Suggest OWI staffs play Squad at least 2hrs a day

[stiff dagger]

Just help devs to know what are the most urgent problems to be fixed

[distant veldt]

That would require they care

[urban marsh]

I don't think that would help.

1. It'd would come directly out of the time they spend developing the game.
   Assuming they have a normal 8 hour workday / 40 hour work week that would mean 25% of their time would be spent playing a computer game instead of doing anything productive.

2. It would not guarantee they would know, understand, or agree about the most urgent problems.
   The players who have played for thousands of hours don't have that kind of consensus about what are the most important problems outside of things like UE5 tuning and other bugfixes. Which are things the developers are already aware of.

3. Someone playing Squad as a work task is very unlikely to see or experience it in the way someone who plays it as casual recreation does.

3a) It could create perverse incentives to make changes that players don't like or are detrimental to the game. For example, increasing respawn or hab activation timers because the time they spend unable to spawn or dead in-game is time they can take to play on their phone or alt-tab out to do something else without getting in trouble for not playing the game. Their leisure time isn't being wasted, and they probably don't care about their in-game performance.

3b) Playing that much when you don't feel like it is a great way to burnout on a game. The ones who like the game right now, might not like it so much after 10 hours of company mandated playtime a week for a few months.

[woven wagon]

It wont adress the issues. The issues are clearly that they are either overwhelmed with the systems they deal with and dont know how to fix stuff, and/or there are organizational issues, especially with how QA is performed. It could also be general management issues prioritizing the wrong things.
Playing the game wont improve a devs knowledge of a system component, how QA is done or improve management decisions. It is literally a waste of work time.

[inner briar]

It’s crazy the shit that makes it through play testing without being addressed, UE5 closed play testers have told me bugs were reported in the first builds that were still in at release

[tidal coyote]

Implying devs are doing anything productive is funy

[azure hornet]

Found one of the devs burner accounts 👆

You aren’t slick

[foggy ferry]

Couldn't imagine going to work, then going home, and working some more

[azure hornet]

Bold of you to assume they work in the first place

[abstract saffron]

they clearly dont play the fucking game since they fucked all the emplacements and open tops for no reason

[tribal bloom]

I think they do it for fun

I think they intentionally break shit

[azure hornet]

Yeah they have to break stuff then fix it every now and again so the company thinks they are busy with work

Otherwise they won’t have jobs

[dim night]

emplacements were not fd over for no reason, mk19 doing a better job at being a mortar than an actual mortar is scary.

couple of tweaks and we'll be back

negativity will accomplish nothing

[tidal coyote]

positivity accomplished that some bugs remain in the game for 10 years now, keep going

[modern crane]

I think expecting them to be productive while also asking them to spend 2 hours of the day playing the game is... a little unrealistic.
There are devs that do play and have been playing more recently, and I definitely agree with the sentiment that they can make changes that feel out of touch and should try to understand their own game from the eyes of the players better, but this particular suggestion just seems kind of silly

[deft void]

2 hours a week would be nice

obviously none of dev played the game for more than 2 minutes, which is time it takes to get stuck in a vic out of main

[modern crane]

There are a few devs who do play. But it's possible none of them are the person in charge of vehicle physics. Or that they know what the bug is yet, unfortunately

[craggy ore]

or that they have any say in whether the update goes live, with or without bugs

[modern crane]

TRUE

[viral forge]

Honestly they should create a normal publicly available bug tracker (which any software/game development company must have), where people can create tickets with bug reports and/or suggestions and follow the status of those, whether something has been fixed/added or not. And where duplicate reports/feedbacks can be linked to each other, so you don't lose the information. Current approach with creating posts in Discord is not exactly suitable for these purposes, posts are getting lost or something that was reported a while ago has been fixed, but was never mentioned in any release notes as usual.

[foggy ferry]

They sort of have it with Zendesk, but the risk of promoting things to be public would be digital vandalism, spam, etc. Would require someone to manage it as part of their role, or use AI with risk of false positive. I agree with your point of view. Probably have it be developed curated, a kind of thing like: "We did this, we acknowledge this, we are working towards this"

[viral forge]

I mean yeah, it's always a risk, but the community should be able to track development progress as well to see how things are going. Current release notes don't mention half of the stuff they've changed, so you never know if they're even payed attention to something.

[modern crane]

Public bug trackers... rarely work out. A lot of games have tried. Few have kept up, and even fewer still have made sure that such a resource includes every piece of work they are working on.

Unfortunately I don't think any problem is really solved by having a public tracker, it in theory makes us feel better as consumers seeing the work stream, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're moving any faster or prioritizing the things we care about correctly.

[mint shore]

I mean this obviously isn't a real suggestion, but highlights a big issue: most people in the player base have been talking about the same issues and fixes to them for 5 years, and yet many of these issues still exist.
It makes it really feel like OWI just doesn't actually play the game cause if they did, they would surely come across these issues themselves and fix it.
However it's almost definitely just a issue with their internal workflow, there's probably some poor dev that wants to fix a bunch of bugs but has been tasked to allow emotes in vics out of all things.

[foggy ferry]

It's this 100% as someone that works in tech. The stream of new stuff is constant and doesn't really give space or priority to fix the PITA 7 year old system that are spiteful. I would imagine OWI have the same issue, unless the product owners come out and say, we need an "Operation health", it's probably only a dev or two working on legacy bugs.

Still blame OWI, but it's their leadership that's idiosyncratic.

[modern crane]

There are a number of factors that go beyond it, bug fixing is usually the easier thing to convince product folk to align on.

[foggy ferry]

Unless you have a shocker of business user.

But my experience at big corporate is likely different from games development

[modern crane]

It's usually more difficult to get product teams to align on efforts to address technical debt--ie, not fixing bugs, not adding any features, often making little immediately noticeable impact, but often having implications for performance and investment for future gains.

I think people are pretty close to the root issue, but it's not actually that the devs just don't address or have time to work on fixing bugs. We've had more bug fixes recently just with the number of patches they've been churning out than we did for years prior to 9.0 and the reorganization with the community development team

[foggy ferry]

That too, but in my experience, business users are fine with bugs if there are work arounds. Aka if it wastes the time of another engineering resource, they're completely fine with the issue persisting.

Likely it's the debt causing odd implementations that have to be fixed.

Imo

[modern crane]

I'd say the problem is more around the release process. It seems like they don't properly define the expectations of a given feature, and so you get things that slip through the cracks when they implement some big change. They also don't seem to have much in their process around preventing regressions, so new things often result in something else breaking.

[foggy ferry]

That too

I would also fathom that whatever testing is either pretty manual or the automated testing doesn't have good coverage. Like your automated testing should make sure you aren't changing how systems are working previously

[hazy fossil]

Squads codebase is clearly a house of cards littered with landmines. That's incredibly frustrating to work on, and completely self inflicted.

I don't have an explanation for how completely obvious recurring issues keep happening. Other than, a lot of issues come and go at random because of God knows what's going on in their code/build pipeline.

So it's not that a bug is always fixed, it's just gone until it comes back again. (Harju grass springs to mind)

[urban marsh]

FYI several devs were spotted playing on a public server a few days ago.

[modern crane]

We see em come and go every so often.

There is a group that sometimes plays on lunch breaks

[inner briar]

They are kinda like a solar eclipse, you might see them once or twice in a lifetime

[urban marsh]

You're talking about a subset of a group of fewer than 150 people, who have no obligation to make themselves identifiable. In a game that has tens of thousands of concurrent players.

How often do you think you should see them?

[inner briar]

It wasn’t a comment on how much they play just how much a player might see one, as a server admin it will notify you when a dev joins, and you see them occasionally.

[urban marsh]

Oh ok

[inner briar]

Honestly they probably play on alternate accounts so people don’t harass them

[urban marsh]

I figured either that, or they have a way to turn off the OWI tag.

Admins might have to know just because of the potential for misuse/abuse but no reason the dev account always needs to be identifiable to the general player population.

[inner briar]

When an admin or developer joins, to other admins and developers there join message will be blue. This is linked to the accounts steam id.

[urban marsh]

Yeah I know about that (or rather there was some sort of notification), I was talking about the tag next to their name with [OWI] and it being yellow.

[limber palm]

Who says that they don't?

[azure hornet]

The state of the game, that’s who

[lament olive]

Quite a few OWI play regularly, and quite a few developers were originally players as well.

You have to understand, only a few select people at OWI have influence over game direction & design, as well as what things end up higher on the priority ladder to address. A lot of developers know what needs fixing or addressing, but majority of the time of what they fix, is what they're assigned/told to fix. Sometimes developers will explore fixes in their own time, due to frustration.

People wonder why developers don't talk in discord or reddit much anymore, or play the game on their developer accounts...The constant remarks how they don't care, or snarky troll rage bait remarks, is a real turn off when it comes to community engagement.

[still grail]

The community are terrible too the devs honestly

[deft void]

well the product owner/manager or whoever decides should play the game that's for sure

that would maybe prevent the shitshow that was 10.3 release 😅

[urban marsh]

You're assuming that there is a button on their desks labeled "Fix Things" that they can press as soon as they're aware of problems to solve them.
There isn't one.

[deft void]

i PM and write software for a living 🙂

at some point the product owner/manager decides to ship without testing, and he wrecks what little trust the player base still had left in the dev company

people are pissed because long standing existing bugs stay in the game for months and sometimes years and they see tons of new content and new bugs showing up

[viral forge]

Well, it simply shouldn't have come to this in the first place, then you would never need to look for such button. It was completely in their power to do things right, listen to the community and do not betray community's trust. Maybe some devs are actually willing to do something, but we're judging the company and the result of their work as a whole. If they're willingly shooting themselves in the legs with a shotgun, no one else is to blame for that.

[viral forge]

Like have you seen what they did to bikes in the last "hotfix"? It's almost reversing faster than it's going forward, someone just changed the acceleration and speed sliders randomly without a single test or anything, it feels like you're driving some shitty vehicle in Garry's Mod back in 2007.

Literally OWI during last half a year

Or how do you manage to fuck up vehicle icons on the map

[urban marsh]

This isn't about your judgment of the company.
It's about the idea that playing Squad for 2 hours a day will solve these problems (it won't).

[viral forge]

I don't think anything of what we're proposing can make any good change - they simply don't want to help themselves, a-la this horse can't be forced to drink. Some people are still having hopes, some are for some reason still defending them and are a classic example of a stockholm syndrome. But nah, to be honest this situation is kinda hopeless. I don't know what must happen so that they suddenly start actually working on the game.

[limber palm]

I believe OWI has a QA team
They should be pointing out performance issues and bugs

[viral forge]

should be

https://discord.com/channels/91294111071469568/1475557709641285974

[naive creek]

I don't really want to play this game anymore because there are no noticeable changes to the gameplay, basically just breaking everything. For example, I don't understand the point of giving a mortar three shells in a single salvo, which are ineffective and unrealistic. The mortar is more suitable for holding off the enemy at a given moment, but it's not lethal. The maximum effective range is 1250. If you look at any artillery, everything is poorly designed, weakened for incompetent players who apparently complained a lot about artillery killing them too much. I can't even remember the last time new maps were added to the game (not handrails). They add factions, they add emotions, but for example, there's no way to bandage yourself in a vehicle, and you can't fire an assault rifle in a truck because the developers don't want you to be able to protect yourself in such a vulnerable moment. The underbarrel grenade launcher should cause significant damage to vehicles. Missiles should knock out the crew in a vehicle, like any other projectile capable of damaging armored vehicles. Vehicles should kill players when they collide with them. Vehicles should take damage when they collide with a supply. Vehicles should break fragile obstacles when they collide with them, not be stopped by a small branch, as if it were thick rebar. Rockets and grenades shouldn't be fired from foliage; it's annoying that when fired near a tree, the shell detonates on an invisible branch. Stationary, unmounted weapons should be able to be moved within radio range and have at least one extra ammo in reserve. The recoil on stationary automatic grenade launchers shouldn't push the barrel skyward. Vehicles sometimes don't move when you've entered and started them, even when you try to turn them through the menu. Vehicles can get stuck in small objects when they should easily roll over them. .

A player can stand still on the turret of an armored vehicle while the vehicle is moving at breakneck speed. A dead ally can be picked up over a wall or hit nearby and then moved 2 meters away, while using a bandage on them. Any attachments for improving weapon recoil control are useless in the game. Half-empty magazines cannot be reassembled to reduce the number of partially full magazines. Dual-purpose sights—iron sight and telescopic sight—cannot be switched. Lasers and flashlights cannot be used on the weapon. You cannot transfer your magazine or bandage to or from an ally; that's what ammo pouches are for, for some reason (whyy ... Mortar shells should fly at least twice as far and have a damage and fragmentation radius 2-3 times larger. It should only fire one shot and cost around 40-50 per shot. A 3-second reload is quite sufficient for this mortar. Helicopters shouldn't be fully mouse-controlled; they should have a self-leveling system. This is why players don't want to fly helicopters, as it's too difficult. Every player who can even barely fly a helicopter in the game is like a gold mine. Make the training walkthrough mandatory for beginners; most players simply don't want to complete it, and because of this, many players don't understand even the simple game mechanics explained in the training mode. Besides, you need to expand on it, as there's not much information there. I hope I've covered all the issues I know about, but if I haven't, please add your own

[urban marsh]

What does all those words have to do with developers playing the game for 2 hours a day to find and fix problems?
Almost all of your complaints are the result of deliberate design decisions, not any problem or bug with the game itself.

[naive creek]

Not designer issues, but stupid gameplay flaws or intentionally created, lame game mechanics that degrade the overall experience. And how exactly does this relate to the developers' obligation to play their own game? It doesn't, because they won't. I simply listed the existing flaws, problems, or stupid game mechanics in the game.

The only similar game that has appeared recently is Arma Reforger. We play Squad because there simply weren't any similar games. The only one we had was the old Arma 3, which was outdated.

[urban marsh]

A lot of the things you listed aren't flaws.
It isn't an issue if the mortars in Squad don't go 5km and down everyone in 15m radius. The developers just don't want them to do that.

The things you brought up aren't even congruent with each other, you want things to be more hardcore in general then complain that flying the helis with a mouse is too difficult and needs to be automated.

[naive creek]

Because in reality, a helicopter has this capability, that's why I said that a helicopter should have this function. There are some things that need to be fixed, for example, where the game creators weakened the game too much or where they made it too difficult. I didn't say the game should be hardcore; it should be more realistic, in my opinion.

[urban marsh]

There are very few cases where making things more realistic won't make things more hardcore (meaning more complex and/or difficult). A lot of those things will also mess up balance. Between factions, different gameplay areas, weapons, and other aspects. If someone wants that kind of experience, they can play Reforger.

[modern crane]

Guiding principle has always been gameplay over realism

Squad is not a milsim

[foggy ferry]

Realism becomes hardcore. Thats the nature of taking in things that in real life are unfair by design.

But a game needs a level of fairness, so maybe you are well suited to play another game.

Squad was never really about realism, it's never been a milsim, it's a tactical shooter first, then an authentic war game second.

[viral forge]

Because if they would actually play the game, they might actually start seeing how shit some of the their design decisions and simplifications are. Personally I hate that vehicle crew cannot be killed in many cases - take helicopters: pilots are sitting in the invincible bubble and helis themselves are basically .50-proof, especially with devs taking .50 tripods off the half of the divisions and rendering them useless by adding recoil like you're a 5-year old hipfiring an M134.

Good example of questions people still keep asking due to dogshit tutorial

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198258056542/recommended/393380

[urban marsh]

Liking or disliking something like crew in vehicles being invincible is a completely subjective opinion. There isn't a universal truth they'll realize by playing the game.

FYI it used to be you could kill crew in vics, but it was taken out because it resulted in de-crewed vehicles being littered all over the place.

[viral forge]

But they implementing it to an absurd level with every one of those things - pilot must not take half a box of 12.7 in the windshield and fly away like nothing happened. Or tank 2 tandem shots.

[urban marsh]

Playing the game won't make someone's opinion on the gameplay and balance decisions align with yours.

[viral forge]

Just mine? And maybe a good majority of the playerbase?

[urban marsh]

I don't think the majority of the playerbase cares about crew invincibility very much, if at all.
I'm certain the majority of vic mains don't want to be shot out of vehicles.

If you really want to measure it, throw up "All pilots and crew should be able to be killed in all vehicles," as a suggestion.

[viral forge]

Yeah, as we all can see, making feedbacks in Discord server works really well for all of us.

[urban marsh]

The purpose of that suggestion wouldn't be to convince OWI to change it (they made it the way it is for a reason), it would be to get an idea of how many people agree with the suggestion (or even care about it at all).

[viral forge]

I'd say quite a few people are finding it to be fair:

https://discord.com/channels/91294111071469568/1243008027754496000

[urban marsh]

20 people is not a lot for a suggestion. For comparison roughly 5x that number care about the loading screens.

[inner briar]

It would seem they are slowly moving towards this, but not in any significant capacity