A Proposal to increase Tribble testing usefulness

malkarris

So, it has become rather obvious that for some reason, the devs are unwilling or unable to give us the tools necessary to properly test new content (by which I mean just about everything in the game). This leads to such interesting issues such as this, this, this, this, well, the list goes on.

Most of these issues could not have been found before this unless someone went on Tribble and did exactly what they would have had to do to get the item on Holodeck, and why would anyone do that when Tribble is not the main server and doesn't "count." Because of all this, Tribble is a glorified showroom where you can look at the shiny cars, but can't take any for a test drive. Its not a test server. I can only assume that this is due to one of two things. One, the devs are too busy with the game to code something slightly different on Tribble to allow for testing, or two, someone decided that no one on Tribble should get "free" stuff on that server. I note that we used to be able to get some "free" stuff, like the Oddy three pack, you could get that on Tribble to test out.

So, I can't suggest anything for the manpower issue, but I can for the other.

First, prior to the start of any major addition to the game that goes on Tribble, wipe the server clean of data. Everyone looses characters, ships, unlocks, everything.

Second, after the server is patched, for every character that logs into Tribble, give them a way to pick up the items needed to test everything on the addition. For instance, with season seven, there was the reputation system and all of the unlocks. So, have a place for players to pick up a crate that has enough Romulan and omega marks, and dil, and everything else to unlock all of the tiers. And lower the timers so that each project only takes 15 seconds, you can put big huge notes in the system that this is for testing only. Or with the Vesta, let everyone claim the ship, like with the Oddy.

Third, give us time to do this stuff. If the timers and stuff was adjusted, I think that the amount of time for the season 7 stuff was fair enough. And I don't need a reward to test things, my reward is knowing that I helped point out a bug to you guys and that you are going to fix it. I don't need another useless Tribble.

Fourth, at the next major addition, or patch, wipe the server again. This means that although we got "free" stuff, we don't get to keep it, and better yet for you, if we liked it, we will immediately go out and get it.

Just my two cents.

darimund

really I would suggest the opposite of this, or even an alternative, have one test server do clean data every major update and another with duplicated data from the live servers + the upcoming update. This would give a comparative between the two to help zone in on bugs for one. But yeah, the ability to quickly go through the new stuff to test gear in combination, make sure all progression related rewards are in place and working properly... itd make using tribble worth while to me for a little bit here and there.

As it stands now, I can't justify spending large amounts of time testing on tribble especially when I cant get to the stuff that really needs testing.

degleo

how do I sign up for the tribble server?? thanks!

voyagerfan9751

f2pdrakron wrote: »

That is pointless because there are combos, if you test a item you dont know how it will work combined with another item.

The entire thing just needs to ditch the time games or have NPCs to give us the stuff we have to test during the testing cycle and its gone after or just let because Tribble is dead as it is, nobody really uses it because, for starters, it does not even check you Zen Store brought stuff.

One thing for sure I will not do is doing free QA that is pretty much what you are suggesting since I would be testing it on a sterile environment without seeing how it interacts with other abilities.

I am thinking this over the OPs suggestion, The problem with wiping characters is if you are invested in a character (yes even a Tribble Character) having to start from scratch every update (assuming you, like me, didn't transfer over a character) can be a downer. Which potentially has the opposite effect then what you wanted (that being less people are testing rather then more)

Cryptic clearly tried to do something similar to this with the "Cryptics Tribble" fleet, but even increased numbers aren't going to help you test content that by design isn't suppose to be achievable for months. As someone who is in the Cryptics tribble fleet, things are going incredibly slow there now (I think we are on Tier 3 on our starbase and tier 2 on our embassy) as almost no one is contributing.

If the likes of a massive dev run fleet can't get to long term goals how are you ever going to know how things work (or more importantly on a test server, Not work) before someone stumbles on it in Live.

captinjacksparow

Hey does anyone know how to sign up for tribble? I did it a long time ago but I forgot.

The reason I need to know is my friend wants to sign up but doesn't know how.

badname834854

You forgot the biggest offender: The Stealth Buff to STF Borg NPCs.

-They Weren't on a Tribble build
- The changes weren't in patchnotes.

Hence, we end up with the continuation of the invisitorp issues, Uber crits from Tac cubes etc. Enough that even Dan Stahl had to make a comment about NPC Borg.

Completely unacceptable.

It's unacceptable because most of this could have been avoided by putting the changes on a Tribble build and announcing the changes in the notes (Read: No "Stealth " Buff)

Instead, all we got was "working as intended" for some time. Arrrgh!