Communication

[Nugatory.8920]

Would it be possible to improve communication in regards to when BETA weeks will be running please? I only play weekends and logged into the game anticipating the usual reset and was disappointed to discover it was instead another test week. I don't check the forums regularly so perhaps I missed the announcement but perhaps you could alert players with an in-game mail a week in advance. This would allow your players who are uninterested in alliances to lower their expectations and prevent their disappointment.

 

Alternatively have you considered running public test servers as an alternative to using the live servers for the BETA. Not only would this alternative allow your players who are uninterested in alliances continue to enjoy WvW, but based on voluntary participation in a PTS you perhaps may gain interesting insight into how much of your WvW playerbase are enthusiastic about the alliance system in general. I am unfamiliar with software development so please excuse my ignorance if there are obvious reasons as to why this alternative would be impossible/difficult/cost prohibitive etc.

[Sviel.7493]

I hear a mail was sent out but many people report never seeing it.  We don't know why.

 

Most players heard of the beta for the first time 2 days ago when it was posted on the forums.  On one hand, it's great to see Anet posting things on their own forums.  On the other, it's odd that it was on such short notice.  It seems like something is up and/or awry, but we don't know what yet.  I doubt this is the new normal for announcements--rather, something just went wrong.

[Luthan.5236]

I would have preferred them sending an ingame mail - the only option where I'd have noticed it. I basically quickly delete normal newsletters and the website usually announces stuff too much in advance (road map news where later you'd need to find the news that is a few months old to see certain dates and infos) and I am not on Reddit where afaik most information and interaction between users and developers happens. Also not much here in the WvW forums.

The orange text UI thing could be used earlier as well maybe? For Extra Life they had this enabled even before donations started to get collected.

Only thing I nociced early was the change in the WvW panel. (Suddenly appeared.) But I did not expect a new beta to start that fast. Though the previous one was later into the previous link and would have expected another one in maybe 2-3 weeks. (Afaik they do one per link phase. Only one so people can still play a lot with their current link.)

Edited December 3, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Nugatory.8920]

Some sort of issue which required urgent attention does seems like the most likely scenario. Especially as they have been good with previous notifications alerting players BETA weeks were incoming.

 

If there was an issue that needed urgent addressing it may be related to the recent queue issues in WvW players have been experiencing. Perhaps they have been making alterations to the code in preparation for alliances and unforseen problems have occurred. This potential scenario could further suggest that a test server seperate from the live servers may be the way to go for alliance development to prevent future bugs from turning up in the live game as alliance development continues. However as I mentioned in my original post I am unfamiliar with software development and admit this speculation is based on very little knowledge of the process or how to successfully manage the process.

Edited December 3, 2022 by Somnambulist.5036
Coherence

[Custodio.6134]

2 hours ago, Somnambulist.5036 said:

test server seperate from the live servers may be the way to go for alliance development

highly unlikely. 

First of all: ANet literally NEVER used public test realms before, and it is unlikely that it ever happens. 
Also, there are a few issues with that: 

1. you would still drain people from the live servers, which in turn would impact the matchup just the same as if you would include everyone when testing on the live servers. 
2. (the more crucial part): the population on these test realms would be extremely small compared to live servers. Especially a project like world restructuring and alliances needs a certain amount of participants in order to yield usable results. The sample size on a separated test realm would simply be too small. 
3. some errors are happening in very rare edge-cases, where a few special circumstances are met. by shifting the tests to a seperate realm, you pretty much eliminate these edge-cases, as everyone starts fresh (unless you "clone" the accounts to the test realm EXACTLY as they are on live, which probably is just too much work for too little gain). 

ANet simply doesn´t have a choice other than testing on live. And in my opinion, they should even extend the test durations for a couple of reasons: 
1. people are too lazy to put much effort into setting up communication and organization, because... it´s just one week. It´s simply not worth it. 
2. longer tests mean more data to gather. especially more live-data to investigate. ANet can still work on fixes while the match is ongoing (we know that they are capable of it, since they´ve done it in the past already). 
3. longer tests would allow to cover for multiple matchups, which increases the accuracy of how people play (e.g. people probably wouldn´t stop playing if the betas were longer).

In the end, the biggest issue we´ve seen now is the extremely bad communication ANet provides (still, or rather, again). 
This is a point, that had improved slightly in the past, but just went back to basically zero recently (lack of beta-recaps, the sudden "announcement" of the current beta, which was literally just mentioned as a "side-note" without proper time to prepare). 

All of that gives the players a feel of "lack of dedication", another round of "bandaid-fixing" where they do just as little as needed, but nothing more. THIS is what ANet has to improve yet again

[Dawdler.8521]

1 minute ago, Custodio.6134 said:

First of all: ANet literally NEVER used public test realms before

Anet has used it many times and the game is literally designed for it (character slots can log into specific account servers). It's been used for every expansion preview and if I remember correctly it was used for testing DBL.

That said yes all those points still apply.

[Custodio.6134]

Just now, Dawdler.8521 said:

Anet has used it many times and the game is literally designed for it (character slots can log into specific account servers).

well, that probably happened when i wasnt active, but

 

1 minute ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

(character slots can log into specific account servers). It's been used for every expansion preview

yeah, kinda forgot about that. I was thinking more of like other games do PTR's (which are completely seperated servers, with seperated accounts, so that is what i was referring to, as ANet doesn´t do it that way)