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DO NOT Give Out Exclusive Items in a Release!

Discussion in 'Release 10 Feedback' started by VZ_, Sep 27, 2014.

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  1. Net

    Net Avatar

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    Hmm, I like the idea of permanent rewards for quest where we test stuff the devs need us to test. I do not like the exclusivity of such rewards much (I do not like exclusive rewards at all), I do not think it is really needed. Though there is aready so many backer exclusive reward so what is few more? Anyway I would not mind if people could get those things later in the game or from the store. would prefer if these items were hard to get in the final game though, so taking time to visit guides or whatever would be the easy way to get them.
     
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  2. Caliya

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    I agree with you on everything except that they should not do this. However, if they do, they should expect complaints though, from people who tried to do the quest but could not, and should be willing to honor it. It seems they addressed that issue in advance, to write to them to receive the item, so they would not receive complaints. However, not everyone reads every forum thread, so many will miss out on that piece of knowledge and be upset.

    Otherwise, if someone never even tries, or wasn't even a backer at this time, they rightfully should not be entitled to the item.

    I have mixed feelings on rewarding people to test the game, after they're already backers and getting exclusive privileges. Piling privileges on top of privileges is a bit strange to me. That was the whole point of backing early (or so I thought?). Seeing early progress should've been the reward (no?? It was one of the "carrots" mentioned in the KS). To entice people to test with rare collectible rewards does not sound like a business strategy that will bring many people neutral feelings. It will cause divisions. People telling others to get over it, it's just a hat, causes further divisions.
     
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  3. Net

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    I think that people who did not manage to complete the quest due to bugs are exactly the people who they want to hear from. People who completed the quest without encountering bugs will not help them make the game better as much as those who will help them to identify undocumented bugs. So those who do not manage to get item are going to provide the most valuable feedback. I am quite sure they want to hear from them and those people will get their reward.
     
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  4. Caliya

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    Actually, I'm sure that isn't true. People like me have contacted support, through the forums and private email, to report game stopping issues. I haven't been able to stay logged into the game for longer than 10 minutes since R2, and I've never received a single reply from anyone except people in the forums accusing my end being the issue. No. No it's not.

    I didn't even try to log into R10 because I was busy the whole weekend and could not. But I'm so frustrated and tired of never being able to stay logged in, it's not a bit of frustration I'm willing to subject myself to.

    I'm not writing support to get the hat because I wasn't able to try to log in. To me, it's just a hat, and not worth the frustration.

    But having said all that, I really enjoyed watching The Mad Hermit's video on the quest (his videos are the only way I've been able to see the game for any length of time). I was really impressed with the amount of progress that's been made. Things are looking pretty awesome for a pre-alpha. First time I ever thought that about SotA. So to me, technically I took the tour, through his eyes. But I know, that doesn't count.
     
  5. Bubonic

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    Just saw this post and wanted to add my 2 cents to say I thought the exclusive reward is an exceptionally clever idea to increase participation in every release.

    In addition, addressing one of the concerns of the OP: I too am avoiding any and all story based questing, cause I don't want to spoil the game at all. But simply running from place to place, to help test the game, didn't spoil anything (in my opinion).
     
  6. Spoon

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    ???
    Not really. Case in point - me. If it wasn't for the quest I wouldn't have thought that an empty boat would take me to a different part of the map, and I would have stayed clear of any mayor cities due to lag & load.
    I was trying to hustle up the smugglers for ages and would never have made it to Ardoris. Then I saw Violations post of how to get to Ardoris, ran to the boat and clicked it.

    So without the quest and the incentive I would have never made it to test the part that the devs wanted to have tested.
    Now, had it been me I would have put a teleport globe or somesuch on that boat...
     
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  7. Trenyc

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    If I'm being honest, I got the quest, ran straight to each of the tour guides, then logged off. I didn't explore anything, I didn't see anything, and I didn't do anything besides run a bit. It took maybe five minutes. I'm just sitting here waiting for them to add more crafting recipes. :) But your point is totally valid. The quest wasn't even a little bit engaging, and I don't know what kind of testing data they might have gleaned from it (besides the number of people who actually did the quest).
     
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  8. smack

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    The quest was indeed far too easy. At least include an Ultima-8 style jumping or climbing puzzle to get to the Tour Guide, where lag and client performance / FPS also factored in. And he only shows up at night so you need a torch. :p

    But hey, it was fun doing it in /classicmode. Because spoilers. :)
     
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  9. DyNaMiX

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    I want to stomp this myth quickly in my specific case. Here are my specs:

    Processor: Intel Core i5 4670 (3.4 Ghz)
    Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H
    Memory: Corsair XMS3 1600 8 GB
    Hard Drive: EVO series 250 GB SSDVideo Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 670 (factory overclocked)
    Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Titanium
    Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit Professional Edition

    My connection is a 2.0 Mbit ADSL2+ connection. When the game does work, it works flawlessly. My two issues this time were a crash and a "return to login screen" issue. The second has no longs unfortunately. It seems to triggered by background processes (such as Windows notifications, Steam Notifications, etc.) or minimising the game while playing in any window mode.

    The first bug (the crash) is new. I have a feeling it was to do with 64-bit because as I said earlier, changing to 32-bit prevented it for the most part (but the second bug still existed). Logs for these were submitted.

    Now it's no-one's 'fault' either way. It's a pre-release test. And that was part of my initial point and why I was trying to move away from making the reward a direct result of your participation in specific circumstances. Because quite frankly I consider my participation in this release helpful. I was completely unable to play but I've got logs to submit and help the devs for the next release. I'm not bothered by that. :)
     
  10. Caliya

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    If it's any consolation, my PC is nearly brand new (just bought a few months ago, this year), it's a gaming PC. My old PC did the same thing though. People keep telling me it's my router. No, it's not. My router works just fine with Elderscrolls Online, all of my Steam games, etc. It's not my issue. And it sounds like it's not yours either. I've never heard from support. Only non-support people in the forums, accusing me of having the issue, not the game.
     
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  11. Trenyc

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    Both hardware components and drivers (or conflicts between hardware components and/or drivers) can cause the most ridiculous problems. My last build had a recurring problem with the computer totally freezing while playing playing games--but only certain games. I swapped RAM, I replaced the PSU, I RMA'd my graphics card. You know what finally did it? I pulled the sound card, for a reason completely unrelated to the freezing. The problem vanished.

    Even when you have more than capable hardware, it doesn't mean hardware isn't causing problems. And that's not always even the fault of the hardware. Sometimes poor game optimization can lead to crashes, freezing, etc., even only with certain combinations of hardware components. And sometimes games actually get released, live long, and prosper with those problems because they're gosh darn near impossible to diagnose without swapping every single hardware component three times.
     
  12. DyNaMiX

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    Yep. A multitude of reasons. And that's why I want to eliminate this argument of "your PC isn't good enough"...
     
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  13. Caliya

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    I guess it depends on what their goal is, to offer an exclusive, rare item.

    If collectors are only playing long enough to get the item, are they contributing to feedback? Won't they be supporting the game, whether they log in or not? (I'd think so, so why the carrot?)

    Are they tabulating numbers of people that are logging in, to discover if carrots are successful in drawing people? Or numbers of people who actually collected the item? Or are they tabulating how many more responses they get in the forum bug reports? Maybe all of the above.

    If they are looking to keep people's interest by dangling carrots, I'm curious why. The game should be selling itself, and people should be looking forward to each release, without the carrot. At least in my mind.

    The target audience appears to be collectors who are also long-time fans. The basic game strategy seems to be, to make a collector's game, and I can partly understand enticing people with collectibles. I mean, if they made the same item available to everyone, and it's easy to obtain, it would not be coveted.

    People who love the collectible game strategy will, no doubt, remain loyal fans. People who don't care about swag but instead, game strategy and longevity, will wonder why they make so much swag and want more game concept, mechanics, strategies, stories, etc.

    The fact they create a coveted item is going to make some people cry "foul!" if they aren't able to obtain it by normal means. I'm sure any decisions they make will please one crowd while repelling another.
     
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  14. Koldar

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    I see some posting about support not responding to emails. FWIW, I emailed support on Sunday following multiple crashes that I had. I zipped up my crash log folders and attached them to the email. I heard back today (less than 24 hours after submitting my support email) from support that my email was forwarded on to the dev team for analysis. That's a pretty good response time in my opinion.

    If you are encountering crashes/bugs and want to help make the game better, I would highly encourage you to submit the issue here in the appropriate release bug forum and to email your crash logs to support@portalarium.com. If you are going to be involved with testing Shroud while it is in a pre-alpha state, you might as well help the dev team out by providing crash logs to help eliminate as many bugs as possible. The more bugs they can get out of the game during pre-alpha, the smoother their alpha/beta/gold releases will be, and the better the game will be for a wider range of players. ;)
     
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  15. Wonderboy2402

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    Well it gets me to hop onto the client and try out the builds. Otherwise I would just be checking the forum.
     
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  16. Myrcello

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    Because of this quest i did go to Ardoris.
    This did lead to have crashs in Ardoris 3 times and me taking a closer look at Ardoris Improvements.

    This did result that i forwarded 3 crash reports, made a huge visual feedback and unity assets suggestions in regards to Ardoris.

    They would not have received this without Hat Quest.
     
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  17. Krellis

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    What about those of us with limited time, with more than one account, and who experienced multiple crashes on one account and only made it halfway through the quest? Yes, we can send in logs for the one account, but the fact that we gave up even trying out of frustration means we have no crash reports for the second account.

    Also, there are people (myself included) who are tired of contacting Portalarium, regardless of the reason. I've sent them enough TL;DR complaints, and have had to request enough support for various things, that I don't feel right submitting a ticket for such a minor thing... Heck, I haven't even been able to motivate myself enough to contact them to ask them to split my two accounts into lower pledge levels, so I just can't justify the time and trouble to email support and send them crash logs for a hat. Sure, that's my choice, but some people are forced into such a choice because they lack essential knowledge, and a big part of my frustration is how people here assume that knowing to contact support (and how to submit crash files) is some kind of innate knowledge that we're all born with or something....

    I have no idea how to properly submit these reports. It's all well and good that some of you do know, and that you can matter-of-factly state how easy and simple it is to contact support and submit zip files of these logs, but then again... some of you have read the posts where the instructions for how to do this are explained and those instructions make sense to you without that much difficulty.

    From my perspective, it is something that I can handle, but it is still not reasonable to expect everybody to know how to do this kind of stuff and to read the forums where this kind of information is found. Yes, these releases are for "testing" things, but the casual person logging in isn't likely to be a game developer or computer scientist, so to expect a level of technical proficiency from them where reading forum posts and submitting crash-reports is second nature is a tall order to fill.

    I just want to point out to some of you who are so quick to apply your own familiarity with tech to everybody else: There are many people on this forum (and beyond it) who don't have a lot of prior knowledge when it comes to this kind of stuff and who might not even read the forums at all. How are these people going to learn about the option to contact support if they don't read the forums, and what about those who struggle to find (or understand) the instructions about how to submit the bug reports?

    I understand that the purpose of this quest was to get people in game and test stuff (and get bug reports from those who are unable to complete the quest), but it wholly ignores the fact that not everybody possesses the prior knowledge that all of you possess when it comes to contacting support and submitting crash files. Some of the condescending responses here shows a real lack of empathy and understanding for the frustrations and potential hardships your fellow gamers might experience (hardships that some of you are fortunate enough not to have any experience with)....

    FWIW, this was the first time since R5(?) I even bothered to log in to the game. I admit, the reward was a bit of my motivation, but I also just wanted to see the general progress that's been made. I admit that it was nice to have a brief look around, but repeated crashes quickly killed my motivation, and then to come on the forums and read patronizing post after post like "it's just a hat" and "just contact support, it's so easy" has totally destroyed what little energy I had to contact support (if I was even going to).

    TL;DR -- Stop assuming that YOUR prior knowledge about computers, submitting crash reports, and rabid following of relevant forum content is the very same prior knowledge and behavior that the rest of us has...... :(
     
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  18. Gaelis

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    I like the Idea forcing people to visit places the Devs need to test maybe more than others.
    The hat ( and maybe other rewards in the next releases ) will be a wonderful memory for me about time I spend in R10 with friends and for all adventuring and exploring we shared.
    Maybe I will not get all special Items because I will miss a release but the others filled with memories will this be worth.
     
  19. Tartness

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    I felt the same about submitting a ticket for slow game patch/updates, it seems like such a self centered thing to do. But it has been preventing me from testing now that I've had more time, so I did email support anyway, have yet to hear anything back from them yet though.

    But that is ok, that is where some people like smack who are on top of things here were able to actually help me out by providing a direct download link to the game which is not in any of the official communications about the releases I read! Now I am ready for R11 :)

    I think the forum is a perfect place for informal support like this within the community, as long as we stay positive and helpful, we can all benefit from one another.
     
  20. Caliya

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    I had/have 2 completely different PCs and experienced the exact same connection problems. So people told me it was my router. I'm not going to buy a new router when the router I have is less than 2 years old and works perfectly fine with every single game I play, aside from testing SotA. And I was able to stay logged in enough in R1 & R2 to have a good look around, have a lot of fun jumping and taking screenshots. So something changed since then, because the crashes are fairly predictable now, and worse since R2.

    I wish these kind of issues would be addressed so that I actually could log in and test the game, because it was one of the "perks" listed, that I wanted. As for making collectibles, the frustration level, from repeated crashing, is too high to subject myself to trying to get them.

    I imagine that if someone is a die-hard fan, or forum moderator, perhaps they get 24 hour support responses.
     
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