PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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mr.devolver said:
Also, what are the data worth if there are many players who spend most of their time in game testing (and restarting the world often) rather than playing?
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I would assume the telemetry would include what build/branch you are playing.   Since the internal test builds are known and different from the public builds they can filter out the QA team and anyone in a closed testing group like they are trying right now with pre-experimental.

Knowing what % of players are on what stable or experimental build is also valuable data for TFP.  

 
Roland said:
Starting with A19 they will have the means to see what regular players are doing with the stable build and not just internal testers and ultra-fans are doing with the experimental build. So they will be able to track gameplay of those who play to Day 1000ish if they want. I suspect they will be much more interested in those who play to Day 100ish though. :)  

For Alpha 20 and onwards Joel will be able to give actual percentages and we will find out whether our preferences are held by the majority or just the fringe. Do we really want to know....?
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It's not just experimental build, I'm playing on stable and still testing. I'm testing the mods and restarting the world often, so while I do play quite a lot, I'm not really getting too far in game to actually reach T5 quests. The farest I got was T3 when I was testing. I think the data would be much better if they could filter out modded games. They would probably have much lower amount of data overall, but in the same time the data collected would have much better coverage of vanilla experience, which is what they are after if I'm not mistaken...

 
Roland said:
Starting with A19 they will have the means to see what regular players are doing with the stable build and not just internal testers and ultra-fans are doing with the experimental build.
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i was until my PC did this

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Roland said:
We also can't craft it so it is limited and won't hurt performance. One concrete mixer that spins probably wouldn't hurt performance either.

If only players would build only one....
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Good luck with that.... :)

 
Roland said:
Starting with A19 they will have the means to see what regular players are doing with the stable build and not just internal testers and ultra-fans are doing with the experimental build. So they will be able to track gameplay of those who play to Day 1000ish if they want. I suspect they will be much more interested in those who play to Day 100ish though. :)  

For Alpha 20 and onwards Joel will be able to give actual percentages and we will find out whether our preferences are held by the majority or just the fringe. Do we really want to know....?
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How will this data be collected? Is there an opt out or will we be required to agree to it per terms of use? 

 
Roland said:
Starting with A19 they will have the means to see what regular players are doing with the stable build and not just internal testers and ultra-fans are doing with the experimental build. So they will be able to track gameplay of those who play to Day 1000ish if they want. I suspect they will be much more interested in those who play to Day 100ish though. :)  

For Alpha 20 and onwards Joel will be able to give actual percentages and we will find out whether our preferences are held by the majority or just the fringe. Do we really want to know....?
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OMG my personal information will be compromised!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

C'mon... you all know its coming :)

 
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meganoth said:
Two reasons:

1) At my trader in A18 there usually are no T3s or T4s on offer but just 3 T5s, 1 T1 and 1 T2. Is it only me that sees this all the time?

2) People do T5s when they still haven't found their weapons and tools in quality 6. T5s are the reliable way to get offered such stuff.
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Right there is no disputing the value of them, but we're gearing our efforts towards progression so the last one needs the least amount of priority right now. We have a new tagging system to make sure there are enough tier x within a reasonable distance of a trader. I will do a T5 if I have to, but I prefer the smaller ones.

 
bjurney said:
How will this data be collected? Is there an opt out or will we be required to agree to it per terms of use? 
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As a former IT Security Specialist for a large global company and in favor of collection of GAME data to enhance the gaming experience, a couple notes about collecting personal data:

1. Legal.  While the United States (as a country) currently (but we are headed there) does not have a broad scope of united formal regulations like GDPR, several states have started down this path.  Companies that utilize collected data that originates in some states and countries (especially GDPR ones) probably ought to be aware of what impact they might have - now or in the near future.

2. Liability.  While it may seem improbable that 'game' data could be utilized to 'hurt' companies or people, 'bad guys' (mostly nation states, crime syndicates, etc. - not little individuals hackers) have all kinds of resources to gather all kinds of data from all kinds of places (including vast databases of previous stolen information) and are linking (using AI) all of that data to be able to determine more of a company's or person's profile (and other things).  Which then can be used not only to access other things, but to better 'spoof' the person or the company.  (Very often, breaches are caused by individuals (naive most of the time - but not always) who have fallen for some sort of spoofing.  Targeted emails ('phishing'), and it's brethren ('vishing', etc.) are getting better and better all the time.

The company I was at decided a few years ago to 'scrub' almost of their data to remove any personal identifiable information.  Data is still tracked and retained - but cannot be tracked/traced back to an individual company or person.  For the cases where it is required, it is handled by outside companies (who are then liable - hopefully...) or it is really locked down and has several layers of very narrow controlled access.

 
madmole said:
Right there is no disputing the value of them, but we're gearing our efforts towards progression so the last one needs the least amount of priority right now. We have a new tagging system to make sure there are enough tier x within a reasonable distance of a trader. I will do a T5 if I have to, but I prefer the smaller ones.
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It is not about there being no T3s or T4s near the trader, I get them offered at the right stages. But once you have unlocked T5s, those T3 and T4 are not offered anymore. Even though they clearly are inside reasonable distance to the trader since they were offered before (and haven't moved 🙂).

It may simple be that there are so many T1 and T2 that by randomly picking them T3s and T4s are seldomly seen !?

 
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Roland said:
Starting with A19 they will have the means to see what regular players are doing with the stable build and not just internal testers and ultra-fans are doing with the experimental build. So they will be able to track gameplay of those who play to Day 1000ish if they want. I suspect they will be much more interested in those who play to Day 100ish though. :)  

For Alpha 20 and onwards Joel will be able to give actual percentages and we will find out whether our preferences are held by the majority or just the fringe. Do we really want to know....?
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I hope they'll make telemetry optional... otherwise they'll have to rename it "Trojanmetry" lol

 
madmole said:
We are planning some infestation quests which add more zombies and raise a tier though, so a 4 could become a 5 if its infested.
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Do you have any other plans for quests that you can share?

If you build great tools for moders to keep adding quest lines, it would vastly increase the game length. The game already looks like Fallout on steroids. Getting some quality story on it would be killer!

It would be cool if it was possible for quests to take players to instances. Like there could be a custom starter island where you wake spawn and have to do bunch of tasks to build a boat so you can get to the main (random gen) map.
Or ppl could build really cool little custom instance maps with a cool side stories that you can enter through a quest. This way you can add new quests even to a old map without having rely on a certain location being spawned there.

 
What Quantum said. The telemetry is going to be gathered using a 3rd party service and it is only game data in large generalities. They are not going to be able to look and see that Snowdog spends 90% of each day at the Booby Trap. Instead they might be able to see whether the Agility Tree is used or largely ignored by most people.  It is trends. No personal info is going to be collected by TFP afaik. The company they are using most likely scrubs anything private or that could be traced to one specific individual. As for opting in or out I have no idea. You can opt in and out of EAC which is another 3rd party tool TFP uses so...maybe?

I'm sure that there will be more information given on this once the official announcement is made. Joel has been talking about telemetry coming but there hasn't been any kind of an official press release yet on who TFP is partnering with nor specifics on opting in or out, etc.  That will come at some point and then we can decide how Orwellian it is.

 
Roland said:
What Quantum said. The telemetry is going to be gathered using a 3rd party service and it is only game data in large generalities. They are not going to be able to look and see that Snowdog spends 90% of each day at the Booby Trap. Instead they might be able to see whether the Agility Tree is used or largely ignored by most people.  It is trends. No personal info is going to be collected by TFP afaik. The company they are using most likely scrubs anything private or that could be traced to one specific individual. As for opting in or out I have no idea. You can opt in and out of EAC which is another 3rd party tool TFP uses so...maybe?

I'm sure that there will be more information given on this once the official announcement is made. Joel has been talking about telemetry coming but there hasn't been any kind of an official press release yet on who TFP is partnering with nor specifics on opting in or out, etc.  That will come at some point and then we can decide how Orwellian it is.
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I can see the Steam threads now... " They should just rename the game to 7 Ways to Spy"  ... 🤣

 
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mr.devolver said:
It's not just experimental build, I'm playing on stable and still testing. I'm testing the mods and restarting the world often, so while I do play quite a lot, I'm not really getting too far in game to actually reach T5 quests. The farest I got was T3 when I was testing. I think the data would be much better if they could filter out modded games. They would probably have much lower amount of data overall, but in the same time the data collected would have much better coverage of vanilla experience, which is what they are after if I'm not mistaken...
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You might be surprised how many play unmodded.  I'm willing to bet thery are a larger % more then modded.

However, I bet those with the most hours logged are those that mod. 😂

 
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