203 réponses à ce sujet

[-PenguinFetish-]

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. We get a passive aggressive wall of text every time people talk about their concerns and dare to question the quality of the product the paid for. But when people ask a genuine question about game information or mechanics we get one liners that look like tweets from a teenager. Apologies if it hurts your feelings, but seriously...

In a thread asking about being able to view the stats of MP characters all we get is a question - "what stats?" And someone needs to put screenshots of SP attributes page.

In another thread someone asked for the ability to select random map when creating lobby/hosting. All we got is - "it's there already...oh wait, it's not, it's just quick match option... lolz"

Thread about demon commander - "Ya'll gotta run! As soon as he goes under just start sprinting, he won't hit you" - too bad people keep reporting this is not the case. So much for pr0 tips from someone playing the game for 2 years as you claim.

Just to name a few.

I still don't get it why games are treated completely different from any other product we buy. No one would accept a phone, TV or any other appliance with some functions not working. You would not accept uncooked food in restaurant. For some reason you should accept bugged games with no promise anything will be fixed.

Totally agree. I really dread to think what we would be looking at had this game not been repeatedly delayed.

Games should not launch with this many issues. There is so many things that just flat out do not work in game aswell as opposed to technical issues.

Several acessories and abilities just don't work properly. Some accessories dont even correspond to existing multiplayer content! Don't even get me starting on the appauling loot system that we have in place here (15 purple drops and i only 4 of them arent outclasssed by commons.)

All 150 hours ive spent in game has been focussed around building characters to educate others who might not want to promote every character to find an optimal spec. In me3, i posted guides and tips for almost every class in the game. Ive recorded, edited and uploaded entertainment to my non profit youtube channel and shared these among the community. Ive created, coded and moderate a subreddit for this game with the help of a friend and my partner (all volunteers), and i help moderate the me3mp community too.

The total time investment for bioware titles is thousands and thousands of hours of my own free time which i do not get paid for in any way shape or form. And you want to tell me that if i have an issue with your game then i shouldnt play it, also implicitly hinting at banning people who do complain? To me, thats just insulting. I have every right, just as every other forum member does at this point in time, to be angry at the fact that ive been sold a product at full price which does not work as it was advertised. I dont make posts saying ' hurr durr bioware sux and dont know how to make a game'. But occasionally i do post somewhat heated opinions about issues i am currently experiencing. Should i not be able to do this? Am i not entitled to get a bit annoyed that the meal i ordered and have been waiting for years to be finished, is delicious, but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth?

That said, i appreciate that someone at bioware cares enough about their fanbase to respond to some of these issues that we are having. I think communication is paramount for this kind of situation, so thanks for putting in the hours outside of your clocked time.

[Pee Jae]

Let me explain my multiplayer experience to you. Just from today. 9 times out of 10. I can't connect to a game or a lobby. The 10th time, I'm likely to either crash or get disconnected. Lag is also a major issue when I finally do manage to get into a game.

 

Until any or all of that is fixed, the game is pretty much unplayable. Right now, I don't care about graphic glitches, how OP the demon commander is, etc, etc. It is meaningless if I can't even get into the game.

 

I have a fantastic internet connection. I ought to, I pay enough for it. I also have an Alienware X51 which is more than capable of running the game. So, this has nothing to do with anything on my end.

 

I really do like this multiplayer. It has the potential for at least as much longevity as Mass Effect's had. I hope these issues can be fixed. Soon.

[Phentos]

Honestly, the MP is pretty much as broken as a china shop after a tornado. 

 

List time!

• Lack of Push-to-talk: I don't want to sit there and hear everyone's breathing and other bodily functions while I play. I'm sure loads of people will back me up.
• Lack of text chat: Not everyone has a mic. Not everyone likes to/is able to voice chat. Personally I can't voice chat most of the time because the place I live is extremely noisy on a daily basis (college dorm).
• LAG: I'm on a very good connection (80MB/s down and100MB/s up), and the network handles congestion extremely well here. Yet I have people complain about lag often while I'm hosting. I also get mountains of lag when I'm in another player's game.
• Loot: Broken.
• Balancing: The trash is somewhat balanced, but other than the Venatori Commander, the other bosses are stupidly OP. *looks at Demon Commander*

I should have known. I should have f'ing known that this game would be a consolized mess. I did the same mistake as with Dragon Age 2. I preordered it.

 

Never again.

[AwesomeBabyLion]

I agree with BWEAmelia here. It often seems frustration gets in the way of constructive criticism, especially on these forums. Now I realize it's easy for me to just say that seeing as I don't have to face many issues myself, but I do hope for everyone to get to experience the best of what the game offers, irregardless of what platform you are on. Flooding forums with emotions of frustration is just going to make it all the harder to identify the issues.

 

To Bioware I would suggest this - create a form that you wish to see when people are reporting bugs and issues. Something simple for the developers to understand and the gamers to fill out and follow. A quick example:

 

Issue: A single enemy became indestructable and unactive (not attacking or moving).

What was going on at the moment of the incident: Playing threathening in zone 3 against a Red Templar Shadow. My Reaver got what should have been the killing blow with Dragon Rage, but instead the enemy seemed to disconnect and not take anymore damage (even though it could still be attacked) and stop moving.

Reproduction method: Unknown.

 

Or find whichever template works for you. I often feel structure around how to report issues can easily filter out the worth while posts from the posts that are not so helpful.

[AwesomeBabyLion]

Replying to this in a seperate post.

 

Honestly, the MP is pretty much as broken as a china shop after a tornado. 

 

List time!

• Lack of Push-to-talk: I don't want to sit there and hear everyone's breathing and other bodily functions while I play. I'm sure loads of people will back me up.
• Lack of text chat: Not everyone has a mic. Not everyone likes to/is able to voice chat. Personally I can't voice chat most of the time because the place I live is extremely noisy on a daily basis (college dorm).
• LAG: I'm on a very good connection (80MB/s down and100MB/s up), and the network handles congestion extremely well here. Yet I have people complain about lag often while I'm hosting. I also get mountains of lag when I'm in another player's game.
• Loot: Broken.
• Balancing: The trash is somewhat balanced, but other than the Venatori Commander, the other bosses are stupidly OP. *looks at Demon Commander*

I should have known. I should have f'ing known that this game would be a consolized mess. I did the same mistake as with Dragon Age 2. I preordered it.

 

Never again.

 

Lack of push to talk. On xbox one we have the mute button on the control. This works pretty well for the console, but then again I mostly play with friends and tell them to get the mic out of their mouth when I hear them start breathing heavily. Never been an issue. I can imagine it would be annoying when playing with PUGs. Push to talk option should be looked into.

Lack of text chat. I could never imagine myself frantically typing stuff in mid action, but during the quiet times when you are trying to get that one archer that is running off to the next enemy group when the rest of the group are standing and waiting at a Rogue treasure room I can see this being useful. On console we have the option to spam "over here" command. I would presume the PC has similar function possibilities?

LAG. Playing on a 60/60 myself and having no lag whatsoever. Have you checked what your actual output connection is? Sometimes other's might be hogging the line, especially in a college dorm I imagine.

Loot. Could use some work. More often than not, opening packs are frustrating. At a certain point it just doesn't feel like a reward anymore. Fine-tuning needed.

Balancing. Balancing is pretty fine so far with the most glaring balance issues being the Venatori Commander being far to weak and the Demon Commander being to strong. Minor balance issues worth mentioning is that the Shadows burst damage can be far to fatal and the Archers damage are currently a bit high and could use a minor nerf.

 

I would have wished that you had left everything but the list out of your post because the other things just made you come of as a hurt little spoiled kid. Try to stay on point and not let your emotions rule you. Otherwise good remarks.

[Phentos]

I agree with BWEAmelia here. It often seems frustration gets in the way of constructive criticism, especially on these forums. Now I realize it's easy for me to just say that seeing as I don't have to face many issues myself, but I do hope for everyone to get to experience the best of what the game offers, irregardless of what platform you are on. Flooding forums with emotions of frustration is just going to make it all the harder to identify the issues.

 

To Bioware I would suggest this - create a form that you wish to see when people are reporting bugs and issues. Something simple for the developers to understand and the gamers to fill out and follow. A quick example:

 

Issue: A single enemy became indestructable and unactive (not attacking or moving).

What was going on at the moment of the incident: Playing threathening in zone 3 against a Red Templar Shadow. My Reaver got what should have been the killing blow with Dragon Rage, but instead the enemy seemed to disconnect and not take anymore damage (even though it could still be attacked) and stop moving.

Reproduction method: Unknown.

 

Or find whichever template works for you. I often feel structure around how to report issues can easily filter out the worth while posts from the posts that are not so helpful.

 

With a ton of money invested into the game, people will tend to get very frustrated over these dumb issues. Especially when they are issues that could have been dealt with in QA for the PC port.

 

I forgot one thing. There needs to be EA-controlled dedicated servers. Fund them with plat purchases as well. Player hosting is a flawed solution because most people have cheapo internet connections that just cannot cope with several people connecting on one line. Not to mention that this creates the possibility for hacking.

 

Since Denuvo has been cracked already, it's inevitable that people will start messing around with the game files and create hacks. A problem that dedicated servers will prevent.

[Phentos]

Double post, I know.

 

Replying to this in a seperate post.

 

 

Lack of push to talk. On xbox one we have the mute button on the control. This works pretty well for the console, but then again I mostly play with friends and tell them to get the mic out of their mouth when I hear them start breathing heavily. Never been an issue. I can imagine it would be annoying when playing with PUGs. Push to talk option should be looked into.

Lack of text chat. I could never imagine myself frantically typing stuff in mid action, but during the quiet times when you are trying to get that one archer that is running off to the next enemy group when the rest of the group are standing and waiting at a Rogue treasure room I can see this being useful. On console we have the option to spam "over here" command. I would presume the PC has similar function possibilities?

LAG. Playing on a 60/60 myself and having no lag whatsoever. Have you checked what your actual output connection is? Sometimes other's might be hogging the line, especially in a college dorm I imagine.

Loot. Could use some work. More often than not, opening packs are frustrating. At a certain point it just doesn't feel like a reward anymore. Fine-tuning needed.

Balancing. Balancing is pretty fine so far with the most glaring balance issues being the Venatori Commander being far to weak and the Demon Commander being to strong. Minor balance issues worth mentioning is that the Shadows burst damage can be far to fatal and the Archers damage are currently a bit high and could use a minor nerf.

 

I would have wished that you had left everything but the list out of your post because the other things just made you come of as a hurt little spoiled kid. Try to stay on point and not let your emotions rule you. Otherwise good remarks.

 

For PC. Push to talk options are pretty much the norm. Along with text chat. As for consoles, I can't really comment on that.

 

I've checked with the IT department here at my school, and their infrastructure here is really well set up. As for someone hogging the line, the only thing that would really bog down the connection for the rest of the people here is if someone runs torrents a lot. And the network filter prevents any torrenting.

 

Honestly the problem lies with their lack of QA and optimization.

 

Also, yea I did let my emotions come into play. Those points I bring up are only for the multiplayer. I have a laundry list of problems for the technical issues in general.

[Bastion6six6]

 

 Who would want to wade into topics such as I have here, knowing what sort of things lie within when they have a fulltime job that is already quite stressful? Community managers, and moderators do, and they have my utmost respect for it. We have some fantastic people doing those jobs.

"Who would want to wade into topics such as I have here" presumably somebody who has answers.  You've never heard people questioning something, questioning something that you know ALL about, and never had the urge to join their conversation and tell them whats up?  If you haven't, well, I don't really know how to describe it to you.  But if you have, you should understand where I'm coming from.

 

"We have some fantastic people doing those jobs"...where?  I haven't seen a single one here.  If you have dedicated moderators in specific sections (which is what most companies do) then thats great, but your DA:I is several lacking in that department.  If they only make their presence known when they step out of the shadows to ban or moderate a user, well, thats all fine and dandy but that certainly isn't what you are striving to be here...is it?

 

Once again, speaking from experience, this interaction has not been great.  You need to understand that people payed money for a product that very much fell short of what it was advertised to be in certain aspects, and those people are going to be understandably annoyed.  I would say that those who are annoyed have presented their complaints fairly reasonably (certainly reasonably enough for a member of a community team to handle with little to no effort).  So far it seems like bioware is playing psychic and likes to cite that if they have more of a voice here that it will cause chaos because we will see them posting and then hold their promises against them.  Um....what??  I've seen examples of that accusation here, with you Amelia, and on reddit with some other devs whose names I didn't bother to remember.  If you work in the game industry you know from DAY ONE that there is A LOT of stuff that you can't talk about to the public.  That is VERY MUCH a big part of working in the industry, everybody who works in it is given that speech and made to understand that their job depends on that stuff.  That stuff is especially important when you are on the community team and its your job to be interacting with the fans, fans who are going to talk about and ask about A LOT of the stuff that you can't mention.  It is such a big deal that most people who are "gamers" (and I would consider anybody who makes the effort to create an account and post on a company's forum a "gamer") know this.  A simple "we are aware of it but can't talk about it" would be better than silence since it would at least inform the fans that they ARE being heard.  Something like revealing this information through PM...yeah, that's a bit of a no no when it comes to community outreach, just a little tip from colleague to colleague.  For future reference, if somebody asks a question via PM that you can and want to answer, make a new topic about it in the forum, link them that topic as your reply.

 

I'll agree that BSN has a bad reputation (DA:I is my first foray into the forums here, never once looked at them before) because I've heard bad things about it before.  It's funny though, because the bad stuff I've heard about this place is overzealous and often comically ridiculous moderators, so...you might not want to contribute to that rumor (I personally haven't seen any of that here, likely because this was years ago, but you have showed that you are thinking about playing with fire and I think it would be pertinent to advise you not to)

 

I don't know how bioware does things (or if they even have a community team, you talk like they do but I honestly haven't seen or heard of them before so who knows) but honestly, some of the places I've worked at would use hand selected forum users to act as "deputy" moderators.  People who clearly know the game and are mature enough to handle the task of being moderator, but not actually being on company payroll.  All being managed by an actual member of company (usually the community manager).  It works fairly well, but it requires constant contact with BOTH the fans and the company itself, it cannot just be an outside force and it cannot just be a means of punishment for "bad" users (in fact, a good community team should rarely ever have to worry about true moderation).  I imagine EA has you "by the balls" in many areas (I imagine that has a large impact on what you are able to talk about, because I have seen much smaller studios divulge MUCH more than you seem to be able to or at least comfortable with, studios who are still VERY successful despite their size) so I don't know if this would be possible here, but yeah, just some food for thought.

[BWEAmelia]

@BWEAmelia

I very much enjoy DAMP and look forward to seeing future fixes and content. 

I was wondering if you could provide any insight to a personal sore spot, the 0xp gain. I believe you've already responded to a thread about this, saying something along the lines of it being a disconnect from the host while the match is loading...I was curious if there was something that could be done (or is being worked on) to prevent this issue from occurring, or if it's a problem the community just has to live with?

Thanks for your time!

 

Anzer! Sorry you got lost in the fray. This issue is fixed internally and should be rolled out in future patch. If you get the 0XP issue at end of match you should leave the lobby and create a new one, or quickmatch to a new session as that lobby has entered a bad state and you may continue to get the same issue at EOM if you don't.

 

I'm sorry, but this is just wrong. We get a passive aggressive wall of text every time people talk about their concerns and dare to question the quality of the product the paid for. But when people ask a genuine question about game information or mechanics we get one liners that look like tweets from a teenager. Apologies if it hurts your feelings, but seriously...

 

In a thread asking about being able to view the stats of MP characters all we get is a question - "what stats?" And someone needs to put screenshots of SP attributes page.

 

In another thread someone asked for the ability to select random map when creating lobby/hosting. All we got is - "it's there already...oh wait, it's not, it's just quick match option... lolz"

 

Thread about demon commander - "Ya'll gotta run! As soon as he goes under just start sprinting, he won't hit you" - too bad people keep reporting this is not the case. So much for pr0 tips from someone playing the game for 2 years as you claim.

 

Just to name a few.

 

I still don't get it why games are treated completely different from any other product we buy. No one would accept a phone, TV or any other appliance with some functions not working. You would not accept uncooked food in restaurant. For some reason you should accept bugged games with no promise anything will be fixed.

 

 

Totally agree. I really dread to think what we would be looking at had this game not been repeatedly delayed.

Games should not launch with this many issues. There is so many things that just flat out do not work in game aswell as opposed to technical issues.

Several acessories and abilities just don't work properly. Some accessories dont even correspond to existing multiplayer content! Don't even get me starting on the appauling loot system that we have in place here (15 purple drops and i only 4 of them arent outclasssed by commons.)

All 150 hours ive spent in game has been focussed around building characters to educate others who might not want to promote every character to find an optimal spec. In me3, i posted guides and tips for almost every class in the game. Ive recorded, edited and uploaded entertainment to my non profit youtube channel and shared these among the community. Ive created, coded and moderate a subreddit for this game with the help of a friend and my partner (all volunteers), and i help moderate the me3mp community too.

The total time investment for bioware titles is thousands and thousands of hours of my own free time which i do not get paid for in any way shape or form. And you want to tell me that if i have an issue with your game then i shouldnt play it, also implicitly hinting at banning people who do complain? To me, thats just insulting. I have every right, just as every other forum member does at this point in time, to be angry at the fact that ive been sold a product at full price which does not work as it was advertised. I dont make posts saying ' hurr durr bioware sux and dont know how to make a game'. But occasionally i do post somewhat heated opinions about issues i am currently experiencing. Should i not be able to do this? Am i not entitled to get a bit annoyed that the meal i ordered and have been waiting for years to be finished, is delicious, but it leaves a sour taste in my mouth?

That said, i appreciate that someone at bioware cares enough about their fanbase to respond to some of these issues that we are having. I think communication is paramount for this kind of situation, so thanks for putting in the hours outside of your clocked time.

 

I think here highlights two key things -

 

No company, or person can please everyone. I enjoy engaging you all on a personal level with some humor and I thought that what our community probably didn't want was a robot that only replies to very select problem threads with a sanitized response, or repeating an already known official message. This of course, is usually what ends up happening since some users will be unhappy that I'm interacting in a casual way ( some will love it ), and some people will be unhappy that I sometimes interact in an official way ( again, some obviously prefer only this ) and I will probably become disinterested eventually in putting the effort forth to do either, but I'm putting in a pretty good run here. This community is getting much more honest interaction from me than they would from a moderator, and your voices have been heard with our team whether you choose to believe that or not. Many users here have brought up issues ( outside of just bugs ) that have gotten me thinking ( and I've said as much in threads ), and as someone who sits in on team meetings and discussions about what we should do next having my ear in this way has directly affected some of our priorities.

 

 

Secondly, what I'm hearing from the posts in this thread is a dissonance between "We want more dev interaction!" and "I am unsatisfied with my direct interaction with a dev!". I think a major reason for this is that expectations on response time for issues is very much out of line with the real process of development. I've found a number of issues and reported them to the team ( even fixed them! ). In fact I've spent my weekends since launch logging into the studio remotely to investigate user's issues that have been reported to me or discussed here, and I've replied a number of times to these users thanking them for bringing the issue up as its something new we hadn't seen and creating an internal ticket for the issue. A number of these occurrences happened over PM from necessity as posting personal or account details in a public thread is Not A Good Idea™. Once an issue is found it takes between days and weeks to track the cause of the issue down and get a set of reproduction steps for the issue. It then takes between days and weeks after a developer is assigned the issue for the issue to be solved depending on the issues priority and the complexity of the problem. Then it takes days to weeks to get this issue into a patch and tested by our QA team to make sure that the patch we're putting out makes the game better, and not worse. Then it takes weeks to get this patch through certification processes with first party ( Sony, Microsoft, internal EA )! The bottom line here to understand is : Just because an issue is reported here in the forums, or elsewhere, does not mean that a fix is incoming in a matter of days. That's not the reality of the pipeline of development for our studio. Keep this in mind when you realize that our game has only been out for two weeks in some places, coming up on three in others, and has already had a patch on launch. We're not chuckling evilly, juggling fixes for issues in our arms, and not applying them to the game to be malicious. Hopefully that information sheds some light on the process.

[killsion]

Then it takes weeks to get this patch through certification processes with first party ( Sony, Microsoft, internal EA )! The bottom line here to understand is : Just because an issue is reported here in the forums, or elsewhere, does not mean that a fix is incoming in a matter of days. That's not the reality of the pipeline of development for our studio. Hopefully that information sheds some light on the process.

 

Speaking strictly on this, as someone earlier mentioned, would it be possible to not delay PC with waiting on unnecessary certification? PC users get the patch first, and can perform their own share of testing, and then by the time console users catch up, they have an even better patch. Essentially think of PC as more of the beta patches. Warframe does this at the moment, and while Digital Extremes are known for some really horrible design decisions, this is one they seem to have down well. You can't keep everyone happy, but placating PC users with patches and console users knowing their patch is coming, and what to look forward to, I think will go a long way.

[-PenguinFetish-]

I think here highlights two key things -

 

No company, or person can please everyone. I enjoy engaging you all on a personal level with some humor and I thought that what our community probably didn't want was a robot that only replies to very select problem threads with a sanitized response, or repeating an already known official message. This of course, is usually what ends up happening since some users will be unhappy that I'm interacting in a casual way ( some will love it ), and some people will be unhappy that I sometimes interact in an official way ( again, some obviously prefer only this ) and I will probably become disinterested eventually in putting the effort forth to do either, but I'm putting in a pretty good run here. This community is getting much more honest interaction from me than they would from a moderator, and your voices have been heard with our team whether you choose to believe that or not. Many users here have brought up issues ( outside of just bugs ) that have gotten me thinking ( and I've said as much in threads ), and as someone who sits in on team meetings and discussions about what we should do next having my ear in this way has directly affected some of our priorities.

 

 

Secondly, what I'm hearing from the posts in this thread is a dissonance between "We want more dev interaction!" and "I am unsatisfied with my direct interaction with a dev!". I think a major reason for this is that expectations on response time for issues is very much out of line with the real process of development. I've found a number of issues and reported them to the team ( even fixed them! ). In fact I've spent my weekends since launch logging into the studio remotely to investigate user's issues that have been reported to me or discussed here, and I've replied a number of times to these users thanking them for bringing the issue up as its something new we hadn't seen and creating an internal ticket for the issue. A number of these occurrences happened over PM from necessity as posting personal or account details in a public thread is Not A Good Idea™. Once an issue is found it takes between days and weeks to track the cause of the issue down and get a set of reproduction steps for the issue. It then takes between days and weeks after a developer is assigned the issue for the issue to be solved depending on the issues priority and the complexity of the problem. Then it takes days to weeks to get this issue into a patch and tested by our QA team to make sure that the patch we're putting out makes the game better, and not worse. Then it takes weeks to get this patch through certification processes with first party ( Sony, Microsoft, internal EA )! The bottom line here to understand is : Just because an issue is reported here in the forums, or elsewhere, does not mean that a fix is incoming in a matter of days. That's not the reality of the pipeline of development for our studio. Keep this in mind when you realize that our game has only been out for two weeks in some places, coming up on three in others, and has already had a patch on launch. Hopefully that information sheds some light on the process.

 

You know, you would get a lot less flak and a lot more respect if you guys at Bioware just apologized for dropping the ball on the multiplayer release. Not once have I seen you guys hold up your hands and say 'Look everyone, we're sorry for all the issues that are happening, we really messed up, but we have fixes incoming.'

 

But instead, you are making excuses for why things haven't been fixed, and just turning round and saying 'well no company can please everyone.' 

 

As for casual interaction, I think you've done a great job at interacting with the community personally. You are most definitely a human behind the monitor and you've proven that. Unfortunately, making jokes when there is some quite serious issues here is not going to go down well with a lot of people. If there wasn't the sheer volume of issues that there is, I think these same people would respond a little better towards your endeavors. One question for you though, why is it that the rest of the studio is completely silent? Ive seen Brojo on reddit a few times, but other than that, its just you. Where is everyone else? Because right now, you are the only person being targeted with all the complaints because you are the only one who has so far shown that you care enough about this game and its fanbase to actually communicate with us, and im not sure that is fair. 

[BWEAmelia]

Speaking strictly on this, as someone earlier mentioned, would it be possible to not delay PC with waiting on unnecessary certification? PC users get the patch first, and can perform their own share of testing, and then by the time console users catch up, they have an even better patch. Essentially think of PC as more of the beta patches. Warframe does this at the moment, and while Digital Extremes are known for some really horrible design decisions, this is one they seem to have down well. You can't keep everyone happy, but placating PC users with patches and console users knowing their patch is coming, and what to look forward to, I think will go a long way.

 

This has been discussed within the team. I can't say what the outcome was, nor am I in a position to make a decision as large as that, but know that we have discussed it.

 

You know, you would get a lot less flak and a lot more respect if you guys at Bioware just apologized for dropping the ball on the multiplayer release. Not once have I seen you guys hold up your hands and say 'Look everyone, we're sorry for all the issues that are happening, we really messed up, but we have fixes incoming.'

 

But instead, you are making excuses for why things haven't been fixed, and just turning round and saying 'well no company can please everyone.' 

 

As for casual interaction, I think you've done a great job at interacting with the community personally. You are most definitely a human behind the monitor and you've proven that. Unfortunately, making jokes when there is some quite serious issues here is not going to go down well with a lot of people. If there wasn't the sheer volume of issues that there is, I think these same people would respond a little better towards your endeavors. One question for you though, why is it that the rest of the studio is completely silent? Ive seen Brojo on reddit a few times, but other than that, its just you. Where is everyone else? Because right now, you are the only person being targeted with all the complaints because you are the only one who has so far shown that you care enough about this game and its fanbase to actually communicate with us, and im not sure that is fair. 

 

Penguin!

 

I really appreciate the time you have put into the mode, and all the wonderful stuff you've generated for it. You're generally a paragon of what good feedback, content, and discussion looks like. You personally have sunk countless hours into the mode, you moderate a great community about the mode, you've posted many videos and class builds, great discussions, and your 60 second threatening run with three friends made me worried haha.

 

I'm going to pick on you a bit here, so bear with me ; ) I have to disagree with you that anyone "dropped the ball", which I think is illustrated by the fact that you were able to put so much time into the mode and not just that you continue to put time into it, a lot of much appreciated time. One of my colleagues got a comment at a recent convention along the lines of "I really hated your last game. I only played it 6 full playthroughs rather than the normal 10." Step back, and read that again. That's really confusing feedback. The statistical fact is that most people don't finish games in general. Here is a quick article about that phenomena : http://ca.ign.com/ar...at-finish-games . Our games generally have higher completion rates, but as you can see there - around 50%. When I get feedback along the lines of "I've played 100's of hours of your game but you really dropped the ball." that's confusing! It seems contradictory.

 

I have to re-iterate something I said in a previous post somewhere here in the forums. This forum is a small sample of users, and is an echochamber that can sometimes make issues seem like they are worse than they are. The quality of the launch of our MP mode is much higher than comparable products in the industry. We do have outstanding issues, and we're actively working to solve those issues.

[Andy Kempling]

Hi, I'm Andy, and I'm a dev on Dragon Age.  Nice to make your acquaintances.  I guess I should contact someone to get this account tagged as such.

 

I disagree that the ball was dropped.  The game is largely playable.  The game has held up very well, particularly in comparison to other online games that have launched in similar time frames.  The general case is that people aren't experiencing loss of service, aren't experiencing account corruption, and are instead playing the game successfully.  Lots of people log on every day and have fun playing DA MP without any major issue.  I can include myself in this cohort: I have yet to personally experience a crash or disconnect on my home computer.

 

That's not to say there aren't issues, but the truth is that most of the issues that people are encountering aren't endemic, and the consequence is generally minimal--a simple retry usually solves the problem--or out of the scope of the game to solve (hardware or computer configuration issue, network configuration or level of service issue, etc).

 

Throwing around phrases like "making excuses" is just trying to paint things in a way that suits your narrative, and this type of argumentative strategy is why I think you don't see more devs posting.  Nowhere in the job description is there a requirement to endure people constantly straw-manning and harassing you in order to push an agenda, which is an unfortunately common occurrence.  The truth is that Amelia isn't making excuses.  She is informing you of the reality of the development process, in the hope that maybe with more understanding of the reality, people would be less angry and more patient. We shall see the results of that experiment.

 

 

 

Speaking strictly on this, as someone earlier mentioned, would it be possible to not delay PC with waiting on unnecessary certification? PC users get the patch first, and can perform their own share of testing, and then by the time console users catch up, they have an even better patch. Essentially think of PC as more of the beta patches. Warframe does this at the moment, and while Digital Extremes are known for some really horrible design decisions, this is one they seem to have down well. You can't keep everyone happy, but placating PC users with patches and console users knowing their patch is coming, and what to look forward to, I think will go a long way.

 

Killsion, I appreciate what you're asking here but it simply isn't going to be the case that we skip the release process except in very extreme circumstances.  The process exists for very good reason and time and again proves itself valuable as we catch problems before they go live.  Also a shout-out to Digital Extremes, my previous studio, for doing a great job with Warframe!

[veramis]

 

I still don't get it why games are treated completely different from any other product we buy. No one would accept a phone, TV or any other appliance with some functions not working. You would not accept uncooked food in restaurant. For some reason you should accept bugged games with no promise anything will be fixed.

 

Many people don't. The majority of Inquisition PC negative reviews are of people complaining about bugs. But... you know.... bioware wants to spend "days" and "weeks" and then more "days" and "weeks" and then more "days" and weeks" for fixes. Take your time while people go on amazon.com, search for inquisition, and see a 2.5 star game.

[Anzer]

Anzer! Sorry you got lost in the fray. This issue is fixed internally and should be rolled out in future patch. If you get the 0XP issue at end of match you should leave the lobby and create a new one, or quickmatch to a new session as that lobby has entered a bad state and you may continue to get the same issue at EOM if you don't.

 

Thanks for the response, Amelia! I'm glad to hear this issue has been resolved internally and will make it's way to the fanbase in the Near Future™. I would also hope that the issue with game assets not loading between zones has also been fixed internally?

To illustrate:

 

You'll notice at the end of the video that I was stuck at the Operation Failed screen. I confirmed that this was the case for my 3 companions. I've had instances where this same issue has appeared and we've (they've) successfully completed the Op, but everyone was still stuck at the Operation Success screen. This issue requires closing the game and restarting.

[tikink]

The game is good i like everything about it as all my friends but we are really looking forward for the next patch cause some of us are experiencing a lot of crash while in mp. My game is almost never crashing compare to them the only thing that sometimes, make me mad, is the rubberbanding ! It is in almost every games when iam not the host but beside these little things and some little loots adjustement, i think you guyz did a damn good job iam in love with your game ! Thx and sorry for my bad english since iam a french canadien on his phone ahah

[KalGerion_Beast]

You know, you would get a lot less flak and a lot more respect if you guys at Bioware just apologized for dropping the ball on the multiplayer release. Not once have I seen you guys hold up your hands and say 'Look everyone, we're sorry for all the issues that are happening, we really messed up, but we have fixes incoming.'

 

But instead, you are making excuses for why things haven't been fixed, and just turning round and saying 'well no company can please everyone.' 

 

As for casual interaction, I think you've done a great job at interacting with the community personally. You are most definitely a human behind the monitor and you've proven that. Unfortunately, making jokes when there is some quite serious issues here is not going to go down well with a lot of people. If there wasn't the sheer volume of issues that there is, I think these same people would respond a little better towards your endeavors. One question for you though, why is it that the rest of the studio is completely silent? Ive seen Brojo on reddit a few times, but other than that, its just you. Where is everyone else? Because right now, you are the only person being targeted with all the complaints because you are the only one who has so far shown that you care enough about this game and its fanbase to actually communicate with us, and im not sure that is fair. 

Its (likely) not Amelia's job to say such a statement.  Do things ever go well when something goes wrong and everyone starts pointing fingers? All it creates is resentment towards coworkers, and no one wants that.

 

However I dont see this game as a flop.  Sure there are some bugs and glitches.  But its not the end of the world, game deserves a 0, if I have click X 3 times instead of 1 to get into a game.  In 100 hours or more of playing i've encountered the invincible enemy glitch twice.  Not bad.  Sure, on occasion I needed to restart the game to get out of an infinite loading screen, but is it really a big deal?  Not saying you are complaining about them, but they seem to be the most common complaints.  

 

Yes, its a bit disheartening to see only one (and now two, Hello Andy!) Bioware employees on the forums.  But honestly most people arent giving them a reason to stay (myself included, never added a thank you to BWEAmelia for an answer to my question).  The devs are responding because they want to, not have to.  And when they go out of their way to answer questions or post fun comments, then only get nonconstructive flak for it, well, what makes them want to do it again?  

 

Apparently we've collectively become so toxic that commods avoid us like the plague, lol...

 

Anyway, its late, but thanks BWEAmelia for answering questions and addressing concerns.  I would hate to see you go, but im still surprised your here.  

[killsion]

Apparently we've collectively become so toxic that commods avoid us like the plague, lol...

 

 

This isn't toxic. Toxic was BSN pre-DA2 and during the initial launch. The way the devs and everyone handled that was utterly appalling. Everyone tried to warn Bioware but they went full speed into a train wreck and devalued everyone else as lesser and whining for no reason, and it got to the point if you disagreed you were banned. That was toxic. Possibly the most toxic and volatile I've ever seen a forum. There are some pretty hilarious videos that came out of it though. 

 

 

Killsion, I appreciate what you're asking here but it simply isn't going to be the case that we skip the release process except in very extreme circumstances.  The process exists for very good reason and time and again proves itself valuable as we catch problems before they go live.  Also a shout-out to Digital Extremes, my previous studio, for doing a great job with Warframe!

 

That's a bummer, but thank you for the response. Guess we all play the waiting game now.

[KalGerion_Beast]

Was not around back then.  Not sure to be glad, or proud.  

[-PenguinFetish-]

This has been discussed within the team. I can't say what the outcome was, nor am I in a position to make a decision as large as that, but know that we have discussed it.

 

 

Penguin!

 

I really appreciate the time you have put into the mode, and all the wonderful stuff you've generated for it. You're generally a paragon of what good feedback, content, and discussion looks like. You personally have sunk countless hours into the mode, you moderate a great community about the mode, you've posted many videos and class builds, great discussions, and your 60 second threatening run with three friends made me worried haha.

 

I'm going to pick on you a bit here, so bear with me ; ) I have to disagree with you that anyone "dropped the ball", which I think is illustrated by the fact that you were able to put so much time into the mode and not just that you continue to put time into it, a lot of much appreciated time. One of my colleagues got a comment at a recent convention along the lines of "I really hated your last game. I only played it 6 full playthroughs rather than the normal 10." Step back, and read that again. That's really confusing feedback. The statistical fact is that most people don't finish games in general. Here is a quick article about that phenomena : http://ca.ign.com/ar...at-finish-games . Our games generally have higher completion rates, but as you can see there - around 50%. When I get feedback along the lines of "I've played 100's of hours of your game but you really dropped the ball." that's confusing! It seems contradictory.

 

I have to re-iterate something I said in a previous post somewhere here in the forums. This forum is a small sample of users, and is an echochamber that can sometimes make issues seem like they are worse than they are. The quality of the launch of our MP mode is much higher than comparable products in the industry. We do have outstanding issues, and we're actively working to solve those issues.

 

 

First off, thanks for your kind words. It means a lot to hear that coming from you.   

 

I want to stress that when this game works without any technical hitch, its easily one of the best ive played. Easily. The gameplay is incredible. I could list so many things I love about it. Weapon attachment crafting, party banter, working as a team to complete missions rather than being the 1 man army that has to do everything, role playing each character, the list goes on. 

 

What I am having difficulties with is actually getting to that point. Random crashes, texture bugs not allowing you to see enemies/teammates, getting 0 xp despite playing the whole game, disconnects, again, I could go on. 

 

When I wrote my initial comment, my girlfriend had been kicked out of our game on zone 5 inexplicably. She was our tank, and consequently, we failed the mission. This overshadows all the previous fun we were having, and as a result, I end up complaining on BSN to find answers as to why this is happening. Im sure this is the process a lot of users go through when they make a topic saying 'Fix everything ever' or 'bioware u suk pls fix'.

 

Regardless, I will continue neglecting my social life in favor of DACoOp, for me, the gameplay outweighs the frustration of the technical issues for me. I would much rather that frustration wasn't there though, but im glad you guys are working on it and im hopeful that issues will be fixed in time.     

[Dorje Sylas]

This has been discussed within the team. I can't say what the outcome was, nor am I in a position to make a decision as large as that, but know that we have discussed it.

 

Who would we need to contact continually until this becomes policy? I doubt an online user petition would help. Who can we make these arguments to? Who is actually in charge these days with at least one key person out of the office on vacation?

 

As I restate again, I asked for this to happen with ME3MP and it never happened much to everyone's regret. With the complexity of software you need to be rolling patches as fast as possible. Got a fix for a minor issue? Get it out ASAP, either you make customers happy or you find out that it breaks several other things the internal QA staff just does not have the brute force man power to catch. Quantity has a Quality of its own. BSN has helped BioWare of the past catch bugs that got into the wild.

 

The method of holding patches for Cross-Platform would be like Microsoft holding every minor Windows patch until they get several dozen bundled up and ready for deployment on Windows Phone OS as well. Which they don't do for very good reasons.

 

If you have a patch ready to go that's waiting for MS/Sony Cert, roll it on PC. Extreme Worst case you make the PC game actually unable to launch on even more platforms (very unlikely), and have to correct it fast. Slight less worst is several new bugs get introduced that have deleterious effects on game play. Best case it all works, PC users are happy with fixes, Console players know fixes are on the way and just waiting Cert (that verifies your code won't make their console explode). We then proceed to the next round of Patching.

 

If this process gets ahead of Sony/MS cert then we can start pointing the finger at them for holding up your brilliant work with an almost antiquated process in the age of digital media.

[Myala]

Network and connection issues are out of the scope of the game and aren't going to be fixed? That is depressing. That seemed to be one issue all platforms had agreed needed to be addressed.

[Phentos]

Network and connection issues are out of the scope of the game and aren't going to be fixed? That is depressing. That seemed to be one issue all platforms had agreed needed to be addressed.

 

That problem would go away if there were dedicated servers 

[Storm_Changer]

@Amelia. If anything it's the people who put hundreds of hours into your game that you should be listening to, as they will know far more about it than the average player. You shouldn't focus so much on WHY they play it, which is individual motivations, but WHAT their feedback is on your product. As ultimately, only one of the two leads to a better product and a more positive community. It's obviously difficult to see criticism and negative feedback on something you've worked intimately on for years. Especially when the feedback is perceived as non-constructive, or God forbid actually constructive feedback is misinterpreted as non-constructive. But ultimately sifting through it all, putting aside what you agree with and discussing these things in good faith is important, as I'm sure you'd agree whole-heartedly. 

 

@Andy I've pumped maybe 25 hours into the multiplayer. I've had around 20-25 crashes, many, many disconnects, failed load screens and awful connections making the actual game actually unplayable at various points. My connection is stable and does not do this on any other game, nor has my computer ever crashed this often when playing a game [It's a £1,200 self-made gaming PC, so it's pretty darn high-end.] I own maybe 80 PC games all-told. When multiple users report the same issues, it then seems far more likely that the problem isn't with the users themselves, but with the product, even if its for a minority. Just because you personally haven't had any problems [more power to you.] that doesn't mean they don't exist within the game, nor does it mean they can be scape-goated as user-end issues. 

 

Ultimately dedicated servers would solve many of the game-breaking problems and generally improve the experience, which I would sincerely hope is on the table rather than discarded. If not, I'm sure the issues can still be fixed, but it would take a larger time investment to do so I would imagine. 

 

I think we all largely agree that a list of issues, bugs and intended game-patches should be composed. It would go some way to placating the forums. Even making the list clearly provisional is fine, as at least then we know for a fact that you are aware of the issue and looking into it further. Most in good faith can accept when you can't fix an issue, if they have visual proof that you've at least attempted to fix it and provided a reasonable justification for why it can't be fixed. There's alot of value to providing these lists, as it proves you've listened to community feedback and continue to do so, as well as giving yourselves objectives and goals to meet. 

 

I think we all also largely agree that a provisional list of content updates, with provisional ETA's would again placate users and give them something to look forward to. I don't think any users would be too outraged if an update got pushed back. There's plenty of games that have done that to provide a better experience. 

 

Drafting up these lists and stating that they're simply provisional in nature doesn't seem like too large a task, to me anyway. It would also push interaction, as devs would need to look at player feedback to see what issues there are and get some suggestions for where to expand the gameplay. We all understand that it isn't a Dev's job to read through all this. However unless community managers are assigned, somebody has to collate the data and suggestions together; that unenviable task seems to have fallen to the devs [yourselves] for now. 

[Andy Kempling]

@Zane Storm, I'm sorry to hear you're having so many problems  I know this will probably sound dumb, but have you verified that you are running the latest drivers for your graphics card?  I know a lot of the initial problem reports we investigated turned out to be resolved by checking the computer configuration was correct.

 

In any case, I believe there may be fixes for various stability issues in upcoming patches.  I'm not fully clear on what, where, and when about patches, so I'm hesitant to make any promises, but I really hope they improve your experience--encountering multiple issues per hour must be very frustrating.  Just because I've had a good experience on my home computer doesn't mean I'm satisfied with that.  We want everyone to have a good experience.  That is why we continue to chase down bugs and look to improve the game every single day.

 

Please don't misinterpret devs posting infrequently as not looking at player feedback.  Every thread in this forum is read, and we are definitely hearing your feedback.