(12-13-2015, 07:25 PM)Valence Wrote: The ones playing extensively are part of the QA department, as well as beta testers. And they do it more than most of us.Â
Then again, on the various points you raise, I can try to bring some answers as I work in the industry myself.
- On the inconsistency between the story and the game, it is something that I usually find very sad yet true: the game takes precedence. The main issue when developing games is that nothing is set in stone and things are always in motion. The end product barely has anything left from early drafts. When you have already laid down most of the lore and story, and when the QA feedbacks tell that the game is not good, not fun, or that some things have to change, then they have to. And then all the other department have to take that into account and modify what they did as much as they can... All of this during heavy time constraints. Most of the time, the more advanced is the development, the more inconsistencies tend to appear. Of course yes, I think that the stories offered by themepark MMOs often don't quit fit the kind of game they serve, as you say. I don't have an answer to that, maybe then that's the themepark model that is flawed... But if you remove those badly fitting stories, what is left to keep the grind... I mean, leveling, compelling, at least a little?
- "Gameplay issues" is subjective. Most players tend to state that X or Y is obviously OP or UP, or broken and should be fixed, based on their own experience. The mistake they do is always to assume that because they came to that conclusion, everyone else did. They often answer to that that you just have to read "forums". Which means, a vocal minority most of the time. I have found out most of the time that when something is not fixed or corrected the way some people expect it, it's often because they are actually the minority, and that the devs don't necessarily cater to their whims. Players, simply put, often lack the bigger picture. Of course, you also have the gamebreaking bugs that are not totally blocking you to play the game, but are not fixed for years, and that, even if companies have to prioritize heavily what is to fix first, can be quite telling of the quality of the service, yes...
- For features that nobody likes, it's always a gamble. You think that your feature or game is fun or compelling, or should work fine, and your QA has been enthusiastic about it. And yet, it fails to meet the expectations. That can happen. Creating "fun", is maybe the most volatile and subjective task ever invented. What is "fun"? Will all those different players find something fun too? Then of course, there is also the features that gets added because marketing asked them to be, no matter what...
Hi, person who works in QA outsourcing here.
- We cannot do script-editing of the title. If shit makes no sense, it has to be caught on dev side. Trust me there are many, MANY times I wished I could put what would be basically a "script makes no sense who the fuck proofread this?" bug and was thoroughly denied.
- Most of the gamebreaking stuff I've seen on titles I've worked on were stuff that we did log, but were completely ignored. The only time I've seen that we missed a thing was a disastrous launch where we simply could not have foreseen what happened, as well as another really dumb thing later on down the line that we should have seen, but didn't :/
- We typically only give our feedback when it's requested by the client. Which is almost never.
I know at this point I'm probably the 10,000th person saying this, but still bears repeating because for some reason I keep hearing people blaming the QA when all they really do is say "there is a bug there, here's how you reproduce it, here's our assessment of how bad it can be with proof".
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In so far as script, I'd say before MMO plots can truly reconcile the personal with the global experience with both being fun and engaging, they need to drastically change the formula and that's not going to happen.
