Voyages

Armali

I want to express my dissatisfaction at how these capstone Seafaring activities have been handled, having now had every voyage on my log, and having a general understanding of how they all work.

902 - A Cursed Voyage
A recent change involving captaincy and ship requirements results in all sorts of possible bugs with the quest forgetting who is captain and what ship you requested the voyage for, resulting in sailing to very far, remote islands, only to find out that the quest forgot who the captain was and being unable to progress. Awards talisman pieces, but requires a very long sail for less rewards than some of the voyages below, has multiple failure points (someone killing a quest NPC, for example), and depends on items that can decay while you're waiting for recovery of the previous.

903 - A Smuggler's Voyage
Bug #10258, as well as a previous bug that was marked hopefully fixed twice, but is still occurring. The quest potentially resets the locations of quest givers mid quest, within 15-20 minutes. resulting in long sails that result in, 'oops, your princess is in another castle'. There's another bug that happens but that actually helps the player more than hurts, but it's still a bug. Does not award talisman pieces.

904 - A Treasured Voyage
Bug #10033, which has been bugged before. One of clues you're given to direct you to where you're supposed go seems bugged, since I've gotten it before and visited nearly every single possible location and nada. Does not award talisman pieces.

905 - A Tourist's Voyage
Disabled a seven months ago and still isn't back.

906 - A Captain's Voyage
The only voyage on this list without any real problems and is repeatable on a daily schedule. On the other hand, you don't know if someone else is doing it (thus blocking you) until you complete a 10-20 minute sail, which means you can waste a hearty amount of time only to have to cool your jets for hours until it respawns. Why can't we tell right away?

907 - An Indebted Voyage
This is fine.

908 - A Grievous Voyage
Disabled in April, still not returned to us.

909 - A Surgeon's Voyage
As of the writing of this post, the quest giver isn't given out his quest for whatever reason (bug #10316) when all other conditions the same as previous when they were. In addition, it can just randomly fail to complete (bug #9929), and multiple steps can fail due to captain/ship identity issues, as described above in quest 902. This is at the end of an hour, hour-and-half long sail. Awards talisman pieces, at least.

910 - A Priestess' Voyage
I'm not sure anyone has ever completed this voyage since its introduction, because of the multiple bugs plaguing it. The recent Changes post described a bug that was fixed that resulted in the entire quest resetting itself if you performed a wrong step, a step you had to perform in the first place. The last step of the quest also seemingly is bugged (bugs #10011, #10012), as the clue is rather unambiguous but performing the action results in no response. Is it truly a bug? It's hard to say, because multiple times, sometimes has been reported, flagged not a bug, re-reported, then grudgingly recognized as an actual bug, and fixed.

911 - A Voyage of Sight
This one is plagued with bugs. The Changes post mentions chests not having gold. This comes on the heels of a previous bug that reported that they were broken in the first place, that cause them to be fixed. Another bug resolved was the appearance of messages globally that should've only been local. However, THAT bug fix resulted in the message being typoed, missing tokens and colors (bugs #10212, 10264). A certain NPC you have to kill has no short description (bug #10265). Unlike most other voyages, it isn't shared with crew (bug #10227). In a recent bug, the quest area becomes inaccessible within a minute of accessing it, contrary to how it's supposed to be (I know how it's supposed to be because I've done it) (bug #10317). Finally, the voyage bugs out on the next step. It's supposed to finish, then lead to the next voyage - however, it never completes, and and it never gives you the next voyage. (bug #10225) I managed to wrangle up an admin to help me during my attempt, and did get the next voyage, but it never completed itself.

912 - A Fog-wreathed Voyage
This one worked, as far as I can tell, but you're never going to get it, given the issues plaguing its precursor voyage. It also wasn't sharable with crew, and did not award talisman pieces, and anyone hoping for more lore will be sorely disappointed.

In the time since voyages were released, how many content releases have we had, above and beyond the monthly promotions? How many of them will inevitably be as buggy as these voyages? Is it too much to ask that some effort and resources be devoted into fixing what's already present, rather than create new content? Or, that some resources be devoted into ensuring bug fixes are tested and verified? How hard is it to see, for example, that the string you made no longer appearing globally, actually displays properly (bug 10212)? Or that a fix emplaced recently doesn't just break the functioning of the entire quest (the recent change to the Voyage of Sight, that seemingly now just prevents the quest wholesale from being performed).

Namino

Soon and it won't get more Soon with the asking.

Adrik

Armali said:

Or, that some resources be devoted into ensuring bug fixes are tested and verified? How hard is it to see, for example, that the string you made no longer appearing globally, actually displays properly (bug 10212)? Or that a fix emplaced recently doesn't just break the functioning of the entire quest (the recent change to the Voyage of Sight, that seemingly now just prevents the quest wholesale from being performed).

As someone who works in the QA field... You don't want to know the answer to that question. To be perfectly clear, I've worked on games that have been out for years that just break all of a sudden under certain circumstances, or what have you.

Honestly would give a thought to actually doing QA work for Achaea if it weren't for the whole "Your character is liable to be inaccessible forever" and.. y'know. the fact i already work a 9 to 6 job doing QA every weekday for $13 an hour. kill me

Armali

I forgot to mention another bug with quest 911:

Bug 9989: when the voyage appears at a harbor, you cannot obtain any other voyage from that harbor. You can choose to take a Voyage of Sight, or request another voyage, and if you choose to select another voyage, the usual dialogue occur... but you won't obtain the voyage when it's complete. You're effectively locked out of every other voyage.

And with quest 912:

Bug 10226: an emit string is missing its newline character - a typo, basically.

Phaestus

Voyages have gone through a lot of fixes to bring them up to snuff, but they're still not in a great place at the moment. There's some valid complaints here, but there's also a lot that's just not correct.

Armali said:

902 - A Cursed Voyage
A recent change involving captaincy and ship requirements results in all sorts of possible bugs with the quest forgetting who is captain and what ship you requested the voyage for, resulting in sailing to very far, remote islands, only to find out that the quest forgot who the captain was and being unable to progress. Awards talisman pieces, but requires a very long sail for less rewards than some of the voyages below, has multiple failure points (someone killing a quest NPC, for example), and depends on items that can decay while you're waiting for recovery of the previous.

As far as I'm aware, nothing has changed with captain or ship requirements lately, nor should any of the items be "forgetting" who is captain. There are also no reported bugs regarding this voyage. You can only take one voyage at a time, so that might be your issue? Not sure. The rest (killing NPCs, decaying items) is standard fare for quests, and are meant to prevent one person from locking down a voyage for an indefinite period. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

903 - A Smuggler's Voyage
Bug #10258, as well as a previous bug that was marked hopefully fixed twice, but is still occurring. The quest potentially resets the locations of quest givers mid quest, within 15-20 minutes. resulting in long sails that result in, 'oops, your princess is in another castle'. There's another bug that happens but that actually helps the player more than hurts, but it's still a bug. Does not award talisman pieces.

Yep, both issues should be fixed.

904 - A Treasured Voyage
Bug #10033, which has been bugged before. One of clues you're given to direct you to where you're supposed go seems bugged, since I've gotten it before and visited nearly every single possible location and nada. Does not award talisman pieces.

Working fine.

905 - A Tourist's Voyage
Disabled a seven months ago and still isn't back.

906 - A Captain's Voyage
The only voyage on this list without any real problems and is repeatable on a daily schedule. On the other hand, you don't know if someone else is doing it (thus blocking you) until you complete a 10-20 minute sail, which means you can waste a hearty amount of time only to have to cool your jets for hours until it respawns. Why can't we tell right away?

Harbourmasters will no longer give this voyage if someone else has the pangolin.

907 - An Indebted Voyage
This is fine.

908 - A Grievous Voyage
Disabled in April, still not returned to us.

909 - A Surgeon's Voyage
As of the writing of this post, the quest giver isn't given out his quest for whatever reason (bug #10316) when all other conditions the same as previous when they were. In addition, it can just randomly fail to complete (bug #9929), and multiple steps can fail due to captain/ship identity issues, as described above in quest 902. This is at the end of an hour, hour-and-half long sail. Awards talisman pieces, at least.

10316 was an intermittent issue, didn't affect most players, and is fixed. I've looked into 9929 pretty thoroughly, and it seems that the only reason this happens is if you abandon the quest (or lose it by starting another voyage).

910 - A Priestess' Voyage
I'm not sure anyone has ever completed this voyage since its introduction, because of the multiple bugs plaguing it. The recent Changes post described a bug that was fixed that resulted in the entire quest resetting itself if you performed a wrong step, a step you had to perform in the first place. The last step of the quest also seemingly is bugged (bugs #10011, #10012), as the clue is rather unambiguous but performing the action results in no response. Is it truly a bug? It's hard to say, because multiple times, sometimes has been reported, flagged not a bug, re-reported, then grudgingly recognized as an actual bug, and fixed.

The first of these is intended behaviour. The second isn't correct either, but there is something wrong with the last step of this voyage. It'll be fixed in the next couple of days.

911 - A Voyage of Sight
This one is plagued with bugs. The Changes post mentions chests not having gold. This comes on the heels of a previous bug that reported that they were broken in the first place, that cause them to be fixed. Another bug resolved was the appearance of messages globally that should've only been local. However, THAT bug fix resulted in the message being typoed, missing tokens and colors (bugs #10212, 10264). A certain NPC you have to kill has no short description (bug #10265). Unlike most other voyages, it isn't shared with crew (bug #10227). In a recent bug, the quest area becomes inaccessible within a minute of accessing it, contrary to how it's supposed to be (I know how it's supposed to be because I've done it) (bug #10317). Finally, the voyage bugs out on the next step. It's supposed to finish, then lead to the next voyage - however, it never completes, and and it never gives you the next voyage. (bug #10225) I managed to wrangle up an admin to help me during my attempt, and did get the next voyage, but it never completed itself.

The first bugfix has nothing to do with the other two, though the relevant typos are fixed. Was an issue with crew sharing, should be fixed now. Re: the sinking, seems like you just got incredibly unlucky with your timing. We'll make sure that doesn't happen in future. Issues with finishing/obtaining the next voyage should be sorted.

912 - A Fog-wreathed Voyage
This one worked, as far as I can tell, but you're never going to get it, given the issues plaguing its precursor voyage. It also wasn't sharable with crew, and did not award talisman pieces, and anyone hoping for more lore will be sorely disappointed.

This voyage is obtainable, shareable with crew, and talisman rewards are on a per-player basis, based on your personal voyage history.

In the time since voyages were released, how many content releases have we had, above and beyond the monthly promotions? How many of them will inevitably be as buggy as these voyages? Is it too much to ask that some effort and resources be devoted into fixing what's already present, rather than create new content?

Over the past year or two we've absolutely been more thorough with fixing, optimising, and adding quality of life improvements to already-existing content than has been devoted to these things in at least a decade, perhaps longer. I've touched on this in other threads, but over the past year we've had well over four thousand bugs submitted, and if memory serves, we've had two (maybe three?) expire since the start of the year, one of which was fixed shortly after, and one of which had already been fixed, just not deleted properly. Bug reports may not get immediate responses, but they are dealt with as quickly as we can get through them, based on priority, how widespread they are, how gamebreaking they are, how many people are impacted, how complex the fix would be, and a bunch of other factors. Plenty of bugs are submitted without sufficient information, or are full of assumptions and claims that are wildly inaccurate, and only serve to bog us down and point us in the wrong direction when we're trying to find the root cause. It can be frustrating looking at your submitted bugs and not seeing any movement, but I guarantee you we're working at it. And that's not even mentioning new content, new systems, ideas, quality of life fixes, classleads, and god knows what else.

As for new releases, we do what we can to test new content as thoroughly as possible, but there's always going to be things we miss, and there's always going to be things that players do that we can't predict. 

Or, that some resources be devoted into ensuring bug fixes are tested and verified? How hard is it to see, for example, that the string you made no longer appearing globally, actually displays properly (bug 10212)? Or that a fix emplaced recently doesn't just break the functioning of the entire quest (the recent change to the Voyage of Sight, that seemingly now just prevents the quest wholesale from being performed).

We do what we can to test and verify bugfixes, depending on the severity of the bug and the complexity of the fix, but it's absolutely not feasible to test every single bugfix thoroughly. For your first example, we'd have to have a volunteer play all the way through that quest up to the point where the ship is raised, wipe out those enemies, station a second person on another ship, and then clean up the quest, ship, and mobs so that the next player doesn't walk into a ship full of mess from a half-finished attempt, all to verify a quick typo fix that took perhaps 30 seconds in total. Your second example just a bad assumption, that's not what happened in the slightest. For the most part, we can tell exactly what might be affected by a bugfix, and test directly for those edge cases to see if there's an issue, but thorough testing of every bugfix, especially the minor ones/typos, is absolutely never going to happen. That's just the reality of the situation.

I'll be going through the rest of the voyage bugs we have submitted over the next couple of hours, but for the most part things should be running smoothly as they are now.

Armali

As far as I'm aware, nothing has changed with captain or ship requirements lately, nor should any of the items be "forgetting" who is captain. There are also no reported bugs regarding this voyage. You can only take one voyage at a time, so that might be your issue? Not sure. The rest (killing NPCs, decaying items) is standard fare for quests, and are meant to prevent one person from locking down a voyage for an indefinite period. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

You can ask anyone that sailed this voyage on a regular basis and verify that something did change, regarding a certain quest item you need to dig up. @Entaro and @Minkaiare a few of the folks that noticed that previously, you did not need the pulling ship at the harbor to acquire a quest item, and then, all of a sudden, did. In fact, we had a captain/ship identification issue earlier today when I did this quest, forcing me to abandon the quest and retake it so that the quest NPC recognized that I was in fact the captain/owner of the quest. If you need further proof, I suppose I'll start logging all of my voyages, start to finish, and attach them to my bugs so you can verify that this sort of thing does sometimes occur.

This voyage is obtainable, shareable with crew, and talisman rewards are on a per-player basis, based on your personal voyage history.

Are we looking at the same history? Did I mysteriously get talismans in a fashion that didn't alert me or trigger messages? I would certainly like to know if I did. In addition, I had @Rhivona helping me when I did this quest, and she must've done something to force a prog that resulted in me gaining the quest. When @Mezghar was doing it the next day or so, he did not have the same luxury and when he performed the last step, nothing happened, ergo, the voyage wasn't obtainable. Whether or not it is shareable by crew, I have no idea, because we couldn't (can't) get it. 

Phaestus

Armali said:

You can ask anyone that sailed this voyage on a regular basis and verify that something did change, regarding a certain quest item you need to dig up. @Entaro and @Minkaiare a few of the folks that noticed that previously, you did not need the pulling ship at the harbor to acquire a quest item, and then, all of a sudden, did. In fact, we had a captain/ship identification issue earlier today when I did this quest, forcing me to abandon the quest and retake it so that the quest NPC recognized that I was in fact the captain/owner of the quest. If you need further proof, I suppose I'll start logging all of my voyages, start to finish, and attach them to my bugs so you can verify that this sort of thing does sometimes occur.

Ah, yep. The buried item did change, but that has nothing to do with any of the other npcs or captain requirements. If you have an issue with those or with a particular denizen, you're welcome to file a bug with the relevant details. Until you do, there's not much we can do about it!

Are we looking at the same history? Did I mysteriously get talismans in a fashion that didn't alert me or trigger messages? I would certainly like to know if I did. In addition, I had @Rhivona helping me when I did this quest, and she must've done something to force a prog that resulted in me gaining the quest. When @Mezghar was doing it the next day or so, he did not have the same luxury and when he performed the last step, nothing happened, ergo, the voyage wasn't obtainable. Whether or not it is shareable by crew, I have no idea, because we couldn't (can't) get it. 

You won't always get talisman pieces. Rewards are evaluated on a per-player basis. As mentioned above, there was an issue with progressing from one voyage to the next, but that is resolved now. Both rewards and crew sharing seem to be working properly (I'd imagine crew sharing didn't work for you because it was forced at the time).

Armali

You won't always get talisman pieces. Rewards are evaluated on a per-player basis.

I have never failed to get talisman pieces from a voyage that rewards talisman pieces, and never gotten talisman pieces from a voyage that didn't (speaking as captain). I'm willing to bet that anyone else who does voyages on a regular basis can say the same. I'd riot if I didn't get my two pieces after sailing a Captain's Voyage, for example. Is this specific voyage unique for whatever reason? 

And one last thing:

This is less of a bug and more of an player-friendly, ease-of-use point,  a la no longer being able to pull a Captain's Voyage if the pangolin is out. A number of voyages require you to dock at harbors. These harbors have ship limits. You can thus be halfway through a voyage, and then suddenly be blocked because oops, everyone just had to have their ships on Clockwork Isle (I just checked, and Clockwork is STILL full at 10/10, blocking completion of at least two voyages unless you can wrangle something). Back in September, several harbors had their capacities expanded. Is this still something that could be implemented?

Armali

Let me reiterate why this is so frustrating.

Last night, a bunch of issues were supposedly fixed with a Voyage of Sight. I even have bug completion messages.

About half of them, including the most important one, are still broken.

A line was typo'd and is still typo'd.

Another line is typo'd and now just straight up doesn't show. Call it a bad assumption, but I don't know if it's just a visibility issue, or if the associated prog is just not running (which would be even worse because it means the quest itself would have blocked progression at this point).

The voyage is not completable. The quest NPC bugs out at the last step. Still. In the same fashion as described in the previous bug (he actually give one less line of dialogue now, one instead of two, and then just abruptly stops. How do I know he should give more? Because @Rhivona forced the prog through the one time I did it successfully and I saw the entire dialogue that's supposed to occur). How long would it have taken to verify the fixes were all working, vs. how much time has been wasted by players having to redo the voyage over and over?

Trey

Bro chill lol

Armali

Bug #10334:

After finishing the Voyage of Sight, the dockworker will prompt you to give a ship name to request the next voyage in the chain... but entering the prompt correctly does nothing. You can enter invalid entries, and the dockworker will complain, but doing it all right won't get you results.

Bug #10335:
As a corollary to the above, the dockworker in port seems to then bug out after a few minutes, and gets stuck. You can't ask him for a voyage or anything.

Archaeon

working as intended (tm)

Thaisen

It will be working as intended Soon and it won't be working as intended any faster if you keep asking about it.

Aegoth

Better quality customer service literally does not exist anywhere else. They cannot give more bang for the buck, it's impossible

Adrik

Thaisen said:

It will be working as intended Soon and it won't be working as intended any faster if you keep asking about it.

I think it's more the

"Hey we fixed this, now QA it for us, which since you have to do it as a user does, takes about 2+ hours"...

And then surprise, it's not fixed when they've said it's fixed at least 10 different times. And, surprise, each 'test' takes 30~120 minutes of work...

Bug testing isn't something players should have to do for fucking free to access content, yet here we are.

Armali

Thaisen said:

It will be working as intended Soon and it won't be working as intended any faster if you keep asking about it.

Most of the issues I listed initially were fixed soon after making this forum post. It does seem to go faster.

Thaisen

Adrik said:

Thaisen said:

It will be working as intended Soon and it won't be working as intended any faster if you keep asking about it.

I think it's more the

"Hey we fixed this, now QA it for us, which since you have to do it as a user does, takes about 2+ hours"...

And then surprise, it's not fixed when they've said it's fixed at least 10 different times. And, surprise, each 'test' takes 30~120 minutes of work...

Bug testing isn't something players should have to do for fucking free to access content, yet here we are.

This method is much cheaper though

Entaro

Voyages are fine. 
Though please @Phaestus extend the clockwork isle capacity, or kick out ships docked there for a period of time. Pls I beg. 

Armali

Armali said:

Bug #10334:

After finishing the Voyage of Sight, the dockworker will prompt you to give a ship name to request the next voyage in the chain... but entering the prompt correctly does nothing. You can enter invalid entries, and the dockworker will complain, but doing it all right won't get you results.

Bug #10335:
As a corollary to the above, the dockworker in port seems to then bug out after a few minutes, and gets stuck. You can't ask him for a voyage or anything.

Both of these are still the case, several weeks after being filed. The existence of the bugs directly contradicts Phaestus's claim that quest 912 (which is blocked by bug #10334) is obtainable, per his forum post above, unless this quest has an IRL month long global cooldown or some other obscure cooldown related issue. It was tested by three different people, two of whom have no done quest 912 before, and it has been at least 12 days since the quest was last completed.

Armali

Thanks to @Ictinus , a lot of voyage bugs were fixed. That is fantastic.

There is just one more issue really plaguing the voyages though, and that's the fact that two voyages require you to dock at Clockwork Isle, which has been at max capacity (10/10) for months. A couple of idle layabouts are just using the docking spaces as shipreturn points for hunting. Can we please get these ports expanded, in the same vein that Tapoa was?

Cooper

Gold sink opportunity!

Allow any harbor to be expanded. 500k per expansion.

Alternatively, allow people to purchase/create a personal dock space that only they can use, 1 million gold.

Austere

Option b, just allow people with select voyages to bypass the cap. 

Zulah

Armali said:

Thanks to @Ictinus , a lot of voyage bugs were fixed. That is fantastic.

There is just one more issue really plaguing the voyages though, and that's the fact that two voyages require you to dock at Clockwork Isle, which has been at max capacity (10/10) for months. A couple of idle layabouts are just using the docking spaces as shipreturn points for hunting. Can we please get these ports expanded, in the same vein that Tapoa was?

@Armali   Worth noting, I know of at least 2 ships parked there just to hinder others from doing the Voyages there. If they were expanded, I know of a few more ships that would be parked there for the same reason.

Armali

Tapoa got kicked up to like 40 slots, so I'm sure if precedent is followed, it won't be a problem.

Worth nothing that Tapoa was expanded also for reasons of voyaging + importance. There's an old forums thread regarding it.

Kresslack

Zulah said:

Armali said:

Thanks to @Ictinus , a lot of voyage bugs were fixed. That is fantastic.

There is just one more issue really plaguing the voyages though, and that's the fact that two voyages require you to dock at Clockwork Isle, which has been at max capacity (10/10) for months. A couple of idle layabouts are just using the docking spaces as shipreturn points for hunting. Can we please get these ports expanded, in the same vein that Tapoa was?

@Armali   Worth noting, I know of at least 2 ships parked there just to hinder others from doing the Voyages there. If they were expanded, I know of a few more ships that would be parked there for the same reason.

Seems like an outdated problem with a seemingly simple solution. Expand harbours significantly to prevent people from locking them down like that.