Prioritization, Part 2, Take 2

Mburn7

Note:  This is a repost of my previous "Prioritization, Part 2" thread with the (apparently) offensive language removed.  Sorry to everyone who was offended by my pathetic attempts at humor.  Lets try this again.

Looking at the "Which Do you Prioritize" thread, its clear we want bugs fixed.  Now I'm curious what bugs specifically everyone thinks are highest priority to fix.

Other Poll, started by @Blazer: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/74020/which-do-you-prioritize#latest

So, which bugs do you think should be fixed first?  I mean this as a "please if you are only going to fix ONE thing please fix this thing" discussion.  If the devs can't fix everything at once (which they probably can't) I think they should know what thing to prioritize in their debugging. (Note:  I took off the "everything" and "nothing" options, since they don't really help the conversation)

FindingHeart8

Whatever, I don't care as long as something is fixed

As long as they're making progress on fixing the issues, I'm content.  However I believe that game-freezing (or being unable to load) situations should take priority over anything else.  You can always play with a different card, but a game-freeze locks you out entirely, with time and effort invested having been for nothing.

This would be 1 and 3 of your options (server freezes and cards making the game freeze).

Laeuftbeidir

Whatever, I don't care as long as something is fixed

All of them. Just that simple. SWW and friends are of course the most dramatic and are probably actually a priority.

Broken cards and effects should be fixed as well, before another set is released that makes the game even more complex, thus breaking more cards.

The mistakes in the card texts are on the one hand embarrassing, when it comes to grammar and stuff, on the other hand the misleading wording can lead to confusion. Fixing this would show an attention to detail and some passion that I'm missing.

Mark_Tedin

Other (please specify)

There is a lot of work to do. I think he should stop a while with M19 and focus on the current bugs.

DumasAG

Other (please specify)

Mark_Tedin said:

There is a lot of work to do. I think he should stop a while with M19 and focus on the current bugs.

Agreed.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

DumasAG

Other (please specify)

I vote fix everything, I am unwilling to compromise.

Brigby

*Merged comments from closed poll into new one

Gunmix25

Server Issues (Something Went Wrong errors, slow loading times...ect)

I say server, then card and effects

bk1234

Server Issues (Something Went Wrong errors, slow loading times...ect)

I want a stable game. I'm willing to wait for anything else. 

I really enjoyed RotGP this week, but even the objectives are bugged -- lots of things need to be fixed. 

Mburn7

Card Text Issues (Card says "Deal 2 Damage" but deals 4 damage instead, for example)

bken1234 said:

I want a stable game. I'm willing to wait for anything else. 

I really enjoyed RotGP this week, but even the objectives are bugged -- lots of things need to be fixed. 

Yeah, I noticed some of the objectives were completing themselves.  Not that I was complaining about it much, but that's definitely something else to add to the list of dumb things that don't work correctly.

Brakkis

Other (please specify)

All of them. Server Issues and Card Functionality are a higher priority than Card Text Issues but they should all get fixed. Before we get a new set.

Mburn7

Card Text Issues (Card says "Deal 2 Damage" but deals 4 damage instead, for example)

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the purpose of this thread.

Obviously all the bugs should be fixed.

I'm asking you what the HIGHEST PRIORITY bugs are that need to be fixed.  

Fixing every bug that exists will take a lot of time.  I'd like the devs to know where to focus their energy first.  That's all.

bk1234

Server Issues (Something Went Wrong errors, slow loading times...ect)

Mburn7 said:

bken1234 said:

I want a stable game. I'm willing to wait for anything else. 

I really enjoyed RotGP this week, but even the objectives are bugged -- lots of things need to be fixed. 

Yeah, I noticed some of the objectives were completing themselves.  Not that I was complaining about it much, but that's definitely something else to add to the list of dumb things that don't work correctly.

Can you please take a look at this thread and add anything else you saw?
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/74112/rotgp-bugged-objectives/p1?new=1

Elektrophorus

Other (please specify)

I voted other, because I believe that game freezes as a whole should be looked at, outside of only "card functionality". This is #1 priority for me, even above "server stability". I feel the servers are reliable most of the time, but that the recent outage has caused a skew in the answers. That is, complaining about servers going down is the hot commodity right now. Yes, servers going down is a problem. However, game freezes happen every day.

wereotter

Card Text Issues (Card says "Deal 2 Damage" but deals 4 damage instead, for example)

Other bugs are more severe, so I fully understand why people would favor them, but personally, I think start with what's easy and work out from there.

Either change the numbers in the code so the card works the way the text says it does, or change the text on the card so it works the way its already coded. This seems simpler and something that those making the game can more directly control than things related to the servers crashing out, and other connectivity issues.

Loading times is a close second, though, considering my phone will put itself into sleep mode in the time it takes to load the game currently. Also I don't understand why the game needs to load all the events when you log in if it's just going to load them all again when you actually go to the events screen. From what the game says its doing, it feel like there's a lot of redundancies in the game that make it use up more data than it otherwise has to.

DBJones

Whatever, I don't care as long as something is fixed

Well, it does need to load up the events to show them in Activity Hub. Maybe they could put a timer in so the Events tab will only reload if it's been 15 minutes since it last checked? It already reloads every hour that an event starts or ends (possibly just every hour period). Overall, as long as they're working on fixing bugs I don't mind what order they go in.

Chocostove

Whatever, I don't care as long as something is fixed

I voted for "Whatever" because I don't know what priority would be beneficial.

Server Issues seem most prominent, but card wording/actual effects also seems like a huge issue as well.

In my wildly unprofessional opinion, I feel like revisiting the cards and standardizing the vocabulary and making sure that the cards actions are all consistent with the wording on the card could benefit both players and developers. But once again I know nothing about coding.

Tilwin90

Card Functionality Issues (Won't cast when it should, card freezes on cast...ect)

Server is such a Pandora Box I won't even open that one. Usually there are people more experienced into handling and optimizing the infrastructure (hence the "server issue") and others that are more focused on the actual content. With that being said, optimized code can have a tremendous impact on the server and performance is another large and complicated subject I won't go deeper into.

Card Text issues are Pandora's Less-Known Box since they actually cover a bigger issue, and that is related to wording in general. Wording is tightly coupled to the comprehensive list of rules I have been mentioning for ages now, inspired by paper magic card design & development. The rules basically standardize things. Once things are standardized you know what you can and can't do (rules change of course, but you need to do that in a mindful and strategic manner, not "randomly throwing balls in the air" and "it is what it is"). Now with the rules set in place, you can properly now begin to set WORDING rules in place, and with those WORDING rules you no longer have to deal with 10 formulations for the same thing. THEN you can begin fixing the card wording in my opinion.
I've started an exhausting (no, I did not mean exhaustive), long and painful list, but after a while I simply stopped. This was getting me nowhere and it's not like it would get the texts fixed anytime soon anyway.

So then we get to the problem #3 which is actual functional issues. Are those related to point 2? Absolutely! Because those magical rules that would come set in place would actually lead to cleaner code. You no longer have a spaghetti mess of endless conditions, corner cases and very specific interactions. You have general rules, generic ways via which the game works, and based on those you can end up writing your card code in a really "lego"-like manner.
In fact, my opinion on this is that for already existing abilities, you could come up with a data-oriented approach, so that you don't actually need to "code every card". This would allow a card design team (a.k.a non-technical) to focus on the design of the new cards, and the development team (a.k.a the coding guys) focus on the implementation of actually needed new content (new mechanics, completely new abilities etc.).
As a sidenote, this approach could actually solve the "oh no, we have to work on 200 new cards" problem that "keeps the developers busy". Card design and balancing has nothing to do with development! So I find it hilarious whenever I hear "the devs" in the context of imbalanced cards for instance, cards that are just junk or possibly stupid effects (I'm looking at you Aven Mindcensor). 

So then why did I vote for #3? Simply because on the surface it's a bigger issue than #2 - though they are closely related. Sure, misleading texts are confusing, but card interactions that just don't work or crash your application are worse!

FindingHeart8

Whatever, I don't care as long as something is fixed

Mburn7 said:

Note:  This is a repost of my previous "Prioritization, Part 2" thread with the (apparently) offensive language removed.  Sorry to everyone who was offended by my pathetic attempts at humor.  Lets try this again.

Looking at the "Which Do you Prioritize" thread, its clear we want bugs fixed.  Now I'm curious what bugs specifically everyone thinks are highest priority to fix.

Other Poll, started by @Blazer: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/74020/which-do-you-prioritize#latest

So, which bugs do you think should be fixed first?  I mean this as a "please if you are only going to fix ONE thing please fix this thing" discussion.  If the devs can't fix everything at once (which they probably can't) I think they should know what thing to prioritize in their debugging. (Note:  I took off the "everything" and "nothing" options, since they don't really help the conversation)

I'm offended by having to vote again.

Hate.......effort...lazy...wombat...fat...wombat...snooze

FindingHeart8

Whatever, I don't care as long as something is fixed

Whatever makes the game freeze, whether it's card glitches, game not loading, graphics overload.  We can always pick other cards to fight with, but not being able to participate or the game freezing is an automatic-loss no matter how good we are doing.