test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Weapon Lockout Caught On Camera, and very repeatable. Attn Bort or Jesse.
mavairo
Member Posts: 579
Yesterday, Thissler and I sat down, and tested a mutual theory. (I'm naming it after Thissler of course. :P as thiss was the victim of it more than I was when we played with sivar previously!) The theory was, it was Disables causing the weapon lockouts.
This theory seems to have panned out, and would also explain quite a lot of times when it used to occur in the past as well. We tested, the following, PSW1, 2 and 3, and Tricobalt weapons.
This is Thisslers video on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYZ9osym8zc
My Vid on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mv0GkvQJ1Y&feature=youtu.be
As you can pretty clearly see, there is no AMS, and no scramble on the map here.
Something to note here, is PSW1 seems to be doing this the most frequently out of the three shockwaves, shockwave 3 seems to knock out the most weapons at once, most frequently.
We eliminated every variable, by pouring through previous footage and this was the only constant, so this is what we tested. It is not (at least not this particular bug) AMS or scramble. It does make sense however for there to be confusion on this, as ships packing scramble also tend to be carrying a PSW1 or 3. Or for it to pop up in subsequent matches, as PSW1 is one of the most reliable methods for disabling extend shields.
The reason we suspect tricobalt does not perform this as reliably (as we could not catch it on camera) is it's stun duration is much shorter, thus the odds of it catching a weapon mid cycle are much lower. This weapon lockout seems to occur, during mid firing animation, or just at the start of the cycle. (most commonly mid point)
Do other disables knock out weapons? I do not know yet. As we did not have the resources to test them all.
I do have more videos of getting PSW to do this, as if the 12 minutes of watching my guns fall silent one by one was not enough already.
Given that this happens in Fleet Events occasionally, that is also unsurprising given the use of shockwave torpedoes by various NPCs, shockwaves by romulan warbirds, which also convers the Vault and all of the reman missions come to think of it, several pve missions as well.
Does this happen in matches with no PSW torps, PSWs, or trics? We simply do not know. This however is by far the most reliably method of capping it on camera that I have seen to date. Perhaps when computer frame rate drops, or during lag spikes you can also catch a weapon mid cycle and cause a lockout, but such a thing is pure speculation on my part, and would be nigh impossible to reliably reproduce (as you can see it was hard enough reproducing this, which is why there is 12 minutes of footage here, and almost 20 minutes of other video footage, during our testing that I have not yet uploaded) you have to catch the weapon cycle just right for this to happen.
This can also cause abilities on your power to tray to white box as well such as Distribute Shields, and bridge officer abilities. I have a second video showing this as well. In the case of abilities on your tray, this only triggers when the ability is started it's initial activation when the box is white, and you have to be stunned during that time to get it to occur most reliably. Distribute shields is the most common because this ability is activated most frequently on the power tray. Other abilities have longer durations, and cool downs so it is less likely they will be caught, but it can happen to them as well.
I have lots more footage of this happening, and even managed to catch distribute shields being locked out on film as well. If need be I can make more movies demonstrating how easy this is to replicate. Do note, this video is 12 minutes long, so you have to be fairly consistent at bumping the buttons over and over again to get it. It does not happen every time psw is hit, though by the end of our last test Thissler and I were able to consistently knock each other's guns silent, by utilizing buff and debuffs as well. (Sub nuc seems most effective here as it lengthens the CD cycle for -everything- including activation, and weapon cycles. Which gives the PSW more time to knock things out)
This theory seems to have panned out, and would also explain quite a lot of times when it used to occur in the past as well. We tested, the following, PSW1, 2 and 3, and Tricobalt weapons.
This is Thisslers video on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYZ9osym8zc
My Vid on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mv0GkvQJ1Y&feature=youtu.be
As you can pretty clearly see, there is no AMS, and no scramble on the map here.
Something to note here, is PSW1 seems to be doing this the most frequently out of the three shockwaves, shockwave 3 seems to knock out the most weapons at once, most frequently.
We eliminated every variable, by pouring through previous footage and this was the only constant, so this is what we tested. It is not (at least not this particular bug) AMS or scramble. It does make sense however for there to be confusion on this, as ships packing scramble also tend to be carrying a PSW1 or 3. Or for it to pop up in subsequent matches, as PSW1 is one of the most reliable methods for disabling extend shields.
The reason we suspect tricobalt does not perform this as reliably (as we could not catch it on camera) is it's stun duration is much shorter, thus the odds of it catching a weapon mid cycle are much lower. This weapon lockout seems to occur, during mid firing animation, or just at the start of the cycle. (most commonly mid point)
Do other disables knock out weapons? I do not know yet. As we did not have the resources to test them all.
I do have more videos of getting PSW to do this, as if the 12 minutes of watching my guns fall silent one by one was not enough already.
Given that this happens in Fleet Events occasionally, that is also unsurprising given the use of shockwave torpedoes by various NPCs, shockwaves by romulan warbirds, which also convers the Vault and all of the reman missions come to think of it, several pve missions as well.
Does this happen in matches with no PSW torps, PSWs, or trics? We simply do not know. This however is by far the most reliably method of capping it on camera that I have seen to date. Perhaps when computer frame rate drops, or during lag spikes you can also catch a weapon mid cycle and cause a lockout, but such a thing is pure speculation on my part, and would be nigh impossible to reliably reproduce (as you can see it was hard enough reproducing this, which is why there is 12 minutes of footage here, and almost 20 minutes of other video footage, during our testing that I have not yet uploaded) you have to catch the weapon cycle just right for this to happen.
This can also cause abilities on your power to tray to white box as well such as Distribute Shields, and bridge officer abilities. I have a second video showing this as well. In the case of abilities on your tray, this only triggers when the ability is started it's initial activation when the box is white, and you have to be stunned during that time to get it to occur most reliably. Distribute shields is the most common because this ability is activated most frequently on the power tray. Other abilities have longer durations, and cool downs so it is less likely they will be caught, but it can happen to them as well.
I have lots more footage of this happening, and even managed to catch distribute shields being locked out on film as well. If need be I can make more movies demonstrating how easy this is to replicate. Do note, this video is 12 minutes long, so you have to be fairly consistent at bumping the buttons over and over again to get it. It does not happen every time psw is hit, though by the end of our last test Thissler and I were able to consistently knock each other's guns silent, by utilizing buff and debuffs as well. (Sub nuc seems most effective here as it lengthens the CD cycle for -everything- including activation, and weapon cycles. Which gives the PSW more time to knock things out)
Post edited by mavairo on
0
Comments
I'm pretty sure both are very well related to each other.
Oh nvm mav already explained that as well
It seems it's happening with many powers/skills...weapons, distribute shields, extend shields, etc.
OP *is* the new balance, whether you know it or not! Gecko says so.
Season 7 - Exodus, available online. U buy nao!
http://seekingalpha.com/article/738221-monetizing-perfect-world-s-latest-update
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Good job by the way. I'll keep capturing the glitches on camera as well.
I've alwsy had to log out and back in to fix it.
R.I.P
So basically any power/weapon that can cause disables produces this bug:
Photonic Shockwave
Tricobalt Torpedo
Tricobalt Mine
HY Tricobalt Torpedo
Makes me leery of wanting to face Kar'fi Carriers..
Good job again and I hope they fix this one soon.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
1.) Is Lymuv as sexy in real life as in these videos?
2.) Does your ship not have an 8-Track as standard equipment? (teh moosic went away!)
3.) How can you stand yourself for shooting a ship as stunningly good looking as teh Marmot?
4.) Should I change the name to H.O.K. as I'm fairly certain I'm no longer in House of Duecelon?
And some NON questions. Just a note. Swapping weapons out didn't clear anything but the white box. New weapons worked. Old weapons didn't. You could put the old weapons back in and the box is gone, but nothing fires. Tre annoying.
And yes NPC's using PSW torpedo ability cause this also. Sooper annoying.
Cheers and ty for watching.
and Mav, next time get my good side in the closeups. sheesh.
Ablative Armor has a pretty long activation delay (in my exploding LRSV-R experience), could be a power to test this with. If it wasn't for the long cooldown of AA itself - get it wrong once, wait forever for your next try...
It's interesting that weapons "remember" this bug. Seems a lot more of information is stored about the items in your inventory than I'd expect.[/Tangent]
And it is sorta funny that this brings us around to CD's again. Not knowing at all how those things are coded in makes anything I would put out there just a wild TRIBBLE guess. It seems like turrets were going offline most often. That could just mean that they fire more often so they are most likely to be 'caught in the act'.
Turret: "Okay I just fired!"
Turret: "Waiting my turn to fire again!"
Turret: "Waiting my turn to fire again!"
PSW3: *BOOM*
Turret: "Waiting my turn to......now where did I put my nice cup of tea?"
Is it an interrupt on an interrupt and it just sends them over the edge? Not sure but now I need a drink.
1: Pure speculation.
2: The 8track is being upgraded at the moment. Also, during for serious testing I try to maintain a certain level of quiet on the set :P
3: You should see the abuse I give my pretty car on the weekends.
4: Most likely yes
PS: You have a good side?
i too have had this happen. its happened to BOFF/players (including guns), whether i use 1 or many. I believe it has nothing to do with any power that can disable the target such as PSW but is a completely randomly timed bug. and that when u noticed this is when u get disabled or coincidently thats only when it occurs for u.
Therefore Mr. jheinig sir. There is somthing else other then a few broken player/boff/critter powers
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I'm so confused. I thought you talked to 15 or 20 people one on one who all said it was scrambles? And that the bug could carry over through different maps and matches?
Does sci team also clear tric stuns?
Something to note completely removing the weapon and putting in new ones, the new weapons work fine. However, if you put the old ones back in, they still will not fire. Which leads me to believe that ST will not work either.
I will give it a try during my next round of testing though.
Borticus and I formulated a hypothesis recently and Borticus was able to get some (not entirely consistent) repetition in testing, so investigation is ongoing.
I have never thought of it as a bug but the power intention.
Watch the vid to see just what the problem is.
Do you guys need more footage?
I have probably somewhere around 2 hours of footage I can give.
its notjust the powers doing it. the weapons stop firing happens at any random time. i was PVP and my rear torp would not work until i map changed. and my CRF would become highlighted and no other powers would work until moments later it unhighlted.
This video just shows 1 instance of this bug working. i might post one to show the randomness of what i'm talking bout.
point is there different things causes all equaling the same thing to happen.
Not at the moment. Our software team will be looking into Borticus' reproducible cases. Hopefully we'll be able to put a nail in at least one case (disabling attacks causing weapons to become permanently unusable). If we are able to find other cases we'll tackle them one at a time; right now, we have a fairly widespread case that we can usually reproduce, so we'll start with this one.
you do understand this is huge right?
you are admitting that basically, the foundation of this game (weapons and/or defense) is broken.
and that you have no clue how or why this is happening. matter of fact, there could be many reasons.
as a business leader responsable for tens of millions of dollars of annual revenue, if i got this response from one of my department heads i would be putting him on a 90 day action plan to either meet his job expectations or be removed from his position.
i think they have done an admirable job considering the foundation of the game was removed and replaced with the new code branch. that is almost guarantied to be a catastrophe when ever you do something like that to a complex computer problem. im always surprised the game works at all after a season change. there is no equal situation in a tangible business environment, if there were it would be unreasonable not to have a considerable margin of error built into the expectations
oh, i know nothing of code.
matter of fact, i know nothing about ladies fashion. im an administrator. and i have a solid sense of timelines and expectations in many arenas.
being a customer for over 2 years gives me much insight to just about anything. im even getting good at pitting publix vs kroger (local grocers) and making out like a bandit.
give me an environment to study for 2 yrs?
blah.
If they have to literally rewrite the entire game, with every season, then it's obviously a game engine problem, and far too much of their time, is spent just rewriting the game each time, and not enough in QA.
So you're saying it's time for the code to branch permanently?
I imagine that would be a tough sell.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I think it's time the devs, fessed up that they released the game far far too early, and do what the devs of sword of the stars 2 decided to do. Scrap the whole thing down to the bare bones, and fix the god awful mess they made in the core of the game engine and go from there.
This is as straight up honest as I can be here, with no antagonistic feelings here. If cryptic wants to play in the big leagues, they're going to have to start by admitting to mistakes, so they can prevent them selves from doing the exact same ones, every single time the game is updated. It's not like we're in alpha here, this is 2 years post launch. This is not how Quality titles operate here guys.
We appreciate, greatly that you guys are finally starting to come down here and talk with us to try and fix things. But you'd think someone in the code monkeys team would have learned something or two by now about the game engine and how to keep it from vomiting up the same old tired bugs, or creating devastating to gameplay new ones. And no, not every title does this. Not on the Big Boy level. On the bargain bin rack, sure lots of companies have problems like this, and they tend to die out very quickly, or remain on the bargain bin rack grade for a reason.
Jesse, and Bort. I suspect you guys might be the only ones actually doing anything down there at The Cryptic in terms of QA. We thank you for at least breaking the lockstep of facerolling tradition of your fellow peers, and coming down here to us.
2 minutes later, 4 of my 6 weapons were lock and usless..
Good bye PVP for another month or two, good work Cryptic.
Division Hispana
www.divisionhispana.com
www.divisionhispana.com