Warframe Support SUCKS

[Tossenberg]

Lately, I have found myself sending A LOT of bug reports to Digital Extremes support teams, and I have been nothing short of disappointed nearly every time. I get about 4 autogenerated messages promising they will get back, but currently, my average wait time before any real person gets to it is weeks, with some reaching MONTHS. 

I get DE is working hard on the new updates and is also receiving a lot of bug reports but instead of the devs acknowledging this, they just keep pushing new content. Now I like new warframes and content as much as the next guy over, but is it really too much to ask for them to just slow their pace and actually fix the rather severe issues that are currently plaguing the game? I would not for a single second mind skipping out on the next 5 warframes if it meant the game ran perfectly.

Some of the issues I have run into are as follows.

- Diriga arc coil is flat out not working.

- Garuda Prime talons mesh still hasn't been fixed after several years and can thus not use tennogen skins.

- Defence operatives (NPC) in archon hunt missions fall through the map and die randomly making you lose the entire (rather insanely boring and tedious) mission.

- Duviri Softlocking me in extraction making me lose the entire mission.

- Duviri Defence randomly starting.

- Netracells random instakill even while invulnerable, shield gated or under "death immunity".

- Display and screen jittering / latency (fixed by alt tabbing but still a pain that they haven't fixed that).

- Volt Ephemera spilling over onto other frames.

- Lighting and effect stacking issues in simulacrum.

- Resource images and names not even showing after extraction.

- Arbitration extraction softlocking.

These are just what I have experienced, but I have seen tons scattered across the forums and Reddit, some having lasted for years without being addressed in any way, and honestly, that is not good enough DE. You have the money and time to fix all this, but instead, you are working on (and excuse my language) #*!%ing plopping warframe onto iPhones, like 90% of your player base doesn't exist or needs priority. 

I have been writing to DE support, giving them tons of logs, screen recordings, screenshots, data and whatever else they could wish for. To this day I have still not received any compensation or alike for the resources I have lost, which to this date totals to around: 236 steel essence, 87 vitus essence, 42 riven slivers, 118 arcanes (from acolytes and duviri) and an unknown amount of endo worth in mods and just plain endo.

DE has been sloppy with their newer updates and bug fixes, and their support team is barely doing anything else than ask for logs and go on about their day after having let you wait for upwards of months. 

I love the game, but get your (again excuse my language) S#&$ together DE

[Chewarette]

Do you expect a Support team to do dev jobs ?

[Tiltskillet]

21 minutes ago, Tossenberg said:

Lately, I have found myself sending A LOT of bug reports to Digital Extremes support teams, and I have been nothing short of disappointed nearly every time.

Support doesn't handle bug reports.  These should go in the bug report forums.  Here: https://forums.warframe.com/forum/149-bug-reports/ or  here: https://forums.warframe.com/forum/1874-bugs/  Although presumably there will be a new one for Dante Unbound tomorrow.

[Tossenberg]

32 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

Do you expect a Support team to do dev jobs ?

No I don't, I expect them to move on with issues that is presented before them so it can be fixed. I am mentioning developers because they should know about issues that are plaguing their game, the same way they keep yapping about IPhone crashes, so they can get it fixed or communicate to the community at the very least that major bugs are being fixed. 

12 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Support doesn't handle bug reports.  These should go in the bug report forums.  Here: https://forums.warframe.com/forum/149-bug-reports/ or  here: https://forums.warframe.com/forum/1874-bugs/  Although presumably there will be a new one for Dante Unbound tomorrow.

I don't report just bugs to them. I ONLY report issues that involve me losing content, game not working, not able to use content I have payed for, or like said me losing resources because of bugs, in attempt to get those rewards back. With general bugs I do use the bug forums and alike. 

Edited March 26 by Tossenberg
Clearification

[VibingCat]

9 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Support doesn't handle bug reports.  These should go in the bug report forums.  Here: https://forums.warframe.com/forum/149-bug-reports/ or  here: https://forums.warframe.com/forum/1874-bugs/  Although presumably there will be a new one for Dante Unbound tomorrow.

How often do we see devs responding to bug reports? Barely ever. Warframe is by far the buggiest game I've ever played. I appreciate their hard work, but I agree with OP, in that I would personally prefer if they focused on improving what we have before adding new content and warframes. 

[Zakkhar]

45 minutes ago, Tossenberg said:

Diriga arc coil is flat out not working.

Wdym not working? Are you using it correctly? It works for me. 

[Tossenberg]

15 minutes ago, Zakkhar said:

Wdym not working? Are you using it correctly? It works for me. 

You can prolly find a bunch of reddit threads about it. There is an issue for a lot of people where Dirigas arc coil doesn't work, makes the sound and everything but nothing happens, no beam no nothing. 

[Tiltskillet]

16 minutes ago, VibingCat said:

How often do we see devs responding to bug reports? Barely ever.

Not often enough, but more than "barely ever".   The key point is these responses more than anything take the form of patch notes. 

Direct responses to bug reports are certainly rare, extremely so in comparison to their volume. Although I'd point to the Known Issues posts, which I consider indirect responses to a significant percentage of bug reports, and a much more efficient way to do it than personal replies to every person reporting the same bug.

24 minutes ago, VibingCat said:

Warframe is by far the buggiest game I've ever played.

Yeah, I'm with you there, and it's frustrating.  Even moreso for me now, with the cadence we've had since Crossplay integrated platforms.  

But the OP said he was sending bug reports to Support, which isn't going to help the problem at all.   That's all I was responding to.

[Rathalio]

1 hour ago, Tossenberg said:

- Defence operatives (NPC) in archon hunt missions fall through the map and die randomly making you lose the entire (rather insanely boring and tedious) mission.

Are you sure they manage to fall through the map? It used to be an issue on open maps like on Europa defence missions where the NPC could literally walk out of bound, which has been fixed since then. But I've never seen or heard anyone experiencing in archon missions. Although there is an important fact you have to keep in mind, in archon missions and in general if I'm not crazy. The operative can be downed a certain amount of times (somewhere like 3 times I believe, it's hard to find a confirmation on the wiki). Once every chances are used they die instantly and you instantly loose the mission.

1 hour ago, Tossenberg said:

effect stacking issues in simulacrum.

There is a reset button next to the arsenal for that in the simulacrum already.

[Tossenberg]

38 minutes ago, Rathalio said:

Are you sure they manage to fall through the map? It used to be an issue on open maps like on Europa defence missions where the NPC could literally walk out of bound, which has been fixed since then. But I've never seen or heard anyone experiencing in archon missions. Although there is an important fact you have to keep in mind, in archon missions and in general if I'm not crazy. The operative can be downed a certain amount of times (somewhere like 3 times I believe, it's hard to find a confirmation on the wiki). Once every chances are used they die instantly and you instantly loose the mission.

There is a reset button next to the arsenal for that in the simulacrum already.

I have screen recordings of them falling through the actual ground on maps where they can't just wander off a ledge. Also they don't get downed or anything, the mission straight up just instantly ends once they are out of bounds, saying the operative died. And ontop of that, they haven't even been downed once through the entire mission. 

 

Didn't know about the button, where is it? In the arsenal with the captura buttons or smth? 

[Rathalio]

5 minutes ago, Tossenberg said:

Didn't know about the button, where is it? In the arsenal with the captura buttons or smth? 

[UnstarPrime]

2 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

You have the money and time to fix all this

Citation needed.

[VibingCat]

2 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Not often enough, but more than "barely ever".   The key point is these responses more than anything take the form of patch notes. 

Direct responses to bug reports are certainly rare, extremely so in comparison to their volume. Although I'd point to the Known Issues posts, which I consider indirect responses to a significant percentage of bug reports, and a much more efficient way to do it than personal replies to every person reporting the same bug.

Yeah, I'm with you there, and it's frustrating.  Even moreso for me now, with the cadence we've had since Crossplay integrated platforms.  

But the OP said he was sending bug reports to Support, which isn't going to help the problem at all.   That's all I was responding to.

And yet, most bug reports are completely ignored, both by players and staff. It seems that hotfixes tend to address the rarest and most irrelevant issues instead of the reported problems, which eventually end up becoming features or strange quirks. I've reported dozens of bugs, and most of them are still present in the game. I bet the same is true for the bugs reported by you and everyone else on this forum. 

[Tossenberg]

2 hours ago, Rathalio said:

YOOOOOOO WTF I feel like it has the same status as the elevator on fortuna, I have never seen anyone use it or anything, damn

2 hours ago, UnstarPrime said:

Citation needed.

You think when they have the money to regularly pump out and develop new content they can't take the time to just make a few things work? And if they don't have the time, just make the time by delaying content or waiting with introducing new.

[Tiltskillet]

39 minutes ago, VibingCat said:

And yet, most bug reports are completely ignored, both by players and staff. It seems that hotfixes tend to address the rarest and most irrelevant issues instead of the reported problems, which eventually end up becoming features or strange quirks. I've reported dozens of bugs, and most of them are still present in the game. I bet the same is true for the bugs reported by you and everyone else on this forum. 

Again, I'm not attempting to justify how DE deals or doesn't deal with bug reports. Except insofar as submitting them to Support is not going to get bugs fixed; and anybody expecting a personalized staff response to a bug report--even one put in the right place--is probably being delulu.  (Which is true of every game I've  played, and not just this one.  I expect AI will be addressing this soon if it isn't already, and will at least make people feel more like they're being listened to.)

If you really just feel compelled to have an argument with someone about whether this game is inordinately buggy or not, or whether DE makes fixing bugs a high enough priority, I would not make a good dancing partner and don't intend to be one.

[Arniox]

4 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

I don't report just bugs to them. I ONLY report issues that involve me losing content, game not working, not able to use content I have payed for, or like said me losing resources because of bugs, in attempt to get those rewards back. With general bugs I do use the bug forums and alike. 

support doesn't work like that. They're not developers. They are a help desk. 
It's funny reading this thread, cause I work as a software developer with a help desk. 
And when the help desk reports something going wrong, it goes into our backlog to be worked on at some point.

Some tickets are given greater priority, usually the ones that actually cost the company money while a thing is broken, and moved up the chain to be worked on earlier.

But right now, there is 35 tickets in the backlog. And they probably won't be touched for half a year or more because they are low priority and there are other more important, more costly, more profitable things to work on first.

There... that's some context to where your issues have gone. Alot of them are probably low-priority and have been moved into a backlog somewhere.
I suggest just making a forum post about it on the bug-reporting subforum, and forgetting about it and stop getting so mad over it. At least to just save you some sanity. You can remain mad over it if you want, but it won't make the work go faster. And reporting on it more wont do anything either.

Edited March 26 by Arniox

[UnstarPrime]

13 minutes ago, Tossenberg said:

You think when they have the money to regularly pump out and develop new content they can't take the time to just make a few things work?

With respect, this isn't a rational argument: the fact that a company has the resources to do X and Y in no way relates to them having additional resources to do Z.  "Take the time to just make a few things work" costs more money than they are already spending.

 

17 minutes ago, Tossenberg said:

And if they don't have the time, just make the time by delaying content or waiting with introducing new.

Releasing content is the way that DE makes money, which is what in turn allows them to keep making the game.  Reducing the cadence of their releases reduces the amount of resources they have access to.  This is something the devs have been very open about.

I agree that it would be nice if businesses didn't have to worry about such limitations, but the reality we live in is one where resources are limited.

[Tossenberg]

On 2024-03-26 at 8:40 PM, Arniox said:

support doesn't work like that. They're not developers. They are a help desk. 
It's funny reading this thread, cause I work as a software developer with a help desk. 
And when the help desk reports something going wrong, it goes into our backlog to be worked on at some point.

Some tickets are given greater priority, usually the ones that actually cost the company money while a thing is broken, and moved up the chain to be worked on earlier.

But right now, there is 35 tickets in the backlog. And they probably won't be touched for half a year or more because they are low priority and there are other more important, more costly, more profitable things to work on first.

There... that's some context to where your issues have gone. Alot of them are probably low-priority and have been moved into a backlog somewhere.
I suggest just making a forum post about it on the bug-reporting subforum, and forgetting about it and stop getting so mad over it. At least to just save you some sanity. You can remain mad over it if you want, but it won't make the work go faster. And reporting on it more wont do anything either.

Like I have said before, I have only reported to the help desk the issues that directly prevent me from enjoying the game, or getting access to content / resources I have rightfully earned / payed for, and even those issues have gone unresolved. I have seen devs speaking on it before that if you lose rewards you should contact the support team, which themselves when talking to have mentioned they can potentially recover lost rewards, problem just is they haven't recovered any of the many resources I have lost. They ask for for logs again and again. I take logs, give it to them, just for them to basically ask for it in the next message. With the garuda talon issues, I have paid for a skin, gotten skin for the talons, paid for it, and can't use it. Or all the softlocks, I have spent time getting rewards, and their systems are withholding them for getting what I got, because of their servers or whatever else. 

On 2024-03-26 at 8:49 PM, UnstarPrime said:

With respect, this isn't a rational argument: the fact that a company has the resources to do X and Y in no way relates to them having additional resources to do Z.  "Take the time to just make a few things work" costs more money than they are already spending.

 

Releasing content is the way that DE makes money, which is what in turn allows them to keep making the game.  Reducing the cadence of their releases reduces the amount of resources they have access to.  This is something the devs have been very open about.

I agree that it would be nice if businesses didn't have to worry about such limitations, but the reality we live in is one where resources are limited.

I get what you are saying, but I don't think Dante the book worm is gonna generate a profit that is so much higher than the way fewer money it would cost if they instead released a mega patch fixing all these issues. Yes it would cost something, but DE would still make great money on all the things they already have going around, especially with their prime access packs which don't need to introduce several game modes, maps and whatever. Like they could so easily just not come out with a new frame, delay it one round, fix EVERYTHING and still be doing just fine in terms of capital. 

Edited March 26 by Tossenberg
Clearification

[Hobie-wan]

4 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

Lately, I have found myself sending A LOT of bug reports to Digital Extremes support teams,

So you're sending stuff that's for developers and clogging up the system so that people with problems that support can actually help with like account issues have to wait longer.

Cool cool.

4 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

To this day I have still not received any compensation or alike for the resources I have lost,

Occasionally they'll give something to players when there's a large bug that affects nearly all of the players. Otherwise, they're not going to compensate you for losing a few resources because you had a problem in a mission. The game is constantly changing and things are gonna happen. The TOS you agreed to tells you this and if you can't handle that, don't play it. Every other game is also going to tell you the same thing, especially live service ones.

[(XBOX)RaeOvSunshyn]

5 hours ago, Tossenberg said:

Lately, I have found myself sending A LOT of bug reports to Digital Extremes support teams, and I have been nothing short of disappointed nearly every time. I get about 4 autogenerated messages promising they will get back, but currently, my average wait time before any real person gets to it is weeks, with some reaching MONTHS. 

Hey, I'm just impressed you're able to post about it on the forum; half the time I can't even read it, let alone post to it. I've had a forum problem for months now, and although every time it takes support, like, 2 seconds to fix it, it takes... days... weeks... months... for them to get around to giving me those 2 seconds. Especially painful since I've been specifically told my issue is something on their end, not mine, and there's nothing I can do except contact them every single time it happens. Then wait.

[VibingCat]

24 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Again, I'm not attempting to justify how DE deals or doesn't deal with bug reports. Except insofar as submitting them to Support is not going to get bugs fixed; and anybody expecting a personalized staff response to a bug report--even one put in the right place--is probably being delulu.  (Which is true of every game I've  played, and not just this one.  I expect AI will be addressing this soon if it isn't already, and will at least make people feel more like they're being listened to.)

If you really just feel compelled to have an argument with someone about whether this game is inordinately buggy or not, or whether DE makes fixing bugs a high enough priority, I would not make a good dancing partner and don't intend to be one.

No doubt about that. However, Support could at least try to minimise the losses of a player who failed a mission due to mere bugs, granted that they have sufficient proof. I think this was OP's main complaint.

I'm genuinely not trying to argue and I'm sorry if I gave you that impression; my goal is rather to show that a part of the community cares about fixes over new content.

[Tossenberg]

17 minutes ago, Hobie-wan said:

So you're sending stuff that's for developers and clogging up the system so that people with problems that support can actually help with like account issues have to wait longer.

Cool cool.

Occasionally they'll give something to players when there's a large bug that affects nearly all of the players. Otherwise, they're not going to compensate you for losing a few resources because you had a problem in a mission. The game is constantly changing and things are gonna happen. The TOS you agreed to tells you this and if you can't handle that, don't play it. Every other game is also going to tell you the same thing, especially live service ones.

I have like 7 inquiries currently pending over 5 months, It's not like I'm spamming them, relax. 

They themselves have referred to the support team to get rewards back, if they refer to it, they should keep their end of the bargain. And sure let's just call it "a few" resources, its still not about that. I shouldn't even have to write to them about this, it should work, period. I write to them so the issues can get fixed as the main purpose in mind. No I don't care about a few hundred steel essence, I get that every other day. But it's still insanely frustrating to play hours, and then lose it all because of their bugs or whatever. I provide Logs and everything else so it can be fixed. This isn't about TOS, they should listen to their community and fix their issues, which they barely ever do. I would like for you to go through a 1000 random bug reports on the forums, and find just 5 responses or notes from actual developers or people who can get the issues fixed. 

Edited March 26 by Tossenberg
Adjustment

[UnstarPrime]

11 minutes ago, Tossenberg said:

I get what you are saying, but I don't think Dante the book worm is gonna generate a profit that is so much higher than the way fewer money it would cost if they instead released a mega patch fixing all these issues. Yes it would cost something, but DE would still make great money on all the things they already have going around, especially with their prime access packs which don't need to introduce several game modes, maps and whatever. Like they could so easily just not come out with a new frame, delay it one round, fix EVERYTHING and still be doing just fine in terms of capital. 

All I can say is that DE has gone on record saying that they've experimented with doing their releases numerous different ways over the years, and their data shows that there's a direct correlation between new content and being paid.  As much as many of us love bug fixes, the overall player base doesn't shell out for bug fixes the same way they shell out for new content.  They need to bring in money to pay their staff and keep the lights on; if the data showed that they could do that effectively by just fixing bugs, I can't help but imagine that more bugs would be fixed, as that would be a win-win for everyone.

Also...they couldn't fix everything simply by delaying a Warframe.  You are vastly underestimating the time it takes to solve bugs in a game of this size and scope.

[Tossenberg]

11 minutes ago, UnstarPrime said:

All I can say is that DE has gone on record saying that they've experimented with doing their releases numerous different ways over the years, and their data shows that there's a direct correlation between new content and being paid.  As much as many of us love bug fixes, the overall player base doesn't shell out for bug fixes the same way they shell out for new content.  They need to bring in money to pay their staff and keep the lights on; if the data showed that they could do that effectively by just fixing bugs, I can't help but imagine that more bugs would be fixed, as that would be a win-win for everyone.

Also...they couldn't fix everything simply by delaying a Warframe.  You are vastly underestimating the time it takes to solve bugs in a game of this size and scope.

They on average earn 252.500 USD per employee, they could afford hiring 17% more employees than they had last year. If you can afford to expand on such a rapid rate. You can fix 500 bugs no biggie. Let's assume it takes 100 working ours average to fix a bug. With just fixing the 500 most prominent bugs it would cost 500 bugs * 100 hours * 20 USD (I'm just gonna set that as the average salary) That's 1.000.000 USD. I think its being very generous with the numbers, and since they generate a solid 123.000.000 USD, I don't think its out of their scope to spend 1 million on fixing bugs.

(Also so far they have earned 42 million this year, so I don't think it's exactly going to be a bad year, nor like they are on the verge of bankruptcy)

Edited March 26 by Tossenberg
Typo

[UnstarPrime]

4 minutes ago, Tossenberg said:

They on average earn 252.500 USD per employee, they could afford hiring 17% more employees than they had last year. If you can afford to expand on such a rapid rate. You can fix 500 bugs no biggie. Let's assume it takes 100 working ours average to fix a bug. With just fixing the 500 most prominent bugs it would cost 500 bugs * 100 hours * 20 USD (I'm just gonna set that as the average salary) That's 1.000.000 USD. I think its being very generous with the numbers, and since they generate a solid 123.000.000 USD, I don't think its out of their scope to spend 1 million on fixing bugs.

(Also so far they have earned 42 million this year, so I don't think it's exactly going to be a bad year, nor like they are on the verge of bankruptcy)

Haha, I respect your effort in presumably looking up those numbers, but you're falling into some classic software development pitfalls in your attempt to utilize them.  I don't have a ton of time to write a full reply, so I'll just leave this here, which is what I would mostly be regurgitating anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month