Counting the Bugs

Feature Requests and Game feedback
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Would it be possible for the developers to stop releasing content without causing a catalogue of further issues, to the burgeoning bag of game bugs we are enduring?

Anecdotally;

Firstly, where is the progress on fixing this fundamental issue with the game

This bug, reported Jan 24 2021, is at the core of GoW. In summary, the game can move gems before you move them. It’s a quite common occurrence when swiping horizontally to vertically to make 4, for it to record a 3 match. So much so, that 2 handed mouse use in GW when moving such gems is sometimes needed, seriously. It has not even received a comment for nigh 10 months.

What is happening with this core gameplay problem, and when will it be fixed?

Secondly,

We have other fundamental game play issues. Imagine playing chess and using your Bishop diagonally, only for 3/4 of the way to the Queen, it sidesteps off the diagonal. Extra Turns are the way you keep the turn, yet all of the new gem content have either once, or still do, prevent the correct move being recorded.

Thirdly, I could list all the gameplay bugs, but that’s not my job. There are spread around the forum in a variety of topics and seem to never get properly fixed. There seems to be an ambivalence towards gameplay bugs, by reading the forums and observing the response to them. Comments like ‘this has been passed on’ are widespread and generally we hear little or no more about them thereafter. Fundamental turn related bugs should not be allowed to remain in the game, now spreading numerous ‘patches’.

There are so many fundamental bugs in this game that need to be properly reported on by the developers, with the intended fix and a timeline to such fix. Not 1 line answers. Even the last month’s patch notes sidestepped what was supposedly fixed…

This week, you have introduced to my count at least 5 different, new bugs.

GW defence bug is a huge bug, absolutely completely undermines the whole ethos of Guild War, when your points are not properly counted. Top end GW is fiercely competitive and adding an additional bug to the existing score issue (never fixed) is really most unwelcome. I doubt I am alone in thinking that this needs to be reported on by the developers, with the issue and a fix this week.

Miles multiplier issue - game content worked around a necessity, which is not recorded correctly.

Turn issue with Journey - something as ‘fundamental’ as this is broken.

Purchase issues with various things/multiple platforms? Can’t even buy properly?

The gem issue with passes.

I mean the campaign even had numerous repeated tasks, it’s most likely a bug there too.

It would be really good if someone could come to the forum and properly advise when these problems are getting fixed. I’m sure it will restore consumer confidence.

I may have missed bugs.

Sincerely, I like the Journey idea and the rewards, I’d love it to be working properly before we invest in it.

EDIT - There is also a new bug with Wyrmrun traits that got re-added. I’m not sure how it occurs, but I’m getting ‘Extra Turn’ message and no Extra Turn sometimes when exploding the board with Terra Wyrm… I’ll see if I can video it.

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The avalanche of defects needs to stop.
Please push the pause button on new types of gems or any other new content and put all resources on fixing the bugs!

Stability over content guys! This is killing your game

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In regards to the four gem match bug, I think what you linked to is different. The link shoes the gem moving incorrectly, but it is properly registering if its a 3 or 4 gem match.

I explained in a comment on that thread {FINALLY ON FILM! NOT A BUG (lol) BUT REPORTED] Caught the (a) match-4 bug on video - #4 by Snooj why its happening and how to reproduce it every time. Basically, the game is using flick prediction which while great for mobile phones, is terrible with a mouse.

I would be very surprised if they ever fix it. 6.0 was the time to fix it but they didnt. Core gameplay issues, even if easy to change, require full regression testing. A new expansion like 6.0 is perfect for that.

But… They didnt even test that their shiny new journey miles was correct… So lol at regression testing.

Speaking of miles calculation, how did this make it live? How was this not caught by the devs themselves? QA? Beta testers? During any of the internal demos? How?

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Awful times, makes me regret my job as guild Janitor. This week especially as you get home from work and start going through the workings of new content on multiple languages with guildies, then you start listing the bugs while jumping between forum and discord to find answers why something is weird about the game. And this is only one guild, 30 players, I can’t imagine how much work this is for guild family people :grimacing:

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If it’s a well organized network it’s actually less — phone trees (or the equivalent in the discord) are your friend :wink:

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Well they had me doing some contract work and now I have some real legit QA experience. Shame they’d have to pay me an exorbitant amount more than they did before. And then make it worth leaving the much-better company I am working with now.

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Thanks for that update :slight_smile:

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I couldn’t agree more.

Their arrogance is bugging me big time. Add #weavergate to the pile of arrogant things they have done.

The releases with several bugs has been going on for so long now, that it must be a choice they made. We are the testers, while they make money on passes, gems, deals.

In their other game PQ3, they are doing the same: they call it early access, but in reality the players are beta testers, while they are also offering deals, vip passes etc. They don’t really listen to the feedback, they just change the game in the direction they want regardless of what the players say. And the money spend on a pass or something specific, well that money could be wasted, as they change a ressource or gameplay by the next update.

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I can do nothing but agree with the OP here. The number of bugs currently active and unadressed is just ridiculous.

And I can only ask devs for one thing: Please, please, please just stop releasing new content, while the existing content is full of bugs. Postpone any future projects, heroic gems, whatever, sit down on your a**es and work them off to restore a fully functioning, bug-free state of the game. The forum is bursting with bug reports and complaints only hours after the release of literally every update since when? 8 months? Or ist it already 10? And most of the bugs are so obvious and simple to find and reproduce, that it is really a shame to see them in an official release version of the game. This isn´t fun at all and it really needs to stop!

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It is my belief that the parent corporation has mandated that new content is paramount.
"Release it first, and we’ll deal with the bugs/issues (that affect our income) later.

Sad

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ITYM “Get the money first, and we’ll deal with the bugs/ issues later” :rage:

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I’ll say you that:
while we are bunch of individual nobodies, unworthy to be even noticed by the demigods, all will stay the same. we must cooperate and act as one force. if they are understanding hard arguments, we can find some. the question is - can we make a community organized enough?

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Just to be a contrarian voice here? Games that stop releasing new content probably find their player base ebbing away. Because if there isn’t going to be anything new on offer, why should the people who have done (almost) everything stick around if there isn’t something to chase?

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The point here is more fix what is already out there and release new content after
To many bugs are making the game a lot less fun and attractive.

As a high end, and paying player, those cumulative bugs will end up with people line me stop playing

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Are you serious? I hope, that you at least read my whole post and didn´t just stop after the first half sentence you disagree with :roll_eyes: You could at least be so kind to put the whole sentence in your quotation, as my intention never was to say, they should not release any new content never again. Just UNTIL everything released yet is working correctly. By ignoring the second half of the sentence, you are intentionally trying to put a statement in my mouth, that I never made. I hope, that is not your usual way of communicating.

I also don´t understand, what you are trying to say. “Endgamers” would value new content more than a game free of bugs? I´m afraid, but this is not, what the disappointed feedback of numerous players in my guild, that have done really everything, is indicating.

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You can count the GoW bugs? Amazing…I am thinking it is too many especially this week.

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Screenshot_20211119-164500
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Here’s one more for the list of “players not getting what they pay for”: can you imagine how many more short-changes must be hidden in the drop rates because customers can’t test it (and the company won’t/doesn’t care/deliberately allows these to happen)?
:relaxed: :vulcan_salute:

#gowProgrammingCanBeTrusted

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Fixed! All good now. Nothing to see here.

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19

The F2P model is successful when it sustains continued engagement from its’ consumers and can generate a consistent revenue stream. The ideal result would be for that playerbase to regularly spend money on the game; the next tier down would be for that playerbase to watch ads even if they don’t directly contribute money to the sustenance of the game; the next tier down from that would be for that playerbase to at least be playing their title and not a competitor’s title.

And F2P games do that in one of two ways. Either they have to have revolutionary game mechanics and the like that draw people in and haven’t been copied – something that is increasingly unlikely in a world of copycats and for a game model that has been running for six years as GoW has. Or they have to use tools like FOMO to keep pulling their base back in to spend time (and hopefully money) on their product.

Yes, a bug-free game would be a wonderful thing. If it’s even possible, especially in an era of constant, often incessant updates. In the absence of that, keeping the bugs to a tolerable level – however they choose to define “tolerable” – while releasing new content to keep people hanging around is the goal. People, especially those endgamers, need that new rabbit to chase. And if one title doesn’t offer that rabbit, another will gladly step in and show off a bunny of their own. Relatively speaking, there aren’t huge numbers of people who will keep doing “the same old thing” when there are alternatives.

How often do you browse something like Steam or the Google Play store for similar-ish titles? How many of those are there? How many of them are rife with comments about how the title is P2W, about huge swaths of content locked behind paywalls – frequently very expensive paywalls – about energy systems that artificially gate players’ progress? Not that Gems of War doesn’t have some of this stuff, but it’s hardly to the extremes that other titles take it to. And while this shouldn’t forgive I+2 for things like the double skull damage bug and the like that took far too long to identify and fix, it’s a tad unfair to only blame them for the (many) things they’ve done wrong and not give them credit for the things they’ve done better than the competition.

Nor would I take the tenor of the discussion on these forums as truly representative of this player base. I suspect the people writing in these spaces skew in two directions: they’re (much) more active than the average player, and they’re (much) more emotionally invested than the average player.

I’ll use my guild as an example. It’s a very casual PS4-based guild, with a core of ten-or-so players who got together years ago to do “Team Synergy” and a bunch of transients, most of whom don’t stick around long or join the Guild Chat. I’m not the Guild Leader – and I don’t ever want that sort of responsibility – but I’m among the most advanced players and the most active players and I’ve sort of adopted the mantle of Liaison to these boards, bringing up the odd issue here and reporting certain things back to them that I read here.

And most of them don’t have the experiences that I’m seeing in this and other threads. Most of them probably don’t even notice a lot of the bugs that draw attention and agita here; none of them would have even known about what’s being referred to as #WeaverGate had the half-price Weaver not shown up in the Soulforge; at that point a couple of questions as to why popped up in Guild Chat and I provided context taken from here to explain it to them.

But long story short? I don’t think a healthy chunk of GoW’s playerbase agrees with the sentiment that this is a buggy mess, or that new ideas and development should cease or be scaled back that much. Because I don’t think it registers to most of them. I suspect a lot of GoW’s players pop in every so often and play a few matches but not more than that. Probably not enough to even notice a lot of the things that the hardcore, active player does.

Add all this together and to try and tie a bow around it? I don’t think most of the player base views this as an issue the same way a lot of people in these forums do. The casuals probably don’t see a problem. The endgamers need shiny objects to chase.

Bugs should be squelched prior to release, but that’s a lot easier said than done. Especially with trends in the Gaming industry where a lot of releases are bug-filled catastrophes. Or where QA budgets have been sliced to the bone as margins continue to shrink, and have been for years because the cost of producing a game continues to rise while the price that consumers pay has remained largely flat and certainly isn’t keeping up with inflation – assuming we’re not talking F2P stuff that doesn’t charge anybody up front but still lets you play. Or because this modern era of “EZ internet everywhere” has permitted developers to ease up on bug-checking and early play-testing because you can fix the product even in the field as opposed to decades ago where the game you bought from the store was the final product and was nigh-impossible to amend after that.

Put more effort into the bug-checking and the bug-fixing, sure. But new content still has to be a priority.

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A lot of text, but you managed to not twist my statement in a gross way :+1: I´ll try to keep my answer as short as possible (could be difficult).

First point: Who does care for new content? I will take my own personal experience to answer this. As a beginner or mid-level player, I never cared for new content. With my kingdom power levels low, I didn´t get enough gems out of tributes to buy a lot of shop tiers to compete in leaderboard races or to finish a new delve at release weekend. Furthermore, I often didn´t have the units needed to build the most efficient teams in most events. And if I had the units, then my stats were simply too low to do much more than the battles given from the free sigils. Only since I was far above level 1000 I did start to care for new released content, as all the obstacles stated before were not true anymore. I started to look forward to new delve releases (and was annoyed, when they were bugged…) and I was curious for new features like lycanthropy, the potions, the new kingdom, the journey (and am of course annoyed, when they are bugged - which was true in some kind of way for every single one of them). So, my first point, it is mainly long time players, that care for new content and will have a close look at it. And of course, they will be annoyed, when new content is bugged.

Second point: Who is putting money in this game? I am pretty sure, most players of guilds like yours will not. You are mentioning a bunch of “transients”, I guess, they are just trying the game for a few days or weeks, then decide, that they don´t like it enough to put their time (and money) in it, then quit. In contrast, I can tell you, that my guild puts a significant amount of money in the game. Many of us have bought elite passes for all campaigns and also the kingdom pass this week. I think, that the most amount of money is coming a) from long time players either still liking the game and want to support it or having the FOMO and b) from newer players, that do like the game and want to catch up as fast as possible.

Point 1 and 2 already are a very dangerous combination: Annoying the hell out of those people, that generate the biggest part of the revenue does not seem to be the smartest of all plans.

Point 3: Who is keeping the games community alive? My guild is a member of a guild family of 3 guilds, I would say, that the most advanced and “hardcore” players are in our guild. The second one is more casual and the third one is open for beginners. While beginners are not playing in my guild, we are still supporting them whenever they have questions, no matter if it is about certain features of the game, how they can advance in the fastest way or just some advice on team building. By that, I would say, we “help” to keep newer players interested in the game. And I guess, that all of the other big guild families - and there are many on PC/mobile - work more or less the same. If all the experienced long time players are so pissed off by too many bugs, that they at some point quit, you will reach a point, where the community isn´t as helpful for newer players as it is now and that will not help to keep newer players in the game. And by the way, if I would imagine, that I have started GoW about 4 or 5 months ago and would try journey mode and during the first 20 fights my game maybe freezes 2 or 3 times due to the Hawthorn bug - that would for sure not help to keep me playing the game. So also from this point of view I can´t agree with your attitude of “new content has priority above bug free releases”.

And a final point, that is very important: If I understood well, you are a PS4 player. Well, then I have to tell you, that you are missing the biggest part of the “fun” of this week. For PC/mobile, guild wars is completely broken. I don´t know a lot about the competition on PS4, but I think, there are far less players and far less competitive guild wars guilds than on PC/mobile. The first 3 to 4 brackets in PC/mobile are already really competitive and that is because of the high number of guilds really focusing on guild wars. For obvious reasons, these guilds have mainly or even only members, that are playing the game for a very long time. A lot of them are only staying in the game for guild wars, you can read it in the thread about the bugged guild wars scoring. So handing out a bug like this is a big desaster for the motivation in these guilds. My guild isn´t even a competitive guild wars guild and even we have some players thinking about quitting or at least taking a break of the game. I can´t even imagine the situation in other guilds, that take guild wars really serious. This could be a good way to lose a lot of those players and why that would be bad, just see points 1-3.

I can understand, that as a PS4 player, this week is probably not so bad for you. But I can tell you, on PC/mobile it is just insane mayhem. So from your point of view, it might make sense to say “nah, this weeks bugs are not sooo bad, at least, we got new content”. From my point of view, it is just completely different. Updates like this are simply an insult for a lot of players on PC/mobile and should better never happen again. So I still stand to my original demand: Putting just more and more updates on this broken code will for sure not improve the situation, so better no more updates until everything existing is properly fixed.

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