Community Relations Archive

it's been 2 years and i still see bugs i noticed over a year ago. if they haven't gotten their stuff stright by now... they never will.

Um... instead of programming your loop from 1 to 4, how about 1 to >= 4?

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Tiggs wrote:

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Ecnirp wrote:

Fix the bugs first!!

And for the love of god.... test the publishes better.

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We hear you and moving forward our publishs will be smaller in scope but willinclude top priority bug fixes along with minimal content.

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Wow...Tiggs replied to my thread...albeit a month late, and it isn't in the GAT. Thanks for finally looking, Tiggs. The dead silence from you all since the CU went live has been maddening. I am glad to see an increase in communication, but I am not giving you guys credit just yet. It is only one day, but it is a deluge of communication, and I appreciate it. I sincerely hope we can keep this level of discussion between Community Relations and the Players. Ignoring us was a bad play.

Bugs and balance for me.

Content is also important, but good content means nothing if there is no balance.

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Tiggs wrote:

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Ecnirp wrote:

Fix the bugs first!!

And for the love of god.... test the publishes better.

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We hear you and moving forward our publishs will be smaller in scope but willinclude top priority bug fixes along with minimal content.

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Forgive me, but we should preamble this comment with, "Our current flavor of the month approach is..."

Nice to see communication though, I'll give you that much.

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Tiggs wrote:
We hear you and moving forward our publishs will be smaller in scope but will include top priority bug fixes along with minimal content.

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A short note or two like this per day is worth far more than one long post per week. Please keep up the communication with us Tiggs, it's very much appreciated.

Oh, and put me down for two bug fix publishes rather than a new content publish.

-Bux

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Tiggs wrote:

We hear you and moving forward our publishs will be smaller in scope but willinclude top priority bug fixes along with minimal content.

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Tiggs wrote:

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Ecnirp wrote:

Fix the bugs first!!

And for the love of god.... test the publishes better.

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We hear you and moving forward our publishs will be smaller in scope but willinclude top priority bug fixes along with minimal content.

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Tiggs, at fan fest, the devs in some of the panels made it clear that they would rather spend their time coming out with new content, new items, new ships, etc... then fixing the old things. Is this LucasArts and SOE's view on this game? Is new content more important then problems with whats already here.

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ConfusedZabrak wrote:

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WilfBrim wrote:
How about a bug free (or minimal) publish? As a programmer i know this is possible.

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What language is/are the games wrote in? Is there not a compiler(?) that "checks" the code for "bugs"?

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It's an interesting concept, but not how programing works, there are 2 basic types of problems you can encounter in coding, a "syntax error" type problem which the compiler will tell you about because the line or sentence of code doesn't make sense. An example of this would be

fi(i==1) {
somecode();
}

If was mis-spelled fi in the above example and would be caught by the compiler.

if(i=1) {
somecode();
}

This is the tougher of the two types of bugs to catch, its called a logic error and can be deviously hard to spot. The problem with that example is I'm trying to determine if the variable i is equal to 1, but what I've actually told the computer to do is set the variable i equal to 1... this type of bug is how things like the armor break effectiveness bug can slip through un-noticed and the developer working on the code swears up and down that the code is correct... which is it from a certain point of view, its correct in that the compiler understands it, but incorrect in that the behavior is not what was intended.

Currently there are no compilers or other development tools on the market that can catch the second type of error. If anyone were ever able to create such an intelligent piece of software they would be a very rich person indeed.

And for those who critique my example code, its not written in any specific language, just some pseudo-code resembling C (or it might be valid C I dont work with that much as a web developer)

**EDIT**
I should have read everything before replying there is another excellent post earlier in the forum that gives this exact explanation with slightly different examples.

/tiphat to the original poster

Message Edited by devious507 on 07-26-2005 09:31 PM

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Tiggs wrote:

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Ecnirp wrote:

Fix the bugs first!!

And for the love of god.... test the publishes better.

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We hear you and moving forward our publishs will be smaller in scope but willinclude top priority bug fixes along with minimal content.

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I remember reading something in a State of the Game letter where the goal was two minis a month, and one publish a month....Or something like that. We have had two publishes that were 90 percent fixes. Shouldnt those be minis?

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Ragnaat wrote:

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Tiggs wrote:

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Ecnirp wrote:

Fix the bugs first!!

And for the love of god.... test the publishes better.

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We hear you and moving forward our publishs will be smaller in scope but will include top priority bug fixes along with minimal content.

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[apologies to other posters who may have raised this issue, don't have time to read all the replies at this point]

Hear me out Tiggs, I know this is a lengthy post, but as I started it I jsut felt there wasn't any way of summarizing it in a way that really gave you anything you could work with.




Its not just bug fixes, Tiggs. Though very discoraging, and cause for alarm when something like BE crafting or armorsmith enhnancement bugs go on for multiple publishes without so much as a mention from staff (and then nothing more then a mention for a few more weeks) from where I sit its more then that.

I just don't have anything to do in the ground game anymore. And that's the current problem that needs to be addressed. Why do I feel theres all of a sudden nothing to do? I think its because I'm feeling theres a great lack of depth and texture in the world that was once there, that you could get lost in, interact with, wander around in and make something to do out of 'nothing' or otherwise make unstructured goals.

Many of the long term goals or challenges are gone and there seem to be less and less of a "world" out there with every patch. This isn't a CU hate post, because the interaction during combat post CU is alright in my eyes, but be it to meet deadline or just because you didn't feel it was nesessary to focus on the subtlties of the pre-cu game there seems to be less depth, texture or room for obsession or personal 'quests'. A few particular areas that need enhancment beyond just remaking lady val or adding another variation of an escort quest...

* Crafter professions were overly simplified... particularly AS and then DE where experimentation changed dramatically but also WS and Chef for other reasons stated below. What was an area where those inclined could get lost in... lost in the chase for a 12pt suit or a slighly better resource or outcome... well, it seems that the best outcome is either easily achievable, or that medcore is enough thanks to caps or diminising returns

* Buff caps and the lack of information/explanation... with 3 or 4 ways to hit the various caps now (they are 20% achieved in whatever way, right?) it has created a lot of redundancy or areas of the game that I as a fighter just don't care about and are totally disposable to me. I'll grab some top tier spice with virtually no drawback on it and go out and hunt. Food, Docs... let em rot and laugh at people grinding em

* Existing loot and quest rewards made either useless or irrelevant... For me personally, this is the biggest area of concern post CU. There just doesn't seem to be a chase that I can obsess over and spend in game time on anymore. I've hit weapon caps for most of my gear (or are holding onto untouchable converted weps) so theres no reason to continue hunting gorax/krayt/geos for that hope of soemthing uber. Quest or limited schematic weapons all got nerfed to hell in back due to poor re-positioning during CU conversion so I will not spend time chasing de-10/scythe/geo pistol schems/on and on. Existing quests, aside from nyms it seems, to this day continue to drop absolutely worthless armor, weps or components where at a time it would be worth doing a themepark for something like form fitted stocks. Even big chases like RIS have become pointless because the creatures are (or were for a time) a joke to kill and again, things like enhancements don't work so why track them down (or why bother crafting a suit with the working parts because the unworking parts will eventually be fixed). Even new looted weps from necrosis or the avatar, once obtained, are either no better then anything else, or not worth chasing after you've pocketed one or two. Space, for me, has been the only place left in this game I can go out on that loot chase.

* There is no longer any "wild" world in this game. For soem time the game has had a mix of spawning issues (like gcw bases hogging things) but theres a bigger problem then that. As a mid to high level player there are 2 maybe 3 planets in the game that have *ANYTHING* to do on them but forced CL missions, and the lower level planets are totally AFKable. I could drive across most planets blindfolded (rori, dant for example) if I didn't think i'd run up and get caught by a tree stump or a harvester. Thats just bad. Worse, is running soemthing like nyms or running to see the hermit for the "hero" quest and not pulling aggro once the whole time... SOME HERO. The grey con not aggroing chagnes that went in, and then things like the more recent mask secnt changes do little for me then remove content and make me pay less attention to the game / make more of the game a time sink. At this point I see no reason for their being other then to create lag. Even more subtle changes like turning a lot of lower level NPCs and creatures from red dots to yellow dots have sterilized things for low level players. All the worries about a CL1 on tat getting killed visting their harvesters or factories didn't materialize, why, because you turned everyhting from kreetles to desert demons non-aggro. Sure, I complained when a kreetle would break mask scent 9 out of 10 times, but it gave the game some texture and kept me on my toes instead of some mechanical drive out 3k to harv and drive back being nothing but pointing my bike in the right direction then getting up to get a drink. There were other resolutions to problems of time vs. xp (for one I think low cl criters have way too much ham, for another I think more combat profs need aoes) which I think was the biggest problem pre-aggro changes

Maybe I've been around too long and it was inevitable anyway, but its how I feel regardless, but at the moment I'm feeling like there is little else on the ground game at the moment but pvp'ing with your current top end gear or grinding out FS or a template change by running endless, monotonous, identical, riskles missions.. and after a few weeks of that.. well.. one begins to question why they're sticking around.

New quests, random cl80 elites, or other "minimal" content or nice, but at the core of the game things are just really, really thin and I don't see that changing with what I know of your future plans and the way things have seemed to be pigeonholed in the post CU design ( by example: BE is now a med crafter, smuggler is now a combat profession, lack of viability of hybrid combat/crafter temps)

I hope things get better, I hope you can find a way to add some depth and texture into the ground game, but for now - for me - the game is little more then tending harvesters or vendors then "hiding" in space to help others, go 'looking' for a battle (or having a battle find me), or chasing that perfect gun or capacitor.

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For the love of everything holy, please, smaller paragraphs.

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Tiggs wrote:

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Ecnirp wrote:

Fix the bugs first!!

And for the love of god.... test the publishes better.

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We hear you and moving forward our publishs will be smaller in scope but willinclude top priority bug fixes along with minimal content.

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Awesome job Tiggs!..Thank you very much for fixing bugs above content.

***edited to remove my non-constructive rant***

Mark my vote down for bug fixes {X}

Message Edited by Beltegrity on 07-27-2005 10:28 AM