ORIGINAL: m10bob
Oh,yeah,I agree completely..I just suspect that even though it was designed for "us",maybe the designers did not have the same level of this particular sophistication and presumed they could emulate it,or they sacrificed "reality" for "playability" from the beginning,with marketing more a priority than customer satisfaction of the true grognard.
***Now how the game ever got out of the gates with the "bugs" intact,supposedly with so many "playtesters",is anybodies guess......
I love the game,but a "yes man" may have served Matrix worse than he served us,because something like this can hurt sales,and if Matrix trusted somebody to tell the truth in the testing,and just got their "backside-smooched",well,it was a dis-service and a lack of trust of the "playtester"..
Hi, There were no yes men in the testing Corps. However disputes were not conducted on the public forum but in the private forum.
It would be a waste of everyones time if a tester found a bug and did not report it. Or if they reported it fixed when it was not. (The truth would out)
Now once the designers and programmers listen to comments and respond with "this is how it will work test it" The tester has two choices. Test it to see if it does what the designers want or quit the team if he feels the subject is being presented incorrectly.
I have been a tester of WITP since it was first sent to testers. I have done some other tasks as well (I assigned terrian types to hexes and the artist drew the map to conform to terrian (opposed to me assigning terrian to what the map graphic was)
I accept the blame where this has been found incorrect. (there were a lot of hexes)
I never thought it would be a good idea to make a stand in private and if I was not heeded move it to the public. I have always thought my job was to test that the design did what the designers wanted not what I wanted. If that is being a yes man so be it. I never hid bugs.
There is a lot of WITP that is the way it is because of the testers. There is a lot of WITP that is the way it is because of posts made by non testers.
There are current bugs that exist now because of features added. The release version of WITP is vastly enlarged when compared to the first Alpha I tested. And the changes are mostly a result of the testers.
WITP results and operation were posted by testers in AAR going back to Alpha. Changes were made as a result of comments from the forum even before the game was beta.
The current game owes much to feedback from this forum. Because the design team was so open to suggestion the final version of WITP was never tested in complete human versus human play. The versions changed weekly (often daily)
There is no blame to be dished out because the final product reflects the desires of the then current Matrix forum posters.
I suppose 2by3 could have set a "last call" for requests and finalized a version a year or two before release for dedicated testing with no new features to be introduced (ever) that would have resulted in a finished product with fewer post release bugs. Instead we have had quite a number of post release bug introduced as a result of changes. I don't feel this demands a witch hunt to assign blame but rahter needs to be accepted as simply part of the process by which the designers are attempting to make buyers happy.
I am proud of the part I played in this games progress to it's present forum. The testers remain busy giving time improving the game. It is sad some people feel they are being exploited by being used as defacto testers after buying what they thought was a finished bug free product. Only those people who have refrained from making requests for changes are entitled to this because if you asked for something and seen it introduced then you have to accept there will be a period where it needs to be "ironed out"
