Patch 557 still broken

[starf1sh@abv.bg 30]

First of all, I'd like to say I really enjoy DayZ, both mod and SA. I know my way around the gaming industry since I am a game producer myself.

 

What I see when going trough patch notes and bug tracker is best described with 1 word: CHAOS

 

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,

 

1. Patch notes are vague at best. People should understand what the features actually are and it will take no more than 20 minutes to describe clearly the feature.

2. Does anyone QA this game apart from the community? How can spraying be released when painting an empty rifle magazine fills it with bullets and paining a mosin lowers its ammo capacity to 1 bullet?

3. Why isn't magazine exploit fixed asap or at least paint canisters removed from loot tables until it is?

4. Why do we have to follow dev's personal twitter account or their friend's livestreams to get info about the game? Is this some new kind of PR strategy the industry has never heard of?

5. More than a million people bought the game and warned about the alpha state or not you at least owe them information.

 

Alpha is alpha - things break, sometimes migrating to live branch breaks something that worked before. AND its ok - but SAY it! Write a weekly update, explain to the community whats going on, act on critical issues, don't let them stay. Hire a QA ;)

Edited January 28, 2014 by Starf1sh

[blissfulkunt 196]

A Q&A would be very nice. +1

[T3hMurph 21]

First of all, I'd like to say I really enjoy DayZ, both mod and SA. I know my way around the gaming industry since I am a game producer myself.

 

What I see when going trough patch notes and bug tracker is best described with 1 word: CHAOS

 

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,

 

1. Patch notes are vague at best. People should understand what the features actually are and it will take no more than 20 minutes to describe clearly the feature.

2. Does anyone QA this game apart from the community? How can spraying be released when painting an empty rifle magazine fills it with bullets and paining a mosin lowers its ammo capacity to 1 bullet?

3. Why isn't magazine exploit fixed asap or at least paint canisters removed from loot tables until it is?

4. Why do we have to follow dev's personal twitter account or their friend's livestreams to get info about the game? Is this some new kind of PR strategy the industry has never heard of?

5. More than a million people bought the game and warned about the alpha state or not you at least owe them information.

 

Alpha is alpha - things break, sometimes migrating to live branch breaks something that worked before. AND its ok - but SAY it! Write a weekly update, explain to the community whats going on, act on critical issues, don't let them stay. Hire a QA ;)

 

1) Not always best to list an added feature in the notes, sometimes you want to implement something without the general population knowing for better feedback. It depends on what it is.

 

2) Things are tested in experimental, but upon implementation to live thingfs can go wrong that weren't forseen.

 

3) In a live game where your playerbase is under the impression the game should work as intended to be good to go, newly implemented bugs are a big thing and features are turned off so user experience is not interrupted. However, and I'm sorry to beat a dead horse, this is in alpha and the playerbase is under the impression that things will break. They don't have to push out hotfixes for bugs such as this immediately, it can wait for the next regularly scheduled (to the devs) patch. 

 

Only issues that should require immediate attention are those that completely halt your playerbase from testing.

 

4) They can give out information in whatever manner they please. I don't follow twitter either, but I really don't care THAT much, personally.

 

5) Eh more information would be lovely, not a big deal this early honestly.

 

Sorry, but there's no reason for a dev to acknowledge a bug. We know it's there, there's plenty of posts (And God I mean plenty) and plenty of bug reports to check out, no reason for them to waste their time saying they are working on it, of course they are.

 

-Murph

[svisketyggeren 662]

2. Does anyone QA this game apart from the community?

 

Valid point...I myself only frequent two forums on the internet, Dayz and Mortal online forum. Mortal online forum has several devposts daily, answering question and paticipating in discussions etc....Dayz have...what, one devpost a month?

Edited January 28, 2014 by svisketyggeren

[Ell360 2]

It's an alpha... Not really sure what your point is, everyone playing the alpha is testing and finding bugs, before alpha release, a small group on reddit helped to test the game, they possibly still are...

But things get released and there are bugs, this will always happen, usually even with QA, that's why day 1 patches exist. That's the beauty of it being an alpha though, there is no priority to get patches out (unless something NEEDS addressing, like the security issues a few weeks back).

Let's use than as an example, what would you rather they fix?

'I can spawn myself a mousin' or 'Spray paininting my mousin, made it only take 1 round'....

Personally, I'd rather they carry on like they are, small issues that can be avoided get fixed on next update, big issues such as urgent patches with character whiped have a forum post detailing what was happening and why.

As for getting updates, what else do you need to know?

Anyway, this alpha is better than most alphas (and some full releases.. looking at you payday 2, where I STILL cannot connect to some of my friends) I've played in terms of stability. I rememberwhen arma 3 was first released, it would crash for like, no reason... I'd rather there be a mag exploit than the game close every 5-10 mins. So far I've been impressed with the alpha, especially when compared to arma 3, I've found a few bugs but none that are game breaking.... just don't spray your mousin (or anything), problem solved imo.

And out of curiosity, what games have you produced?

[Proper Gander 45]

I think from a play test point of view, I would like a little more information on what exactly I should be "testing" in the alpha.  I don't want to report that something is "broken" if it is already known to the developers; for this reason I check the bug tracker.  By the way, I have yet to find anything in the alpha that is NOT on the bug tracker, so I haven't reported anything that is "broken" yet.  But to the OP, I would concur that a little more feedback from the developers would be nice.  And I have never produced nor "tested" any game before.

[faramon 66]

A community manager would be nice .... the person could fully centralize the tweets / info / everything

[starf1sh@abv.bg 30]

It's an alpha... Not really sure what your point is, everyone playing the alpha is testing and finding bugs, before alpha release, a small group on reddit helped to test the game, they possibly still are...

But things get released and there are bugs, this will always happen, usually even with QA, that's why day 1 patches exist. That's the beauty of it being an alpha though, there is no priority to get patches out (unless something NEEDS addressing, like the security issues a few weeks back).

Let's use than as an example, what would you rather they fix?

'I can spawn myself a mousin' or 'Spray paininting my mousin, made it only take 1 round'....

Personally, I'd rather they carry on like they are, small issues that can be avoided get fixed on next update, big issues such as urgent patches with character whiped have a forum post detailing what was happening and why.

As for getting updates, what else do you need to know?

Anyway, this alpha is better than most alphas (and some full releases.. looking at you payday 2, where I STILL cannot connect to some of my friends) I've played in terms of stability. I rememberwhen arma 3 was first released, it would crash for like, no reason... I'd rather there be a mag exploit than the game close every 5-10 mins. So far I've been impressed with the alpha, especially when compared to arma 3, I've found a few bugs but none that are game breaking.... just don't spray your mousin (or anything), problem solved imo.

And out of curiosity, what games have you produced?

 

Look around, the community is blind. No one cares to shed some light on ongoing issues.

If developers were to actually acknowledge bugs there would not be 50 duplicate topics of the same bug.

The hive related char wipes serve as an example - they released hardcore and regular hives and no official announce was made. Many people entered hardcore and were confused - they decided their characters were wiped.

After that there was an issue with hardcore characters not saving. Again no info was officially released and server hosters kept their servers up which resulted in thousands of people spamming forum, bug tracker, reddit, ect. When you have 1 million players you can't afford to say "Its alpha". You have a community that you should keep informed even if that means hiring a PR and community moderator. Money should not be an issue here - big companies cater to their players and the respective communities thrive even after big fails. So far thats not the case with DayZ.

About the infinite ammo exploit and mosin glitch - fixing those will not delay cars, bases ot private hives! Why? Because team members that develop the new features did not work on spray painting. The problem here is really that shifting priorities is very slow in a chaotic bug tracker full of duplicate issues.

Dean should organize the workflow better or hire someone that can. Early alpher is not an excuse when have characters wiping on hardcore and noone announces it properly in the official game forum for 24 hours. Bohemia needs to learn to cater to the community - something that's also evident from the release of A3

Edited January 28, 2014 by Starf1sh

[korpisoturi (DayZ) 127]

Yep, Dean even said long time ago that PR will be important part.

 

Haven't seen any changes to the mod when it comes to PR and answering questions. Sure Dean has made couple "answer anything" topics on Reddit, but honestly I don't know about that site, is it american thing?

 

And once a month Dev post is pathefic.

 

Why not post these things in the games own damn forums?

[frosti 2165]

Currently game is trully in early alpha with game breaking glitches such as duplicating and wall glitching.

 

Those warning that you should not buy it and if you play it, except game breaking bugs are no joke.

[starf1sh@abv.bg 30]

Currently game is trully in early alpha with game breaking glitches such as duplicating and wall glitching.

 

Those warning that you should not buy it and if you play it, except game breaking bugs are no joke.

 

Wall glitches and zombie noclip are not easy things to fix but the fact that a member of this forum with 1k + posts has no idea of the project's roadmap speak for itself - cold war proportion information blackout by BI.

 

Early alpha or not - 1 million people deserve DAILY or at least WEEKLY updates + proper changelog of released features and community feedback...

[Zer0HD2 (DayZ) 40]

A Q&A would be very nice. +1

 

QA =/= Q&A. But yeah, would still be nice :P

[starf1sh@abv.bg 30]

Well tbh honest Q&A happened several times so far but always on Dean's guest twitch appearance. Why not here? Why not somewhere people will actually see it...

 

The need for an official wiki is also evident - there's like 5 wikis and all are full of crap!

[OrLoK 16185]

Hello there

 

Is the dev tracker not visible to you guys?

 

http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/forum/131-devtracker/

 

Rgds

 

LoK

[starf1sh@abv.bg 30]

Hello there

 

Is the dev tracker not visible to you guys?

 

http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/forum/131-devtracker/

 

Rgds

 

LoK

 

 

[Reddit] MattLightfoot on Why is this server allowed to exist. Join and he says "TESTING PLEASE LEAVE" and then just kicks. I suspect loot far  

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DevTracker

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[Twitter] [ctorchia] @ultrabrilliant holy crap.  

Started by DevTracker, Today, 11:16 AM

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DevTracker

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[Reddit] rocket2guns on Rocket please read! Awesome idea for the lootable objects you mentioned on the stream.  

Started by DevTracker, Today, 10:51 AM

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[Twitter] [24VictorKane] Some WIP #DayZ http://t.co/KEzWr06Vuh

Started by DevTracker, Yesterday, 06:58 PM

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DevTracker

Yesterday, 06:58 PM

 

 

 

So whats the purpose of the official DayZ forum if random bits of info get released randomly by random devs on random internet sites?

Look at real big FPS MMOs - Do artists from the Planetside 2 team post their work when they desire on twitter or reddit?

Please BI - be professional about it...

Edited January 28, 2014 by Starf1sh

[MethHeadMario 27]

I agree with the OP.. This entire setup is complete chaos. Example: I recently started a post about Combat Logging, Ghosting and Server Hopping. It took 2 days and 3 pages of troll comments before someone was nice enough to give me some info that Rocket said about it. I don't know where the info came from and evidently 1000's of other people have never seen the info because there are TONS of post's complaining about the same thing. I even had a Forum Team Member troll me and tell me I didn't know what I was talking about and that he didn't know whether to close my post or merge it with the thousand other post's about it instead of giving the info that some random other guy gave me..

[law1977 17]

Hello there

 

Is the dev tracker not visible to you guys?

 

http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/forum/131-devtracker/

 

Rgds

 

LoK

Yeah i noticed this the other day but that has only just come about in fairness to OP, but i take the points he made. It can be a bit frustrating to go digging through reddit posts from rocket to see whats going on. The above link helps alot to find out about my fav game, I suppose they are busy fixing stuff and adding stuff to devote time  to do the PR stuff.

 

That black mosin thing was annoying, I am not sure how they got through the bug thing anyway hot fix incoming by the end of the week to fix the little bugs hopefully. I know about the bug but I wanted a black mosin and thats that I was happy with it until i died last night BOO HISS

I know rocket did a twitch vid the other day might watch a bit of that they are usually entertaining but very long. 

 

[GMF 0]

wow is it annoying when people make comments like this: "When you have 1 million players you can't afford to say 'Its alpha'".  

People made the choice to buy a half baked game...   It's like buying a bag of dog shit and then complaining because it's dog shit.  Stop bitching about stupid shit like "the devs aren't updating us enough".  

[Dusty_ 48]

I think they are doing a pretty damn good job of communicating to us and letting us nkow what they're working on through twitter.. I'm actually very impressed, coming from the ggame WarZ the devs didn't communicate at all with the community... I'm very happy with the way the devs are communicating. and the patch notes are much more detailed in this game than WarZ AKA Infestation.

[MethHeadMario 27]

I think they are doing a pretty damn good job of communicating to us and letting us nkow what they're working on through twitter.. I'm actually very impressed, coming from the ggame WarZ the devs didn't communicate at all with the community... I'm very happy with the way the devs are communicating. and the patch notes are much more detailed in this game than WarZ AKA Infestation.

ok, you coming from the game Warz can say that anything is better because that game was the worse ever..

[MethHeadMario 27]

wow is it annoying when people make comments like this: "When you have 1 million players you can't afford to say 'Its alpha'".  

People made the choice to buy a half baked game...   It's like buying a bag of dog shit and then complaining because it's dog shit.  Stop bitching about stupid shit like "the devs aren't updating us enough".  

Lol.. Another Fanboy. Just because we bought a game in Alpha doesn't mean that the way they keep the community informed isn't chaos.

[spartanxapathy 203]

I think they are doing a pretty damn good job of communicating to us and letting us nkow what they're working on through twitter.. I'm actually very impressed, coming from the ggame WarZ the devs didn't communicate at all with the community... I'm very happy with the way the devs are communicating. and the patch notes are much more detailed in this game than WarZ AKA Infestation.

 

Agreed, they are doing alright. I actually like having some of the stuff not mentioned in patch notes, makes it that much more interesting when you find an item or something else new that you didn't know about.

[GMF 0]

Lol.. Another Fanboy. Just because we bought a game in Alpha doesn't mean that the way they keep the community informed isn't chaos.

You know... I guess things could get changed for the better if people keep complaining that things aren't perfect.  So good job and keep up the crying guys... someone has to do it.

[lordopeth 274]

 

 

 

So whats the purpose of the official DayZ forum if random bits of info get released randomly by random devs on random internet sites?

Look at real big FPS MMOs - Do artists from the Planetside 2 team post their work when they desire on twitter or reddit?

Please BI - be professional about it...

 

 

Forums are for 3 things.

 

1. To complain about the "game" people just bought.

2. Pointing out peoples comprehension problems to the warning signs about the game they just bought.

3. Continually telling people that the game is still in an alpha state and pointing to youtube videos to explain what alpha truly is.

 

We bought a game to help identify bugs and document them. Nothing more.  The game isn't meant to be fun right now and the devs do not need to go into great detail what they are doing and document it on a forum.  Although I would like to see a roadmap of some kind. 

 

BTW, Alpher.

Edited January 28, 2014 by opethZ

[antonioajc 500]

Another thing that concerns me is the suggestions subforum. It's a total disaster with redundant suggestions and people posting things that have already been suggested. I hope an admin or mod creates a thread about things NOT to suggest because it already has been acknowledged or simply can't be done and pins it. Just like on the Kerbal Space Program suggestion subforum.

Edited January 28, 2014 by AntonioAJC