There's no time for fixes but always time for nerf

wizardlvl80 · July 2018

Hi,

I don't understand why there is no time to fix issues reported as bugs but there is always time to deliver nerfs.

I understand that tradebar costs and HE in RD were such a crucial and gamebreaking problems that they need to be addressed before fixing existing issues.

percemer · July 2018

I am not a developer, but I think it takes more time to fix a bug, which is difficult to reproduce internally, than to change a few values

However, don't worry: they are working on every bug we've escalated.

Thank you for your patience!

cdnbison · July 2018

Yeah. If there is a list of 50 items to do, and 1 is "Change Nightmare gear to cost 65", that one probably gets crossed off in about 5 minutes. "Figure out why game keeps trying to patch, despite flags being set for no on-demand patching" likely takes some more work....

How fast something gets fixed comes down to 2 things, really:
1. How easy it is to fix. See also: changing cost of something. Super easy. Diagnosing random issues (like sound dropping during bhe's - sometimes) - less easy.
2. How gamebreaking it is. Does it prevent players from playing? Top of the list. Only affects .01% during a full moon in June, if they are playing a MOF CW in Vellosk? Much lower priority.

Balance between those two things. Sometimes, you're in that small group that is being affected, and it sucks. But let's face it - the HE rewards were unbalanced, and are much more in line with what *should* be rewarded for a small HE. That's not a nerf, that's actual balance. The Nightmare gear - that kinda sucks, as it was a nice way to 'cash in' tradebars, and I don't think it'd cause much problem, as accounts are still limited to 100k/day refining. So, even if you salvage 10M AD worth of Nightmare gear, you'd still need 100 days to refine it all....

pitshade · July 2018

It would be nice when a possible bug is reported, to get a definite answer if it is in fact a bug. (such as whether Eyestalk Wraps and Hag's Rags should stack or not)

percemer · July 2018

pitshade said:
It would be nice when a possible bug is reported, to get a definite answer if it is in fact a bug. (such as whether Eyestalk Wraps and Hag's Rags should stack or not)

I understand, we will try to improve this.

So, I assume this is a bug that the following items do not stack:
- Fured Kiuno of the bear & Heels of Fury
- Eyestalk Wrappers & Hag's Rags
- Ring of the Undead Slayer +5 and Vistani Ring of Dark
I can also confirm that Cryptic is now aware and working on it, but I don't know how and when this will be resolved

snotty · July 2018

fix bugs? it only took them from mod 6 release till 2 weeks into mod 7 to fix the DR/DI bug that every player was complaining about. Of course that was partly because they didn't believe it existed. I guess they figured it was normal for trash mobs to suddenly be able to 1 shot players.

but as far as the HE and TB nerf, that's all about AD. 50 seals reward is higher then any other HE and if people are zerging them than its a quick build up of seals which of course becomes quick salvage. The same goes for the nightmare seals. 5 bars for a salvageable weapon is pretty cheap and with how many people buy keys or have VIP at this point, that's a lot of AD.

regenerde · July 2018

cdnbison said:

...
Balance between those two things. Sometimes, you're in that small group that is being affected, and it sucks. But let's face it - the HE rewards were unbalanced, and are much more in line with what *should* be rewarded for a small HE. That's not a nerf, that's actual balance. The Nightmare gear - that kinda sucks, as it was a nice way to 'cash in' tradebars, and I don't think it'd cause much problem, as accounts are still limited to 100k/day refining. So, even if you salvage 10M AD worth of Nightmare gear, you'd still need 100 days to refine it all....

Hunts will have to receive the same kind of "balancing" in the next patch as well, since they are not harder then running any River District or other SHEs... not to mention that hunts can drop equipment as additional reward directly.

10 Seal of the Brave should be more then enough for hunts too.

notagain · August 2018

Well what I have seen in STO in terms of fixes has convinced me of one thing! Some will be patched/balanced and others left as is.

While I have been a vocal critic in the past, I think that many of the fixes can't be implemented this late into the current version maps/schedule. I think it is like a deck of cards, if one is backwards, do you risk pulling it out and changing to the correct side with the risk of having it all fall down on you. So perhaps it not a matter of not wanting to fix but an issue of patches on patches and patches to patch previous content attempted patches could cause the whole thing to fall down (after all I am sure people would be angry if they told us servers will be down several days for critical maint/patch corrections). Think Microsoft. Their code for Windows just continues to grow and they still won't get to the heart of many of the security issues as they have built upon that unstable or vulnerable code and one change could cause other things to break.

therealprotex · August 2018

percemer said:
I am not a developer, but I think it takes more time to fix a bug, which is difficult to reproduce internally, than to change a few values

However, don't worry: they are working on every bug we've escalated.

Thank you for your patience!

When I first read this comment, I thought it was good sarcasm and lol'ed. Then I noticed that you're a moderator and you are serious with what you wrote. I lol'ed again. Then I cried.

therealprotex · August 2018

notagain#5499 said:
Well what I have seen in STO in terms of fixes has convinced me of one thing! Some will be patched/balanced and others left as is.

While I have been a vocal critic in the past, I think that many of the fixes can't be implemented this late into the current version maps/schedule. I think it is like a deck of cards, if one is backwards, do you risk pulling it out and changing to the correct side with the risk of having it all fall down on you. So perhaps it not a matter of not wanting to fix but an issue of patches on patches and patches to patch previous content attempted patches could cause the whole thing to fall down (after all I am sure people would be angry if they told us servers will be down several days for critical maint/patch corrections). Think Microsoft. Their code for Windows just continues to grow and they still won't get to the heart of many of the security issues as they have built upon that unstable or vulnerable code and one change could cause other things to break.

That's a software developer's bread and butter. Not only to create new code but to maintain, fix and improve existing code. If you neglect the latter, your code will surely not improve at all and if you negect it out of fear to break something, Software developer might be the wrong job for you. There are ways out of the mess of too complex code. One is refactoring patters and one other is unit testing.

swamarian · August 2018

therealprotex said:

That's a software developer's bread and butter. Not only to create new code but to maintain, fix and improve existing code. If you neglect the latter, your code will surely not improve at all and if you negect it out of fear to break something, Software developer might be the wrong job for you. There are ways out of the mess of too complex code. One is refactoring patters and one other is unit testing.

Refactoring takes time and a stable codebase. I'm not sure if Cryptic's release schedule gives them enough time to really go through and clean up their cruft. (They've done it a couple of times in STO, but it's either been when they were having major server performance issues, or powers were stupidly broken.)
Unit testing is useful, but it's not a panacea. I suspect most bugs are weird interactions that wouldn't be caught by a unit test.

Unknown · August 2018

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spoonybard · August 2018

Also, for the umptieth time, how can it be so difficult to upgrade Terrored Grips the same way they upgraded all other hunt-gear?

plasticbat · August 2018

spoonybard#3189 said:
Also, for the umptieth time, how can it be so difficult to upgrade Terrored Grips the same way they upgraded all other hunt-gear?

Comparing with the Prosperity insignia, that would be "very" difficult since Prosperity insignia bug is still not fixed. There is no design (or re-design issue), there is no new code issue, there is no new item issue, there is no testing issue (no timing, no specific interaction with something else, ....), no need to set up a specific environment, no level issue, not an ancient bug issue, ..... Yet, the prosperity insignia bug is still not fixed over a month. So, relatively, yours is 'pretty' difficult.

demonmonger · August 2018

> @swamarian said:
> That's a software developer's bread and butter. Not only to create new code but to maintain, fix and improve existing code. If you neglect the latter, your code will surely not improve at all and if you negect it out of fear to break something, Software developer might be the wrong job for you. There are ways out of the mess of too complex code. One is refactoring patters and one other is unit testing.
>
> Refactoring takes time and a stable codebase. I'm not sure if Cryptic's release schedule gives them enough time to really go through and clean up their cruft. (They've done it a couple of times in STO, but it's either been when they were having major server performance issues, or powers were stupidly broken.)
> Unit testing is useful, but it's not a panacea. I suspect most bugs are weird interactions that wouldn't be caught by a unit test.

Also the people who wrote the old code no longer are working on the game... so it's like coming in and proof reading someone's 700 page research paper then editing out stuff you are not sure of then making a closing statement....

therealprotex · August 2018

swamarian said:
Refactoring takes time and a stable codebase. I'm not sure if Cryptic's release schedule gives them enough time to really go through and clean up their cruft. (They've done it a couple of times in STO, but it's either been when they were having major server performance issues, or powers were stupidly broken.)
Unit testing is useful, but it's not a panacea. I suspect most bugs are weird interactions that wouldn't be caught by a unit test.

Refactoring does not require a stable code base, it leads to a stable code base. I can and will not discuss Cryptic's release schedule and if it includes time for refactoring, but in my opinion (and from my experience as a software developer for 25 years) every professional company should have it included if they plan for their product to exist longer than a couple of years. Unit tests are not the same as integration tests, that's true. They cover different things, but for a proper refactoring unit tests are essential. And again from my own experience, if you have a code coverage of 80-90% you can be sure that integration tests fail rarely.

demonmonger said:
Also the people who wrote the old code no longer are working on the game... so it's like coming in and proof reading someone's 700 page research paper then editing out stuff you are not sure of then making a closing statement....

Again, that's a software developer's bread and butter. In every company is happens to every newly employed software developer that he has to wade through code that's not rarely years old, sometimes even decades. And again, if you are afraid of that, software developer might be the wrong profession for you...

swamarian · August 2018

therealprotex said:

Refactoring does not require a stable code base, it leads to a stable code base. I can and will not discuss Cryptic's release schedule and if it includes time for refactoring, but in my opinion (and from my experience as a software developer for 25 years) every professional company should have it included if they plan for their product to exist longer than a couple of years.

Back when Cryptic introduced the upgrade system in STO, they put it on the test server first, as you'd want. Part of the upgrade process was switching from the old, nonupgradable items to the new upgradable items. STO has a lot of items, and there were errors in the conversion, so people tested upgrading everything. The dev team took their results, and updated the code and rereleased. It was a lot better, but there were still errors. Test, release, fewer errors. It wasn't ready for prime time, but it was getting there.
What did management do? They released it early. It did not go well. Since then, every major system update's either been buggy, not well thought out, or both. I can only remember one time when an update was held up by bugs. The community was actually supportive of holding off and fixing the bugs, not knowing what they were.
I can't speak to Neverwinter, but on the STO side, it really looks like the release calendar drives development, and stuff gets released on schedule whether or not it's ready.
(And while I think that unit tests are somewhat overrated, automated unit and integration tests are great at making sure that you're not breaking something. The problem is that it'll slow you down in the short term, and I'm not sure that Cryptic's willing to take that hit to the schedule.)

ecrana · August 2018

therealprotex said:

demonmonger said:
Also the people who wrote the old code no longer are working on the game... so it's like coming in and proof reading someone's 700 page research paper then editing out stuff you are not sure of then making a closing statement....
Again, that's a software developer's bread and butter. In every company is happens to every newly employed software developer that he has to wade through code that's not rarely years old, sometimes even decades. And again, if you are afraid of that, software developer might be the wrong profession for you...

Truth right here and the main reason programmers/front end/back end devs have it hammered into them from day 1 that you have to "Comment your code". Then when the new guy comes in he reads the comments and understands what the code is supposed to do.

I've seen this tired excuse about the old devs no longer working there brought up every now and then. All I have to say is so what. "wah it's too hard to figure out the code and do my...job". Code is supposed to be maintained, refactored for future proofing, etc. You're just sitting on a ticking time bomb if no one can fix any systems because they were programmed by a former employee.

swamarian · August 2018

ecrana#2080 said:

Truth right here and the main reason programmers/front end/back end devs have it hammered into them from day 1 that you have to "Comment your code". Then when the new guy comes in he reads the comments and understands what the code is supposed to do.

I've seen this tired excuse about the old devs no longer working there brought up every now and then. All I have to say is so what. "wah it's too hard to figure out the code and do my...job". Code is supposed to be maintained, refactored for future proofing, etc. You're just sitting on a ticking time bomb if no one can fix any systems because they were programmed by a former employee.

Many years ago, I wrote a routine to convert from CMYK to RGB because OpenLook (who remembers that?) didn't support CMYK, and printers REALLY like CMYK. This was in PostScript, so I did everything on the stack, without any variables. It was roughly 6 lines of code, and it was totally inpeneterable 3 months later.

therealprotex · August 2018

ecrana#2080 said:

therealprotex said:

demonmonger said:
Also the people who wrote the old code no longer are working on the game... so it's like coming in and proof reading someone's 700 page research paper then editing out stuff you are not sure of then making a closing statement....
Again, that's a software developer's bread and butter. In every company is happens to every newly employed software developer that he has to wade through code that's not rarely years old, sometimes even decades. And again, if you are afraid of that, software developer might be the wrong profession for you...
Truth right here and the main reason programmers/front end/back end devs have it hammered into them from day 1 that you have to "Comment your code". Then when the new guy comes in he reads the comments and understands what the code is supposed to do.

I've seen this tired excuse about the old devs no longer working there brought up every now and then. All I have to say is so what. "wah it's too hard to figure out the code and do my...job". Code is supposed to be maintained, refactored for future proofing, etc. You're just sitting on a ticking time bomb if no one can fix any systems because they were programmed by a former employee.

I am not a friend of comments in source code. Usually, comments are out of date the minute you write them. It is hard enough to maintain the source code itself, maintaining and updating the comments, too, is really time consuming. I rather like a style where code comments itself. I like a style where a method or class is named in a way that the consumer knows what it is doing. If a method is named "GetUserName()" it is not necessary anymore to comment it with "// Gets the user's name". ;-) (That is usually only possible if the devs follow the "Single Responsibility" disign principle, but following SOLID does not make your code worse anyway.)

I fully agree on your second paragraph. Not maintaining/refactoring code builds up debts every day. One day the debts will crush you and your company.

notagain · August 2018

The only problem with writing comments, is that will you be able to detail enough so the next person comes in and can understanding. Heck I take notes on workarounds for games that have issues in Win 7 for example, 6 months later I usually don't understand what I did, so I go back and redo it and retake notes hoping it will be right.

I am not a software developer or code writer (someone said I should not be one - just confirming that isn't my fortay).

The question is could they take the code apart and peel the layers back (like you do in photoshop), fix the minor issue and then see what happens.

They need to do some real testing of code and they have to tie it with a reward for your time spent. STO they did that twice and since they force everyone to be beta testers with new releases then they spend maybe the next 5 patches fixing everything that should have been done before releasing content. That I hold them accountable for and don't excuse them when the code is sloppy, the grammar is worse than a first grader or other issues (hey my grammar level is kindergarten so - not really 2/3 done with Masters, anyhow). Maybe even a trophy hunt for bugs in test code/beta before release onto main server. Perhaps a bigger reward if they find an exploit that can create a serious problem like person jumping up and down 5 times, then selecting emote sleep and they get 2m in AD (this is example only sure hope this isn't true but it shouldn't). It is not like they don't have enough items to choose from to reward players for testing, for finding issues or finding exploits. You need to make the reward worthwhile. No chef clothing or fashion stuff, to me that would not make me test. Not saying they should give away a legendary item/mount/comp either. Just make it worth our while. Perhaps you award them zen??? since there is no cryptic 3 daily quest for cpoints to trade in for zen.

regenerde · August 2018

https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1240922/constant-patching-in-game-since-ravenloft-released/
vs.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/10976213
"A loophole that allowed players to refine Astral Diamonds past cap in a very, very specific way has now been closed."
some of us can't play the game without lagging back and forth from one end of an area to another for weeks now, and nothing official from a Devs about it, but when it comes down to issues regarding rAD/AD, they fix/patch those kind of problems with lightning speed.

wizardlvl80 · August 2018

That's exactly my point.

Nerfs or buisness "fixes" are delivered asap. People complaints are "on the radar" forever.

That's not the way to treat your customer.

greywynd · August 2018

It's understandable. Player complaints often have to be researched to find how/why it is happening. Business directives always take priority, particularly when an exploit/loophole allows players to bypass what was done.

Unknown · August 2018

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notagain · August 2018

Well I think we all agree exploits/cheats are things we want closed asap. After all if some are reaping huge amounts of AD for example, or getting items on the AH for less than what is posted or being able to one hit the boss monster in epic dungeons. So I disagree that these type of fixes should take a back seat to other changes. Yes I know if I was affected by one of these issues I too would want these other fixes pushed aside for now. However if someone is making (just an example) 50,000 off of each random dungeon with no limits, I would be upset knowing that people are building up huge amounts of AD by using a cheat or exploit while I am fighting for every approx 20k AD approx per day.

So exploits and cheats/hacks, sure you can them business fixes, however they are the most important fixes to maintain the integrity and trust players are putting in cyrptic to reward them the same amount as any other player doing the same work. Yes a server wide failure then naturally fix it first.

There is no point in posting a notice in the game to tech support not coming to the forums. This is not just a NWN issue, but STO as well. I think due to limited funds and time, they fix the easiest and the hardest they have no choice but to let them remain. If you are one of those unlucky to be in a small group of players having connection/sign on issues, then you probably won't be heard. However posting in the forums can lead to some other player who found a workaround/fix to post there knowledge and help solve your problem.

These issues of hardware compat have been with us since the first day there was more than 1 choice for hardware and more than 1 set of drivers for each of those brands of joysticks or motherboard or mice/gaming mice led to a infinite (well almost) to configurations and only those running the best gear in regular config/speed/performance/etc will usually not be on the I am having troubles forum post as those parts usually can be considered approx what system they used (not saying they used top of the line, but I don't see them using a mobile gpu from 5 years ago or a desktop GPU like the Geforce 295 or AMD 7970 to get things to work. Also for those who think the above was saying only those with money get games that work for them and paying is the only way to ensure it works or calling them cheap or get a job and buy better gear, that was not my intentions. I apologize if you fell like I am saying that. Heck I am still on my Core-i7-2600K Sandy Bridge and only the other days replaced my 770 EVGA FTW with a 1070 ti FTW2, so I am also not running the latest and greatest.

There's no time for fixes but always time for nerf

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