It would be nice to have more/clearer feedback regarding some long-standing bugs
Hi! Let me preface this by saying that I love this game, I think the whole team has been doing an outstanding job at improving it in the last few years, and the game health operations planned for this year are exciting as hell. The change in how new gameplay/UI/QOL changes, updates and announcements are brought to the community through social media lately has also been amazing and for the better. Same thing for the members who manage the forums; I know well how stressful/disrespectful customer care jobs can get and you guys are always really professional, nice and very much underappreciated. I'm sorry for all my long ramblings you had to read during the Sadako PTBs lol.
I think there's only one minor thing that could be improved on and that could make things clearer and ease up some frustrating aspects: I think communication from the team about long-standing (1+ year) bugs and issues could be clearer and more active, for example through the "Known issues" section of the forum but also through social media / other means in general.
I think the "Known issues" category is a great part of the forum that could be used a bit more often/actively. It's mainly used just for the big, game-breaking bugs, but even then it isn't necessarily updated (for example, there is currently a huge game-breaking bug affecting the Twins ever since the last update + a bunch of fairly big Ghoul bugs, but the "Known Issues" section was last updated in early February).
Members of the BHVR team posting about acknowledging a bug confirms that the bug/issue has been read by the devs, identified as an issue and "put on the to-do list", so to say, so even if there's not a definite ETA for a fix it at least tells us that it's being looked on and I think that's already a great step in communication.
On that regard, aside from being used more, I think it would be nice to use the "Known issues" part for minor bugs that have been reported multiple times/been in the game for a year or more.
For example, @xoreyna and I have posted about Elodie/Laurie cosmetic bugs repeatedly over the span of months/a year; I understand that in this specific case they are very minor, low-priority bugs affecting unpopular characters and that they inevitably end up at the bottom of the to-fix list (rightly so, as gameplay-affecting bugs are more important for example), but the same happens with killers that have often-reported 1+ year long bugs, and I believe in both cases it would be nice to have that "we saw and confirm this long-standing bug exists, we will get to it eventually" confirmation even if a fix can't come anytime soon.
The frustration stems from the fact that, even for those low-priority problems like the aforementioned Elodie/Laurie bugs, players have spent real money on skins (and sometimes full characters) that have been completely broken for a year or more, and we have no idea whether it's on the to-do list or not.
And obviously sometimes it's impossible to even know when/if a bug can be fixed, and it would be impossible to do it for every bug in the game, but I think at least doing it with some of the most commonly reported and/or long-standing ones would be a great change. Some time ago the team acknowledged that the Sadako demanifesting bug that has been in the game for more than one year exists, but we don't know if at the time or even now it was actively been working on, if it was acknowledged but kept for much later, or if they tried already and couldn't find a fix at the time, for example. Having a thread over on the "Known Issues" section would keep the issue afloat, and even if the answer about a bug's status wouldn't be positive, having it all would be a change for the better.
It's inevitable that the less played survivor and killer characters get their bugs fixed later, compared to the most popular/latest ones, and that's understandable. But clearer and more active communication on that front would definitely ease the inevitable frustration, and I think there is room for improvement on this front.
sorry for long post :)
Comments
Yeah it is very frustrating. I’ve uploaded a bug report for sadako’s demanifested invisibility bug like 2-3 months ago and this bug is already a year old. At houndmasters release they fixed the bug partially but not completely. Now there are still 0.2seconds of invisibility missing without any confirmation on whether they are going to fix it or not.
Do you think BHVR is going bring every bug to the designers table? No, the first barrier is immediate harm to the game.
I don't think you will be able to get a list of all bugs and then have the designers and decision makers give you their 2 cents on all of them. As far as I know the Community Managers only pass it on, but without it being a big problem with all other issues and things going on those issues probably wont see confirmation or acknowledgement. Why? because that would likely take the attention of designers for like idk multiple hours for minimal gain.
This has nothing to do with transparency, what is being asked here is a logistical nightmare.
Best we can hope for here is that someone decides there needs to be individual bug report forums for each Killer, instead of having everything be in one big mess with honest to god very little chance of finding the right bug or issue if its already reported through the search function on this website THAT ALSO STILL SEARCHES ALL OTHER THREADS TOO- Argh.
I think that would be the biggest improvement, rather than asking the Community Managers spend more time than what they already do keeping a list curated and up to date, Honestly Im never the guy to consider outsourcing, but I think WE have more time combined than developers to curate bug reports. If we had the tools tho.
Oh no absolutely, getting the devs to give their 2 cents on everything would be straight out impossible. But we do have a "Known issues" section that has been unused since February; I believe things would feel much better if it was used more, overall.
A bug reporting section split by character would also rock. The current bug section is a bit too messy for such a big game that inevitably spawns a lot of bugs, I've had bug reports straight out end up as Pending forever. If they were sorted out in a separate Ghostface section it would have been more noticeable, let's say
Im afraid, while It might be true that some players would feel better about it if the "Known Issues" section was used.
Feelings matters very little when it hits logistical limits or take away time from things that could be, Bigger Feelings, such as the necessary changes before FNAF comes. I'd much rather have them make the determination, than keep the "known issues" section alive for some hope we might have, It suck I agree, I too have bug reports which never was resolved.
I guess a reason the Community Managers dont do this in regards to bug reports is probably it would be very intimidating for a new user to see a huge list. But honestly I think getting to a point where its childlike super easy to find and check bugs reported will outlast the problems that such an expansive section would have.
I like what they have done with Killer or Survivor Tags
But we need like way more Tags.