Organization and planning

[Royalhotness]

I'm already mildly disliked to say the least, so I may as well charge in.

My suggestion is one for the dev team and is as follows: organize yourselves.

 

Reports are being overlooked, skipped, deemed unimportant, who knows what.

There is an almost complete lack of communication toward anyone asking questions or reporting the same thing countless times. (because we don't know if it was missed, skipped, or unnecessary, due to lack of comm.)

In my personal experience, it seems like certain dialogue reports get tended to, or not tended to, depending on who opens them. For example the '$ / pokedollar' ones. A third of them just get the "resolved" sticker and nothing has actually changed. Seems like at least one of you just sits there going: "idc about that. -.- *skip*"

 

If there is no system in place for team-wide use, to check what has been done or needs doing, perhaps it's time for one.

And perhaps a team-wide agreement on how to do things across the game, and communicating that to the people checking those things.

 

Sorry to have said it and probably having put it bluntly and perhaps hurting some feels here and there, but it needed to be brought up.

And, I should hope I'm not the only one thinking this.

 

 

Otherwise awesome work on the game, to date. :y:

 

End rant. :Nervous: :thanks:

[Royalhotness]

Re: Decent organization

 

<t>In an attempt to drag everyone over here and read it...:<br/>

@Red @Shane @Hexy @Enki @Dimitri @BoomBox @SiddhantR @Zaik @Arnie @Chappy @Naero @Carel @Fblaster @Wargreymon @Gawerty @Xhaj @EvilAms @Thanos<br/>

@DoSantos @Engineer @Pretentious @shiju @WarEagle</t>

[Red]

Re: Decent organization

 

<r><QUOTE author="RoyalHotness"><s>

</s>

Reports are being overlooked, skipped, deemed unimportant, who knows what.

<e>

</e></QUOTE>

Links?<br/>

<br/>

- Players are being told everything they need to know. Ratio of fixing things is good. If something gets overlooked ask for reasoning why it happened in a first place. Second, I am yet to see another game that is providing fixes and updates at this level, even though there are lots of bugs that were cardinal mistakes to begin with. Another thing is, we barely have one active scripter who will go over reports. I can do it as well. However, the amount of things I am working on does not allow me to do so since I am working on them ALONE and there is no one ELSE who does those or help me. Same goes for Shane and others doing stuff alone. If something gets overlooked its natural to happen. You can always address those. Remember, we are a team of handful people who actually work on stuff comparing with similar games that so many staff got changed and nothing noteworthy has been done. Pay them a visit for a change then re-post. I am actually happy with the work my team is doing. Short in numbers yes, but gets the job done. Remember, you can count people who are fixing those reports of yours on your left hand fingers.</r>

[Red]

Re: Decent organization

 

<r><QUOTE author="RoyalHotness"><s>

</s>

In my personal experience, it seems like certain dialogue reports get tended to, or not tended to, depending on who opens them. For example the '$ / pokedollar' ones. A third of them just get the "resolved" sticker and nothing has actually changed. Seems like at least one of you just sits there going: "idc about that. -.- *skip*"

<e>

</e></QUOTE>

As a tester you have the right to report even if report gets overlooked. NOTHING should be closed and resolved without explanation given and I do agree on that one. However, amount of fixes is so high that things will be skipped depending who is doing the fixes. There is also work behind scenes that tends to be more than equal to actual bug reported on the forum.</r>

[Red]

Re: Decent organization

 

<r>We are opened to <URL url="https://pokemonrevolution.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=45"><s></s>recruit<e></e></URL> new people with actual skill. However, there is not much of a interest coming from players. If there is one then it usually comes down to lack of skills to do certain task or becomes inactive when work is needed to be done. That being said, the game direction is okay and people are more than organized given the above said circumstances.</r>

[Royalhotness]

Re: Decent organization

 

<t>@Red <br/>

"Links?" Oh, I love sifting through page upon page of forum posts as much as the next guy.<br/>

Anyway, I didn't mean to insult anyone, see it as constructive criticism.<br/>

"comparing with similar games" You shouldn't be worried about other games, focus on your own game.<br/>

I see others say what you said above, that you are a team, and a small team at that, and how each of you needs to do a lot of things by themselves.<br/>

And how you all have a lot of other stuff to do and barely have time as it is. We can go on about these statements, but I'll just say: all the more reason to organize what little time you have, so as to better coordinate results, not potentially waste time on something that has already been done, and create a less stressful environment for yourself and each other, which will pay off immensely. Even more so, when you officially release the game, and even more players start flooding in, asking, wanting, and demanding things, as I'm sure you can imagine will happen. Now imagine how you and your team will handle that.<br/>

<br/>

Back to your comment on visiting other games, however, I had already done that, before applying to help test this one for errors. This is the only Pokemon related online game I felt was worth it.<br/>

But while you are obviously doing a great job, especially for a small team, it is nevertheless important to coordinate, plan, and organize. Especially in the near future.<br/>

<br/>

Last-minute edit, as the forum alerts me to a new reply:<br/>

"things will be skipped depending who is doing the fixes." This. This is a very important part, at least right now, during this time of reporting and fixing. If you're going to internally plan for reports of a certain nature to be skipped (at least I hope this is according to some kind of internal decision) it would be very helpful to let whoever's report(s) you skipped know, that they have purposely been skipped for this and that reason.<br/>

This, to prevent people from continuing to report things of this nature, and perhaps understand any reasoning behind it.</t>

[Royalhotness]

Re: Decent organization

 

<t>As for recruitment, I would love to fill a spot and help out further, but I don't see myself qualifying for any of the positions on that page.<br/>

On a side-note, I do have prior programming experience, but mainly with industrial CNC machines, and 2D-3D industrial design. I doubt any of it is similar to what's used in a game.</t>

[Red]

Re: Decent organization

 

<r><QUOTE author="RoyalHotness"><s>

</s>@Red <br/>

"Links?" Oh, I love sifting through page upon page of forum posts as much as the next guy.<br/>

Anyway, I didn't mean to insult anyone, see it as constructive criticism.<br/>

"comparing with similar games" You shouldn't be worried about other games, focus on your own game.<br/>

I see others say what you said above, that you are a team, and a small team at that, and how each of you needs to do a lot of things by themselves.<br/>

And how you all have a lot of other stuff to do and barely have time as it is. We can go on about these statements, but I'll just say: all the more reason to organize what little time you have, so as to better coordinate results, not potentially waste time on something that has already been done, and create a less stressful environment for yourself and each other, which will pay off immensely. Even more so, when you officially release the game, and even more players start flooding in, asking, wanting, and demanding things, as I'm sure you can imagine will happen. Now imagine how you and your team will handle that.<br/>

<br/>

Back to your comment on visiting other games, however, I had already done that, before applying to help test this one for errors. This is the only Pokemon related online game I felt was worth it.<br/>

But while you are obviously doing a great job, especially for a small team, it is nevertheless important to coordinate, plan, and organize. Especially in the near future.<br/>

<br/>

Last-minute edit, as the forum alerts me to a new reply:<br/>

"things will be skipped depending who is doing the fixes." This. This is a very important part, at least right now, during this time of reporting and fixing. If you're going to internally plan for reports of a certain nature to be skipped (at least I hope this is according to some kind of internal decision) it would be very helpful to let whoever's report(s) you skipped know, that they have purposely been skipped for this and that reason.<br/>

This, to prevent people from continuing to report things of this nature, and perhaps understand any reasoning behind it.<e>

</e></QUOTE>

I am not worried about other games because my game is in the league of its own plus I really have no other game or community to look upon. Hence why I am here after all. As for organizing we have that covered and the team is organized as well. But there is that another thing. I can't really put a pistol on someones head and force them to work if they have other problems that have higher priority than the project. <br/>

<br/>

As for overlooking. I am going to tell you something interesting. Good number of testers do overlook things and they often fail to determinate what could be the priority. I.e; can moved Soak have greater priority than a money or Pokemon exploit? That being said, every time I login in the game I myself see the bugs that were previously labeled as tested properly. I even came to that point that I had to call my 8 years autistic cousin to help me with bugs. You could see his reports for kanto (maps only) that were previously labeled as done from testers. And when you look at it, dozen of people overlooked same things where one 8 years old kid found them all. Overlooking tends to happen and we have a proof of it here that applies for both staff and players. Do not mean to discredit testers work in any way. In matter of fact you did and keep doing one hell of a job that I appreciate a lot. Just sometimes you have to think globally rather than locally.</r>

[Thor]

Re: Decent organization

 

<r><QUOTE author="RoyalHotness"><s>

</s>As for recruitment, I would love to fill a spot and help out further, but I don't see myself qualifying for any of the positions on that page.<br/>

On a side-note, I do have prior programming experience, but mainly with industrial CNC machines, and 2D-3D industrial design. I doubt any of it is similar to what's used in a game.<e>

</e></QUOTE>

 

Scripting would therefore be your best bet. If you have some previous coding experience it helps.<br/>

<br/>

With regards to the 'skipping over stuff'. Our Mappers do a great job with fixing map related bugs, but they can only do so much with what they have. I am the only Tile Artist, and as you can imagine creating buildings and such for later regions has taken up much of my time, and fixing tile related errors can only be shown on the next client build. As well as the fact that i have learned much of the basics of the scripting language here (this has happened over the last couple of weeks or so) to help our scripters out, and i do fix maps on occasion aswell, but nowhere near as much as say Boombox for example. So while we do fix the majority of stuff, there have been reports that simply aren't actual reports, or don't tell us anything about the nature of the problem. <This is what builds up and then looks like we're just 'ignoring' stuff, which we aren't<br/>

<br/>

Yes we are shorthanded, but as always constructive criticism is welcome.<br/>

<br/>

P.S. This is why reports have been seperated, so we can go through them better and mark when this is done (or stated otherwise if not). Its a learning curve ;)</r>

[Royalhotness]

Re: Decent organization

 

<r>@Red @Arnie<br/>

After reading all this, I have to say I feel confident that it will most likely work out well. ^^<br/>

<br/>

And I can understand you don't fix things that don't need fixing or lack the needed info.<br/>

As for testers not knowing what nature of bug gets priority, I agree, since I only have a vague idea myself.<br/>

For instance, when players ask "when will more battle animations be added" I feel confident enough to tell them that that is not at the top of the list right now.<br/>

But beyond that, whether Bug A of Bug B is more important, I have no idea. And I think many of us testers are the same.<br/>

<br/>

It just had me worried, since we are so close to release, and things seemed so chaotic from my point of view.<br/>

I know things get overlooked, especially when there are a lot of things to go around.<br/>

<br/>

But when you mark them as having been checked and tended to, one expects they actually are.<br/>

Example of a marked but not actually completely resolved report:<br/>

<URL url="https://pokemonrevolution.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=2105&p=18395#p18395"><s></s>These dialogue reports seem very familiar...<e></e></URL> (part 3a)<br/>

<URL url="https://pokemonrevolution.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=1532&p=16688#p16688"><s></s>Because they are ;)<e></e></URL> (route 20)<br/>

I can only speak from personal experience in that regard, as I do not monitor what everyone posts. xD<br/>

Part of that post is the Weezing Pokemon flying around in the darkness, outside the actual building graphics, which has not been resolved, and not been commented on as to why not.<br/>

Same thing with the PCs in the Pokemon Lab on Cinnabar. I'm not a Pokemon pro, (though I am learning a lot since I started testing this o.O) and as such, many times don't know if something like a PC not working or not being accessible, is intentional or not.<br/>

<br/>

Ufff many text, much tired, wow.<br/>

And yes, the report splitting did help a great deal!<br/>

<br/>

@Arnie<br/>

I don't know if the kind of experience I have is applicable here, I would not mind giving it a shot, but I understand how security-sensitive this kind of content can be, etc etc, for someone to just 'have a shot' at it.</r>