Development Cycle Archive

Let me get this straight, Jedi being able to get revived was an -exploit-? The whole doctor skill that saves anyone from a cloning center doesn't work on the people that (in theory) can't go to a cloning center because they're 'hardcore'? Seems cheap.

Though they did say they wanted Jedi hard, this seems punitive. Why not just block medic xp reviving jedi? Or is it primarily the BHs getting 'kill the jedi' missions that's being exploited, and it's the docs that are bringing them back to be used again? if it's the latter it's solved nothing (and been punitive), since the skill-reset jedi can do whatever it was that got the BH on them in the first place.

I not sure if this is the right location for this but here goes...

Since after yesterdays restart my store was completely empty yet the status says 167 items in the house. ALL my furniture, vendors, etc. are gone or invisible. Does anyone know what I need to do to fix this issue. Iam losing business fast and can't do anything without my store. Iam a crafter by the way....I waited for 6 hours checking every hour and still nothing loads. HELP!!!!

What about the obvious credits dupe still around! I did report it to SOE again. Peole have sold over 20 million credits on ebay in last few days for 75.00 5 million lol. And now have another 30 million up for sale. This is Farstar! new server... not possible to make like over 20 million per day constant on a new server lol without a dupe. If you add up all the little guys doing mission you wouldn't even get that many credits into the economy! ( rmember missions are the only way money gets into the supposed player economy ) NOW IT IS VERY SIMPLE! SOE goes into the game and checks all thos on farstar that have over say 20 million? 100 million and follows them around or see how they got those credits... then get the dupe and fix it! SOE did this before! They were warned about a credit dup and didn't fix it for weeks until the economies were shot. This time they have a chance to fix their mistake. I do know I and many others were sticking around to have a new server free from dupes etc.. I will be leaving if this is not fixed... why sit and bust your but all day to become a master armorsmith/wepsmith/stim chem etc.. to craft over and over the same items to make a few million when Little johnny duper can amke 1 billion in 1 hour and ruin it fo erveryone? Please this needs to be fixed... before the trickle down affect kills yet another server.

Dear Blair,

It must be a wierd world for a development team of an MMORPG to live in. Sure, when you leave the office or studio, just another balmy California day. But holy cow, these forums contain some of the most aggressive and vigorous community interaction I have ever seen or heard of anywhere. People care pretty deeply about this game, from what I can see. It is amazing, because I don't often see people caring this deeply about anything else out there. Lot of intelligent and not so intelligent posts, and unbelievable conviction behind them.

Interacting with a mass swatch of American society must be some wierd business. It reminds me of the gap that lies between politicians and constituencies. A small number of civic leaders trying to make an imperfect system work as well as it can for a massive number ofcitizens. This seems to be the same sort of thing, where a small number of developers try to make an imperfect arrangement of code work as well as it can for a massive number of clients.

What is it like trying to organize and make sense of an impossible number of needs like this? A lot of people seem to feel that, like the politicians, the developers here don't listen to the masses. I am betting that this is wrong, though. I am betting that it just can't be done. I am also betting, however, that some number of people move through the consumer feedback and catalog game issues to arrange in some sort of master plan of attack in the patching process.

Is it possible to make a publication of that constantly changing document, so that people can see a comprehensive list of acknowledged issues and the general nature of difficulty and timing inherent in coordinating solutions?

How erratic is the code, and how do the infinite inputs of data from client to server and back again affect the stability of the code. How frequently do you encounter that a fix in one area of the code has the potential to generate unforseen changes, which could result in bugs, in other areas of the data? I think folks have no real idea how things spin specifically with regard to this particular design aspect of the project. Maybe, like politicians trying to explain the details of legislative process to the average person, this type of information is just as difficult to explain. Of course, I have no idea, being an average person myself.

See, people need a map. My guess is that there are some pretty good reasons why, say, bounty hunters are giving you so much trouble in the redesigning of faulty game mechanics. But no one really understands what your challenges are behind the scenes on that score. Maybe the lawyers have knit together your bindings in such a way that you aren't allowed to reallt talk about a lot of these things. Maybe the law is a necessary protection against a public that has developed a crude sort of savvy in making money off of just about anything. Maybe there's a way around it, though, where you can give people that insight into where all the big and little consumer griefs with the game fit into the bigger picture of its difficult and continuing development.

Anyway, Blair, just my two cents. Folks really like this game, and even with all its problems, it does the number of allowing me and my guild mates to get online and socialize in a relatively safe and escapist way in something kind of like a movie. The game is super-competitive, too. Sometimes, though, I feel like we could use some crazy diagram that shows someone is taking notes on all the potentially fixable errata, and that there is a master plan which constantly changes and may or may not make good on promises from one day to the next due to high variability of results encountered when servicing the code.

Bau Beel'Drek, CRA Guildmaster, Scylla

Holy cow, never mind...scratch that last post...taking a look through the "State of the Game" thread and its references to some of the correspondence-related threadwork. I guess folks need to just read through these areas of the boards to get a better idea of how this team has been working things. It must be the intensity of the flames by people who want instant gratification on things (ain't no saint here myself on that score).

Anyway, nice stuff. I can't believe how much you folks type a day.

Blair -

When are the constant game crashes with the 11/13/03 patch going to be fixed? I have submitted 19 bug reports (one for each crash) since the patch went live. I've crashed while sitting still and chatting, combat, crafting, loading,and even filling out a bug report on the crashes. This game is unplayable for those of us that are getting these crashes. I have called Tech Support and all my drivers are updated, they don't know what's wrong (they deny it's a problem with the game), I have submitted tickets but the CSR's say that the QA team is looking at the problems. I would like an answer from someone that knows what's going on. I will be calling the accouting department and demand that I get credit since the game is completely unplayable in it's current condition. My lag still isn't fixed from the 10/8/03 patch. I see this patch as a mistake and was loaded without enough proper testing.

- Travin