able to use the program, I am thrilled with the fact that something is being done about it finally, I've been waiting long enough for sombody to even say hey we are working on this. The thing that kills me is that some of the bugs couldn't be that hard to fix, some of the stuff in this patch sound like they required some work. I'm not a programmer, I don't claim to be even good with computers in general, but I'm pretty sure it's not that hard to fix some of these problems. How hard would it be to get keen edged weapons to actually read out right, and there are dozens of other little things like that. It sounded like Wizards wasn't happy with the patch they got either, I take that as a good sign as they know and understand that there is alot more needed.

 

[theoremtank]

I agree with you previous post Eric and can understand your frustration.

There's one ray of hope for me .... and that's Anthony Valterra. He's ever been a straight-shooter with me. I know he's trying like heck to do some things in the background to make the bug fixes happen. But I also fear -- that he may be facing an impossible task.

I however am not holding my breath in regards to your last paragraph. While I don't doubt Anthony Valterra is a nice guy and would like to see eTools customers get satisfaction for their spent money, even he is ultimately a puppet for his company. What Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro tell Anthony to do is what he will do (honest or dishonest).

Jesus Christ, George Bush, Saddam Hussein, or Anthony Valterra could tell me that eTools is going to be a great program, but I won't believe any of them until I see tangible production. Which we are still waiting on.

 

[herald]

Anthony isn't a puppet. He calls alot of the shots for WOTC and he has ensured that WOTC has had a steady course over the past few years.

He was heavily involved in the new setting search and many other developments for WOTC.

Let's becareful before we just start throwing names around.

 

[Chaz]

Well despite what Anthony said the patch does address a couple bugs as mentioned in another post. Also some of the added functionality will make it easier for ET users to fix other problems. Like the xml output, char sheets etc.

Lets look at this folks, weve already gotten more response / feedback from anthony in a short time then we have from anyone else in quite a while.

Let give him a chance to show what else we will get. So far im not upset with whats being added.. I mean a LOT of this stuff was requested by users and I would like to see it added. So lets see what happens.

I certainly would like to know for sure to what extent ET will continue to be supported. Lets all just stop whining and see what happens. As I said, more feedback has come to us since Anthony has taken over then weve seen in a while. So lets be more possitive and see what happens.

And EricNoah, You once gave me hope when I started losing the faith. Let me try and do the same for you. Hang in there my friend untill we know for sure there is no hope. ET may yet live!

Peace.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I've been thinking about what to do and what to say about this.

It's hard for me to express the depths of my disappointment at this revelation. All this time we were helping Fluid round up bugs, and for what -- for them to sit on them and use them as leverage in some battle with WotC? That's the only way I can interpret the situation. On the other hand, I know Scott -- he must have been in a very desperate situation to resort to something like this. I am not qualified to judge either side when I don't know what's truly going on. But I do know that we, the customers, have been caught in the middle like kids whose parents are divorcing. When I think personally about how much I tried to be a positive supporter of the project ... it just makes me feel kind of used.

And yet ... I still have hope. With the right people on this project, and the right people leading it, it could still go somewhere. Scott originally guestimated around 10 days between release of the product and the release of the first patch. If WotC has the resources to do it, I could easily see a similar timeline for a second patch for the major/obvious bugs. On the other hand, I know all too well that the west coast seems to be in its own little time warp -- "10 days" can mean 3 months. And I know that today's resources aren't a guarantee that they'll be available tomorrow.

I am curious to see some of the new enhancements. I'd pushed hard for a general "notes" screen and that appears to have been implemented. But to see something like that at the expense of, say, calculating a paladin's saving throws correctly ... it's just another in a long string of questionable choices when it came to priorities. Work on the mapper first? Work on graphics and sound first? Work on enhancements over bug fixes? The project has been done backwards from the beginning.

There's one ray of hope for me .... and that's Anthony Valterra. He's ever been a straight-shooter with me. I know he's trying like heck to do some things in the background to make the bug fixes happen. But I also fear -- that he may be facing an impossible task.

This is probably the most disturbing post I've seen in regards to e-Tools. Eric, I bought e-Tools pretty much because you stayed with the project; I figured that if you felt it had the potential to be that good, that was enough for me. I had faith in your faith in the program. It seems that your faith has been abused. I want to stress that I don't see this as a reflection on you, just in case it comes across that way in my post. I see it as a reflection on those who betrayed your trust.

I want to also lend my support of Anthony Valterra. He's in an unenviable position right now. I know he'll do everything he can to ensure that e-Tools gets fixed. But, like Eric, I get the feeling he's been thrown into the breach, with little chance of accomplishing the task appointed him. Sorta like the Spartans at Thermopylae. Regardless, he's always been straight with us here at EN World, and that, also, is good enough for me.