Even being a lifetime member, and playing since day 1 apparently I do not have permission to create a new thread.
You may need to hit a minimum post threshold before being allowed to post a new thread, so that spammers can't just create a new account and instantly start posting new threads.
The Aegis shield proc still goes off, but 100% of the damage completely bypasses shields and goes straight to hull.
I'm pretty desperate so I'm open to any and all suggestions.
The only way you could get anyone to confirm your account would be to provide a combat log. Someone experienced in the arcane art of parsing the log would be able to confirm that your shields are actually being hit.
It's also entirely possible that Cryptic intentionally or unintentionally changed something. They make stealth changes all the time. Well, "stealth" to the vast majority of players.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
But I have complained multiple times about Cryptic's lack of quality control. Note that I say "quality control" and not "QA", because I don't believe QA is entirely at fault, though they do share some blame. It's true that QA doesn't catch as many bugs as they should.
Quality Control and Quality Assurance are branches of the same process, QA is proactive while QC is reactive, but both could indeed be better... You are merely quibbling over semantics though...
But the people who actually make stuff---whether they be programmers, artists, writers, or system designers---need to stop producing so many bugs in the first place. Every release, I see new bugs introduced. Some bugs are fixed, and the rest remain indefinitely. The quality of the game is slowly deteriorating because of the steady accumulation of bugs. I don't see how the situation can improve unless they produce fewer bugs each release in addition to fixing the existing bugs.
This is entirely a matter of opinion... The overal quality of STO has remained roughly the same since I started playing a couple years ago...
There has always been bugs, and will always be bugs... Again, QA could be better, but even then, bugs will occur...
I don't understand why these discussions always revolve around the same tired arguments.
Because people keep pulling out the same tired arguments for how and why bugs should be fixed, usually with a total lack of understanding of how an MMO is developed and how the QA process itself works...
1. Cryptic should stop all development on new content until the bugs are fixed.
We all know this isn't going to happen. However, I do think they aren't devoting enough resources to bug fixing. And I'm not the only one, judging by the number of people asking for bug fixes in Cryptic's last poll.
Funnily enough, I don't recall bug fixes to be the highest item on that list of 5 (IIRC) choices... In fact, I believe it was last and well behind the reintroduction of Exploration Missions and new Episodes, which were a clear first and second respectively...
Yes, there is call for more bug fixing, but it's apparently not the most important factor for the majority of players when it comes to how Cryptic can improve STO...
Sure they can. They can fix bugs in their own domain. Artists fix art bugs. Writers fix typos.
And when was the last time someone took to the forums ranting about a typo or that a particular art element needed immediate attention?
*crickets*
Anybody?
*crickets*
No?
*crickets*
Then I'm guessing bugs related to the game engine, and general game mechanics are the major concern, meaning graphics artists and story writers aren't going to be able to contribute much to bug fixing...
Whenever someone says this, I wonder what he means by "game-breaking". The servers crashing? Is everything fine just because the servers are running? There are plenty of bugs of lesser severity that affect a large percentage of the population. The boff station bug is the most prominent one right now, but there are others. There are bugs in the game mechanics. There are quality-of-life bugs, such the camera zooming in very close to the ship.
A game breaking bug is a bug that, by it's very nature, makes it impossible to play a game or to progress beyond a certain point...
A bug that stops you progressing through the episodes could be considered 'game breaking' in a linear story-driven game...
Since no such bugs exist in STO, there are no 'game breaking bugs'... The statement is entirely valid...
Are there bugs? Yes, but nothing that makes the game unplayable... Most are, at worst, extremely frustrating and will negatively impact your enjoyment but none of the existing bugs will prevent you from playing any existing element of STO...
Whenever someone says this, I wonder what he means by "trivial". A typo? An art bug? There are plenty of bugs that I don't consider trivial. See point 3 above. And while bugs like typos, art errors, and improperly drawn UI elements are not terribly important, they do add up. Each of these bugs is a minor annoyance individually, but together they make the game look shoddy. It's as if we live in a house with chipped paint, cracked mirrors, and leaky faucets. In general, I think the game shows poor workmanship.
Trivial is a relative term and entirely up to the interpretation of the individual...
5. QA misses some bugs, because they are hard to reproduce.
While this is undoubtedly true, they also miss other bugs that are easy to reproduce. Many of the bugs reported by players are reproducible every time. QA should have caught these bugs first.
6. The programmers can't fix a bug, because they can't reproduce it.
Does this mean they can't reproduce it at all or just not every time? While some bugs are reproducible only some of the time, that does not necessarily mean they are rare. Even a bug that occurs only 10% of the time is common enough to be reproducible. While this makes a bug harder to fix, it doesn't mean they should just abandon all efforts to fix it. I think Cryptic tends to abandon bugs whose solution is not immediately obvious. I suspect this is what happened with the boff station bug. As far as I know, flyingtarg was the last person to work on it. I think he's been reassigned to the item update project.
These two points can indeed be true... Some bugs may not be easily reproduced in a controlled environment and a lot can happen unexpectedly when patches go live...
Also trying to pinpoint bugs, even those which may be affecting 10% of the playerbase, as you used in your example, may not be easily reproduced as 9 out of 10 people are not experiencing it - how many within that 10% will actually provide useful feedback to try and pinpoint the bug if it cannot be reproduced by the QA team?
I'm gonna be blunt, you don't seem to have a firm grasp of the fact QA is not always as easy as people believe... Identifying and fixing bugs in potentially hundreds, or even thousands of lines of code, is not a simple task when that bug could be a single character that's out of place and so forth...
I worked for a while designing web pages, I learnt by hard coding pages in notepad... All it took for the entire page to not display was forgetting a bracket or comma, or a single key stroke out of place... Given I know first hand just how difficult correcting a web page can be, I can understand bug fixing when it comes to MMO coding is no small task...
Having said that, it does not mean I'm giving Cryptic a free pass, I'm only willing to cut them a little slack when it comes to bugs...
There are no game breaking bugs that prevent me playing STO and those that do exist are generally an annoyance which is easily worked around - loadout bugs and AWOL Boffs just require you to select the loadout again in the UI usually...
I am yet to see anything that would suggest the full stoppage of new development to fix bugs is in anyway justified, especially since doing so would cause far more harm in the long term, due to lack of new content, than a few nagging bugs being in the game....
When the dev blogs come out, they're mostly done and working on new projects. Also you guys don't help them by not posting the bugs int he proper section. And you also forget taht unless they can replicate the bug they can't fix it. It's easy to sit here and complain at them, but I'd like to see these forums touch the program code without creating more bugs. Welcome to software programming. It's never bug free.
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
You may need to hit a minimum post threshold before being allowed to post a new thread, so that spammers can't just create a new account and instantly start posting new threads.
The only way you could get anyone to confirm your account would be to provide a combat log. Someone experienced in the arcane art of parsing the log would be able to confirm that your shields are actually being hit.
It's also entirely possible that Cryptic intentionally or unintentionally changed something. They make stealth changes all the time. Well, "stealth" to the vast majority of players.
Unfortunately, the combatLog text file is not really human readable, but ACT STO plugin (what I use for DPS parsing) does show that I took absolutely no shield damage for the match I did just now and that 100% of damage is bypassing my shields. Looking at the few old ACT parses I have It looks like I usually take a few hundred thousand shield damage in a crystaline entity match. So it really is bypassing my shields. Is there a way to enable that? Maybe my cat walked on my keyboard or something and pressed some hotkey to make my shields not stop stuff? I'm open to anything at this time.
When the dev blogs come out, they're mostly done and working on new projects. Also you guys don't help them by not posting the bugs int he proper section. And you also forget taht unless they can replicate the bug they can't fix it. It's easy to sit here and complain at them, but I'd like to see these forums touch the program code without creating more bugs. Welcome to software programming. It's never bug free.
Yeah, but most MMOs aren't 20-25% bugs. I mean there's bugs in most aspects of the game. It's everywhere, space, ground, ui, crafting, doffing, pve, pvp and I mean everywhere.
You can put the bug report in the right section and it wouldn't get read, ignored or not fixed correctly.
They have a policy of release when it's due, come hell or high water. It's been that way since they acquired the rights.
Yeah, but most MMOs aren't 20-25% bugs. I mean there's bugs in most aspects of the game. It's everywhere, space, ground, ui, crafting, doffing, pve, pvp and I mean everywhere.
Really? Exaggeration does not make for a more compelling statement...
Many bugs exist, but I think you're stretching it a little far with this...
but ACT STO plugin (what I use for DPS parsing) does show that I took absolutely no shield damage for the match I did just now and that 100% of damage is bypassing my shields. Looking at the few old ACT parses I have It looks like I usually take a few hundred thousand shield damage in a crystaline entity match.
So it really is bypassing my shields. Is there a way to enable that? Maybe my cat walked on my keyboard or something and pressed some hotkey to make my shields not stop stuff? I'm open to anything at this time.
Sounds horrible. I would assume it's just melting your shield facing in the opening salvo, unless you told me that the shields are still visibly up during all of this.
Any Borg content would probably be dismissed; recent changes to Tachyon Beam make shields vanish, and every sphere has TB.
I'm more interested in the ANRA data, if only because it avoids the TB issue.
"Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society." - Aristotle
Yeah, that's all you've got for that part of my post?
Were you here at release?
Any un-biased posters here know where you affiliation lies already.
:rolleyes:
I could ask you the same question... But, what purpose would it serve? Given the state the game was in at release, a lot of work has indeed gone into STO since...
And by un-biased you mean anyone who agrees with your statements right?
Please demonstrate what content was removed, just to correct a few bugs... Exploration? It was removed as it was boring as **** to put it mildly...
Ummm... No, they're not... Exaggerated percentages, which you've created off the top of your head, does not make them 'as good as any'...
So you don't know about bugged content that were removed, interesting.
Well I don't see the official numbers from Cryptic/PWE so your opinion is just that.
And by un-biased you mean anyone who agrees with your statements right?
Un-biased, when I praise Cryptic/PWE when they do good and I criticize when they do bad. Instead of always praising them whatever they do. I believe my defenition is more correct.
When the dev blogs come out, they're mostly done and working on new projects. Also you guys don't help them by not posting the bugs int he proper section. And you also forget taht unless they can replicate the bug they can't fix it. It's easy to sit here and complain at them, but I'd like to see these forums touch the program code without creating more bugs. Welcome to software programming. It's never bug free.
I've posted multiple bugs in the bug report section, all easily reproducible 100% of the time and had no response from the devs on any of them. Only 1 of them was ever fixed and it took over 6 months when the problem was just a typo in the stats of phased-tetryon weapons.
It's been almost 3 weeks since I posted that and it has gone completely ignored even though another player verified it in that thread. What's the point of reporting bugs if your report is completely ignored? This exact scenario has happened every time I have reported a bug.
So you don't know about bugged content that were removed, interesting.
Well I don't see the official numbers from Cryptic/PWE so your opinion is just that.
Perhaps you should put forward an example of said content, rather than some vague assertion, given there have been substantial content changes over the years that I've been playing, as exactly what content you're alluding to, eludes me...
Since we both know full well there are no official numbers available on bug percentages, your insistence on this is complete bollocks and the very definition of a straw man argument, so please, spare me such nonsense...
I merely suggested asking you where you were at release would serve as little purpose as it did asking me... Are you somehow insinuating you've played since release and that somehow gives your opinions and insinuations (as that is all you've contributed so far) greater weight than my own statements?
I did however suggest that, given the incredibly rushed state of STO at release, considerable work has been done, and is ongoing to improve the game...
Un-biased, when I praise Cryptic/PWE when they do good and I criticize when they do bad. Instead of always praising them whatever they do. I believe my defenition is more correct.
Then you clearly have not been paying as much attention as you seem to think, but by all means, you keep believing otherwise... Really makes no difference to me...
Ah, the straw man defence for ones who have none. Lol
Yep, and I'm still yet to see you put forward anything but... Other than over blown, make believe percentages and vague references to supposedly deleted content, none of which you yourself have made any effort to verify, in the hope it will divert attention... The very essence of a straw man argument...
STO players are like Starship captains. They want everything right now and they want it their way. The secret is to give them what they need, not what they want.
lol, except most of the bugs we are addressing are bugs we have been "waiting to be fixed" for a long long time. lol.. so the want it right now really doesn't apply here. lol..
as far as the secret, yes, that is true, however cryptic has failed (in my eyes and a lot of people I know eyes) to give us what we want or need..
my friend (who quit a few years ago) summed it up perfectly.. he said that in the world of mmo's and mmo developers, cryptic is the one with adhd and a sleep disorder all at the same time.. the story line bounces around more than a tennis ball in a tennis match, making the game have no real cohesion. and the time between meaningfull content takes so long, its like the team hibernates inbetween major content releases.. further more, the same bugs that drive one crazy seem to be part of the game. no real attempts are made to squash them.. and the few cryptic does squash seem to just come back in a matter of weeks to a month anyways.
I once had a convo on these forums with danny stahl before he left, and I had said that the game was an ok game, but it felt like cryptic hadn't quite figured out recipe for how to build the game. (ie, what do players want and need, and what attracts non star trek fans, but keeps existing star trek fans happy, and so on and so forth). he agreed with what I said, and to this day, I still don't think cryptic has figured out that recipe. content that works as intended would be a great start to building a solid recipe for success in this game.
I have never played a game that was plagued with so many bugs, that lingered as long as these bugs have.. sure, lots of games have had bugs, but most have fixes within a month of the problem being discovered, even more game dev companies squash bugs in a weeks time.
I want to work for cryptic, then I could underperform, make sloppy work, not deliver any products on time,and not have to fix any mistakes made and still have a job and get paid at the end of the day. (not all devs are like this, but this is the image this game and its poor state, and infiniate excuse factory for why its in a poor state provide. )
After years of watching all of the pissing and moaning from the few that wanted this changed and that changed and having the developers acually listen to you morons I can't help but chuckle with the fact that this game is going to die soon. Iv'e been gaming for a long long time and i can see the writing on the wall with this one, which sadly Iv'e enjoyed but like many of you have mentioned has recently turned into a cash grab grand boo-ba! Ladys and gentelman you have to understand that most people don't understand trek hence don't give 2 ****s about your "hobby" and will shut this dog and pony show down in a heartbeat once it fails to produce, which judging from whats left of my fleet is already happining. If they would have just had the balls to stay the course of their idea instead of listening to every tom, **** and harry maybe it would have had a chance. But like I said, I give it 2 years and hope some other developer can bring new life to trek again (Anybody but JJ!) LOL
Perhaps you should put forward an example of said content, rather than some vague assertion, given there have been substantial content changes over the years that I've been playing, as exactly what content you're alluding to, eludes me...
Since we both know full well there are no official numbers available on bug percentages, your insistence on this is complete bollocks and the very definition of a straw man argument, so please, spare me such nonsense...
So you didn't actually read my original post? You were so incensed that I besmirched the love of your life that you had to attack. Then this is officially arguing with a wall.
I merely suggested asking you where you were at release would serve as little purpose as it did asking me... Are you somehow insinuating you've played since release and that somehow gives your opinions and insinuations (as that is all you've contributed so far) greater weight than my own statements?
I did however suggest that, given the incredibly rushed state of STO at release, considerable work has been done, and is ongoing to improve the game...
Again, please provide examples as the only deleted content that springs to mind is Exploration which, IMO, was no great loss anyway...
Then you clearly have not been paying as much attention as you seem to think, but by all means, you keep believing otherwise... Really makes no difference to me...
Yep, and I'm still yet to see you put forward anything but... Other than over blown, make believe percentages and vague references to supposedly deleted content, none of which you yourself have made any effort to verify, in the hope it will divert attention... The very essence of a straw man argument...
So you didn't actually read my original post? You were so incensed that I besmirched the love of your life that you had to attack. Then this is officially arguing with a wall.
No point in arguing with a wall.
You're dismissed.
So, me refusing to accept nonsense as the basis of your statements, and actually challenging you to put forward evidence of your assertions and strawman arguments, is you 'talking to a wall'?
That's a remarkable notion from someone who later declares themselves victorious in the same post...
Not to mention your massive assumption regarding my opinions of STO and Cryptic as the 'love of my life', which is yet another straw man argument in of itself... Or just a really poor attempt at trolling... As you really have no clue who I am, or what my true thoughts are...
It's also rather amusing that you accuse me of being incensed and on the attack, considering what precipitated this was my pointing out your wild exaggerations... Given you felt it necessary to 'go on the attack' in response, it's really rather hypocritical of you to now throw up this accusation at all... :rolleyes:
But, I will give you one point, having gone back and found your original post :
This is absurd since no new content would ever be released.
This still does not change the fact you've thrown up multiple vague statements, none of which you've provided any evidence to support, right beside utterly ridiculous exaggerations, with nothing by straw man arguments to try and divert attention away from the fact that your comments regarding the number of bugs, and the removal of content outright, were utter rot...
Even this very post, dismissing me out of hand because you are apparently 'talking to wall' (sorry if I'm not swayed by baseless nonsense like your average forumite) is a straw man argument...
If you're trying to make some sort of point, actually put forward something to substantiate your claims, especially if you're going to declare yourself victorious, but if you want to just dismiss my remarks so blithely, with further straw man arguments, all to protect your ego, then by all means knock yourself out...
Which bugs in specific are you most concerned about?
Please be more precise!
The only persistent, super annoying one I can see (which has affected me only a couple of times) is loadouts dropping. This is probably not easy to fix; as they've stated before they have to replicate the bug in order to see what might be causing it. Since it effects people very unevenly, its probably very hard to figure out what is happening. And since their is a workaround for it (create a loadout, save it, load it when it drops), it is probably not on the top of their list.
The "Uneasy Alliances" bug was fixed very fast: the only issue that it raises is those kinds of bugs are unable to be seen from their QA system, which was pointed out as some kind of defense when it should be a lesson that they have to change their QA system!
What other ones are there? Game breaking ones? Not that I can tell. Graphical ones? That's just visual extras, not affecting the game play. I would prefer they spend 1h designing some new cool interiors then fixing where DBBs come from on some random ship.
Even if they stopped to fix all the bugs, more would appear when they add new content, new missions, new powers, new consoles, etc, because MMO game code is very complex and its hard to see the knock on effect of changing things.
Bugs are bad, but they cannot all be squashed, and if they were all squashed more would appear with new content. They should be fixed, but without people paying for ships and lockboxes then they wouldn't be able to keep the lights on to fix bugs. What we have now is a compromise between making sure game breaking bugs don't go to far and that enough content can be made to engage (some of) us.
As for balance for PvP, that's not about bugs, it's about money. If they though they could sell more things by having balanced PvP that everyone could partake in, then they would. But the data must be pointing in another direction, the benefits of investing in that are minimal for their bottom line, so it's not important.
Sounds horrible. I would assume it's just melting your shield facing in the opening salvo, unless you told me that the shields are still visibly up during all of this.
Any Borg content would probably be dismissed; recent changes to Tachyon Beam make shields vanish, and every sphere has TB.
I'm more interested in the ANRA data, if only because it avoids the TB issue.
Thanks for the tip on the parser. My other characters on Crystaline show as taking shield damage, and parses I had before last week on Tala show her as taking shield damage so ACT is correct for analyzing the existence or non existence of shield damage.
However, I never see blue numbers in combat and my shields always say 16,310/16,310. I doubt the Tholians are blowing through that on an opening salvo. I also run tactical team all the time so even if one facing got hit hard it would recover very quickly.
This character has done those advanced queues countless times in the past without incident. So I am sure it is not a case of not having enough shielding.
Perhaps you should put forward an example of said content, rather than some vague assertion, given there have been substantial content changes over the years that I've been playing, as exactly what content you're alluding to, eludes me...
Since we both know full well there are no official numbers available on bug percentages, your insistence on this is complete bollocks and the very definition of a straw man argument, so please, spare me such nonsense...
There is the Terradome that was pulled due to various bugs. Guess you could include various revamps since Cryptic removed that content and replaced it with something else like the old STFS, but that is pushing it. I would not consider revamps as a removal since the devs are replacing old content with similar new content.
Thanks for the tip on the parser. My other characters on Crystaline show as taking shield damage, and parses I had before last week on Tala show her as taking shield damage so ACT is correct for analyzing the existence or non existence of shield damage.
However, I never see blue numbers in combat and my shields always say 16,310/16,310. I doubt the Tholians are blowing through that on an opening salvo. I also run tactical team all the time so even if one facing got hit hard it would recover very quickly.
This character has done those advanced queues countless times in the past without incident. So I am sure it is not a case of not having enough shielding.
Strip it down to basic or no equipment, no traits, etc., test everything and you may find the cause.
Must the players in the first group wait for the devs to fix the second group's content before they get new content? To my way of thinking, they should not.
This is happening already. People who prefer certain specific content already do have to wait for fixes. Sometimes even for years.
Whoever is responsible for proper allocation of human resources and distribution of funding in general, is doing a bad job.
MMO's are not typical computer games. They are constantly evolving, growing, and becoming more and more complicated.
They want to sell us their product, they want our money? Then I expect them to do their job. Not more not less. Even if maintaining an MMO may be more difficult compared to maintaining a single player tetris game. Doesn't change that fixing bugs is an integral part of their jobs. If they don't have enough qualified people, they need to hire some.
STO players are like Starship captains. They want everything right now and they want it their way. The secret is to give them what they need, not what they want.
To follow your analogy: What would happen if a starships chief engineer wasn't fixing bugs in the warp drive for months, even for years sometimes, despite his captain asking to do so? Even worse, the chief engineer going full 'ignore mode' on his captain? A warp drive may be complicated, but the engineer still has to do his job.
But the people who actually make stuff---whether they be programmers, artists, writers, or system designers---need to stop producing so many bugs in the first place. Every release, I see new bugs introduced. Some bugs are fixed, and the rest remain indefinitely. The quality of the game is slowly deteriorating because of the steady accumulation of bugs. [...] However, I do think they aren't devoting enough resources to bug fixing. And I'm not the only one...
Are there bugs? Yes, but nothing that makes the game unplayable... Most are, at worst, extremely frustrating and will negatively impact your enjoyment but none of the existing bugs will prevent you from playing any existing element of STO...
The nature of this game makes it unlikely for a bug that is game-breaking - in the narrowest, literal sense of the term - to occur.
Repeated negative impact on peoples gaming experience, accumulation of unfixed and ignored major and minor bugs, has caused heavy attrition already.
Many bugs got ticket-reported and described in the bug sections of this forum, most of them only either fixed very late or never at all. Folks test stuff on tribble or holodeck, their findings being ignored. Once, players discovered a double-shield bug, made videos, posted logs etc. But instead of fixing the bug, Cryptic deleted the threads, gave people infractions, even forum bans. What a mess.
The nature of this game makes it unlikely for a bug that is game-breaking - in the narrowest, literal sense of the term - to occur.
Repeated negative impact on peoples gaming experience, accumulation of unfixed and ignored major and minor bugs, has caused heavy attrition already.
Not denying the impact of lingering bugs, however, I'm just not convinced bugs are that big a factor in people quitting the game...
It wasn't too long ago that people were blaming the XP grind at level 50, others will blame the lack of players in STF queues, others will blame the lack of content, while others still will blame poor PVP balancing...
The suggestion that game bugs are one of the primary causes for people to quit is entirely unsubstantiated...
Have people quit as a result of 'bug attrition'? Very likely... Is it a large number of people? I don't personally feel that it would be, as most bugs are an inconvenience at worst...
Bugs may be a factor, but I highly doubt they were the sole cause for most people who stop playing...
Cryptic deleted the threads, gave people infractions, even forum bans. What a mess.
Since the forum mods are usually pretty relaxed regarding thread contents and most behaviour, if any of this did happen, it's my experience that the people in question had resorted to abusive behaviour, rather than supplying useful feedback...
I am not saying people quit just only over some loadout bug or whatver. It takes a bit more than just one or a couple of bugs. It's an accumulation of various reasons, one of them being the bug handling. But after a couple of seasons, people just give up on the game.
I have often said this in the past but providing the bugs are not too drastic all the vast majority of players care about is getting new content, of course fixing every single bug is nigh impossible but I would favour a major update of purely but fixes over content but I`m afraid I am in the minority.
all we can hope for is that the bugs get fixed from time to time as and when the devs get time to look at them.
if you don't think players worry more about getting more content over bugs just take a look at the forums after each season/expansion update, you can guarantee there will be threads about what is hoped for or wanted in the next update and it wont be bug fixes.
its usually more ships, more playable species, more factions, more missions, more PVP and more exploration.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Since the forum mods are usually pretty relaxed regarding thread contents and most behaviour, if any of this did happen, it's my experience that the people in question had resorted to abusive behaviour, rather than supplying useful feedback...
Ya, it did happen. There is a reason why certain bugs got nicknamed 'voldermort'
EDIT: I believe I heard Al Rivera saying they thought they fixed the bug; the way he said it (in the context of the interview) heavily implied they were assuming malicious intend behind the continued reports of the bug in question (since from his pov, they bug was already fixed. Even though it wasn't). /EDIT
Todays mods are relatively relaxed nowadays, but there were also different times, different mods.
Instead of thread deletions, today peoples bug reports remain mostly ignored. An improvement of policy, compared to previous times? Perhaps. Good enough? Not in my book.
Comments
The only way you could get anyone to confirm your account would be to provide a combat log. Someone experienced in the arcane art of parsing the log would be able to confirm that your shields are actually being hit.
It's also entirely possible that Cryptic intentionally or unintentionally changed something. They make stealth changes all the time. Well, "stealth" to the vast majority of players.
No, you may not have, but the OP did...
Quality Control and Quality Assurance are branches of the same process, QA is proactive while QC is reactive, but both could indeed be better... You are merely quibbling over semantics though...
This is entirely a matter of opinion... The overal quality of STO has remained roughly the same since I started playing a couple years ago...
There has always been bugs, and will always be bugs... Again, QA could be better, but even then, bugs will occur...
Because people keep pulling out the same tired arguments for how and why bugs should be fixed, usually with a total lack of understanding of how an MMO is developed and how the QA process itself works...
Funnily enough, I don't recall bug fixes to be the highest item on that list of 5 (IIRC) choices... In fact, I believe it was last and well behind the reintroduction of Exploration Missions and new Episodes, which were a clear first and second respectively...
Yes, there is call for more bug fixing, but it's apparently not the most important factor for the majority of players when it comes to how Cryptic can improve STO...
And when was the last time someone took to the forums ranting about a typo or that a particular art element needed immediate attention?
*crickets*
Anybody?
*crickets*
No?
*crickets*
Then I'm guessing bugs related to the game engine, and general game mechanics are the major concern, meaning graphics artists and story writers aren't going to be able to contribute much to bug fixing...
A game breaking bug is a bug that, by it's very nature, makes it impossible to play a game or to progress beyond a certain point...
A bug that stops you progressing through the episodes could be considered 'game breaking' in a linear story-driven game...
Since no such bugs exist in STO, there are no 'game breaking bugs'... The statement is entirely valid...
Are there bugs? Yes, but nothing that makes the game unplayable... Most are, at worst, extremely frustrating and will negatively impact your enjoyment but none of the existing bugs will prevent you from playing any existing element of STO...
Trivial is a relative term and entirely up to the interpretation of the individual...
These two points can indeed be true... Some bugs may not be easily reproduced in a controlled environment and a lot can happen unexpectedly when patches go live...
Also trying to pinpoint bugs, even those which may be affecting 10% of the playerbase, as you used in your example, may not be easily reproduced as 9 out of 10 people are not experiencing it - how many within that 10% will actually provide useful feedback to try and pinpoint the bug if it cannot be reproduced by the QA team?
I'm gonna be blunt, you don't seem to have a firm grasp of the fact QA is not always as easy as people believe... Identifying and fixing bugs in potentially hundreds, or even thousands of lines of code, is not a simple task when that bug could be a single character that's out of place and so forth...
I worked for a while designing web pages, I learnt by hard coding pages in notepad... All it took for the entire page to not display was forgetting a bracket or comma, or a single key stroke out of place... Given I know first hand just how difficult correcting a web page can be, I can understand bug fixing when it comes to MMO coding is no small task...
Having said that, it does not mean I'm giving Cryptic a free pass, I'm only willing to cut them a little slack when it comes to bugs...
There are no game breaking bugs that prevent me playing STO and those that do exist are generally an annoyance which is easily worked around - loadout bugs and AWOL Boffs just require you to select the loadout again in the UI usually...
I am yet to see anything that would suggest the full stoppage of new development to fix bugs is in anyway justified, especially since doing so would cause far more harm in the long term, due to lack of new content, than a few nagging bugs being in the game....
Only one game in the history of MMOs only one game have ever did a maintenance mode and came out of it well.
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
Unfortunately, the combatLog text file is not really human readable, but ACT STO plugin (what I use for DPS parsing) does show that I took absolutely no shield damage for the match I did just now and that 100% of damage is bypassing my shields. Looking at the few old ACT parses I have It looks like I usually take a few hundred thousand shield damage in a crystaline entity match. So it really is bypassing my shields. Is there a way to enable that? Maybe my cat walked on my keyboard or something and pressed some hotkey to make my shields not stop stuff? I'm open to anything at this time.
You can put the bug report in the right section and it wouldn't get read, ignored or not fixed correctly.
They have a policy of release when it's due, come hell or high water. It's been that way since they acquired the rights.
Doesn't look like it will change anytime soon.
Sad but true.
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
Out of curiosity, which MMO is that?
Really? Exaggeration does not make for a more compelling statement...
Many bugs exist, but I think you're stretching it a little far with this...
And that's why no bug has ever been fixed in STO... *sarcasm*
From what I understand, ACT is out of date. Use CLR instead. http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=14042121
Sounds horrible. I would assume it's just melting your shield facing in the opening salvo, unless you told me that the shields are still visibly up during all of this.
Any Borg content would probably be dismissed; recent changes to Tachyon Beam make shields vanish, and every sphere has TB.
I'm more interested in the ANRA data, if only because it avoids the TB issue.
It's not an exaggeration when they fix the bugs by completely taking the content out.
Supply the correct numbers from Cryptic/PWE, otherwise my numbers are as good as any.
Yeah, that's all you've got for that part of my post?
Were you here at release?
Any un-biased posters here know where you affiliation lies already.
:rolleyes:
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
Please demonstrate what content was removed, just to correct a few bugs... Exploration? It was removed as it was boring as **** to put it mildly...
Ummm... No, they're not... Exaggerated percentages, which you've created off the top of your head, does not make them 'as good as any'...
I could ask you the same question... But, what purpose would it serve? Given the state the game was in at release, a lot of work has indeed gone into STO since...
And by un-biased you mean anyone who agrees with your statements right?
Yours were straw man arguments, both...:rolleyes:
Final Fantasy 14
So you don't know about bugged content that were removed, interesting.
Well I don't see the official numbers from Cryptic/PWE so your opinion is just that.
So you agree my statement is correct.
I believe there is less work now since all the deleted content. Lol
Un-biased, when I praise Cryptic/PWE when they do good and I criticize when they do bad. Instead of always praising them whatever they do. I believe my defenition is more correct.
Ah, the straw man defence for ones who have none. Lol
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
I've posted multiple bugs in the bug report section, all easily reproducible 100% of the time and had no response from the devs on any of them. Only 1 of them was ever fixed and it took over 6 months when the problem was just a typo in the stats of phased-tetryon weapons.
Here is the last bug-report thread I made, again completely ignored even though it's easily reproducible 100% of the time: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1404651
It's been almost 3 weeks since I posted that and it has gone completely ignored even though another player verified it in that thread. What's the point of reporting bugs if your report is completely ignored? This exact scenario has happened every time I have reported a bug.
@DevolvedOne
Perhaps you should put forward an example of said content, rather than some vague assertion, given there have been substantial content changes over the years that I've been playing, as exactly what content you're alluding to, eludes me...
Since we both know full well there are no official numbers available on bug percentages, your insistence on this is complete bollocks and the very definition of a straw man argument, so please, spare me such nonsense...
What did I agree with exactly?
I merely suggested asking you where you were at release would serve as little purpose as it did asking me... Are you somehow insinuating you've played since release and that somehow gives your opinions and insinuations (as that is all you've contributed so far) greater weight than my own statements?
I did however suggest that, given the incredibly rushed state of STO at release, considerable work has been done, and is ongoing to improve the game...
Again, please provide examples as the only deleted content that springs to mind is Exploration which, IMO, was no great loss anyway...
Then you clearly have not been paying as much attention as you seem to think, but by all means, you keep believing otherwise... Really makes no difference to me...
Yep, and I'm still yet to see you put forward anything but... Other than over blown, make believe percentages and vague references to supposedly deleted content, none of which you yourself have made any effort to verify, in the hope it will divert attention... The very essence of a straw man argument...
lol, except most of the bugs we are addressing are bugs we have been "waiting to be fixed" for a long long time. lol.. so the want it right now really doesn't apply here. lol..
as far as the secret, yes, that is true, however cryptic has failed (in my eyes and a lot of people I know eyes) to give us what we want or need..
my friend (who quit a few years ago) summed it up perfectly.. he said that in the world of mmo's and mmo developers, cryptic is the one with adhd and a sleep disorder all at the same time.. the story line bounces around more than a tennis ball in a tennis match, making the game have no real cohesion. and the time between meaningfull content takes so long, its like the team hibernates inbetween major content releases.. further more, the same bugs that drive one crazy seem to be part of the game. no real attempts are made to squash them.. and the few cryptic does squash seem to just come back in a matter of weeks to a month anyways.
I once had a convo on these forums with danny stahl before he left, and I had said that the game was an ok game, but it felt like cryptic hadn't quite figured out recipe for how to build the game. (ie, what do players want and need, and what attracts non star trek fans, but keeps existing star trek fans happy, and so on and so forth). he agreed with what I said, and to this day, I still don't think cryptic has figured out that recipe. content that works as intended would be a great start to building a solid recipe for success in this game.
I have never played a game that was plagued with so many bugs, that lingered as long as these bugs have.. sure, lots of games have had bugs, but most have fixes within a month of the problem being discovered, even more game dev companies squash bugs in a weeks time.
I want to work for cryptic, then I could underperform, make sloppy work, not deliver any products on time,and not have to fix any mistakes made and still have a job and get paid at the end of the day. (not all devs are like this, but this is the image this game and its poor state, and infiniate excuse factory for why its in a poor state provide. )
After years of watching all of the pissing and moaning from the few that wanted this changed and that changed and having the developers acually listen to you morons I can't help but chuckle with the fact that this game is going to die soon. Iv'e been gaming for a long long time and i can see the writing on the wall with this one, which sadly Iv'e enjoyed but like many of you have mentioned has recently turned into a cash grab grand boo-ba! Ladys and gentelman you have to understand that most people don't understand trek hence don't give 2 ****s about your "hobby" and will shut this dog and pony show down in a heartbeat once it fails to produce, which judging from whats left of my fleet is already happining. If they would have just had the balls to stay the course of their idea instead of listening to every tom, **** and harry maybe it would have had a chance. But like I said, I give it 2 years and hope some other developer can bring new life to trek again (Anybody but JJ!) LOL
So I win with a "straw man.'' Cool.
So you didn't actually read my original post? You were so incensed that I besmirched the love of your life that you had to attack. Then this is officially arguing with a wall.
No point in arguing with a wall.
You're dismissed.
Officially Nerfed In Early 2410
So, me refusing to accept nonsense as the basis of your statements, and actually challenging you to put forward evidence of your assertions and strawman arguments, is you 'talking to a wall'?
That's a remarkable notion from someone who later declares themselves victorious in the same post...
Not to mention your massive assumption regarding my opinions of STO and Cryptic as the 'love of my life', which is yet another straw man argument in of itself... Or just a really poor attempt at trolling... As you really have no clue who I am, or what my true thoughts are...
It's also rather amusing that you accuse me of being incensed and on the attack, considering what precipitated this was my pointing out your wild exaggerations... Given you felt it necessary to 'go on the attack' in response, it's really rather hypocritical of you to now throw up this accusation at all... :rolleyes:
But, I will give you one point, having gone back and found your original post :
This still does not change the fact you've thrown up multiple vague statements, none of which you've provided any evidence to support, right beside utterly ridiculous exaggerations, with nothing by straw man arguments to try and divert attention away from the fact that your comments regarding the number of bugs, and the removal of content outright, were utter rot...
Even this very post, dismissing me out of hand because you are apparently 'talking to wall' (sorry if I'm not swayed by baseless nonsense like your average forumite) is a straw man argument...
If you're trying to make some sort of point, actually put forward something to substantiate your claims, especially if you're going to declare yourself victorious, but if you want to just dismiss my remarks so blithely, with further straw man arguments, all to protect your ego, then by all means knock yourself out...
Also, there were several unique factors involved. It's not quite an apples to apples comparison.
There's development, production and QA, and then there's Cryptic's interpretation of them.
Please be more precise!
The only persistent, super annoying one I can see (which has affected me only a couple of times) is loadouts dropping. This is probably not easy to fix; as they've stated before they have to replicate the bug in order to see what might be causing it. Since it effects people very unevenly, its probably very hard to figure out what is happening. And since their is a workaround for it (create a loadout, save it, load it when it drops), it is probably not on the top of their list.
The "Uneasy Alliances" bug was fixed very fast: the only issue that it raises is those kinds of bugs are unable to be seen from their QA system, which was pointed out as some kind of defense when it should be a lesson that they have to change their QA system!
What other ones are there? Game breaking ones? Not that I can tell. Graphical ones? That's just visual extras, not affecting the game play. I would prefer they spend 1h designing some new cool interiors then fixing where DBBs come from on some random ship.
Even if they stopped to fix all the bugs, more would appear when they add new content, new missions, new powers, new consoles, etc, because MMO game code is very complex and its hard to see the knock on effect of changing things.
Bugs are bad, but they cannot all be squashed, and if they were all squashed more would appear with new content. They should be fixed, but without people paying for ships and lockboxes then they wouldn't be able to keep the lights on to fix bugs. What we have now is a compromise between making sure game breaking bugs don't go to far and that enough content can be made to engage (some of) us.
As for balance for PvP, that's not about bugs, it's about money. If they though they could sell more things by having balanced PvP that everyone could partake in, then they would. But the data must be pointing in another direction, the benefits of investing in that are minimal for their bottom line, so it's not important.
Thanks for the tip on the parser. My other characters on Crystaline show as taking shield damage, and parses I had before last week on Tala show her as taking shield damage so ACT is correct for analyzing the existence or non existence of shield damage.
However, I never see blue numbers in combat and my shields always say 16,310/16,310. I doubt the Tholians are blowing through that on an opening salvo. I also run tactical team all the time so even if one facing got hit hard it would recover very quickly.
This character has done those advanced queues countless times in the past without incident. So I am sure it is not a case of not having enough shielding.
There is the Terradome that was pulled due to various bugs. Guess you could include various revamps since Cryptic removed that content and replaced it with something else like the old STFS, but that is pushing it. I would not consider revamps as a removal since the devs are replacing old content with similar new content.
You could also provide as full a build as the skill planner site permits. Maybe that could reveal something. http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/
Very odd, though.
Whoever is responsible for proper allocation of human resources and distribution of funding in general, is doing a bad job.
They want to sell us their product, they want our money? Then I expect them to do their job. Not more not less. Even if maintaining an MMO may be more difficult compared to maintaining a single player tetris game. Doesn't change that fixing bugs is an integral part of their jobs. If they don't have enough qualified people, they need to hire some.
They already lost customers over this.
To follow your analogy: What would happen if a starships chief engineer wasn't fixing bugs in the warp drive for months, even for years sometimes, despite his captain asking to do so? Even worse, the chief engineer going full 'ignore mode' on his captain? A warp drive may be complicated, but the engineer still has to do his job.
Quoted for truth.
The nature of this game makes it unlikely for a bug that is game-breaking - in the narrowest, literal sense of the term - to occur.
Repeated negative impact on peoples gaming experience, accumulation of unfixed and ignored major and minor bugs, has caused heavy attrition already.
Many bugs got ticket-reported and described in the bug sections of this forum, most of them only either fixed very late or never at all. Folks test stuff on tribble or holodeck, their findings being ignored. Once, players discovered a double-shield bug, made videos, posted logs etc. But instead of fixing the bug, Cryptic deleted the threads, gave people infractions, even forum bans. What a mess.
Not denying the impact of lingering bugs, however, I'm just not convinced bugs are that big a factor in people quitting the game...
It wasn't too long ago that people were blaming the XP grind at level 50, others will blame the lack of players in STF queues, others will blame the lack of content, while others still will blame poor PVP balancing...
The suggestion that game bugs are one of the primary causes for people to quit is entirely unsubstantiated...
Have people quit as a result of 'bug attrition'? Very likely... Is it a large number of people? I don't personally feel that it would be, as most bugs are an inconvenience at worst...
Bugs may be a factor, but I highly doubt they were the sole cause for most people who stop playing...
Since the forum mods are usually pretty relaxed regarding thread contents and most behaviour, if any of this did happen, it's my experience that the people in question had resorted to abusive behaviour, rather than supplying useful feedback...
all we can hope for is that the bugs get fixed from time to time as and when the devs get time to look at them.
if you don't think players worry more about getting more content over bugs just take a look at the forums after each season/expansion update, you can guarantee there will be threads about what is hoped for or wanted in the next update and it wont be bug fixes.
its usually more ships, more playable species, more factions, more missions, more PVP and more exploration.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Ya, it did happen. There is a reason why certain bugs got nicknamed 'voldermort'
EDIT: I believe I heard Al Rivera saying they thought they fixed the bug; the way he said it (in the context of the interview) heavily implied they were assuming malicious intend behind the continued reports of the bug in question (since from his pov, they bug was already fixed. Even though it wasn't). /EDIT
Todays mods are relatively relaxed nowadays, but there were also different times, different mods.
Instead of thread deletions, today peoples bug reports remain mostly ignored. An improvement of policy, compared to previous times? Perhaps. Good enough? Not in my book.