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I promise, this is the greatest suggestion ever.
cybersoldier1981
Posts: 2,501 Arc User
There's no possible way this can go wrong. I promise that the entire community here will support the idea.
FIX THE BUGS THAT MAKE THIS GAME UNPLAYABLE.
Really, don't add anything. Don't put anything in the store. Don't add a new alert. No costumes, no events, no powers, NOTHING. Just. FIX. Problems. Until these things can be resolved, don't add a single thing to this game. Re-task the guys who make stuff to fix bugs, assuming that, you know, you can do that (I'm not some computar warlock, so I don't know how you do these spells and if you can even re-task a code witch to fix stuff).
I don't care if you have to shut the server down for 12 hours, 24 hours, or whatever. This crap is getting WAY out of hand.
FIX THE BUGS THAT MAKE THIS GAME UNPLAYABLE.
Really, don't add anything. Don't put anything in the store. Don't add a new alert. No costumes, no events, no powers, NOTHING. Just. FIX. Problems. Until these things can be resolved, don't add a single thing to this game. Re-task the guys who make stuff to fix bugs, assuming that, you know, you can do that (I'm not some computar warlock, so I don't know how you do these spells and if you can even re-task a code witch to fix stuff).
I don't care if you have to shut the server down for 12 hours, 24 hours, or whatever. This crap is getting WAY out of hand.
Post edited by cybersoldier1981 on
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- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
Know why I'm on the forum so much right now? I wanna play, but I can't log in. Every time I do, I get maybe 15 minutes of play, and then booted. Today, I can't even connect to the patch server to get the launcher to start. Yeah, that's pretty game breaking.
RIP Caine
This is true, the graphics and audio team aren't involved in fixing game play mechanics, however... there are issues in their respective areas as well that need addressing.
Various Costumes have texture issues, primarily on females.
Animations having awkward anomalies, such as stretched necks on travel powers.
Audio misfiring or playing at nearly inaudible levels during some cut scenes and on some powers. Other Audio clips playing at excessive volumes as well.
So while these departments may not be involved in fixing the broken game play mechanics, they do have a variety of issues of their own in need of attention. So taking a month out to fix bugs gives the graphics, audio, and animation teams a month to fix and improve upon problem areas in their own departments as well.
I'm sure a lot of players would like to have their costumes textures actually properly wrap their character model, as well as have animations fixed in addition to all the existing bugs.
And it was made quite clear that I wasn't certain that one person writing code for a costume could re-write other code.
It doesn't matter.
To hell with what has been pointed out 'time and time again'. THE DAMNNED BUGS HAVE ALSO BEEN POINTED OUT TIME AND TIME AGAIN.
There is absolutely no point whatsoever in shoving shiny baubles into a broken, bugged system. Half of the new fun things we got brought on these crashes and glitches.
Exactly, the main reason new content needs to be halted for a month or two to fix stuff. With the number of bugs in the game currently, adding more new content only serves to compound the issues, since more often than not new content brings a whole new list of bugs with it, and these new bugs tend to get addressed earlier than the bugs that have been in the game for months even years.
There comes a point when something has to give, and quite frankly, that point passed long ago, it's long since been time that Cryptic took a break from new content and fixed existing content in ALL departments. Bugs, Glitches, and Flaws exist in every single department, and have existed for a long time.
We've heard it already that they just don't have enough devs currently to handle both new content and fix all the issues in the game, so the logical solution to the problem for the time being until they can hire on more devs is to halt new content and focus on bugs and touching up the game.
And yet I have not crashed once in probably the last 6 months. Not once...
And that would likely be why, IF it's a problem on Cryptic's end, it hasn't been fixed yet. Bugs that don't occur consistently are very difficult to track down, much less fix...
Yeah, the game is currently buggy, I don't deny that; but it's perfectly playable for many other folks like myself...
M-O-O-N, that spells @Rhyatt
Originally Posted by mijjestic: Ultimately, though, MMO players throwing stones at each other in this fashion is basically one nerd pointing and laughing at another nerd whose glasses are thicker.
Laws yes!
I don't like this mentality that roughly states 'It's not a problem because I'm not experiencing it'.
There are tons of game bugs that maybe you haven't ran into yet. It does NOT invalidate the complaints. The idea is, like you said IF it is a problem on Cryptic's end, they need to fix it.
We are getting lots of [cool] things, but there's no point in it if the real issues haven't been fixed. Because of Cryptic's inability to allow people to test costumes, those are also bugged when they come out. There's no point in nemesis missions and alerts if they keep disappearing
I want a complete game. I don't want to dodge content that's bugged and work around it. Like I said, there's no point in playing with a new Tonka Truck in the sandbox if there's cat poop in it.
The mentality is, "This doesn't seem to be easily reproducible. That means it may take a long time, if ever, before the bug is even chased down - and leaves open the possibility that the bug isn't even in Cryptic's system. Perhaps the user's ISP doesn't like to parse the URL for Cryptic's server or something, and if it's along those lines, how would we ever chase it down?"
A "game-breaking" bug is a bug that literally breaks the game, making it impossible for the majority of the players, if not all of them, to play. These bugs generally are in Cryptic's software, and happen due to reproducible errors (cf the SG bank tabs disappearing, or all of the Nems malfunctioning). That makes them relatively easy to fix - usually. (The bug that broke Darkness and Twin Blade Nems was/is harder to track down, in part because we keep working around it instead of giving the programmers more data with which to find the bug.) However, an error that affects you in particular, and not everyone who accesses a given module of the software, is exponentially more difficult to find. The assumption seems to be that the bug exists because nobody cares to fix it; in point of fact it seems more likely that they are trying to fix it, but in the meantime don't want to shut everyone down for the sake of the few. That's a good way to lose your entire player base, after all...
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Look at those starving kids in Africa. Oh well, I have food. Not my problem- right?
When a programmer is looking to stomp on a bug, he needs to be able to figure out where in the code the bug is hiding. The more lines of code, the harder it is to find a particular error. The quickest way - sometimes the only way - to find the error is to reproduce it in your test runs.
If the error isn't coming up in your test runs, you may never find it. In fact, sometimes that's an indication the problem isn't even on your end - there's a reason the IT Mantra is, "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?" If the user can tell you exactly what they were doing at the time, that might help you form a pattern. The problem there is that people keep coming to the forums instead of filing trouble tickets with almost every issue they have; and when the problem is described here, the complaint is just, "I keep dc'ing!" What were you doing when it disconnected you? Is there a pattern to that? When you can't log in, are you trying at the same time every day? Perhaps there's a data bottleneck where you are - try another time of day, perhaps?
For a time, there was an issue with our UK friends (no idea if it's still there), that had to do with data transmission structures in the UK. They could generally solve it by using the US proxy, a prime indicator that the issue wasn't with Cryptic.
That's one of the reasons I miss the old days of compiled languages - a lot of problems would show up on compilation, before any end users tried to run them. (My personal best was in COBOL - over one hundred runtime errors generated when I missed one semicolon in the Data Division, while defining an 88-level variable called "the-cows-come-home" [the loop had to iterate between once and two thousand times, depending on the dataset].)
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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You can complain, stamp your feet, and throw little tantrums all you want on the forums. It wont do a thing. If Cryptic can't reproduce the bug/glitch/whatever to figure out what code is broken, then it may take a long time to fix, or it may never be fixed, just as Cyber has kindly explained. I'm sorry if you think its a "oh its not your problem so who cares" kind of argument, but programmers are not little fairies that flutter around the office with magical coding wands that with a simple wave of sparkling happy goodness all your bugs will get fixed.
Personally I picture fixing a coding bug to be like trying to solve an Airplane crash. Detectives have to find one thing in the massive field of debris that can tell them, or at least give a clue as to why that plane crashed. Which is borderline impossible without the two black boxes on the aircraft. You know since you want to make real world comparisons to back up your argument, with that starving kids in Africa statement.
Coming to the forums and throwing a tantrum of sorts, is like trying to solve that airplane crash without those Black Boxes, all they know is that there is an issue. If you want an issue fixed, give them a "Black Box", outlining everything you do, when it happens, anything and everything. With that information Cryptic can attempt to recreate the issue on their end, if it is indeed an issue on their end, and only then will they be able to fix it.
You know what? No. No no no. I'll keep it simple.
I paid for a product, I expect it to work as advertised. I don't care if you have to tear Christ out of Heaven to make him fix it. Either make the product function, at least RESPOND to the problem, or compensate appropriately. 'Sorry for inconvenience' isn't addressing a problem.
Afraid I have to disagree with this.
Many, if not most, of the complaints on the forums include commentary about having filed tickets without ever seeing a response.
I think it is a bit of a stretch to just assume that people are not filing tickets in addition to coming to the forums.
Tickets do get filed. In detail. Exhaustive detail.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Both times I required a response, or at least some form of GM action and never saw it. The first time was when one of my characters was traveling from one zone to another, and the entire game crashed over and over. After MORE THAN A WEEK, I just gave up and deleted the character (he was only like level 16), and the second time was more recently. Eventually, I said 'to hell with it' the last time and respec'd my character, then re-converted him to gold with a retcon I had left over.
In all fairness, both problems could have been solved by someone resetting my character. This did not happen.
This has been my experience as well.
I had a character locked out of advancement for over a year. All of the tickets in the world had zero impact.
I had a character that couldnt leave the powerhouse for months. Tickets did no good.
I completely understand, in theory, that the complexity of an MMO's coding means that fixes can be difficult, but....
In what other consumer industry is is considered normal or acceptable for a company to charge for a service or product and then not provide it...without any form of compensation for the affected customers ?
If you pay for cable television and it doesn't work, and the provider's response is something to the effect of, "we are going to keep taking your money, but we may opt to never provide the service," would that be OK ?
If one pays for a car, and the dealer tells you, "hmm, we've decided to save payroll by not having someone here who can do the paperwork that allows you to take possession of the vehicle, maybe someday we will get around to hiring someone to do so...we'll let you know then. Oh, and thanks for the twenty grand," would that be OK ?
Basic customer service: If problems with the product impact your customers, ensure that they know what you are doing to fix the situation, keep them updated, apologize, and provide some remedy/compensation for the inconvenience.
NEVER leave the customer to suffer the inconvenience of the problem without a sense that it matters to the company and is being addressed in a timely manner.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Am I saying CO should barf up discounts for everyone who has a complaint? No, absolutely not. But I'd like to see something other than ignored complaints about certain issues.
If you want to know what I REALLY thing, there should be a compiled list of known and reported bugs that is updated and what the 'bug exterminators' have found and fixed.
I completely agree.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Totally.......
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
All of which doesn't really mean anything to me if you're not an actual programmer in Cryptic with access to the game's coding, even more so if your programming work doesn't involve MMORPG services. Just because you're a programmer yourself doesn't mean that your anecdotes automatically apply to whatever's going on behind Cryptic's closed doors.
I have a feeling that it's not due to lack of proficiency as to why there are still so many bugs old and new and persisting stability issues. I'm willing to bet that Cryptic just doesn't have enough programmers for the job and they're struggling to keep up. They don't even have reliable technical support. Enough people have been complaining about tickets not being answered at all, or simply just take too long to get answered.
The one and only time I've ever actually spoken to and was helped by a GM was in taking over management of SPECTRE from our old leader who'd abandoned the SG and quit playing CO. That was in the second quarter of '09.
Right now, the one annoyance I'm still getting is the memory leaks, given it's much better than the every half hour ones from a few patches ago. But I'm still CTDing every 2-6 hours depending on how many times I zone or switch toons. And since I often have to go through an inventory sweep of my 29 characters, that's almost a guaranteed memory leak crash.
And it's definitely not my PC since I have 6 gigs of RAM with a 1024mb videocard and the game can't even utilize large address. I have to chuckle when i get the "D3D out of video memory" error box sometimes, when my video card's memory usage at the time of the crash was not even above 50%...
Snark never dies.
If you get a large number of complaints over a single issue, bring a response to the forums or front page of the website and make it known that the problem is being looked into. Not only that but keep us up to date on the progress.
So many developers act as though we don't care to know the details or can't comprehend them. The truth is far from it, most of us want to know what is going on, and many of us can not only comprehend the information but can provide feedback and advice as to how to fix the issue and better prevent a relapse. The gaming community has a large number of moders, hackers, programmers, and developers in it, any number of which would be more than willing to offer their own time and effort for free to fix problems in their favorite games.
You say you don't have enough developers and not enough funds to hire more on, then take the opportunity to open up to your player base, detail some of the issues you've run into in locating, fixing, and preventing bugs. We will respond with feedback that you can use.
I'll take another example that happened to me personally. Back in my CoX days, I encountered an issue with an instanced mission where I had to kill X badguys. I was only able to find X-1 of them, even after searching for about an hour. I submitted a GM ticket, and within an hour a GM contacted me and teleported into my instance. He was able to see that the enemy was stuck in a wall or outside the instance boundaries, gave me a warning to get ready, and teleported the enemy back into the instance. Around when CO launched, I had an issue where a mission door was glowing but not able to be interacted with - I filed a GM ticket, and got a response back several days later to drop the mission and retry. Really!? Why wasn't there someone able to help me that same day? Why couldn't they just teleport me into the instance since the door was bugged? And if the "solution" was so easy, why did it take several days to get a response.
Since its launch, the concept of GMs in CO has been a running gag - i.e. there aren't any! If there was a GM who just sat in MC all the time, they'd be able to squash inappropriate conversations happening in zone, and they could take care of silencing and banning all those RMT broadcasts we hear.. oh that's right, we don' hear any of those - good, paying subscribers are just being silenced by a system that's been broken from the start.
And as for other bugs - I've done a little programming myself, and I always code in systems to provide me with feedback as to what the program is doing. The devs should be able to pull logs from a "crash event" for a user and see exactly what happened - whether the client encountered an error, or if there was some issue between the client and server, etc. Either the engine was written in such a way that it doesn't have any sort of logging functions, or the current batch of devs can't/won't/don't have the time/ability/etc to analyze it...
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
Official NW_Legit_Community Forums
Currently Resistance is too buggy for most (some can eat Mega Ds some can't), at least two lairs are bugged to the point of undoable, the Nemesis missions are hit and miss at best, Demonflame is bugged (making it much harder), Aftershock is uncompleteable and Vibora bay is unavailable to any new players/toons oh and Lemurian crisis may be bugged maybe not I've not been able to get to it for weeks.
It's a lot of content that can't be done, not an inducement to stick around for the refugee population.
The Vibora bay thing is particularly galling as the crisis is the only story arc in the game where you get that "how the heck are we gonna win this?" feeling. The really good dark part of the CO universe is unavailable.
I hope the refugee pop can stick around for the bug fixes so that they know it's not all camp fun and games in CO and we even have a really serious lair in here too.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The one who can't shut up formerly known as 4rksakes
About the @handle - it's a long story.
Profound quote.. "I'm not a complete idiot - several parts are missing."
They'll probably look at it and put it on their bug-hunt list if they have one, and fix it in a while.
Honest question, is this your experience in CO...or is it a reference to other games ?
I ask because it has not been my experience in CO.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.