Oct 13, 2022

Minion Masters - Yesterfox

--NEW CARDS--
Korrrgoth, Tyrant of Gorr’Rakk

Cowardly Imps

--FEATURE UPDATES--
- Massive Mayhem Rework - 6 new Mayhems, rewards updated, Mayhem Leaderboards added.

--BUFFS--
Bazooka Scrat
- Health: 100 -> 120

Idol of Sacrifice
- Mana cost: 5 -> 4

Kurrnath Crystalback
- Spell trigger effect range: 14 -> 18

Pincer of Dread
- Damage: 100 -> 120

Rampant Growth
- Healing: 75 -> 100

Zap Shrine
- Damage: 0 -> 25

--REBALANCE--
Commander Azali
- Mana cost: 9 -> 7
- Health: 800 -> 650
- Damage: 150 -> 125
- Max number of shields: 10
Azali has seen little play outside of premade due to her high mana cost. With lower mana cost you should be able to support her better with swarm cards.

Glenn’s Brew
- Full rework: Give a friendly Minion Frozen. Heal it for 200 over the duration. If it's a Stoutheart, it gains Revelry.
Glenn’s Brew has been very frustrating to deal with due to the instant heal effect when used near the enemy Master tower. This rework should give the spell some new interesting utility while removing the frustrating aspects.

King Puff
- Birthday Cooldown 43 -> 45
- New Gifts:
- Gift of Spirits: Give a nearby friendly minion spirit.
- Gift of Knights: Summon 2 Knight Puffs
- Gift of Spells: Add a random one-use 2-mana spell to your hand.
- Knight Puffs damage: 50 -> 40
King Puff is powerful but doesn’t see a lot of play. Adding more gifts to King Puff’s kit should make him more versatile and more fun to play.

Nyrvir the Fallen
- Health: 2000 -> 1800
- Damage: 320 -> 240
- Attack rate: 8 -> 6
This change should make Nyrvir more consistent. She becomes a little harder to counter as her attack is quicker, but deals slightly less damage and has less health to compensate.

Rimargaal, Scourge of the Summit
- Freezes minions played from the two closest hand slots instead of the entire hand.
- Defrost count: 35 -> 25
This gives player a choice to not play a frozen Minion while defrosting Rimargaal, which should make the card more versatile overall.

--NERFS--
Dragon Nest
- Duration: 30 -> 45
- Spawn rate: 5.8 -> 8.7
This change doesn’t alter the amount of dragons that gets spawned, but gives the player more time to play a spell in-between spawns to get the most out of the card. While also making it easier

Feng the Wanderer
- Mana cost: 5 -> 6

Grenadier
- Damage: 40 -> 30

Lash of Ah’Mun
- Slitherbind: 2 -> 3
- Mana cost: 5 -> 6

Rabid Prowler
- Sacrifice Cost: 1 -> 2

Rimargaal’s Breath
- Damage: 180 -> 150
- Master Damage: 20 -> 15

Shi-Hou monkeys
- Health: 420 -> 400

--FIXES--
- Linked match time estimation to Elo rather than rank.
- Idol of Sacrifice removed from random pool.
- Fixed a couple of issues related to setting and saving resolution in the settings menu.
- Fixed a bug where Zipp’s Zappinator would do more damage than intended.
- Fixed a bug where Jahun would attack multiple times in quick succession.
- Fixed a bug where the Squire Puff relic was spawning puffs in the same position regardless of which bridge was captured.
- Fixed an animation issue where Zealots of the Burning Fist would continue attacking into the air.
- Marked units that get stolen by Ghost will no longer continue being attacked through the marked debuff.
- Fixed issues related to Coax the Diplomancer and the Veilstalker’s avatar’s icons.
- Fixed an issue where an Arcane Ring on a unit stolen by Ghost would change rotation direction visually, but mechanically would continue rotating in the same direction. Leading to a mismatch between the mechanics and the visuals.
- Arcane Golem now properly gets frozen by Rimargaal’s permafrost effect.
- Fixed several issues related to the in-game bug reporting tool.
- It was managing to timeout depending on various factors, including length of the session, speed of the internet connection, as well as whether other reports were submitted earlier in the same session. We did as much as possible to limit these effects, but it’s impossible to be certain that it will work perfectly for everyone. It should be a major improvement though.
- Fixed an issue where Tranquil Shi-Hou would be unable to move after a combination of stuns and roots while healing.
- Fixed model and animation issues with both Feng the Wanderer and Taloc the Vessel.
- Fixed stuns getting cleared when a unit got unfrozen. - Thanks Memfisto
- Fixed Black Hole leaving behind certain visual effects.
- Fixed audio issues with selecting Valorian in the master selection menu.
- Fixed cards occasionally rotating when being promoted.
- Fixed Frostfeathers on a Flyby being able to resist the gravitational pull of a Black Hole.
- Fixed a weird interaction between Frostfeathers and Arcane Ring that would cause the Arcane Ring’s spin animation to break.
- Frostbearer’s Frozen Aura now correctly applies Slow.
- Fixed an issue where Mar’dred’s attack animation would break.
- Barrel Shields now correctly take 50% reduced damage while Frozen.
- Fixed Frostbearer losing his aura when consumed by a Black Hole. - Thanks Jackeaa
- Gor’Rakk Gate now has proper card buff tooltips for all options.
- Fixed many various localization issues, especially with Chinese translations.
- Made both Nyrvir and Rimargaal respect being frozen and stopping their attacks.
- Fixed an issue where A’Zog would shadow dash twice. - Thanks Jackeaa
- Fixed an issue where Frostbearer would freeze itself and friendly units after being stolen by a Ghost.
- Made Coax stop attacking when frozen.
- Fixed an issue where a player could enter a state where he would not be able to create lobbies.
- Fixed the Rarity of the Poltergeist Morellia skin.
- Applied the same restriction to repeatedly getting the same teammate in randoms as the restriction on repeatedly getting the same opponent which was already implemented in all modes.
- Fixed AFK Bot toggle working correctly even in the first match of a session.
- Framerate capped at 60 FPS
- This is an effort to reduce the amount of drain on the GPU from the game for anyone with a higher frequency monitor. The game simply wasn’t built for optimization at these extremes, so the gain in graphics fidelity compared to the increased performance drain isn’t really worth it in our estimation. If there is sufficient demand to bring back higher frame rate play, we may look into it in the future but it requires a not insignificant amount of work so for now we’ll try simply capping it.
- It is still possible to enable V-Sync and lock the game's framerate to whatever the framerate of your monitor is, which can be higher than 60.
- Elo equivalence table rebalanced.
- After additional review of the Elo equilibrium, we have decided to adjust the equivalence table again. Specifically the Elo equivalence change is 100 down across all ranks making it easier for everyone to get to higher ranks.

Oct 13, 2022

Dev Diary #62 - QA on Victoria 3

Victoria 3 - Pelly

Introduction

I lied!

We’re not talking about Audio this week, we’re talking about Quality Assurance, otherwise just known as QA! Excuse the dust as we teardown and set up this new development diary a little earlier than planned. We will eventually have an Audio Dev Diary (looks hopefully at Community) but for now you’ve all locked in here with me again about a subject I know all too well: how it is to QA Victoria 3.

Though this is honestly a great introduction to what it's like to QA Victoria 3, or how it is to be a QA in general. As we are at the end of the pipeline we must be the most adaptable members of the team. Broken builds, delays, reworks, and merge errors - these are an everyday occurrence in our profession. Even when things go perfectly, QA is still a race against time or more specifically a race of timeboxing: what is the most important thing to test now and what can be put aside to when there is either time or it is more complete - do we suspect another Market Rework is coming or are we at the final implementation at last?

A regular QA posting, usually among ourselves.

Not everything can get tested, it's a sad fact. Paradox games are unique in their complexity of interlocking mechanics and systems that to test the full functionality of the game and all of its iterations for every change is impossible. An infinite number of QA with an infinite budget and time could still not deliver a near perfect quality product. Why is that? Well because in that scenario the bottleneck of quality would not be the QA but the developers on the other side of the bug fixes - it's their bandwidth that would then be the limiting factor. The Job of QA is to test and test appropriately balancing the time for technical feedback and gameplay balance based on the development timeline of the game.

And before we get too far, the comment that I expect to get the most to this diary:
“Why don’t you use [insert specific development/testing process], it will solve all your problems!”

I wish this were true, but there is no silver bullet for development.

Each model of development and testing mitigates risk in a separate way, but there is still inherently some risk especially because we are talking about the potential for human error: missing connections or building on top of a system that was not originally written with such a perspective multiple iterations ago.

The most lock-tight development model that does not allow for any “bugs” also does not allow for any creativity on the part of the developers. Video games may be a product to be sold but they are also inherently an art, which makes QA’ing and solving their problems a much more subjective experience at best. The trick is to find a system that creates as many safeguards as possible without fully boxing in the creativity of the team. I digress and will stop there before I get into a longer wided sidenote. Throughout this diary I will go into more detail about what I mean.

The People, The Process, The Timeline, and Going Forward

As we’ve moved through the more public side of the development process, my role in QA has shifted while the meme of me as a QA Lead has remained the same. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about “what exactly a QA Lead does and how my role as Manager/Director was different” so I thought I would take some time to flesh this out for you all with at least a basic explanation.

The People - QA Team Breakdown:

QA Director: Represents the QA team’s interests on the studio leadership level, ensuring that all plans of release and development are taking into consideration the bandwidth and requirements of their team.

QA Manager: Professionally manages the QA Team, less involved in the day to day and more involved in the growth and development of the QA Team as individuals and overseeing staffing.

QA Lead: Represents the QA team’s interests on the project leadership level, manages day to day prioritization and coordination of testers.

QA Tester (Embedded): Employee of Paradox Development Studio, who lead the charge in testing development, verifying fixes, and giving feedback.

QA Tester (Outsourced): Employee of our Outsourcing Partners (such as QLOC) who works with the internal team and assists in testing development, verifying fixes, and giving feedback.

Community/Beta Tester: Paradox Community Member who under NDA gets access to an in-progress build to give feedback and partial bug reports on - which the QA will later collate and verify.

Overall QA are an interesting bunch of people. It takes a very dedicated individual to look at an unfinished project and happily get to work, to not only document the flaws but to peer behind the curtain and see the intent of the finished product and give feedback on that. The QA, as an individual, is able to look a developer in the eye, tell them they love a feature and then send them 20+ jiras about all the problems with it with no cognitive dissonance. Sometimes we will throw in a few feedback jiras about how we think it would be cool to tie it into other features as well.

Checking if the issues are actually fixed is always an adventure - you never know which new issues you're gonna find

Our need to be critical and take the player perspective also leads to us being very blunt and forward when asked our opinions. In our profession, sugar coating concerns only lead to problems down the line. The trick that I will share on the forums is this - it's possible to be blunt and not a jerk. Browbeating a developer as a QA may get the problem solved but it comes at the cost of the working relationship. I have been many types of QA in my career and if I may be so bold to reflect upon it - it is the QA that is blunt yet respectful that gets more achieved in influencing the game then the one who screams the loudest. As developers are people too, they have feelings and can react emotionally especially if you act emotionally (especially angry) towards them. I ask that you please remember this as we move towards post launch and live support, but I will get into that more later in this dev diary.

We were once told that we should go about things in a more positive perspective. That request did not stick for long.

I’ve joked on stream that “I saw the QA team laughing during multiplayer testing and that’s either a sign that everythings working or everything is broken.” Our profession comes with a strange sense of humor, or maybe it's just the type of people who enjoy our work - after 8 years I’m still not sure.

The Process

I’m going to talk more about the general process of QA and try to avoid going into too much detail here, otherwise it is a rabbit hole I will never escape. What I will say is this, I am talking high level processes of the QA department as a whole in relation to the project, QA’s interfacing with each other department: Code, Design, Narrative Content, VFX, Audio, UI/UX, Environment Art, Tech Art, 2D Art and the various subcategories I’ve forgotten - each of these have a separate process work a bit differently. This is because they are all developed differently and implemented at different times of the game and so the standard QA has for one team is different from another depending upon the state of development.

QA has two types of general process testing, Milestone and Feature.

Milestone testing is the one most people outside of the industry understand as it translates to the words we use - Proof of Concept, Alpha, Beta, Release Candidate, etc. These are all milestones that we use in the development process. The intention is that there is a significant difference between them, the status of its features and even more importantly its gameplay loops and engagement. Milestone encompasses the game as a whole and is generally used in the statements such as “its as you would expect for alpha” etc.

Even while testing the features for milestones. QA, just like the rest of the team finds a way to add a little humor into the documentation.

Feature testing is a bit different, here at Paradox we usually refer to it as “development support testing” it's where QA is doing more piecemeal testing of individual implementation of the various pieces of the game. This is where we are ensuring that things merged correctly, that coders did not accidentally overwrite each other and we are caring more that things are working from the technical perspective then the full gameplay perspective.

When a game is in its early stages of development to its alpha milestones - feature testing supersedes milestone testing. That’s not to say we do not do alpha milestones but a large part of our testing is in the technical ends of the game as opposed to “playing for balance purposes.” The reason behind this is that while the game is still actively being developed and is not yet towards the milestone where features are less likely to change, testing balance is inefficient effort. QA has a limited amount of time and a never ending series of tasks to tackle, so we have to be as smart as we can.

Early on the fact the game is less polished has to be accepted by the QA team. We find unique ways to cope with this fact.

In case you were wondering, this is what that smile looks like today.

As we get further along our milestones, towards beta and release candidates - the inverse is true: milestone testing supersedes feature testing as the main means of gathering data. In beta QA may still dive into features and test them from a technical perspective depending upon the number of changes made by a developer but more often than not they will focus on how these features interact with each other and do they make for meaningful and fun gameplay. Our difficulty in doing this? We need to figure out how to answer this question with some form of certainty as quickly as possible.

As the game’s development progresses so too does QA’s standard processes on what is worth bugging and what is an acceptable fyi issue. Technical concerns have priority in early stages of milestone development while in release candidate papercuts with poor UI or incorrect information given to the player are treated as the same severity as broken functionality outright. Because it doesn’t matter if it technically works if the player cannot understand it.

The Timeline Going Forward (and Farewell)

A QA’s role adapts as the project progresses. In the beginnings of the project we’re very technically minded and working on ensuring the structure of the game is there. As development progresses we focus more on the features and how they feel and the overarching scope of the game. As we get further along the milestones QA becomes the representative experts of their game. Designers can tell you how it's supposed to work, QA tells you how it does currently and because of this knowledge we work regularly with community, beta testers and influencers in teaching them how things work early on and getting their feedback.

Community is very much our comrades in arms in this endeavor, anything reported to Community Team on our forums or discord is brought to QA’s attention to ensure we’ve got it Jira’d and the rest of the team is aware.

Soon release will be upon us, an exciting time for us all. You all will finally get a hold of the game and the development team will sit here anxiously waiting to hear your feedback and see the shenanigans you all get up to. The QA team itself is going to sit here wondering what last minute changes we made broke what and how that slipped through the cracks of our testing.

At release and going forward we will have a bug forum where any issues found by you all that you think we do not know about, you can let us know. And even if we do know about it, you can help judge priority of fixing but more information will come in regards to that from the QA Team Lead around release so keep your eyes peeled.

And well, that’s a summary of high level QA processes, instead of talking about the nitty gritty of testing X features or how many jira’s we’ve written I hope you enjoy the peak behind the curtain to our sense of humor splattered throughout the dev diary.

I guess this dev diary also marks the end of my responsibilities as QA on the team. I now go off to the other side of the merge requests… ready to take on a different kind of responsibility. Be kind to my QA Team in the coming weeks. You have no idea how much effort they have put into this game over its development - especially in the past year. I certainly do, and I’m very proud of them. The project is in good hands.

Hopefully next week we’ll have our Audio Development Diary with Franco, sorry I’ve got no classy segway this time.

Oct 13, 2022

Vol. 41 Ready Or Not Supporter Development Update - Mod.io Integration

Ready or Not - Kaminsky

Attention Officers,

Welcome to the 41st edition of our biweekly newsletter! This newsletter will be showing off something quite exciting!

To start off, we’d like to announce the integration of the mod.io platform into Ready or Not. Starting October 18th you’ll be able to download and remove mods at the click of a button!

This may come as a surprise to many members of the community, as we have said that we would bring Steam Workshop functionality in the past. However, given how under-performing the system is, we’ve decided to instead adopt mod.io. Just like the Nexus Mods and Steam Workshop users will not be limited in what they can upload to the mod.io page, with the obvious exceptions being obscene or unsuitable content.

The adoption of mod.io will allow direct integration with Ready or Not, giving users the ability to search through and download mods from inside the game itself, instead of having to open up the Steam Workshop or download via a third-party website. It will also offer the most flexibility going forward as we make updates to how we support modders and as Mod.io continues to update and add more functionality to their platform!

We’ve worked with both Modders and the Ready or Mod Discord team to ensure that the concerns of the modding community are met, currently we are testing the implementation of Mod.io with just map mods!

As we update both the game and our support with mod.io, we will extend compatibility to all of the weapon and skin replacers that the community has come to enjoy!

At the moment you can download skin, weapon, and attachment replacer mods via mod.io, however they need to be extracted from their folder in [C:/Users/Public/mod.io/3791/mods] to [steamapps\common\Ready Or Not\ReadyOrNot\Content\Paks]

Conclusion

This concludes our 41st biweekly briefing. Be sure to tune in next time for more development news (there are many more to come)!

If you’d like to help us test new content during playtesting periods on the Supporter exclusive experimental branch, provide us with your game feedback, and keep up with the Supporter community; you can become a supporter at www.voidinteractive.net or at our Steam store page.

Are you a content creator on youtube or twitch looking for new games? We got you covered; Ready or Not has partnered with Lurkit to elevate gameplay! Make sure to follow us here.

https://www.lurkit.com/games/ready-or-not

Make sure you follow Ready or Not on Steam here.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1144200/Ready_or_Not/

Keep your feet on the ground.
VOID Interactive