Private Testing Feedback Needs to Stop

The devs need to stop listening to feedback given to them in PMs and instead listen solely to feedback in the public thread. Because you have people who have YT channels (everyone knows him), his friends and leaguemates that ONLY provide feedback through PMs to the devs. The testing feedback through PMs needs to stop. If they don't have anything to hide then they would post their feedback in the public thread, but they don't which tells me they do have something to hide. They don't want the "casual forum pu***es" (his exact words, not mine) to know how they're skewing the feedback to fit 1 goal of making everything super hard for everyone, because they if they had their way, every raid would be SM R30 difficult and that much of a P.I.T.A.


In fact, when Wonderverse was on test these people made a public @ message in their discord to not upload any public videos, not post any feedback in the public thread and ONLY PM it to either dude with the YT channel or to a specific dev. Now why is that, why only PM your feedback if you have nothing to hide??? Well he's claimed in the past the he does that because he doesn't want his feedback drowned out by others in the public threads that hes openly called "Casual Forum Pu***es". Which tells anyone with 1/2 a knats brain that he wants his feedback and others like him elevated above everyone else's because he deems it more important. He also claims that he has nothing to hide, but yet I've looked though raid testing feedback threads and hes only posted in them a handful of times and only 1 post was providing meaningful feedback and 1 other post was linking a video less than 1 week before the release of 31st Legion after all the changes that he wanted were made. You think he only gave 2 pieces of feedback in 3 DLCs? What he actually did is post 1 thing of somewhat meaningful feedback, and kept everything else to PMs. Now if these people want to provide feedback, more power to 'em, but do it in the public feedback thread.

Scenario -
You're in a private server testing new content.
Devs tell you to send private PMs for said feedback.

I mean this can be really simple instructions to prevent trolls and other players whom haven't played said content to begin with... and in all honesty, those that haven't played the content and yet attempt to provide such feedback end up getting called out by forum sharks and next thing ya know, the entire sub-page becomes a derailing flame war of "Nurf Dis" and "Boff Dat."

These guys have dealt with this nonsense for at least 8 years now as far as adults acting like literal children in an attempt to get their point across, going so far as to even threaten these same devs with less than ideal actions that would get someone arrested.

Plus how can public feedback be provided if said content in question has not been released yet, considering it's within a private testing server at the time??? That's kind of a walking contradictory within itself.

Everyone is literally free to test themselves at any point and post their feedback on the testing feedback forums. You have obviously been critical of testing feedback but have you even once gone on the test server to test the very content you are critical about or are you just forming completely biased opinions as a hobby? Is there any evidence to support an opinion that feedback provided on any testing feedback forum is completely disregarded?

I don't know any of the characters involved in this. My first thought when I read this was "how do we know the devs are listening"? I can test, and send PM's that there's too much of the colour red in raids, if the next chapter has a muted colour palette, I go on Youtube and proclaim that I have the dev's ear. Who knows, maybe they do listen, maybe they don't. I'm not saying you're incorrect, I would just point out that anyone can send PM's to anyone they like.

Testing is PC only. So everyone can't literally test. I have no opinion about anything else, because the real test begins once the game go live

Whoops wrong thread

DCUO can run on a laptop 1/2 the price of a PS5 or less and doesn't require any membership. I realize not every player out there will have access to a pc/laptop but what right does that give those players to criticize the entire testing process?

This is no way a defense to anyone, but my experience with testing over the years.

There have been issues with players and devs interactions with the testers. To the point, we don't really have the same number of testers as we did initially. I think the main testers that have stuck around don't really test like they used to, save maybe Penryn, who is a god among players.

I post in both open forum and private. Depending on the feedback I am providing. I've been attacked by players in the open one, which is a tactic that players will do to try and prevent meaningful feedback. I've also given up on trying to talk about balance of content. I point out bugs and quality of life issues now.

tl;dr private feedback is fine, since the forums can push players away from actual testing.

I've been waiting for this thread!

That is not true at all. I’m a ps player and can test just fine on my old laptop that I barely ever use. Yes you need a pc or laptop. But the quality of the laptop needed is extremely forgiving.

My only issue with feedback given is feedback given by people who don’t actually test anything. Look at the stu update. So many people were crying and saying that the clamp was to harsh and you couldn’t solo anything. Yet multiple people who actually tested have shown proof that it was not true at all. So the testing section is cluttered with false information. So I can’t blame anyone for wanting to give feedback through PM only. I’m not sure who the OP I talking about. And I honestly don’t care. Maybe they should lock the testing section to anyone who doesn’t have a testing account. Who knows.

If someone doesn’t like the feedback that’s being given, regardless if the feedback is that the content is to easy or hard, than they have the option to hope onto the testing server and actually test things out. The test I look for the most is Penryn. He doesn’t go by he said she said. It’s “this is what this did” or “this is what happened when I did this” kind of stuff with actual proof. Instead of “omg this is gonna kill the game” or “omg everything is to easy because of casuals”.

And the same goes for testing other things. Players complain that they level artifacts and find out it’s no good so complain that they are this or that. When they can simply hop on test and try out the artifacts before leveling. Same things with people complaining about powers. People complain that x is broken, or y is terrible. Yet they can easily hop on the test and compare x to y with different artifacts combinations and so on.

People are so quick to point the finger and complain instead of trying to see how things actually work

Criticism of the testing process is valid when it's being done behind closed doors and, additionally, when it's being done by people who have a ... less than positive opinion of their fellow players.

Disregarding entirely the second of those two items (for now) - the lack of transparency isn't positive for a couple of reasons.

The sheer volume of occurrences where a critical exploit makes it to the Live Server in an end-game Raid is an excellent reason by itself - and the fact that it's occurred so often throughout the course of the years does beg some interesting questions regarding the integrity of the testing process itself being left in player hands, but also isolated from other player's observation.

Game-breaking bugs don't magically appear five minutes after it goes live, 100% of the time - but you give a handful of people direct access to the content for weeks beforehand and no time limits or consequences for testing said content, and chances are excellent that sort of bug can be found in that environment. So integrity is an excellent reason by itself.

Second, as demonstrated - repeatedly - current "elite" Raid difficulty is a very subjective thing, and has also been demonstrated - again, repeatedly - subject to continuous reevaluation and subsequent reduction by the developer body. The community as a whole wouldn't be commenting so vociferously or so negatively if the "closed doors testing approach" was in line with the actual daily reality of the average player, even the average "end game" player.

The fact that there are occurrences where members of the testing community openly cast aspersions on their fellow player base also calls into question the objectivity of said testing process.

Or, to summarize, if it was working as well as intended we wouldn't keep running into situations where things are restructured to make them feasible, and it definitely wouldn't have occurred so often that we'd be talking about it now.

If you have a machine that can run windows 7 and at least 40 gigs of space for the download (I think it needs about 25gigs), you can run DCUO fine. In some cases even older versions of windows will work, but that might prove a little more difficult to get it to run as I think DCUO no longer supports older versions natively.

They used to have testing feedback locked to players who had PC legendary only. As legendary members were the only ones who were testing. This resulted in issues with players who were PS players, but were actually given special permission to test because they had a PC and were part of the community council. They later made PC Test open to everyone, in doing so, made the testing feedback open too. I have a problem with players who treat it as live server, but whatever at this point. I'm somewhat jaded when it comes to testing and my time is limited so I only go on to test a few bugs and see about updates.

Penryn is a god. <3

ALB said: ↑

“Testing is PC only. So everyone can't literally test. I have no opinion about anything else, because the real test begins once the game go live”

Diety Supreme said:

“That is not true at all. I’m a ps player and can test just fine on my old laptop that I barely ever use. Yes you need a pc or laptop. But the quality of the laptop needed is extremely forgiving.”

This seems contradictory to me. ALB states the testing is PC only, which means testing is done a PC. The other poster indicated it is not a true statement but then says in the very next sentence one needs a pc (desktop/laptop) to participate in testing.

I am a PS player, I own an M1 Mac Mini. I am unable to test anything DCUO related unless it is already live for PS players to use. Oh and only Windows for ARM will work with a Mac with the M1, and that’s not for sale, so Boot Camp isn’t an option for me.

Just confused.

Well now you know what to ask for for your birthday.

The feedback in the public thread:

"STat clamp is bad because I want to faceroll stuff!!"

"Make another name reclaim so I can get an used name and won't need to think of a new one!"

"This game is losing players because the devs don't cater to MY whims!"

"All other MMORPGS do this and you don't because I said so!"

I don't know, friend, I would prefer the private testing.

Testing is PC only based (Windows). I might be misremembering but I think you discovered recently that you don't have bootcamp on your new model so you'd have to run it in an emulator environment. I use to do that for some of my apps years ago and didn't like the performance. Newer models may not have the same experience though so if you have an emulator like Parallels etc setup already you could in fact test. I personally use Bootcamp though since my Mac is an older model.


****

To the larger issue the OP is talking about. It is a problem that feedback is delivered privately, especially since in the past testers have misused the opportunity to ensure they could benefit from bugs and exploits while the rest of the community played the game as it was presented. And as the OP points out, the players in question have a vested and biased interest in tilting the outcome of the feedback in their benefit by increasing difficulty etc.

In this case the situation has also created a belief that the player in question has a personal relationship with the dev team. And there's definitely an argument to support them receiving preferential treatment after a few recent events. It's not unlike journalists soft-balling interviews with politicians in exchange for "access" while the politician benefits from positive public presentation. The concept is the same.

Players see this unhealthy relationship as noted in this thread, and it fuels toxicity within the player base and is ultimately toxic for the community. Specific exploits can be reported anonymously already, so there's no justification for having a private line of communication to provide feedback that sidesteps any concept of transparency and the rest of the community. Their feedback is not more valuable than anyone else's and isn't deserving of any kind of cover or reprieve from scrutiny. It's like writing a scientific paper and then skipping a peer review because you don't want dissent from your own unproven findings.

It's a little bit silly to not post your testings for the public, discussion helps a lot building good content and the devs should be the ones who filter feedback. In the other hand it's understandable. When we tested clamping, a bunch of people who didn't test anything at all showed up asking for stuff to be nerfed/buffed and tried to invalid the feedback, sometimes with offenses. Problems that were fixed 2 weeks before were being reported again by people who just watched random videos about the stuff or saw the OG patch notes and already had a conclusion about how bad/good it would be, making it very frustrating to report good feedback.

Plus, There is almost nobody who tests elite raid content on test, maybe like 12-14 people max, if you post feedback about it, most of the replies will be from people trying to get it nerfed without even touching it.

Thank you for clearing it up for me. One of our IT guys has said Microsoft is working on Windows 11 for ARM and should work on Boot Camp for M1 Macs. Also, he said I could still remote into a Windows machine and do it that way so that’s another avenue open to me.

Thank you again.

Well if you were actually testing content you would see that what happens on test doesn't necessarily always carry over to live. There are lots of instances where things worked on test but then when it was released on live it functioned differently. You are also free to have concerns about the integrity of the testing process but do I see yourself or players that share the same mindset willing to completely volunteer dozens of hours of their personal time for free in order to work towards having a better end product released to the community? Think about that

Elite raid difficulty is not as subjective as you think, the microcosm of the dcuo community has a horrible track record when it comes to being objective about elite raid difficulty. If a player wants to make absolutely no meaningful effort to learn mechanics and wants the game spoon fed to them how can that person be subjective or even provide helpful feedback? CTE was a good example of this, I cannot think of a more basic mechanic then being 2 colours and if the 2 colours meet bad things happen, yet that concept was so difficult to grasp that there were floods of comments saying it was too hard and to tone it down.

Testing isn't brand new to this game but I certainly don't see players lining up to volunteer hours of their time for free to repeatedly test the same content each time there is a hotfix and provide feedback. Maybe if there were there wouldn't be threads like this but the dcuo forum community would rather create threads like this than actually be apart of the solution.

This is EXACTLY what the dcuo forums are and these apparently are who we should leave all the feedback up to