Where we are, where we are going
Greetings agent!
How is everyone enjoying their solitary confinement?
For those TL;DR, you can scroll to the bottom for my future suggestions.
I wanted to make a post that covers two areas of interest. Where we are with the game and what I think would be interesting additions down the road.
To start, I am going to put my white knight helm on and do a little defending of the Dev team. As someone who works in a similar field, not game development, but in enterprise level security software for Fortune 500 companies, I go through many of the same types of issues they are currently experiencing on a daily basis. I may even be able to make an argument that my situation is possible even more complex due to our products have to be able to fluently integrate with the hundreds of 3rd party products out on the market. In addition, since we do not actually own the servers where our applications reside, we end up at the mercy of the admin o the client side to have been diligent where required to ensure no complications.
With this in mind, there generally are two scenarios that can be pursued when something is broken or not working as expected. Based on severity, you can either investigate the fix and do extensive testing that would require weeks, possibly months to QA or you can make a fix and run it through best case testing and roll it out and hope for the best. Obviously, the first scenario is the best case to pursue, but sometimes the issue is so urgent, you do the best you can. There can literally be 1000s of of test scenarios that should be fully qualified before releasing a fix, but sometimes the issue is so urgent, getting something out is better than waiting. As you can expect, rushing something out in just a week or two can have unforeseen issues arise.
What I describe above is a very simplistic detailing, but from a high level, it does detail the most common paths to pursue when the approach begins. Should a product for customer consumption be released fully functional with little to no faults? In theory, yes. In real world execution, it really isn't possible. There are so many situations in play and many are very limited in your control, without going through hundreds of thousands of test scenarios, you cannot feasible release the right solution for every situation. And those are just the ones you can think of during testing. I think any gamer is aware that when it comes to players, they are capable of coming up with up scenarios the developer never even imagined. In a way, developers find themselves working in somewhat of a box because they are tasked with a vision and they are trying to accomplish a specific goal laid out before them, which creates a form of tunnel vision. It is just the nature of how the human mind works.
Saying all the above, does it alleviate the frustration when what you paid for isn't working? No not really. As and end consumer, we certainly have a right to grievance, but we also should keep in mind that a developer is a form of artist and they take pride in what they do, with the agenda to make it the best experience possible for the end user. A developer is not looking for a way to short change the end user or take short cuts just to make a buck. We leave that to the middle management and executives :P Unfortunately, at times, these requests can trickle down and affect the development team. This is whole other discussion.
Basically, what I am trying to say is, I know the dev team is trying to create the best experience they can with consideration for the what is best for the game as a whole. If something is broken, they do want to fix the problem. I am sure most them are gamers too and have experience similar frustration in another game makers creation. As I mentioned before, I go through many of the same issues they are experiencing and so I can say, submitting a bug ticket or making a post that says "This doesn't work, fix it! does not help the cause. If you experience a problem and you want it to be resolved, providing as much detail as possible explaining what occurred is beyond helpful for reproduction. Once the problem is reproduced, the turn around for resolution is so much quicker. Help them help you.
In final, I just want to give a shout out to the dev team for what they have accomplished. Are there issues? Yes, but there always will be until testing automation improves. Even then, there will likely always new additions unforeseen that will occur that will need to be resolved.
On to what I would like to see come in the future:
Exotics - I understand the revamp they went through in accordance to balancing based on the loot 2.0. I likely would have came to the same conclusion. As it appears the plan is to follow this direction with loot, following the based core elements of other loot genre games is warranted. The whole concept of loot grind games is to achieve dominance through perseverance. With this being said, I think with the way exotics have been somewhat toned down, the option to wear as many exotics as you want is feasible.
I personally never enjoyed getting powerful items and then find I have a restriction to only be able to use one at a time. For me it defeats the purpose of hunting. As I stated, the goal is to keep getting more powerful. Let us wear as many as we want and have the challenge scaled to our gear score, which now seems to be set behind the scenes. Although, consideration needs to be made in regard to if the challenge is always scaling up, you never really get the sense of becoming powerful. Setting up a tier system may be more functional, so as you advance certain tiers, they become more doable and provide that sense of growth and power level that makes you feel dominate. I state this all without having any knowledge of how the back end computations are done and this may make things way out of balance, but perhaps some in-house testing could be done to see the results.
New activities - Based on the age of the game, to help retain the customer base and to generate rekindled interest, the time is good for something new to do. Adding in something like the Underground, but enhanced would be great. Choosing your missions that take the existing assets and do a twist in how they work similar to how Black Tusk missions use the same assets, but the mission is different would be awesome to add in. As well, making it so you can choose all the directives on the mission as well as designate the target loot for the mission. Yes, this would be quite complex to build, but it sure would be fun.
Mods - Again, I understand with the loot 2.0 changes, this needed adjustment, but honestly, the mods really feel unexciting. Instead of a negative, lets turn it into an opportunity. Exotic mods! And not just higher stat mods, but mods that change how things function! Mods that do new things like ricocheting bullets or turns the bomber Drone payload into a napalm continuous burning firewall. Or how about a mod that passes a portion of damage towards the team member with the highest armor count? All new build potential with enhanced mods. Skills could get the buffs they need for higher difficulties with new mod enhancements.
Anyway, I will step down from my soap box for now. Thanks dev team for your hard work and and enduring our consumer wrath.
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