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Real Talk: was the Houndmaster playtested?

PreorderBonus
PreorderBonus Member Posts: 338
in General Discussions

Houndmaster is probably the killer with the most bugs on release, aside from Twins. Dog pathing is obviously beyond horrible, but even if that was fixed, the dog still gets stuck while following you. This means you can literally send him on a chase, be unable to follow through because he's stuck somewhere, and still be locked in the sending-to-chase animation with the movement speed cooldown. I don’t even have to go in-depth about it because if you played her, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Anyone claiming "she's fine" clearly didn’t play her.

So, what happened?

I’m trying to look at it from BHVR's perspective here, but it doesn’t take more than a single match to get a feel for how janky and buggy the dog is. It's impossible for them to have missed this, which means it can’t just be incompetence. If that's not the case, the only other explanation is that BHVR knew how buggy she was, how unplayable her current state was, but decided to release her anyway and charge real money for it. They charged for something they knew wasn’t finished, and we’re left uncertain whether they’ll even be able to fix it properly.

This, combined with other issues—especially the indefinite gutting of Skull Merchant (another killer sold for real money)—makes me wonder how anyone is excusing this. Are we just supposed to accept this as the norm now? Why is there so little accountability for these releases that are, at best, borderline unfinished and at worst, a straight-up scam? It feels like BHVR has become more interested in pushing out content at the cost of quality, leaving us stuck with half-baked killers. It’s a pattern that’s hard to overlook, and it’s clear they're trying to sweep it all under the rug with flashy licenses and event announcements. But how future-proof is that?

Comments

  • Iron_Cutlass
    Iron_Cutlass Member Posts: 3,353

    To be fair, whenever they do test out content they are working, they probably dont do it on normal maps and instead QA test in specific environment. Some of the pathfinding issues or issues where the dog get stuck are dependent upon weird or awful map geometry, and in a normal testing environment, they normally use basic geometric shapes or flat surfaces for testing.

    I do wish the QA team would spend more time testing this stuff in normal matches since there are many bugs and glitches that occur just from normal play that wouldnt show up in a normal testing environment.

  • biggybiggybiggens
    biggybiggybiggens Member Posts: 700
    edited December 1

    Just sending the dog in a straight line that the Survivors can literally dodge by taking one step to the left or right immediately tells me that this Killer wasn't tested. At least not by or against people with common sense… -_- They really were not trying to convince us that it's a real dog at all with that ability. Is this a robot dog? Is that in the lore? Seems pretty hard to mess that up from where I'm standing. Being on the inside and looking out must make you blind, deaf, and dumb.

  • SoGo
    SoGo Member Posts: 1,534

    It was. Just like Twins.

  • maipace
    maipace Member Posts: 25

    In a past delivery, you said that you do not plan to live stream the game as the management is also doing test play in a safe environment that is not the same as the production environment.

    Therefore, I don't think they understand how many camp tunnels there are or how fast Generation repairs are.

    I always want people to experience how difficult the current environment is, which the management thinks is appropriate, by playing both camps on the live feed.

    Also, in my personal opinion, if you are going to release a character in such a buggy state, I would like to see you lengthen the time between releases a bit and prioritize fixing the numerous bugs that are still occurring.

  • Tostapane
    Tostapane Member Posts: 1,667

    honestly i'm surprised that this abomination left the ptb unchanged… she's awfully weak and her power is actually a hinderance for her rather than an advantage… i already did her adept but you know how i did it? This was the first time that i was forced to camp, tunnel and slug from the beginning for doing adept (and mind you, it worked only because they were dumb hoes and only one of them had perks like ds, ub, off the record…)