Age 5

[DarkSider]

Well the suggestion is simple and i did one similar a couple rounds back.
On every of the latest rounds, changes for new round are beeing coded in the last few days of the break or in the early days of the round. Always they come with bugs, either something was wrongly coded or the whole ideea of the thing implemented was a failed project. I can't tell to somebody else how to organise their life and which i think should be his priorities but imho a few days of coding and thinking and making perfusions with coffee to stay awake ain't the solution for having a nice game enjoyed by most of the players all round long.
So i'd sugest a list of suggestions to be thrown in a topic, players input their opinion about each, input more ideeas, think of bugs and solutions, fine tunning etc, Azzer gives a reply every now and than what he thinks it's worth implementing so we can analyze the suggestion from every angle, think how it integrates in the big picture and be very carefull with all the details aswell. In 2 months of planing coding and testing we should have a wonderfull age 5 to enjoy. I don't know about others but i very much dislike to hear "test round", "mid round change", "bugs" or anything else that makes you think the game is not a priority and left to die.

[f0xx]

I don't know about others but i very much dislike to hear "test round", "mid round change", "bugs" or anything else that makes you think the game is not a priority and left to die.

Oh I cant say how much I agree with this...

[Reub]

A great idea DS. I remember a fair few rounds ago there was a pol in-game about proposed changes? What ever happened to this? Imo, that is truly the best way to see what the players want, not what the couple of hundred forums users want.

And as for actually taking time with changes and not stuffing them into the game last minute, it's the way it should be, and it's the way that things have usually been, but lately....

[Cheese]

Clearly Azzer wants bushtarion to grow... and one of the best ways of making a game grow is word of mouth... and in all honesty I'd feel bad recommending the game to anyone else with half arse attempted updates that just make the game ridiculous.

[pinpower]

plus there is no way a new player would be able to get into the game without ALOT of reading (or someone spending a long time coaching them)...

now they come along, understand most of the game..."ahh if i attack this person and manage to steal land ill get 15% of his land" 8 ticks later "WHERE THE HELL IS MY LAND?...DAMN THIS GAME!!!"

Just my little role play from inside my head...

[Chewie]

I don't know about others but i very much dislike to hear "test round", "mid round change", "bugs" or anything else that makes you think the game is not a priority and left to die.

Oh I cant say how much I agree with this...

Well that is unfortunate as the only way to truely test a change is to do live testing in a real round. Despite this not being convenient, people need to learn to live with it. Some changes need to be made mid-round like the change of vampires last round. Sure it might have a negative affect on you personally but think of the benefitsto the whole of the bushtarion community.

[f0xx]

No that is not the way things "should" be. Get some testers to play in a private world, enough with the experiments already.

[Chewie]

It wouldn't work aswell as testing it in a live round, ask anyone with experience on the matter. I used to have the same view on this as you but Bobbin proved me otherwise and now I see things from his point of view.

[Azzer]

Private testing just doesn't work. You don't see the same things, people aren't as motivated to find every loophole and abuse they can to ruin other peoples play/gain advantages themselves, and you don't see the most unlikely or weirdest of scenarios cropping up that can happen in a full blown live game.

I test all the core essentials myself on a local server, and then I usually pick a few people to test any more "Major" changes for me on my private server before they go in. But until the entire playerbase is playing, properly, motivated for the goals and achievements and intentions that they are in the "real game", the situations and scenarios just don't crop up - even if they seem like the most obvious thing in the world when they do happen in the live game, in a test environment it's just entirely different.

[DarkSider]

Well i'm sure they won't find every bug, but the obvious things can be spoted by a large part of the experienced players. On your private tests you can only try a few diferent scenarios and sometimes quantity > quality :P