Sneaky Sneak Peek of the next Update

We call that confidence :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thanks. Saw the 3.3 info but didnā€™t see the GW troops bit.

While Iā€™m not thrilled about that, either - I really am not - the devs said before that they are on a schedule and sometimes pressed for time. After the UI horror, I really had hoped that these things wouldnā€™t happen again, but I guess it cannot be helped sometimes when third parties are involved and putting up deadlines.

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I wish the 2 options were: Repeat & Quit - with repeat being on the left for us console players so that it would be selected by default saving us 1 more action after every battle. At least as it is now it reduces the actions from 5 down to 2. But why not go all the way and reduce it to 1 action?

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I am sorry you miswrote ā€œoverconfidenceā€ :stuck_out_tongue: .

Their schedule should include a beta test. Itā€™s all a question of organisation. It doesnā€™t seem that difficult to keep a beta version running at the same time than a release one (at least on Steam).
But apparently, they are not interested.

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Welcome to ā€œGames as a Serviceā€.

@Turintuor, itā€™s not that simple, unfortunately. We are very pressed for time and have a strict turnaround for updates. We will be doing as much QA as possible before release, but organising an open beta is a lot of extra work, time and resources.

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I am not sure about that: Branches (Betas) (Steamworks Documentation) (of course thatā€™s only for Steam)

No, this is not how things work. When you implement something new, it sometimes needs to be implemented in one go. You canā€™t implement half a raid mode or half a troop. And if the raid mode - as example - has to be done until date X and you already can see that you canā€™t get the whole thing done until a few days before that (hopefully), then doing a beta test is not doable. Itā€™s like when I do translations - they need to be done until date X and if I can only manage to get them done a day before deadline, then I canā€™t have a friend look over them again before submitting them and can only hope that I didnā€™t goof somewhere in my hurry (which does happen. A lot. Thatā€™s what being pressed for time does to people).

Itā€™s not just the opening of the beta that is work. Itā€™s also organising players, having somewhere for them to talk, addressing their feedback. It needs someoneā€™s full attention to run an open beta effectively. Also, whenever we run an open beta, we want to make sure that players feel like they are being heard, which unto itself takes time as someone has to go between the players and the devs (holla that is usually me).

And this is only possible to even consider doing if we are finished early.

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I donā€™t want to fan the flames, but dang.

If you donā€™t have time for QA, itā€™s going to be a mess.

If players arenā€™t setting the schedule, and player satisfaction isnā€™t the metric for defining features, who is drawing the roadmap? The last major update was a disaster because it shocked the players. So weā€™re going to do it again?

As another software dev Iā€™m starting to get the feeling there are lots of frowns in the office. I really hope the smells Iā€™m picking up are my imagination.

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Unfortunately, our players arenā€™t the ones that dictate the schedule. As hardcore as many of you are, you are also great at understanding when we need more time to release things. (I may or may not be talking about Bright Forest and Shocktopusā€¦)

You are correct in that I canā€™t say much more, but we are doing our best! Also, we do have an internal QA team, so the update will be rigorously tested. We just donā€™t have time for a public beta. When we do have the time I love running them, but it wonā€™t be possible for 3.3.

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+1 for this. #makeithappen

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On a slightly related note, you have the patience of a saint.

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I am playing a game called Dead Cells. They have 3 branches (i.e. versions) alpha, beta and release/official and any players can jump to any versions. They use Steam forum to get their feedbacks.
And I think itā€™s great and this could be used by GoW.

I hope in the future you will consider this kind of approach :slight_smile: .

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Dead Cells is an early access title. Itā€™s a paid beta test (one of my most hated of current gaming trends) so not the same thing as an ever evolving F2P title.

Itā€™s also worth mentioning that beta testing generally isnā€™t to test new features, itā€™s about nutting out any potential bugs that QA didnā€™t catch. I canā€™t think of a single developer that has implemented a beta and then gone, well people didnā€™t like this so letā€™s scrap a huge chunk of the work weā€™ve just done and focus on something else. Doesnā€™t happen, they will tweak balancing issues, and again, sort out any bugs that are caught, but entire game modes arenā€™t decided by beta testers.

Just as another note, if I was a beta tester I would 100% be asking for more Ray Martin in your game, just saying.

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You nailed it @Sin_Ogaris.

My point was more about how they manage their different versions.
Itā€™s just a matter of ā€œdo the game is working on new features or notā€ (like ā€œevolving F2P titleā€ or early acces games).

Yeah of course and I never said that beta testers would choose if devs should keep Raid Boss mode or notā€¦ Maybe the way of respawn is too cumbersome and when doing X battles you get it.

GW should have been released without bracket and with only one defense team for all days. Itā€™s thanks to the feedbacks on this forum that devs thought about it.

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I get what you mean, but I unfortunately still canā€™t agree based on your own information, given that the developers listen to the players (for the most part) and make adjustments based on their grievances it means a beta test isnā€™t really necessary as adjustments are made throughout the course of the development.

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The thing also is that I feel that ā€œcatching issuesā€ is an undefined thing.

Beta testing is incredibly good for not just catching bugs, but also fight tunnel vision you get when developing stuff. Iā€™m pretty sure that with a beta test, the UI numbers wouldnā€™t have been too small at the beginning or the banner texts not readable at first. If you develop stuff slowly, you get used to it because you have slow change. We players get hit by it all of sudden and so, the devs are surprised when we have readability issues or migraine from particles.

But at the same time, we still have the semi-transparent board, unreadable text on card borders and whoever decided to scratch an extremely player-friendly feature of making players pick their TH backgrounds in favor of putting the worst background of the game behind it is still at large. Obviously, as these things are still in despite heavy player feedback, they are intended to be that way and no beta test would have changed that.

Because of that, beta-tests are a weird thing to me. If there will ever be an opening for new beta testers, I dunno if I would apply - on one hand, I love giving feedback and want to help, on the other hand I feel it would frustrate me a lot if something that makes the game much worse for me is going to be implemented and all feedback falls on deaf ears.

Also we must not forget the last update, where beta testers gave a lot of feedback for things like the position of keys in the chest menu (gold keys to the leftā€¦) and there was an uproar when it wasnā€™t implemented despite being promised because the devs had sudden bugs to wrangle and then had no more time to change the stuff they originally wanted to change based on feedback. Thatā€™s frustrating for the players and surely also frustrating for the devs (because they know they will get backlash despite wanting to do it right).

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