Development Cycle Archive
Thread: New Team Comments Producer J. Allen Brack
Everseeker wrote:
Can't say for SURE (Since I don't work there) but I am about 99.997% sure that they already use a bug tracking database (Such as PVCS) The question becomes one of.... What can the dev's let us see.
Consider the fact that such a database is probably running a couple hundred "open" items at any one time. Also consider the fact that, mixed in with the rest, are game exploits that need to be patched, and "content" that would be considered as a "spoiler" if it became widely known [For example...Bug: container under Jabba's butt does not contains a +22 Flame Thrower instead of the +2....]
So, someone would have to "sanitize" the list and publish it. This list is NOT going o be the one the dev's work from. Their PVCS (or whatever) has the functionality they need to record builds/code checkouts/change history/etc...etc...etc... The "web" page would be just a window for the end users...
They don't have anyone tasked with such a job...
(Of course, If they NEED someone, I could send my resume)
I'm aware of this, although thank you for bringing it to the attention of many who may not have. I also realize this would most likely be a great deal of work for whomever is responsible for "cleaning it up" (considering the size of the game...and the IMMENSE amount of bugs 
)for we the end-users, but, and this is a Kimo-sized but(t), I think it would be well worth the expense off skullsweat and man/woman hours if it would keep the active community more well-informed of, well, what the devs are well-informed of.
The ID/IT/etc forums were an excellent start, and I think this "Known Issues" page would help the community even further.
I suppose I would understand if the idea was discarded out-of-hand given the myriad other details on their collective plate these days, but I would still be disappointed in the lost opportunity.
Blair wrote:
R2DADROID wrote:
Often it feels like what we write is futile and won't be read by red names.
And often we get no response at all, and then months later we see the notes for Publish 7 that goes a LONG way to addressing wants and concerns we've had for ages.
Can we expect to keep seeing red names in the forums, and maybe even on a more frequent basis?
Good question. Honestly, this is something that each developer struggles with on a daily basis The question is always where can we do the most good. In my case, I usually focus on communicating Update notes and server downtime and relying on Thunderheart to answer questions as to why does X work the way that it does. Also, understand the there are literally hundreds of thousands of posts on the boards right now. The fact is we can’t keep up with you even if we tried, so what we can respond to will always feel like a drop in the ocean. If you read the Publish 7 notes and were pleased that means we are listening and responding to you. The process of getting something out to live once it is complete isn’t swift for a lot of valid reasons
Thanks for responding
I've never gotten such a lengthy, good repsonse from a dev before.
I totally understand that it takes a long time to develop things in any game.
I think the pace that new features get added here, to a game already in play, is astounding.
I think Doom 3 was announced before this game, and it's still not out yet.
Half-Life 2 has taken over 5 years, and keeps getting postponed all the time.
That says something about how long it takes to develop these games.
I was commenting on how players proposed some new ideas and changes months ago, and, although the devs have said little about acknowledging them, they are coming to the game.
That includes little things like lighting and moving stuff up walls in houses, and big things like the two most requested additional mounts.
And I notice the level of communication getting better, and it's much appreciated.
The other question I have has basically been asked in this thread is:
I file bug reports often and have for a long time. I play mostly in live. Many of the bugs that I've reported are still in the game.
Others that were reported by many players many months ago get announcements from devs months later that sound like they just discovered a bug no one had heard of.
Is there some way of letting us know that our /bug reports are not a waste of time?
By the way,can you and the rest of the dev team refrain from copying over directly from Microsoft Word? Because it makes it really difficult to include quotes from you in our messages. I hardly even knew what HTML looked like before I started using these forums, and I've used the internet for 13 years. I've learned how to edit HTML, albeit marginally, just writing here.
AnmeldungStinkt wrote:I would like to know why you state SWG to be an MMO instead of an MMORPG.
Living the Star Wars saga is playing a role isnt it ?
Because three characters are easier to type than 6, I imagine... the same reason people use "MMORPG" rather than "Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game".
Lazarus Long
Mohr wrote:
Its interesting to me how they are going to fix the HAM system so people don't kill themselves doing specials (Carbineer etc) but prevent the rest of the people from spamming specials (BH KD/Eyeshot). These are two very different directions to be fixed in one fix.
I've also read Dev comments that the new combat system is pretty much going to stop people from spamming specials? Does this mean we now get to enjoy the wonder of auto-attack instead of weaving together complex series of combat specials (spam?)?
It seems to me if they really wanted to fix Carbineers etc from killing themselves they would rescale the HAM costs for those specific cases to achieve balance instead of ripping out the entire system and replacing it with something new (and untested/balanced). This makes me think they are doing this for other reasons they haven't shared...which makes me think its going to be some kind of mass nerfing as someone previously stated.
It makes me feel less sympathy for how busy they are if they are spending time on things that people don't view as broken when there are a multitude of very obvious bugs and broken things in the game that need work. Sony needs to get serious about finishing what they have started in a quality way before redoing entire parts of the game to somehow magically achieve balance.
Based on what I've seen on Testcenter before they removed it concerning HAM and specials.
Essentially where you you take damage now in your ham bars for using specials, all of this "cost" will be shoved onto your secondaries instead. How many specials you can spam will be entirely dependent on your secondaries stats.
That alone should give you some insight as to how special spamming will work out.
In the future those who spam the most specials will be those who have raised they're secondaries.
Now the regen of your secondaries... thats the big ??? I have about this. I'm not sure what the rate of regen on the secondaries is or what determines that.From what I had seen though it was pretty quick. I guess what I'm personally wondering is how buffs will factor into this. I'm thinking as it had existed there was no way you could increase the regen rate of the secondaries. So maybe all doctor buffs get you is a longer span of special spamming.... as where now depending on the profession and buffs used, special costs can be almost entirely eliminated.
gratz on your whatever, now can you please fix the Combat Medic Area of Effect mind poison that always hits, can be thrown further than you can shoot, and goes through walls. A fix for that would be a date I would celebrate in the years to come!
Natanial Storm
Essentially where you you take damage now in your ham bars for using specials, all of this "cost" will be shoved onto your secondaries instead. How many specials you can spam will be entirely dependent on your secondaries stats.
Gamble wrote:
For those of you asking for a bug listing page I think you're asking way more than you think you are. I am a QA Specialist for a small software company and I funnel all the defects from customers (us in this case) to inhouse (company) and it's an overwhelming task for a program that weighs in at a total of just under 60 megs (granted it's mostly calculations). To add another option to see what's visible for users like us is next to impossible. Our small software package has anywhere from 50-200 open defects at any given time. In terms of galaxies, I'd be surprised if they didn't have somewhere closer to a thousand. To say if it can be seen by the customer or not is not a 30 minute task of simply checking yes or no on a checkbox. Generally someone responsible for what the public is allowed to see (no we shouldn't see all problems) has to OK most if not all of what goes out which requires communication w/ people who have other things to do on each issue. Assuming this WAS done though, how many people would then realize the work put into it, appreciate it for 5 minutes then realize that the time could have been spent fixing the defects and complain about bad time management?
As an alternative viewpoint....
I manage the development of enhancements to a complex software product that's in Production use. As a programmer on this team for several years,I came to believe that one of the biggest problems in achieving customer satisfaction is "unpleasant surprises." These are cases where, after some change is turned over in a release, customers point at the developers and say, "We didn't know that's what you were doing!" whiledevelopers point at the customerand respond, "We didn't know that's what you really wanted!"The result:multiple reworksand general unhappiness and frustration on all sides. (Sound familiar?)
The cure for unpleasant surprises is improvedcommunication early in the development process (i.e, before implementation actually starts).One of the first things I did when I took over asteam lead a few years agowas to develop a Web-based changereporting tool. It automatically reads our internal trouble ticket tracking database, extracts relevant details, and displays them in a searchable format on a Web page that is visible by developers, customers, and management alike.
The result of providing early visibility into the development processhas been a marked improvement in customer satisfaction, and that is derived directly from reducing unpleasant surprises. Instead of discovering at turnover time that-- oops! --what we gave them isn't really what they wanted, we find these things out early enough in the development process to be able to do something about it. Weget better requirements becauseeverybody can see exactly what the customer is asking for and request clarification. And we deliver more appropriate changes because everybody can seethe assigneddeveloper's analysis and implementation plan. Our error rate dropped dramatically, and the number of correct changes we make in every release increased significantly.
I see no reason why something similar can't work for SWG. Frankly, yes, it is possible for some responsible individualto simply click on a check box to specify which issues (if any) should not be visible to the general public. Thatis an appropriate task fora developer lead, or designer, or producer,and it'senabled bysetting up your trouble ticket tool to require thatan appropriateproject leadexplicitly check or uncheck the "allow public visibility" box in order to move the ticket to the next status. This should not require an appreciable amount of time compared to analysis, implementation, and testingtime, but even if takes an extra hour per ticket it still pays for itself several times overin better task prioritization (based on customer, developer, and management feedback) and more accurate change delivery.
I'm a big fan of many of the recent visiblechanges toSWG's development process. Hiring Thunderheart -- big win. Focusing each release on a specific theme -- big win. Communicating some details ofplanned changes two publishes in advance --big win. Each of these stepsalone would be helpful; in combination they are a very positive sign for this game and I salute everyone involved in making them happen.
But ultimately customer satisfaction isn't just about "telling them whatwe're going to give them."Real satisfactionwill come from making the customer an active part of the earlydevelopment process by enabling two-way communication ofactual scheduledchanges before work begins on those changes. The big win here comes from finding out whatcustomersreally want before you've invested too much development time into less valuable changes.
I have to add here that I know perfectly well that sometimes what customers say they want isn't what they really need. Frankly, sometimes what they say they wan't isn't something they can be given, and sometimes it's something they shouldn't be given even if it is possible to do it. Tthe final responsibility for what actually gets worked rests with the developers and producers. In the cases where popular requests must be turned down, an early two-way communication system gives SOE the chance to identify these issues before they become sore spots. This will allowpotential problems to be headed off byspending a little extra time explaining tothe customer community why the particularchange they're requestingwouldn't be good for the gameor can't be done. Again, early communication of planned developmenttasks is the key.
So to conclude,I strongly support not just a "current issues" Web page that someone has to remember to manually update, but an "issues being worked and their statuses" Web page that's automatically generated from the officialdevelopment assignmentdatabase. The former is better than nothing, but the latter is better still, and I encourage the good people at SOE to continue the positive steps they've taken by implementing this suggestion.
--Flatfingers
"Their are many that feel strongly about one thing or another and it is good to voice such views but when you are working on something like a painting or craftinga table, it is one thing to have someone say "the sky should be darker" or the table needs more legs and here is why. but when people are spending money to use the table while it is being worked onpeople tend to be more like "THIS TABLE NEEDS MORE LEGS! FIX IT NOW!" insted of seeing that if theycould help show how to make the table work biggerand better for everyone, it is easy to yell for more then it isto show how to make more possible."
Commendable view. Here's one for you to consider:
10 minute waiting time. Remove it or at least reduce it to something bearable i.e. 1-2 mins. How can this be so difficult to understand? The fix just does not seem all that difficult to put in. It is stuff like these that cause all the negative comments.
SOE Dev Team DO DESERVE SOME (not all) of the negative comments. They can't seem to prioritize what is important i.e. FUN should be #1, not a "perfect" system.
The new dungeion, pets can't go past the first door. Yes, there is a 'fix' coming out. BUT DID THEY DO ANY SORT OF SERIOUS TESTING before the dungeon was released? This is just one example where the problem is so obvious that it painfully points out to the fact SHODDY WORK is the order of the day. Shoddy work IS ACCEPTABLE by SOE standard. Andthey pat themselves on the back. Some people should be fired for such SHODDY WORK.
MMORPG is a tough game to make. Is it a valid excuse for shoddiness?
Nuu wrote:"Their are many that feel strongly about one thing or another and it is good to voice such views but when you are working on something like a painting or crafting a table, it is one thing to have someone say "the sky should be darker" or the table needs more legs and here is why. but when people are spending money to use the table while it is being worked on people tend to be more like "THIS TABLE NEEDS MORE LEGS! FIX IT NOW!" insted of seeing that if they could help show how to make the table work bigger and better for everyone, it is easy to yell for more then it is to show how to make more possible. "
Commendable view. Here's one for you to consider:
10 minute waiting time. Remove it or at least reduce it to something bearable i.e. 1-2 mins. How can this be so difficult to understand? The fix just does not seem all that difficult to put in. It is stuff like these that cause all the negative comments.
SOE Dev Team DO DESERVE SOME (not all) of the negative comments. They can't seem to prioritize what is important i.e. FUN should be #1, not a "perfect" system.
The new dungeion, pets can't go past the first door. Yes, there is a 'fix' coming out. BUT DID THEY DO ANY SORT OF SERIOUS TESTING before the dungeon was released? This is just one example where the problem is so obvious that it painfully points out to the fact SHODDY WORK is the order of the day. Shoddy work IS ACCEPTABLE by SOE standard. And they pat themselves on the back. Some people should be fired for such SHODDY WORK.
MMORPG is a tough game to make. Is it a valid excuse for shoddiness?
My viewpoint is that they are doing what they can.
The reason for what some may feel "non critical" fixes in patches is a result of that particular team e.g. Artwork, getting something done and them lumping it in the patch.
They do test and test quite a bit. If you think ANYTHING here is even REMOTELY bad, you should have been here (a) during early Beta 3 or (b) on release day.
As Q posted to the forums once Beta3 started working right for more than 3 hours at a time, "there's only so much you can tell with a limited player base and bots" Testing processes are never perfect, neither are games that require clusters of servers connected to other clusters of servers to run. MMOG's are a lot more complicated under the hood than most people care to realize or even explore.
Ever play EQ/Shadowbane/Ultima Online/Dark age of Camelot/Ascherons Call??? You'd discover that this "shoddy work" you speak of is a fact of LIFE for a MMOG, especially one that is under a year old when it's all still very new, even to the people who feed their families by working on it.
Without the Devs this game would simply not exist. At some point you've got to give them some thanks, if for no other reason then giving you something to gripe about.
If you can't hack it, keep your 15 bucks and go watch a movie; 2 hours of bug-free entertainment in a room with a janitor that does "shoddy work" because the floor is sticky. Just like the sticky floor, the bugs are not going to be gone any time soon. So you can either enjoy the game, enjoy the people, and thank the devs for their work on it or, age old advice, "If you think you can do better, do it yourself"
Niven