If u think I'm talking about a blinking icon as a bug then u missed the point.
And if you can be bothered to go in and fix typos, then you should probably ask for an unemployment paycheck...
You both fail at the bigger picture, regardless of how minimal or how huge the bug is. To say that's the gaming community and to let it be solidifies laziness and not doing the job.
A blinking icon that lasts longer than it should...no, not a priority, but accolade bugs, mission bugs, typos, etc, should be and can be fixed.
So why can't STO be the top tier game that can, does, and addresses bugs and fixes them. Be the stand out among games and let people know you care about the game and it's player base by, oh I don't know, actually fixing things.
Hell, let's take the mailbox icon...6+ years as you say...
Ok, spend the day resolving the issue and remove the item and eyesore from the list and, bam!, plenty of players would be happy, some maybe not. But doing something to nothing is the goal.
Show pride and ownership in the game, knock out the small stuff, then move to the medium, and so on.
I still call BS on the whole bit.
Be different, own it, fix it, and shine brighter then the rest in the industry.
Donate an extra $10 million to Cryptic for bug fixing and then sure they can hire another 20 staff to work on it for a few years.
Do you work? If so, is everything at work perfect and problem-free? Does no one at your work ever cut corners on something not because they're lazy but because they need it working now not perfect? Is any job ever rushed to make a hard deadline?
Is everything that was ever rushed now, fixed to be perfect later? Everything?
No? Then why not "show pride" in your work? Stay nights and weekends, work an extra unpaid 20 hours a week until everything is perfect. It's easy!
"Perfect is the enemy of good"
Perfect doesn't exist in real applications of any size. It's impossible to formally verify them for any sane amount of effort, and even doing that would only show it matches some design not that the design itself is perfect.
Hell, let's take the mailbox icon...6+ years as you say...
Ok, spend the day resolving the issue and remove the item and eyesore from the list and, bam!, plenty of players would be happy, some maybe not. But doing something to nothing is the goal.
That means losing that day's work on bugs that actually matter. So, give up on fixing the KDF recruit reward boxes then?
ill offer a solution since you seem to be less inclined. hire a few interns from a local college who are getting degrees in the gaming industry ( https://www.stemjobs.com/best-degrees-for-gamers/ ) and let them get hands on experience resolving the little things, such as, spelling dialogues, or, hey, a blinking mail icon, double voice overs, and so on. check the work, verify it, and then apply it. not expensive, offers hands on for a student, and oh heck, here we go...fixes bugs. win win.
little things can often lead to bigger things. fix the little things, and get that removed from the list, and i bet you dollars to donuts, they would find more time to fix the bigger things.
That's a decent idea, but there are problems with it.
It takes time for a new hire to get up to speed on the code for an application to the point where you can understand it well enough to fix something beyond a typo. Even fixing a typo in a story episode requires learning the tools used for episode creation which are most likely quirky, half-documented and hard to use because they were written in house to be used by a handful of people.
Worse yet, bringing a new hire up to speed takes time away from the experienced developers who are training them and who have to check over any work they do.
Have you ever trained a new hire for a complex task at work? They are a net loss for weeks, possibly longer.
Sharing your proprietary source code with someone who's only there for a short time is a risk, though you can try to use NDAs and other legalese to protect it.
Interns only there for a summer might be more trouble than they are worth.
> @keepcalmchiveon said: > > define a bug that matters vs one that doesnt? oh, thats right, if you cant finish the mission, that is one that matters, or as you say, the reward boxes. doesnt the mailbox issue not also deserve to be one that matters? or again, would you leave it to blink like the light in the lobby? > > as i said, recent bugs often get fixed, and/or addressed that would hinder mission progress, or heaven forbid, as you say, a reward box. sorry you are so fixated on the reward box and not the game as a whole.
Yes, TRIBBLE, there is a hierarchy of bugs. If BOFFs are sitting in the floor, or if a cutscene is TRIBBLE-ed up, that should be fixed.
Game-breaking bugs like the “Temporal Ambassador” console glitch should be high-priority.
Reward packs for a promo-Event—high priority. Long-time gamer inconveniences like the trait-unslots are high priority.
The user experience in “Stranded in Space” should be fixed. It is the 1st Fed post-tutorial episode afterall. But I would still want new content.
If we had the foundry there would be more content too—but also, likely, more bugs
so, help me understand how you came to that conclusion, that fixing bugs, being the stand out among the industry, and caring about the game and the player base equates to "needing to fix all of these things isnt good for business?"
Because what you suggest isn't realistic, or achievable.
Your entire argument's basis has been that Cryptic doesn't fix everyone due to a lack of caring, or not wanting to be "stand out". when that isn't the case. Cryptic doesn't do it for the same reason no one does it. It isn't possible to fix everything, while also balancing making new content. Not even the MMO giant Blizzard, that has a staff of literally hundreds working on one game, with subs from literally over a million people, is able to achieve that results. Would it be nice if Cryptic, or anyone really, could do it? Yes. Can they? No.
Your entire mindset is based on an utterly naive concept that you can just hire a bunch of interns to fix hundreds, thousands, of bugs in games. If it was that easy, it would have already been done, and become industry standard. And all of your arguments are these nonsense, PR speak, talking about about being "stand out", or "caring about the game and players!" that ignore all concepts of reality.
Every company wants to eliminate bugs, especially in large scale projects like MMOs. the fact that no one has done it isn't due to a lack or caring, or not wanting to have good business, or not caring about the players... its because its about as realistic of a goal as making a game udpate that allows your computer to print 100 bills.
No, it's because of a lack of caring. Full stop. They could choose to, but they'd take a financial hit and it's been proven the majority of players will play anyway, or defend it.
So they don't. Also, Blizzard is far less buggy than Cryptic, given it still has UI it fixed rather than removed, and how it actually fixes annoyances instead of not. I don't agree with the 'fix all the things' bug-repair stance, but I do think Cryptic gives up on fixing things far too easily.
(Bluntly: hiring interns COULD be done, they don't because of the legal issues, and often because they'd only get a month out of a three-month span of usefulness. It's the cost of it, honestly.)
And speaking of MMOs, I wish to direct you to FFXIV, which spends a lot of time .. fixing bugs. Funny how it's one of the most popular ones.
Heres another choice. Quality Pass on Mission Rewards.
Minimum VR, freely upgradeable to Mk XII.
Upgrade stats, etc. to be consistent with the cuttent game paridigm.
All awarded on a run, if that was the so-called reason people supposedly hated Featured Episodes.
Update all Episodes from the Discovery Arc on to provide decent Rewards.
You want peopkr to want to run your Episodes, make it worthwhile.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
They need a balance of both. Content to keep people interested, and bug fixing to keep the content we have working. As much as some folks may think it's a cop out answer, proper bug fixing takes time to do. They have to first be able to identify the problem, then they have to code a fix for it. In the immortal words of GI Joe "knowing is half the battle." If they can't reproduce a bug consistently, they have no way of knowing for certain what is causing the problem. That's why they ask as many questions as they do when fixing bugs. Once they know the problem they can then focus on fixing it properly. A single one or zero out of place in the code, or fixing the wrong thing, can bring the entire thing crashing down. They'll never be able to produce a 100% bug free game, but they can try to keep bugs to a minimum. They also need to have the time, resources, and manpower to fix bugs properly as well. Depending on the severity of the break and what's needed to fix said break, it can take alot longer than people like. Case and point the Kemocite debacle years ago.
If all they did was fix bugs, folks would complain they never add anything new. If all they did was add new stuff, folks would complain they never fix bugs. Hence why they need a balance of both.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
Prioritizing bug fixes for those that fundamentally break the game, and hiring original developers and/or proprietors of original coding elements if necessary, is not an insurmountable task, and is something that would bring a return on investment.
I can play any number of online games today some with vast open worlds and huge player populations on the same map (including guiness world record holders), guild wars 2, planetside2, overwatch, star wars the old republic, etc. and all my player abilities toggle immediately without fail or delay, none of which have had persistent game-wide rubberbanding lag problems beyond 1 month in my experience. Some of those are free to play also and have been around as long as STO and come from major IPs (star wars) and have active development so unless I'm missing something it is fair game to compare them along the dimension of 'Cryptic fails at fixing core bugs where many others don't.'
STO is old news to me, I don't bother much with it other than to squeeze some last bit of fun wherever possible, neither has the fleet I'm part of.
People are free to test out other MMOs and I highly encourage it!
I know, I know, "it's only me who experiences these game-breaking problems, because my ambient room temperature leads to negative ionization of the air, which leads to glitches on the transmission line and in no way is Cryptic to blame or at fault." I've heard it all before, even if I present the endless bug reports and other players who experience these exact fundamentally game breaking issues, and even if not one has come up with any solution to any of us, ever, in years since we started playing STO.
This isn't the first or last gaming forum I've seen that type of dishonest or truly utterly blind 'argument' and it tends to come from those low skilled players who truly don't know any better.
Prioritizing bug fixes for those that fundamentally break the game, and hiring original developers and/or proprietors of original coding elements if necessary, is not an insurmountable task, and is something that would bring a return on investment.
I can play any number of online games today some with vast open worlds and huge player populations on the same map (including guiness world record holders), guild wars 2, planetside2, overwatch, star wars the old republic, etc. and all my player abilities toggle immediately without fail or delay, none of which have had persistent game-wide rubberbanding lag problems beyond 1 month in my experience. Some of those are free to play also and have been around as long as STO and come from major IPs (star wars) and have active development so unless I'm missing something it is fair game to compare them along the dimension of 'Cryptic fails at fixing core bugs where many others don't.'
STO is old news to me, I don't bother much with it other than to squeeze some last bit of fun wherever possible, neither has the fleet I'm part of.
People are free to test out other MMOs and I highly encourage it!
I know, I know, "it's only me who experiences these game-breaking problems, because my ambient room temperature leads to negative ionization of the air, which leads to glitches on the transmission line and in no way is Cryptic to blame or at fault." I've heard it all before, even if I present the endless bug reports and other players who experience these exact fundamentally game breaking issues, and even if not one has come up with any solution to any of us, ever, in years since we started playing STO.
This isn't the first or last gaming forum I've seen that type of dishonest or truly utterly blind 'argument' and it tends to come from those low skilled players who truly don't know any better.
Agreed. FFXIV works wonderously, and the only reason I'm not playing it is nostalgia atm. It also, doesn't have "why is this ability not triggering", etc. etc. etc.
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,863Community Moderator
No one is saying that Cryptic "doesn't know" about them. Odds are they're a lower priority because they aren't game breaking. The mail icon is a little annoying, but not game breaking, and you can get it to stop by messing with your inbox for a minute or two.
Chive... I think you're taking it a bit far right now. You and Som are jousting constantly and honestly you two both should put the flamethrowers away please.
I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite colored text = mod mode
you cant really sit there and tell me they cant take time to fix the mail icon bug and cross it off the list. is it game breaking? no.
does it cause one to halt mission progression, no. but is it a known bug that irritates people, yes. that bug, no matter how small, can be a reflection to some of how you treat the game and how you feel about it. if you dont care about one bug, then what does it show about the rest?
Developers only have so many work hours in a day. It's a budget. If you spend that budget on one thing, then other things do not get done no matter how much pride you take in your work, no matter how valuable the customer's happiness is, etc.
If you can fix 10 things before the next patch, you need to choose which 10 things. It's triage that program managers and lead developers repeat over and over. Each time you go by the importance of the fix not the age of the bug.
Should the mailbox really be in that list at the expense of more important bugs?
I don't work at Cryptic but I have been a lead software developer for over 20 years now (yep, I'm old). No company I've worked for would say "ignore (this issue causing real problems) and fix the mailbox instead." No company I've worked for has had the budget to hire unlimited developers and fix every bug.
FFIXV might do better than STO, but they charge a monthly sub fee (without it earning any cash shop points / zen), plus they charge for new expansions, plus they have a cash shop with microtransactions just like STO: $1 for dye packs to set the color of a gear piece, $18 for outfits, $10 to change your appearance (each time), ...
FFIXV might do better than STO, but they charge a monthly sub fee (without it earning any cash shop points / zen), plus they charge for new expansions, plus they have a cash shop with microtransactions just like STO: $1 for dye packs to set the color of a gear piece, $18 for outfits, $10 to change your appearance (each time), ...
*looks at the ships that cost 25$ or more, the inv unlocks that are 3$, the gachapon, the relentless promotion of the sub/lifetime packs*
No, it's because of a lack of caring. Full stop. They could choose to, but they'd take a financial hit and it's been proven the majority of players will play anyway, or defend it.
Ahh yes, all the MMO devs every just chose to not fix their games because they simply don't care... yeah, I've heard this brand of argument before.
Generally, they choose not to fix it because the ROI is terrible. I mean, I gave examples of MMOs that do, but a lot don't because they know they only need to fix the most severe bugs, and other bugs as needed, but they can leave a lot of annoying figures in. But I don't see how that negates my point that they could if they chose to, they choose not to. (Do you know how many games have identified QA bugs in in release that they don't fix for various reasons?)
So they don't. Also, Blizzard is far less buggy than Cryptic, given it still has UI it fixed rather than removed, and how it actually fixes annoyances instead of not.
I am going to assume this is supposed to be a jab at Cryptic's removal of the calendar. Whats funny is that the calendar wasn't removed because it was bugged, it was removed because it was poorly designed. It couldn't just be updated on the fly, and could only be updated on patches, which often meant what was on it was wrong, and the devs had no real means to fix it quickly. That and it was revealing things they didn't want revealed at the time. The calendar worked exactly as it was originally design, and wasn't removed due to bugs.
Even granting that, it ignores the bitabout "Cryptic COULD build things that worked well, communicated things, and didn't do things it doesn't want it to do, but instead it'd rather just make things for whales instead of putting effort into it."
(see: recent mission design, the fact that a lot of KDF dialogue once you pass the Klingon War arc is very Federaton-ish, the total dearth of any real mission changes..)
Comments
Donate an extra $10 million to Cryptic for bug fixing and then sure they can hire another 20 staff to work on it for a few years.
Do you work? If so, is everything at work perfect and problem-free? Does no one at your work ever cut corners on something not because they're lazy but because they need it working now not perfect? Is any job ever rushed to make a hard deadline?
Is everything that was ever rushed now, fixed to be perfect later? Everything?
No? Then why not "show pride" in your work? Stay nights and weekends, work an extra unpaid 20 hours a week until everything is perfect. It's easy!
"Perfect is the enemy of good"
Perfect doesn't exist in real applications of any size. It's impossible to formally verify them for any sane amount of effort, and even doing that would only show it matches some design not that the design itself is perfect.
That means losing that day's work on bugs that actually matter. So, give up on fixing the KDF recruit reward boxes then?
That's a decent idea, but there are problems with it.
It takes time for a new hire to get up to speed on the code for an application to the point where you can understand it well enough to fix something beyond a typo. Even fixing a typo in a story episode requires learning the tools used for episode creation which are most likely quirky, half-documented and hard to use because they were written in house to be used by a handful of people.
Worse yet, bringing a new hire up to speed takes time away from the experienced developers who are training them and who have to check over any work they do.
Have you ever trained a new hire for a complex task at work? They are a net loss for weeks, possibly longer.
Sharing your proprietary source code with someone who's only there for a short time is a risk, though you can try to use NDAs and other legalese to protect it.
Interns only there for a summer might be more trouble than they are worth.
>
> define a bug that matters vs one that doesnt? oh, thats right, if you cant finish the mission, that is one that matters, or as you say, the reward boxes. doesnt the mailbox issue not also deserve to be one that matters? or again, would you leave it to blink like the light in the lobby?
>
> as i said, recent bugs often get fixed, and/or addressed that would hinder mission progress, or heaven forbid, as you say, a reward box. sorry you are so fixated on the reward box and not the game as a whole.
Yes, TRIBBLE, there is a hierarchy of bugs. If BOFFs are sitting in the floor, or if a cutscene is TRIBBLE-ed up, that should be fixed.
Game-breaking bugs like the “Temporal Ambassador” console glitch should be high-priority.
Reward packs for a promo-Event—high priority. Long-time gamer inconveniences like the trait-unslots are high priority.
The user experience in “Stranded in Space” should be fixed. It is the 1st Fed post-tutorial episode afterall. But I would still want new content.
If we had the foundry there would be more content too—but also, likely, more bugs
No, it's because of a lack of caring. Full stop. They could choose to, but they'd take a financial hit and it's been proven the majority of players will play anyway, or defend it.
So they don't. Also, Blizzard is far less buggy than Cryptic, given it still has UI it fixed rather than removed, and how it actually fixes annoyances instead of not. I don't agree with the 'fix all the things' bug-repair stance, but I do think Cryptic gives up on fixing things far too easily.
(Bluntly: hiring interns COULD be done, they don't because of the legal issues, and often because they'd only get a month out of a three-month span of usefulness. It's the cost of it, honestly.)
And speaking of MMOs, I wish to direct you to FFXIV, which spends a lot of time .. fixing bugs. Funny how it's one of the most popular ones.
Minimum VR, freely upgradeable to Mk XII.
Upgrade stats, etc. to be consistent with the cuttent game paridigm.
All awarded on a run, if that was the so-called reason people supposedly hated Featured Episodes.
Update all Episodes from the Discovery Arc on to provide decent Rewards.
You want peopkr to want to run your Episodes, make it worthwhile.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
If all they did was fix bugs, folks would complain they never add anything new. If all they did was add new stuff, folks would complain they never fix bugs. Hence why they need a balance of both.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
I can play any number of online games today some with vast open worlds and huge player populations on the same map (including guiness world record holders), guild wars 2, planetside2, overwatch, star wars the old republic, etc. and all my player abilities toggle immediately without fail or delay, none of which have had persistent game-wide rubberbanding lag problems beyond 1 month in my experience. Some of those are free to play also and have been around as long as STO and come from major IPs (star wars) and have active development so unless I'm missing something it is fair game to compare them along the dimension of 'Cryptic fails at fixing core bugs where many others don't.'
STO is old news to me, I don't bother much with it other than to squeeze some last bit of fun wherever possible, neither has the fleet I'm part of.
People are free to test out other MMOs and I highly encourage it!
I know, I know, "it's only me who experiences these game-breaking problems, because my ambient room temperature leads to negative ionization of the air, which leads to glitches on the transmission line and in no way is Cryptic to blame or at fault." I've heard it all before, even if I present the endless bug reports and other players who experience these exact fundamentally game breaking issues, and even if not one has come up with any solution to any of us, ever, in years since we started playing STO.
This isn't the first or last gaming forum I've seen that type of dishonest or truly utterly blind 'argument' and it tends to come from those low skilled players who truly don't know any better.
Agreed. FFXIV works wonderously, and the only reason I'm not playing it is nostalgia atm. It also, doesn't have "why is this ability not triggering", etc. etc. etc.
Chive... I think you're taking it a bit far right now. You and Som are jousting constantly and honestly you two both should put the flamethrowers away please.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
Developers only have so many work hours in a day. It's a budget. If you spend that budget on one thing, then other things do not get done no matter how much pride you take in your work, no matter how valuable the customer's happiness is, etc.
If you can fix 10 things before the next patch, you need to choose which 10 things. It's triage that program managers and lead developers repeat over and over. Each time you go by the importance of the fix not the age of the bug.
Should the mailbox really be in that list at the expense of more important bugs?
I don't work at Cryptic but I have been a lead software developer for over 20 years now (yep, I'm old). No company I've worked for would say "ignore (this issue causing real problems) and fix the mailbox instead." No company I've worked for has had the budget to hire unlimited developers and fix every bug.
FFIXV might do better than STO, but they charge a monthly sub fee (without it earning any cash shop points / zen), plus they charge for new expansions, plus they have a cash shop with microtransactions just like STO: $1 for dye packs to set the color of a gear piece, $18 for outfits, $10 to change your appearance (each time), ...
*looks at the ships that cost 25$ or more, the inv unlocks that are 3$, the gachapon, the relentless promotion of the sub/lifetime packs*
Also, it's STO's choice to go F2P.
Even granting that, it ignores the bitabout "Cryptic COULD build things that worked well, communicated things, and didn't do things it doesn't want it to do, but instead it'd rather just make things for whales instead of putting effort into it."
(see: recent mission design, the fact that a lot of KDF dialogue once you pass the Klingon War arc is very Federaton-ish, the total dearth of any real mission changes..)
Woo. Now tell me how much of that is in terms of the full bugs list. I'll wait.