"Do the devs play this game?"
Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 4:02 am
I've been visiting forums (and moderating a few) for several years now, and one of the more common phrases I've seen, especially on MMOG boards is "do the devs (actually) play this game?".
It may surprise you to learn that most devs actually don't play the games they make - all they see is code. Let me tell you how I know this...
I work for EA in one of the various QA departments (let me finish this post before you try and lynch me for working for EA) and during my time here I discovered that in general devs never see the actual games they're making. They see pages and pages of code, but not the actual results of that code. In fact, the first time they usually see the results of their work is when they get a copy of the game after it's released (a perk of working for a game company - you get a free copy of any game you work on).
This is why we in QA not only look for bugs, but also report on bad gameplay. If a feature sucks, we report it to our project leader and if he/she agrees, they will forward that to the producer for consideration, and they may or may not change it depending on various factors such as time remaining until release, how hard it is to fix, whether fixing will cause problems with other parts of the game and so on.
Now, I'm not sure how Nevrax do it, but you can be reasonably sure that they work to a similar process, so the next time you're tempted to say/think/post "do they devs play this game?", the truth is - they probably don't.
In this case, we are the QA team after a fashion. After all, we're the ones actually playing the game, so it is our responsibility (to an extent) to report bugs, broken features, exploits and nasty gameplay to them so they can fix it. The best way to do this is via the bug reporting tool, but most people tend to use the forums. I say this is our responsibility simply because we all want the game to work well so we can enjoy playing it, and we're far more likely to see issues than the QA team at Nevrax because we play more and there are more of us.
All I would say is if you are going to report something you think isn't right, the best way to do it is with a clear, concise post containing a clear step by step description of what the problem is, what you were doing when you found it, and how to recreate it, with as much detail as possible. Just saying "teh devs r all teh suXX0rZ i quit" won't help anyone, neither will just saying "combat is broken, fix it or else" as neither will help the dev team figure out how to fix the problem. To quote an old axiom - they can't fix it if they don't know what's broken.
Now, we all know there's been some problems with patch 1, and this has really highlighted this issue. A lot of people say something doesn't work, then a lot come and say it does and accuse the first group of not knowing what they're doing, and so the flames begin. I personally don't know what (if anything) is wrong with combat, because I rarely do it, but I wonder whether it's entirely the fault of the game or whether some people cannot/will not react to the changes and modify their play style accordingly. I'm not going to say either side is right because as I said, I don't know enough about the problem. It would seem however that something is amiss, simply from the size of the arguments.
What I will say is if you want to communicate an issue to the dev team, please try and do so in a calm, rational articulate manner - not just for combat, but for anything you come across in game that doesn't seem to be working properly. It also helps if you can get other people to try it, and see is they have the same problem as you.
This advice isn't really intended to solve the current issues, but more for future reference, as the patch 1 thing has been pretty much done to death already, and is in the process of (hopefully) being fixed. The current situation does show that the system does work to an extent as the devs are reacting to the concerns of the players. Whether they should or should not have applied patch 1 is now irrelevant.
It may surprise you to learn that most devs actually don't play the games they make - all they see is code. Let me tell you how I know this...
I work for EA in one of the various QA departments (let me finish this post before you try and lynch me for working for EA) and during my time here I discovered that in general devs never see the actual games they're making. They see pages and pages of code, but not the actual results of that code. In fact, the first time they usually see the results of their work is when they get a copy of the game after it's released (a perk of working for a game company - you get a free copy of any game you work on).
This is why we in QA not only look for bugs, but also report on bad gameplay. If a feature sucks, we report it to our project leader and if he/she agrees, they will forward that to the producer for consideration, and they may or may not change it depending on various factors such as time remaining until release, how hard it is to fix, whether fixing will cause problems with other parts of the game and so on.
Now, I'm not sure how Nevrax do it, but you can be reasonably sure that they work to a similar process, so the next time you're tempted to say/think/post "do they devs play this game?", the truth is - they probably don't.
In this case, we are the QA team after a fashion. After all, we're the ones actually playing the game, so it is our responsibility (to an extent) to report bugs, broken features, exploits and nasty gameplay to them so they can fix it. The best way to do this is via the bug reporting tool, but most people tend to use the forums. I say this is our responsibility simply because we all want the game to work well so we can enjoy playing it, and we're far more likely to see issues than the QA team at Nevrax because we play more and there are more of us.
All I would say is if you are going to report something you think isn't right, the best way to do it is with a clear, concise post containing a clear step by step description of what the problem is, what you were doing when you found it, and how to recreate it, with as much detail as possible. Just saying "teh devs r all teh suXX0rZ i quit" won't help anyone, neither will just saying "combat is broken, fix it or else" as neither will help the dev team figure out how to fix the problem. To quote an old axiom - they can't fix it if they don't know what's broken.
Now, we all know there's been some problems with patch 1, and this has really highlighted this issue. A lot of people say something doesn't work, then a lot come and say it does and accuse the first group of not knowing what they're doing, and so the flames begin. I personally don't know what (if anything) is wrong with combat, because I rarely do it, but I wonder whether it's entirely the fault of the game or whether some people cannot/will not react to the changes and modify their play style accordingly. I'm not going to say either side is right because as I said, I don't know enough about the problem. It would seem however that something is amiss, simply from the size of the arguments.
What I will say is if you want to communicate an issue to the dev team, please try and do so in a calm, rational articulate manner - not just for combat, but for anything you come across in game that doesn't seem to be working properly. It also helps if you can get other people to try it, and see is they have the same problem as you.
This advice isn't really intended to solve the current issues, but more for future reference, as the patch 1 thing has been pretty much done to death already, and is in the process of (hopefully) being fixed. The current situation does show that the system does work to an extent as the devs are reacting to the concerns of the players. Whether they should or should not have applied patch 1 is now irrelevant.
if they can come faster that is i notice that they are fixing bugs as we let them know of them