Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: 19 answers
Ok so it was suppose to be posted this week right? Have they stopped doing the 19 questions already? I realise there is alot going on, but if you make a promise, or promisary statement (TH) then you stake your reputation. I am really trying to be patient in this, but like many I am not surprised.
What I was expecting? an answer, a blowoff full of hot air, but an answer none the less.
A> That the team is currently working on the jump to lightspeed expansion typical answer...
or else...
b> Each publish we choose one proffession to spotlight thing.
followed with the old:
I was told that will be looked at
...or...
I was told that it might be in the game
or
At this time we are working on creating a more balanced system and as such we cannot make any changes until the balancing has been completed.
But you know...what do I know.
As far as we have been told the plan is to post them next wednesday to get back into the routine of doing 1 post every wednesday.
I know you've all been very patient but remember these answers dont change anything - best case scenario is an acknoledgement from the devs that they are aware of the issue.
Just getting an answer from TH doesnt make the problem go away, nor does it provide an instant fix.
I do have some info for you but I'm awaiting permission to post it.
This is not an issue that is going to get fixed overnight. But with our help I'm confident the devs can resolve the remaining bugs in the system.
If you're looking for something to do to pass the time while you wait - instead of posting angrily/impatiently about the problems we all have with pet validity - help me to get this fixed, go make invalid pets them come tell me the recipe. I will check out each and every one of them.
The only way we are going to get this issue resolved is to help the devs track down the cause of the bug.
Kevie wrote:
aren't we supposed to get another question this week?
With E3 last week and the catching up this week we should probably see the next set of 19 next week.
Thunderheart wrote:
IsamuYF-19 wrote:
TH can we get a solid set of dates for this "19 questions answered"? You posted last thursday so it's it going to be every thursday or are you on DT? (dev time, a week to them is a month for us)
Every Wednesday OR Thursday depending on how much is entailed in the answers...
EVERY Wednesday or Thursday? I'm fulling willing to cut you a large amount of slack for last week being at E3. And I understand you were probably catching up on stuff this week so it wouldn't have gone in Mon or Tuesday. But I'm not sure we're really on track enough to be saying "every". Maybe after you've done 3 in a row 
TH, I think you're doing a great job... I'm just sure that the easiest way to make the next19 answers post appear is for me to click on Submit Post and then feel like an idiot when I go check Dev Tracker and you've already posted. LOL...
This is not an issue that is going to get fixed overnight. But with our help I'm confident the devs can resolve the remaining bugs in the system.
If you're looking for something to do to pass the time while you wait - instead of posting angrily/impatiently about the problems we all have with pet validity - help me to get this fixed, go make invalid pets them come tell me the recipe. I will check out each and every one of them.
The only way we are going to get this issue resolved is to help the devs track down the cause of the bug.
asdartha wrote:
umm Nancy, I thought you said that info was for you. Not the devs.....
As far as being aggitated, TH said he would post the week of the 17th if he did not post the Saturday before E3. To me this is the same old story from TH. Besides, before leaving for E3 he said he was almost finished with the 19 questions.
As far as changing anything, if TH answers the question we asked.. not some random interpertation he pulled from who knows where, then we as a community will have a time-frame to look to for when the invaild pets will be fixed. That is what we asked.. Not when, but during which future publish.. so the actual fix was never the question, just the date.
1. NancyJ said she was collecting the data to give to the devs. She's doing this under her own initiative, NOT because the dev's asked her to. Besides what would she do with that information? She can't fix it, but she can give the data to the devs to do something with.
2. TH said he was going to try to post the 19 answers before E3, BUT there were something he needed to clear up with the correspondents, and if he couldn't do that before he left for E3 then there would be no post.
3. Don't hold your breath for a definate when (or even a publish number) since they have already scoped out the work they are doing between now and JTL the best answer they could give would be "after JTL"
Message Edited by Kevm on 05-22-2004 12:01 PM
It would be unreasonable to expect so. For them to give us that information would require them to already know exactly what the problem was and how to fix it.
As Kevm has said, the devs schedule is pretty booked until after JTL, however this doesnt mean that we cant get our issues dealt with sooner. This is not a new feature we're asking for its a bug fix.
What it does mean is that the devs dont have enough resources to dedicate to finding the cause of this bug without our help. The more information we can give them the better and the sooner we're likely to get this issue resolved.
NancyJ wrote:
What it does mean is that the devs dont have enough resources to dedicate to finding the cause of this bug without our help. The more information we can give them the better and the sooner we're likely to get this issue resolved.
DialUp wrote:
NancyJ wrote:
What it does mean is that the devs dont have enough resources to dedicate to finding the cause of this bug without our help. The more information we can give them the better and the sooner we're likely to get this issue resolved.Will we be getting a check in the mail for doing their jobThis "pay for long term beta" is really getting tiresome...
Perhaps you would prefer that our crafting was as dull and formulaic as the other crafting systems in the game?
Would you prfer us to sit and twiddle our thumbs and wait for the devs to be able to free up the human resources to test every possible DNA combination so they can get to the bottom of this problem?
At the end of the day if you want a game thats bare-bones and bug free then play City of Heros - no-one is forcing you to play SWG.
I'm not knocking CoH - its a great game. Its beautifully designed and its brilliance is in its simplicity. And it works, I havent had a single problem with it.
But its a completely different game to SWG, its not trying to be new or revolutionary or innovative, its just a FUN game.
They've got the basics right and it'll be very interesting to see what they do with it in terms of new features and content.
NancyJ wrote:
Perhaps you would prefer that our crafting was as dull and formulaic as the other crafting systems in the game?
Crafting need not have bugs to be exciting...
Would you prfer us to sit and twiddle our thumbs and wait for the devs to be able to free up the human resources to test every possible DNA combination so they can get to the bottom of this problem?
Any decent programmer could easily write a nested For Loop to test every possible combination. In fact, I could do it in a matter of minutes and even an old 486 could process the results rather quickly...
At the end of the day if you want a game thats bare-bones and bug free then play City of Heros - no-one is forcing you to play SWG.
Are you telling me that a good game can't be bug free? Bugs are introduced due to poor preplanning and psuedocoding....
You may be a professional programmer but I'm guessing you've never done QA for an MMO. Internal tested and simulations do not always accurately reflect the situation 'in game' - thats why we have a test server as well as the internal QA server.
You could write your nested for loop and process the results and what would it tell you? Even if you came out with a list of all the possible combinations that produced invalid pets, the results would still need to be analysed and interpretted by a human being to determine the cause of the bug.
You might also want to consider what exactly would be involved in generating these results...
There are approx 700 creatures that can be sampled
Each 1 creature can yield DNA of 5 different qualities
Not even considering the random variance of samples - you've now got 3500 DNA samples that can be put into a template in any combination of 5 (also remembering that you can have multiples of each DNA type and quality)
And for each possible template there are up to 10 experiment points that can be spent in any combination on 5 attributes.
Then create a clone remembering the random variance again.
Then simulate calling the pet and checking for validity, not forgetting to check the validity at each stage of its growth cycle.
Then for every possible clone we just calculated we have another creature to add back into the DNA pool and a possible each with 5 different qualities of DNA....
Rinse and repeat until you've had enough.
...just out of interest what is it that you program?