Commando Archive

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Azanoth wrote:

...some good about game development - snip...

Developing a game is NOT EASY. Hot fixes for simple things like how long something is down when you use a knockdown shot, or how much damage something deals are easy. But reworking a completely broken piece of functionality can take unknown amounts of time. The developers are going to be contacting the correspondents today on the issues they've received so far, so I would wait before attacking them further.

...things we do already and apeal to humanity tword devs - snip...

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I am a programmer. I have dealt with issues akin to this and well aware of what you speak. The show stopper for me is the exp and cert problem. Here is the crux of it...

Camps were altered as a hotfix. You at first could not drop a camp in NBZ's. Now you can. Where did this change occure? There might have been several ways a camp was tested here.In the deploy routine perhaps? Best I can tell there are 3 zones on a planet, buildable, non-buildable and city. Iimagine that in the deploy routine you have a search for the object class, get current location, get location class (1 of 3 zones) and search for object you can't be near. Now lets consider equipping a weapon. You would have in it a proficiancy routine. It would process what class of weapon this is (class), search your skill trees to get all possible weapon certs and compare. You should thenbe able to then determin which sets of attack stats to load to the battle routines. Several easy hot-fix points jump out: the part that processes the weapons class or the part that pulls the certs out of the skill trees. Now if it was not quite coded in this way then more's the pity as now I can see why parts of this game would take months to put in what look like simple things...

A Hotfix a Day keeps the Consumers at Bay... Kind of.

Zaphod
Novice Commando
Ahazi

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Holocron wrote:

We try to limit hotfixes to critical exploit fixes (as in the baz nitch example), major bugs that damage players somehow (item loss, for example), stability and performance fixes, and things that are top CS calls (so that we can improve the responsiveness of CS).

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So, your saying that if every Commando and all their friends / PAs were to non stop petition over and over that Commandos are broken you would fix them because its a top CSR issue? Neat!

And who here wants to bet against me that Q's little all day meeting is actually him locked in a room with the DEV team franticly trying to answer the last 3 weeks of correspondent letters. We weren't born yesterday Q, it's pretty amazing that a Correspondent drops the guantlet and mysteriously today of all days you miraciously have responses from all the DEVs on the last 3 weeks of correspondent letters. Especially since you have not commented on the correspondent program since it's inception.

And what rock did Holocron crawl out from under today? He hasn't posted on the boards since 7-25 and all of a sudden he is vocal again?

I guess I should have started reading the forums earlier. I was going BH then saw the cool looking skill tree for commando and changed my mind. I have now been spending my time working towards Commando only to now learn it has all been for naught.

Like one of the other posts said, 95% of my DAoC friends have left SWG for good to go back to DAoC as well. Mainly out of frustration with bugs. Instead of CharCopy for TC can I CharCopy my Druid and Champ from DAoC to SWG and give them a pistol? JK, LOL.

Someone had told me in game that Commando had bugs. I guess I should have listened....didn't realize it was so bad. However, with as much as people complain about various Nerfs I thought it was an overstatement. Learned my lesson on that one.

I am also not willing to put anymore time in to developing a Commando if it will be weeks / months / years before it is fixed. Guess I will be switching to another profession (again).

If it's $15 / mo now...how much will it be when the game actually works?

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Kitrinia wrote:

And who here wants to bet against me that Q's little all day meeting is actually him locked in a room with the DEV team franticly trying to answer the last 3 weeks of correspondent letters. We weren't born yesterday Q, it's pretty amazing that a Correspondent drops the guantlet and mysteriously today of all days you miraciously have responses from all the DEVs on the last 3 weeks of correspondent letters. Especially since you have not commented on the correspondent program since it's inception.

And what rock did Holocron crawl out from under today? He hasn't posted on the boards since 7-25 and all of a sudden he is vocal again?

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This is the one little thing I will defend them on. We had hints that they were already going to be responding this week back on 8/9/03 in this thread.

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=commando&message.id=5786

I realize it was nothing concrete from the devs themselves saying yes we would respond at this time but it is at least a hint that they would be responding.

My curious question is why quit 2 days before the patch where they were saying that they were going to fix a bunch of stuff from your last correspondence? Surely 2 more days until it was released and given some initial feedback wouldn't have offset that much. Hopefully they fix you guys soon and this patch does what it was promised to do as a start.

Probably because the patches changes for Commando didn't need to take 6 weeks, probably not even half that. Certs should've been fixed within a week of when the problem was first announced, instead work is going in to new classes when there isa long list of problems for the ones already in game. Less than ten fixes for month's worth of problems is pathetic, it barely even scratches the surface of what problems Commando has. Leaving a day before the patch is simple -- it won't make a **edit** bit of difference, it's just a form of appeasement.

The biggest disheartener is the lack of communication from SOE, appointing Correspondants usually implies that there's going to be a two-way dialogue between the players and the developers. A majority of the Week I responses were 'We're working on it.' or 'It was meant to be that way.' to me that's just a sugar covered 'get over it'. Dunno about you, but if i'm going to be paying $15 a month i'd like to know that my money's going somewhere. So far it looks like it hasn't, or atleast not in the way it was intended.

I applaud you for holding out this long Garibaldi, you probably had more reason to hate Commando than any one of us. Yet you stuck with it, and tried to see it through to the end. Rest assured that it's not your failure in this, it's the Devs. You did all you could. Good luck in all future projects, and thanks.

One shares your feelings. When one read about them improving 'fishing', adding slot machines and making lairs lootable, one is disgusted that they did not use their resources on fixing an unplayable profession instead. Especially since almost every other profession got tweaked,...

My Question: is the TC more stable than the "primary" servers? Are there less bugs in it? If so, I am totally set to move my guy to the TC !

So I checked on the status of the weapon certs, and all of them are supposedly fixed on TC. That means that you should be getting them within a week (probably quite soon).

Holocron I thank you for checking on that really I do but do you really think that's what this group wants to hear that it'll be done within a week? We've been waiting a month and a half now for these to be fixed and I don't know about the rest of the commandos but I'm tired of trying to fight to get them. Thank you though

In fairness the patch with the certs is supposed to go up tomorrow according to Q. There really wouldnt be much of a point to a hotfix at this point. In this case it's more of a "try not to let this sort of thing happen again" rather than "fix it NOW", imo.

HOLOCRON,

How about a comment on the resource dupers and the actions to remedy this disaster??

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=291850

Please.