So Boss Rush 2.0, was it tested?

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Comments

  • Ducky
    Ducky Posts: 2,255 Community Moderator
    Brigby said:
    Hi Everyone. While I don't have the specific details as to testing procedures, I do know that the QA team has in fact tested this event prior to including it in the daily patch update.
    To be fair, they play-tested Boss Rush as well. They just didn't play test it for 5* scaling and admitted as much in one of the Puzzle Warrior podcasts. Hopefully they didn't make that mistake again.
  • ProtoformX
    ProtoformX Posts: 29 Just Dropped In
    Brigby said:
    Hi Everyone. While I don't have the specific details as to testing procedures, I do know that the QA team has in fact tested this event prior to including it in the daily patch update.
    Not attacking you, but it sounds like you don't realize how little that means given all the previous critical bugs that passed QA testing.  Given the nature of the updates, I have to imagine that the code base is more spaghetti than code so I can't blame the testers, but it is painfully obvious that not enough time/resources is given to flushing out issues before deployment.
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
    Ducky said:
    Brigby said:
    Hi Everyone. While I don't have the specific details as to testing procedures, I do know that the QA team has in fact tested this event prior to including it in the daily patch update.
    To be fair, they play-tested Boss Rush as well. They just didn't play test it for 5* scaling and admitted as much in one of the Puzzle Warrior podcasts. Hopefully they didn't make that mistake again.
    Man, I don't even believe they did that much. Round 6 and up was utterly awful at the 4* level too. If they did test it, they went "Huh, you can't beat it without a gimmick team that takes 25+ minutes? Sure, that seems reasonable."
  • spectator
    spectator Posts: 395 Mover and Shaker
    I'm just going to assume first run is horrible and will be much much better the second time around. That's usually how it works with these boss events. Open to being pleasantly surprised
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,736 Chairperson of the Boards
    Optimism:  Infinity Gauntlet was fun and not broken in the first run.  Civil War was fine in the first run too.
  • Beer40
    Beer40 Posts: 826 Critical Contributor
    Brigby said:
    Hi Everyone. The developers have been well aware of the concerns of "Boss Rush 1.0" during the development of The Sinister Six event. Two big concerns from Boss Rush were AP build-up transferring over to the next boss, and enemy difficulty levels, so the team made sure they tackled those two issues this time around:
    1. The Sinister Six event will clear AP after each wave is defeated, preventing the next boss from using any of the AP the previous wave had collected.
    2. Enemies have had their difficulty levels tuned, particularly in the upper levels.
    The Sinister Six event is still intended to be a challenging event, but with the previous two adjustments, hopefully it won't be overwhelmingly so.
    I don't doubt for a second that the MPQ team tried to fix the issues or they wouldn't have re-run the event (albeit with different naming). The issue is in QA (testing) and whether or not it was appropriately tested. 

    Another quote from Brigby said it was tested. Well, my guess is that the developers test their own material. Any good developer would. But that's where QA comes in. A second (or more) set of eyes and a different thought process is needed to thoroughly test. 

    The "hopefully" part of this comment doesn't give me great hope that its been seen by enough different people. I hopefully am wrong.
  • UNC_Samurai
    UNC_Samurai Posts: 402 Mover and Shaker
    edited July 2017
    Brigby said:
    Hi Everyone. The developers have been well aware of the concerns of "Boss Rush 1.0" during the development of The Sinister Six event. Two big concerns from Boss Rush were AP build-up transferring over to the next boss, and enemy difficulty levels, so the team made sure they tackled those two issues this time around:
    1. The Sinister Six event will clear AP after each wave is defeated, preventing the next boss from using any of the AP the previous wave had collected.
    2. Enemies have had their difficulty levels tuned, particularly in the upper levels.
    The Sinister Six event is still intended to be a challenging event, but with the previous two adjustments, hopefully it won't be overwhelmingly so.
    It's hard to tell from just the early rounds, having not seen the upper end of scaling. But through the first 7 rounds, I think the Demiurge Team got this right. Overall, the boss abilities are challenging without being nigh-unto-impossible:

    • Sandman can be beaten, though I do worry that beating him in round 8 will require lucky board generation.
    • Venom's invisibility is fast enough that you can't just deny purple. You have to heavily rely on tile-altering powers. I like the strategic puzzle element there, although I can understand if people with limited rosters felt otherwise.
    • Vulture manages to take-off and land without melting the source code. Fighting him reminds me a lot of Tyrano in Chrono Trigger - you had a limited number of turns to deal your Final Kick damage, before he hit your party with his fire breath.
    • Most importantly to me, Ock's reactor token was susceptible to targeted tile destruction. I don't know if that was a conscious decision on the part of the dev team, but I'm glad to see that vulnerability (it makes sense that Widow or Bucky would just shoot the friggin reactor)

    Overall, I really like the approach, continuing their design trends from Kaecilius. It's put real value in board shake and manipulation abilities. I happen to like that, although I know some people will think it slows the game down.
  • waywreth
    waywreth Posts: 303 Mover and Shaker
    edited July 2017
    I thought it was a fun event.  It really put the puzzle in puzzle quest.  There are multiple avenues and combinations that can win vs. each boss, and the reset between rounds made it far more fair.

    Great work! 
  • spectator
    spectator Posts: 395 Mover and Shaker
    spectator said:
    I'm just going to assume first run is horrible and will be much much better the second time around. That's usually how it works with these boss events. Open to being pleasantly surprised
    Pleasantly surprised, so awesome, thanks devs
  • Ducky
    Ducky Posts: 2,255 Community Moderator
    This event is actually a bit too easy. We're not even to the 2nd refresh yet and have round 8 with less than 2 millions points to go.  You shouldn't be able to beat a boss event in less than a day, that's how you lose engagement in the future.
  • akboyce
    akboyce Posts: 283 Mover and Shaker
    I would love to see a system like clearance level for future alliance events. Your alliance picks how hardcore it wants to be at the start and difficulty/prizes scales accordingly.  Personally I love this difficulty level for my more casual alliance. Going in I thought we would be lucky to get 2 Carols and now we might go all the way if we work hard all weekend and for a smaller more causal alliance that feels AWESOME. But I have been in hardcore ones before and I can understand how finishing in one day could be really bad. I would love it if both groups could have obtainable shinnies and enjoyable multi day events. Obviously a very hard needle to thread though.
  • Stax the Foyer
    Stax the Foyer Posts: 941 Critical Contributor
    Ducky said:
    This event is actually a bit too easy. We're not even to the 2nd refresh yet and have round 8 with less than 2 millions points to go.  You shouldn't be able to beat a boss event in less than a day, that's how you lose engagement in the future.
    The people who are in alliances that were able to beat it in less than a day aren't the at-risk group for losing engagement, I don't think.

    It's the players who want to participate on the last day but are scaled out because of Side Node Hell that I'd be most worried about.

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