Purpose of In Testing

[Kruschev2086]

<p>I would like a singular, solid answer to this.  What purpose do the devs see this forum for?  Do they want true feedback, opinions, and such?  Do you just want us to tell you when bugs appear, and how they occured?</p><p>If it is the former, can we at least see a copy+paste response now and again on threads saying 'we have read this, and will be discussing the change further' or something similar?  If it is the later, please tell us so we can stop bothering to tell you how we feel/expressing opinions about these changes.</p>

[feldon30]

There's also a private testing forum you aren't able to see. Not that that forum gets taken all that much more seriously than this one.

[Gladiolus]

<p><cite>feldon30 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>There's also a private testing forum you aren't able to see. </blockquote><p>Presumably that would be for things that only affect the Test community as such, not things which are being tested for the live community. Such matters would need to be posted here where everyone can participate in the discussion. There are many who go to the Test server to test specific changes but who mainly play on live servers, and are not therefore privy to the private Test forum.</p>

[Onorem]

<p><cite>feldon30 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>There's also a private testing forum you aren't able to see. Not that that forum gets taken all that much more seriously than this one.</blockquote><p>Do they pay attention to people in that forum? If so, they need to invite more people. If not, who's supposed to care about it existing?</p>

[ChrisMarchant]

<p>You have to apply to get access to that forum, it was Amernerys who gave me access, and that's what the light blue name indicates, the people who are flagged as testers on this forum.</p>

[Onorem]

<p><cite>ChrisMarchant wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>You have to apply to get access to that forum, it was Amernerys who gave me access, and that's what the light blue name indicates, the people who are flagged as testers on this forum.</p></blockquote><p>Do you feel like your feedback is useful in that forum? I doubt my application would be approved, but hate the idea of a secret test forum when the existing test forum doesn't do much to fix the problems that are brought up.</p>

[Whilhelmina]

<p>It was, when Kiara was around. Now, well, not so much.</p>

[ObsidianNightmare]

<p>This thread is interesting and amusing. I love that there's a private testing forum that gets as little attention now as the more public one.  It seems there is a larger problem that needs to be addressed that has nothing to do with public or private testing privledges.</p>

[Kruschev2086]

Still no official response. What do you want us to contribute here in this subforum? Bugs? Opinions?

[gourdon]

<p>It is pretty unrealistic to expect developers to have infinite attention to give to feedback.  Not all feedback will get attention, and the attention will not be prioritized to the most important feedback.  When you're on a development deadline, the number of tasks you have to juggle can get to be quite difficult to manage.  At that point, sifting through feedback, all of which is not useful, is not a simple matter.</p><p>It would really be helpful if the developers would put together a short list of what they want looked at and the player community would compile a list of problems that correspond to it and refrain from mucking it up with their own agendas.</p>

[feldon30]

<p><cite>gourdon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It is pretty unrealistic to expect developers to have infinite attention to give to feedback.  Not all feedback will get attention, and the attention will not be prioritized to the most important feedback.  When you're on a development deadline, the number of tasks you have to juggle can get to be quite difficult to manage.  At that point, sifting through feedback, all of which is not useful, is not a simple matter.</p><p>It would really be helpful if the developers would put together a short list of what they want looked at and the player community would compile a list of problems that correspond to it and refrain from mucking it up with their own agendas.</p></blockquote><p>There have been less than 2 dozen posts about game mechanics changes in the Testing forum in the last 3 months. To say we are expecting "infinite attention" is a straw man argument which you might want to check yourself on.</p><p>During the Reitemization, there was no developer response to issues posted (via /bug, /feedback, and here on the forum) for <strong>7 weeks</strong>. To date MASTERCRAFTED gear still has problems that were reported within 48 hours of Game Update 61's item changes hitting Test. That was <strong>14 weeks ago</strong>.</p><p>The devs have been given too many things to do (huge Game Updates, plus a features Expansion) and I guess there isn't any time left for Testing. But that's neither the Devs nor Players faults.</p><p>Every significant change that goes to Test, ESPECIALLY Mechanics changes (which are notorious for getting NO explanation whatsoever <em>before</em>, <em>during</em>, or <em>after</em> going to Test and then Live), should really have a post (however brief) explaining the change, and what the goals are. If you can't explain to the players why a change is needed, maybe you shouldn't do it.</p>

[Anurra]

<p>It is pretty clear that this game is being mismanaged (in other words, I agree with Feldon). I blame SJ.</p><p>I heard recently that SJ is the producer for ALL of the EQ games??? EQLive, EQ2, and EQNext. If so, EQNext has already failed, imo.</p>

[Neskonlith]

<p><cite>feldon30 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>During the Reitemization, there was no developer response to issues posted (via /bug, /feedback, and here on the forum) for <strong>7 weeks</strong>. To date MASTERCRAFTED gear still has problems that were reported within 48 hours of Game Update 61's item changes hitting Test. That was <strong>14 weeks ago</strong>.</p><p>The devs have been given too many things to do (huge Game Updates, plus a features Expansion) and I guess there isn't any time left for Testing. But that's neither the Devs nor Players faults.</p><p>Every significant change that goes to Test, ESPECIALLY Mechanics changes (which are notorious for getting NO explanation whatsoever <em>before</em>, <em>during</em>, or <em>after</em> going to Test and then Live), should really have a post (however brief) explaining the change, and what the goals are. If you can't explain to the players why a change is needed, maybe you shouldn't do it.</p></blockquote><p>Look at the Dev tracker, and you'll see ~10 days worth of interaction on the first page, and 8/40 of that is patch notes.</p><p>Remember the good ol' days when Devs were really active here on official forums as well as other fan-sites?  Nowadays, I suspect they are chained up at their desks buried under memos and TPS cover sheets, and when they do accidentally step in something on the forums, the trolls which have been starved for attention pounce on them like piranhas on a monkey.</p><p>The withdrawal of interaction makes it feel like there's awful secrets brewing, and like they say: <em>"Loose Lips Nerf Ships"</em>.</p><p>/tinfoil on</p><p>/huddles under desk</p>

[feldon30]

<p><cite>Neskonlith wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>Look at the Dev tracker, and you'll see ~10 days worth of interaction on the first page, and 8/40 of that is patch notes.</blockquote><p>Yep and most of that interaction is about tradeskills, quests, animation, character appearance, and live events. Mostly non-controversial stuff. Kaitheel, Cronyn, Domino, ttobey, etc. kick some serious butt there.</p><p>However anything involving mechanics, class balance, and itemization, and it's Duck and Cover.</p>

[Neskonlith]

<p><cite>feldon30 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>However anything involving mechanics, class balance, and itemization, and it's Duck and Cover.</p></blockquote><p>If they tell us what they are going to nerf next, it spoils the surprise! </p><p>Nerfs are fast, cheap, and require little thought to implement when compared to the effort of creating a balanced fix.</p><p><img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Whilhelmina@Storms wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It was, when Kiara was around. Now, well, not so much.</p></blockquote><p>That sums up alot of forum feedback <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[gourdon]

<p><cite>feldon30 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>gourdon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It is pretty unrealistic to expect developers to have infinite attention to give to feedback.  Not all feedback will get attention, and the attention will not be prioritized to the most important feedback.  When you're on a development deadline, the number of tasks you have to juggle can get to be quite difficult to manage.  At that point, sifting through feedback, all of which is not useful, is not a simple matter.</p><p>It would really be helpful if the developers would put together a short list of what they want looked at and the player community would compile a list of problems that correspond to it and refrain from mucking it up with their own agendas.</p></blockquote><p>There have been less than 2 dozen posts about game mechanics changes in the Testing forum in the last 3 months. To say we are expecting "infinite attention" is a straw man argument which you might want to check yourself on.</p><p>During the Reitemization, there was no developer response to issues posted (via /bug, /feedback, and here on the forum) for <strong>7 weeks</strong>. To date MASTERCRAFTED gear still has problems that were reported within 48 hours of Game Update 61's item changes hitting Test. That was <strong>14 weeks ago</strong>.</p><p>The devs have been given too many things to do (huge Game Updates, plus a features Expansion) and I guess there isn't any time left for Testing. But that's neither the Devs nor Players faults.</p><p>Every significant change that goes to Test, ESPECIALLY Mechanics changes (which are notorious for getting NO explanation whatsoever <em>before</em>, <em>during</em>, or <em>after</em> going to Test and then Live), should really have a post (however brief) explaining the change, and what the goals are. If you can't explain to the players why a change is needed, maybe you shouldn't do it.</p></blockquote><p>There have been responses to feedback, but not all of the time.  No doubt, there has been intent to look through feedback and new work or other bugs cropping up have gotten in the way.  You at least acknowledge this, though don't seem to understand that there can be intent to do something that gets interrupted by new problems or tasks that crop up.  This is normal if development schedules are aggressive.  Anyone that has done development work at this level or above (except for managers) knows that everything takes several times more effort than you think it will, with the variation often being unpredictable.</p><p>The argument that they shouldn't bother testing because feedback gets overlooked still doesn't necessarily hold water.  There may be concerns about changes crashing the game or creating some game breaking bug, and they at least want to see it run somewhere outside of their internal servers.  Then, even if some item stat problems slip through because they don't have the bandwidth to address it, they can at least be reasonably certain that the whole game won't collapse when it goes live.  In other words, they might not be looking for the bugs that are being reported.</p><p>They could be just going through the motions of QA, because that is their procedure and they would be better off just skipping test server QA.  However, there could be some method to the madness as well.</p><p>Addressing the argument against the reitemization, it isn't difficult to understand why they are pushing it through and may be not all too concerned about how well stats are balanced out.  While specific stats might be wrong, the build points are right where they want them, and the upcoming reforging option will allow them to be changed freely by players.  That makes for a very low priority fix.  There will probably need to be some tweaks to the build points on some items, but that will make more sense when players are reforging their equipment and making same stat comparisons between equipment.</p>

[ObsidianNightmare]

<p><cite>gourdon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>feldon30 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>gourdon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>It is pretty unrealistic to expect developers to have infinite attention to give to feedback.  Not all feedback will get attention, and the attention will not be prioritized to the most important feedback.  When you're on a development deadline, the number of tasks you have to juggle can get to be quite difficult to manage.  At that point, sifting through feedback, all of which is not useful, is not a simple matter.</p><p>It would really be helpful if the developers would put together a short list of what they want looked at and the player community would compile a list of problems that correspond to it and refrain from mucking it up with their own agendas.</p></blockquote><p>There have been less than 2 dozen posts about game mechanics changes in the Testing forum in the last 3 months. To say we are expecting "infinite attention" is a straw man argument which you might want to check yourself on.</p><p>During the Reitemization, there was no developer response to issues posted (via /bug, /feedback, and here on the forum) for <strong>7 weeks</strong>. To date MASTERCRAFTED gear still has problems that were reported within 48 hours of Game Update 61's item changes hitting Test. That was <strong>14 weeks ago</strong>.</p><p>The devs have been given too many things to do (huge Game Updates, plus a features Expansion) and I guess there isn't any time left for Testing. But that's neither the Devs nor Players faults.</p><p>Every significant change that goes to Test, ESPECIALLY Mechanics changes (which are notorious for getting NO explanation whatsoever <em>before</em>, <em>during</em>, or <em>after</em> going to Test and then Live), should really have a post (however brief) explaining the change, and what the goals are. If you can't explain to the players why a change is needed, maybe you shouldn't do it.</p></blockquote><p>There have been responses to feedback, but not all of the time.  No doubt, there has been intent to look through feedback and new work or other bugs cropping up have gotten in the way.  You at least acknowledge this, though don't seem to understand that there can be intent to do something that gets interrupted by new problems or tasks that crop up.  This is normal if development schedules are aggressive.  Anyone that has done development work at this level or above (except for managers) knows that everything takes several times more effort than you think it will, with the variation often being unpredictable.</p><p>The argument that they shouldn't bother testing because feedback gets overlooked still doesn't necessarily hold water.  There may be concerns about changes crashing the game or creating some game breaking bug, and they at least want to see it run somewhere outside of their internal servers.  Then, even if some item stat problems slip through because they don't have the bandwidth to address it, they can at least be reasonably certain that the whole game won't collapse when it goes live.  In other words, they might not be looking for the bugs that are being reported.</p><p>They could be just going through the motions of QA, because that is their procedure and they would be better off just skipping test server QA.  However, there could be some method to the madness as well.</p><p>Addressing the argument against the reitemization, it isn't difficult to understand why they are pushing it through and may be not all too concerned about how well stats are balanced out.  While specific stats might be wrong, the build points are right where they want them, and the upcoming reforging option will allow them to be changed freely by players.  That makes for a very low priority fix.  There will probably need to be some tweaks to the build points on some items, but that will make more sense when players are reforging their equipment and making same stat comparisons between equipment.</p></blockquote><p>These are my concerns which i see raised in other areas of the forum:</p><p>I feel that lack of a direct response from the devs to the player base does not necessarily mean that the player base can not be made to feel as if they are being listened to.  When game updates occur that are direct fixes to existing problems, that is the format for resolution and closure when direct forum/in game feedback from SOE is non existant. When game updates go through with little hitch, then this is also warmly accepted by the player base.  However, the communication has indeed broken down to the point where what the player base wants and what the SOE team is giving back is not on the same page unless you are into decorating.  This is giving the player a feeling of insecurity towards the quality and direction of the game. It's a downward spiral that has been happening with some ups and more downs since TSO.</p><p>This expac has most definitely seen the worst of this atmosphere.  Many argue that the focus is on end game but those that play at the end game largely feel it is a hollow and shallow mirror of it's former self.  The team's resources and talent pool are definitely on the downturn and but as you say there is an aggressive development schedule. The question remains WHY is there such an aggressive schedule and what is the NEED for it.  Quite a few of these changes could have been and should have been TESTED AGGRESSIVELY before being PUSHED AGGRESIVELY to us live. Quality is affected.</p><p>The vision for the internals of this game is not stable and the only thing that is a constant are an influx of house and marketplace items.</p><p>There's no way for the player base to test or know every aspect that needs to be looked at in the test environment and they are not paid to do this. The team that pushes these changes should also be playing on test with the QA team and internal testers (if there are any) checking the stability of the game against the changes. I'm sure they do?  But obviously that is another team that is not on the same page with those making the changes.</p><p>So this IMHO is the largest problem here and its not a good one because a continuance of this course of action with nothing to back up the quality of the changes is going to further raise frustration.  Some are mumbling that it's a purposeful gave that is being dug for this game perhaps to concentrate on EQNext.    It strikes me as hilarious that these Fan Faire's occur with such tremendous player feedback personally directed right at the dev's feet, but yet here we are with the state of this game.</p><p>They don't have to listen to every little nit pick, need or want that every player has and thank goodness they don't.  However the way these changes are going out is SLOPPY! It's a big slooply mess that is a vote of no confidence into any future product SOE puts out.</p><p>To the Previous Poster : So what you're saying is that it doesn't matter that they screwed up the rest of the items in the game, items that are still screwed up such as any item from a Contested encounter in SF, becuase the player base will end up fixing it on thier own with a feature pushed out that was hardly asked for by the playerbase? This is acceptable how?</p><p>A better way to do the re-itemization would have been over a longer period of time going backwards in order of expansion so as not to further invalidate content of the most recent expansions of the game. These same people always give a response that there are a significat amount of players at the lower level but yet they cut their arms off with this re-itemization update.</p><p>Re-forging and the Dungeon Creator are interesting updates yes but what is the reason for their addition now?  I think my points above show the reason.  We don't know what you want, we don't know how to</p><p>Some of these changes are coming at a high speed with low quality and poor stability to the rest of the game. This is a freqent talking point on the forums.  The question remains, why test when feedback appears to be largely ignored while the next set of changes gets loaded in.</p><p>How can you repeatedly let pass changes that affect the stability of the internals of the game.  In example, transport has been broken in not one but two zones recently after two separate updates. Are we, the player base, to test transport? Are we to know it's broken in any random zone when the change goes through that breaks it? NO. However once a problem like that is recognized, how is it allowed to pass through and affect other zones in the future.  The a repetion of a broken process after an update has been happening since day 1 sure. But we're well past that and why haven't these kind of occurances been reduced. Why have they seemingly increased?</p>

[feldon30]

It's hard not to take gourdon's post as "don't worry, be happy".