Development Focus

    So I’ve been playing this game for over 3 years. I’ve definitely enjoyed playing it, but like most things in life, it’s had its ups and downs. I can say with certainty that the overall quality of the game has decreased recently. What I’ve noticed an increase of is the developers’ expectation that a new mission every week is supposed to make up for the fact that I have refresh my webpage/app 3, 4, sometimes 5 times before I can actually get into the game. Then 15 minutes later, I have to do that all over again because the chat stopped loading.


    With somewhat of an education in coding, I think I can say that coding a new mission takes a maximum of an hour to complete. This makes me think, "Where can I see active developing in the game?" The answer to me? Not many areas.


    Personally, I would rather the developers stop creating new missions altogether and work on the quality of the game. As an admin of the largest alliance on the US game, I've seen many users from outside the US join and talk about how they're glad someone is near them. Our alliance just recently surpassed 6,000 members, which when you think about it, isn't all that big in terms of how many people use the internet. Most alliances have less than 100 players. This leads me to think: How much attention do the new game versions actually get? Is it worth adding them at the cost of making the game super buggy with lots of downtime/lag?


    (On a side note, the translations in the english version really aren't done well and lots of things mess with my ocd, so I can't imagine what the translations are like in the versions they put together relatively quick recently. Alliance admins know what I mean when I say "Protocol" is nowhere even close to being appropriate for the alliance log. I'm sure there are plenty of people, myself included, that would be willing and able to help with this.)


    Here are a few of the issues I'm talking about here. I'm not that active on the forum so I'm not sure if they've been reported or not:


    -Opening the game on my browser (MS Edge, latest stable version) often results in this. Fixed by refreshing, sometimes multiple refreshes are necessary.


    -Opening the game on my phone (iPhone XR, iOS 14 Public Beta but I believe it happened before I downloaded the beta as well) often results in this. fixed by refreshing, sometimes multiple refreshes are necessary.


    -Our alliance has had to make a rule stating only one storm at a time as multiple running simultaneously (or one running while another has not been cleared) will induce lag for many of our players.


    -Oftentimes the game chat will freeze and not update with new messages, causing you to have to refresh (and deal again with the issues mentioned above).


    -Banning or Kicking a user will result in a serverfehler and will not be logged, not to mention that banning and unbanning are actually mislabeled on the alliance log.


    -General downtime/slow response times: these have increased significantly in recent months.


    There are plenty more bug, these are just some of the bigger ones I could think of off the top of my head. Also, not to mention the many grammatical errors in the game that I also discussed above. These issues don't just happen to me; users in my alliance have expressed the same thoughts I have to me. I understand the developers are trying to expand the game and make it more in-depth and realistic, but I personally feel that the general quality should be increased before more expansions, etc. continue to be added.


    tl;dr: I would like to see some actual bug fixes/better stability instead of a mission with a overly cheery translated message every week.



    (If a mod feels this would be better suited in another category feel free to move it)

    You have basically answered your own post here. If your in a massive alliance the game has to pull the date which if you have loads of members as stated will take time. Yes the game has its teething issues at some point's but they are resolved when they can.


    In terms of coding i'd like to point out a few things, If i was to write you a string of code for something you have never seen before would you be able to work from it?? Because thats what the new developers have had to do, the game runs on a code system they have had to learn and to some parts are still learning, the original dev made the code for this game in the knowledge that he wasn't going to sell it but ended up doing so. The code will have it loop holes which the new devs may not know about.


    In terms of new missions would you be happy then for say a 4 week break from new calls, no new units etc, i know the alliance im part of are happy to see new calls and actively work on our set ups to for fill them.

    I guess what I’m not happy with is the lack of communication about or recognition of these issues. I feel like I’m expected to be happy with the devs putting out tons of new missions. To me, sure that’s nice, but it’s not a make or break thing. I could be playing with the same amount of missions as there were when I started playing and I would be just as happy playing. Even with things such as the wildland update: I would rather breaking bugs be fixed than have new units/stations.
    That being said, if any mods/admins see this: are the devs aware of these issues? Are they not as big of a priority as, say, the next phase of the wildland update? If they haven’t exactly figured out what the issue is, but they’ve made progress, that’s fine with me. I’d just like to know progress is being made.

    Before I joined your alliance i had smaller lag issues than when i was in it.


    Anyway, for me My Android Mobile app just doesn't load at all. I was able to log into the german account i accidentally created but that was only once. I used to play on the mobile version and it worked fine for a couple weeks, then i moved to the browser edition. Now i cant get in. I wanted to get some coins but i don't have any of the payment options listed on the browser edition so my alternative is google play gift cars. But i cant do that now.

    For the bugs, please report them via the app as it’s more direct.


    For the mission coding, I can tell you it takes no longer than 10 minutes max, for the UK game, I myself along with the UK team are the ones who actually right the code and develop the missions. The Devs just implement it. It may seem slow but I can assure you that there are updates being worked on behind the scenes and the devs time is not taken up by coding missions.


    As I say, for the UK game the devs are not the ones writing the code, for the US game, if players would like to see an end to the weekly missions (a tradition from the games launch) then they must respond in big numbers saying this.

    I agree, the bigger the alliance, the slower the game is. That's just the way it is.


    One suggestion for game development is being able to delete your own staging areas. This is particularly frustrating to me as a have a couple dozen units that are specifically assigned to task force to help new or struggling members. I use the staging areas every 700 miles. But then have to wait the 24 hours got them to expire.

    I like the weekly missions, but the fact they are practically the same thing every week is kind of annoying. I like the smaller calls but we've still gotten nothing larger, the UK version has entrapments, apartment fires, HGV calls, that are all not "small" calls, but require around 8 units each, I'd say 170 out of my 190 calls are just 1 unit calls at this point. There have been so many mission suggestions on this forum but none get added, not seeing the point in why those threads were even made in the first place.

    So the way weekly missions work on the UK game is the moderation team write the code for the missions. The devs just implement it, this way they are working on something else. Honestly the mission suggestions for the UK game at least is a bit outdated now because we are focusing on trying to make the UK game realistic for UK players so are using actual information attained from services to create calls with realistic responses. I would like to see more smaller calls as well so it’s something I will look into.


    —EDIT—


    Id also like to note that there are some very exciting smaller missions coming as well as a couple really large police missions to give the police side something comparable to fire

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