You think that mentioning how you think “things work” makes them immune to criticism and kills any argument. But often enough, “the way things work” in a company is the very thing that is broken and should be criticized.
If you produce a game with live service aspects that has bugs older than Methusalem, then the things just don’t work as they should.
For example, if customer support staff members don’t know the game they are the customer support of - that would be a problem.
If they can’t log a collection of bugs - that would be a problem.
If there is more than one person per hour working on bug fixing, and this is the outcome - that would be a problem.
If wasting my time is okay but wasting their time is not - that would be a problem.
Tell me again that I am wrong and Funcom processes bugs the perfect and right way once they are all gone.
Bug lists are not useless, they normally get distilled in the mentioned bug trackers and get listed again in patch notes. Some of the trackers are even open to the players, making it so much easier, for example using Trello.
Not using mods when reporting bugs is common sense in 2024 at least for people who take the time to report bugs for a this old game.
All my bugs only need one step to reproduce - turn on the game and try it. For real:
Bug: No epic variant of delved armors.
Reproduction: delve the armor and look at the trait.
It is not like an RPG bug where a special line of text won’t appear if you eat the apple of justice while dancing with a crocodile and saying the words “Trug Backer” twice before talking to the thunderbox.
This unnecessary information is just slowing you down. Which devs time is saved by reading: Turn on PC. Start Steam. Start Conan Exiles. Collect ???. Give ??? into altar. Start surge. Wait for mobs. Kill Mobs. Loot armor. Ride to your base. (Maybe build the base first?). Build a delving bench. Ride to a dungeon. Fight through the dungeon. Kill the inhabitants. Loot the Chest. Bring eldarium to the base. Melt eldarium in kiln. Bring eldarium bars to the delving bench. Delve the armor. learn the recipe. Go to the traits tab…
Man… there is an error in the traits database regarding delved armors. Check it.
And I also mentioned that my bugs work on any platform or server. Because that’s how database errors work. Today I wanted to add, that hardened steel weapons looted from the Black Hand in Siptah state, that they were variable but aren’t. How the hack would a database error like this only affect PC PvP Servers on Mondays? That is not how Unreal Engine works.
How do you really do good, effective bug fixing at eye level with the players who take time to report them?
You could for example open your bug tracker to the players. Display priorities and let the tracker be searched to avoid duplicates. Let the players feed new bugs in a waiting-for-confirmation state. Let a Funcom employee discard or forward bugs. Let anyone vote on bugs, so Funcom gets a feeling for what is important to the players. Display which bugs are currently worked on.
Or alternatively, release the game and its updates in a near-flawless state.
Because at the moment players report bugs for nothing. Reporting them is unnecessarily harder than it must be. And even the finest filled templates will not be touched by Funcom and the bugs will remain as they are. Proven by the years they already exist.