Hey Everyone,
I've been getting a lot of reports of what people think are high priority issues in PvP lately. You have probably seen me have a reaction to these that could be described somewhere between between "less than favorable" and "fury that burns hotter than a thousand suns". I'm going to attempt to make clear why I have this sort of reaction to these types of reports and tickets in one centralized place, here, again, so that we have something to link back to and don't have to keep discussing this over and over again. Most PvP reports are extremely low priority for a variety of reasons that I will outline here, and maybe you can understand why I have such a sour reaction to these kinds of reports.
Reasons Why PvP Reports/"Bug" Reports/Tickets Are Extremely Low Priority
1. The game client is bad, and has been modified a by a lot of devs over the years.
The client you are playing with is extremely buggy. Every DBO client on every server is. It can lie to you, misrepresent things to you, omit things from you, and just outright confuse you. What you are seeing is not always what's happening on the server. The client has been changed and modified in some helpful ways and some not so helpful ways over the years, and it changes how certain skills are represented to you visually. As a result of this, you can be extremely convinced that something is happening that isn't really happening. You are not playing the game as it was originally intended, you are playing an approximation of it.
2. The report quality is atrocious, and it's not (always) your fault.
Because of the nature of the client, videos you send cannot always be trusted. We have to verify everything ourselves, so without steps to reproduce what you believe the issue is, we have to watch your video and attempt to reproduce the issue ourselves. Many of these videos are minutes long, of a very low quality, and come with no explanation on what you feel the issue is. It is extremely time consuming and frustrating to deduce what you are trying to report to us, and/or extract the information from you. This costs many hours of staff time for very little gain.
3. Most PvP "bugs" are not actual bugs, and the ones that are, are client bugs.
The vast majority of bugs that are reported in PvP are not bugs. Of the very small remainder that are actually bugs, they are client bugs. We do not have the source code for the client you are currently playing with, the 1.0 client. It is not worth our time to try to fix the bugs in that client, because we are working on a new client that we can actually debug, and have the source code for. Additionally, many of the things players perceive as bugs (for example, not returning to your original location after a knockdown) are not bugs. The behavior of returning to your original location after a knockdown is the bug. That's why your character appears to slide back to their location. The client has no way to display this to you other than sliding you back, because it is a bug, not intended behavior. All of these things take countless staff hours to investigate.
4. Even if it's a bug, we cannot always punish the players responsible.
Not all bugs are punishable, and not all bugs make the game worse. Not all bugs are created equal. Some bugs make the game better by making abusive mechanics like knockdowns more counterable. Some bugs make knockdowns work the way the original creators intended, and remove the sliding back behavior. Some bugs are just replicated by activating skills normally. It is not as simple as sending a video of what your client showed you, and expecting a ban because you don't like what you saw. There are precedents we cannot afford to set and stances we cannot afford to take because they will waste countless more staff hours in the future.
5. Aggressively pursuing these reports right now is a massive waste of time.
The game is not competitive. It has never been competitive. It will not be made more competitive by wasting tons of staff time chasing down every minor PvP report of a thing you saw. Even if we punish every person who does anything you don't like, bug or not, the competitive experience of the game will not improve. It is simply a bad game for PvP right now. It is imbalanced to hell and there's very little build variety. PvP is locked behind PvE. There is a best way to play that works in almost every situation, and nothing we do in terms of temporary PvP bans will alleviate that problem. It is a much better use of our time to move forward and get the new client prepared so that we can actually fix the root problem and make the game more fun and balanced for you.
6. The PvP players are a very loud, annoying, persistent minority of players.
Very few people who play games are truly competitive players who enjoy PvP. The vast majority of players are people who just want to play a relaxing game and have fun. Even in hyper competitive games like Starcraft or Halo, people vastly prefer the casual content. The people who do enjoy PvP enjoy confrontation. I know because I'm one of them, and that's why I'm more than happy to butt heads with the PvP players here, and why I am not shy about roasting you a bit. PvP players here want to enjoy the elitism that comes with being the best DBO players, but want none of the responsibility that also comes with it, or to put in the time necessary to become actually good at the game.
Every good PvP change I've given you, you have not responded kindly to. Every new PvP system we make, you attempt to exploit by farming playing against yourself or your friends. You fix PvP matches and sell titles, spam ranked battle against yourselves to get titles and records you didn't earn, and then complain when you are punished for it. You complain to such a degree that you will even make tickets defending the people you report for abusing bugs when they get banned for abusing bugs. You complain when I nerf abusive strategies or infinite resource exploits.
If you want this game to be competitive, and you want me to start respecting you as competitors, you must start acting like competitors. Don't spam the ticket system every time you lose a match to someone doing the same thing you're doing, and attempt to pass it off to me as a bug. If you are going to report a bug, be clear about it, give me detailed steps to reproduce it, and don't be argumentative about it if you don't get the answer you want to hear. Don't close ranks and spam the ticket system with complaints every time I ban one of you for anything.
You are not an expert in game design or running a game, just because you have mastered the ability of kd spamming someone out of the ring, or killing them in one hit while they're stunned. Playing a game, designing and balancing a game, developing a game, and running a game are all different skills. The player in me wants the bugs fixed, and anyone who uses them banned. The designer and balancer in me wants all the stuns and knockdowns gone. The developer in me wants them gone, too. The person running the game knows he can't just ban every player for it, because that's not a scalable solution.
If you want the elitism that comes from being a PvP player and being better than the people you perceive as casuals, and if you are going to attempt to argue with me, change my mind, or redirect my priorities, you'd better come prepared to have a difficult conversation. Otherwise, I'm going to torch you and it's not going to be fun for either of us, but we both know that kind words do not sway competitive people. It is extremely frustrating and disheartening to me that there is nothing in my toolkit beyond rage and consequences to communicate with this kind of person, but I understand that you are angry and upset, and there's not much I can do about it right now. Don't take it personally. If you feel like it's going to hurt your feelings, come talk to me later after the roast and I'll apologize, or just take me at my word and trust me to make the game better in time.