Stop adding game-breaking crap to the live servers

Right now half of my ranged skills vanish into thin air because of elevation bugs, making the game barely playable.

Next release the cover system is supposed to be introduced. If it's linked to terrain in any way, you can pretty much guarantee it's going to cause major problems.

These are just a couple of examples.

A 25% boost to combat values is hardly going to bring people flocking to this game. There is no need for it to be on the live servers until it's ready.

Leave this crap on the test server or at the very least, be ready to pull it if it's going to take significant time to fix.

 

I'd also love them to stop adding knee jerk changes from release to release, and maybe do smaller incremental changes instead.

 

You are on a test server. It may be persistent, with the end intention that all of what we are doing now being in the game when it is live, but it is STILL a test server. And as a test server, they need to release things to the greater public to test things that they intend to implement, so that the ways they might be broken can be exposed. Part and parcel of being involved in the early release portion of development.

That would be why it isn't referred to as LIVE yet, and you have the construction zone warning before you even try to log on.

 

Indeed.
The joys of beta gaming.
Aka: get over it.

 

This is the test server. You acknowledge that every time you launch the game.

They're not going to simply stop updating the game altogether.

 

This is probably the most important part of it all.

The devs have no clue about incremental nerfs. Its literally knee jerk. What they dont understand is they are making people quit because the nerfs are just too drastic.

Guys tone town the nerf baton. Instead hot or cold, lets try to land the nerf bat in the middle where people will not be up in arms with these knee jerk nerfs.

 

This... I can get behind. There ARE a lot of changes implemented that require much more thought than is apparently given when the change is either first mentioned or first hits the servers for testing. The "No more respawn in any mode other than MPO" was one of those that was tweaked after it was initially vomited into existence (1/8th rate in SPO and increasing in FPO until at "normal" (MPO) rates when 8 or more people were in the instance) is an example of one of these.

 

Yes we know its a beta game, it's testing, you guys can stop parroting that anytime someone gives bad feeback.

They want feedback, that is part of the testing... if they deserve bad feedback that's what we should give them, if they deserve good feeback we should give them that also. I wish we had nothing but good feeback to offer them but that is not the case. There are some bad ideas being pushed forward and we need to let them know how we feel.

If someone disagrees with a particular bit of bad feedback you should posts your reasons why... not just tell us its in testing, which we're all quite aware of.

 

Telling them to stop adding stuff isn't feedback.

 

I think you missed the point of his post, I saw it as him saying that the blanket statement, we're in testing, isn't enough for some of the changes that are made, and would like more feedback as to why.

 

For important features like basic combat functionality, they can take more time on the QA servers to get it into a more polished state before dumping it onto the live servers.

It is feedback. They introduced the new targeting system before it was ready and half a year down the road it is still broken.
They did the same with elevation and plan to do it again with cover next release.

I have to disagree. I think drawing numbers out of a hat for game values is fine as long as you throw in the occasional dice roll or magic 8 ball for the more important decisions.

 

It shouldn't be if it is also the persistent server where people have paid for assets on. That would be the definition of a live server, regardless of the preamble beforehand. It fails the duck test to call it a test server.

On live servers you have to avoid these wild swings that keep being done, however they should be totally expected on a test server. I did internal game testing for years and that is where you have to do it so that your live population isn't spooked by the changes. They will complain (and blame testers) for things that they miss but they should never be exposed to an environment that is unstable or in any way more out of control that they expect. That is the other duck analogy - looks smooth on the surface but working like hell under the water.

 

I'm not going to debate whether or not it should be a test server. The fact of the matter is that it is. It reminds you every time you launch the game and constantly says pre-alpha on the top left corner of the screen. You paid for in game assets knowing they were to be used in a test environment.

It doesn't matter if you want to consider it a live server or not. The game is clearly in development and dramatic changes are to be expected.

It isn't even Beta. It's pre alpha. It's persistent, it's accessible to backers but it is still in the alpha stage of development.

 

The game is absolutely in a pre-alpha state. Big changes, multiple systems not yet in existence, entire zones still being created.

When you make your game persistent, you are releasing your game. Especially when you begin taking money to support that persistence. Games are wiped multiple times in alphas and betas. You have to. Entire systems change because they have to. There's nothing wrong with wiping during alpha and beta, but if the devs are now making the game persistent it is live. You can call it "early release" or "shiny banana" but it doesn't change that fact.

Take the simple issue of masteries. There are many people with dozens of masteries right now. There are people who have mastered crafting, discovering every recipe. When the new player comes in and tries to follow their path they cannot. They have massive walls preventing them from following those paths because they were wrong - they needed to be tuned. Those folks who have all that stuff did nothing wrong. But that new player now has to pay a huge load of cash to learn their craft, which will turn many away. That new player has all the "good" grind areas long gone, and no one new to grind with so they have to solo for very slow exp, which will turn them away. Making it persistent so early was great for those investing but is exponentially bad for everyone who follows. I cannot see how the game can honestly ever have a true "release" without a complete and total wipe...but that's already been forsworn, hasn't it?

Starr Long said in Release 32 notes - "Even though this is the “Final Wipe” we are still in Early Access and, if needed, we will do small Rollbacks and/or Partial Wipes if we absolutely need to in order to maintain the health of the product."

 

They can't do an item wipe for sure, but they could do something with skills. Except when you consider that people bought obsidian potions to increase skills, even that becomes fuzzy.

My pet peeve is premature tuning. They did everything they could to make sure that mining wasn't easy, and had "risk". Okay, I understand that. They start by adding mobs to guard node spawn points, then they make sure that they actually despawn so that more mobs come back. Then for other reasons they make respawns more aggressive (if a lot of mobs are down, they respawn faster), then "oh hey we finally implemented magic resistance, here you go!" That instantly made it significantly harder than the rather good tuning they had already done.

So now here I am down in Etceter Crag Mines where every side room has two mobs, usually both ghosts, and even though they are yellow, their HP drain (which only shows up in the chat log as "hits for ## damage", oh and it can apparently go through walls too) is way overpowered to the point where I can barely take on one, but two can kill me easy, at adventurer level 66. And they respawn fast enough that by the time the ores in a side room have respawned, both mobs have too. And I can't damage them with anything but searing light and banish undead (too bad if I forgot to bring enough garlic) because they're apparently immune to all other types of magic. It helped a little that I got a Necklace of Necromancy Warding +6, but that just means their drain isn't quite as overpowered.

And I can forget about getting through the liches to see the crystal room, which was already hell before magic resistance because there were so many elementals and they respawned so quickly.