Until we process the information we've received we don't know, but any additional information is useful at this stage.
The processes the system uses should be a black box as far as players are concerned. The useful feedback here is that players are doing X, with the expectations of Y. The problem might be a bug, or how we feedback for player actions or some other issue.
Michael
First off, I want to thank you for letting us know the team is looking into it. There's been a lot of player effort in a lot of different places and no end of frustration, and having some acknowledgement that there may in fact be a problem and the problem might actually be fixed is a huge boost in morale.
But moving on: A blackbox system has, by definition, a defined interface. A good black box should be clear about it's expected inputs and outputs, but not it's methods for determining them. That's what people are asking for. Not the details of how things function behind the scene, just an interface definition so we can determine whether or not the black box return "cow" to the question of "What is 2+2?" is appropriate. If the interface is defined as "When asked 'What is []?' and provided a number as the argument, the box will return the animal matched to that numerical value.", the system is still a black box. We have no idea how how the internals work, how it determines what animal is what. But we know it's not broken (in this way)! We know what outputs to expect, and even though they may not be instinctively understandable ("What? How is 2+2 a cow? Shouldn't it be 4?") we know they are working as intended.
Unless "What is 2+2?" always returns "cow" and "What is 4?" always returns "platypus". Then,
even though we don't how the box works, or how it decides what animal is matched to each number, we know the box is broken, because the
interface defines the argument as a value, and the format of that value should not effect the outcome.
We aren't asking for internals, we're asking for a definition of the surface for interfacing with the black box - "When missions are completed, it will raise or lower certain attributes, all of which will be displayed."
There are some kind-of-internal-kind-of-interface expectations that could be shared as well:
"Raising attributes can trigger states by reaching a specific value, but are not the sole determinant in whether or not that state occurs."
Or, perhaps the biggest:
"When we display a 1% increase in faction influence, it should increase the faction influence attribute by 1%".
We don't need to know what's going on inside, but we should be able to know that if a missions says "Influence: +1%" what that actually means in terms of box-output. Especially if it's contrary to basic expectations, i.e. "Influence: +1%" should increase influence by 1%.
This is especially crucial in a situation such as this where we know that the interface has, in fact, previously been explicitly lying to us - you've claimed to have fixed a bug that resulted in half a mission's displayed result being illusory. The most amusing part of that, though, is that since we don't know what the expected output was there's no way for us to determine this was in fact the case even now, after the fact!
We're not asking for the internals of the black box, we're asking for it's transfer characteristics.
Help us help you! We just want things to work, because we love the possibilities the system offers, and mystery is great but only if the people pursuing it have faith the mystery can be resolved, and that's something people are very rapidly losing!
