Beta communication
Some sort of roadmap for beta development is required, and communication from the devs has to improve going forward. We, as active, paying players, are being asked to perform QA on this product for free. Whilst this in itself is an issue - a beta should be for testing a finished product in a live environment, not a substitute for early, in-house testing - many are happy to give their time to try to help improve the game. Please make things easier for us to do this, and treat us with a bit of respect by acknowledging the bug reports and recommendations that we provide.
In short, the communication issues that I see are:
- We identify bugs and create reports, but have no idea whether these bug reports are acknowledged by the development team
- We have no idea which bugs are being worked on or which bugs have been fixed, since patch notes are either sparse or non-existent
- We have been given no timescales as to how long our accounts, which have had time and money sunk in to them, will be locked into this beta and how long we are expected to be testing for
From what I can tell, the client is nowhere close to being ready for a full launch, and bug fixes are being rolled out so slowly that the game may be staying in beta for a good while.
If this is the case, I really think that there needs to be some communication as to what the anticipated timelines for rollout are. Those of us who have spent time and money on their accounts, who were actively playing on PTCGO, now find ourselves locked into this beta with a very small player-base. It can take a long time to find matches - so long that I often just give up.
This is something I can accept for a short time, as part of beta testing, but if this situation is going to last much longer, I want to know what the devs intend to do to allow me to actually start playing the game again. There seems to have been no notable change to the client since the launch of the beta, with most bugs that people experienced on day one still being present within the game. New bugs are added with patches, which don't seem to be thoroughly tested, so again it is up to the community to perform QA testing, which makes the experience feel like we are drifting further away from a final client, rather than towards it.
All of these complaints come before even mentioning opinions on UI, UX, game features and in-game economy, which many feel very strongly and passionately about. This is another huge area of feedback that needs to be accounted for.
You have set up a forum for communication - please start using it.
Comments
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100%, well said.
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Well said, all of this needs to be addressed as many of us have been losing hope for months and the beta hasn't helped.
Aside from the obvious we need to know what to expect from this game and the future of the card game online.
- What's the main goal with the creation of this client (assuming there is something more then just making it an in house project)
- Will the user interface and user experience improve as the game comes closer to a full release, the game looks quite simply bad compared to other games in the space (i.e mtga, heartstone, runeterra, master duel etc)
- What about the ranked ladder and other forms of competitive , if we also compare this to other games in the space (as we should) the ranked ladder doesn't provide us anything. And yes this was also an issue with ptcgo, but we shouldn't be relying on just play limitless for any form of competitive online (and no I don't just want to see players cup and team challenge move onto this client after full release)
This is something I'm sure the live team has been hearing time and time again but we need not only better communication (the updates after maintenance that have just been fixing bugs that the game shouldn't have/be fixing in the first place isn't enough) but hope for a better client as a whole. Casual to competitive to collectors to content creators all want a better client and for now I and many others have the opinion of this just being a downgrade from ptcgo (which we have been wanting to improve for years)
To add to this jon11w's points and mine are just the start for what we should be seeing in a client like this and it's honestly just depressing to see.
As jon11w said '"You have set up a forum for communication - please start using it."
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Which is frustrating, given that TPCi has deep pockets, probably more than all of those other companies (and a successful client would help grow the PTCG user base, and said pockets lol)
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TPCi is a subsidiary of TPC Japan, not TPC itself. Their pockets aren't nearly as deep as you'd think. And even TPC Japan itself only gets a portion of the IP's revenue. They're really actually comparable to Wizards and only about half of Konami in terms of revenue. Not that they can't do better, but, especially since Japan isn't supporting it, Master Duel is legitimately out of reach most likely.
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Well once again it seems that we have a new patch which has left the game feeling just as buggy as before, if not worse.
The only developer communicating with us arrives to share the patch notes and then swiftly disappears before the fallout occurs, leaving deafening silence behind them.
Now it's up to us to test their patch for them, which they clearly cannot have done internally, judging by the Sparkle "fix", and blindly hope that they're listening to feedback.
Rinse and repeat next week.
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I think the influencer backlash has massively delayed the game's launch. I think the pokemon company genuinely thought this game was pretty much ready for launch. Now ppl like trickygym are calling for the game to be scrapped entirely. I can see why though as I recently played yu-gi-ohs new client and its night and day better AND its even on all consoles. I think the fact we wont ever see pokemon tcgo on consoles outside the switch possibly massively holds it back and gives yu-gi-oh and magic (if they ever bother making one) a massive one up.
I sadly agree though they should let us switch back and restart the client at this point. Turn all our credits into coins to buy packs as we wont be able to craft OR add crafting credits to ptcgo and they transfer over.
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