Pathfinder has an interesting feature: You press a button and a screen comes where you can describe a bug or make a suggestion. If you press "send" the game will send a save, a screenshot and your description to the devs.
This is good because:
- In some games it is a problem to press alt+tab to switch to a different program ( email or forum for example )
- The devs want a screenshot and savegame in any case but players usually do not have it when it happens and some stuff is hard to reproduce.
- Some things are hard to describe with words, an image helps a lot then
Of course there should be a bug section in the forums in any case so that players can discuss stuff, for example if something is a bug or not and how can it be improved.
Indeed. Phoenix Point has the same feature - packs all data devs want to investigate and sends it away with marked screeshot and description.
I've also seen that in a game recently. Especially for EA this would drastically improve the amount of bug reports, if users could just report a bug right when they found it, without digging through the file system to gather logs and system specs.
There should also be a feedback form.
I'll cast my 'yes' vote for this suggestion. As someone who is experienced in IT/technical support in a former life (in a manner of speaking), and has helped others as a gamer, I don't think its any stretch to say that not all gamers are necessarily technically savvy. And I know via different games and betas I've participated in, some ask for external emails with crash dumps/dxdiag/screenshots etc etc via email, which isn't the most elegant approach by any means, and especially not for those who aren't as comfortable or savvy in having to do so.
If the game client has a means to instantly capture all needed files (which should be generated to a specific local drive location anyway), and pops up a dialogue window for the player to provide detailed feedback alongside that to explain what they were doing and what happened at the time it occured, that would be the ideal. And then, as stated here, even then when a crash isn't involved, its still more convenient to have an in-game reporting dialogue tool to be able to capture information and submit on the fly.
Addendum: I reported a bug once for Civ 6. Had to do it through the website, which then proceeded as email discussion. Send these files, create that report, search for those logs. It was a pain in the ass. Eventually I decided that it's not worth my time. If 2K would have wanted a proper bug report, they would have made it easy on me.
I think it would help Larian if, at any point during game play, the player was able to freeze the game and enter thoughts into a dialogue box. After sending the message to Larian, the game would then proceed.
There would be a couple of advantages to this. Firstly, all the feedback from all the players pertinent to a particular moment in the game would be collected together. That could facilitate game improvements and bug fixing. Secondly, a lot of good ideas are lost to developers because players never mention them as there is no mechanism, or they forget or it is too troublesome. People playing the game want to keep playing it, not launch a browser, register an account, put in their system details, format a bug report etc. If the feedback had a categorize feedback menu, that could help filtering later.
I think an in-game feedback mechanism would be a huge asset to Larian. How else are developers expected to hear the "Oohs!" and "Ahhs!" or see the expression on the faces of the people playing their amazing game?
Yes, I think that would be a great idea.
Yes, I think that would be a great idea.
Without something like this, it is like the developers have had a "Silence" and "Darkness" spell cast over them. Early Access players are just the sort of people who would be keen to provide such feeback. It would be timely, hopefully actionable and if the feedback were being monitored, the developers could respond in real time through a dialogue window, which would be very encouraging and perhaps helpful for follow up questions/re-testing.
Using the same functionality, Larian could also decide to trigger this screen-freeze/feedback-dialogue during particular moments of the game (ideally, not many!) where feedback is urgently needed or highly desired. It might be possible to reward participants with in-game perks, like particularly ornate armour, or beautiful bodies!
Thanks, Daniel213, I hadn't spotted Madscientist's thread there. He proposed this very idea. Hopefully, Larian will try it.
I quite hope for this, personally. It would be my preferred method for giving feedback 9/10 times.
And there is no report/feedback option in the game... Too bad, because I already found 2-3 bugs. Well, I guess someone else needs to find them and report them.
Firstly I want to say that I love this game. I can see myself spending countless hours gathering my party and venturing forth. Only thing I'd really like is to have a much easier way to submit bug reports. There are early access games that do this currently by having a button on screen that clips the current screen, takes a log of recent events to generate the bug report, and that has to be done is to type in some additional comments. It seems like the hoops we need to jump through (like opening and pasting an image into an image editing program just so that we have a picture to upload) and the lack of categories to choose from when submitting bugs that there really isn't much interest in getting those bug reports from the players who are essentially testing your game into the right hands. This may not be true but it certainly feels that way. When full price is being charged for a game with missing character animations, missing music, broken character audio, and progress locking bugs, you might want to alleviate that possibility and make it feel like you actually want the feedback with some ease of use for the users to submit that feedback.
Same, I have been keeping notes on bugs but nowhere to post them for them to see.
Also had to register stuff on my notepad to post here. I didnt find any shortcut to submit bugs. I think a small icon near the bottom skill bar would be great to register game states screen and allow for observations.
+1 for sure. I want to help as much as possible and but there's lots of friction to doing so right now.
I posted something similar without realizing this thread existed. Glad to see there are more people with the same thought.
--My Original Post-- Firstly I want to say that I love this game. I can see myself spending countless hours gathering my party and venturing forth. Only thing I'd really like is to have a much easier way to submit bug reports. There are early access games that do this currently by having a button on screen that clips the current screen, takes a log of recent events to generate the bug report, and that has to be done is to type in some additional comments. It seems like the hoops we need to jump through (like opening and pasting an image into an image editing program just so that we have a picture to upload) and the lack of categories to choose from when submitting bugs that there really isn't much interest in getting those bug reports from the players who are essentially testing your game into the right hands. This may not be true but it certainly feels that way. When full price is being charged for a game with missing character animations, missing music, broken character audio, and progress locking bugs, you might want to alleviate that possibility and make it feel like you actually want the feedback with some ease of use for the users to submit that feedback.