BHVR, Why did you release the Knight unfinished?
I'm genuinely saddened by the state of the Knight. This is such a cool concept of a character and yet he clearly released unfinished, with all the bugs that weren't changed from PTB to how pitiful and unresponsive his current ability is to even how he doesn't have the same restricted vertical look angle as other Killers. And that's not even getting into all of his problems that I could list in the Feedback or Bug Report threads.
Why did you release him in this clearly unfinished state? I just want to know why.
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Tight timing, pressure because of working on other characters / licensed stuff that require more attention.
Or... The Knight is a crash test concept for Lady Dimitrescu & daughters.
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If I have to take a guess Im going with deadlines in software companies are brutal, especially on game software, plenty of modern games have been released with cut content, plenty of gamebreaking bugs or barely working "thanks" to shareholders and higherups imposing a release deadline and not budging a milimeter.
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Money, simply as that.
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all jokes aside, I think if they bring in lady D it'll rather be as a legendary skin for artist
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3 month content release schedule
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Honest question (this isn't meant as snark) but do you think people would be favourable of a six months release schedule interspliced by big cosmetic packs? Like that you'd get a chapter and then a themed cosmetic pack for all characters at that point for a chapter price, and then a chapter etc?
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I think it all depends on how you sell it, most people dont really care about the core of what they are perceiving but at how they perceive it, its all about spinning the story, Ive seen multimillion losing mistakes at my job (enough to fire someone or at least give a demotion) being sold as huge sucesses with the correct wording and selling point, the higherups eating the BS like champs and exiting the reunion with smiles on their faces.
Now imagine these 2 possible scenarios
- "Ok people, we had a very bad string of faulty patches so we are going to slow down content release to fix glaring problems, sadly we wont have any new Killer in 6 months but the cosmetic team will work to release skins which you can buy on the store to make it look like its not a content drought"
- "We have GREAT NEWS!! Our art departament has come with some asskicking designs for some legendary skins, comunity contest, sets AND maybe some colaborations but we have to move staff to it and pour extra resources for their vision so we are giving them the numbers to pull this amazing project but its only temporary and dont worry about the developing team, we are putting them to work on fixes so nobody is losing their job or anything like that, stay tuned on Twitter for upcoming info on this and the upcoming bloodrus... oops I talked too much ;)"
Which one is probably going to get the "BOOOOOOOS" and which is going to get people hyped? Both are pretty much saying "No new content but skins and bug fixes" but how you spell it changes everything.
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What about the Knight is unfinished to you? You know a killer being weak is not a unfinished problem, right?
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Remember that after it became clear on the first day of PTB that the developers had no idea about the interaction between Rocker and Victor, the twins were added to the live version with a bug on their backs, which was further addressed by an update later on.
Oh well, I guess they have to sell it even if it is unfinished because of the release schedule. Business Perspective.
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The fact that he’s so buggy is a testament to how rushed he is. He can literally be locked out of his power the whole match
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I dont see how you can say more time would mean that bug would not exist, seems you are just expecting that to be the case.
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not to mention there is a speed bug that gives him faster movement randomly meaning survivors are basicly screwed.
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More time = more time to fix bugs with more play testing to find new ones
Fact is the knight feels clunky and buggy because he was rushed out. The overall patch is also a testament to this with bugs like the new map spawning every available pallet
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Yeah that's your assumption, but any programmer would tell you an answer wont magically appear if you just put in time. It isnt always the case that time = results. Sometimes having over 100 000 users play a product is better at finding an issue than most QA teams.
You guys are just assuming the resulting product is caused by rushed development.
I would not call Knight unfinished, clearly the bugs only appear once you scale up the play.
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Maybe not unfinished but should a killer even be released if he’s this buggy? Obviously some will seep through but some of this stuff was literally on the test server and found by players
I’m not expecting a bug free killer (none are anyway) but what we got wasn’t exactly polished
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Switching from unfinished to unpolished feels like you are just jumping from a word once I press you to demonstrate.
I applaud you accepting killers wont be bug free on release, I see loads of people on here talking like even a single bug is too much.
I wont ask you to demonstrate 'unpolishedness' because its just another word for bug free at this point.
How many bugs to you is enough to say, nah we must delay this killer? and also how do you know bHVR knew about those bugs before the PTB?
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DbD follows a schedule. It's all about quantity over quality.
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Better. More time for Bugfixes and especially changes on characters already in the game.
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I definitely understand what you mean (especially about the importance of sample size of testers) but time is still an extremely important factor in the debugging process. I don't think either of the two necessarily outweighs the other, as sometimes when the bug finally is found it can involve rewrites of multiple other things ranging from scripts to entire elements/mechanics to accommodate the correction. It could very well be that they learned of issues from the PTB and simply didn't have the time to fix them entirely, and releasing half-fixed would have broken other things elsewhere.
I always try to give the devs on the ground the benefit of the doubt, because these types of issues tend to boil down to project management, and even that can go all the way up to shareholder pressure. The long and short of the matter though is that the Knight was not ready for release, nor was his map. Whether they needed more perspectives to test from or more time to iron things out is a bit of a moot point, as its likely both.
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well if it means he aint a victim of being rushed, -> he is intended like he is as now.. which leads us to some other VERY pressing issiues and questions.
yeah playes find bugs well better than QA.
but what about the dozens of suggestion to like make not his power readable like a book (orb removal, paths not shown etc.) we did in the PTB feedback section. And yet none of those suggestions made it live. I can only assume it is because of schedule. That is the most generous thing to assume because otherwise we have the issiue of it being intended as is.
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it depends on the severity of the bugs in question. for example any bug that disables your power for the whole match should be worthy of a delay imo
Numbers do matter but small bugs like minor audio and visual issues arent too bad.
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Flat out disagree, what you call not ready for release has been working almost flawlessly for me, so it does not fit that definition for sure.
The PTB is only for fixing glaring issues, its not for fixing bugs, that's for first hotfix patch. Why? well because we have consoles whose companies need to run through it first. Its called Submission weeks, we been told before by devs that PTB is to get a head start on issues for release and head start on bugs for hotfix 1.
to sum up if you think PTB is for fixing all the bugs before release, you are mistaken.
Well depending of how easy it is to replicate, it could be easier to get mega data from the community on it. We don't have any numbers on how many games were affected of the power break, so what do we know? Nothing for sure except it happens. If we cant show that its hard to demonstrate it would be delay worthy.
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"it works for me" is not how bugfixing (or even finding) works. You are currently claiming that every single person who has had a moderate to severe bug with this killer must be lying. The entire point about bugs is that they are unintended behaviour, which means that if their cause is not triggered, you would never know there is a flaw in the code. Its also the entire reason why larger sample sets are preferrable in the first place, a point you originally posited. Im sure it worked perfectly fine for them as well, which is why it would have passed a smoke test.
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Where did I claim that? I think no such thing, so it would be weird thing to claim things I dont even believe. What sentence made you think that?
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The one I was responding to, of course:
Flat out disagree, what you call not ready for release has been working almost flawlessly for me, so it does not fit that definition for sure.Since you were quoting multiple posts, my only other conclusion would be that it was attributed to the wrong post in the chain.
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Sorry, what part of english makes that sentence mean Im saying everyone else is lying? Seriously I aint got a clue why you think that=?
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The PTB is only for fixing glaring issues, its not for fixing bugs, that's for first hotfix patch. Why? well because we have consoles whose companies need to run through it first. Its called Submission weeks, we been told before by devs that PTB is to get a head start on issues for release and head start on bugs for hotfix 1.
to sum up if you think PTB is for fixing all the bugs before release, you are mistaken.
And what about the multiple feedbacks how knight maybe shouldnt give survivors visual q over his power?
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Considering I never said "the definition of" and your extremely vague comment says "according to that definition," you yourself kinda opened the floor for miscommunication. I'm stating that you saying it works for you in response to a posit that the killer was not ready for release is saying that anyone who disagrees with him being ready for release due to firsthand experiencing gamebreaking bugs (like his power literally getting stuck, unintentional speed boosts, and every other bug that fails a smoke test) must be making it up in order for you to disagree with that perspective. Unless you are assuming your experience is the only one?
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what about them?
I say according to that definition cause people on these forum have pretty vague definitions, so I honestly dont know what definition the next person is dealing with. Been talking to people who say even the slightest bug is cause for delay.
No I dont assume my experience is the only one, Why would I?
It seems as tho me mentioning that has set you off, it was not my intention. If we work from the mindset that my game working isnt valid for the game being ready to release, then when someone always have a graphical issue with each new patch so that would mean that all releases of this game would NOT be fit for release, which I think is just ridiculous.
The patch working on my PC is a valid experience too you know.
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Of course your experience is valid. The killer working correctly for you is certainly something that can happen, and i have no reason to doubt you havent experienced issues with him. That said, many people have experienced and reported severe bugs, including things to his power breaking and being unusable for the rest of the match. Testing these types of things is a two step method involving sanity and smoke testing: Sanity testing is "does the bug happen", while smoke testing is "is the bug important and/or impact minimal enough that it can still be pushed live in its current state." The big issue is that many feel the severity/importance of one or more of the bugs exceeds the acceptability of the smoke test.
Plenty of people misuse terms like that (and hyperbolize in turn) but I was being much more literal: I feel the knight is currently in a state that should not have hit live servers.
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I take it I convinced you that I dont deny other people experiences tho you didnt mention it.
Yeah if alot of people are having issues in all their games I would agree it should not, but here comes the problem, How many games does his power malfunction? 1/10 or 1/100? can we have a percent? I know I dont know and im pretty sure you dont know either. We certainly cant say it should not have hit live servers unless we know how big the problem is.
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That's how I felt about The Twins. I was hoping they were proof of concept for Tiffany and Chucky.
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what about them?
Well obviously they all got ignored, which means he is intended to give 1000 counterplays to his power.
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Nope, bHVR knows, but they are not making rapid changes to Killer based on forum complaints.
Once they have a clear picture over time, they can make changes.
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well what did we play the ptb for then?
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I don't know if you work for a company, but every company has a deadline to deliver things, and there is not always time to do everything perfectly, but the deadline has to be met and that's why the knight was released even though it wasn't completely finished
The developers were very dedicated to bringing important content to the game this year (especially project W) I believe they preferred to dedicate themselves to this content, so they had less time to work with Knight
I've known companies that had a deadline to launch content and couldn't be late, for them it was preferable that the customer received the product on time and had to fix it later, than to deliver a product late and defective, that's unpleasant, but it's a way to keep deadlines up to date
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Exactly, the devs brought a lot of cool stuff this year, project W and the birthday and Haloween events, and the Ghostface pass, I don't think there was enough time to give the knight too much attention
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is that cosmetics are easier to make and sell well, a new chapter, there is programming work on ideas and concepts, and it's always a new experience for the devs, they create the ideas, but they don't program the bugs, not to mention the adaptations that need to do in the whole game
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So they can get a head start on Hotfix 1, while the game is checked for submission by Console Companies and make small adjustments.
bHVR does not do sweeping changes from PTB.
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so no matter what we say, they gonna do what they think is good. And if they think its good a killers power litteraly weakening itself then thats the fact..
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no, I think you are confusing game development with democracy. haha you only have an advisory role, like the rest of us.
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wouldnt it be smart for them making a game fun to their customers?
im not a game developer but i would perfer MY customers to be pleased with the service i provide, my livelyhood depends on it after all. But i guess people working at BHVR its their secondary job and not main income.
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And yet unpolished states hurt sales more than generating them. If BHVR had other revenue to help keep them afloat over dbd they might be more cautious
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The thing is that bHVR should have a clear picture because The Knight released in practically the same state as he was on the PTB. Bugs, issues and poor balance in all.
So they SHOULDN'T have to wait AFTER the release of Knight since he's practically remained the same since PTB. To me, that sounds like they're trying to cop out of making immediate changes on Killers that desperately need it.
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