It has been a while since I posted last because I have been spending my time in some other betas and though I would add a post about something that really irritates me.
If the point of an alpha, beta or early access is to find and report bugs and balancing issues why do some games make it so difficult to report them? I’m talking about not allowing a player to create bug or feedback reports in game on the fly. In the current game I’m playing when I run into something new after a patch my first thought is I should report it, but because I have to log out of the game and then log into the website and find the section for bugs I usually skip reporting it or tell myself I’ll do it later, especially if it’s something small.
Let’s say I’m running through town and I see that a boulder is sticking through the farmer’s wall in an unintentional way. This is what I would like to see in Pantheon from day one of testing. While in game I hit esc to get to the main menu and hit the feedback option. Up pops a menu that asks me if its general feedback or a bug report. I hit bug report button and then ask me what type of bug it is to include an “other” option for bugs that don’t fit into the provided categories. I hit the graphic bug option and it creates a form with specific questions associated with graphic problems. I fill in my boulder information, click the current location box that records my location for the form and summit it all in a few minutes of work. Now I’m back to playing with almost no interruption.
I guarantee if you want lots of bug reports to be summited you need to make it as easy as possible because lets faces it most prerelease players are not devoted enough to log out to report bugs.
This style (which I have seen in a few games before) should allow for better organization of the reports on the development side. I can only imagine the work it takes to sort out which report goes to who when your company bug reporting mechanism is simply a single text box asking you to tell them about the bug in a single paragraph.
Don’t work harder, work smarter.
We actually already have several discussions active on this one of which was recent with Dev interaction and in that thread I stated that we will release an official guide which I am working on currently with Convo, so I will have to close this thread to keep the discussion consolidated, please wait for our official release with further instructions.