We don't need new art, we need a working game.

[Surette]

Perhaps the issue is this is the only Indie game I've taken a liking to and that my expectations are unrealistic.

Yes, this is very clearly the issue. Your post is characteristic of someone who has never played an online game. This isn't Microsoft Word, an enterprise program that is expected to remain stable for 30 years. This is an indie game developed by a group of 15 people. Game patches change fairly big components that are frankly impossible to test 100%. Bugs are (and should be) expected. I would truly be more surprised if there were absolutely zero bugs -- that just tells me that there are likely more insidious bugs that haven't been uncovered yet.

Software has bugs. Online games have even more bugs. Online games developed by a small team of people? Of course there will be bugs. That said, Guns of Icarus is a pretty well-polished game. I don't think I have ever encountered a game-breaking bug.

Also, your suggestion that they stop paying artists and only pay engineers is completely absurd as well as goddamn insulting.

[Ultimate Pheer]

Honestly, the situation with this is little different from, say, Minecraft.

A small team working on a very LARGE game, making it difficult, if not impossible, to fully test everything in a reasonable amount of time.

Coding is not a simple process; so many lines rely on other lines that changing one can have a cascading effect that accidentally inverts gravity or something.

[Imagine]

I am bemused by people bringing up the MLG "nonsense". Remember, it wasn't Muse who went to MLG and asked to be put in, it was us.

[HamsterIV]

I thought ship disappearing was a feature. Since we all play a different graphics settings some of us will render more cloud particles than others. It would be unfair for the extra cloud particles to obscure a ship on a higher end system that a lower end system will less cloud particles can see clearly. I think the game detects the number of cloud particles between ships at the server level and sets the ship to invisible when the number is too great. The glitch is not that the ship disappears but that you can't see the cloud particles partially obscuring the ship as it transitions from visible to invisible states.

Of course I could be wrong, and just making up excuses.

[Dementio]

I thought ships disappearing in clouds is normal. How do you see a ship that is "hiding"? And I personally like that ship disappearance in scrap. The calm before the storm, first there is nothing, suddenly the entire enemy team. And sandstorms coming in during a fight could lead to potential saves as a ship could (while maybe unintentionally) go behind another one.

What I am concerned with MUSE is not that they publish as many bugs as they do, but rather they don't seem to test such things before they publish them. When they released the patch, the infoboxes of the badges were sometimes covering the entire badge, making it impossible to switch it since you couldn't click on it because the infobox was blocking it. Something like that has to be noticable when you look at it for 5 minutes max. But nobody seemed to really bother checking it out, not even the normal players that are testers in dev app as well.
And such a massive fps drop with flamers and sometimes hwachas can't go by unnoticed if you test it.

When a developer releases a patch, I expect them to look at the most noticable and easiest to notice things, like said infoboxes and fps drop. I don't doubt MUSE's inability to check for bugs like this, but they apparantly didn't invest as much time in it as they should have. And hopefully, they will invest more time to search for these bugs now.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

I am bemused by people bringing up the MLG "nonsense". Remember, it wasn't Muse who went to MLG and asked to be put in, it was us.

Yeah, and you just added one more thing that Muse has to deal with now. Granted it is something a lot of us wanted but you didn't stop for a second and think one bit what it would mean and why this game was not ready. Heck, a year ago I'd have been all up in that and rearing to go. But in 1 year, I've seen enough to know MLG is going to make a lot of buzz and then just pile on more stress on a small studio which has more important stuff to do. The game needs to be in a better state than it is.

[Imagine]

I am bemused by people bringing up the MLG "nonsense". Remember, it wasn't Muse who went to MLG and asked to be put in, it was us.

Yeah, and you just added one more thing that Muse has to deal with now. Granted it is something a lot of us wanted but you didn't stop for a second and think one bit what it would mean and why this game was not ready. Heck, a year ago I'd have been all up in that and rearing to go. But in 1 year, I've seen enough to know MLG is going to make a lot of buzz and then just pile on more stress on a small studio which has more important stuff to do. The game needs to be in a better state than it is.

Muse doesn't have to deal with jack squat. Other than Keyvias helping flesh out some rules, Muse and MLG have nothing to do with each other. Anything that happens through their Arena system will all be community dependent, and has nothing to do with Muse staff.

[RomanKar]

Imagine, are you delusional?  You don't think there will be added pressure when there is an MLG event and a patch like this last one comes out?  Sure, Muse could decide to whistle through the graveyard and pretend MLG isn't there, but that's simply not realistic.  MLG is a real opportunity for serious expansion of the player-base.  It only ratchets up the pressure Muse is already under trying to hear all the suggestions and complaints and address them.  Do you read all the "suggestions" to improve competitive play? 

Either this is an opportunity for GoIO and Muse or it isn't.  If it isn't, why did anyone try for it to begin with?  If it is, then there is pressure to make the most of that opportunity.  And to say MLG and Muse have nothing to do with each other, other than Keyvias fleshing out some rules (any tournament runners out there want to talk about how that's not a big deal and takes almost no time?), again, is unrealistic.

What if MLG or their fans or whatever overwhelmingly "suggest" the game is too slow, hard to follow, boring, whatever?  I guess Muse just ignores that.  Has jack squat to do with that?  We both know that is not the way Muse operates.

Oh, and don't forget about Adventure Mode.  Only so many man-hours in a week.  Only so many balls you can keep in the air.  If Keyvias just takes 5 hours total to address MLG rules, that's 5 hours he could have been putting into the game itself.  And as a percentage of man-hours, I'm betting it's a pretty high number. 

I'm certain Muse has priorities.  I'm certain they evaluate these priorities.  I'm certain they listen to the community to inform those evaluations.  Maybe they listen to us a little too much sometimes. 

[Imagine]

Imagine, are you delusional?  You don't think there will be added pressure when there is an MLG event and a patch like this last one comes out?  Sure, Muse could decide to whistle through the graveyard and pretend MLG isn't there, but that's simply not realistic.  MLG is a real opportunity for serious expansion of the player-base.  It only ratchets up the pressure Muse is already under trying to hear all the suggestions and complaints and address them.  Do you read all the "suggestions" to improve competitive play? 

Either this is an opportunity for GoIO and Muse or it isn't.  If it isn't, why did anyone try for it to begin with?  If it is, then there is pressure to make the most of that opportunity.  And to say MLG and Muse have nothing to do with each other, other than Keyvias fleshing out some rules (any tournament runners out there want to talk about how that's not a big deal and takes almost no time?), again, is unrealistic.

What if MLG or their fans or whatever overwhelmingly "suggest" the game is too slow, hard to follow, boring, whatever?  I guess Muse just ignores that.  Has jack squat to do with that?  We both know that is not the way Muse operates.

Oh, and don't forget about Adventure Mode.  Only so many man-hours in a week.  Only so many balls you can keep in the air.  If Keyvias just takes 5 hours total to address MLG rules, that's 5 hours he could have been putting into the game itself.  And as a percentage of man-hours, I'm betting it's a pretty high number. 

I'm certain Muse has priorities.  I'm certain they evaluate these priorities.  I'm certain they listen to the community to inform those evaluations.  Maybe they listen to us a little too much sometimes. 

You're putting waaaaaaay too much stock into MLG Arenas. Yeah, it's a cool (and frankly surprising) thing that we got on there, but it really really has nothing to do with anything as far as the game will go. I mean, it's been what, a month since we've added to their list and have you seen anything that indicates that we're suddenly flooded with new players coming from MLG? I sure as hell haven't.

Once again, Muse had nothing to do with the addition of GOIO to the MLG Arena. They have no obligation to even think of it, or even to take it under consideration when looking at the state of the game. You speak in a bunch of hypotheticals bringing up possible "problems" which we've had zero indication of happening as some basis as to why MLG will be a horrible thing, for some reason assuming that it will happen.

Saying Keyvias spending time reviewing and hashing out rules for x amount of hours while he could've been spending those fixing the game is about as insulting as people who were bitching about the Hamsterdam art and how dare Muse work on x while they should be working on y. It's an asinine statement and best, and horribly insulting at worst to a staff that has done nothing but be completely transparent with the work they do for us.

[Richard LeMoon]

The ships 'vanishing' is not just from view. They are literally not there. Shots will pass through them. Not only that, SHIPS will pass through each other. Moonshine ramming through a Mobula, only to see it appear behind you fully intact... is pretty weird.

But, I understand how small teams work, and don't fault them completely for not getting everything done as fast as we want. There is always a huge list of things to do.

[RomanKar]

Imagine, you can't have it both ways. You can't say that Muse has nothing to do with MLG and diverts no resources toward it while also stating that one of the devs is diverting time, any amount, to MLG.  To say that Muse had nothing to do with getting into MLG is blatantly and patently false:

Congratulations Everyone!
You are now working on an official MLG game.

After working over the weekend with Dan from the Rob and Dan show. 
https://twitter.com/MLGRon/status/488558791839866881

Hats off for Howard putting me on the trail with the link from Gabe Connor on facebook.
We spent the weekend pushing and we got it. We gathered the community and dominated the MLG forum and got enough pressure to get noticed by the organizers.  After trying out the game and seeing how passionate our players were they said they would start with working on the ladder for it.

We're just starting out so I'll keep everyone updated on what comes next.


--
-Matthew Hartman
Muse Games

So this is your definition of having NOTHING to do with it?  And since when has Muse's standard for involvement in their game been whether on not it's obligatory?  Muse go above and beyond in just about every aspect of this game, why would they treat MLG like stinky red-headed step child with leprosy?

And commenting on the validity of your statements about Muse's involvement with MLG is hardly insulting Keyvias.  He is free to do with his time as he sees fit, and is probably the better judge of what to do with that time than you or I or anyone else.  You claimed it had no effect.  That's simply bullshit.  40 - 5 cannot = 40.  I'm not even arguing about whether or not this game should be involved with MLG or whether or not Muse should be working with MLG or not.  What I'm saying is you're not dealing with reality if you think that GoIO being in MLG has no effect on Muse.  It's an impossibility.  If only because they actually give a crap about their game and the people who play it.

No, they are in no way obliged to devote any time or energy toward MLG.  But neither are they obliged to post on this forum, play the game with their customers, provide prize support for tournaments, and the list goes on and on; however, they do these things. 

For the record, I have no idea what impact MLG will have on this game.  I hope it's good.  But to believe it has no impact, especially on developers, especially Muse developers, is insulting to the level of Muse's involvement they have constantly had to this game.  Look at their involvement in community run, rather small tournaments.  You truly think their level of involvement in MLG will disappear?  Come on, man.

[sparklerfish]

Do I expect a patch for an indie game with a small developer team to have some bugs?  Yes.

Do I expect it to be so severely bugged that it is actually UNPLAYABLE?  Nope.


The past two days have been awful.  My framerate drops to as low as 3 (yes, three) FPS in combat, especially when fire weapons, carronades, and hwachas are used (though most everything affects it to some extent), and my audio sounds like it's been run through dBlue Glitch.  This is clearly not an isolated problem and one that should have never made it out the door.  It makes me wonder what kind of testing was done on this patch before its release, since quite a large number of people are reporting the same issue occurring extremely consostently.  This isn't some minor bug that occurs in some rare random scenario; this is most combat being broken entirely all the time.

I love ya Muse, but as Niet said... fix your fucking shit.  O_o

[Queso]

Next time this happens to you, we need your log and your graphics settings. If we don't get those, we can't do anything to fix it. Nobody in the office has been able to reproduce it. It got released in this state because it has literally never happened to any of us. We don't have a publisher dedicated to QA testing on a variety of hardware. There was no way we could know it was broken. It may not be a minor bug form a rare, random scenario, but we can't tell that unless we get logs and accurate reporting. We've got such a small pool of data to work from because so few players have sent in the logs and reports we need to make connections and figure out just what is broken for us to fix.

[sparklerfish]

Next time this happens to you, we need your log and your graphics settings. If we don't get those, we can't do anything to fix it. Nobody in the office has been able to reproduce it. It got released in this state because it has literally never happened to any of us. We don't have a publisher dedicated to QA testing on a variety of hardware. There was no way we could know it was broken. It may not be a minor bug form a rare, random scenario, but we can't tell that unless we get logs and accurate reporting. We've got such a small pool of data to work from because so few players have sent in the logs and reports we need to make connections and figure out just what is broken for us to fix.

Found the list of requested information in another thread; e-mailed all the logs and such.  Hope it helps.

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

So, I have to put my foot in my mouth regarding some of the performance issues that are going on. From what I understand, 3v3's are still kind of gnarly when the flamethrowers and other particle start to come out (reports are the Iron Fork of Friday was pretty abysmal for that reason.) But I played a few 2v2's over the past few days and at least those games seem exceptionally stable, even when I'm playing on Euro servers (I 'm on the west coast of the U.S., the best coast).

So, yeah, stuffs clearly getting fix, and a lot faster than I was expecting, so I have to thank the Muse for the work that they've put into stabilizing this game post-patch, much better than the work I've put into this run-on sentence. 

I haven't been able to do any 3v3's though, but as soon as I can get into another game of Scrap, you'll be getting a log. Hopefully it'll be helpful.