Blue's Bugs! [Updated 4-2-13]

bluestuffzzz · April 2013

Firstly, I wanted to start by saying that I've been around since 08 and when I saw that you guys are planning to listen to the community on game bugs and issues, it got me so excited! This is what I've been advocating for, since ages ago. I've wanted the staff of PWE to update and acknowledge the player base's concerns. Instead, Frankie decided to ban my main off the forums for attempting this, quite some time ago.

I've decided to create this thread, which I will update frequently, with various bugs, glitches, and suggestions. I appreciate PWE staff for taking the time to look at and respond to the player base, and this whole thing is a big +1 in my book. Good job guys!

Bugs

1.) The client crashes often due to a limit of RAM that it is allowed. elementclient.exe is capped at 2GB of RAM, and it causes constant crashes for players, often giving them bug reports. A trivial method can be used as a work around to uncap the exe to 4GB, but it's bannable to report this fix. If possible, could this be brought up to the devs, so that they may cap it at 4GB? It would fix almost all crashing of the game.

Also a side note: The reason it even reaches an astonishing 2GB of RAM in the first place is due to the memory leaks of the client. Fix that, and it results in a complete bug fix. Either way, this is a pretty big issue, and has been for a long time now.

2.) SoT has invisible walls in the instance. This is something that wasn't present prior to the most recent content update.

3.) Faction Slogan's are still quite buggy. The faction I'm in originally had spaces in the slogan, then the Siren's of War patch broke it, still leaving it with spaces but making it non-editable. In the latest content patch, a fix was implemented to allow spaces once more, but the faction slogan still can't be edited. I can take screenshots if needed, but it's pretty self-explanatory.

4.) Marriage Quest: Since MQ Was implemented, it bugs if one player in the party (either the husband or wife) disconnects from the game while doing the quest. Also it will bug one of them changes lead after accepting it, or invites someone to the squad by accident, etc.

5.) TT 2-x: It's possible to activate the dog boss and then while the player awaits for it to spawn, they accidentally hit "tab" and an invisible mob (that is used to do the activation method), is then put on the player's screen. The player being interested, attempts to hit the mob. This bugs the entire spawning of the dog boss, resulting in it not spawning. How unfortunate!

6.) Charm issues: Often times, I'll get hit hard enough that my charm doesn't tick fast enough, and I die. I feel that this is a bug, because the intended purpose of an HP charm is said on the item (after 50% HP, it ticks). It's not true, though. If I'm being hit by an enemy at 5aps, my HP can drop so quick that the charm refuses to tick, resulting in my death.

7.) In the Cube of Fate, when you port inside the instance (technically room 1 - where everyone is), the entrance is PK-enabled. This has been a major issue for quite some time, with new players not knowing they can be banned for killing players as they spawn in, and older players killing people for the lulz. It would be nice to finally see it fixed.

Suggestions

1.) Horn functions: It was once stated that due to player dislike, horn's would be removed from the Boutique. Since then, they have been added to the Quest-Master quests & Lucid-Silver/Gold dailies. If horn's can't be removed from the game, can we at least get the ability to turn off horn chat? That would be amazing, as it's so annoying when attempting to do stuff in the game.

2.) Re-adding all smiley sets to the Boutique. Player's have wanted this for a while, and it doesn't harm the game. Would be nice!

3.) Making Nirvana a worthwhile instance, would be yet another suggestion. Currently, very very few people do Nirvana runs anymore, now that Nation War's gives them instantly what they could get from farming Nirvana for months. I believe upping the rewards in Nirvana and giving 1 basic badge per boss would help keep this instance farmed.

4.) Finish streamlining the quest-experience for players 60-105. The quests don't give much, in terms of exp, coin, and spirit. Quests were streamlined originally for lower levels, but never completed for higher levels.

5.) Wrap up the rest of content for this last content patch we received. Currently, we are missing core skills for the new transformations, making it not worthwhile. I'd really enjoy seeing the rest of the content update released soon!

genotypist · April 2013

bluestuffzzz wrote: »

Bugs

1.) The client crashes often due to a limit of RAM that it is allowed. elementclient.exe is capped at 2GB of RAM, and it causes constant crashes for players, often giving them bug reports. A trivial method can be used as a work around to uncap the exe to 4GB, but it's bannable to report this fix. If possible, could this be brought up to the devs, so that they may cap it at 4GB? It would fix almost all crashing of the game.

Also a side note: The reason it even reaches an astonishing 2GB of RAM in the first place is due to the memory leaks of the client. Fix that, and it results in a complete bug fix. Either way, this is a pretty big issue, and has been for a long time now.

Hiya Blue. I'm not aware of any easily-identified memory leaks. Please submit a bug for me to find any you know of.

As for the 2GB limitation you're referring to, we brought it up once and it was not convincing enough. I'll take another swing at it. Modifying the client files (aside from localizations) leaves us a bit wary, you might understand.

bluestuffzzz wrote: »

2.) SoT has invisible walls in the instance, along with Warsong. This is something that wasn't present prior to the most recent content update. Shame too, because it defeats a lot of the fun/scare of falling off. It also makes it take forever to get back to the middle of Warsong.

3.) Faction Slogan's are still quite buggy. The faction I'm in originally had spaces in the slogan, then the Siren's of War patch broke it, still leaving it with spaces but making it non-editable. In the latest content patch, a fix was implemented to allow spaces once more, but the faction slogan still can't be edited. I can take screenshots if needed, but it's pretty self-explanatory.

Please write me a bug to point out the specific walls in Warsong. I've ran through it several times recently and was able to fall through the edges at many different points just fine.

Editing the Faction Slogan wasn't a priority on our plate. I'll take a look.

Synta - Dreamweaver · April 2013

I don't see the warsong walls either...

Faction slogans at the moment are ok, but full stops (.) aren't able to be used...

The memory leak issue coupled with the RAM limit (I think it's 1.8GB, rather than 2, not sure) is a big problem. Purging the RAM using minimem can help, but it's a bit of a roundabout solution and causes some performance issues sometimes...

bluestuffzzz · April 2013

genotypist wrote: »

Hiya Blue. I'm not aware of any easily-identified memory leaks. Please submit a bug for me to find any you know of.

As for the 2GB limitation you're referring to, we brought it up once and it was not convincing enough. I'll take another swing at it. Modifying the client files (aside from localizations) leaves us a bit wary, you might understand.

Please write me a bug to point out the specific walls in Warsong. I've ran through it several times recently and was able to fall through the edges at many different points just fine.

Editing the Faction Slogan wasn't a priority on our plate. I'll take a look.

I guess you guys fixed the invisible walls in Warsong last patch? But they are still present in Seat of Torment's instance.

As for the memory leaks, they are impossible to spot to the naked eye. Programmer's can spot them in the code by search algorithms, testing where the spikes are in the client (RAM spikes), etc. I don't have access to the game's code, and even if I did, I'm not proficient in this game's code. I know some programming languages, but I highly doubt a game from 2004-2005 would be even remotely something I could work on. The best I can offer you is the mere knowledge that memory leaks are present, and they normally spike in major areas of the game where a lot of players are. They continue even when the player has moved to an area with 0 population. The game starts with about 700MB of RAM, but slowly goes higher and higher, and when it finally hits that 2GB cap (actually about 1.8GB), it simply crashes the game. It's very easy to spot that it's a memory leak. That's the definition of a memory leak, by the book. Unfortunately, the only people capable of fixing this or circumventing the 2GB cap, are Wanmei's developers. I realize this, but hope that you guys may pass the word off to them.

The faction slogan isn't a big deal, I know. It's a trivial bug when we look at how many other bugs exist. This thread is arguably for me to compile a list of bugs, and they aren't in any particular order of which is more trivial than the next, or which needs to be fixed first, etc.

When you have such a large game on the table, it's only a matter of fact that there will be countless bugs present. Especially as the game ages and technology advances, while still playing on the same old engine, etc. The problem is, Wanmei has decided to take the content route, instead of balancing content with bug fixes and balancing. We see this too often in many large-scale MMOs, and it's unfortunate. Content brings fun and cash for the company, but if each piece of content has bugs and can bug, break, or glitch an old piece of content, or make the old piece worthless in comparison to the new piece, etc it's not really worth it.

I'll continue updating this bug list thread through the coming days, and hopefully will find my old list of bugs that I sent to you guys back in 08 via a ticket. I know most of them still exist, unfortunately.

Fielyla - Sanctuary · April 2013

i dont think it so much a leak as the client saving every thing from maps you go to 5-7 WS or FCC in a row with out a reboot leads to dc and crashes for me it even seams to anger my router making it dc my pc

bluestuffzzz · April 2013

Fielyla - Sanctuary wrote: »

i dont think it so much a leak as the client saving every thing from maps you go to 5-7 WS or FCC in a row with out a reboot leads to dc and crashes for me it even seams to anger my router making it dc my pc

Actually, it is a memory leak. Here's a wikipedia definition of a consequence:

Where the program runs for an extended time and consumes additional memory over time, such as background tasks on servers, but especially in embedded devices which may be left running for many years.

Credit for the above

It's caused by aging software, and happens when the developers refuse to divulge back into old code to find where the leak is coming from. It's unfortunate that a lot of older game's run into said problem. If Wanmei continues pushing out content, they will make more memory leaks, thus that 4GB potential cap of elementclient.exe will only be a temp fix. It's very possible for the client to hog more RAM.

I've also added four more significant bugs to the list:
4.) Marriage Quest: Since MQ Was implemented, it bugs if one player in the party (either the husband or wife) disconnects from the game while doing the quest. Also it will bug one of them changes lead after accepting it, or invites someone to the squad by accident, etc.

5.) TT 2-x: It's possible to activate the dog boss and then while the player awaits for it to spawn, they accidentally hit "tab" and an invisible mob (that is used to do the activation method), is then put on the player's screen. The player being interested, attempts to hit the mob. This bugs the entire spawning of the dog boss, resulting in it not spawning. How unfortunate!

6.) Charm issues: Often times, I'll get hit hard enough that my charm doesn't tick fast enough, and I die. I feel that this is a bug, because the intended purpose of an HP charm is said on the item (after 50% HP, it ticks). It's not true, though. If I'm being hit by an enemy at 5aps, my HP can drop so quick that the charm refuses to tick, resulting in my death.

7.) In the Cube of Fate, when you port inside the instance (technically room 1 - where everyone is), the entrance is PK-enabled. This has been a major issue for quite some time, with new players not knowing they can be banned for killing players as they spawn in, and older players killing people for the lulz. It would be nice to finally see it fixed.

More will come later.

shaiyrdren · April 2013

Suggestion to the OP or admins, would it not be better to make a seperate thread for each issue? It will probably get difficult to see an ordered list of responses for one particular issue and can potentially cause the thread to bloat up with a lot of responses making it exponentially hard to dig through.

bluestuffzzz · April 2013

shaiyrdren wrote: »

Suggestion to the OP or admins, would it not be better to make a seperate thread for each issue? It will probably get difficult to see an ordered list of responses for one particular issue and can potentially cause the thread to bloat up with a lot of responses making it exponentially hard to dig through.

Sure, if you would rather have 20-50 threads with little responses. All updates I make to the thread in terms of bugs and suggestions, will be posted as a new reply and amended to the OP.

opkossy · April 2013

bluestuffzzz wrote: »

Sure, if you would rather have 20-50 threads with little responses. All updates I make to the thread in terms of bugs and suggestions, will be posted as a new reply and amended to the OP.

Or you could simply follow the stickied guidelines, notably:

v4liance wrote: »

Submission Guidelines:

Caveat
This forum is a place where you can voice your concerns and opinions and point out serious bugs. General issues related to Tech Support, Billing, or Customer Service should be routed via the support page: https://support.perfectworld.com.

To make it easier to find and respond to issues, please keep the following in mind:
- Search the forum for your issue before creating a new thread. If someone else has already reported your concern, add your information to their thread. Even if you have nothing new to add, simply saying that you are experiencing the same problem gives us a better idea of how many people are affected by it.
- Each issue should have its own separate thread. Do not create threads containing multiple different issues, and do not add unrelated issues to existing threads.
- It's okay to "necro" threads here. It is possible for an issue to be addressed in one version, only to reappear later. If you search for your issue, and find a thread that describes it perfectly that hasn't been updated in several months, go ahead and add your info to it anyway!
- Use the correct in-game names for everything, and try not to abbreviate.

VERY IMPORTANT
Do not publicly report exploits. Please use the private message feature and report it to the appropriate authority.

Remember: Just because we haven't replied to a thread yet doesn't mean we haven't seen it.

This thread was glanced over at first because geno had already responded and it would have been a bit of a hassle to make it harder on you both. However that does not mean you should take that as a green light to ignore the guidelines.

bluestuffzzz · April 2013

OPKossy wrote: »

Or you could simply follow the stickied guidelines, notably:

This thread was glanced over at first because geno had already responded and it would have been a bit of a hassle to make it harder on you both. However that does not mean you should take that as a green light to ignore the guidelines.

If you're stating that you'd rather I post each bug & suggestion in it's own thread, you'll have roughly ten threads started in minutes, and assuming I continue with stating new bugs and suggestions, you'd have pages worth of threads started by me for the sole purpose of posting one bug. They won't be responded too, since there are so many. The method your stating is for posting one specific bug. I have plans to list hundreds. I can post each individual one in it's own thread, but that seems redundant and trivial.

Nevertheless, if this is what you want let me know and I'll follow it by the dot.

shaiyrdren · April 2013

I'm having a dificult time understanding how you would get more than one thread for one bug. From what I can see, if new information comes to light (e.g. different way of reproducing the bug, removing an additional step was in the reproduction steps that wasn't necessary, someone voicing they're experiencing the same bug) I don't think posting new information related to a bug you've already posted is frowned upon (I think it's actually encouraged somewhere in the sticky or the bug template they've linked to).

If you do have 100 bugs that you find, then 100 threads might well be the optimal solution. Consider that other forum users will chime in on issue #1, and another chimes in on issue #33, and another user chimes in on issue #75...the thread would get really long and finding all specific posts related to issue #25 would no longer be trivial.

What you could do though is group similar bugs together if possible. For example, put all text errors in one thread. What can be grouped together or not might be difficult to determine though for the layman, but IIRC, we spoke about testing/coding in another thread so you should have an idea of how you might want to combine things.

genotypist · April 2013

bluestuffzzz wrote: »

If you're stating that you'd rather I post each bug & suggestion in it's own thread, you'll have roughly ten threads started in minutes, and assuming I continue with stating new bugs and suggestions, you'd have pages worth of threads started by me for the sole purpose of posting one bug. They won't be responded too, since there are so many. The method your stating is for posting one specific bug. I have plans to list hundreds. I can post each individual one in it's own thread, but that seems redundant and trivial.

Nevertheless, if this is what you want let me know and I'll follow it by the dot.

Let's try to keep issues in their own threads. I figured there would be a lot of threads not following the guidelines early and I didn't want to start this forum with a flood of "follow ze rules! omg" replies.

To address the memory leaks, I'll really need everyone's help. If I can get reliable steps to reproduce it, (do X, then Y, then Z), then the devs will very happily address it. I just can't give them nebulous steps and expect them to fix it.

Faction Slogans can be edited. I don't know where this came from. You are not prevented from editing your slogans. Adding the period to the slogan's permissions list is a separate matter, and a minor change.

Let's deal with these problems in their separate threads in the future.

Salari - Raging Tide · April 2013

!. This is a hardware limitation on 32bit systems not a software problem(other than mismanage dynamic memory). Hardware on a 32 bit system will only allow from 1.5-2 gig's of addressable memory, this can not be change by the OS nor software(there are some workarounds but beyond this discussion). The patch you are referring to only works on a 64 bit system. Introducing such a patch on a 32bit system to address more than hardware allows will do nothing but cause problems. You can however change the OS allocations the 3-4gigs of total memory for each process. It can be change so you have a larger pool of dynamic memory. The problem with this will be knowing how much static memory the program or game(pwi) + what the OS loads in static memory uses. If you lower the static memory to 1gig and 1.5 is needed you can run into problems as well. Both Windows and other OS's do have built in mechanics to handle this, but that is no guarantee the program will run, or run correctly.

2. Invisible walls in SoT is a plus I think. No longer have to worry about falling off. A lot of people liked to jump off to evade a disaster... all I can say to that is, if you don't get caught with your pants down, you don't have to worry about pulling them back up b:chuckle

3. Sure that will be fixed on one of the next patches, not a big issue

4. b:surrender I know I have heard of alot of problems with that dating back before I started playing 2009ish

5. Are you sure they are not selecting the immune mob that is in the middle of the room then disappears after a few secs? I think that room was original designed(or changed) if you agro a mob you have to kill them all at one time or the dog will never appear

6. Charms like everything else has a cool down for good reasons, I don't see a need for the cooldown period to be lowered, aps attacks or not

7. Yes this is a problem, I got the movement key pressed down before I even tele, usualy works b:thanks

Suggestion
1. YES FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS SACRED

2. As bubbles or ast or someone said, there are unused smiley slots, fill them up pls b:cry

3. I agree, revamp the bosses in both normal niv and caster(including lifting the caster limitation) to something worth while. Say add the niv orns into our ver(they exist just not used) and ajust the recipe for special drops, just not cannies/raps. Add a gold like rare item for forging the niv orn gears.

4. Yes I agree on this too, not to many quests anymore, I think I have 30 total quests left 2 102. I have not finished them just so I think i have alot more todo besides level b:surrender

5. YES

My opinions and thoughts

Salari - Raging Tide · April 2013

genotypist wrote: »

To address the memory leaks, I'll really need everyone's help. If I can get reliable steps to reproduce it, (do X, then Y, then Z), then the devs will very happily address it. I just can't give them nebulous steps and expect them to fix it.

Just need a memory manager to see how dynamic memory is not handled to well. Generally the less memory it free's up from the targeted program the better the targeted program is handling freed up memory. That is a very loose responce, there is alot more to it.

There are no steps to reproduce memory leaks, the program(s) either have them or they don't.

The only fix is a dev issue and requires alot of debugging and going over all of the code. Just look @ IE, decades later and still has the same memory issues. There are ton's of programs out dedicated to tracking down leaks and is something pw-cn has to take a lead on as stomping out mem leaks is a coding issue.

Blue's Bugs! [Updated 4-2-13]

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