A Pandora's Box of Bugs

[GentlemanAndAScholar]

Turbine, in all honesty, I think you are doing a disservice to yourselves and the player base by trying to release content faster than you can test and fix bugs for. I might not know the intricacies of your code base and development environment, but I sure do know what unsustainable code bases look like and their effect on end product. Yesterday's update is yet one more prime example of major bugs that make their way into production. Had more than a fair share of friends telling me not to bother with the new quests because they bug frequently and can't be completed. We had the Lawful room in PoP bug and never surrender the orbs even though the optional was successfully completed. Not sure if intended or not but FoM is not working against webs or hold monster/person plus all other malaise and bugs reported in these forums.

So, for a long time many people has asked to have an update to be exclusively for bug fixes (old and new). If the higher ups at Turbine think new content trumps bug fixes, tell them think again. New content is worthless if it's buggy and a buggy game is more likely to drive players away that just about any other reason. There's no reason a product should be updated to add more features when it has a LONG backlog of bugs needed to be fixed.

IMO, I think it will be healthy for the game, long term, if the devs or their managers were to think beyond the quick buck and decide to add value to the game by dedicating an entire update to fixing the long list of issues that have become so prevalent in the game.

[DrakHar]

Turbine, in all honesty, I think you are doing a disservice to yourselves and the player base by trying to release content faster than you can test and fix bugs for. I might not know the intricacies of your code base and development environment, but I sure do know what unsustainable code bases look like and their effect on end product. Yesterday's update is yet one more prime example of major bugs that make their way into production. Had more than a fair share of friends telling me not to bother with the new quests because they bug frequently and can't be completed. We had the Lawful room in PoP bug and never surrender the orbs even though the optional was successfully completed. Not sure if intended or not but FoM is not working against webs or hold monster/person plus all other malaise and bugs reported in these forums.

So, for a long time many people has asked to have an update to be exclusively for bug fixes (old and new). If the higher ups at Turbine think new content trumps bug fixes, tell them think again. New content is worthless if it's buggy and a buggy game is more likely to drive players away that just about any other reason. There's no reason a product should be updated to add more features when it has a LONG backlog of bugs needed to be fixed.

IMO, I think it will be healthy for the game, long term, if the devs or their managers were to think beyond the quick buck and decide to add value to the game by dedicating an entire update to fixing the long list of issues that have become so prevalent in the game.

While I agree, we now have like ninety billion threads like this...

[alvarego]

We had the Lawful room in PoP bug and never surrender the orbs even though the optional was successfully completed.

I think I found a workaround about this bug, when the optional is done remove the orb from the outside where the lever is, you don't get the ones inside but at least you can go on with the quest using that lonely orb ...

About the rest of the post, I also ignore the developement enviroment but can make a guess, there it goes :D

http://s3.amazonaws.com/files.posterous.com/temp-2011-02-07/jijIwdnlGizlluAEbqelgsEeDGqurstzocnytvCAlmqrhAkuII nIwBeBJuIw/tree_swing_development_requirements.jpg.scaled1000 .jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJFZAE65UYRT34AOQ&Expires=1345557466&Signature=sznqU6o%2BGEdl1jLgLQTelvj%2FUn4%3D

[krackythehoodedone]

I'll think you will find Turbine answer to greater powers than us

So if the release date is X. Then X it will be come what may.

In years gone by when Turbine weren't ready they simply pushed back the release dates.

Update 9 by nearly 6 months for those who remember.

Guess their Devs are feeling the pressure as we speak

[ThreeEyedBob]

How about U16 - The Bug Fix Update

Purely fixing of bugs in all their horrible varieties. Now THAT would be something.

[Bahgs]

How about U16 - The Bug Fix Update

Purely fixing of bugs in all their horrible varieties. Now THAT would be something.

There is (at least) one problem with this concept. After U16 - The Bug Fix Update, you would need U17 - The Fix the Bugs introduced in U16 Update.

[Jedamijo]

We had the Lawful room in PoP bug and never surrender the orbs even though the optional was successfully completed.

This one was around pre-U15. I ran it three times and it never surrendered the orbs after successful completion. Only thing to do as already stated was to remove the original orb and move on.

[SlipperyPete]

Turbine is for profit business. As long as customers are willing to keep paying for the buggy content and turbine points do not expect a thing to change.

Pretty simple actually.

[GentlemanAndAScholar]

Turbine is for profit business. As long as customers are willing to keep paying for the buggy content and turbine points do not expect a thing to change.

Pretty simple actually.

That's precisely the point I'm trying to make. People will not find it reasonable to keep paying for a buggy game, specially when it's not just "inconvenient" bugs, but rather game-breaking, fun-breaking, time-wasting bugs. So, yes, you'd think that being such a simple concept, that Turbine higher-ups would see the value in getting their game fixed instead of the current state of disrepair. Soon enough it'll be so bad that won't be able to produce ANY content without breaking the game entirely. It's a law of software complexity (so-called technical debt). Just as any debt, when it goes unpaid, it will eventually balloon and crush you. If the higher ups won't listen to their tech leads, then perhaps they will listen to a consultant (I'm not one, just saying that sometimes the higher-ups need an external source to tell them what their technical team has been telling them all along).

[karsion]

That's precisely the point I'm trying to make. People will not find it reasonable to keep paying for a buggy game, specially when it's not just "inconvenient" bugs, but rather game-breaking, fun-breaking, time-wasting bugs. So, yes, you'd think that being such a simple concept, that Turbine higher-ups would see the value in getting their game fixed instead of the current state of disrepair. Soon enough it'll be so bad that won't be able to produce ANY content without breaking the game entirely. It's a law of software complexity (so-called technical debt). Just as any debt, when it goes unpaid, it will eventually balloon and crush you. If the higher ups won't listen to their tech leads, then perhaps they will listen to a consultant (I'm not one, just saying that sometimes the higher-ups need an external source to tell them what their technical team has been telling them all along).

They are also money-wasting bugs as all the people who were charged multiple times for single transaction can attest to :)

[Siro]

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9396244/whathaveIdone.jpg

[karsion]

That's precisely the point I'm trying to make. People will not find it reasonable to keep paying for a buggy game, specially when it's not just "inconvenient" bugs, but rather game-breaking, fun-breaking, time-wasting bugs. So, yes, you'd think that being such a simple concept, that Turbine higher-ups would see the value in getting their game fixed instead of the current state of disrepair. Soon enough it'll be so bad that won't be able to produce ANY content without breaking the game entirely. It's a law of software complexity (so-called technical debt). Just as any debt, when it goes unpaid, it will eventually balloon and crush you. If the higher ups won't listen to their tech leads, then perhaps they will listen to a consultant (I'm not one, just saying that sometimes the higher-ups need an external source to tell them what their technical team has been telling them all along).

They are also money-wasting bugs as all the people who were charged multiple times for single transaction have found out:)

Oops, silly me, sorry for doublepost.