Community Priority Bugs

[Kafka]

Community priority bugs

Let’s talk about it, I want to give you some insight into this small part of what we do.

We maintain a list of top 5 bugs that are a priority for the community. This is in the Feedback section because I don’t want to clog up the bug reports with a discussion thread AND community bugs is about how we prioritise things for the community and one of our processes - not about the bugs themselves.

The dev team puts time into focusing on these issues each development cycle for each update.
There is no guarantee that all the bugs listed will be fixed, but the programmers do check them out and do what they can and let us know why if something can’t be done in the update we’re working on.
These are not the only bugs being looked into by the programmers each dev cycle, but these are bugs we have all put emphasis onto to make sure they get some extra attention.

These bugs are chosen for the list based on reasons that include but are not limited to the following:

• How many players are talking about it in game and in the community
• How many and how regularly we receive support tickets about it
• How many players it affects
• How game breaking it is

There are no “rules” for how this list is compiled, the CX team put it together based on things including but not limited to:

• Our conversations with you all and what we see going on in the community even when we’re not participating in the discussion
• Our experience triaging bugs
• Knowing what may have already been fixed in the next update so doesn’t need to be added to the list any more
• Making decisions to not add some things due to knowing it will not fit in the schedule yet so not wanting to waste a spot on the list.
  • These things are very much still communicated thoroughly - but are not kept on this specific list.
• We are more likely to include lower priority bugs on this list if it directly pertains to the features/areas of the game that the programmers are working on RIGHT NOW.

Very low impact issues (such as visual issues) won’t make this list if there’s major issues going on even if there’s a lot of talk about them - although you’ll see in a minute a visual issue that’s broken a threshold of badness is on the list currently, so it can happen!

We update this list once at the start of the development cycle, and only mid cycle if something unexpected and a big deal pops up before the start of the next dev cycle. This does not include urgent issues that have server fixes that the team work late into the night to get resolved quickly - only bugs that require a client fix or maybe they do have server fixes but for insert very situationally specific reason it can’t be quickly fixed with a server deployment.

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Current Priority Community bug list:

DISCLAIMER I have not updated this list for the new dev cycle, which is why it’s not 5 items and the things on it may yet change, I’ll be updating it before the end of the week.

• Visual issue where the Gold Mark region bonus appears as a Silver Mark bonus even though players receive the Gold Marks correctly
  • We receive a LOT of help requests for this, so even though it’s a visual issue, it’s bothering enough players, regularly enough that we’ve got it on this list.
• PvP Teams resetting/not saving when an Immortal is on the team
• Bonus VP from PvP Goals Rewards to count towards Season Pass progress
• PvP Leaderboard Rewards sometimes not received
• ??? bug was fixed and removed from list - not got a real good one in my brain hole right this second as I post this- but I will when I update this list

If this has been of interest/value to any of you let me know. Happy to share the updated list with you if you’d like once I’ve got it as long as we’re all chill with each other in this discussion and talking like we’re on the same team. That’s my personal boundary, I appreciate you allllll <3

[AMT]

Odd that the Notifications issue is not in there

Do you also keep a list for things that you do not consider ‘bugs’, but the community really hopes for? (e.g. Alliance Ranks not resetting)

[Dwuemka]

A fix to missing guild pet rescue notifications, pretty please…

And, while not a bug on its own, it’s a real burning issue - soulforge mythic rotation… it’s become far too long and waiting for a specific mythic can take up to over a year, if the stars align the wrong way.

[Kafka]

@AMT

Odd that the Notifications issue is not in there

This is due to what’s causing the issue we had to change the service we were using for push notifications and the one we changed to doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the old service had. We’re talking with the service provider to work out what the options are to resolve this and even about the possibility of if they’d add the functionality we need.

So even though this is a big issue for the community - due to the nature of the issue and what it’ll take to resolve it, it is not on this specific list.

@AMT

Do you also keep a list for things that you do not consider ‘bugs’, but the community really hopes for? (e.g. Alliance Ranks not resetting)

Absolutely!

[Maisie]

@Kafka

PvP Teams resetting/not saving when an Immortal is on the team

Good; that’s top of my mental list of annoyances, and to be honest I’m baffled that this one hasn’t already been fixed. It’s been broken ever since shortly after the Immortals release, it’s trivially reproducible, and it actively undermines the entire Immortals feature: at the moment I’m deliberately not using Immortals on my PvP teams because it’s so annoying having to constantly re-enter the team after it gets wiped.

Like AMT I also have a long mental list of quality-of-life issues – show the World Event scoring rules in-game! show Tower of Doom scouting automatically in-game! but I also have a mental list of weird accumulated cosmetic cruft that annoys me, for example:

• the stuck-in-5-years-ago world map scaling: why do I always have to scroll around looking for kingdoms? I have a big monitor, let me zoom it out further!
• the weird flashes of UI rescaling on transitions between game modes; harmless, but looks janky
• the way that some of the UI have been updated to the gold navigation buttons and title banners, but some of it is still on the previous iterations’s blue buttons; when you enter Arena you get the old overlaid over the new:
  
  

Like: I’m glad there’s a top 5 but I feel there’s a long tail of quality-of-life and tech-debt and good-enough-for-now-ship-it issues below that patiently waiting their turn.

[Dwuemka]

@Kafka

This is due to what’s causing the issue we had to change the service we were using for push notifications and the one we changed to doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the old service had. We’re talking with the service provider to work out what the options are to resolve this and even about the possibility of if they’d add the functionality we need.

So even though this is a big issue for the community - due to the nature of the issue and what it’ll take to resolve it, it is not on this specific list.

How many sacrificial lambs, chickens, and carrots do we have to kill as the community to make it happen faster? I’ve found I’m playing less and less, and engaging less with my guild ever since the notifications broke down. Kingdom income notifications aren’t as reliable as they used to be either

[Kafka]

Yeah for sure re: the QoL requests.

I was having a think but I’m not sure having a clone of this thread that is just about QoLs, not bugs would actually work the same way.

It’s very late in the day here - I did accidental overtime as I didn’t notice the time, so, I’ll wait until normal work hours when I have a fresher brain to have a think about how best to have this sort of discussion about QoL requests while also maintaining the discussions about each request in their specific threads as otherwise it will be completely unweildy

There’ll be a very simple way to do this that my tired brain just can’t compute right now - this is my sign to sign out for the day because I’m becoming a bit useless ha

How about we do this, stick to this bug discussion and the existing discussion threads about the other stuff over the next day and I’ll get back to you on initiating a Community QoL priorities discussion

[AMT]

@Kafka

Absolutely!

Care to share that list too so the community can better help adjust the top 5 as required dynamically?

I’d hope to see Alliance Ranks not resetting, ToD auto-mapping, and the accessibility of Hoard Mimic, Underspire Guardians and Tarot Cards on such a list.

[Kafka]

Please don’t sacrifice any helpless farm animals this time.

I’ll try to get a progress update from the team in the next dev meeting

[Kafka]

@AMT

Care to share that list too so the community can better help adjust the top 5 as required dynamically?

I don’t actually maintain a top 5 list that is just dot points like the top bugs.

We have multiple spreadsheets and even word docs.
QoL requests are a very different beast.

But leave it with me. Maybe there’s something I can share like I have with community bugs in this thread.

[Fourdottwoone]

@Kafka

This is due to what’s causing the issue we had to change the service we were using for push notifications and the one we changed to doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the old service had. We’re talking with the service provider to work out what the options are to resolve this and even about the possibility of if they’d add the functionality we need.

So even though this is a big issue for the community - due to the nature of the issue and what it’ll take to resolve it, it is not on this specific list.

From player perspective, there’s an important feature that stopped working, due to a change on your side, within your responsibility. This is a bit like your game servers getting stolen, while there might not be a way for a UI designer to fix it, there’s still a very strong expectation to be able to play again. Would it be possible that you rework your list of “community priority bugs” to reflect what the community perceives as broken, not what you perceive as easy to repair?

To add a bit of context here, you may not be receiving many tickets in regards to broken notifications. But they are sure causing guilds some major grief, due to way too many members complaining about missing out on tributes and pet rescues.

[awryan]

@Kafka

Visual issue where the Gold Mark region bonus appears as a Silver Mark bonus even though players receive the Gold Marks correctly

• We receive a LOT of help requests for this, so even though it’s a visual issue, it’s bothering enough players, regularly enough that we’ve got it on this list.

It’s a visual issue that is causing less players to know that gold marks can be earned for free. Therefore it feels super unethical that it has not been fixed yet. Infinity Plus 2 games gets to tell the platforms that gold marks can be earned daily this way. But the player doesn’t know that because they don’t see that. The expectation that they do these battles in hopes of getting gold marks instead of silver marks is even more unethical.
Let’s say that every bug that doesn’t hurt the player helps the publisher retain or make more money. And vise versa. How many of the “bugs and notification issues” on your list hurt the player experience?

[Raistlin]

How is the white block that obscures the center of the board in PvP still not on this list??? It’s only been an issue for a year. Plus, whether it’s working as intended or not, how about stop screwing players that actually play the game and increase their level over 2k by giving us at least one battle with over 50VP? I not only rarely see battles worth more than 50 VP, I often get battle sets where all three are less than 50 VP.

[NerdieBirdie]

Loving the extra communication of this thread! This is a really important conversation to have with the community.

[Stratelier]

@Maisie

It’s been broken ever since shortly after the Immortals release, it’s trivially reproducible…

I tested this last night placing Immortal Virago on a team then doing one battle in her home region (currently having a “Knight” restriction). My team was still pre-loaded when I selected a second battle … (checks) … but disappeared after the Daily Reset. This is why steps to reproduce are important – and why any bugs that occur specifically across a Daily Reset may be deemed difficult to reproduce, since (without a proper testing environment) you can literally only make one attempt per day.

[Maisie]

It’s not just daily reset that wipes Immortal-not-matching-region-restriction teams; it also occurs on tribute collection (reproducible in 1 hour) and on game quit/restart (reproducible in 30 seconds).

I don’t think people have been quiet about repro steps for this.

[Dust_Angel]

Sorry, man, it has absolutely nothing to do with daily reset specifically. Simply close the game and open it again - the team will be gone. Just collect tribute - the team will be gone.

Replicating is indeed trivial - anything that triggers their team-legality-check script wipes the lineup.
And they know perfectly well when and under what conditions the script gets triggered (they made the script and put it where it is, didn’t they?). So, what is their problem?

[Stratelier]

@Dust_Angel

Simply close the game and open it again - the team will be gone. Just collect tribute - the team will be gone.

I left my game running overnight (it’s been a longstanding habit). However, I did collect an hourly income after it splashed the Daily Login Rewards screen.

But this is not specific enough. For example, after leaving the game on suspend for an hour or so, I assembled a PVP team (including an otherwise-non-compliant Immortal troop in their home region), did one Quick Battle, collected an Hourly Income, and . . . oh wait, my team combination actually IS still there, it wasn’t wiped.

This does not cross my line into being “trivially” reproducible – which I admittedly define pretty narrowly, mostly as “immediately apparent/discoverable regardless of any specific steps to trigger it”. I can still consider it “easily” reproducible i.e. assuming the correct steps are followed, albeit complicated by some ambiguity regarding the actual steps. And with that said, I shut off the game and restarted it, and found my PVP team to be wiped. All within a span of about 10 minutes…

[Maisie]

@Kafka

we had to change the service we were using for push notifications and the one we changed to doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the old service had

From the user perspective, on Android at least: it’s not the bells and whistles that are missing here, it’s basic functionality. Notifications just aren’t arriving reliably.

[Voq]

@Kafka

This is due to what’s causing the issue we had to change the service we were using for push notifications and the one we changed to doesn’t have all the bells and whistles the old service had. We’re talking with the service provider to work out what the options are to resolve this and even about the possibility of if they’d add the functionality we need.

Does that include Android notifications not having a timestamp? That seems like it should be controlled from the app’s code itself. Or is it just not on the radar? It was mentioned in an older thread but I don’t think anyone opened an actual bug report thread for it.