Warface Top Issues. Part II
Categories: General
18 Dec 2020 01:28 PM UTC
Soldiers!
In the previous article we covered such topics as “servers”, “game economy” and “cheaters”. In today's agenda there are equally important things concerning content prioritization and bug fixing.
Very often we see players saying things like “you don’t listen to the community”, “why don’t you implement what we tell you?” on our Social Media.
So how do we actually decide on what content to add into the game?
To answer this question we first want to give you a brief overview on the types of content we introduce:
- Major content updates. This section includes such novelties as “Swarm”: new Special Operations and maps, the UI rework and other big features. Usually we keep this info secret before the actual release. The development of these things takes months of non-stop work.
- Minor features such as small reworks, weapon rebalancing, new weapons, etc. Most of the community suggestions belong to this category. Usually it doesn’t take too much time to develop them but these little guys may be tricky and even a small change may require a huge rework of certain basic aspects(for example, the regional pop-up, the “Clear all” button in notifications, etc).
- Bug fixes. (Burn them! Burn them with fire!)
At the end of every year we create a Roadmap for the next year which includes new content alongside with the rework of the older content. Usually this schedule is highly dense, and it doesn’t leave much space to add things on the go.
Then which community suggestions can make it into the game?
When we receive a community suggestion we evaluate it according to the following factors:
- What User Experience improvement it will bring;
- The technical side ( can the feature be actually implemented and how much time it would take for the developers to do so );
- If it fits the current game realities and the game’s direction;
- The frequency of this suggestion (how many players asked for it).
On the first stage the most frequently asked suggestion makes its way to the project team and specifically to the game producers. They decide if the suggestion fits the game and if it will be useful for the majority of the player base. Later on, the suggestions that “passed” the second stage are discussed with the developers to find out if it’s possible to implement them and to evaluate the estimated development time. Based on their synopsis, it’s decided whether the suggestion fits the current Roadmap, or it should wait its turn for the next one (which is decided upon in the end of the year).
Thus, all the community suggestions that are going to be implemented are announced in the development roadmap.
Community feedback
Suggestions are not the only thing we receive from our community, we also get a lot of feedback which promotes us to think about “quality of life” changes. We decided to put a special emphasis on improving your game experience and work on the most “burning” issues, while making this process more transparent. To define the direction of development, we recently launched an opinion survey in the Game Center (it ended today) and expect it to help us better reflect your wishes in the final product.
Bugs
Speaking of the most burning issues, we consider “Bugs” as one of the most important. First, we want to specify that a bug is a software error, and it has nothing to do with an intended client behavior or server performance. We are here to tell you more about the process of game testing and bug fixing.
Before September 2020 the game versions of Warface Ru and Warface International didn’t quite match, which basically meant there were two different games with the same content. As Warface International didn’t have a PTS, its version didn’t undergo public testing, only the internal one. Starting from September, the game versions got synchronized, and they go through both internal and load testing before every update (on the Russian PTS).
However, sometimes it’s still not enough to track all the bugs, so the developers issue hotfixes giving the highest priority to the most critical errors.
We totally understand all the disappointment and frustration such situations may lead to, so currently we’re working on improving the testing processes not to let nasty bugs go live alongside with the new content. We’ll update you on the status of this development in the following articles on the topic.
Just a reminder, if you encountered a bug - here is a guide to bug reporting.
We appreciate your patience and the continuous support.
Sincerely yours,
Warface Team
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