Arenas were playtested for more than 3 weeks straight by more than 15 people. This is what I've tried to say with things feeling "rushed" in that you cannot run in to every issue. For example, bosses scale to the number of players in the arena with a cap of 8. On the first day, players reported bosses only having one health. This was caused by the fact having more players caused it to exceed the allowed health limit which then caused the boss to revert to 1 health. Testing for over 3 years would not have ever found this issue because it couldn't occur in our testing. Similar issues account for points 1, 2, 3, 6, and 18. 9 and 18 are 100% intentional because those items represent losses.
I just patched the anticheat further to help with 19 and 20. 4 is being looked into as a requested feature. 14 is a case where things had been planned weeks ahead of time and additional ideas are suggested later. 12 is now changed.
this was intentional design after the last event where people farmed the first 7 rounds since it was much less work and faster to get keys playing easy than actually trying
~ @CluelessKlutz
You say you guys playtested for 3 weeks, but who was this done by? If I had to guess, it was only staff members. Staff members, as I've mentioned before, are not experts on gameplay or glitch exploitation; they're just really nice people who know server commands. I'm not hating on anyone, just acknowledging that being an expert in these areas are far from a requirement to be staff. The very first game we played, our team encountered two gamebreaking bugs within ten minutes of gameplay. The clearlag and getting tped out. You're telling me in three weeks of testing, this wasn't seen once? And we somehow see two examples of it almost immediately, in the same game?
This all goes back to the core problem regarding playtesting. Over and over, buggy messes are released to the public, then over the next few weeks, are very slowly patched. This is not how things should be. Obviously you can't expect them to be perfect, but this is inexcusable. The summer event in the state it was released in was unimaginably riddled with problems and bugs that broke the game so easily. And yet, a group of normal players can play for a week and find a number of these. Many of the players who are playing mob arena "seriously" are playing mainly to find bugs and exploits. And we found plenty. And there's less than 15 of us. Would it really have been that hard to invite some non-staff players into mob arena to test it? It's not like there would be any advantage, mob arena is already predictable and we've seen the plug in before. Having us playtest would not have been advantageous to us in the slightest. And I know many players who would have loved to do it, for no reward or recognition. Beta testing is honestly pretty fun, especially when you know it's helping the server out.
Many staff constantly complain they spend hours working and playtesting to put the events in a suitable position for release. So why not ask the players for assistance? As has been mentioned before, we are not a multi-million dollar gaming company. Asking for people to play your game and tell you whats wrong with it is perfectly acceptable and, in this case, necessary. You mention that some of these bugs could not occur in testing, but only give one reason. And if I'm understanding correctly, which I may not be, it was just a problem of not having enough play testers at once? Once again, easily solvable by introducing players to testing.
To end it off, please do not be angered about our criticisms, or view us as ungrateful. What you have to understand is that we play the server for fun, and when things like summer event, which are broken in a plethora of ways, are put out for us to play, we do not have fun. Finding broken bugs every single arena game, whether by stumbling upon them, looking for them, or dying to them, is not a fun experience. You guys put hours into creating the game, we put hours into playing it. Obviously it's harder to create, but it's also what many signed up for. Yes, it is volunteer work, yes it isn't easy, which is why relying on players is not a bad thing. We would love to help out, and we're not going to look at you guys any different. If anything, I will have more respect for you guys if you came to us in need of assistance. We aren't mindless players like many larger servers. We understand the server, and are easily approachable. Let's make summer great again.
