You are someone I actually have some respect for - so I am glad to hear that you are included in this group. But others have been wielding that membership as a sign of their ‘privileged position’, attempting to use their ‘greater knowledge’ to shut down criticism of the results we as players get to see. That is what I am criticising as ‘an elite group’ - especially given that their first move on discovering that players were attempting to organise a group of their own to achieve some hope of change was to try to shut it down.
I didn’t call for the settlement system not to be incorporated, in fact if you read my more detailed criticism here, you’ll see that I was a fan of the idea, it is the execution that I view as bad.
As to my criticisms above - maybe the ‘test group’ was given no chance to prevent the removal of custom inventory sorting (or of the mouse pointer from radial menus, or of functional combat facing (still locked facing whenever harvesting, despite its supposed ‘fixing’) or a myriad of other poor decisions, many of which fly in the face of long established industry standards) - but Dennis flat out stated that ‘No one uses custom inventory sorting’. This means that one of three situations is true - a) Dennis lied, or b) the 'test group failed by not giving Dennis the information that many players do in fact use custom inventory sorting, or c) the test group failed by not including a wide enough range of players to be able to give that information in the first place.
Irrespective of what the test group did or did not have a chance to change, statements like that suggest failure at a deep level somewhere.
Similarly, Funcom’s communciation has been abysmal, despite repeated promises to the contrary. Again that is not a failing of the game, or even of the direction it is being taken. That is a failure of Funcom employees - either those at the top failing to ensure that communication is maintained, or those doing the job and not communicating. Again I point out a complete lack of response to even the simplest and most polite of questions.
Exactly this.
But when those bugs are entirely game-breaking, are found and reported by beta testers (if not earlier) are then ignored and the update is pushed out anyway, then players have every right to consider that they are being f*cked with.
And that is dishonesty masquerading as being reasonable. You at least I expect better than strawman arguments from. I have spent years defending the little bugs that the team might not have been able to expect, or might be considered low priority. Hell, the ‘falling through foundations’ bug is clearly such an unexpected side-effect, and for exactly that reason I have defended Funcom’s efforts to isolate and fix the problem (without, as AndyB pointed out accidentally recreating the Nemedian foundations stability bug). But that is not remotely close to what is being complained about.
Except that many of us have spent years defending Funcom against that exact sort of accusation, Yet, when we make a simple request - to have a clear and unequivocal statement from Funcom (not simply the opinion of ther players, no matter their expertise) regarding whether ANY bug reported during testlive will ever be fixed before release (not EVERY bug, ANY bug), we are repeatedly ignored. Despite explaining that a clear statement would allow those donating their time for free (my hundreds of hours may pale into insignificance next to the thousands of hours you have donated - but they would still cost Funcom a significant sum to actually pay someone to do the work I have done for them, and I am just one of many) to know exactly what to expect. Despite explaining clearly that if the answer is ‘no bugs identified during testlive will be fixed before release’ that would itself still be an acceptable answer - as it would at least allow people to know, and would give us something to point to when others complain. Instead we were ignored, repeatedly. Again.
In respect to the bugs you are refering to above - you are damn right they knew exactly what was going to happen and still released it - because all of those issues were reported during testlive, if not before.
I don’t give a damn how they do it - I care that they don’t do it at all.
It is not unreasonable for players to expect that game-breaking bugs should not in fact be pushed live after having been reported in detail before going live. I do not need to know the cause of a bug, to understand the consequences of a bug. And I do not need either of those things to recognise that point blank refusal to communicate, despite repeatedly claiming to do otherwise is just poor practice.
Exactly.