How Bugs Can Transform What Should Be a Triumph Into a Disaster : Why We Need In Game GMS

Halcyon_Kismet

To set the stage on why this thread is being created, let me tell you a story. Last night, me and some friends decided to try and go for the March of Sacrifices Trifecta. This is something we had attempted multiple times over the past couple of years, but after just clearing the Moongrave Fane Trifecta a few days earlier, we felt it was time we revisited this challenge. We did amazing, we cleared everything with precision, dodged every dangerous attack, and had strategies for each of the hurdles and potential problems. We made it to the end with plenty of time and no deaths, raised the challenge banner and began the fight. Each hunt was a nail biter with more than one close calls, however we made it through each one unscathed. The final hunt ended and the excecute phase began ... and boom! the boss falls! On the Discord there is mass celebration, we had done it! A challenge that many of us had thought impossible a few short years ago had finally fallen! After a few moments... nothing happened. Did we miss some mobs? We quickly sweep the dungeon and surprise, there actual was a pack in the middle of the forest section that was skipped. No worries, we dispatched it quickly hoping that the achievement would pop ... and nothing. (And yes, this would normally trigger an achievement, had something similar happen in Scalecaller where a harpy was missed and when it was ko'd the achievement was awarded.) We scanned every remaining inch of the dungeon multiple times, and it was cleared 100% and the time was 26 mins when the final pack died, well within the 30 min limit. The game bugged and did not award us our hard earned tirfecta achievement.

The mood quickly changed from a triumphed celebration to a deflated grumble with a general feeling of being cheated felt by all involved and our one spectator. I jumped straight on the support text chat while we were still in the dungeon in hopes of there maybe being something that could be done. (Wishful thinking I know...) The customer service reps answer? Do the Achievement Again and see if it pops! I can only hope that the person was just doing a job and probably didn't realize how ridiculous their request was. In short, nothing was done besides a ticket being submitted to the dev team. (I imagine this going straight to a shredder on how much good that will likely do.) Can our team do it again? Sure. Should we have to? Absolutely not. (And it probably wouldn't give us the achievement anyways.) And for the record, I don't expect ZoS to correct our situation, but I feel its a good lead into my main point.

While the game shouldn't be as buggy as it is, the problems are compounded by a lack of in game GM's that can potentially fix issues. If they had in game GM's. this situation could have potentially played out drastically different. If they had the proper tools, they could have scanned to see if there was a mob under the floor or something (my guess as to what happened) and resolved the issue.

Let me ask you this long time veterans of the game?. How many times have you been running a dungeon only to have a door bug out and not open.
I can think of 3 cases in recent history right off the bat:
1) In Moongrave we've had it bug out right before the final boss. After clearing the 2nd wave, the 3rd wave never spawned leaving us stuck in limbo.
2) Or how about Depths of Malatar before the tower collapses? I've experienced multiple cases where the imps stopped spawning leaving us stuck.
3) Unhallowed Grave, right before the first interaction with the sigils. That door sometimes just refuses to open.

Perhaps if GM's were in game, they could simply advance the dungeon by opening the door or at least gather data on what could have caused the issue to hopefully permanently resolve it.

What about that one mob in Cradle of Shadows that decides to jump into the celling every run? He's been doing that for how many years now?

If this Trifecta is bugged... are there others? What other hard to do achievements are bugged?! This thought terrifies me!

Long story short, ZoS needs to have people in the game that can either fix these issues, or at the very least document it and the conditions on the spot and fast track a fix for it. Think about how much good this could have been that time World bosses bugged out during events and became immortal. Countless problems could be corrected on the spot and change a nightmare experience into positive ones.

Flangdoodle

This gets into the larger topic of ZOS's Customer Service and the process to report bugs or other issues . Their process is inherently flawed because it is designed to ignore complaints. Every time I have reported an issue in game - every. single. time. I get an email saying basically "thanks for reporting - if we don't hear from you w/n 4 days well assume the issue is resolved"

Wait what? How does that make sense? Imagine this in another context: "hello, thanks for reporting this car accident, if we don't hear from you in 4 days we'll assume everything is OK." "Hi thanks for reporting that the product you bought from us doesn't work, if we don't hear from you within 4 days we'll just assume it works" "hi, thanks for reporting that you never received the package we sent you - if we don't hear from you in 4 days we'll just assume you got it". And on and on. It's silly - and it completely ignores and negates the fact that YOU JUST REPORTED IT.

I get it - it's a way to filter through the complaints to get to the "serious" ones without having to spend money on an actual person contacting every complainant, but it just comes off as rude and unresponsive.

All of which is to say that if they won't invest in people to respond to customer reports of issues, they sure as heck aren't going to hire teams of folks to be engaged in the game as it's happening.