In-Game Unique Item to Help with Dev Debugging

[Kauffy]

I see a lot of posts in this forum that are referencing specific places on the map, which is obviously enormous. Finding it by searching for "House in Muldraugh" or "Fire Station" is probably pretty tough. I can't imagine how much time would be spent (if it's bothered with at all), to track all these things down.

 

Here's what I propose. Create a mod-- an official mod-- that adds a device to the player's inventory (0 weight). When the player encounters an issue like this, they can right click the item, which will pause the game, take a screenshot, give them a text box to fill in any details, and then it will drop a player-visible marker on the floor (so the player doesn't report it again in the future). Then, it sends the player's note, along with the exact coordinates, directly to the devs.

 

Possible expansions:

1) When a player makes a report, it is broadcast to everyone else with the mod, so the other players see that something has already been reported, along with what was in the note. This will cut down on duplicate reports, but not prevent subsequent players from doing another report if they want to add more information.

 

2) Bind it to a key, and actually capture the local gamestate, if the report isn't simply a map/tile issue, but might actually be an unexpected behavior. Heck, bind it to a key, anyway.

 

3) Bounties or something.

 

Why I suggest this is that I've seen a few games implement a similar tool (Subnautica comes to mind)-- you can just hit a key and report a big, in situ (with a screenshot). I also used to run the tech side of a bio-medical device startup, and our user feedback was filtered through 9 layers of people who were bad at communicating, and rarely made it back to me (acting product manager). I added a "Feedback" link, tiny, in the top right corner, of every single page of our product's internal website-- anyone clicking that link could write whatever they wanted, and it was emailed directly to me. They didn't have to remember it for later or worry about whether it would get to the right person.

 

I think something like this would help you immmmmmmensely.