Confused about how new features are pushed to stable for testing.

[brazorf 46]

I'm that kind of player that pve, the forest, the lonely wolf, and blah blah.

So, when i've firstly heard about cooking, hunting, fishing and the such i was very excited about it.

 

Unfortunately ive never tried most of them, because animals are few, getting a fishing pole is a damn quest,

cooking also needs a fair amount of stuff, and so on. Or the damn bow: get the long wood, get ropes,

go find a damn chicken for feathers, get a blade for sharpening sticks. How can we have a mass-test

if items are so rare?

 

Why not to boost a feature for a certain amount of time so it can be tested by anyone?

 

I mean, you introduce animals? Spawn the damn beast to common locations

Introduce cooking? Spawn somehow cooking sets (pot, gas, etc)

 

I just don't undestand why. Keep them there for the time of the stable release, then switch back to normal spawn.

[Conrad_The_Comrade 577]

See, some people think of this as an actual game instead of the test-build that it is, and then we'd have complaints of things being too common, but on the other hand we have complaints about stuff not being common enough. At least this argument serves a purpose in the testing of the game, so yes, I agree. If anything, increase spawn rates for testing new things significantly on Experimental servers.

[hells high 676]

The point of this kind of mass, open, stable branch for testing is to play the game as a consumer. Sure you keeps your eyes out for bugs, provide feedback on things you like and dislike, but you are to play the game as if you were an end consumer because ultimately that is what the game is for.

 

If you think fishing and hunting are too hard to get into then by all means make your case, but try it first.

[LoveAffair 329]

Well when i got the game the first thing i found was a fishing hook and made a pole. Looked up how to fish and it worked fine. Also made a bow , killed a few chickons found a few arrows and went hunting with the bow , everything went fine. Use the small gas stove to cook the tasty bbq. Made a fire place but never used it to cook , only because it's easier to use the stove then dig up rocks and get paper and rags and gold and stardust and all the other 20 things you need for a fireplace. But i never posted any bugs with them beacuse they all worked fine for me and i had no trouble finding the stuff to make it. Try searching in places other than jumping from barracks to barracks to barracks..

[lmstr 11]

Wild Animals are pretty plentiful, OP must not have looked very hard.  Living off the land should be viewed as a challenge... but even that is a mild challenge at best.  I'd say hardest thing is the bow as the chickens are difficult to come by due to the limited spawn and the fact zombies tend to kill them quickly. Most the items mesh pretty well, like you need the machete to make arrows and to skin animals.  I'd love if they made arrows stack better, and allow you to move and fire the weapon 

 

I found making a fire much easier then gas.  All you really need is matches, considering any survivor worth his salt will have an axe and rags...stones aren't required. With gas you need the stove, an LP tank and a pot/skillet - and you get no warmth

[DemonGroover 8836]

I agree and in a way this is what experimental servers should be all about, testing new items, features etc. 

 

Not sure if the spawn rate of these new additions are increased on exp servers but it would be worthwhile as it allows us to test, rather than spend countless hours looking for new things.

[chompster 171]

How can we have a mass-test

if items are so rare?

 

Why not to boost a feature for a certain amount of time so it can be tested by anyone?

 

I mean, you introduce animals? Spawn the damn beast to common locations

Introduce cooking? Spawn somehow cooking sets (pot, gas, etc)

 

I just don't undestand why. Keep them there for the time of the stable release, then switch back to normal spawn.

Cooking sets actually do spawn a lot. Portable gas stoves are spawning at an alarming rate it's the frying pan that's scarce. Also it's not hard to cook using nature.

 

Sticks + rags/paper = fireplace kit + log = ignitable fire + raw pieces of mean = cooking. 

 

But generally i agree with what you're saying. At least on experimental they should increase certain(mainly new ones) for testing purposes.

[doctorwhy 157]

Animals are mostly found in the fields near the center of the map (Novy or Stary Sobor ish) and all around. There is a Herd of Cow South of Barezino and in the town south of Vybor.
Bam All the meat you can want right there.
 

The Deer and boar tend to be near Novy and Stary. 

[Mos1ey 6301]

The point of this kind of mass, open, stable branch for testing is to play the game as a consumer. Sure you keeps your eyes out for bugs, provide feedback on things you like and dislike, but you are to play the game as if you were an end consumer because ultimately that is what the game is for.

 

If you think fishing and hunting are too hard to get into then by all means make your case, but try it first.

 

^This.

 

Everything is tested internally before it's let loose on experimental, nevermind stable. Also, when you have 2,000,000 players running around instead of a group of 5 or 10 testers, bugs tend to be uncovered pretty quickly without people having to go out of their way to look for them.

[dodas 47]

I'm that kind of player that pve, the forest, the lonely wolf, and blah blah.

So, when i've firstly heard about cooking, hunting, fishing and the such i was very excited about it.

 

Unfortunately ive never tried most of them, because animals are few, getting a fishing pole is a damn quest,

cooking also needs a fair amount of stuff, and so on. Or the damn bow: get the long wood, get ropes,

go find a damn chicken for feathers, get a blade for sharpening sticks. How can we have a mass-test

if items are so rare?

 

Why not to boost a feature for a certain amount of time so it can be tested by anyone?

 

I mean, you introduce animals? Spawn the damn beast to common locations

Introduce cooking? Spawn somehow cooking sets (pot, gas, etc)

 

I just don't undestand why. Keep them there for the time of the stable release, then switch back to normal spawn.

Probably you are new to dayz or as a lone wolf so let me help you as iam a long lone wolf survivor.

Ropes are everywhere in garages,sheds,piano buildings and the one with the long corridor.

You can find the fishing rod pretty easy by cutting down an ashwood tree. Plenty of them near elektro or vybor.  ---- bows can be made from them also

Arrows can be found in the red,green and orange houses

Animals are also everywhere near zeleno and vybor (You should have a knife or a machete with you. Thats the only slightly rare thing to find from all you have said)

No comment for cooking. The materials are everywhere. But you must know it is a little bugged. Meat goes from uncooked to burnt.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Polyandras

[dodas 47]

 

Edited October 15, 2014 by Polyandras

[Judopunch 523]

I'm that kind of player that pve, the forest, the lonely wolf, and blah blah.

So, when i've firstly heard about cooking, hunting, fishing and the such i was very excited about it.

 

Unfortunately ive never tried most of them, because animals are few, getting a fishing pole is a damn quest,

cooking also needs a fair amount of stuff, and so on. Or the damn bow: get the long wood, get ropes,

go find a damn chicken for feathers, get a blade for sharpening sticks. How can we have a mass-test

if items are so rare?

 

Why not to boost a feature for a certain amount of time so it can be tested by anyone?

 

I mean, you introduce animals? Spawn the damn beast to common locations

Introduce cooking? Spawn somehow cooking sets (pot, gas, etc)

 

I just don't undestand why. Keep them there for the time of the stable release, then switch back to normal spawn.

There do seem to be a few more animal spawns on the exp servers. However provided you know where to look they arent that uncommon. Thats how we survived in the first iteration of the .50 hardmode. We were constantly hunting and cooking, it was actually very engaging we never quite had enough food or equipment. ... Then they dumbed it down and made it super easy again :/

 

To more directly answer your question, they dont add like 100 animals because they are still working on the server infrastructure that handles AI and re-spawning. They know that on the basic level the animals work. The next and harder part is to get the server to work with more animals/zombies. It is one of the biggest most programming intensive tasks they have and ties into every aspect of the game. When they get the optimization tackled then they can add more relatively easily.

 

With the new features its mostly the same reason. They are hard-coding most of the new content as opposed to just scripting it in. This takes a lot more time. They are literally rebuilding massive parts of the underlying structure of the game. The features we are testing are not simply 'the new gun' or 'the cows', they are 'client server archetecture, sync, stability, security, rendering, yada yada yada that you wont ever see.

 

In short we will get it its just a huge ball of crap that they are starting to sort out and get it just the way they want it. I am looking forward to continuing my adventures in this game :)

Edited October 15, 2014 by Judopunch

[brazorf 46]

The point of this kind of mass, open, stable branch for testing is to play the game as a consumer. Sure you keeps your eyes out for bugs, provide feedback on things you like and dislike, but you are to play the game as if you were an end consumer because ultimately that is what the game is for.

 

If you think fishing and hunting are too hard to get into then by all means make your case, but try it first.

 

Well, i don't think they are "too hard", but they are not a priority in my gaming session because

they are usually very time consuming. So, should we've found an assembled fishing pole when fishing

was released (this is just an example), most people would have tested it more easily, and massively.

 

Thats what they're doing now with thermometers for example, as thery're very common and people

can easily try and report issues.

[brazorf 46]

^This.

 

Everything is tested internally before it's let loose on experimental, nevermind stable. Also, when you have 2,000,000 players running around instead of a group of 5 or 10 testers, bugs tend to be uncovered pretty quickly without people having to go out of their way to look for them.

 

Just to be sure i got you right, are you stating that user testing is not necessary?

[brazorf 46]

To more directly answer your question, they dont add like 100 animals because they are still working on the server infrastructure that handles AI and re-spawning. They know that on the basic level the animals work. The next and harder part is to get the server to work with more animals/zombies. It is one of the biggest most programming intensive tasks they have and ties into every aspect of the game. When they get the optimization tackled then they can add more relatively easily.

 

 

Just to be more specific. Take for example animals (released on 46? 47? cant remember).

Keep 100 of them but spawn them near the player-spawn spots, so every fresh spawned player

can play around with them. Then, next release, reconfigure spawn to points to their proper location.

[Mos1ey 6301]

Just to be sure i got you right, are you stating that user testing is not necessary?

 

I'm stating that the developers do not intend for their paying customers to "test" DayZ in the same way that hired testers would.

[brazorf 46]

Testing it's still a prerogative in an alpha release though. What i'm saying would make it easier, also for paying customers (as i am).

Im sure that also some 100k testers -outside the developement team- would provide much appreciate feedback, as they're (we're)

doing already in big numbers on the bug tracker.

[qwer4790 26]

Well, you don't need a bow if you have a gun, chopping long wood will ruin your axe, so I never do that..

Fireplace is easy to craft.

 

But I don't like something that is soooo rare, like PM73 RAK, I never found one since its release.

[St. Jimmy 1631]

In experimental some new items spawn more often when they're released. Also they don't need 1mil of testing some things when 1k is already enough.

[ChainReactor 922]

Large scale testing happens on the experimental branch, and spawn rates of new stuff are usually higher there, at least that is my impression after i've spent the last 4 patches almost exclusively on experimental.

 

Most of the time however, we test new implementations best by simply playing the game.

Edited October 15, 2014 by ChainReactor

[brazorf 46]

Well, you don't need a bow if you have a gun

 

 

This is exactly my point. Maybe he'd tried if it was a "free" attempt: we usually test only what we need.

From this point of view, we don't need animals, cooked food, fishing poles, and so on.

[Judopunch 523]

This is exactly my point. Maybe he'd tried if it was a "free" attempt: we usually test only what we need.

From this point of view, we don't need animals, cooked food, fishing poles, and so on.

Your confusing testing with and playing with new content. We are testing backend changes right now. They already know that interaction with animals works.

[hells high 676]

Well, i don't think they are "too hard", but they are not a priority in my gaming session because

they are usually very time consuming.

 

But that's what you are going to do when you play the game. The programmers didn't just write some code, compile it, and throw it into experimental. They are likely trying out the thing before even completely committing it to a company wide internal build (although different teams do have different pipelines). Its not like you need to "test" whether or not you can catch a fish and eat it, at that point it becomes more of wanting to try the new toys rather than testing anything.

 

Player testing is very important, because you find out how the game plays and acts in a release style environment. The team can evaluate how the game is performing, what the player's experience is, how they can improve it, what players like/dislike, etc etc. In these kinds of environments certain bugs and issues pop up that might not otherwise in a closed testing one. Plus 2 million pairs of eyes playing the game almost constantly are more likely to notice the small things that pop up during regular gameplay that a developer or internal tester might not catch quite as quickly.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Hells High

[Finchtastic 50]

There are obviously pros and cons to both internal and consumer testing.  The user end, if not both, should definitely have higher spawns for things to test, if only for the first patch they're out.  There are tons of things I want to test, but simply can't because the parts or required equipment just can't be found.

[brazorf 46]

But that's what you are going to do when you play the game. The programmers didn't just write some code, compile it, and throw it into experimental. They are likely trying out the thing before even completely committing it to a company wide internal build (although different teams do have different pipelines). Its not like you need to "test" whether or not you can catch a fish and eat it, at that point it becomes more of wanting to try the new toys rather than testing anything.

 

 

Well yes and no. As a developer myself i can tell you that some guy that's *inside* the development team will never find all the issues. Of course, just to use your example, we can be sure enough that plain fish-catch fish-eat procedure will work fine, but there may be side effects due to different users trying it with different approach and mindset.

Look at this for example (there's plenty of examples in there): http://feedback.dayzgame.com/view.php?id=8044

We know that lie down works, that 3pp camera works, that looking around works. However people suffer from death when performing these actions. Funny, isn't it?

 

For the last part, well... if i'd just like to *try* one feature, i would search for a pole, a rope, a bait, a pond, and have my fishing time without opening any thread.

 

Player testing is very important, because you find out how the game plays and acts in a release style environment. The team can evaluate how the game is performing, what the player's experience is, how they can improve it, what players like/dislike, etc etc. In these kinds of environments certain bugs and issues pop up that might not otherwise in a closed testing one. Plus 2 million pairs of eyes playing the game almost constantly are more likely to notice the small things that pop up during regular gameplay that a developer or internal tester might not catch quite as quickly.

 

Here we are saying the same thing apparently.