To Citan - Comments about player feedback

[Khaylara]

"1) We can't collect any metrics automatically. In order for us to collect information we have to sit at our computers with a pad of paper and a pencil (or equivalents) and write down every action we take (every hit, every bit of damage, every mob we kill, every item those mobs carry, every step of every recipe we craft, etc.)

2) You don't provide specific, detailed information in updates. You make vague statements like "I tried to improve how useful cheese is in recipes" or "I increased drop rates in ZONE-NAME". You deliberately obfuscate the intentions behind your changes by using vague wording. If we don't know what you're specifically trying to do, we can't tell you if you've done it.

3) Information that should be available to us as alpha-testers isn't available to us, because this is an old-school mysterious game and we should discover it all for ourselves. You deliberately hide the numbers from us and expect us to reverse-engineer what you've done.

4) There's a lack of dev maturity and ongoing passive-aggression in responses on known bottlenecks that repeatedly frustrate players. "


Besides the...heated tone of OP

1. We are not testers in the classic sense of the word. From my limited experience testing another game, a dev gave me access to a test server, I opened a .doc and while playing I wrote down all the bugs I could find. I had limited access to the test server (said test server was up only for a couple of hours a day). Fairly sure this game is actually a free to play perfectly playable game atm. Due to the lack of funds needed to hire actual testers (and probably for marketing purposes too) we get to play for free (and to an extent impact the development process) in exchange to bug reports. Imho a good deal for both sides.

2. I'm okay with vague terms, if I have doubts that a feature is intentional I just report it.

3. I don't understand this point, yes, we already know it's an old school game in which we are supposed to discover things by ourselves (and rate the experience, is it immersive enough? Did we like X zone? Could it be improved?)

4. There is something called "short fuse" but I don't think Citan actually has it (speaking as someone with a very short fuse) More like he works really hard at this and we sometimes complain a lot which most likely tests the limits of his patience. I think calling him "immature" is out of line and I'm surprised he responded to this thread.

Side note-yes, he released the json files (try asking these off any other developer or anything client-related and see if you get anything). Overall this is the only game where I saw this level of interaction between the staff and the players, I get actual responses to my bug reports and the suggestions I make are read and taken into consideration. I doubt my experience is different from any other player's.