Ranger Archive

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Jolandir wrote:

The following was todays experience in part.

1st you really need to fix the TC servers stability. It is way to frustrating right now. Please do not think ofadding anything else to test until you get this fixed.

My understanding right now is that this is a "client stability" issue ... but its something that the Devs are working on because the instability was the result of a change to something within the upgraded system. There is no doubt in my mind this is the number one priority right now.

From my experiences the best thing you can do right now is avoid cover or players using it. When I'm alone I have no problem with CTDs. When I'm near the public frogs I have more, when I'm in an area with a lot of random testers I have a problem again.

2nd, on TC 4, my character on Bria can't use his armor (just about everyone has composite armor), and there are no blue frogs to get a new set. I too am curious to see what the conversion is going to be like. I've yet to figure it out myself. Yes I guess you could buy it but why are we making it that time consumming when we are trying to test? I tried to use /planet to ask anyone on Naboo, or Corellia if they knew of an exchange system or what the command was for respectingyour character so you could at least get the armor on, but /planet doesn't work. That's right I tried both /planet and the planet tab and neither worked. So I tried /bug, guess what, there are no catagories in /bug yet, so I tried through the holocron help system, nope you can't do that either. OK, why do we have a server on TC that you can't send /bug reports in for problems you find on it? The respec command is out there... I read about it in one of the threads the other day. Aplayer was complaining about not being able to respec their jedi appropriately. Try the Holocron and I'll do my best to track down thepost. I read it last nightso I'm pretty sure its there.

3rd, so I went to TC EP3 tried my two characters there, and at least had a little more success. Got booted still, and yes I have updated my drivers and I have done full scan so many times it is not funny, and it still has crash problems. I finally decided to try my M Rifleman/M Ranger. I got resources to make camo kits and made the kits for the various planets I wanted to try hunting on. Then I went to Dath and tried to apply camo. Uh Oh! There isn't any conceal command anymore. So I tried highlighting my character and then use the camo kit directly. Nope nothing on the radial dial will let you apply it. So I try /conceal, LOL, it tells me I am not in the right position and state to use conceal shot.

The Alpha Testersare most definitely working at it. The Devs are aware of this problem.

Ok, so forget the camo kits they are useless. So I headout and I get near my mission a Rancor lair. I get off my bike and use maskscent. It tells me I have maskscent on, but there isn't any icon under your characters stats, like with other states and mods, to let you know you really are in /maskscent. So I trust it.

Ok, I get to within about 90m and I hit /cover. I am told that I can't take cover because "something" is close enough to see me. You have to be kidding. I look around and there is some grayed out yellow con about 20m away I try to shoot it but it says you can't see that. Grrrrrrr. So how did it see me so I couldn't put on /cover? Well after trying move away a little and not being able to go to /cover in my frustrations I fail to see the Rancor move up to within 40m of me. He finally sees me and aggros on to me. I kneel and start shooting. I am a cl 80 and it is a cl 81 (I checked this carefully), so I have up to this time on TC been able to fight anything that is only one cl over me. Not this time. It doesn't matter how much I shoot it, it's regeneration is so fast that it is back to full before I can get my next shot off. After about two minutes of this he finally incaps me. Grrrrrrrrrr. Ok, so I move off so I don't get incaps again and sit down and rest. I start thinkingwhy would this creature next to meeffectly stopmy hiding in cover in the first place. I can't imagine getting ready to fight an NPC or opposing faction member out in the wild and being told, sorry you can't take cover because a Dwarf Nuna is within 90m of you. If this stays this way it will effectively eliminate /cover completely from any combat and just about all hunting situations.

Ok about five minustes have gone by so I decide to try again. I move where there doesn't appear to be any other creatures within at least 40m of me. So I hit the /cover icon, and it tells me I am not in the right position. Ok so I go prone and hit cover. It is almost done when, yep it crashes. So restart my computer, come back, once again do a full scan, and get back on.

I find my character lying prone and almost invisible, and not on the radar. Wow! Very cool! so I sneak up within range and try /conceal shot. It says you are in the wrong state to use conceal shot. Grrrrr. So I stand, go prone and use /cover again. This time no crash and it says "you take cover", and I never changed being almost invisible nor did I ever appear on the radar, and so I remained this way. So I crawl up once again. I get ready and target the rancor and then hit /conceal shot. What!It saysyou are in the wrong state. What!? So I stand and go prone again and do the rest. The same message. So I finally get up and head back to the starport and all the time I am off the radar and almost invisible. It looks cool guys, but it really does need to work. I get to the starport and you guessed it I crashed for the fifth time. So I quite testing for the day.

Can't comment on the cover skill. I don't use it because of the client instability. I spend more time tracking and looking to make sure the Ranger stuff is in place properly.

Please guys look into these problems, and please get them fixed. Thanks.

Jolandir

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Hi Jolandir,

Just adding a few comments to your mail that might lend a different persective, but aren't meant either as an apologia for the issues you are experiencing or in any way as 'flames'.

I'd point out that I'm currently off TC so am basing my comments on previous experience of the CU test, testing on TC-Prime and focus testing in general.

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Jolandir wrote:

The following was todays experience in part.

1st you really need to fix the TC servers stability. It is way to frustrating right now. Please do not think ofadding anything else to test until you get this fixed.

Have you cc'd this over from the bug threads on the TC forum? The profession correspondents don't really have any more access to the folk that get stuff 'fixed' than you or I.

The Dev's have had an announcement up, and a note on the bug thread, saying they are aware of the stability issue and I think we can take their word for it that 'engineers are working on this now'.

2nd, on TC 4, my character on Bria can't use his armor (just about everyone has composite armor), and there are no blue frogs to get a new set. Yes I guess you could buy it but why are we making it that time consumming when we are trying to test? I tried to use /planet to ask anyone on Naboo, or Corellia if they knew of an exchange system or what the command was for respecting your character so you could at least get the armor on, but /planet doesn't work. That's right I tried both /planet and the planet tab and neither worked. So I tried /bug, guess what, there are no catagories in /bug yet, so I tried through the holocron help system, nope you can't do that either. OK, why do we have a server on TC that you can't send /bug reports in for problems you find on it?

TC4 is the conversion server? It is intended to be an exact copy of a standard production server so that issues with the conversion process can be highlighted.

There are no blue frogs simply because there will be no blue frogs on Live. The crafting process has to be checked out 'as in Live' in as much as the combat process has been being tested.

If you write up your bug report in the closest matching category (the lack of a 'free text' box for bug reps has been an ongoing issue on TC for at least a year now. The bug rep tool needs a radical overhaul, again that's a known issue) withthe following information on the first line: Character name, location (including server and grid reference), and then a clear descriptiojn of the problem it will be in the system and will be assessed along with all the others that are being recieved.

If you copy the text of your bug rep to Notepad it's pretty easy to then transfer the info to the bug thread in the TC forums when you get the chance. (Obviously if the system CTD's before you get a chance to do a rep, post as much info as you can on the forum once you get back online)

3rd, so I went to TC EP3 tried my two characters there, and at least had a little more success. Got booted still, and yes I have updated my drivers and I have done full scan so many times it is not funny, and it still has crash problems. I finally decided to try my M Rifleman/M Ranger. I got resources to make camo kits and made the kits for the various planets I wanted to try hunting on. Then I went to Dath and tried to apply camo. Uh Oh! There isn't any conceal command anymore. So I tried highlighting my character and then use the camo kit directly. Nope nothing on the radial dial will let you apply it. So I try /conceal, LOL, it tells me I am not in the right position and state to use conceal shot.

Ok, so forget the camo kits they are useless. So I headout and I get near my mission a Rancor lair. I get off my bike and use maskscent. It tells me I have maskscent on, but there isn't any icon under your characters stats, like with other states and mods, to let you know you really are in /maskscent. So I trust it.

I believe there was a thread on the Ranger and possibly TC forums saying 'don't use conceal' and highlighting a couple of issues that were causing problems? Unfortunately it's a 'feature' of doing anything on a test server that, if you do something that is known to be bugged and it gives you problems, all you can do is make a note of it and either try to find a work around or log out and start over from 'clean'.

It IS intensely frustrating. Moreso when it's something like /conceal that we know should be doing something else, and you've already had a bucketload of other buggy moments. But half the time in test all you can do is shrug your shoulders, think OK won't do that again, and start over. The other half of the time? Well, the system probably crashed...

Ok, I get to within about 90m and I hit /cover. I am told that I can't take cover because "something" is close enough to see me. You have to be kidding. I look around and there is some grayed out yellow con about 20m away I try to shoot it but it says you can't see that. Grrrrrrr. So how did it see me so I couldn't put on /cover? Well after trying move away a little and not being able to go to /cover in my frustrations I fail to see the Rancor move up to within 40m of me. He finally sees me and aggros on to me. I kneel and start shooting. I am a cl 80 and it is a cl 81 (I checked this carefully), so I have up to this time on TC been able to fight anything that is only one cl over me. Not this time. It doesn't matter how much I shoot it, it's regeneration is so fast that it is back to full before I can get my next shot off. After about two minutes of this he finally incaps me. Grrrrrrrrrr. Ok, so I move off so I don't get incaps again and sit down and rest. I start thinkingwhy would this creature next to meeffectly stopmy hiding in cover in the first place. I can't imagine getting ready to fight an NPC or opposing faction member out in the wild and being told, sorry you can't take cover because a Dwarf Nuna is within 90m of you. If this stays this way it will effectively eliminate /cover completely from any combat and just about all hunting situations.

The point of testing is to highlight things like this. Get it reported, and on the 'to do' list for the codey people to sort out. Unfortunately they will be prioritising tasks and some other bugs (like CTD maybe) will be getting the biggest share of attention.

If something is close enough that it could see you, that isn't the same as it actually seeing you. It may be that, in order to simplify the amount of code needed, there's a simple proximity check, if there's something sentient in that radius the attempt wil fail. Regardless of whether it can see you at that point or you can see it.

As for not being able to attack a CL81 with a CL80 character, were you using a weapon that you were certificated for? Are there resists on the creature? How much damage did the combat log say you were doing per shot and how fast were you able to fire?

And finally, has Dathomir been 'normalised' for CL yet? If you are still in a focus test envirnment it's possible that creatures and npc's outwith the scope of the focus will not be behaving 'normally' yet. (Think of all those ultra low level critters that people aren't able to damage now even with a CL80 toon. The dev's are looking for high end testing.... join the dots.

Ok about five minustes have gone by so I decide to try again. I move where there doesn't appear to be any other creatures within at least 40m of me. So I hit the /cover icon, and it tells me I am not in the right position. Ok so I go prone and hit cover. It is almost done when, yep it crashes. So restart my computer, come back, once again do a full scan, and get back on.

I find my character lying prone and almost invisible, and not on the radar. Wow! Very cool! so I sneak up within range and try /conceal shot. It says you are in the wrong state to use conceal shot. Grrrrr. So I stand, go prone and use /cover again. This time no crash and it says "you take cover", and I never changed being almost invisible nor did I ever appear on the radar, and so I remained this way. So I crawl up once again. I get ready and target the rancor and then hit /conceal shot. What!It saysyou are in the wrong state. What!? So I stand and go prone again and do the rest. The same message. So I finally get up and head back to the starport and all the time I am off the radar and almost invisible. It looks cool guys, but it really does need to work. I get to the starport and you guessed it I crashed for the fifth time. So I quite testing for the day.

I'm sure there is a thread on either TC or the in_testing forum saying that 'states' are not always clearing until after logging. It may also have been mentioned in either TH or Tigg's posts over the past few days.

Please guys look into these problems, and please get them fixed. Thanks.

You're doing a grand job identifying problems and, by reporting them back through the bug rep tool and in_testing threads, you're helping to get them fixed. Eventually.

It's incredibly frustrating, I know. But the chances are that these bugs will take a while to iron out yet. Actually getting the problem identified, then new code written, checked for errors, possibly tested on another server, then added to the batch of fixes for the next publish hotfix all takes time.

If they hauled the server down every time a coder managed to fix 'any' bug, the server would be down so often that you'd never get on for downloading and redownloading updated files. Once there's enough to make it worthwhile they'll do it. Besides, isn't there usually a patch/publish thing on a Tuesday "normally"?

Okay, now to find out if Lithium is going to eat this reply, or if its going to behave....

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Jolandir wrote:

actually they have asked you to start testing Rori, Talus and Lok as well, but that doesn't explain why a Rancor's health regenerates faster then you can shoot it.

Guys this was just a story, about my attempt to use some of this stuff, not a rant or even a complaint. I just was trying things out and documenting all that happened. Gads!

Jolandir

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