Some people seem to think that there's no system in place that handles bugs.. Or that things they notice to be wrong go undetected. Sorry to burst your bubbles, but the community is not the first and foremost 'finder of bugs', that some of you think it is.
On the contrary, almost EVERYTHING that pops up on the forum, has usaully already been reported before people post about it. And the rest is reported as well. The fact that they were not working properly before release, is something else, which I am not getting into.
But the people's wishes/suggestions/complaints/grievances are all relayed to vstep too. And Vstep visits the forum on a daily basis too and they read it all aswell.
And once things get fixed and patched, you can read about the changes that patch makes, in changelogs.
But, the infomationstream and changes in status is a very big and rapidly changing bundle of data, which makes it just not feasible to upkeep another list, translated into a usable 'public format' and keep it up to date. But rest assured, all the things that come up, are known and noted.
The idea of having a sort of 'look here first before you post a bug report' topic, is not a bad one, it has it's merits, I grant you that, although it might be less effective than most people actually think. This will only be a sort of 'these things are known and reported' thing though, f we'd set up a 'bug aknowledgement topic I reckon. Keeping up with the changes on the bugtracker is not really feasible. And you'll just have to going to take my word for it, you cannot judge it unless you have seen how it works, behind the scenes.
And I also think these kinda topics won't solve the 'clutter' of the forum anyway. Just like all the other guidelines, people just don't seem to ever read them. And just jump in and post instead. And then there's the people that I qualify as true 'moaners', who do not offer any type of constructive remark at all and just are here to kick up some fuss and take such topics off topic and insert a diverting element in an otherwise helpful topic.
There's a few topics made where we've asked for member feedback, and some people can't even keep to a simple suggested format to make their opinions known, but go off on tantrums, sometimes so bad that we have to edit and remove posts, since obviously.. when customer get angry, the forum rules can go out the door, so it would seem?! And profanity and rudeness to volunteers that are in the middle trying their best, is then suddenly the new norm.. And they wonder why sometimes a member can annoy us.. or why we are reluctant to invite more of that behaviour..
So anyway, A centered 'these bugs/problems have been reported, read this first' topic is perhaps a good idea though, we can take it into consideration, but it might still be too diverse to have it all visible at a single glance. Cause as you can imagine, there are many different 'sub categories' for bugs.. and that's not even counting all the complaints about featues that DO work, but are not to people's liking. And that's a whoile different story. Features that work are not really up for this discussion of a 'broken game'. Even so, Vtstep listens to that aswell, and has already changed a few things because of the wishes of the end users.
We'll have a look and talk about it, see if it is feasible to create such a list, or if it changes so fast that it will be to messy for the average casual forum user.
But again, know that the ones among you that post clearly and constructively about the problems with the game, and about your wishes for a better game, are listened to!! It's only the unreasonable and non constructive rantings of some 'odd ones out' that sometimes go down the wrong way.
And the reason that you sometimes not get a clear answer, is because we cannot say 'yes, reported and will be fixed' unless we are SURE it can be and will be fixed. Which is much later ,after the fix. and testing. At that point, the info will soon be available in a changelog anyway. So it's really just sometimes a matter of, we can't say yet, cause it might come back to bite us on the behind.
Kind Regards,
Fred.