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Suggestion to PWE and Cryptic
tfomega
Member Posts: 812 Arc User
Dear PWE/Cryptic,
If, after 10 years of IOS, Apple slows down and refocuses iOS development on stability and performance, do we have to wait another 2 years to receive that attention in STO? There are glaring bugs in the game some of which are years old, but the decision was made to only focus on newly released content bugs.
The only bugs that seem to get fixed are on items that are tied to money (i.e. tailor, lobi/zen ship seams), but there are stuff that has been reported for years that still has not been fixed. The arena scoreboards, interaction decloaking (no, it isn't by design, it is a bug you didn't want to fix). Constant decloaking due to MW tree and other game effects (Feds have cloak now.. move it up in priority??). At what point do you stop releasing new content and fix what we have?
http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/01/apple-refocuses-ios-development-on-stability-and-performance.html
If, after 10 years of IOS, Apple slows down and refocuses iOS development on stability and performance, do we have to wait another 2 years to receive that attention in STO? There are glaring bugs in the game some of which are years old, but the decision was made to only focus on newly released content bugs.
The only bugs that seem to get fixed are on items that are tied to money (i.e. tailor, lobi/zen ship seams), but there are stuff that has been reported for years that still has not been fixed. The arena scoreboards, interaction decloaking (no, it isn't by design, it is a bug you didn't want to fix). Constant decloaking due to MW tree and other game effects (Feds have cloak now.. move it up in priority??). At what point do you stop releasing new content and fix what we have?
http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/01/apple-refocuses-ios-development-on-stability-and-performance.html
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
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Whatever.. they need to do something and make a mature decision like Apple did.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
All you have to do is look back through the bug forum and see the same bugs reports again and again for years. One was just written recently.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
So? For every bug you can point out that has been around for a long time, I can point to one that was fixed.
Cryptic is not Apple. There's only so much they can do and stalling development and the release of new content to just fix bugs that aren't that game breaking would likely quickly result in the death of the game.
It is new releases, seasons and events that ensure that people keep coming back. You don't have to take my word for that, anyone who's been here for years knows from experience that this is true and that it is new content that results in increased activity after lulls.
Fixing bugs so that players can play the same old content again but without some minor nuisances that most bugs are, isn't as important as you might think it is. Comparing the two is pointless anyway as Azrael rightfully pointed out.
In fact, most mature software companies agree. It is called "tech debt", and a proper company will spend a percentage of their resources during their development periods focused on making prior releases more stable and eliminating those bugs.
There is an impact/risk rating that goes with any bug or defect that is detected after release which then determines priority to fix. If a defect/bug has been reported and assigned minimal priority, it will forever get displaced by higher priority/impacting bugs, thereby keeping that bug on the list forever and continuing the cycle that I am bringing up. A company must also determine how to deal with those bug fixes that never see the light of day due to the low impact/priority.
So, perhaps Cryptic/PWE should take note of what other companies do to make their own company/products better, because despite product differences between companies, the methodology for handing bugs/defects and their subsequent fixes remains the same.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
No, while there are deadlines and priorities, those deadlines and priorities also factor in tech debt into the overall final release schedule. It is called an Agile/Sprint/SCRUM methodology which is an incremental release schedule approach. New features and content are not "surprises" that must be completed at the last moment thereby removing the "rushed" development release schedule that you are referring to.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
And never fixing those low-impact bugs is a perfectly cromulent strategy for a company with limited development resources.
Let's consider two choices:
- Keep things the way they are now. Some low-priority bugs never get fixed just like with WoW, SWTOR, and MS Office.
- Fire a couple of content developers, hire a couple of bug fixers. Release less new content. Have the number of active players decline, have revenue decline, no longer be able to afford the current staff level, fire the bug fixers to cut costs.
Strategy 2 fixed a few extra bugs, but reduced content forever and weakened the company.
We have bug tracking and priority lists at work too. Some bugs get pushed down the list for months or even years because they don't really matter. If we gave customers an either-or choice between fixing them or adding new more important features and fixing higher priority bugs . . . some would say "do it all" like you, but the ones who understand life's not like that would say let the old bugs linger.
Ate my post when I tried to edit.
Neither of those options are good ones.
No one should be fired. Instead contractors, having expertise in the programming language being used, would be hired to temporarily tackle many old bugs.. unless there is a money reason preventing this. The bugs/defects are low priority/impact, so why put your best developers on them to begin with when you can hire temporary programmers to fix them. It is often easier to hire a contractor because it comes out of a different budget-- usually OpEx (Operational Expenses) and does not come out of the payroll budget like your normal permanent employees. This would allow you to keep the headcount you have today, still allow the current release schedule, and go back and make your end-user's experience much more enjoyable and actually show your patrons that you do care instead of ignoring them for years.
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Also, development at smaller companies is not like that either. Getting someone up to speed on a custom application is not something you can do in a day with drop-in-replacement temp workers. A developer needs to understand large parts of the complete application before they can be productive and that takes days and hand-holding from the current staff, which also means the current staff get less work done. So adding short-term temp staff is usually not cost-effective.
(I'm a lead developer and my last two employers have been small companies. I've trained new hires at both of them.)
Was it game breaking? No. But it was a big one.
Currently I think the main non game breaker is Gon'cra being dang near impossible.
But right now the Bort and the Bug Squishers are probably combing through not only the current live build, but whatever's been finished for the upcoming expansion in order to try and make the release as bug free as possible.
There will ALWAYS be bugs. You fix one thing, another bug crops up somewhere else. That's just how it goes with MMOs. All we can do as players is identify potential bugs and flag them for Bort's team to work on when they get the opprotunity to do so.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
You may want to Google it for the first time. Everything you said is entirely incorrect. An Agile methodology significantly focuses on test-driven environment for fast/high quality delivery of the product which allows development to be performed in manageable chunks thereby allowing more complete unit testing to be performed to prevent the bugs in the first place. That is how my company strives to perform. Development shouldn't be rushed as it should abide by the phases of the development lifecycle. It is more cost effect to catch a bug at the beginning of the development lifecycle than it is after release. Given how much the user base has to beta test everything Cryptic releases, I am not sure how much of any of that is being done. *lifts glass* to you reaching 40,000 posts before the end of Q1 2018!
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Thing is, there are a lot of bugs out there. Some mere annoyances, some quite massively affecting enjoyment, none of which I know is critical to actually playing the game. It may well be that Cryptic has neglected the bug hunt. But it also may well be that they deployed quite a lot of resources to hunting them without success, and at one point simply had to say it ain't worth it. We just don't know. What we do know is that programming doesn't work like in a computer game where you just put x resources into production or science and then everything works as intended.
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