On top of what Llama already said, you have cases where neither the devs nor the players realize there’s an issue until the node is used. Take, for example, exploding ballistas. A single error in the scaling formula for that node in the code caused it to go from correctly scaling area to incorrectly scaling radius. This made the explosions exponentially larger than they should have been, A=πr² after all. So instead of A×1.04, we got A=π(r×1.04)².
Until players used this and the devs said “wait a minute… Something ain’t right.” the error, which again was one line of code, wouldn’t have been caught.
Players help test games all the time. We’re not living in the age of cartridges and CD Roms that can’t be patched
If they paid someone to beta test this as they should’ve to begin with, and use ALL OF THE SKILLS and their interactions, this error would’ve been found out.
You need 1-2 people per class. The best part? It’s a one time thing! You don’t have to retain them forever! Give them god mode, level them to max with cheats, and give them a testing environment in which they can play around with the builds. How long do you think they’ll need to work to go through every viable combination? Week? Two weeks at most.
Don’t tell me about scale. You’re thinking in player perspective. With cheats they won’t have to waste time leveling or finding items.
You’re excusing bad practices. Do what you want. But don’t turn it around on the players as IF ITS THEIR DUTY to report this shit.
Howl says “your wolves howl”, but Primal Resosnance says “your nearest companion … is restored to full health.”
So no, it should not be healing all the wolves, only the nearest one. But it should still make all wolves Howl, per the Howl’s description.
It is their/our duty to report this shit. Dude, you must be insane to think that even the most rigorous testing will catch 100% of issues. Players are the last line of defense in the testing process, and testing doesn’t stop before launch, it’s an ongoing process because things will change and need to be fixed.
Even Square Enix and Blizzard with the two most successful MMORPGs of all time and have the money to pay full time testers have bug fixes weekly/monthly and looooong “known issues” sections.
Players have a duty to report any bugs that will slip through any testing that is done.
I don’t know what to tell you.
There was time when games did exactly that, and the bugs that slipped through could be counted on one hand. Now it’s an entire gallery.
When ff14 came out ARR, there weren’t this many bugs, and the bugs were mostly quest related not skill bugs, and there was no weird translation bs. It just goes to show that it can be done. Some companies did it, some didn’t, they saw they can get away with it, and they keep doing it because we as players allow it.
IF ARR had that many bugs as you describe it, the game would’ve died on the spot given the debacle 1.0 had.
Also I didn’t say don’t report bugs. I said it’s not our duty to spend more of our time for what the company needs to be doing. I said DON’T USE THIS AS A SWORD against players. Like the person above did
This would not be a thing if they actually did minimal QA testing. That means actually using the functionality they created, at least once.
If this happened, there wouldn’t be obvious bugs like like Synthesis of Light from Healing Hands tree, or the very recent “Warpath echoes only deal damage if you stand nearby” issue.
They supposedly have an internal QA department, and even a closed group of community testers since 2022 (source), but I really have to question wtf is this QA department doing, and if this community group even exists or does anything at all.
Please don’t tell me you’re referring to the cartridge/CD era because I can literally find you examples of hundreds of bugs for most of those games. And if you’re referring to more modern games, I can, again, easily point out games like… Any Bethesda game, that are so broken the players had to fix it with mods.
Thankfully, no one is saying that EHG is doing a phenomenal job at finding bugs.
I’m arguing that it’s a players responsibility to report bugs that will slip through, even if EHG hired every QA tester on the planet and tested the game for 600,000 hours before releasing any patch. Bugs will slip through, no matter what. Which is why testing doesn’t stop once a patch goes live/game is launched.
What Nevyn is saying is that players tend to think “someone else has reported it/will report it so I won’t waste my time.” and then you have situations where bugs go unreported for weeks/months and because they’re a niche interaction, it doesn’t get fixed.
Prior 2010.
And selecting 2% of broken games out of everything that released is hardly an argument that games “were always like this”.
It’s still players fault that it keeps happening at an increasing rate.
Again, thinking from player perspective.
They would use cheats and be much more efficient in testing. With a single command they can fill up a chest with all the items and affixes they need and want.
No, I’m thinking from a programmer perspective. If you genuinely think that a handful of QA testers with God Mode active can find every bug prior to a patch, I don’t know what to tell you except that you’re wrong. Just flat out, wrong.
But what’s a reasonable level for you? I handcrafted a Necromancer build, a Mastery I never played prior to this recent cycle refresh. Across my 60 hours of playtime through the campaign and a handful of normal monos, I encountered a single bugged skill node.
Just 1 in a handcrafted, non-meta build, had 1 bugged interaction.
Is that acceptable? If it is, would 2 be unacceptable?
Is it fine because you didn’t use that node, but if you did it wouldn’t be?
And those bugs are on the known issues list in most cases, what’s your point? They’ve been reported and it’s now on EHG to fix it. Which EHG hasn’t done. This is now moving the goalpost from your original statement of “bug reporting shouldn’t be a player responsibility” to “but EHG hasn’t fixed bugs in 4 years.” which I absolutely agree is an issue.
Talking about moving goalposts.
You said reporting mattered. 4 year old bugs. 4 god damn years. Do you know how long that is? I had a niece born, and my son is 3.
Instead we get content nobody asked for locked behind the same mono grind fashion that everybody said “give us something else in end game, monos are good but are boring to do constantly.”
CLEARLY they didn’t use those 4 years to fix the bugs. What did they do? How many people are even still working on this project? Questions I honestly don’t want to know the answer to.
All the good reporting did for those players who follow this since its birth.
(Statistically some of those backers have died waiting for their favorite build to work as it should. Terrifying.)
Because it was you who took a stance regarding the “finding of issues”.
Your Ballista example is also a great showcase of this problem.
“Exponentially larger explosions” is not something an actual QA employee would miss. If a new skill is added - new functionality - it’s literally QA’s contracted job to test the new functionality - to use the skill and its passives to see if they do what they are supposed to.
Sure, players can help test this - if they are part of the testers group, or if we’re on a beta build. But not if it’s a released patch that’s running on the end user systems. That’s QA not doing their job.
