Customer Support?

[jorb]

Whales bashing Knarrs is an intended mechanic, though.

if you honestly rubbed your 2 brain cells together and came to the conclusion that rather than actually using the haven and hearth combat system, that whales should instead just bash the knarr and drown every player, then I hope you cease having children. That is probably the single dumbest mechanic you've ever thought up, and you should be ashamed of yourself. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

User was banned, asked to be.

[MagicManICT]

Open dev server and give me access and dev tools

???

Profit

You'd still never find all of them. Why do you think companies like Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft spend tens of millions on software testing? Any complex system, even one as simple as Haven compared to those three behemoths, is going to be beyond the realm of feasible for testing for even a large development team of hundreds or thousands. And they still fail to find that critical 10-20%. Bugs and exploits are why we have weekly updates to Windows, Android, iOS, etc.

I, at least, want jorb and loftar spending time on creating, not bug hunting. A small group of *trusted* players that have a strong history of finding bugs and not abusing them might be good to have.

But I'm going to have to agree with Ardennesss on the whales. If the goal is to hunt them.... then make it so people can, but combat off of boats is broken as fuck right now. If the goal was to just create a giant Moby Dick in the game... the why make all the bonus items they give? Just make them indestructible and blow players up, and then swim off; basically, a hostile sea dryad. The other option is to take 5 or 6 knarrs out at once to hunt them and a couple backups, but then are they worth losing a ship, or two or three, that's relatively expensive compared to everything else in the game? Whales aren't even the first instance of this issue.

[Ardennesss]

No, the other option is to just drag them to shore and cheese them. People are soloing whales. Making them sink knarrs is only hurting people that don't expect it to not actually fight them.

[XXPX1]

No, my post was targeted at the village who died and quit because they tried to fight a whale fairly and instead of engage them in combat it just bashed the knarr and killed them all.

No, the other option is to just drag them to shore and cheese them. People are soloing whales. Making them sink knarrs is only hurting people that don't expect it to not actually fight them.

While the current state of whale mechanics may need more refinement, it really isn't the topic of this thread. The test server you're suggesting would simply serve to expose a mechanic that you happen to disagree with rather than truly help them find a bug.

I believe most people participating in a test server would only care about the new development (and not regression testing various aspects of the game) and use their time in the test server to develop a meta about how it will be employed when it hits live.

I think Fierce Deity's point was:

Should paying players claims merit more investigation?
Should there be any attempt to help players in situations like these?
If it can be confirmed that a player has suffered a significant bug, should anything be done?

[Kaios]

players spend countless hours grinding out characters and industry just to get fucked

Read that back to yourself and see if you can spot the resource required to detect the bugs in question.

Pretty pointless to try to dialogue with you when there is zero cognizance of the circumstances of development, or even basic recognition when I point them out.

Sure, we could test more -- that's easy and completely free for you to claim -- but we have to manage a scarce resource known as time, and spending time on testing 99 cases that are complete duds, to maybe find the 1/100 problematic case, is a horrendous use of our time.

Come on man you know what I mean, for you as the devs it is a simple matter of spawning things on to the test server and trying them out. It takes time to get the required skills and materials and level of industry for us to go and test out certain features in the game and some never get tested to their full extent because very few players are capable of participating in some features the game has to offer and even players that can take part usually do so in a very reserved or risk-free manner.

I realize quite well you don't have an infinite amount of time to try everything but neither does the player and the end result of our time investment to go test something for the first time could mean the loss of a character. The end result of you not spending any time to test certain functions and mechanics results in the loss of a player/players.

[MooCow]

Come on man you know what I mean, for you as the devs it is a simple matter of spawning things on to the test server and trying them out. It takes time to get the required skills and materials and level of industry for us to go and test out certain features in the game and some never get tested to their full extent because very few players are capable of participating in some features the game has to offer and even players that can take part usually do so in a very reserved or risk-free manner.

I realize quite well you don't have an infinite amount of time to try everything but neither does the player and the end result of our time investment to go test something for the first time could mean the loss of a character. The end result of you not spending any time to test certain functions and mechanics results in the loss of a player/players.

The problem jorb is talking about is hard to understand. As the developer you KNOW what something is supposed to do, so when you test, you test that. Testing what shouldn't happen is what becomes an impossible task, because there is an infinite set of things that shouldn't happen.

Sometimes it feels like a bug was obvious, but it was only obvious to you because you didn't know what it was supposed to do, and immediately try something that was out of scope. It isn't because they didn't test, it is because they didn't think of what they didn't think of.

The devs TEST EVERYTHING, they just don't test enough to catch everything. Even figuring out how much time should be put into testing is hard to know. It isn't possible to know where the errors exist without know what the errors are.

[Kaios]

The problem jorb is talking about is hard to understand. As the developer you KNOW what something is supposed to do, so when you test, you test that. Testing what shouldn't happen is what becomes an impossible task, because there is an infinite set of things that shouldn't happen.

Sometimes it feels like a bug was obvious, but it was only obvious to you because you didn't know what it was supposed to do, and immediately try something that was out of scope. It isn't because they didn't test, it is because they didn't think of what they didn't think of.

And who does the fault lay with for that, the player or the developer?

For example:

Whales bashing Knarrs is an intended mechanic, though.

Where exactly was this crucial information provided to us? For all we know he could just be saying this now after the fact, he may not have even known at all they bashed knarrs until someone reported it and then he decided "oh I like that mechanic, it's intentional." Lol how about a little enlightenment regarding certain mechanics and how they might work if they aren't going to test them properly, but no the great honour of doing so is reserved for us to suffer through and discover.

[MooCow]

And who does the fault lay with for that, the player or the developer?

Are you implying that the developers are wrong because they have an unavoidably different perspective from us players?

For example:

Whales bashing Knarrs is an intended mechanic, though.

Where exactly was this crucial information provided to us? For all we know he could just be saying this now after the fact, he may not have even known at all they bashed knarrs until someone reported it and then he decided "oh I like that mechanic, it's intentional." Lol how about a little enlightenment regarding certain mechanics and how they might work if they aren't going to test them properly, but no the great honour of doing so is reserved for us to suffer through and discover.

Documentation is hard. I have struggled to find information on multi-million dollar pieces of custom machinery built specifically for my company. As part of their contact we withhold hundreds of thousands of dollars, until they send us a 20 page document that barely covers what they are obligated to tell us. Nobody wants to document shit. Ever.

I am happy we get the patch notes we get. Of course they could be better, but how long should they spend. I bet if you asked nicely jorb might tell you the amount of time he already spends writing the patch notes and reading/responding to the following drama.

Personally I would really like it if they told us the expected requirements for new monsters, like you need 4 knarrs with a combined 5000 is to kill a whale, but I understand the desire for mystery.

[h3retostay]

Seeing how we are actually paying for this game now I don't think the generic "boohoo sorry not sorry" take on bugs is acceptable... Throughout the history of Haven jorb has said that to anyone affected by a bug. Someone killed you with cliff jumping? "Boohoo" You died because of some other bs bug? "Sucks for you! Here's a cape" That was alright when people had not been paying for the game but now we are paying you guys for something that is supposed to resemble a decent game. Instead we get a game that constantly crashes with every update, where the developers don't actually play the game like the rest of us with no clue how true factions work, and where the devs never own up to anything. Jorb acts like a child anytime he is confronted on an issue and never gives a clear answer. The way he handles situations is mind blowing to me... I've been playing this game for a long time and it's slowly going down the drain in terms of content and dev support. We're not just playing you're shitty free 2d game anymore, time to start acting like it guys...

[Granger]

Seeing how we are actually paying for this game now I don't think the generic "boohoo sorry not sorry" take on bugs is acceptable... Throughout the history of Haven jorb has said that to anyone affected by a bug. Someone killed you with cliff jumping? "Boohoo" You died because of some other bs bug? "Sucks for you! Here's a cape"

Only reasonable stance as else they would be flooded with 'revive me' requests as everyone that dies for whatever reason would have an incentive to make up shit how it would have been a bug instead of swimming in circles in a lake.

That was alright when people had not been paying for the game but now we are paying you guys for something that is supposed to resemble a decent game. Instead we get a game that constantly crashes with every update, where the developers don't actually play the game like the rest of us with no clue how true factions work, and where the devs never own up to anything. Jorb acts like a child anytime he is confronted on an issue and never gives a clear answer. The way he handles situations is mind blowing to me... I've been playing this game for a long time and it's slowly going down the drain in terms of content and dev support. We're not just playing you're shitty free 2d game anymore, time to start acting like it guys...

You seem to be feeling entitled, don't you? Shall they also come by to wank you off after you spent a weekend on the 'shitty game from immature developers that's going slowly down the drain' instead of going out to meet someone and getting laid?

Be happy that they don't terminate your account for posts like this, as would happen to you with quite many other 'paid' games these days.