I know we all desperately want new content but can we all agree that devs take a bit more time before updates? Intstead of releasing the the next update late march/ early april the devs should be spending a few more weeks looking for bugs and after that if they still drop the ball theres just no hope i guess. The dupes and auction house shutdowns are old asf and need to stop
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I agree in principal. The thing is that the Dev team is not going to find these bugs and such on their own. If you look at the test server the last couple months, no one plays on it. For example this one… There was like 1k+ the first day. Now there are less than 100 people.
People go on the test server, test a few things for PVP then log off. Some people try to find some exploits to keep to themselves and log off. Some people look for what will make them some bucks on the TP after the update to prepare for it. Some people test the dungeons so they know how to do it day one without wasting orbs. Some people try out the new weapon and log off. Some people check out everything to make some YouTube videos. ETC.
Not many of them actively test to look for bugs.
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This is true! I do know if I could do a Character copy and use my own toon I would be more inclined to playing on the PTR more since I can then play around without having to do a bunch of silly things just to get to SM. Also it lets me see what I need/will want to get for the update. I spend about 2 hours on the PTR this release just to play with the Blunderbuss and then haven’t logged on since. Maybe each day they should put out a targeted event like they did with war so we know what area’s to focus on. That might help, or a Title/Skin for Live that we spent time on the PTR hell maybe even Gypsum reward. Like play 5 hours on live and complete this quest get 1 Gypsum or something like that.
If they left the server open without wipes and gave me two character slots, I would live on the server for them and test whatever the hell they wanted tested lol.
“isn’t that what live is now” - just kidding, but yeah its hard to play for longer periods of time knowing that nothing you do effects your live toon.
They had been taking already more than 5 months… perhaps in another 5 months they can end with the bugs, cheats, bots…
Hmm idk maybe they could have like some sort of community ambassador or maybe even figure out a way to reward people for their time on ptr
It is not the responsibility of players to find bugs for the developer. The developer is responsible for finding & fixing the bugs that they create. Players can help sure, but the developer can’t rely on the sole feedback of the players because most people do exactly what you described - quickly test what is relevant to them then log off. It is very clear that AGS has no formal internal testing or quality assurance of their own because every patch they release introduces more bugs than it fixes.
The dev team needs to realize that by prioritizing new content & changes over stability, they break their game more with every patch which drives way more players away than those that stay for the new content & tolerate the broken game. I completely agree with the original post. We don’t care about having new content every month. We want a working game.
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You are right, it is not the players responsibility. However, no dev team can find everything themselves. This is why alphas/betas/ptr servers exist in the first place. They are not for showcasing new stuff. Thats just the way that players treat it. I don’t totally fault players for treating it that way since a lot of developers have moved into charging people to play in alpha/beta thereby not only getting free work out of people but actually getting money to let people work for them. As shady as that is, a developer team will not find everything without a mass amount of people playing it. There are just too many weird ways that code can break.
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I think they are looking into doing that. I remember seeing a CM put out a post asking people what would entice them to play on PTR.
Devs dont catch nearly enough bugs/issues on their own. They are leaning way too much up to the already small and demoralized player base. Honestly, it looks like complaints on the forums can get you whatever you want if you are just persistent with it. Look at grav well - complaints got devs to not only undo a nerf, but decide their entire train of thought was the opposite of what should happen.
They also do not communicate effectively with us. CMs just show up to tell us they forwarded your feedback to an inbox somewhere.
Can they take the CMs off the budget to hire more devs? We don’t need multiple people to tell us the feedback went to the devs and frankly their “information gathering” is a waste of time. They ask questions like someone who has never logged into the game and at the end of the day, it goes into the same inbox with no answers.
i had a thread with like 10 replies from Willard - ultimately the devs ignored the feedback with no response for the players. His last reply? Basically that he sent the feedback so his job is done =D
It was on a perk that they slapped on to Absolute Terror as a quick fix to the double keen. Refreshing, just like every weapon in Dynasty. Lazy
They need to have someone monitoring a few of those discords where people allegedly share bugs and exploits, plus that well-known exploits forum that anyone who has played MMORPGs since the early 2000s knows about.
Agree, this one feels rushed. So many bugs got reported but didnt get fixed.
So I think your point is totally valid, but hear me out and feel free to disagree and share your views because I’m not totally convinced either way.
Let’s say they slow down. Maybe monthly patches are smaller with fewer additions in each one. OK - the table is set. My concern is that, unfortunately, because of the history of the game, people will just quit and put pressure for merges/transfers again. That might be TOTALLY UNFAIR, but I do fear it’s true. We lost a lot of players (for various reasons) but I do think without substantive, material content updates we’ll see a continued, linear decline to a point where I might start fearing the game will actually get shut down.
Now you might say the introduction of bugs/exploits is the principal reason for the loss of players, but I think it’s more complicated than just one thing. I think it’s a mix of issues between content/bugs/exploits/lack of communication/exclusive PvP modes/economic imbalance/combat imbalance.
Now does “small” mean non-substantive? I’m not trying to get into semantics. I guess it all depends on what they feel they can get into an update without ACTUALLY BEING CONFIDENT it won’t introduce new issues (and right now I’m not even sure if they know whether to be confident or not in their releases).
I love the game. I am definitely something who has stuck around through it all, but even I’ve had a hard time logging-in lately.
Unfortunately, I think they screwed up the rollout so badly that they have no other choice to move fast and maintain high quality - and those two things rarely exist together. I’m open to being wrong, I’m pretty persuadable in this issue, but I do generally feel it is true.
I would just expect dupes and the temp closure of the auction house every major update. AGS is consistent in this regard if anything.
The PTR is a publicity thing anyway.
They keep adding stuff that is not in the PTR anyway and even if bugs are reported on the forums they are disregarded (like the food dupe that came live with the feb patch)
I don’t necessarily disagree with that but like 10-20 people were on the PTR server daily. Thats not much testing. Was the dupe reported on the test server or was it reported after it became live?
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