Sacrificing Gameplay For Profit (Regarding bugs + bug reports)

mattjohnsonva

Cryptic I've noticed quite a few unusual and unexplainable bugs recently in Tau Dewa and other areas. The amount of bugs in the game is beyond belief and I'm left wondering if the whole game code is about to collapse.

Cryptic your record on fixing broken stuff is second only to Pinnacle Studio in my experience, with every update there are emergency fixes to put right the last untested patch. QA seems to be non-existent at Cryptic HQ at the moment, or if it is there the guys are not given the time to fix things.

Cryptic everything you do is geared to one thing only and that's making money. As a business owner I can understand that, but sometimes you also have to take a hit on your profits to satisfy your customers expectations otherwise you will very soon have no profit!

Hive Onslaught is a good example, since LoR it is unplayable, You have been advised many times by many people with video evidence as well as our anecdotes, hell you only have to team up and try it yourselves to see, but where is the fix? Nothing of importance is fixed in this game except major game breaking bugs that usually pop up after a server stability update.

I understand that your parent company is pushing you hard to maximise profit, but this is like pushing a racing car to the red line every race without a service, eventually the engine will explode and you will lose everything.

I know that the team of developers at your company are extremely talented individuals and genuinely interested in the game, I feel your passion for it when I read your blogs, but your paymasters have tied your hands. As a business man it is OK to go back to your boss and say we are unable to do something on your time-scale because of ...... providing you have evidence to back it up.

The parent company must listen to you if they are at all interested in the long term survival of this game. I am sure they are lest they wish to be known as PWE the company that killed Star Trek.

STO is an amazing game with absolutely huge potential but the amount of bugs is laughable and in my opinion something the company should be ashamed of.

vestereng

I always used to say "well at least I don't crash a lot", but I do now after LoR I crash in sector space...

Goodbye doff'ing

I've been waiting on them since december to fix the season 7 ground sets and accolades so I can "save 60% time"

Meanwhile they waste time nerfing carriers.


I don't know their policy on what should take priority all I can say is it's wrong

oschw

Well, modern business follows a simple rule:

Short term income is more important, then long term stability.

is that a usefull way of thinking? No.
But greed allways beats common sense.

irwin109

I have to agree, I love this game, it's the only game I play, but the lack of information coming out about plans to fix bugs is alarming, especially when looking at posts such as the consolidated bug report list which is only really getting longer.

I was told there used to be, before I started playing, a blog called something like 'engineers report' which listed the known issues, had ETAs on fixes or told you if there was no fix known yet, what happened to those? I think that is something people dedicated to this game need to see.

The game still has massive potential and the addition of LoR was amazing, but as I say the pile of bugs and the seeming lack of interest in fixing them before introducing new content and reworking old content, such as the Nukara Hard missions being put in the PVE queue.

So here's my recommendation, before bringing in any of the exciting content mentioned in the State Of The Game blog, put out a blog saying 'we're going to go through this game with a fine toothed comb to investigate all the bugs reported to be still happening, this may take some time but we will follow this blog up with a list of issues we have found, an ETA on their fixes or if we have not found a solution as of yet we will also state that this is the case, until we can find a solution. We will do this before releasing any new content and will release a blog monthly to list issues and fixes that are incoming. Thank you for your continued support yada yada yada'

That's just my two cents anyway, as I said at the start I love this game, I'd just like a bit more of a sign that the team is aware of all these issues and actually want to fix as many of them as possible.

lordmalak1

Doesn't everyone drive better when they're drunk ? I know I do.
:P

zerobang

i pretty much stopped playing STO by now because of the bugs and the lack of anything exciting to look forward too (and the last "State of the Game" did only confirm my negative predictions)

aexrael

The only thing which matters is the customers buying stuff, anything else is secondary. There is no interest in user retention (Gekos own words in the latest podcast). If it doesn't make money it isn't on the "Schedule" (TM).

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thecosmic1

mattjohnsonva wrote: »

Well I can't agree there, the state of the game blog I found very exciting, however before the team embark on such ambitious plans they ought to really sort out the existing issues.

I agree with you. While I like what's been added to the game over the last few months the incredible number of new bugs, laid on top of all the old bugs, has become a major issue. You can play around them, but why should anyone? Even if someone's not paying to play the game should still be playable. The sheer number of bugs takes away the potential incentive to pay for something from the C-Store.

If I'm going to be asked to replay missions dozens of times as part of an established time-sink the least Cryptic can do is make the missions as bug free as possible.

irwin109

aexrael wrote: »

The only thing which matters is the customers buying stuff, anything else is secondary. There is no interest in user retention (Gekos own words in the latest podcast). If it doesn't make money it isn't on the "Schedule" (TM).

I haven't heard the latest podcast, if those truly are his own words then he's shot himself in the foot saying there's no interest in fixing issues.

irwin109

thecosmic1 wrote: »

I agree with you. While I like what's been added to the game over the last few months the incredible number of new bugs, laid on top of all the old bugs, has become a major issue. You can play around them, but why should anyone? Even if someone's not paying to play the game should still be playable. The sheer number of bugs takes away the potential incentive to pay for something from the C-Store.

If I'm going to be asked to replay missions dozens of times as part of an established time-sink the least Cryptic can do is make the missions as bug free as possible.

Totally agree, I'm looking forward to the new content but if the old issues are not resolved then we're only to expect more problems to arise without any sign of solution, we've got a great game here but when you see an issue still outstanding after a few months with no word of whether or not they have a fix or not it makes you wonder if they are even working to resolve these problems at all.

risian5

mattjohnsonva wrote: »

Nothing of importance is fixed in this game except major game breaking bugs that usually pop up after a server stability update.

Indeed. The only things that are fixed immediatly are the bugs that are actually helpful to players. I'm still amazed that when I did the patrol mission in Tau Dewa, a part of the mission was bugged for several weeks (or more recently, the Scimitar which was bugged for almost a whole week), but when they release the Nukara Tribble and realise it's bugged and players might get marks they shouldn't have, they're immediatly on it and the next day the thing's fixed.

They clearly do have the ability to fix things fast, they simply don't consider it a priority, unless a bug might be helpful. It's what many players already suspected, the Nukara Tribble gave me all the evidence I needed to believe it myself.

thecosmic1

irwin109 wrote: »

I haven't heard the latest podcast, if those truly are his own words then he's shot himself in the foot saying there's no interest in fixing issues.

Those actually weren't his words. As is quite usual on this forum, what he said was taken entirely out of context of what he meant. He never said anything about having no interest in fixing problems.

First rule of a forum, if you believe even 1/10th of what someone says on a forum you're believing 99.9% too much.

irwin109

thecosmic1 wrote: »

Those actually weren't his words. As is quite usual on this forum, what he said was taken entirely out of context of what he meant. He never said anything about having no interest in fixing problems.

First rule of a forum, if you believe even 1/10th of what someone says on a forum you're believing 99.9% too much.

Haha, I said nothing about believing it! I'd have listened to the podcast to find out though!

therealfluffy

A standard Bugzilla would come a long way to ease the tension between Cryptic and its customers on this matter. Just the ability to be able to follow the status of a reported bug (unconfirmed, new, assigned, duplicate, closed, reopened) would take a lot of pressure off the forums. Being able to have a direct dialogue with the assigned developer and for anyone to add additional information on how to reproduce the bug would be a major bonus. Of course Cryptic can still chose to close any bug they want without taking action but at least the system would force them to provide an explanation to why.

lordmalak1

aexrael wrote: »

The only thing which matters is the customers buying stuff, anything else is secondary. There is no interest in user retention (Gekos own words in the latest podcast). If it doesn't make money it isn't on the "Schedule" (TM).

I can see why he said that, if users have purchased a lifetime sub then they already have those users money, and their data shows F2P'ers don't spend the kind of money they want so the company is left with only one option: get new players into the game. And that is where the company spends it's resources- creating new material that will attract new players. DS also says they want to expand the game into new markets, so I fully expect a gradual 'dumbing-down' of this PC game so it'll run on consoles, tablets and eventually smartphones.

I'm not sure they realize that there's only so many players in the pool, eventually after they've flushed current players for the new ones the wells gonna run dry.

cmdrscarlet

I agree. As much as I understand that new content has always been wanted by existing players and that will help bring in new players (I suppose), making a more solid game *now* should really take precedence.

And I don't expect all of the bugs to be fixed *right now*, but prioritize the game/experience-breakers (such as First Contact) over the text (typo in a description). I mean, fixing typos is a clear sign that work is being done and I presume repair is relatively easy but if Cryptic one Tuesday posted that First Contact (as an example) is fully and expectantly functional, plenty of people would enjoy that. Naturally others would not care but everyone can't be satisfied at the same time.

vocmcp

My suspicion is that they are understaffed in order to save money.

thecosmic1

vocmcp wrote: »

My suspicion is that they are understaffed in order to save money.

Since the game has gone FTP STO's staff has gone from 20 to 50. I can't comment on how many of those people have gone into QA, but STO currently has the biggest Dev team it's had since before it was launched.

aexrael

thecosmic1 wrote: »

Those actually weren't his words. As is quite usual on this forum, what he said was taken entirely out of context of what he meant. He never said anything about having no interest in fixing problems.

First rule of a forum, if you believe even 1/10th of what someone says on a forum you're believing 99.9% too much.

It also weren't what I said. He talked about STO no longer being a subscription based game, the focus isn't on keeping player subbed, but rather giving players stuff to buy. Given the track record for bug fixing and content development, you can infer from that what you want, but it's pretty clear long standing issues which aren't considered a high priority are left half finished or bugged because it doesn't drive sales and there aren't enough devs to allocate time or resources for those issues.

thecosmic1

aexrael wrote: »

It also weren't what I said. He talked about STO no longer being a subscription based game, the focus isn't on keeping player subbed, but rather giving players stuff to buy. Given the track record for bug fixing and content development, you can infer from that what you want, but it's pretty clear long standing issues which aren't considered a high priority are left half finished or bugged because it doesn't drive sales and there aren't enough devs to allocate time or resources for those issues.

First, the context of what he was talking about was adding some new KDF ships to the game and then seeing how well they do before investing into more. Within that context he goes on to say:

"Honestly, you know when you're doing a free-to-play game it's a lot different then doing a subscription game. You're doing a subscription game you're trying to keep people continually subscribed and when doing a free-to-play game really what it is what do people want. It really doesn't take us any less time to make a ship that only a handful of people buy versus a lot of people are going to buy."

The context of the statement is ships, not bug fixes or anything else. The point was that in a Sub-based game you can take more chances on C-Store items because most of your income comes from the Subscription. In a FTP game every C-Store item needs to sell because that's your only income source - thus you can't take as many chances.

askray

Few points -

First page someone asked about engineer reports. Those were removed for the state of the game blogs due to the engineering report had so many things listed that were coming soon, coming later, coming tomorrow, etc etc etc. There was no actual "ETA's" on them for the most part and schedules change so it did more harm than good.

As for taking time to squash ALL the bugs? It's 100% impossible. MMO's tend to ALWAYS have bugs because of balancing, code being added that conflicts with another piece of code unintentionally, code works till thousands use it then it goes belly up etc. There can never be a 100% bug free mmo except those that are dead. Then they're bug free because you can't play them anymore :P

The complexity of bugs in a game with millions of lines of code is insane. Some bug fixes are pretty simple to squash, some that even LOOK simple to the player may be insanely hard to fix so it's pushed as long as it's not causing extreme game play issues. And some are so small but take a bit to recode that for the time being, leaving it alone to tackle bigger issues is more important.

Ultimately sure, from some players perspective they aren't fixing squat (or fixing very little). From those that know how much of a pain in the toosh bug hunting and squashing can be in an MMO environment they get that sometimes bugs can be a pain and are more lenient in letting small ones that are easily avoidable go by. For a bit anyways

As for a public bug tracker? I'd actually be okay with it but you'd need mods just to make sure there isn't repeats upon repeats upon repeats. And no exploits posted for obvious reasons

foundrelic

I'd like to say this.

If they needed to take the game down for as much as a week and it guaranteed that AT LEAST 80% of the bugs (Major bugs being in that 80%) were resolved. I'd be fine with that.


PWE however would not as that would cut into their short term profits.

irwin109

therealfluffy wrote: »

A standard Bugzilla would come a long way to ease the tension between Cryptic and its customers on this matter. Just the ability to be able to follow the status of a reported bug (unconfirmed, new, assigned, duplicate, closed, reopened) would take a lot of pressure off the forums. Being able to have a direct dialogue with the assigned developer and for anyone to add additional information on how to reproduce the bug would be a major bonus. Of course Cryptic can still chose to close any bug they want without taking action but at least the system would force them to provide an explanation to why.

This!!!

askray wrote: »

Few points -

First page someone asked about engineer reports. Those were removed for the state of the game blogs due to the engineering report had so many things listed that were coming soon, coming later, coming tomorrow, etc etc etc. There was no actual "ETA's" on them for the most part and schedules change so it did more harm than good.

Ok so it seems I misunderstood the purpose of the blogs then, my idea was more like the aforementioned Bugzilla.

askray wrote: »

As for taking time to squash ALL the bugs? It's 100% impossible. MMO's tend to ALWAYS have bugs because of balancing, code being added that conflicts with another piece of code unintentionally, code works till thousands use it then it goes belly up etc. There can never be a 100% bug free mmo except those that are dead. Then they're bug free because you can't play them anymore :P

The complexity of bugs in a game with millions of lines of code is insane. Some bug fixes are pretty simple to squash, some that even LOOK simple to the player may be insanely hard to fix so it's pushed as long as it's not causing extreme game play issues. And some are so small but take a bit to recode that for the time being, leaving it alone to tackle bigger issues is more important.

This much I understand, I know that fixing one bug could cause another but the lack of information about the awareness and attempts to solve these bugs is my concern.

askray wrote: »

Ultimately sure, from some players perspective they aren't fixing squat (or fixing very little). From those that know how much of a pain in the toosh bug hunting and squashing can be in an MMO environment they get that sometimes bugs can be a pain and are more lenient in letting small ones that are easily avoidable go by. For a bit anyways

As for a public bug tracker? I'd actually be okay with it but you'd need mods just to make sure there isn't repeats upon repeats upon repeats. And no exploits posted for obvious reasons

I wouldn't be so unhappy with that either, but that could be because I'm from a country whose new job rate has plummeted by 20% in a year!

angrytarg

It doesn't matter since people will gladly and gratefully throw 50$ at their screen when a new skin for the scimitar gets released

If you are unstatisfied with the product stop paying for it until it is in a state you desire. If not stop paying for a sub-par service and complain about it.

trygvar13

There are bugs in this game, yes. But I've been playing MMO's since the mid-90's and STO is far from the being the game with the most bugs. In fact, I would say that I have yet to encounter a bug that really affects my game time. And I would not be happy if the game was off line for a week:eek:

corvalle

askray wrote: »

As for taking time to squash ALL the bugs? It's 100% impossible. MMO's tend to ALWAYS have bugs because of balancing, code being added that conflicts with another piece of code unintentionally, code works till thousands use it then it goes belly up etc. There can never be a 100% bug free mmo except those that are dead. Then they're bug free because you can't play them anymore :P

Well, I understand what you are trying to say, but the problem is that they do NOT fix any bugs.

The only bugs that go fixed ASAP are bugs that would potentially help other players, and not in an unbalancing way. And with every new patch, comes new and fresh bugs and broken stuff piled on the existing bugs that have and will never be fixed. It is essentially a house of cards. It is going to collapse.

Never have played such a bug riddled MMO before, and ive played many. Unfortunately, it is the only Trek MMO around, so I do not have much of a choice

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originpi

Personally I play the game a whole bunch and I don't really notice any bugs that effect gameplay in a really negative way. Like, of course I notice bugs, but all games have bugs. I have NEVER played another game that gets as many gameplay updates as STO, many of which are available for free.

So because of the fast pace of (great) content coming out, you are going to get quite a few bugs. It seems to me the bugs get triaged, and if its important enough or an easy enough fix, they fix it.

Keep in mind, for every 1 "Fix bugs!" post on this forum there are probably 10 "Make new ships!" or "Content is boring, add more content!" posts. So it is not just short term profit that they are developing towards, it is the will of the community. (Thats democracy, live with it)

Mostly people whine because they fixed the game-breaking exploit that would replace 2/3 of the Reputation content with *Click buttons every 3 seconds*.

corvalle

originpi wrote: »

Personally I play the game a whole bunch and I don't really notice any bugs that effect gameplay in a really negative way. Like, of course I notice bugs, but all games have bugs. I have NEVER played another game that gets as many gameplay updates as STO, many of which are available for free.

So because of the fast pace of (great) content coming out, you are going to get quite a few bugs. It seems to me the bugs get triaged, and if its important enough or an easy enough fix, they fix it.

Keep in mind, for every 1 "Fix bugs!" post on this forum there are probably 10 "Make new ships!" or "Content is boring, add more content!" posts. So it is not just short term profit that they are developing towards, it is the will of the community. (Thats democracy, live with it)

Mostly people whine because they fixed the game-breaking exploit that would replace 2/3 of the Reputation content with *Click buttons every 3 seconds*.

You are an example of the very few people that choose to except the game in its current form. There have been bugs since launch that have gone unfixed. The consolidated list of bugs forum thread is proof of that.

Regardless if the game is F2P or not, alot of people do spend money, alot more money here than in any P2P game. The content should work, and if a bug, no matter how minor is reported by several people, it should be looked at ASAP and fixed. That is good customer service, and a statement that shows how they care for their customers (lol). We know they are capable of fixing bugs in a jiff, they did it with the Nukara tribble almost immediately and it was not even game breaking, period.

The title of this post says it all...its more about money than providing a good quality gaming experience here. And like someone else stated previously, its the only Trek MMO around. We do not have a choice (at least trek fans) to go somewhere else, and PWE knows this.

And as far as you never playing another f2p mmo that gets updates? Might want to go try RIFT F2P, they get twice the updates and content as we do. And I mean CONTENT, not lockboxes, not lobi store stuff and not fill in the slider reputation timegate grind, but actual working , playable content. And when a bug is discovered in game by someone, and they report it, there is a DEV within 15 minutes in server chat explaining they are aware of the bug, even if its a small bug and they are working on a fix ASAP, ive seen it. Their f2p store is second to none, very well priced. I play that game too, so I have an idea.

elessym

foundrelic wrote: »

I'd like to say this.

If they needed to take the game down for as much as a week and it guaranteed that AT LEAST 80% of the bugs (Major bugs being in that 80%) were resolved. I'd be fine with that.


PWE however would not as that would cut into their short term profits.

Oy. An MMO is not a car, you don't need to put it in the shop in order to fix problems.