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ChrisGansler

ChrisGansler



29 May

State of the Game - May 29th, 2019

Comment

Originally posted by thuggothic

I don't call mentioning it one time during a stream about looking for a way to add matchmaking in the raid and two weeks later being radio silent transparent 👀

Atleast a release window gives ppl hope that massive is actually listening to them

This show didn't need the first words outta Hamish's mouth being there will be no talk about raid matchmaking today

We talked about this a little bit on State of the Game 120, as well as during the Special Report for Operation Dark Hours. Hamish very quickly mentioned it today as well.

TL:DR We're looking into improving the way to find players for the raid, so that you can more easily find other players.

State of the Game - May 29th, 2019

Comment

Originally posted by motomofo

Here's what I don't understand. It takes very little effort and even without going into detail, to simply acknowledge some of these issues to the player base. Let them know they've been heard like you've done today. Thats been lacking in these SotGs. We're not asking for details or even immediate solutions. But alot of the top concerns by players have zero mention. I feel an ounce of attention would go miles towards player retention.

I think I dropped the ball on that a bit, as I'm working on the communication list for the State of the Games. With Title Update 3 being out for two weeks, we prioritized communication around this. We definitely could have been quicker, no question.

Massives Dev Team when they internally prioritize bug fixes.

Comment

Originally posted by gX-kiD

exploits totally have a very high priority for us

Without discrediting the rest of your reply, I think this right here is the problem.

I personally haven't used that exploit because I'm not playing the game atm but when it came up I knew immediately that the fix is imminent.

Why exactly do you consider some players getting loot at a faster pace "game breaking"? I know you're aware of all the discussions around the dissatisfaction with the amount of RNG, gear sets, exotics, and whatnot. Things like this can ease the pain for your players a little, at least until you have a real solution to the issue ready. But instead of letting them farm for a week you've given everyone the impression again that players getting too much loot is a "STOP THE PRESSES!!" kind of emergency scenario - and I don't think that sits well with a lot of players.

A lot of time in a game like this it feels like the community and the developers actual...

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We definitely see the point that some players are totally fine with just a room with endlessly spawning NPCs dropping loot being fun and fine. We don't think that's the best experience the game can be and for example wouldn't want to purposefully design a mission that plays like that. In the end it comes down to what our developers think the game should be and it's not just a door spawning NPCs and players purposefully wiping to reset that.

It's a pretty dry answer and I'm sure there are a bunch of counter arguments on what people think is currently not fun, but I hope it explains our thoughts a little bit.

State of the Game - May 29th, 2019

Comment

Originally posted by gX-kiD

We will have more information, hopefully next week, about what things could change and what we're looking at.

You should have talked about these things weeks ago. But you're doing the exact same thing as shortly after TD1's launch. Wait weeks and months to even acknowledge the most pressing issues, and only when the player base has basically been evaporated you started to rework core mechanics in the game.

I know you didn't work on the first game but I assume a lot of your colleagues did.

You threw this game out there in the typical AAA-hubris of "We know better what you really want!" and now it's biting you in the ass. Again.

You're lucky the game isn't on Steam since the player numbers are probably devastating already.

Once you've made up your mind about solutions going forward there will be no more players left to benefit from said solutions. Again.....

Interesting feedback for sure. We try to be as responsive as possible but we definitely fell short this time on these topics. That being said Title Update 3 also has only been out for 2 weeks, so there hasn't been that much time to respond to things yet.

Thanks for your comment though!

State of the Game - May 29th, 2019

Comment

Originally posted by FuNiOnZ

Since SOTG has to address the entire fan base in a limited time format, I feel like maybe the best way to handle some of the more ‘hardcore’ crowd would be to have some sort of alternate broadcast that gets more into the technical side and touches on more topics (RNG, AI, Bugs, etc) rather than the sweeping generalizations that you have to use to fit it into the limited time format we presently have.

I found the AI guy to be interesting, and liked hearing about what’s going on under the hood, but others seemed extremely bothered by it if chat was any indication.

We don't want to shy away to talk about these topics. The reality is just that we don't have solutions for all of them yet. Once we're certain that some fixes are coming and we think it'll address the communities' concerns we'll happily talk about them on State of the Game.

That being said, we also think there's some different formats that we could stream to address certain topics or talk more often to you. With the resources we currently have it's not something we can do soon, but it's absolutely something I'd like to kick-off later this year.

Massives Dev Team when they internally prioritize bug fixes.

Comment

Originally posted by gX-kiD

Every.

Loot game.

Dev.

Ever.

As soon as players benefit too much from something it will be patched immediately. Things that bother players or flat out hinder their progression always take weeks or months to fix.

They will of course tell you their default excuse of "sOmE fIxEs tAkE lOngEr tHaN oTHeRs" but it really is one giant coincidence that these exploits that benefit the players ALWAYS fall in the "easy to fix" category whereas literally everything else is always super complicated.

I understand the sentiment. As a player I'd also wonder why these exploits are always easy fixes. And to be fully transparent, exploits totally have a very high priority for us, so the turnaround will be quicker than something that doesn't break the game.

That being said, we actually need to be able to fix them quickly. The normalized armor issue is an example of something we'd love to fix quickly and we couldn't. Another example are the NPCs being too aggressive; It's really, really difficult and that's why we can't patch it quickly.

Again: Totally get where you're coming from and there's a lot of frustration out there currently. We're sorry if you feel that our communication is part of it. We'll try to get better and get you some more information on the pain points you guys are reporting to us.

State of the Game - May 29th, 2019

Comment

Originally posted by LarsTheDevil

Thanks for your answer.

Maybe you and your colleagues at Massive that work the front line (aka social networks, communities) can improve on your communication and post a "weekly 10-20 liner" what you are working on, when the fix will be deployed (aka in 10 days or unknown) and what you are looking into it. What the next steps for you will be (analyzing, programming, testing, deployment,...)....

Currently my impression is 'we' (the community) voice our concerns and get no feedback or super delayed feedback. (...we heard your concerns with matchmaking and are working on it....)

/sorry for the kind of rant

Totally understood. With unlimited resources we'd probably love to do that. Realistically there's a lot of different conversations to be had before we can communicate on a feature or new content. On top if it, we're constantly working on the game so priorities shift. For example the Title Update 3 was meant to go out in April but due to issues with the patch and us wanting to put in extra polish, we delayed it.

Telling you guys this and giving you a reason is fine. But if there are 10 things on that theoretical list and they constantly change, that's an issue. Not only because it might be frustrating for you, but we also need to keep track where we communicated on this, we need to fix the timeline, follow-up later on, etc.

We think we can get better and give you updates earlier, but we'll never be able to answer all questions and concerns immediately. I personally also dislike to comment on literally everything "We're looking into it" because it just feels like I'm ...

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Massives Dev Team when they internally prioritize bug fixes.

Comment

Originally posted by Imronideutch

All i want is my. f**king. Last. Ivory. Key. f**k

We're looking for a way to allow you to get missing keys and masks once you've done Hunters. This has been quite tricky to fix and actually broke Hunters spawning at all when testing this internally. We'll try to get something that doesn't break the game to you as soon as possible.

edit: a word

Massives Dev Team when they internally prioritize bug fixes.

Comment

Originally posted by UncleThursday

The joke is that, like Destiny's loot cave, they were quick to fix a way that players could actually get loot-- maybe some of it useful-- but are going to make us wait until TU 3.1 for the AI fix, which could still be weeks away. Destiny had many of its own problems at the time, including getting useful loot, which is why the loot cave became popular.

They already said they identified the problem in the last SotG, so they SHOULD release a stand alone patch that fixes the AI behavior. They won't, though, because they apparently have to pay MS and Sony some money to get the patches validated. So in order to save a few bucks, they'll make us wait up to the next month with this borked AI and wonder why the raid isn't being completed by as many people on console as it could be, because the AI moves too fast to aim at and dodges bullets like Neo.

Just to clarify, we have a first fix for the AI being overly aggressive coming Friday. Some more improvements after that will come later.

And as zFireBG points out, some things are easier to fix than others. We do not shy away from fixing single issues because it's expensive or we have to "bother" Microsoft and Sony. We just sometimes need more time to fix something, because it's either not ready or we need to test it to make sure it doesn't break more things.

Lastly, as a Raptors fan: I love the Drake meme.

State of the Game - May 29th, 2019

Comment

Originally posted by xcel30

Sorry, but there has been mentions to "working on skill mods and improving skillpower investment reward" even since before the PTS, and all we got was complete silence, same for build diversity. So honestly pretty hard to believe you

Understood. The changes to Skills, as well as the introduction of Auxiliary Skill Battery with Title Update 3 were a first step towards that. We understand that it's not what some players want to see, as they'd like more drastic changes.

We will continue to improve things and Title Update 4 will have some improvements to Skills already, but we also want to let you know what our longer term plans for the above mentioned topics are.

State of the Game - May 29th, 2019

Comment

Originally posted by SkandiBruh

Hopefully, we don't get radio silence regarding issues of the games core mechanics ie Build diversity, Insane RNG , Flawed crafting and recalibration. I hope Massive has been listening to the community and we get some feedback or at least be told that we have been heard

You have been heard.

State of the Game - May 29th, 2019

Comment

Originally posted by xcel30

Can't wait for them to not talk about skillpower, build diversity and bugs

While we don't have answers to all of these topics yet, please know that the dev team is talking about all of these, as well as the inventory, loot, Recalibration and Crafting. And with that I mean specifically to look for improvements and your feedback on how things could be improved.

We will have more information, hopefully next week, about what things could change and what we're looking at. Thanks for your patience and the continued feedback, not only on the mentioned topics.


23 May

All the raid tuning complaints are fine and dandy, but can the so called "fixes" for sound bugs, texture loading and especially enemy AI be adressed? Because all three of these became noticably worse since the "fix", instead of better.

Comment

Originally posted by RyuKenBlanka

Ok that I understand. What it seemed like we were told and it's possible I misunderstood is that we didn't get the raid initially because a big balance patch was deployed and it wasn't seemed as fair to expect people to do a raid the same day a balance patch was added which fine, I agree. Then we got another balance patch and the raid two days later. Seems like based on that logic the raid should have been delayed again maybe a week so we could have gotten geared up properly for it but again, maybe I misunderstood. Appreciate the reply though.

The intention never was to have the raid with Title Update 2, which was the first, smaller balance pass. The raid was released later to focus on fixing bugs and also listening to the feedback from players about Title Update 2.

Our initial thought was to release the raid immediately with TU3 release, but with all the changes coming to the game we thought it's better to have a couple of days to update your builds and with the new loot rules also being able to get better gear, if needed.

Please Fix the Rifle and Pistol Changes

Comment

Originally posted by KakkaKarrot

u/ChrisGansler whats the status of this?

We're fixing this with TU3.1, as said on State of the Game. We're still working on that patch so no ETA yet.


22 May

Control points bugged. Most have turned white and I can’t trigger anything to reclaim them.

Comment

Originally posted by mykkenny

Hi Chris, sorry that was 100% not the issue. Definitely something to do with having just levelled a 2nd character to 18. I and three friends all had the same issue, all resolved the same way. Some details to help you out:

  • We levelled to 18 by getting to Theatre Settlement, doing 1st mission to rescue daughter, then had a friend in WT5 invite us to their session to complete the last two missions on story mode (bunker and Potomac) for mad XP. We then did the history museum and viewpoint in our own session. This unlocked L3 theatre and the DZ NPC, so we did the East and South DZ missions to gain access.
  • We farmed the DZ a bit on the L18 chars and quit - not logging out, just quitting app or turning off the Xbox.
  • Next login we noticed we can't see many BoO NPCs. Yesterday trying to do Union arena I could see and choose difficulty of mission and fast travel to it but not actually play, it just didn't start. Same for the missions I listed above
  • ...
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Super detailed, awesome! Thank you a lot, I'll pass this along.

Control points bugged. Most have turned white and I can’t trigger anything to reclaim them.

Comment

Originally posted by mykkenny

Got this same issue, so do a bunch of friends - we think it's because we have L18 characters (for generic mod farming).

Control points are white, we can't access four of the missions (DCD, Bank, Air & Space and ViewPoint) and we can't access District Union Arena.

u/hamishbode / u/ChrisGansler are you aware of this issue??

Hey. From what we know this can happen if you die on the Control Point and all enemies have died as well. If you do not use your flare or have allies actually take the point, it will stay neutral.

This should automatically reset after ~10 minutes of being logged out.

All the raid tuning complaints are fine and dandy, but can the so called "fixes" for sound bugs, texture loading and especially enemy AI be adressed? Because all three of these became noticably worse since the "fix", instead of better.

Comment

Originally posted by RyuKenBlanka

Why was the raid part of that delay anyway? I don't understand? You rebalanced the game then dumped the raid on us 2 days later? Why couldn't the raid have just been released earlier? I don't see the association?

Both the game and the raid received tuning during the delay. Also taking some part of a patch out of a patch and making it a different patch is a lot of work. Basically you build a patch by putting everything inside you want to push at the same time. That building process takes time and it's unfortunately (from my very simple understanding of coding) not like Lego where you can plug out the raid segment and push that live earlier.

Also, we think that the balance changes in TU3 helped making the raid as epic as it was.


21 May

All the raid tuning complaints are fine and dandy, but can the so called "fixes" for sound bugs, texture loading and especially enemy AI be adressed? Because all three of these became noticably worse since the "fix", instead of better.

Comment

Originally posted by georgios82

Thanks for being here and communicating with us by the way. Means a lot.

I guess what I am personally hoping for is that next content updates will not be as problematic as TU3. TD2 and the whole franchise is by far one of my favorite ones and I hope to see Massive stepping up their game in areas that right now are hurting the game.

Thanks for the feedback, it really means a lot to us as well. We'll do our best to make it a better experience for sure.

Massive, can we please get an estimated patch date for the reintroduced issues in TU3? Enemy AI being overly aggressive, crashing, and sound issues?

Comment

Originally posted by Kambz22

Is there anywhere to submit information for bugs? I know we had a thread here for the PTS but I don't see anything currently.

Even if it is a known issue, I know some more detail around when the issue occurs may help diagnose and solve it.

Yes, we have dedicated Technical Support forums. We have staff dedicated to look at these regularly, but we also scan reddit and our social media channels for reports.

Thanks for your help!

All the raid tuning complaints are fine and dandy, but can the so called "fixes" for sound bugs, texture loading and especially enemy AI be adressed? Because all three of these became noticably worse since the "fix", instead of better.

Comment

Originally posted by georgios82

I get your point, however some of the issues like the reintroduction of the erratic NPC behavior, gun sound problem etc are easily discoverable after 10-20 mins of casual gameplay.

I don't think there's any advantage of having them go live and find them there.

As an IT professional with many years on the field I assure you most of the times management thinks otherwise

As a Community professional for 5 years and having worked in triple A for nearly 9 now, I have never heard that ever. We even delayed Title Update 3 and the raid to further work on the patch. I understand that it's frustrating and I definitely agree (and the team does too) that those issues should be found earlier. But I'm in contact with the dev team, with QA/QC and just people playing the internal builds here every day. It's not like anybody is trying to hide these issues, they just were not found.

I also don't experience all of the issues described here. As you can see in my post history, I have the aggressive AI too. But I have not had any audio issues at all so far.

That's why we're so fortunate to have our community that will bring up these issues as fast as they do and also provide us with reproduction steps and other ways that help us identify these issues.