How often do we see this from @Community.
We have game full of bugs, which includes the Bug Report template as well.
This pretty much sums up the state of the game at the moment.
I’ve suggested to them that, since they can’t get the template to work the way they intend, they should just modify the instructions to properly match the way that it does work. I even suggested that they simply include the guide that Pugilist already made, that several of us try to link to people that have tried and failed to make a bug report. That was more than two months ago - the response was ‘Will see what we can do’ and no news since.
Edit: I find it hard to imagine that it requires two months to change the instructions, even if programming the template itself is difficult.
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I think us 3 and a few others have been asking for years now.
3 years with confusing instructions overlaid on a broken template.
3 years of broken posts per day, sometimes up to 5.
3 years of wasted time for mods, players and those trying to get help or to help.
I don’t understand…
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Yeah, I suppose in the overall timescale of how long we’ve been reporting the problem and asking for a fix two months isn’t really that long. But it was also the first time I can remember that we got a response to any of our reports on the topic, so for that response to still have no result is a little galling. The fact that it took me accusing Funcom of not wanting to fix the template in order to hide the true scale of bug reports - since many of those who try to report and fail simply don’t come back for a second attempt - makes it feel even more ridiculous that they still allow so long to go by without implementing a fix, especially since we have provided the fix for them. It makes it harder to believe the denials… Still, the CMs have finally switched from just sending people back to the broken template to ‘try again’ to now actually admitting that the template is at fault and asking them to add the details in a reply instead, so that’s at least an improvement. Maybe in another few years they’ll finally get round to amending the instructions so that there are fewer failed reports in the first place…
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With you on this, I’ve complained enough.
Oh gosh I wasn’t comparing the timescale O.O just stating that it’s been that long we’ve been asking.
Yep, you’ve addressed them, I’ve made a post like Hawke and others… Deac has too.
This is incredibly impacting. The view of the forum is not that great especially seeing some of the comments in other spaces. Sure I agree there’s some dysfunction happening here but it also happens in those other spaces too. What makes it worse is that the communication from FC, on their website, their help center, social media, when tickets are filed, is to come here to file a bug report. With the broken template. That doesn’t work.
Indeed an improvement. They obviously can’t alter the template posts because it is Andy that posted it and I assume he has a higher status than they do. I get that Andy is incredibly busy but it would take so little time investment to adjust or remove certain features so it isn’t such a waste of time, effort and frustration for everyone. Like christ the time wasted to me is incredible. 3 ■■■■■■■ years.
Both you and I have spent literal hours now informing others that it is broken. Now @cyc has been trying to help too.
This should not have gone on for so long.
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Oh I got that, no worries. Just made me think of the difference between two months since ‘the reply’ and the years we spent waiting for that reply in the first place, lol. Heck, it’s going on for a year since Pugilist put that guide together - I’ve got the re-post of it bookmarked and that was October last year!
Yep, which is probably part of why we see the numbers continue to dwindle. Fewer and fewer new posters join to replace those that give up. It doesn’t help that certain key figures on other platforms are often determined to badmouth the forums because they prefer another platform (coincidentally one where they happen to have additional power…), but as you say, the same disfunctionality is present in those spaces too. But then, Funcom often seems to regard the forums as the last place to actually address communications - preferring to announce things on Twitter for example - which is another ‘nail in the coffin’.
It really does make me question why Funcom directs all bug reports here (to the faulty template), refuses to make the simple fixes that we’ve explained to them, and seems either through active choice or inactive negligence to be willing to let the forums rot. I get that Andy took responsibility for the flawed template, but after years of us telling them, and months since they finally acknowledged it, it is hard not to view it as deliberate when still nothing is done.
Yeah it seems really odd. Especially given that the only time investment actually required would be to slightly adjust the instructions so that they are clearer (and maybe link Pugilist’s guide, since that seems far more effective for more people than the existing instructions) - it’s not as if the template even needs to be fixed, if the instructions are fixed instead. But somehow even that little time can’t be found. So instead everyone - bug reporters, community managers (including Andy himself when he has to periodically calm the irritation) and of course us - all end up wasting far more time than it would actually take to make the simple changes necessary.
Yup. And even the community team have wasted hours pasting the same replies having to ask for more information. It all adds up.
Really it’s just incomprehensible. It’s like those stories you sometimes hear of some important expensive machine that reaches catastrophic failure because someone didn’t get round to replacing some small cheap part. But then, we look at the bugs in the game, several of which are just mistaken table entries that have been identified for them by players and yet are allowed to persist for months or years, and it does rather seem like it’s just the way Funcom operates. There’s a good reason I’m not even looking at Dune, despite enjoying the IP…
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Count me as another that would very much like to see this fixed. Heck I’d build a bug tracker for them if I thought they’d use it.
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I am having a look at the source code for the bug template page, as it seems to use html’s blockquote to copy what the poster has inputted into the page, and as to why it is unable to write this into the text boxes as a report is a little weird.
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Andy admitted the reason it doesn’t do what was intended is because he doesn’t know well enough how to program it - that’s why I’ve kept recomending that he fix the instructions to match the actual behaviour rather than trying to fix the behaviour itself. But if you’re able to provide him with an explanation of how to do what he intended it to do, I’d guess he’d probably be happier with that.
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Fyi for anyone reading this Feed-back.
@ DanQuixote is referring to these comment made by Andy on the 28th March.
I would have thought that making a fully functional Bug Report Template would be a top priority.
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Ah ok I did not see this explaination of andys, I just assumed it was a forum thing not realising this.
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“Is it really that hard…”
I submit the past 5+ years of Funcom’s behavior to definitively answer: Yes, it is really beyond the realms of possibility for Funcom to do anything remotely sane or competent.
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I have no idea if you guys are recent years players or originals from back in the early days.
But if your recent then you won’t know about (let alone remember) how hard it was to file a bug report at all, and then once you did, how long it took for them to address the bugs (years to never) and they very rarely kept you up to date on anything. And that was in AO’s Prime. Now it’s still the same, very little communication, no-one seems to know whose in charge of bug report monitoring, and mostly they ignore bugs because they cannot figure out how to fix them.
I mean when AoC came out AO lost a lot of players, who found AoC buggy, underdeveloped and a complete waste of money… but they’d already cancelled AO subs, and bought AoC. So they cancelled AoC and never came back to AO because they became annoyed at Funcom for hyping AoC and killing AO. I refused to play AoC but AO was pretty much a ghost town. Funcom tried getting players back by promising a new graphics engine implementation. They promised for about 2 years and then nothing. No engine, no update, and now… over 10 years later and still no new graphics engine.
If Funcom say they’re going to do something, nod like you would to a crazy person and walk the opposite way. But don’t worry, mostly they’ll just ignore the bugs and implement some other stupid starter area. It’s already changed twice from the original, and they’re both crap.
I’ve been playing the game for 6 years with 13,800 hrs of game play + another 620 hrs on the Public Beta Client.
I am well aware of Funcom’s history of ignoring bugs.
I find it incredibly frustrating that they are treating the Bug Template in the same way as they are treating the game. Almost got it right, it’s usable, so we will fix it proper later.
Andy has said why the Template is broken/not working as intended.
The problem is when a retailer runs out of hot water bottles in the middle of Winter, excuses don’t keep your feet warm.
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are you surprised? if the issue is not related to dune it doesnt matter.
during the weekennd theyu deployed 2 patches to dune,.yes TWO ./… (small hotfixes) , just to give you an example how they are dealing with DUNE. …
funcom keeps lying, and they will keep doing so, because they have no idea how to be honest with their community. they simply do not have the guts to come forward and say whatever they need to say … that thing that most of us know already.
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Speaking of which - How’s that Crafting Overhaul for AoC going, Funcom?
The plugin that @AndyB mentions is from discourse, it does not allow except for copy and paste for the information where the bugs are entered to prefill out the composer, this is what we all use when we make a post.
It seems that the only way this can be done is to make the composer the actual bug template, exactly the same as the form but within the composer so that when we press submit all of the information is posted as it should be.
This is the closet thing they have from what I have gathered to what we are requiring here.
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