Honest Thoughts on Recent Patches – Transparency & Testing Concerns

[mighty folio]

I wanted to share some honest thoughts as a player who has been here since launch. Since the Frost Wizard patch, I’ve felt pretty disappointed with how things have been handled. There are a lot of game-breaking bugs that, from a player’s point of view, really should’ve been addressed much sooner. Some of these bugs are finally getting fixed in the upcoming patch, but it feels like they should’ve been hotfixed earlier, given how much they affect gameplay.

I know the community has been actively giving feedback and I trust that it’s being passed on through the mods and admins. That said, where I feel most frustrated is the lack of follow-up or updates on that feedback. It often feels like we’re left in the dark. I’m wondering, is there a reason for the limited transparency? Or maybe a better way to phrase it: what’s making it hard to share more openly about what’s being worked on or prioritized?

Another thing I’ve been wondering about is the testing process for major patches. Every time there’s a big update, it feels like a wave of new bugs follows, which can be expected to some extent. But when it comes to game-breaking issues, it seems like those should be caught during testing before the patch goes live. Is there something about the QA process that makes it hard to catch these kinds of problems early? Just trying to understand how thoroughly these patches are tested before release.

FYI

That said, I think what many of us are asking for isn’t every little thing, but just more clarity on major issues, especially when they’re game-breaking or widely reported. Even just knowing, “Yes, we’ve seen this and it’s being worked on,” or “This one’s proving tricky and might take time” goes a long way toward keeping trust and patience.

Transparency doesn’t have to mean full disclosure , just enough communication to let us know the feedback loop is working. It’s not about demanding answers, it’s about staying connected as a community that clearly cares about the state of the game.

[desert raptor]

I think it's a fate of the early access. It's hard to polish the game completely when there's a huge potential of new things being added. This is my personal past experience of EA games, at least. But yeah some improvement can be made on the pace of the responsiveness in terms of patches and communication related to that.

[mighty folio]

Thanks for your thoughts on this topic. Appreciate it

[grand wasp]

Yea, keeping #1357341617882796092 up to date should be a no-brainer for so many reasons. Also #💬┃general-chat message

[honest hull]

Arena mode wen?

[silver oracle]

I was always surprised, Discord is so convenient for implementing reviews, why create an endless number of them, I'm talking about bugs, we have mods or someone like me could volunteer and keep track of bugs, if people report the same bug, just delete this topic, and the known issues section would be replenished with a short line that would characterize the bug.

And then after a week or two, the developers would sit down and cross out everything from the list that they don't consider a bug, and the rest would be marked with a color indicator of the importance of the fix.

Discussion of the bug list can be done instead of questions on MTD.

That is, to keep the bug report clean and put all known bugs on a list that would then be subject to public analysis and fix priorities, so that people could see that their feedback was heard and the bug was either still on the fix list, or it was not on the list because it was not a bug, or it was priority #1 for fixing.

[next sigil]

If u say "since the frost wizard patch" u imply that even the frost wizard patch is something u disliked?

They at some point did a vote for the community to take part in where its discussed whether they should focus at bug fixes or future content, and I think it was like 60/40 for bugfixes. Therefore I am disappointed aswell in the amount of fixes happening after the frost wizard introduction. The frost wizard patchnotes however were really good I enjoyed them. The bugs that occured after I didn't.

It would definetly be nice to not introduce bugs in patch X and have entire patch Y that comes almost 1month after solving even only >some< of these bugs introduced in patch X ...

The latest patch did some bugfixing, that itself was only needed cuz the first patch itself was badly introduced

Patch 2 and 3 came within 2 week cycles and did both have more stuff in them than Patch 4. They are currently primarily working on the new content I suppose, which is mandatory for new player retention and a good decision. Its just sad that it is a tradeoff to all the players that are currently enjoying the game. I think however once that is done there will be more fixes coming. The game's survival rate with the new map will probably be higher than it would be compared to the bug fixes they could've introduced in the same amount of time. Atleast thats what they are thinking I suppose. And since they are a smaller studio it is how it is and resonable approach.

[mighty folio]

Yes and no, the patch was majority okay for me. But like u said the bugs that occured with it didnt.

[mighty folio]

Whats frustrating, though, is that the current player base, the ones actively supporting and testing the game, are the ones hitting these gamebreaking bugs right now. So while the content roadmap might be good for the future, the experience in the moment can feel pretty rough.

[next sigil]

small companies prioritize solving their biggest problems first, even if it comes at a cost to some people, because leaving those big issues unresolved would cause greater harm overall. And for them the biggest prio was getting a new player map. Ofc it sucks but well it had to be done

I guess we could collectively as players create 1 big bugtrack thing for example priest or any other class and have them take a specific look at it so the Q&A atleast has an easier time etc.

[reef panther]

100% agree with every word you said.
I've reported so many things, and it feels most are being ignored
Many feedback threads that even get hundreds of people discussing certain issues (for example gear caps) just get blatantly ignored as well.

Look at this as an example: https://discordapp.com/channels/830738139789787147/1381120851843354704/1389870023534841878

Chris (CEO) replies to my message from first week of june an entire month later.. these issues listed there have been reported by me and other players since launch of this season, 2.5 months ago, and some of these are still in the game.

What's worse is that he's asking me if I still encounter these issues, which I give a thorough reply to (https://discordapp.com/channels/830738139789787147/1381120851843354704/1390170767924269117) just a day after and address many other issues (some reported and thoroughly documented since over 2 months ago now) and yet over half of these issues still exist until today.
Ah. my reply got totally ignored (we're now another month later)
Why even ask in the first place?

The most annoying thing to me is that EXTREMELY game breaking bugs such as double casted pyroblasts stay in the game for WEEKS.
how can you seriously let such a game breaking bug stay in the game for almost a month? How can anyone take this game serious in the future, if 1 shot bugs exist for a month?

Bug reporting seems like such a waste of time and hit or miss if it gets addressed or not. Some SIMPLE bugs exist since CBT1 are still in the game..

Yesterdays MTD made me even more frustrated when I heard chris talk about "gold master" stage of the game, where apparently the lodge upgrading and crafting systems are supposedly at now? Idk if you guys get what that means, but essentially they're happy with lodge upgrading and think it's ready for full release. IMO the UI/UX is absolutely terrible and not intuitive at all for a game most likely releasing 1.0 in 2026 🤦‍♂️

[silk hawk]

One of the hardest parts of game development is you fix/add one thing, and it breaks 3 other things.

I’d love to see an active Kanban board showing the current status of bugs, content, etc.

But that basically means another person added to the head count, or pulled away from active development/bug squashing.

I’m sure they have something internal, but most companies don’t like to publish things like that, or it has to be sanitized for public consumption. Which loops back to that person being pulled away.

One solution would be to have say the top 5 issues be split off into their own sub threads of the bug report discord, and then a miscellaneous section. But again, that would require more work.

What would be your ideal solution?

[mighty folio]

True I agree but they also had a Sale with Frost Wizard Patch, not sure what the steam reviews were back then but im pretty positive they weren’t that good. All I am saying, they could have handled it better.

[mighty folio]

A simple weekly update, just highlighting the top 3–5 bugs being worked on, any high-priority fixes pushed live, and what’s currently on the radar, could literally take 30 minutes to draft. Doesn’t need to be polished or comprehensive, just consistent.

Also, I assume the devs already have some kind of internal system, a backlog, sprint board, bug tracker, something. If that’s the case, is there no project coordinator or a managing person helping prioritize and communicate that info?

[silk hawk]

The roadmap is actually pretty helpful for the higher level content.

#👀┃roadmap message

But it doesn’t really address the bugs. And the problem with posting the internal system is it has sensitive information, discussions, code etc.

There are internal discussions about how to address bugs and be more transparent though. Small teams are hard. Everyone wears multiple hats.

[mighty folio]

Even just stating “In the upcoming weeks or days we are not focusing on solving bugs instead..” is already more than enough. I mean I doubt that such statement is hard to accomplish..

@vast swallow I would like to hear your opinion on this topic if that is possible. Thanks

[silk hawk]

#📺┃whats-new message

This might answer your questions.

[mighty folio]

Are you just referencing just the channel or a specific message from it?

[silk hawk]

The most recent message.

That the link takes you directly to. It specifically says:

“Hello Adventurers,

This marks our final patch for Season 1. As always, we have worked hard to address as many bugs and known issues as possible, but we also want to be transparent: continued patches and hotfixes inevitably take time away from preparing for the next Season.

If there’s something you reported that hasn’t been addressed in this update, please be assured that we’re tracking it and aim to resolve outstanding issues with the launch of Season 2 next month”

[mighty folio]

Yea I read it, hence why I am making my post. It took a whole month to tell us that with a patch that was announced in a MTD.

While this might be considered transparent, saying “continued patches and hotfixes inevitably take time” is like saying “Your estimated delivery time for your Temu package will be expected 5-10 work days”.

No disrespect to you brother, I know you mean well and I appreciate it immensly that you took your time to get this deep into this topic with me. I hope you can see the issue of “transparency” and can agree that this frustrates alot of people.

[silk hawk]

No worries.

They are trying to improve the communications.

I will say the Notorious team is far more transparent than some of the big billion dollar companies I have dealt with.

But there is always room to improve, and I think they are trying to do that.

[craggy sedge]

I think they said in a recent dev talk they don’t know if they should focus on more content for us or the bugs first