Relationship between the Live Server and Testing. Thoughts and suggestions

There are enough threads about what a horrendous, unplayable, unenjoyable experience the Unity version is. I don't want this thread to become another list of gripes about the live game (although some will be unavoidable). What I want is to encourage a discussion about the purpose of the Test environment, how it relates to the live game and specifically whether that needs a rethink

I've seen comments about how bugs were believed to have been fixed on the Test server and yet have reappeared now and it made we wonder a few things:

Just how many players actively PLAY test - not just log in to spec out the next event, but actually build an island, play adventures, trade etc... without just gemming everything. (I don't for reasons I'll list below).

Compared to the live server, how many player/game hours are spent on test?

Back in the early days, players would be invited to the test server for specific purposes: generally it was about making sure new features would hold up in a scaled up situation - i.e. not just on the developers' hardware.

We would be informed what was happening and specifically WHEN a load test would take place or WHAT features we should be focussing on.
We would get an invitation specific to that purpose.
We would be rewarded for joining in, with small in-game rewards for our live game accounts.

That all changed.

The latest debacle just indicates to me how unfit for purpose the test environment now is.

It is an incredibly tedious experience. Islands are reset with most new versions
The quests (and endless quest completed arrows when you level up to anywhere useful) are tedious.
There is no incentive to stay and report bugs - in fact there is an overwhelming feeling, at least on the non-German servers, that our bug reports are ignored (and the apparent deluge of complaints on the German forums suggest maybe its universal)

Where is the incentive to test a bugged game?

A few ideas:

1. Remove the quest chains - unless it's actually under scrutiny it is just tedious to constantly click quest complete and I doubt anyone who instantly jumps from level 1 to level 50 plus bothers with them or claiming all the rewards
2. Offer some kind of ability to export/backup (locally) your live island and import to test. or at least to preserve your lovingly, painstakingly built test island between version tests.
3. Re-introduce the idea of specific test targets and reward players for participation.

We're all mightily peeved atm. Let's try to be constructive in the criticism please

Well people was testing and writing reports - checking of the bug was already found - sticking to templates when writing those reports.
List of bugs was made - none was fixed - only very few updates was made on test.
None of us who had been testing was surprised by this

I have not been on for 4 weeks there because of crashed zone - many players on live server now cant get on because of crashed zone. During those 4 weeks where I could not get on - no changes have been made to test server. I have reported my problems. Most of the reported problems are still there - they was there 4 weeks ago when I could still get in - they did not try to fix them - they did say they had fixed them - just not on test first- why should we believe that. Now they come and wants us to be a test server and report the same bugs again.

Cant see any of what you are suggesting going to help - nothing helps against ignorance and stupidity - they must have know exactly what would happen and did it anyway.

Here it goes! Now we are all testing, no Test server needed any longer. Fixed and sorted. :)

Most bugs reported on testserver 3 months ago are still not fixed - so no need to play/test until those bugs are fixed.

Let me quote myself from another topic:

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The Unity Test Server was very helpful to our development team and would not have been so helpful without you players. The hard work many of you have done has been very important to the Unity version, even though some of you may feel it was "useless".

If you look at the changelogs, you will see a very large number of issues fixed. I don't want to throw away random numbers, but we had one single update that fixed over 35 bugs.

Some issues, such as the memory problem, were fixed and we did not receive any further reports until the live version was released, which could be for various reasons.

We still have bug reports from Unity Test Server waiting in the queue to be fixed. Most of them are related to graphic/UI.

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I want to thank you for the feedback about the Unity Test Server, and I will share it with the team.

My point is a complete port of the game was bound to be bug-riddled. The situation was unlike anything we've had before - normally a few minor bugs arising from new content, but the core of the Flash game was ok. You could go on test and try the event related content (for instance) and feel you were getting something from it.

As soon as I tried the Unity version and realised how horrible it was I gave up - what was the incentive for me to go on there and submit more reports of the same bugs?- I spend my gaming time on the live server. The more frustrating the experience on the test server, the less incentive there is to test.

It's my opinion that the purpose of any test should be explicit - "We want you to try the star menu and see if it works quickly and correctly", "We'd like you to try and delete emails and see if you no longer get the hammer man". run the test - eliminate bugs - upload a new version - test something else. Small achievable, targeted steps - not just a massively frustrating, free-for-all, bug hunt.

If you return to the idea of live-game rewards I'm sure you'll get more people prepared to tolerate half an hour or so on a less than perfect game - especially if you tell them what to look for.

No doubt there is a small, dedicated, hardcore bunch of masochists who enjoy the kind of testing we've had with unity; no reward other than the occasional nod in the forum. Sorry I'm not one of them and no-one I know (in-game) is either.

The problem with the unity test, is the bug list was so large, and so many reports, and nothing got fixed. and people stopped trying.

If BB had been fixing the issues reported on test, we would have carried on trying again to find the smaller maybe nuanced bugs, but it was so unplayable and broken, it really shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone that it was going to be an unmitigated disaster to think it was ready to go live.

if there was a reason that BB had no choice to go live such as the client wouldn't work anymore for whatever reason, a simple "Hey guys and gals, we have no choice to goto unity, we know its not going to be ready but we have no other option...." guess what, the honesty would have saved you from a major part of this backlash.


You designed and built a game that literally demands years of dedication and time to build on, this isn't a quick shootem up game, so really don't be surprised when emotions of players are running very high seeing all the hard work goto waste.

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Originally Posted by BB_Trafffer

Let me quote myself from another topic:



I want to thank you for the feedback about the Unity Test Server, and I will share it with the team.

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Can pls explained why Client based on the Old preHistoric Flash could handle your game better then the new Unity? Can Handle HTLM5.0 not interact fast enough for the Unity servers or is Unity servers much slower then Flash based server and Operating systems?

Yeah i do not like Unity because it does not support really well the newest Graphic cards or can not use them. For the old game of Settlers i gues it would not use alle cappity of Unity. So why is it so difficult to get the same experience as the Flash Client from Samsung sisterCompanies. It worked very fine. Was it the expensive licenes fee you needed to pay? Pls explain the decission. Yeah for people with not much explores the games runs nearly fine. But if you have explores and need to be a lot in starMenu or in the inmail box you are screwed. Why does this version so much refresh the island. It almost look like that the lagg is coming to much people refresh the island so too much traffic to handle for the servers?