Policy Change: QA Server and Release Instructions Early Drafts Open to All (starting with R45)

Sure, having those forums used the way they were promised to be is a good start. Again, illustrated in that post you obviously haven't read. You can put the white knight armor away now.

 

Ohhh i see now juvir, i missed @Daxxe Diggler posting. My bad again.

The fact that the devs can see metrics on everything makes more people on QA a great idea!

I also PMed a idea i thought would be neat to attenwood for Dev+ members (that actually fit with the whole Development theme of it) earlier yesterday.

But i still think the "i paid for QA" argument is silly.

 

The current bundles read:


The pledge reward read:


The kickstarter read:


I don't see how any of this could possibly match up with this...

The reward is simply no longer being given out. Anything that a developer talks about in DEV+ could (and will be) considered a "potential economic and gameplay advantage".

 

No, that's awful. This isn't a clinic, it's an ER. Bugs are handled in order of importance: how they affect the game. Who you are shouldn't affect the attention given to your bug, because that bad for the game.

 

Anyone can post bugs for the live server and yet very few do so. I see no difference for QA.

[edit] Also, priority shouldn't be given based on the poster's status. It should be done based on the severity of the bug.

 

This isn't going to work because it would take something away from the wider community they are used to for month and in parts even years.

 

Wise move.

Unpopular, but wise.

As a Dev+, my backer value is vastly diminished (I'm at the Developer pledge level exactly because Dev+), but still think it's a long term insightful move.

 

@DarkStarr Thank you for this however what about those of us who paid extra to get into those forums to be in the know early and have never done anything like this? many of us have respected the rules and we loose out because of a few AGAIN.

And please lets not let the harshness of this new change get lost in the problems with how the information came. Please please reconsider this change. I am looking at loosing more of our guild because of this. You guys are already thought of as against us to many who craft. The saying has been "anything good they take away from us." This change looks to many of us as just another way to hard to deal with part of crafting. I am mostly crafter. I spend most of my time gathering to craft. I have only stayed with this game because my friends still play. However this might be the last straw for most of my friends.

The bonuses are not worth the change. As it is the weapon bonuses do not work according to our tests. Now no one will ever want to even make a set of armor to just collect forget about making sets to enhance and wear. The bone armor is hard enough. Please do not do this to this set.

Many of us have been looking forward to maybe having dragon scale armor since you guys mentioned scale armor. but now many have said forget it these guys will just make that unobtainable too.

I think you guys should work on player retention a lot more and pay more attention to what we all hate about the system. We are not just complaining children, In the end this is a game and at this point the only thing fun about it is my friends.

 

Nothing to do with importantce, more to do with expierence. These people have profected bug reporting and are more efficent at it.

4 years of expierence should not be dismissed.

You have misinterprated my intent and assumued I tied this to pledge value, when its actually tied to expierence in bug reporting.

Most of new the posters will be rereporting bugs these people have posted along time ago.

 

How are you going to test for that? Plenty of us backers work in dev or QA IRL and have years of experience with bugs and bug reporting that has nothing to do with our pledge level.

What 'new posters'? People without QA access have been reporting bugs in the release forums all along.

 

You're making a world of assumption about the experience of those coming in. Some of them will have been making reports on the Live-server for the last 4 years. Some will have experience bug reporting and even developing for longer than Portalarium has been a company.

Furthermore, if the bug was reported last release but not this one, it SHOULD be reported again. That way it doesn't get forgotten about or "lost." Just this release I posted a bug that I had been experiencing for a while, had multiple people chime in on the thread (and yet more comment on it to me privately), only to find out Portalarium thought it was resolved.

That's not really Portalarium's fault, I should have been reporting it EVERY release. (Of course, getting "need info" without actually saying what info is needed doesn't help me improve the report)

 

Yes, this. I did not mean not start a class division when I proposed a quiz for new QA testers, I intended it as a way to greenlight experienced / knowledgeable testers and hold back those that need to study up before advancing to QA. Similar to the way you can test out of entry level language, science, and math classes in college. Then the devs / professors can focus their time on the grad student work. The TAs / Bug Brigade have their hands full over in the live release. It had nothing to to with the amount of money spent, but the amount of time spent.

Also, I should mention, I am not Dev+. Just a wannabe. Sorry if I opened up a mess, I was genuinely trying to be helpful.

 

I have to ask what are you talking about??

The change is about information release - not crafting? Now if you are referring to a specific change and you where taking advantage of that advanced knowledge ? ? ? ?

Change is good, sadly this is another knee jerk way overboard.

 

He's talking about the change the precipitated the outrage, and brought about this policy change. It's off-topic for this discussion though, and should get it's own (assuming we are allowed to talk about it outside of Dev+ yet) disscussion.

 

What exactly are we trying to solve here?

The policy change announcement has been made, so are people who think they have been devalued looking for a realistic alternative 'thing' or interaction of value?

@Tahru has brought up some suggestions, but not sure if @DarkStarr wants to go on to make some new time commitment like a special Dev+ Q/A session.

 

The good I see from this:
gamers that you don't know and have no real control over (not your usual amen corner) will come in and look around and say 'WTF!?'
You may as well make the free trial indefinite. You give away everything else. If you don't bother to value your IP, why should I?
I don't know why you even bother to have a QA server, you ignore serious bugs that are repeatedly reported. Some of them even get the coveted "entered into jiira" and nothing happens.
Covfefe. That is why we have founders and royal founders. That is why only some of us snowflakes are getting coats of arms. Are you going to get mad and delete anything you don't like again. It's your right but that's the kind of legacy this project will be famous for.

 

+1e99

 

I am sorry that we have made all of you this upset. That was absolutely not our intent but it is inevitable in the course of things like this.

I am also very sorry that many of you have experienced what you feel is a dismissive attitude towards your contributions to the project. That is also not our intent.

I wish we had the bandwidth to be even more transparent so you could witness just how very painful each priority decision we have to make is. There are so many features and bugs I want to get done "now" vs. "later" but I have to be King Solomon and cut babies in half. It truly haunts me, especially when see posts in threads like this from loyal customers. However I just do not have time in the day to expose all the data and every decision point to all of you. Honestly I don't even have time to expose that level of data to my whole team and they are only 30 people. I just have to hope that they trust me that each of my decisions are done for the overall good of the project even if they might not seem like it at the moment.

At the end of the day I can only thank all of you for your contribution and sympathize with your frustrations. They are totally warranted but sadly I cannot appease them right now. I wish that I could. Thank you again and I am sorry.

 

@DarkStarr why not do a live Q&A now, get talking to people, its a hot subject and people submitting questions getting answers may help..

 

Because the priority right now has to be to get R44 pushed out on Thursday and no matter how hot this subject is, it is not more important than that. A good example of how I have to prioritize.