Gate of Souls is an Embarassment

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

The Gate of Souls troop released today has the following spell text:

Curse an Enemy and drain (Magic + 0) Life from them, boosted by my Souls. Then shift it to my Armor. [3:1 Boost Ratio]

However, as it is implemented currently, it doesn’t do anything RESEMBLING this.

The current implementation does the following:

Deal (Magic + 0) True Damage to an Enemy. Gain 0 Armor, boosted by Souls gained [3:1 Boost Ratio]

This BARELY resembles the original spell text at all. Damage dealt doesn’t boost by Souls, Armor gained isn’t based on damage dealt, and the Curse status effect is completely forgotten.

It’s like they didn’t even TRY. The only possible explanation is that NOBODY even tested the spell ONCE between the spell getting coded and the troop getting released.

The issue is blatant and egregious here; the IP2 team is not acting in a professional manner in the continued development of this game.

And before one of the devs said “We tested it before it got changed,” that means you didn’t test it. It’s like saying that you can’t spell terrible because you showered before working out.

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2

As someone who makes spelling mistakes like this thanks to my phone as well. I don’t mean to embarrass you nor correct you. But it is too ironic that I can’t help but hope you did it on purpose. :grinning:

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3

Sadly, it’s all too common. Faction event last weekend, broken pet. Today’s release, broken. Is the AB broken as well, no deeds for a while, just junk after junk…

A litany of these things for a long while, not just recently, where world events could dictate.

4

For those new to the forums. This is nothing new. When things are released there’s about a 50% chance to work right on the day it’s released, and when it doesn’t = “:man_shrugging: making games are hard, we can’t get everything right”. Anyone else who’s only right about their job 50% of the time is fired eventually or they are a Weatherman on TV.

This and the OP are nothing new.
Find the thread as to when Infernus was first released and when Patch 4.8 did the last “fix” which I assume works now… (since it’s not my job to test troops).
Don’t even get me started on Tina 9000. :man_facepalming:

I get embarrassed when I make mistakes. I envy I+2 in their ability to shake it all off. Taylor Swift would be proud.

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5

I don’t mean to pile on here, but this kind of thing is why people have so little faith in new features. Everything is broken on release, so when the last portal for Council of Chiefs was ridiculous, the original Epic Task blueprint was announced, etc, people couldn’t tell if it was by design or bugged/poorly mathed out.

If you don’t have time to run tests, please consider implementing rolling hotfixes moving forward. Each weekly reset can include fixes for the (non-urgent) issues introduced in the last week, and these fixes should be listed in the weekly post. If people can trust that things will get fixed, they won’t be as up-in-arms about everything.

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6

A story. To hopefully provide perspective in these intense times.

I’m a software dev. I’m currently “working from home”, which for me means deal with two kids all day (ain’t no daycare available, the kids are 4 and 1 years old), take “breaks” to have remote meetings and then work after the kids are in bed, at some point after 9 pm. Getting in a full work day before passing out has been a challenge.

This past weekend, I did coding 9 pm - 4/5am every night because a feature absolutely had to be ready today. They gave me the task Friday afternoon. I got it done, but it’s :poop: code, I had no time to research how it should be done, so it’s one hack after another and full of bugs. I flat out told my managers (yes, multiple managers for some reason) to not ship it, it needs more work. They’re currently debating it, but I’m betting it’s getting shipped because there are deadlines to be met and the thought of saying “we missed a deadline” makes managers :poop: their pants. And inevitably, there will be a customer out there who will use my buggy feature and declare, either to us or themselves, “It’s like they didn’t even TRY”

Productivity is down everywhere. Some people are able to work from home as effectively as from the office. Many are not, they might have kids or crappy internet or are sick. The majority of people I know are doing everything in their power to get their work done and it hasn’t been easy. Meanwhile, deadlines haven’t gone away, there’s still the next update to work on, the weekly events, weekly new troops, support and so on.

I don’t know what’s going on in the devs’ team, and neither does anyone else that isn’t part of it, but I’m willing to bet it’s not smooth sailing.

And from personal experience, even “smooth sailing” is never smooth - there are always stakeholders that need the team to deliver more than they can. I have a long list of things that we really should do and 95% of them will not get done because there’s no time or rather, no way to show a concrete $$$ value to the people in charge.

Point being, maybe cut them a bit of slack, eh? Especially during these trying times. I guarantee it, they’re not ambivalent about things like this.

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7

At this point in GoW’s development I would expect the introduction of a new troop to go along the following lines…

  1. Pick piece of unused art pertinent to the Kingdom.
  2. Use existing toolset to specify traits and skills.
  3. Test it.
  4. Release it.

The game mechanics are all in place for the skills and interactions, there’s nothing new here. It should not require additional code. This latest troop shows the continuing decline in Quality Control coming out of IP2. Over the weekend we had a Hive troop with a different skill description depending on the language because of a lack of attention to detail.

If they cared they’d make it right, but the backlog of product failures must now massively outweigh the list of new product features they cannot wait to release in rushed and broken fashion.

So I complain the only way I can. :no_entry::dollar:

8

The issues preceded C19. And will continue long past it. Players don’t make it a big enough deal. So the devs don’t think it’s a big deal either.

I’m not saying in anyway that we shouldn’t be compassionate right now to each other. But that doesn’t mean we can just lower the bar and be good with it. Can still point out the fault… Just be more patient for the resolution than usual.

People rely on games more than ever for escapism and relaxation. Having to deal with bugs shatters that and replaces it with frustration.
The solution seems obvious… Just don’t use the troop.
I have a better solution… If they don’t/can’t test it… don’t release it.

6 Likes
9

This is so flagrantly wrong I’m almost certain this is my last week in the game. I feel like it’s a Trump enterprise at this point.

Another game I played was down for 2 days last week. They ended up compensating every player dang near $25 worth of in-game currencies. In Gems of War we call that “Tuesday”, and we never get compensation.

1 Like
10

We released a fix last night for this issue, if you aren’t seeing it please restart your game and console.

We are sorry for this oversight, and are reviewing our practices. @mitamata is on the money, and we are adjusting to our changed working conditions. I apologise for this, and we are doing what we can to improve moving forward while we work from home.

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11

Maybe you should play your game more since you’re stuck at home due to quarantine anyway. That way when 4.9 rolls around everything will be fixed!

(is saying you’d find a helluva lotta bugs to fix and troops to rebalance)

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I hope things are better for you now that it’s almost a year later! My hubby is a developer (not for GoW). It’s been good for me to hear him while working from home. All of what you said here rings true. He does everything he can to get something done by a deadline…he tells them it’ll be super buggy if it gets released too soon…it gets released…he spends the next long while fixing bugs, meanwhile he’s also supposed to be developing their next release. My heart goes out to you and your little ones. I am glad that you still are able to work from home, even though it’s not easy.

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14

Rude much @Tibo?

Software dev/manager here. Not all jobs are strict Mon - Friday. Some people, especially those with kids, who WFH have extra flexible schedules now and need to work weekends to make a full time week, because they can’t get enough hours in on work days. My rule among my team even before the pandemic was Monday - Friday 10 - 4. Make up the remaining hours however you want, be it mornings, evenings, or weekends. Now with the pandemic it’s even more flexible. Someone having a different schedule than you doesn’t make them dumb. My goodness.

If @mitamata is overworked, that’s not their fault by the way. It’s their manager’s fault. If someone on my team delivers buggy code, that’s a reflection on me.

Mitamata, I hope everything is going better for you now and you got a rhythm down.

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Yes! Thanks guys :blush: I wasn’t going to come back here, but now just want to say, it did take a while to learn to balance things. We got daycare back a couple months after my post and some normalcy has been established. Many lessons were learned - our daycare is closed due to covid for two weeks currently and I immediately cut my hours by half and took some days off. Not doing that craziness again!

On the job front, the manager I had at the time was let go over the summer - turns out shipping :poop: and overworking your employees eventually comes back to haunt you :smiling_imp:

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