You guys need a proofreader.

I thought the exact same thing. I don't know if it's just me but Issue 22 has really taken the cake for showing just how little the writing team cares.

Okay that is a BIT harsh.

I think typos are a bit . . . bad, but I wouldn't go that far.

I would. Wanna know what struck the final hit to that nail?

When I started Heather Townshend's arc on my TW/WP villain and was presented with two options:

After that I stopped reading and just played the arc for its rewards. If the writing team cared at all they wouldn't have cornholed villains into being heroes.

AGAIN.

At least they put it in the very first thing you did, rather than dump it on you five SSA's later.

I dunno, I liked the bit where the clue said you were gonna fake being a hero because people always buy that BS.

No, but you can expect characters in the next round of SSAs to remember with fondness how Darrin Wade, in his infinite forgetfulness, neglected to write a description for his new ultimate form.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I remember laughing my *** off the fist time I started writing Java code comments in Eclipse and had the editor spell-check my writing. That was... Unexpected. I mean, yeah, it always error-checks my code automatically, so it follows it'd could check for basic spelling, I just didn't expect it

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The idea that the text of a game is a "low-priority" concern might have been almost justifiable back in the day when editors didn't routinely automatically check for errors of all kinds. But as Samuel_Tow pointed out there are now plenty of editors that'll do many things like this without adding any significant effort on the part of the writers/coders. Yes, a simple spell-checker will not catch every spelling or grammar error this game seems to generate, but something like that would have caught at least 85-90% of them.

For that reason alone there is literally NO good excuse the Devs of this game could come up for the vast majority of typos in this game's text. It pretty much makes the otherwise acceptable stories of this game look like they were scribbled by a 10 year old which frankly is not an acceptable level of quality for a game like this. I'm not asking for perfection here, I'm just asking for something that looks professional.

Sadly like others have mentioned I've pretty much stopped caring about most of the "story" behind this game almost for this reason alone. *shrugs*

You can hang on to that slice of humble pie you're trying to serve me.

I appreciate you not locking the thread, Z.

My only beef with this is the huge cluster of people who've been saying for years that they HAVE been, and that the lack of recognition has made them stop. I file text bug reports as often as I can (my most recent ones being "Huab Tov" and "Mu'Vorkin" in Heather Townshend's arc, and "upmost" in the Max arc), but I've never seen them fixed. I only ever see typos in power text fixed.

I understand that viewpoint, and I certainly appreciate that there's a level of frustration associated with it.

It's a matter of priority. Text bugs with powers are higher priority, because the nature of them causes them to be exposed to a higher level of scrutiny.

When it comes to updating mission text, or other things which, while annoying, aren't game breaking, we have to ask a simple question: What other task (bug fixing, new content, testing, etc) would we have to deprioritize to allocate the time for the task. Yes, these are bugs, however there are far more pernicious bugs which require more attention, usually discovered during development (bugs are bugs, even if they don't make it to live. You'd be amazed at the amount of bugs we find well before content makes it anywhere near Beta).

We fix them when we have time, however I will be the first to admit they are not the highest priority item on our list.

Not ignored .

That's just the Paragonian spelling. You know, like how the Brits spell things with a "U"?

There, I just introduced a whole new RP element.

No not really...

Because we do, occasionally, have time to address them. When the devs are able to slog through the list, it helps to have the reports.

If text fixes are getting in the way of power pool customization, I will happily diffuse my bombs and hang out with Huab Tov.

>_>

Did you do that on purpose? )-:<


Please understand, if bug reports ever showed results for text errors, this thread wouldn't exist. The instant someone said "you guys have text errors" they'd be laughed off stage and followed with a "just file a bug report or clam up about it, noob."

As it is, this seems to be the only way for us to be heard, jointly proclaiming "we would not amused"




As suggested by someone else earlier in the thread, I will gladly lead an initiative to compile a detailed list of text errors so they can all be corrected in one big update. That is, if you guys can be bothered to make use of it.

Proofreading is a tricky and expensive proposition even for publishers, I imagine its a fairly low priority for an MMO developer on a budget.

I mean sure, they ought to do a better job of it.
But honestly, how many of their players engage game text in any but the most cursory manner?

That other huge fantasy MMO had a funny storyline poking fun an players who barrel through content, clicking through everything madly in their eagerness to start bashing stuff only to become enraged when they couldn't finish quests because they had no idea what they were supposed to be doing.

That's probably applicable to most players of any MMO, who want to get to THE REWARD as efficiently as possible- dialogue windows just slow things down.

Not excusing their demonstrably lax attitude toward proofreading and editing, but I can see how it would be a low-ish priority on the totem pole of smallish MMO dev team.

Actually no. It was stream of consciousness .

I'm not sure that the likelihood of one big update is high. Again, it's more of a "when we're able to fit it into the schedule".

If you have a detailed list and would like to forward it to me, I will forward it along to design.

I'm sorry, Zwillinger, but I must respectfully disagree. It's not hyperbole, and what you just said is one of the standard hostile non-apology apologies: "I'm sorry you feel that way." At best. At worst, it's responding to someone who says, "I'm angry about what you just did" with "no, you're not."

Nobody here is saying that no typos get fixed; what we're all saying is that (a) way, way too many typos get past that process and (b) the ones that do might as well be permanent. What we're suggesting is that the development team is not budgeting anywhere near enough time or manpower to what the game industry calls "polish."

I think LordAethar nailed it when he described the result: a game that works reasonably well, that plays reasonably well, but looks shoddy - and, frankly, increasingly so lately. The number of glaring typos that make it through the beta process and then seem to live forever has gotten so bad, the last three issues, that I must add my name to the list of people, above, who have given up. I no longer waste time filling out /bug reports for typos. Why bother?

During last week's Coffee Talk, Positron said that he was blowing off a meeting to prioritize the bug report list. We're all quite curious to know: did that meeting end up allocating any time, any time at all, to typo correction? My guess is that it did not.

I don't have such a list at this time. And with all due respect to you, I can't be bothered to compile one for the end goal of "it will probably collect dust in someone's inbox." It's a matter of priorities, as you're aware: this time and energy stuff should go both ways or no ways at all.

It's not the text errors that offend me. I'm a designer and developer myself, and I know how silly little things can slip past everyone and out to the world all the time. The issue isn't that problems occur, since preventing that wholesale would mean never getting any work done, or very slowly. I understand that.

What gets me is that the text errors in this game never get fixed. Ever. When a problem is found in a project I'M working on, it's added to a to-do list and the next release will not occur until that item is checked off. But I can get away with that because I don't work on rigid deadlines, and have no investors breathing down my neck asking where their next chunk of cash is going to come from.

As for you guys, well, how would you summarize it? You apparently care that text errors occur, but I didn't know that until about an hour ago when you said so. Before that, it was eight years of problem problem problem and not a single one of them addressed. And I'm here questioning whether what you said is true or not--presented just to pacify the angry mob--since it looks like we'll be going into year nine without a single one of them addressed.

From this side of the revenue stream, we've got your customers expressing concerns and requesting changes and those wishes simply aren't being acknowledged. What's more is that the nature of the problem is right out there in front: Paragon Studios expresses itself through the content in the game, and if they make text errors that they never fix, how can they be expected to take their work seriously?

It really doesn't matter how many new awesome Power Sets you're making or how many Incarnate Threads you can get solo now. If you guys are just going to be letting cosmetic mistakes like this go indefinitely, your logo might as well look like this:



Edited because I made a typo. (-: