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TRIBBLE Maintenance and Release Notes - February 21, 2014
coldsnapped
Member Posts: 520 Cryptic Developer
We will be bringing down the Tribble server for maintenance to apply a new update: ST.36.20140207a.7
General:
Known Issue:
General:
- Away Team Leader:
- Resolved an issue that was preventing Romulan captains from benefitting from this power.
- Now, when on ground missions, Romulan Captains will buff the skill levels of all of their Bridge Officers by 1 for each level they have (from 1 to 50).
- This functionality is already present and working for Klingon and Starfleet captains.
- Resolved an issue that was preventing Romulan captains from benefitting from this power.
- Episode "Trapped"
- Added missing waypoints to the mission.
- Spire Fleet Holding:
- Resolved an issue that would cause Pimek Gren to appear twice in the Spire's Duty Officer Store for Starfleet players.
- Hirogen Ships:
- Enhanced Inertial Damper Field power no longer shows a generic faction power icon.
- The Transwarp to Fleet Spire power no longer shows an unnecessary buff icon in space.
Known Issue:
- KDF captains cannot switch to all costume slots.
- There is no error explaining that loadouts and quick equip will not work if the captains inventory is full.
- Powers granted by a space set are not remembered in the power tray when using the loadouts feature.
- Romulan ship warp trails are not consistently the right color based on chosen faction.
- Caitian and Feresan tails are visible when wearing the Dyson EV suits.
Post edited by coldsnapped on
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Comments
There was Engineering/Science/Tactical Team Leader before the current skill revamp so I would assume that Cryptic just made it into an automatic thing back then and most people are not aware of away team leader. So it is always present now and is probably an undocumented feature of the game.
So instead of fixing bugs that everybody knows and complains about for months on end, they fix a bug for a feature that almost nobody knows even exists?
A nicely armored tail covering would probably make me actually unlock the Catian and Ferasian races and play them
They're working on the other known bugs too, some just take longer to fix than others.
And do you honestly think you'd rather they wait until the player base notices a bug and makes a big uproar about it before fixing them?
There are are still bugs in the game that have been there since launch four years ago that are yet to even be acknowledged, let alone addressed, and the KDF costumes are fast approaching Urban Legend status. as was stated in other threads, Cryptic might as well just put up a warning disclaimer for all KDF players purchasing costume slots saying something along the lines of : "Warning! KDF Captains will not be able to use additional costume slots because we're too busy creating content nobody asked for and fixing bugs nobody knows about!"
Cryptic only seems capable of fixing bugs like this (and the missing textures bug) when they roll out a major content update (like LoR) because it seems that those are the only times when they can afford to bring in competent engineers to do their programming.
Let's review how bugs are handled by Cryptic and every other game developer in existence. There are only so many hours in a day, and so many people on a team that are capable of fixing bugs. The goal is to tackle as many as possible in a reasonable and efficient way, with high priority given to game-breaking bugs and low priority given to QoL bugs.
So yes, Cryptic (like every other studio is existence) is going to first tackle the bugs that are quick and easy to fix. Then they move onto the ones that are of high priority and work down the list. The longer and more complicated the fix, the less likely it's EVER going to get fixed, especially if it's considered low priority, simply due to there always being a finite amount of time and resources to get stuff done.
So while something might seem like it should be a simple fix to you, in reality, if it were a simple fix it would have already been fixed. So it's pretty safe to assume if something is dragging out for long time, that the fix is NOT simple and requires more time and effort than its priority rating currently allows.
The assumption that the Cryptic team is incompetent or doesn't care is not only wholly inaccurate, but insulting, as they work their asses off to make the game as good as it can possibly be. Every game has bugs. Every game has bugs that pre-date back to beta (and in some cases alpha). Even WoW. It's just the way it works. No one wants the game to be bug-free more than Cryptic. But it's simply not possible, and will never be possible.
Understand?
There is only one problem with this...
While I would agree with most of your statement, Cryptic and other game companies have also created new bugs in the process of fixing some old ones. Copy/Paste of code sometimes causes its own problems.
Also, (and this is merely speculation on my part) I am thinking that the reason SOME bugs are not or will not be fixed is because, in the future, some areas of the game may be completely overhauled anyway.
Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
I would say that both statements are very likely to be true. No point in fixing bugs in a particular area if it's scheduled to be completely redone in the near future. It's an inefficient use of time and resources.
As someone who used to be a programmer I'm all too familiar with the phenomenon of inadvertently creating new bugs when fixing old ones. It's certainly not intentional, but it just sometimes happens. Code is like an intricate and delicate spider's web. Try to fix a break on one end and you can easily create a new break (or series of breaks) on another end. Add to that that you've got new well-documented code mixed in with old un- or poorly-documented code written by people that are no longer there and it can make things quite precarious at times. Needless to say there is a reason I'm no longer a programmer.
Of course I understand. There's no reason be insulting yourself. The problem as I see it is that if it were as easy as you say, games wouldn't have bugs at all. but they do because this kind of complex programming produces errors by its very nature, and a persistent world like that of an MMORPG is naturally prone to more recurring errors as the code is tweaked, revisited, and subtly altered again and again.
That being said, lets examine another developer who has released an MMORPG: Blizzard Entertainment. In all my time playing Blizzard titles (including a brief stint in WoW, I cannot recall a single instance of a mechanical or technical problem with any of their titles outside of a Beta or PTR (Public Test Realm) which is what such things are for in the first place. Blizzard may not produce particularly inspired titles (at least not anymore), but they are mechanically flawless. I have never had a Blizzard title crash on me. Ever.
I enjoy STO, and I certainly appreciate the time and effort that the Cryptic team puts into it every hour of every day, but the fact remains that they have managed to break something with every single update, and many of things they managed to break remain broken for weeks, months, or even years. As I see it, to do that kind of damage with every update and patch takes a special kind of idiocy.
What Cryptic really needs to do is go to PWE and request to take six months to do a major bug hunt and engine upgrade to make the game as good as it can possible be, instead of releasing piecemeal patches and updates that seem to cause more problems than they solve. Knowing PWE, this probably will not happen because they would not be receiving any immediate revenue, never mind the huge influx of players and money they would receive after such a bug hunt was completed.
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2014/036/9/0/ensign_t_osh__eva_suit______commission_by_nightwing1975-d757hm3.jpg
Just like in this picture.
Full suits for the tail included.
So while you say you understand you clearly do not.
Make it so Cryptic, while I'd rather have our current bare tails that somehow magically are so tough they resist the harshness of space and the sun rather than no tails at all, this is the way it needs to be done!
Besides, that position is entirely justified when it comes to ship interiors. Creating a ship interior is an incredibly labor intensive process, that offers absolutely nothing of any use in the context of the game.
Of course the philosophy applies to the entire game. Cryptic couldn't continue to make the game if all the work they did resulted in loss of profits, at which point they are no longer getting any money for the game and we don't have the game to play. A company has to pick and choose what it's going to work on in the interest of keeping the game alive. Minor bugs are just that: minor. If they only offer an inconvenience then more effort is going to be put into other aspects of the game. A minor bug that people know how to avoid or work with won't cause a loss of players on the same level as a loss of interest due to a lack of new content, so in the end Cryptic (and every MMO developer) is going to prioritize new content. That's how the game business works.
Some bugs are also extremely difficult to determine the cause of. If they can't find a way to reproduce the bug reliably, they can't make steps to fix the bug and so the bug must be left to persist until a cause is found and corrected.
And then you have to think about player retention and acquiring new players. New content helps with retention, keeping the current players interested in the game. Remastering old missions also adds the possibility of old players making new characters to experience the new versions, and new characters increases the possibility of various C-store sales while the player tries to equip their new character. And if the new content impresses the old players they tell people about it. "Wow, they made the old missions so much better, you should try them!" And now we have the possibility of an influx of new players, which further increases the chances of profit for the game. What happens if, instead, Cryptic focused everything on bug crushing. What would you tell someone you think might be interested in the game? "Wow, Cryptic finally fixed that bug that's been around for a while!" Yeah, that's not going to get someone interested in the game. Not only have they only provided a minor incentive for player retention and almost no chance of new characters, they haven't provided any level of interest for other players to come play.
The universe has a wonderful sense of humor. The trick is learning how to take a joke.
It's true that reproducing a bug is the necessary first step to repairing it, and obviously if you can't reproduce it on your end, then you can't work towards a solution. But the test server (which we are discussing, among other things) is designed for this exact purpose, but it isn't used for it. Cryptic has shown a consistent habit of putting a new patch up on the test server, leaving it there for anywhere from a week to a month, then launching the new patch on live with few (if any) changes or repairs made to it. This is not a proper testing method.
When the missing/corrupted textures bug first appeared, Tacofangs made a feeble, but valiant attempt to communicate with the players and locate where the bug was to no avail. It has been almost three months since then and the bug persists with no word from Cryptic at all. While this is probably not the case, it does seem that Cryptic believes that because they could not reproduce the problem on their end, it must not exist and the hundreds (thousands?) of players experiencing this issue must all be making it up.
There have been millions (possibly billions) of bug reports made since STO launched and many of them, including reports from different players encountering the same issue in the same way have been ignored or flat out denied. Hundreds of thousands of bug reports all dismissed as false. While it is logistically and humanly impossible to diagnose a billion bug reports, the same issue being reported in the same way repeatedly by hundreds of players is a clear indication that something has gone wrong and it needs to be addressed or they risk losing players due to glaring technical and mechanical problems.
Only after a significant amount of time, usually six to eight months, does this loss of players begin to have a noticeable effect on PWE's account books and only then will it become a priority, and only then will Cryptic devote meaningful resources to solving the issue.
Content and player retention is the key priority in any MMORPG, but players will only stay if the content is good and the game is functional. Cryptic releases content based on whether or not it will be a good return on PWE's investment, not whether or not the content is good or even working as designed. The lack of quality control in STO indicates that Cryptic is held to a very tight schedule and they have no time or resources to diagnose and repair flaws. PWE does not care if the product is good, only if it releases on time and on budget. Customer satisfaction is not taken into account.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
They read the responses to these patch notes, they are far more likely to find that my doff isn't working here than in some thread that is buried. Also if you don't think bumping a topic WHICH BRINGS MORE ATTENTION TO IT would serve to get their attention, then learn to forumz.
erei1: 1791 posts.
jack24bau3r: 129 posts.
Really. The devs do read the bug reports in the bug report forum. That's where bug reports belong.
Please report in the right place with as much info as possable screenshots are good but give them ur time zone as well. So there can find it in the game history n see wots up.
This thread is for tribble testers to cheak if sone thing is fix or not. Or to comment on patch n how players will feel.
Saying all that i complain on here about outfit slots alk the time
Yeah my 129 posts are gold, all your posts and his posts are is ******** about other peoples posts. lololololo
Ok ur trolling i wont try n help u ever again hate ppl that get abusive when im trying to help them :mad: wish there was a forum ignore like ingame
What you're essentially describing is starvation: low-priority bugs are constantly being pre-empted by higher-priority bugs and hence are never addressed. I've said before that Cryptic should change their bug scheduling algorithm. Some possible solutions are as follows:
Aging: As a bug gets older, increase its priority until it is fixed.
Grouping: Combine multiple low-priority bugs into a higher-priority bug. The idea is that many small bugs are together as bad as one large bug.
Frankly, the Romulan warp trails should be Romulan-style no matter what faction they join. It's not like they're borrowing the KDF/FED's warp nacelles. They can't even use M/AM warp cores in-game.
Make warp trails based on the ship itself, not based on the captain's politics.
let me put it this way:
you work in an office every day, your job is to fix issues found in the game. you run out of things you can take care of for now, and decide to work on something else while the design team gets back to you.
you're only responsibility is bug fixing, where do you go?
general discussion: to sift through days of people muttering about rumors and half thought ideas?
ten forward: where the game isnt even the topic half the time?
tribble announcements: where people talk about things you just finished?
no. anyone that is actually looking to do this kind of job would go to the BUG forums, where the only thing posted is related to your job. when there's a whole forum dedicated to bugs, why would you look somewhere else to find bug reports?