A tool i would like for TESTING ONLY (not in-game) would be a built in timer that we can start/stop ourselves to get some rough estimates for certain things: Encounter length, travle time from point A to B, general length if takes to complete a quest, etc.
Can YOU think of other TEST only tools we might need/want?
azaya said:design docs with contextual links to your current area/npc/quest etc so you can tell if its working as intended would be nice.
Maybe a /stuck command. Because we all know that we're going to get stuck at some point. And if we have no gate or /suicide, it's going to be a long wait for someone to come get us out.
/stuck makes sense for testing but I wouldn't want it to persist into the live game, if possible. And, whenever someone does a /stuck, it should drop an entry in a log somewhere about where the problem occurred, so that the art folks who do zone building can go try to fix it.
I would love to see a /stopwatch function - and actually, carry that over to live too, because players could use it for all kinds of emergent stuff (like timing a race, for example)
I'd also love to see a /psr (problem steps recorder) function during testing - something that kicks off a log on your client that logs *everything* that you do and the result - where you clicked, along with screenshots, etc, which you can then in turn share as part of a bug report. To see an example of how this concept can work, in Windows, go to your search/run bar and type PSR. Of course, I guess we could just use the Windows one too, but an in-game one might get behind-the-scenes stuff from the game client that would help with bug squashing.
Nephele said:/stuck makes sense for testing but I wouldn't want it to persist into the live game, if possible. And, whenever someone does a /stuck, it should drop an entry in a log somewhere about where the problem occurred, so that the art folks who do zone building can go try to fix it.
Yeah that's what I meant. A /stuck command would get exploited left and right on launch. I was meaning just for testing. During alpha and beta there will likely be a lot of instances where people get hemmed up in a corner through some poorly placed objects or fall just a bit under the world. A /stuck command during testing would just make it easier for the player and the GMs. It's a quicker solution for testing if you find something like that than having to wait an hour for someone to come move you back out.
Might be a good idea to (and I don't know if this is even possible) add an option to copy quest text into a pad to make any corrections and note them should we find grammar issues, which tends to happen during tests. I found quite a few during Vanguard's beta and had to type it all out by hand. Maybe a click option that copies the quest text to a pad and then writes any changes in a highlighted font to make it easier for the devs to know what's being reported. A quicker tool for that would be a nice to-have.
At first I thought you meant stuck in scenery. And I thought of the EQ1 solution to that of /rewind.
Though I can imagine if there was a sort of option to "rewind" a small sequence, so the tester could more easely confirm a discrepancy/bug.
Being ducked stuck, then /rewind, otherwise an evac to zoneline that a dev could remotely activate for you on a tell request. (why would you want to "cheat" during testing? lol it would defeat the test purpose)
Heh - this might be a bit much, but...
It might be good for them to put something client side that records the last X minutes of play on an ongoing basis (so maybe 5 or 10 minute blocks) along with detailed logs for that span - to the extent they could do so without adding too much overhead to the player's system. (i.e. you don't want the test tools to artifically impose game performance issues).
Then, when people experience a bug or whatever - rather than trying to recreate it, that stuff would just be uploaded for the devs to analyze / watch.
The stuck command couldbe very usefull since climbing is an available skill. Let's say we are practicing our climbing skill and fall between some crevices on the rocks a.d cannot get out. The /stuck command could be used to move you back a few feet so you will be able to once again move.
As far as a timer goes a simple stopwatch or wall clock in front of you or somewhere in sight would take care of that.
Kratuk said:Maybe a /stuck command. Because we all know that we're going to get stuck at some point. And if we have no gate or /suicide, it's going to be a long wait for someone to come get us out.
/stuck is indeed already in the game :) Although I can tell you from my time in the game, I never had to use it. The world is very well meshed, so there wasn't a single time I got stuck or fell through the world. I'm not saying it can't happen. But it probably won't happen very often.
Bazgrim said:Kratuk said:Maybe a /stuck command. Because we all know that we're going to get stuck at some point. And if we have no gate or /suicide, it's going to be a long wait for someone to come get us out.
/stuck is indeed already in the game :) Although I can tell you from my time in the game, I never had to use it. The world is very well meshed, so there wasn't a single time I got stuck or fell through the world. I'm not saying it can't happen. But it probably won't happen very often.
Good to hear. What we've seen looks pretty solid but as we all well know, testing brings out the unseen flaws. So that little tool at least will be handy once they start getting found. I know the most common stick I've hit in testing will usually be something like 2 objects just close enough together that if you slip going over you might land in that one little crack that either puts you just low enough that you can't jump out, or the worse one of the continuous slip, where you never plant fully on the ground and do an eternal looping slide. So that will certainly be handy for that. Thanks for the heads up on confirming that Baz.
I would like a switch to turn on various levels of debug logging on the client that records your interactions in game. Depending on the type of bug you may not see an error message pop-up, but if debug is turned on, it would be logged. so after a session of testing, you could review the session logs for bugs you might not have noticed or pull additional information about the bug from the logs thay you may have forgotten to write it down. They may already have this in place on the server side, in which case they may feel it is un-necessary. Unless its a manual process of a single or few people manually reviewing the logs then its can get very tedious. If each tester is reviewing their debug logs after each session, they may catch some things missed by a few people viewing hundreds of logs. I hope they are parsing the game server logs for various warnings and errors into a database for easy review. A quick database search can be a powerful tool when a bug you thought was squashed re-appears months later. Because no one ever restores old code onto the main branch...:( But I digress into my old IT mindset. Whatever tools they provide we will take full advantage of to make their lives easier..:)
BeaverBiscuit said:In game reporting, at least for simpler things. Much better than having to go to the website and lose/forget half your information as you try to find out where you can even report.
Pretty sure they have the /bug feature, which for the life of me I can not understand why any developer in their right mind would insist that players go to an outside website to report bugs (I'm looking at you Daybreak). It's fine if this is part of the testing forums where players can maybe add additional information to a problem to help developers out once it's discovered, not so much if it's your primary way of doing it and cutting out an ingame /bug tool all together. Lunacy, I say.