Have Faith in our Devs

[pie2655]

As the title says, have faith in our Devs. They are here to make the game as good as they can. It will NEVER be perfect because they, like us are human. The devs are NOT trying to make you miserable, DDO is a business and that would be bad for business. If they do something you dont agree with that doesnt mean the majority of DDOers agree with you. Turbine is a business, they need to make money to keep this game going therefore they have to appease the majority before the minority. Most importantly remember there arent TONS of devs, im sure they work hard, and you CAN help apply for the mournlands and bug report on live and lammania it DOES have an effect. NOT bug reporting does more harm then good.
Overall have faith in the devs, they are NOT out to ruin the game (that would be stupid! Use common sense!). If bugs, well bug you that much do what you can to help the devs find them and fix them!

[Synsuous]

It's not the Devs you should or should not have faith in. They do not make any decisions. It is management who is to blame.

[toaf]

i want to blame who ever is in charge of checking up on the bugs found on the test server, from what i've been reading. 80% of the bugs where found on lamland. and yet they still made it live.

[Ranncore]

i want to blame who ever is in charge of checking up on the bugs found on the test server, from what i've been reading. 80% of the bugs where found on lamland. and yet they still made it live.

That's not a test server, it's a preview server.
That's supposed to be sarcasm, but really...

[mystafyi]

having faith in an entity that has shown via past precident the utter lack of ability to code... hmmmmmm
perhaps I should have faith in the crackhead on the corner to stop smoking crack?

[pie2655]

having faith in an entity that has shown via past precident the utter lack of ability to code... hmmmmmm
perhaps I should have faith in the crackhead on the corner to stop smoking crack?

Uhm really? Log in and look around.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Everyone at Turbine knew of expansion pack deadline WELL ahead of time. However, lots of opportunity to spread the blame around!

- Is the QA team's testing methodology good enough to find enough bugs in time to fix?
- Were internal development resources mis-allocated to future content during the bug-fix stage?
- Did the developers provide accurate estimates of effort at the outset?
- Did the project manager properly manage scope creep?
- Did the project manager identify schedule slips early enough to correct them?
- Did the marketing team negotiate hard release dates with retailers and publications?
- Was WoTC involved enough to prevent re-work of lore/graphics/etc?
- Did management refuse to delay the release, even though they could have?
- Did Turbine fall prey to something akin to Brooks law when they ramped up their head count by 50% for the expansion?
- Does the code base just plain suck? lol.

[mystafyi]

Uhm really? Log in and look around.


sorry cant... got the stupid disconnent upon connecting bug....

this game is a bastardized version of Asherons Call 2, well over 10 years old. The current Dev team had little to nothing to do with AC2. Expecting them to be able to fix anything would be a miracle.

[darksol23]

Overall have faith in the devs, they are NOT out to ruin the game (that would be stupid! Use common sense!).

I agree they are likely not "out to ruin the game", but being incompetent while having good intentions can often lead to the same outcome.

MotU and U15 have once again shown there is a significant issue "behind the scenes." Only Turbine (and WB) will ever know whether it is a management problem (poor direction, resource allocation, unrealistic schedules) or whether it is personnel problem (inexperienced or incompetent developers/coders or designers or QA). But there is definitely a problem... And it's showing.


P.S. Many props to the DDO Art team. Honestly, the one part of MotU that I felt was done very very well.

[Ungood]

The Short Answer is - No.

Sorry. but while the Developers are just trying to do their job, lets be real here, they know what they are putting out is buggy, not working, and incomplete.

While as it stands, they personally may have no say in the matter, that does not mean that I should have faith in then.


If they have no control of the situation, they are as helpless as I am to change the game or do anything and thus there is no point in having faith in them.
If they are in control of the situation, then they are responsible for putting out content they know is half baked and thus not deserving of having faith in them.

Now at some point, somewhere in the company that is Turbine, someone made the judgment call to push out the content knowing that it was buggy, incomplete, and would make the company look incapable of putting out polished work.

Who that person is, I do not know, so I have no recourse but to blame Turbine as a whole, and that includes it's development team for putting out poorly done work, for poor time management of tasks, for allowing development projects to sit for years half done, and overall, a constant state of flux where they are breaking the working parts of the game as they try to "fix it"

[Dragaer]

It is really hard to have faith when they break all the rules of running an MMO.

Here is what Jess Mulligan said game designers and producers should not do. Don't know who she is? That's ok....Turbine does.

• If your licensor wants you to launch your game before it's ready, cancel it.
• It's the community, stupid.
• Many players don't experience a persistent online world as "a game." They experience it as "my life." An online world's hardcore players view themselves as citizens. Some want to be good citizens, some bad, but the entire core wants to believe they belong to something permanent.
• Big changes after launch drive away existing players and make newcomers mistrust you.
• Fix the bugs. If you can't fix them, cancel the launch.
• Oh yeah - don't launch before you're ready.

And my personal opinion, they really do not know how their game is played (nor how to play it).

[Jay203]

why give them more stress by putting more hope on them to live up to? :D:D:D:D

[ddobard1]

This game is HUGE! I love this game!

[GermanicusMaximus]

The Short Answer is - No.

Sorry. but while the Developers are just trying to do their job, lets be real here, they know what they are putting out is buggy, not working, and incomplete.

While as it stands, they personally may have no say in the matter, that does not mean that I should have faith in then.


If they have no control of the situation, they are as helpless as I am to change the game or do anything and thus there is no point in having faith in them.
If they are in control of the situation, then they are responsible for putting out content they know is half baked and thus not deserving of having faith in them.

Now at some point, somewhere in the company that is Turbine, someone made the judgment call to push out the content knowing that it was buggy, incomplete, and would make the company look incapable of putting out polished work.

Who that person is, I do not know, so I have no recourse but to blame Turbine as a whole, and that includes it's development team for putting out poorly done work, for poor time management of tasks, for allowing development projects to sit for years half done, and overall, a constant state of flux where they are breaking the working parts of the game as they try to "fix it"

Crikey! I agree!

[Tenlaar]

If bugs, well bug you that much do what you can to help the devs find them and fix them!

Like bug report them for years while seeing not a known issue over and over again.

[doomboy]

It is really hard to have faith when they break all the rules of running an MMO.

Here is what Jess Mulligan said game designers and producers should not do. Don't know who she is? That's ok....Turbine does.

• If your licensor wants you to launch your game before it's ready, cancel it.
• It's the community, stupid.
• Many players don't experience a persistent online world as "a game." They experience it as "my life." An online world's hardcore players view themselves as citizens. Some want to be good citizens, some bad, but the entire core wants to believe they belong to something permanent.
• Big changes after launch drive away existing players and make newcomers mistrust you.
• Fix the bugs. If you can't fix them, cancel the launch.
• Oh yeah - don't launch before you're ready.

And my personal opinion, they really do not know how their game is played (nor how to play it).

well said. and the last quote really applies to U15. i mean U14 was bugged, whatever as far as i care. most of the content could be completed. but if U15 id being given to us WITH A BROKEN QUEST AT THE VERY BEGINNING there is something SERIOUSLY WRONG going.

[Oliphant]

Most of my frustration stems from the phrase, "If there is nothing else I can help you with, have a good day. *ends chat immediately*"

[HungarianRhapsody]

As the title says, have faith in our Devs. They are here to make the game as good as they can. It will NEVER be perfect because they, like us are human. The devs are NOT trying to make you miserable, DDO is a business and that would be bad for business. If they do something you dont agree with that doesnt mean the majority of DDOers agree with you. Turbine is a business, they need to make money to keep this game going therefore they have to appease the majority before the minority. Most importantly remember there arent TONS of devs, im sure they work hard, and you CAN help apply for the mournlands and bug report on live and lammania it DOES have an effect. NOT bug reporting does more harm then good.
Overall have faith in the devs, they are NOT out to ruin the game (that would be stupid! Use common sense!). If bugs, well bug you that much do what you can to help the devs find them and fix them!

I have absolute faith that the developers at Turbine *WANT* to make DDO a great game and that they want us to have fun.

I have much less faith that Turbine's management wants to put in the time, effort and money to make that happen.

[Grosbeak07]

I have absolute faith that the developers at Turbine *WANT* to make DDO a great game and that they want us to have fun.

I have much less faith that Turbine's management wants to put in the time, effort and money to make that happen.

After seeing the fruits of the "hot fix" tonight... I'm pretty sure the Devs have their fair share of the blame.

[Qezuzu]

I have absolute faith that the developers at Turbine *WANT* to make DDO a great game and that they want us to have fun.

I have much less faith that Turbine's management wants to put in the time, effort and money to make that happen.

imo it probably is the management.

Earlier, there was a thread titled "will the newbs stay" or something like that. There was posted a link to glassdoor.com, and apparently employees were marking points off for Turbine's management.

I don't know how reputable those anonymous comment were, but I still highly doubt it's the devs themselves that are incompetent. They have the skills, some bugs DO get fixed... just not all of them, because time is limited.

[HungarianRhapsody]

After seeing the fruits of the "hot fix" tonight... I'm pretty sure the Devs have their fair share of the blame.

I actually don't blame any individual developer at all for this. The fact that Turbine still doesn't have any sort of version control even after all of the version control problems that they've had over the years says to me that the developers are cranking out code as fast as humanly possible with no time to do the job right. It's a hellish situation to be in and I have tremendous sympathy for them.

I used to work for a company that had version control problems and we experienced all of the same problems that Turbine's code has. Then we got our process under control and things got better. We started using better tools and management started to realize that the entire process of writing code needed to be improved instead of just yelling at individual developers and the QA department. Then things got better. We had fewer bugs. Bugs that we killed stayed dead instead of rising from their digital grave to plague our customers again. QA had fewer bugs to deal with, so we were able to do a better job with the testing in general. The developers had fewer bugs to correct, so they were able to actually produce more code in less time.

There is never a choice between "write new code" and "fix bugs". There is a choice between having a process that works and having a process that doesn't. When your process works, you'll write more new code AND have fewer bugs month after month because you'll be spending less time putting out fires and you'll have more time left for quality code production.

All of that starts with a management decision that quality is important. I still have hope that this can happen at Turbine, but I certainly don't have any faith that it will.

[ZeebaNeighba]

As the title says, have faith in our Devs. They are here to make the game as good as they can. It will NEVER be perfect because they, like us are human. The devs are NOT trying to make you miserable, DDO is a business and that would be bad for business. If they do something you dont agree with that doesnt mean the majority of DDOers agree with you. Turbine is a business, they need to make money to keep this game going therefore they have to appease the majority before the minority. Most importantly remember there arent TONS of devs, im sure they work hard, and you CAN help apply for the mournlands and bug report on live and lammania it DOES have an effect. NOT bug reporting does more harm then good.
Overall have faith in the devs, they are NOT out to ruin the game (that would be stupid! Use common sense!). If bugs, well bug you that much do what you can to help the devs find them and fix them!Oh. So pie is capable of not trolling, I guess.

[captain1z]

I think most of us have faith in the devs. they do as much as any human being can do with what they have.
However, 2 things work against them and us.

1- The coding for this game is older than the millenium falcons various parts. this game has been heavily jury rigged to run and Im sure some devs are surprised it continues to run at all. Odd abilities tied to coding that have very little in common and when you tweak it just a little, something else breaks. Frustrating for us...more so for them because they gotta fix it.

2- Management. They steer this ship, thier course? Treasure Island. The fastest route there regardless of reefs, storms, icebergs, crew and some passengers expendable. Somewhere in the mamagement offices is a document that measures the average life expectency of an mmo, average amount spent by a user in a micro transaction setting, at what point these things are the greatest and 100 pages of suggestions on how to increase both.

Still it is assumed that beyond a certain point you will experience diminishing ROI and when that point comes near........... they deploy the golden life raft


where does that leave the rest of us?

[Blank_Zero]

https://i.chzbgr.com/completestore/12/7/20/CCz6x5dJNEawsSLZcQE-yQ2.jpg

[Kiel]

I had faith in Sony when i played SWG....and the guy i lent platinum to 2 weeks ago on my server, i also had faith lotro would send me my cd's i paid for over 3 years ago.....none of them have come thru.

Its not easy to have faith in people you have never met and know nothing about. For all we know ddo could just be a 9-5 job that he/she hates because he was turned down for his first choice.

I think hope would be a more appropriate word.

[Ew_vastano]

i think my faith in the devs and turbine died somewhere around U9

[Memnir]

I try to keep faith in the Dev team. I really do.

But for me, the problem is that faith often feels as if it's rewarded like this:
.
.
.
http://i.imgur.com/EVLo9.jpg
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I've posted that pic a lot over the years, mostly because it still feels the most apropos to how I feel about the Devs. No matter how much prior experience tells me that they'll just yank the ball away at the last second... here I go again.

The pic says as much about me as a player as it does the Dev team.
So, I'm not sure if I have as much faith in the Dev team as I do co-dependency.

[Dragavon]

It's not the Devs you should or should not have faith in. They do not make any decisions. It is management who is to blame.

This

[Wabisuki]

Faith.

A month ago already i lost all my epic destinies, to this day its not fixed. I agree i cannot determine who is responsible for the horrid mess we call ddo and thus i look at turbine as a whole as well. What i do not understand however is that employees working at turbine have no issues in swindling people. Roughly put they made us pay to play a Beta (weird in itselve) then pretty much literally copied and pasted it as life product. With the current amount bugs in any other product it would have been recalled/cancelled untill fixed. Why this has not happened with ddo motu i have no clue. All i know is i have a lot of questions. I dont understand why they havent released a statement concerning this mess. Altho the fact that they havent released any statement of sorts leads me to conclude they dont consider their customers valueble. So far this game has given me a sensation of extreme distrust in MMO's and Online games. People speak of having faith in devs QA whatever. Somehow the customers are not considered a priority, look at how the GM's respond to tickets.....at the moment turbine makes me feel like one of them milkcows on a farm, quality of my life is not important, their profit is


: inappropriate content
Telling someone to "learn to read" is not allowed.
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[janave]

I blame the marketers and the management -.- , many of the facepalm decisions are clearly originating from them.

[Aurora1979]

I tend to base my opinions on previous experience, "faith" is not something I have in Turbine.

[Hokiewa]

Faith is an odd word to use but whatever. I don't have faith in a reliable released product. That's simply history.

[Daemoneyes]

I try to keep faith in the Dev team. I really do.

But for me, the problem is that faith often feels as if it's rewarded like this:
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.
.
http://i.imgur.com/EVLo9.jpg
.
.
I've posted that pic a lot over the years, mostly because it still feels the most apropos to how I feel about the Devs. No matter how much prior experience tells me that they'll just yank the ball away at the last second... here I go again.

The pic says as much about me as a player as it does the Dev team.
So, I'm not sure if I have as much faith in the Dev team as I do co-dependency.

so true :/

[tasebro]

...this:
.
.
.
http://i.imgur.com/EVLo9.jpg
.
.
...The pic says as much about me as a player as it does the Dev team.
So, I'm not sure if I have as much faith in the Dev team as I do co-dependency.
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http://blog2.tshirt-doctor.com/images18/the_frog_and_the_scorpion_tale_619555.jpg
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The Scorpion and the Frog is a fable about a scorpion asking a frog to carry him across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and begins carrying the scorpion, but midway across the river the scorpion does indeed sting the frog, dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion points out that this is its nature. The fable is used to illustrate the position that the behaviour of some creatures is irrepressible, no matter how they are treated and no matter what the consequences.
.
Conclusion: "Giving positive reward for negative behavior is not sustainable."

[Ryiah]

As the title says, have faith in our Devs.

I have faith in the developers. I even have a little bit of faith in QA. I don't have any faith in those calling the shots.



They are here to make the game as good as they can. It will NEVER be perfect because they, like us are human. The devs are NOT trying to make you miserable, DDO is a business and that would be bad for business.

No they are here to do what management tells them. If management were to tell them to do something they feel would hurt the product, they have to do it anyways. That is what they are paid for. Don't like how management is doing things? Look for a new, ideally better, job.



If they do something you dont agree with that doesnt mean the majority of DDOers agree with you.

The opposite can also be true. Most players want a product that is reasonably bug free. DDO is rapidly leaving the reasonably bug free stage.

[Wickednisse]

I am by no means a Turbine fangirl, so please don't take this post as such. I do, however, have experience with testing and releasing programs (not games, but programs used in businesses) and I'm going to relate an experience.

We were moving from one program to another, the purpose of these programs was to help the analysts with data and then provide accurate data to pay our sales groups. The 'old' program was being replaced because the company was going out of business and was no longer supporting said program which led to us having to implement a variety of sources to augment and make it possible to do our jobs and ensure that our sales group (who are the ones responsible for making the business money because afterall, they're the ones that go out and get us business) got paid correctly and on time.

Enter the new system, it was not tested thoroughly and was released anyway - people like me who voiced their concerns may have been talking to a wall for all of the impact it had. The new system went live and everything was borked all to hell. And when I say borked, it's probably an understatement. Upper management didn't care, and those who kept protesting the new system were told to get rid of our negative attitudes (exact words mind you).

When the company was being acquired by another, larger, company all of the people (including me) who knew the new system was broken and needed a complete overhaul, if not replaced entirely were suddenly out of a job. The ironic thing is that when the acquisition was complete the new owner scrapped the new system completely because they discovered what was being hidden from them before the buyout - that it was broken.

What I'm trying to say is, don't give the devs too much credit on what they have control over. If management is pushing for content to be released and they have a deadline to meet - it doesn't matter if new code doesn't mix well with old code, they don't care if the system needs an entire overhaul. All they are about is that they don't end up with mud on their face because they are the ones in the end that made the call on when said content was going to be released.

I feel for the devs, but with the economy as it is I can't blame them for just doing what they're told to earn a paycheck. I'm fairly certain that the majority of them wish they could release quality content that wasn't so buggy - and it must be frustrating for them to know that regardless of if they think the update is ready or not, it's going live because some boss who has lost touch with the player base looks at a calendar and picks some magical date for release.

I've been in their shoes, and in a few months I'll be there again because the company I'm with now is implementing a new system with a target date of December. This will be the fourth system conversion I've been a part of, and it's being released at our busiest time of the year. I think it's a mistake to release it then, my managers also think it's a mistake to release it then - but their bosses don't care. Big surprise... /endsarcasm.

[Beethoven]

Most players want a product that is reasonably bug free

That's only partially true. Most players want a product with frequent / monthly content updates, lots of features, that is reasonably free of bugs and comes for free or fairly low cost.

Now, management looks at a market were two months before releases Guild Wars 2 ended up with 8! pages of bugs and was considered "actually more stable than its competitors". Think about what that says about the industries as whole and think about what it means that there is no big uproar about it. They also see Diablo 3 and SWTOR were released "riddled with bugs" (as some users put it) but still sold fairly well. Finally, they have the CEO of the leading OS who even admitted bug fixing is no priority for Microsoft since there is no money in it.

So, they see competitors (and/or other development companies) become successful by releasing early, cranking out update after update (at the cost of best possible quality) while companies focused on quality, in private industries, ... well, do they still exist? It's not Microsoft. Their CEO already admitted bug fixes are secondary to new updates / features. It's certainly not Blizzard. By the looks of it, it's not ArenaNet/NSoft either; by their statements it sounds more like as long as GW 2 is more stable / has less bugs than their competitors have/had (during release) it is good enough.

And why not? If everyone produces in Asia for a fifth the cost, you start looking into producing abroad too so you can stay competitive.


DDO is rapidly leaving the reasonably bug free stage.

That's exactly it, by whose standard? Now, as matter of personal opinion you are right (since, well, it's an opinion). However, professionally? What is considered "reasonably bug free" on a general level? Where I can I look it up? What pages or professional sources rank MMORPGs based on number of bugs (similar like they rank size, frequency of updates, customer base, features, graphics, etc.)?

Turbine is holding back the next update for LotR. We know that because it is on our forums. However, outside of Turbine? There is no hype about it, no reports, no big news stories on gaming sites / magazines ... nothing like the hype WoW (or DDO) got for actually launching an update (with bugs).

Also, how much do you really think Turbine holding back DDO's x-pack to polish it would have done? How likely is it that it would ultimately just have generated bad press for delaying the expansion? It certainly wouldn't have sent a huge message to the entire gaming industries to forever change the landscape of MMORPG development.

Now, if people would have demanded their money back the moment it looked like a title like GW 2 will be released with (some) bugs and people in general would have decided to not buy it until they have assurance they fixed all bugs that would have had the potential to do something.

People (myself included) didn't though. It wouldn't be convenient because I want my new toy and I want it now. So I (same as everyone else) will look past the occasional bug. I am not trying to bash the game. GW 2 is going to be a good game, but I doubt they managed to fix eight pages of bugs in two months and by giving them my money I am sending a very clear message: that I am perfectly fine with games (or updates) being released with bugs. I then cannot turn around and complain about how they keep releasing games / updates with bugs - as little as it a bit silly to complain about a company producing in China and then turn around and only purchase products made in China because the alternative costs more.

[eonfreon]

As the title says, have faith in our Devs. They are here to make the game as good as they can. It will NEVER be perfect because they, like us are human. The devs are NOT trying to make you miserable, DDO is a business and that would be bad for business. If they do something you dont agree with that doesnt mean the majority of DDOers agree with you. Turbine is a business, they need to make money to keep this game going therefore they have to appease the majority before the minority. Most importantly remember there arent TONS of devs, im sure they work hard, and you CAN help apply for the mournlands and bug report on live and lammania it DOES have an effect. NOT bug reporting does more harm then good.
Overall have faith in the devs, they are NOT out to ruin the game (that would be stupid! Use common sense!). If bugs, well bug you that much do what you can to help the devs find them and fix them!

Have faith in them for what? That they are doing their best? I'm sure they are. So what?

These are people I don't know. I'd be a fool to have "faith" in people I don't know.

The Devs are but part of the equation. And I'm sure they don't want DDO to fail, but don't be naive enough to think that they have much control over the situation. And you may be the one to use common sense. The Devs likely don't want to "ruin" the game, but there are many factors involved and there is no guarantee that the corporate heads give a **** about the game. To them it's just a product to be funded. If they could get away with getting money from DDO without developing anything new (spending money), they would.

As it is, it all depends on how profitable DDO is. And with a system as old as DDO is, it's probably very expensive to get things done right, probably more then the corporate heads are willing to pay, hence why we see so many shortcuts and likely improvised systems.

DDO is a bit of a mess, but it's not horrible. It just lost my interest for the most part. I have no faith in the product. The Devs I couldn't care less about. They are just people doing their jobs. Nothing special and certainly nothing sinister about them. I neither have faith in them nor do I consider them incompetent or such. I know next to nothing about them nor do I wish to. I care about the final product, not the Devs.

Or I used to. Nowadays I'm just occassionally curious to what's going on.

I have hope that some day I'll find something I enjoy in DDO (and no it is not terrible, the things I did like about the game are still there, they just aren't enough for me). But faith has to be earned.

[Viisari]

It will NEVER be perfect because they, like us are human.

Nobody expects anything to perfect.

But releasing things in an already broken state is not acceptable on any level.

Nor is breaking old things with every update.

I've a very high tolerance for buggy and broken games, but U14 and to some extent U15 were very badly handled even by my standards.

[AuraAten]

I have to wonder how many of the people leaving posts here actually work in software development? Most of the comments I have read here seem to be complaints and such, really having nothing to do with the actual subject. As it was explained to me by a REAL software developer, (not a windows home pc owner/operator self declared "expert") the Lamannia server is NOT live, is NOT programmed to run and test game content in a live environment. Most of the code and process there is to simply view a finished or almost finished piece of the game. When applied to the LIVE server, a slightly unpredictable environment hence the LIVE (I.E. not recorded,dubbed, or edited) label, these same processes and codes may or may not function as they did on the TEST server. The solution as it was explained to me was to: implement another LIVE server, use the existing LIVE server to TEST new content.

[GermanicusMaximus]

by giving them my money I am sending a very clear message: that I am perfectly fine with games (or updates) being released with bugs. I then cannot turn around and complain about how they keep releasing games / updates with bugs

I can at least agree with that part of what you said. Refusing to buy bug riddled products, and talking about that decision, is the most effective means of dealing with the problem. I refused to buy Update 14, and will not buy update 15 either. I am not alone. There are increasing numbers of people doing the same thing.

There are a fairly large number of people who have opted out of DDO recently who could potentially be tempted back into DDO, if Turbine ever got its act together and started to produce the quality of software it used to produce.

The main impediment to solving the problem are the DDO fanbois, who are so emotionally invested in DDO that they can't control their own purchasing decisions. and feel threatened by anyone who dares to speak out about the flaws in DDO. How anyone becomes so emotionally invested in an online game that they create thousands (or tens of thousands) of posts defending it is hard for most people to understand. (The most prolific fanboi I can think of has created over 20,000 posts over the last 6 years, or an average of 10 posts a day. I'd rather not imagine what his personal life looks like.)

Having "faith" in anyone will not be effective in solving this problem. The best option is to simply act as an informed consumer and vote with your wallet. If Turbine can't/won't respond and produce a quality game again, then DDO isn't worth saving.

[Ungood]

they have the CEO of the leading OS who even admitted bug fixing is no priority for Microsoft since there is no money in it.

To be fair, Microsoft "not working" is a ongoing joke. People use it, not because it is great, but for the same reason why they buy McDonalds hamburger, it's cheep and easy to get and available everywhere.

In fact, Microsoft not having their stuff together is why I am using a PS3 Controller as opposed to an X-box ontroler on my windows based PC should be indicative that maybe, just maybe, they are doing it wrong.


That's exactly it, by whose standard? Now, as matter of personal opinion you are right (since, well, it's an opinion). However, professionally? What is considered "reasonably bug free" on a general level?

In a nut shell, when the bugs of a game do not impact the player base to a noticeable extent. Now while it is evident that you do not work in QA or Control, hence why you are even asking this question to start with, it is about making experienced judgement calls in regard to the product in question, hence hiring skilled professionals who should know what they are doing in this field.

But to try and explain it in simple terms, a 100 pages of bugs could be fine as long as players do not feel their impact on their gaming immersion.

One obstructing bug in the game system is worse then a 100 bugs that players need to hunt down and discover.

Like anything however, to have a firm grip on what it takes to draw this line requires working knowledge of the product, much in the same way Bill Gates had to send e-mails to Microsoft directors telling them their driver download process was not user friendly, and made them look bad.

[deahamlet]

I have to wonder how many of the people leaving posts here actually work in software development? Most of the comments I have read here seem to be complaints and such, really having nothing to do with the actual subject. As it was explained to me by a REAL software developer, (not a windows home pc owner/operator self declared "expert") the Lamannia server is NOT live, is NOT programmed to run and test game content in a live environment. Most of the code and process there is to simply view a finished or almost finished piece of the game. When applied to the LIVE server, a slightly unpredictable environment hence the LIVE (I.E. not recorded,dubbed, or edited) label, these same processes and codes may or may not function as they did on the TEST server. The solution as it was explained to me was to: implement another LIVE server, use the existing LIVE server to TEST new content.

Ahhhmmm I'm sorry but bugs were experienced on Lamma, with it's non-live quality... I mean if it impacts gameplay on such a small scale imagine on a live server.... And they did nothing before putting the content live. I don't particularly care if they consider Lamma a test server or not, the fact is they put out a product having been told of gameplay debilitating issues. Making another live test server will not fix such indifference.

To OP: faith?! I have issues in general with the concept of faith... Believing in an outcome or ideas in the absence of proof. Perhaps if you had said I should trust in the developers... That is earned. And they have earned me expecting every hot fix or update to bug something new. That is what experience has taught me. They have not earned trust. Why do I play? Because I like the character development and I work around bugs. They've ruined it enough for me that I went back to never winter nights 2 for a while and enough for me to put down money to try other RPGs and MMOs. One of these days one of these games will have enough I don't know what to beat the pros and cons of ddo. If ddo didn't have so many bugs lately I wouldn't be looking to cheat on it. I'd be loyal. But I feel loyalty would be an illogical course of action.
And no, I don't care if the programmers are ****, the project managers are ****, the managers are ****, wb is ****... I don't care whose fault it is. They are all one entity to me... Turbine. Those dudes/duddetes putting out ddo.

[Raithe]

It is really hard to have faith when they break all the rules of running an MMO.


"Having faith" is NOT, in any way, an admirable quality on its own. It is a natural tendency of humans that needs to be tempered with skepticism. Having a healthy mix of both is what is admirable.



Here is what Jess Mulligan said game designers and producers should not do. Don't know who she is? That's ok....Turbine does.

• If your licensor wants you to launch your game before it's ready, cancel it.
• It's the community, stupid.
• Many players don't experience a persistent online world as "a game." They experience it as "my life." An online world's hardcore players view themselves as citizens. Some want to be good citizens, some bad, but the entire core wants to believe they belong to something permanent.
• Big changes after launch drive away existing players and make newcomers mistrust you.
• Fix the bugs. If you can't fix them, cancel the launch.
• Oh yeah - don't launch before you're ready.


These rules are for a particular type of gamer, and the older rules of MMO design included filtering out the type of gamer to which these rules would apply. I only agree with the fourth point about big changes always reducing the size of your current playerbase (but if your game sucks to begin with, it may still be the only option to eventually attract a large permanent base). An MMO is, by prior definition, an unfinished work and so bugs that do not interfere with program execution can simply be viewed as unfinished programming.



And my personal opinion, they really do not know how their game is played (nor how to play it).

Just like the playerbase is not made up of people with the same playstyle, same preferences, or same skill level - neither are the developers. Your sweeping generalization is completely false, someone at Turbine can not only play the game well, they can design the 3D graphics and physics systems that we use to often entertaining effect.

There is no doubt, however, that the people at Turbine often don't agree with each other on the course of game design and that there are people among the development team that should have been canned, probably a long time ago.

[Ew_vastano]

Ahhhmmm I'm sorry but bugs were experienced on Lamma, with it's non-live quality... I mean if it impacts gameplay on such a small scale imagine on a live server.... And they did nothing before putting the content live. I don't particularly care if they consider Lamma a test server or not, the fact is they put out a product having been told of gameplay debilitating issues. Making another live test server will not fix such indifference.

To OP: faith?! I have issues in general with the concept of faith... Believing in an outcome or ideas in the absence of proof. Perhaps if you had said I should trust in the developers... That is earned. And they have earned me expecting every hot fix or update to bug something new. That is what experience has taught me. They have not earned trust. Why do I play? Because I like the character development and I work around bugs. They've ruined it enough for me that I went back to never winter nights 2 for a while and enough for me to put down money to try other RPGs and MMOs. One of these days one of these games will have enough I don't know what to beat the pros and cons of ddo. If ddo didn't have so many bugs lately I wouldn't be looking to cheat on it. I'd be loyal. But I feel loyalty would be an illogical course of action.
And no, I don't care if the programmers are ****, the project managers are ****, the managers are ****, wb is ****... I don't care whose fault it is. They are all one entity to me... Turbine. Those dudes/duddetes putting out ddo.

i quite agree with you turbine should be worried i have tried lots of different mmos this year (first time in near 3 years)

one day i will pick one up and it will have something

that day ddo will be uninstalled and never re-installed

yes i can work around the game breaking bugs but WHY should i

if another game like the origanal neverwinter nights ever came about ddo would be a desert

[fco-karatekid]

i want to blame who ever is in charge of checking up on the bugs found on the test server, from what i've been reading. 80% of the bugs where found on lamland. and yet they still made it live.

THIS^ I recently went back and read the threads from Lammania - U14 and U15 - bugs that were identified weeks out were released in both.


But I've about given up on expecting change quickly - Turbine as a whole is apparently putting out the best quality within their capabilities - otherwise they wouldn't have released it.

I have lowered my standards to compensate - it makes it less frustrating when you run into bugged quest after bugged quest, long-standing bugs that have never been addressed, and repeated deployment of unfun game mechanics (Coyle the War Wizard).

I now just shake my head and go "awww, aren't they cute?"

[adamkatt]

I have faith in the devs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu3VTngm1F0

[Beethoven]

I can at least agree with that part of what you said. Refusing to buy bug riddled products, and talking about that decision, is the most effective means of dealing with the problem.

Actually, stopping to buy a "bug riddled" product from one company and instead purchasing a "bug riddled" product from another company is not an effective way in dealing with the issue of companies releasing products riddled with bugs.

It's like saying it is bad to be a Turbine fanboi, but it is fine to be a Blizzard or ArenaNet fanboi. Why? My point was if you are no longer content with game developers releasing products that have bugs you'd need to stop giving money to all companies that engage in the business practice.


To be fair, Microsoft "not working" is a ongoing joke. People use it, not because it is great, but for the same reason why they buy McDonalds hamburger, it's cheep and easy to get and available everywhere.

And MMORPGs are not easy, cheap and readily available? I tipped waiters more for half an hour of service than a pay for an entire month of DDO. Also, I was not using the Microsoft reference as ongoing joke but was referring to an interview of Bill Gates by the German weekly magazine FOCUS (#43, October 23, 1995, pages 206-212); from the executive summary:

* Bug reports are statistically, therefore actually, unimportant;
* If you want a bug fixed, you are (by definition) in the minority;
* Microsoft doesn't care about bugs because bug fixes are not a significant source of revenue;
* If you think you found a bug, it really only means you're incompetent;
* Anyway, people only complain about bugs to show how cool they are, not because bugs cause any real problems.

Granted, lots has changed with Microsoft ever since but it does not change that Mircosoft was already very successful in 1995 and that the negative publicity of the interview did not really harm them (not even in Germany).


In a nut shell, when the bugs of a game do not impact the player base to a noticeable extent. Now while it is evident that you do not work in QA or Control, hence why you are even asking this question to start with, it is about making experienced judgement calls in regard to the product in question, hence hiring skilled professionals who should know what they are doing in this field.

You are correct. I don't nor have I ever worked in QA or Control of an MMORPG. I did, however, manage a QA department of a fairly successful company. It does not change the fact that MMORRGs are not generally rated on the amount of bugs (not to the extend of how they are rated for graphics, features and content, anyway), which were I was going with the question. There is no generally accepted schedule of how many bugs a game may have or what type and nature of issues cause problems with immersion and which won't.

All they (and we) have to go buy is personal opinion (which frequently is shared by our gamer friends since they are likely the same type of gamer) and market trends. The latter is not necessarily conclusive. Say, DDO's playerbase has a significant drop in September; is it caused by bugs, by the release of GW 2 or a combination of the two? What if they have waited with releasing the x-pack and spent two months longer with fixing (known) issues? Would they have lost revenue because more people would have gotten bored with the lack of new content (and thus not only lost the same amount of customer, but also gotten less new customers and made less money on the x-pack)?

What I was addressing is that some people act like Turbine would be the only company to ever release software early and DDO the only game that has a list of bugs. It has become somewhat a (sad) standard. So, in my opinion, it is not an issue with a single company but with the entire industries. I am not sure how you conclude from that, that I obviously cannot have the first clue about QA. Put bluntly:

* as long as people purchase products produced in second and/or third world countries, companies will produce there because it is cheaper.
* as long as people purchase software despite it being knowingly released in a buggy condition, companies will release early (to make profits) and patch later.

Yes, it sucks. No, there is nothing wrong with making a fuss about known issues and bugs but attacking everyone who dares point out that Turbine is trying and DDO is actually not in as bad a shape (compared to its competitors) as some people make it out is maybe taking self-righteous fury a bit too far.

[MrElusiveness]

I find it odd how even though people are complaining about how bad the game has been developed, not a single dev or rep is responding to the complaints. I guess they need to have a board meeting or go out in the parkinglot each morning doing jumping jacks and cheers before starting their day.

[Elaril]

At first I was indifferent to the devs. Then I lost faith in them due to multiple factors. Then, they appeared to increase their communication with the playerbase and seemed to be listening to our feedback. Then they pushed MoTU out, along with the annoying (to me) deviation from the d20 system disguised as the combat system changes.

I do really enjoy the ideas behind all of the new content, with the notable exception of the CiTW trainwreck, and think they did a pretty good job there. The new combat system, nerfs to freedom, and disease/poison immunity (particularly on warforged) is what shakes my faith in them again. I am really getting tired of their frequent changing of the rules and it concerns me that there is so little consistency there. I think they take nerfs entirely too lightly and are too inclined to take the easy way out instead of creatively solving problems (looking at you wing nerf, attack speed nerf and dungeon alert).

[danzig138]

They are here to make the game as good as they can.No, they aren't. That's a mistaken impression. They are here to make the game as profitable as they can for the company they work for. Those are not necessarily the same things. In fact, sometimes they are quite opposite. And when they conflict, the devs will err on the side of profitability instead of good design. That's simply how it is. I just wish they'd be open about it instead of having a couple of mouthpieces try and explain bad decisions as good ones.

You also have to take into account, that sure, they might try and fix a bug here or there, but that doesn't make them good at game design. They might be excellent coders (history indicates otherwise), but again, that's not the same thing. As game designers, they're mediocre at best. As designers of a D&D game, they are not very good. I honestly think they could do some decent design for a different game, and really, it feels very much like they're trying to do that now, while shoehorning it all into the D&D setting. Because this is the license they're stuck with for now.

Oh. So pie is capable of not trolling, I guess.

If you say so. I don't really see this as an example of that though.

[smatt]

I have plenty of faith in the actual working Devs.... They do the best they can with the time and budgets they have to work with. MOTU was like someone throwing a 25LB FROZEN turkey at you and saying "You have 2 hours and no more to have this turkey cooked and ready to eat" Not happening....... It's the unrealistic vision, goals, and timeframes that are the problem.... Even the best basball player in the world can't hit homeruns in a major league park with a wiffle bat.... :cool:

[GeneralDiomedes]

I find it odd how even though people are complaining about how bad the game has been developed, not a single dev or rep is responding to the complaints.

Pfeh. They have come out and said 'we'll do better' on a few occasions, and ultimately it's just words. I want results, not platitudes.

[MrElusiveness]

Pfeh. They have come out and said 'we'll do better' on a few occasions, and ultimately it's just words. I want results, not platitudes.

I agree. and with some people trying to tell us how real life plays out at work for the dev's.... its just more talk to smoke screen the real issue at hand. I dont think it matters what the dev's go through at work. All that matters is RESULTS.

[Scraap]

I have plenty of faith in the actual working Devs.... They do the best they can with the time and budgets they have to work with. MOTU was like someone throwing a 25LB FROZEN turkey at you and saying "You have 2 hours and no more to have this turkey cooked and ready to eat" Not happening....... It's the unrealistic vision, goals, and timeframes that are the problem.... Even the best basball player in the world can't hit homeruns in a major league park with a wiffle bat.... :cool:

Sparks of brilliance consistently snuffed out by a torrent of unrealistic deadlines. It'd be easy to shrug off poor quality (and leave) if there weren't so many moments of "Now they're on the right tra- oh sonova..." moments.

Still, there's Premium. Give em cash when they do well, and wait in between. For myself, pretty much at the point of waiting to give em more cash till Christmas, and determining then how much they've earned since the MoTU purchase.

[MrElusiveness]

Sparks of brilliance consistently snuffed out by a torrent of unrealistic deadlines. It'd be easy to shrug off poor quality (and leave) if there weren't so many moments of "Now they're on the right tra- oh sonova..." moments.

Still, there's Premium. Give em cash when they do well, and wait in between. For myself, pretty much at the point of waiting to give em more cash till Christmas, and determining then how much they've earned since the MoTU purchase.

lol well while you are to the stage of thinking about giving them money at xmas time and how much, I am no where near thinking about spending anymore money.

They have been comming up short in the results department.

[Missing_Minds]

It's not the Devs you should or should not have faith in. They do not make any decisions. It is management who is to blame.
Exactly.

i want to blame who ever is in charge of checking up on the bugs found on the test server, from what i've been reading. 80% of the bugs where found on lamland. and yet they still made it live.
And if those bugs were not properly reported, not much you can do. You can love the system, you can hate the system, but don't try to screw the system or the system will screw you.

And really I wish management would stop over ruling QA on what is or is not a good release.

[mystafyi]

And if those bugs were not properly reported, not much you can do. You can love the system, you can hate the system, but don't try to screw the system or the system will screw you.

With the bug reporting tool bugged and lamma forums bug complaints ignored, what would be 'proper' reporting of bugs? Just curious as to how far you think the players should go to do turbines job? perhaps we should drive to boston and just code it for them?

[MrElusiveness]

With the bug reporting tool bugged and lamma forums bug complaints ignored, what would be 'proper' reporting of bugs? Just curious as to how far you think the players should go to do turbines job? perhaps we should drive to boston and just code it for them?

no driving to boston needed, they just need to issue us checks in the mail if they want us to solve their problems.

besides, since when was it OUR job to fix things? I think its ok we get to voice our opinons on things, but OUR job to report bugs?? and yes the buggy bug report system is a joke. If they want to know about bugs they should try reading the forums or playing the game! lmao

[Loriac]

I have to wonder how many of the people leaving posts here actually work in software development? Most of the comments I have read here seem to be complaints and such, really having nothing to do with the actual subject. As it was explained to me by a REAL software developer, (not a windows home pc owner/operator self declared "expert") the Lamannia server is NOT live, is NOT programmed to run and test game content in a live environment. Most of the code and process there is to simply view a finished or almost finished piece of the game. When applied to the LIVE server, a slightly unpredictable environment hence the LIVE (I.E. not recorded,dubbed, or edited) label, these same processes and codes may or may not function as they did on the TEST server. The solution as it was explained to me was to: implement another LIVE server, use the existing LIVE server to TEST new content.

It is best practice to have test and live environments be as similar as possible. Usually the test environment is less powerful (for obvious reasons) but if there are differences in code that would be applied to live vs. whats in test, then its not really a test environment.

Typically you'd expect Live to throw up issues you don't see in Test for a couple of reasons:

i. testing by its nature is limited, particularly regression testing. In other words, whilst its straightforward to test the changes you've made work as you intended, its often less easy to determine what other parts of your code are affected by those changes. This is an area where having standardised processes and objects helps, as does good documentation. When you promote to live, suddenly you have a lot more people using the code and using it in ways that your test scripts didn't cover. This is very likely to throw up bugs that were not identified through testing.

ii. server performance issues - live environments typically handle more volume, and whilst you can make estimates of how heavily your new code will affect server performance, it tends to be more rule of thumb than anything else. This often leads to issues such as lag.


What we seem to be seeing with Turbine processes at the moment is the following:

i. testing is not given the importance it is due; in other words, the arbitrary deadline schedules assigned by management override the level of stability evident in the candidate code

ii. testing feedback is ignored as being outside of the testing parameters. This is particularly galling for veteran players, who can often see consequential effects of changes better than isolated QA teams who may not play the game extensively and are not aware of wider repercussions than those listed on their test scripts

iii. its quite possible that live and test are not similar to each other, and that version control has to some degree broken down between environments. This is evident in dev comments on the forums to the effect that some issues are simply not replicable for them on their dev or test boxes, even though they are commonly seen in live (mob spell damage scaling is a classic example here)


There are probably a whole host of other issues at play here, but the above seems quite likely based on what we're seeing in terms of recent releases.


Edit: one other thing occurs to me: normally, you have user acceptance testing before final promotion to live. This is where expert users are given access to the code before it gets promoted to live, and they are told to use the software as they normally would. Whist Lammania exists, its not a true UAT environment, largely because the users do not have the ability to reject the code. I don't know if Turbine has a team that approves changes from a user perspective, but there certainly seems little evidence that there is based on the type of design decisions that are put forward and then quickly changed after they have gone live.

[Raithe]

i. testing is not given the importance it is due; in other words, the arbitrary deadline schedules assigned by management override the level of stability evident in the candidate code


Two things:

1) Just like playstyles (I'm trying to emphasize in all of my forum responses the fact that we as players DON'T all get along or have the same vision for the game), there are different types of development practices for every engineering firm. (I have worked for and with several.) No one has the high ground, software development is not so much a science as an art.

2) I don't think people understand the current position of many MMO-like offerings (DDO isn't an MMO in my book, but it faces competition from similar games like GW2). Bugs are not a high concern. Client stability may still be, but I have not had the game crash on me more due to MotU and later releases. If anything, the client has been more responsive and less prone to problems (at least on my multiple computers and ISPs).

[Ungood]

Actually, stopping to buy a "bug riddled" product from one company and instead purchasing a "bug riddled" product from another company is not an effective way in dealing with the issue of companies releasing products riddled with bugs.

It's like saying it is bad to be a Turbine fanboi, but it is fine to be a Blizzard or ArenaNet fanboi. Why? My point was if you are no longer content with game developers releasing products that have bugs you'd need to stop giving money to all companies that engage in the business practice.

Actually this is a painfully good way to express your feelings, and it is the most effective way to do so, because as players we have funds to spend, and we want to play games, this is a given. It is not up for discussion. period. The only question every MMO maker asks, "is will they spend their money on my game?"

Thus, if Game A begins to see a decline in their income and game B sees an incline, game A will make efforts to adapt to what game B is doing, hence all the popping up F2P models in older dated games based on DDO success in such a venture.

If Players flock to Game C because it is "The Most Stable game" and they "Are getting fed up with the bugs in other games they used to play" you better believe that "Bug fixing" just became very profitable, if not survival dependent.


Bill Gates by the German weekly magazine FOCUS (#43, October 23, 1995, pages 206-212); from the executive summary:

Granted, lots has changed with Microsoft ever since but it does not change that Mircosoft was already very successful in 1995 and that the negative publicity of the interview did not really harm them (not even in Germany).

He has changed his tune quite a bit, that is for sure, and it's called being trenched in, it is the same reason why Ford did not change their business model till Chevy began to outsell them.


It does not change the fact that MMORRGs are not generally rated on the amount of bugs (not to the extend of how they are rated for graphics, features and content, anyway),

Actually they are. MMORPG.Com, includes ratings in regards to bugs, technical issues as well as CS. In fact WoW lost it's 10 Rating due to CS issues.

In the end, every company will build it's own reputation with it's customer base, how it opts to do that, or whatever, is it's own call.

You can argue this, or better yet, *TRY* to argue this, but I'll leave you with a thought to ponder.

"Take care of your Customers or someone else will"
Harvey Mackay

[Vint]

I am not nor do I see myself bashing any Dev. I am also sure that they work just as hard at their job as any other.

The frustration comes from the big wigs at Warner Brothers and Turbine. People can easily forget that the Devs don’t set the price or make the release dates. I am sure they were not happy that they had to rush out a product that they were not happy with, but the guys in charge that want our money thought otherwise.

I also think that the devs would love nothing more than to spend an update doing nothing more than fixing or repairing the old bugs that have been around forever. Even if these bugs are not game breaking, they would still want their work to look good. It is just too bad that the people making the decisions don’t have the same conviction.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Actually, stopping to buy a "bug riddled" product from one company and instead purchasing a "bug riddled" product from another company is not an effective way in dealing with the issue of companies releasing products riddled with bugs.

It's like saying it is bad to be a Turbine fanboi, but it is fine to be a Blizzard or ArenaNet fanboi. Why? My point was if you are no longer content with game developers releasing products that have bugs you'd need to stop giving money to all companies that engage in the business practice.


Agreed, and done. There are plenty of other entertainment options available to most of us.

Online games can be quite addictive (most use psychological techniques amazingly similar to Las Vegas casinos to hook their customers), and there is some interesting literature discussing it. Simply google "mmo addiction" and take a peek. :D

Most gamers are just having fun, but clearly some people do become at least psychologically dependent upon gaming. These are the people who descend into fanboi status, and like a junky tend to be unable to quit cold turkey. Flitting from one bad game to another doesn't help their situation.

Its not that hard to determine whether you are addicted. Just vow to stop for a week. After a week, you should find you care a lot less about what seemed so important just a week ago. If not, or if you can't even make it a week without a "fix", its probably time to uninstall and get some help.

[Missing_Minds]

With the bug reporting tool bugged and lamma forums bug complaints ignored, what would be 'proper' reporting of bugs? Just curious as to how far you think the players should go to do turbines job? perhaps we should drive to boston and just code it for them?

It is a simple statement of logical assumption that 1000 people can find more issues than 10 no matter how good that team of 10 may be.

That team of 10 also have a direct leash to developers of what is and is not intended.

Frankly we shouldn't touch their code, honestly. It is already a spagetti mess as is. Tossing in random people will only make it worse.
What I'd like to see is some system that actually rewards players for reporting bugs.

The forums are also a jackpot of... everything. What is whining, what is asking for changes, what is bugged, what is ______. You do NOT use forums as a place to report bugs unless you are willing to hire people who's sole job it is, is to track the forums and reproduce the bugs as best possible.
Heck we've seen it before that people complained that XYZ was reported on the lama forums (but not bug reports) only to go looking and OOOPss.. it wasn't. Just some forumites who complained but did nothing at all other than tell guildies about the issue.

[tasebro]

... The new combat system, nerfs to freedom, and disease/poison immunity (particularly on warforged) is what shakes my faith in them again....I think they take nerfs entirely too lightly and are too inclined to take the easy way out instead of creatively solving problems....

No doubt about it.

That is the direct consequence of them giving positive reward for their negative behavior; thus rendering bugs/nerfs into de facto "job security".

That is model is upside down, and it will remain so until people have sense to stop throwing money at them to make *more* bugs/nerfs.
Dev behavior will not improve until they are forced to improve.

[smatt]

It is a simple statement of logical assumption that 1000 people can find more issues than 10 no matter how good that team of 10 may be. Of course it is, there's simply no way that with the amount of revenue in play Turbine can totally debug this game. I think most players understand this.... The use of Lama as a tool is great and all.. And now that at least some of the time, they're getting content up there much earlier than in the past, interacting more, as well as reacting more to player feedback and reports. It's also NOT a live server enviroment..... THAT is oen fo the big downsides, while they do have all their fancy diagnostics tools etc built into the Lama client, it simply doesn't act like the live client.



That team of 10 also have a direct leash to developers of what is and is not intended.
It's sad that it's so common in DDO now that the players, many of which have been playing this game for 4-5-6 years don't know and cant' get answers to what is and what isn't intended. That so many things jsut are as they are and players assume that since they are like that it's intended, and then come to find out... It's not... How can you possibly evaluate something when you dont' knwo EXACTLY what it's suppossed to do.



Frankly we shouldn't touch their code, honestly. It is already a spagetti mess as is. Tossing in random people will only make it worse.
LOL



What I'd like to see is some system that actually rewards players for reporting bugs.
They can barely run a contest with 5 winners without messing it
up...



The forums are also a jackpot of... everything. What is whining, what is asking for changes, what is bugged, what is ______. You do NOT use forums as a place to report bugs unless you are willing to hire people who's sole job it is, is to track the forums and reproduce the bugs as best possible.
I will say again, that since early MOd 8 when the ingame bug reporting system went completely haywire, I've never understaood hwo they could run this game without fixing it. Heck, even prior to that A LOT of hte reported bugs ended up in the trash somewhere. The Dev team would least claim to have never known about them. Why in the fricken heck they can't even get a decent bug reporting system within the game that WORKS is fricken amazing, and frankly proof there's a total 100% lack of competance somewhere within the system at Turbine.


Heck we've seen it before that people complained that XYZ was reported on the lama forums (but not bug reports) only to go looking and OOOPss.. it wasn't. Just some forumites who complained but did nothing at all other than tell guildies about the issue. Look, myself as well as MANY others I know gave up reporting bugs long ago, when they were ignored for years, when the system was bugged as it is now. A lot of people dont' even know HOW to report a bug within the ingame bugged bug reporting system. And going back to WAI.... When you don't know what WAI is then how in the heck are you going to accurately bug report something. When you add in all that, even IF they have a decent WORKING bug reporting ssytem, there will be so much noise, they wont' ever be able to get accurate reports through....

These same problems have existed here in this game for years... The same discussion, the same complaints... The same lack of action by Turbine.... A little bit of lip service every once in a while.... It's either they simply don't give a ****.... Total lack of competance in leadership, or laziness.... I'd go with #2 there......

[susiedupfer]

+1 to the OP. I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, but I appreciate the fact that you, like me, are a bit tired of the rant/hate on devs theme going on.

I think what we all need to remember is that Turbine is trying to stay in business. Just like every other business. Are they going to improve their practices because 5% of players get on here and rant? Nope. A well thought out, well reasoned, calm post will get far more attention than ranting. Be specific, be concise, most of all, be polite.

[pie2655]

+1 to the OP. I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, but I appreciate the fact that you, like me, are a bit tired of the rant/hate on devs theme going on.

I think what we all need to remember is that Turbine is trying to stay in business. Just like every other business. Are they going to improve their practices because 5% of players get on here and rant? Nope. A well thought out, well reasoned, calm post will get far more attention than ranting. Be specific, be concise, most of all, be polite.

If anyone deserves a +1 its you. You just put it much better than i ever could.

[Captain_Wizbang]

*waiting for the car analogy*........

[smatt]

*waiting for the car analogy*........

This game is like an AMC Pacer.... :D;)

[lugoman]

It's not the Devs you should or should not have faith in. They do not make any decisions. It is management who is to blame.

Yes, whoever is making the release date decisions is to blame.

[Missing_Minds]

Total lack of competance in leadership, or laziness.... I'd go with #2 there......

Honestly, I go with leadership. The grunts, aka developers, do seem to care. Leader$hip must look at the higher calling, esp now under WB. There is a reason why I ratioed 1000 to 10.

[Captain_Wizbang]

This game is like an AMC Pacer.... :D;)
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm299/chefricochet/animated/th_88dea2a8.gif (http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm299/chefricochet/animated/?action=view&current=88dea2a8.gif)

Sorry Pie, didn't mean to derail, your thread needed some pizazz, and nothing says pizazz like an AMC Pacer

[Gara]

As the title says, have faith in our Devs. They are here to make the game as good as they can. It will NEVER be perfect because they, like us are human. The devs are NOT trying to make you miserable, DDO is a business and that would be bad for business. If they do something you dont agree with that doesnt mean the majority of DDOers agree with you. Turbine is a business, they need to make money to keep this game going therefore they have to appease the majority before the minority. Most importantly remember there arent TONS of devs, im sure they work hard, and you CAN help apply for the mournlands and bug report on live and lammania it DOES have an effect. NOT bug reporting does more harm then good.
Overall have faith in the devs, they are NOT out to ruin the game (that would be stupid! Use common sense!). If bugs, well bug you that much do what you can to help the devs find them and fix them!

Common sense?! You want us to use common sense? Time and time again there have been decisions to gameplay that violate common sense. I may not understand the intention behind every move but clearly the devs in this game have little to no common sense. Most of them don't even play the game I am guessing.

The one thing I have faith in is that even if the devs created a bug that deleted every character on the players account there would still be a person like you on the boards acting like they are getting paid to spout this stuff.

Every bug thread also has a person like you in it telling everyone how some crippling bug doesn't effect them so just don't worry about it.

Either way it doesn't make any difference. There is zero transparency on who makes these decisions and often things are changed without any notes at all. So good luck even finding someone to point a finger at if you have a valid complaint.

[smatt]

Honestly, I go with leadership. The grunts, aka developers, do seem to care. Leader$hip must look at the higher calling, esp now under WB. There is a reason why I ratioed 1000 to 10.

Oh there's no question..... Having had at least some interaction with a number of the various Devs, they do try. I may not agree with some of their decisions, but that's different than the overall thrust of the game. There have been some awesome additions to this game. And the communiation from individual Devs has been much better than it was for the first 5 years. But there are various glaring issues that seem to always be put on the back burner.... That's leadership or lack thereof plain and simple... And I'm not trying to be mean, just honest after all these years I've been playing and watching it all unfold.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

+1 to the OP. I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, but I appreciate the fact that you, like me, are a bit tired of the rant/hate on devs theme going on.

Personally, I agree here.

This makes the forums so much full with sour/acid/aggressiveness that it isn't no more fun reading here.

In terms of programming, I'm at the side of the developers,
in terms of software quality I demand a little bit more quality from the management.

Too many non-bugfixing Updates in a too short time can become a problem, imho.

I firmly believe that DDO should get several "sabbatical" months dedicated to only bigfixing, and to bugfixing alone.

The result would imho be a great, stable and solid basis for all future Updates.

This is my opinion.

[AuraAten]

It is best practice to have test and live environments be as similar as possible. Usually the test environment is less powerful (for obvious reasons) but if there are differences in code that would be applied to live vs. whats in test, then its not really a test environment.

Typically you'd expect Live to throw up issues you don't see in Test for a couple of reasons:

i. testing by its nature is limited, particularly regression testing. In other words, whilst its straightforward to test the changes you've made work as you intended, its often less easy to determine what other parts of your code are affected by those changes. This is an area where having standardised processes and objects helps, as does good documentation. When you promote to live, suddenly you have a lot more people using the code and using it in ways that your test scripts didn't cover. This is very likely to throw up bugs that were not identified through testing.

ii. server performance issues - live environments typically handle more volume, and whilst you can make estimates of how heavily your new code will affect server performance, it tends to be more rule of thumb than anything else. This often leads to issues such as lag.


What we seem to be seeing with Turbine processes at the moment is the following:

i. testing is not given the importance it is due; in other words, the arbitrary deadline schedules assigned by management override the level of stability evident in the candidate code

ii. testing feedback is ignored as being outside of the testing parameters. This is particularly galling for veteran players, who can often see consequential effects of changes better than isolated QA teams who may not play the game extensively and are not aware of wider repercussions than those listed on their test scripts

iii. its quite possible that live and test are not similar to each other, and that version control has to some degree broken down between environments. This is evident in dev comments on the forums to the effect that some issues are simply not replicable for them on their dev or test boxes, even though they are commonly seen in live (mob spell damage scaling is a classic example here)


There are probably a whole host of other issues at play here, but the above seems quite likely based on what we're seeing in terms of recent releases.


Edit: one other thing occurs to me: normally, you have user acceptance testing before final promotion to live. This is where expert users are given access to the code before it gets promoted to live, and they are told to use the software as they normally would. Whist Lammania exists, its not a true UAT environment, largely because the users do not have the ability to reject the code. I don't know if Turbine has a team that approves changes from a user perspective, but there certainly seems little evidence that there is based on the type of design decisions that are put forward and then quickly changed after they have gone live.


^^agreed..and thank you for an insightful and informative reply containing no insult to the original post.

[AuraAten]

Ahhhmmm I'm sorry but bugs were experienced on Lamma, with it's non-live quality... I mean if it impacts gameplay on such a small scale imagine on a live server.... And they did nothing before putting the content live. I don't particularly care if they consider Lamma a test server or not, the fact is they put out a product having been told of gameplay debilitating issues. Making another live test server will not fix such indifference.

To OP: faith?! I have issues in general with the concept of faith... Believing in an outcome or ideas in the absence of proof. Perhaps if you had said I should trust in the developers... That is earned. And they have earned me expecting every hot fix or update to bug something new. That is what experience has taught me. They have not earned trust. Why do I play? Because I like the character development and I work around bugs. They've ruined it enough for me that I went back to never winter nights 2 for a while and enough for me to put down money to try other RPGs and MMOs. One of these days one of these games will have enough I don't know what to beat the pros and cons of ddo. If ddo didn't have so many bugs lately I wouldn't be looking to cheat on it. I'd be loyal. But I feel loyalty would be an illogical course of action.
And no, I don't care if the programmers are ****, the project managers are ****, the managers are ****, wb is ****... I don't care whose fault it is. They are all one entity to me... Turbine. Those dudes/duddetes putting out ddo.

Actually SEVERAL issues that were reported on the test server were addressed and fixed. No one is forcing you to play this game, nor reply to a post like you know what you are talking about even when its apparent you dont.

[AuraAten]

This game is like an AMC Pacer.... :D;)

WHAT?!!? NO!!! its like a Pinto....keeps blowing up when smashed in the end....

[Synsuous]

The fact that Turbine still doesn't have any sort of version control

Can this be *verified*? If so, I am...well dumbfounded doesn't even begin to touch it. I have been an SQA Engineer for over 15 years. I have worked at the smallest startup and at Microsoft and I have -never- worked for a company that didn't have VCS (even if it was a crappy flavor of VCS).

[DeafeningWhisper]

Th devs I trust, the guys with the whips telling them what to do? Not so much...

[Synsuous]

Faith.

: inappropriate content
Telling someone to "learn to read" is not allowed.
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This infraction is worth 1 point(s) and may result in restricted access until it expires. Serious infractions will never expire.
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OMG! Is this for real!?! I guess I should learn to read. :p

[Synsuous]

However, professionally? What is considered "reasonably bug free" on a general level?



I've been an SQA Engineeer for more that 15 years. Here is the release criteria for almost every company that I have worked for:

All Priority 1 bugs fixed

All Priority 2, Severity 1 & 2 bugs fixed

As many Priority 2, Severity 3 and lower bugs fixed as reasonably possible.

As many Priority 3 bugs fixed as reasonably possible.

Which doesn't mean that the product can't ship without there being 1 or 2 Priority 1 bugs that were know about but deferred, but most companies try to do the best that they can.


And I should mention that I started out as a game tester. The companies I worked for as a game tester weren't any less concerned about fixing bugs than any other company I worked for.

[countfitz]

Part of me thinks the dude is trolling, I'm not sure. I mean, from his comments, if he were seriously on the forums all the time, he'd know he's points are heavily flawed. For instance:


...and you CAN help apply for the mournlands and bug report on live and lammania it DOES have an effect. NOT bug reporting does more harm then good.
If bugs, well bug you that much do what you can to help the devs find them and fix them!

As most people have noted, the bug reporting tool has been bugged FOREVER. Also, as past experience has shown, when there were bugs on Mourn or Lama, and the devs were told about them, responded to those posts, and even stated those bugs wouldn't make it on live, they did.


Uhm really? Log in and look around.

Again, as most people have noted, logging in is often impossible because of the bugs. Or, simply Turbines failure to pay it's bills


Overall have faith in the devs, they are NOT out to ruin the game (that would be stupid! Use common sense!).

So this statement, to me, seems like he's just setting us up to prove points he wants to make, using trolling manuevers. And I support that.

Anyway, the OP's point is incredibly valid. The only way to support Turbine anymore is FAITH. Blind faith. Faith, as in the "Everything tell's you you are completely wrong, all evidence points to you being completely wrong, everyone tells you you are completely wrong, but I BELIEVE ANYWAY!" kind of faith. And that is the only way to get by, hoping against all hope that Turbine will turn its act around.

As such, the choice of the word "faith" also points to me believing this is a troll post. Anyway, have fun responding to the dude!

[Uma-Quixote]

The Short Answer is - No.

Sorry. but while the Developers are just trying to do their job, lets be real here, they know what they are putting out is buggy, not working, and incomplete.

While as it stands, they personally may have no say in the matter, that does not mean that I should have faith in then.


If they have no control of the situation, they are as helpless as I am to change the game or do anything and thus there is no point in having faith in them.
If they are in control of the situation, then they are responsible for putting out content they know is half baked and thus not deserving of having faith in them.

Now at some point, somewhere in the company that is Turbine, someone made the judgment call to push out the content knowing that it was buggy, incomplete, and would make the company look incapable of putting out polished work.

Who that person is, I do not know, so I have no recourse but to blame Turbine as a whole, and that includes it's development team for putting out poorly done work, for poor time management of tasks, for allowing development projects to sit for years half done, and overall, a constant state of flux where they are breaking the working parts of the game as they try to "fix it"

Considerable +1

[Cyr]

The only way to support Turbine anymore is FAITH. Blind faith. Faith, as in the "Everything tell's you you are completely wrong, all evidence points to you being completely wrong, everyone tells you you are completely wrong, but I BELIEVE ANYWAY!" kind of faith. And that is the only way to get by, hoping against all hope that Turbine will turn its act around.


Sadly too long to fit in my sig.

[Cetus]

My support is where it counts - the money I pay for this product every month. I use these boards to point out my frustration with things that affect my enjoyment of the game. Just because there might be posters that shroud these boards in negativity doesn't mean that they've lost faith in the devs, its quite the contrary - these are probably the main financial supporters of this product and thus care enough to go through the trouble of voicing their concerns.

There are many obvious decisions that could've been better as far as the recent stretch of updates is concerned. Something as rediculous as leaving out greatswords and khopeshes out of raid loot is the most obvious disappointment. There are dozens of others.

[aa7threalm]

still waiting on a "response" for my lost 47 epic destiny levels,

hopefully the fix comes after :)

[Auralana7214]

I have come to the realization that because of the amount of bugs, there is probably no real hope that improvements to the game that I would like to see will ever come about.

The game is still fun, but I don't really expect anything. I guess you could say I have no faith in the devs. I don't think they're not good at what they do, I just think that the project has grown big hairy troll legs and out run them.

I won't presume to know what the problems are with the management style, hierarchy, coding, or whatever. Something is definitely broken.

It's sad because this game could be so much better.

[countfitz]

still waiting on a "response" for my lost 47 epic destiny levels,

hopefully the fix comes after :)

Sometimes I don't understand how people in your situation don't ragequit.

Seriously... If I'd been the subject of 1) Abbot eating my greensteel 2) Bank eating an ingredient bag or 3) this one... I don't think I'd make it back to the game. Assuming they don't fix it. Which may be a fair assumption, I hope not for your sake.

As one affected by the missing U14 prepurchases, I almost called my credit card company to cancel the payment...

I kind of still wish I had sometimes...

But anyway, I've put enough money in the game, and grind enough, that it's completely free now and always will be. So I will now only pay for one thing: Unicorns. Either pets, or panther-like hirelings, or mounts.

But that's it.

Or Unicorn themed armor skins... Maybe.

My wife has a thing for unicorns. I don't get it... but anyway.

[pie2655]

countfitz you sir, are a genius. You've caught me, yes this was totally a huge troll!
+1 to you sir for figuring it out!

[pie2655]

oops forgot how to edit posts. meant to add /sarcasm off to the end of that!

[Raithe]

It's sad because this game could be so much better.


This could have been my motto from five years ago. DDO had some of the best physics, best graphics, best technical aspects of any MMO I have ever played before or since. I had invested in this game because I saw the massive potential and was waiting around for the developers to capitalize on it. They could have made seventy bazillion.

But a year or so passed and the game didn't go anywhere but to the dogs. They kept installing grinds, and inflating stats, and making DCs higher and higher so that you HAD to grind in order to play at your own skill level (I resisted anyway). They developed the "Epic" game that to me seemed so ridiculously stupid and moronic it made smoke come out of my ears. They ostracized all the good players of the game and catered to the worst gaming element of any online game, in my opinion at least.

Then came the challenges, and after that Menace of the Underdark. Yes, it was fraught with bugs, but still like a breath of fresh air. The D&D atmosphere was back. It felt like fantasy, not steam-punk grind. Quests were fun and interesting for the most part and you could explore them in detail or get them completed quick if you were in a hurry or wanted to move on. Random loot became interesting again. AC became useful for people who actually controlled the success of their completions, and epic destinies made gameplay for non-casting classes something to embrace.

Everyone that is so disenfranchised in this thread needs to realize that their goals and hopes for the game were coming at the expense of a larger audience. From my observations, MORE people are playing now. The game has changed, it's true, but it has changed for the better in my personal analysis, and probably for the better in Turbine's pocket book.

[Skar]

Do I have faith in the developers ?
Are they active DDO players ?

Those questions are perfectly equivalent.

Sorry, my first MMO was run by the single programmer who invented it and after he left the most active player had learned to code and carried on ...

[knightgf]

Do I have faith? Honestly, it has eroded greatly over time. Developers make mistakes in game development, including valve. I realize that these guys may not be top of the line, but even so, the amount of bugs in this game as well as the horrible balance between casters and melee/ranged fighters is just shocking. Game development is never a easy task, but the quality of the updates I have seen just go more and more downhill with time.

I love DDO:EU. I realize that Turbine did some unique stuff to the game to reveal it's potential, but I feel that it is time for someone else to take charge, mostly because there are so many potential developers that could do better the game is being hurt in the position it is in at the moment. I believe that while hiring enough people matters in a studio, having a revolving door of employees doesn't work well in the end.

I think Turbine should hire a outside game company, such as valve, to try to work on their game and show them how the right way to do stuff in a game if they want to continue working on DDO:EU. I know valve has worked on few games of this category, but they know so much from the game categories they make that it would certainly open people's eyes to stuff they have never seen before. Consider it Turbine! The knowledge you could gain and the content you put in by hiring a outside game company could be well worth it!

[GermanicusMaximus]

My wife has a thing for unicorns. I don't get it... but anyway.

Yeah, I really don't get the unicorn thing either.

Whenever I see some fanboi talking about how great the game is now, all I can imagine is that the fanbois are off on some test server someplace, riding around on their prancing purple unicorns. If they aren't on a test server, they certainly appear to be on something else. :D

[GeneralDiomedes]

Can this be *verified*? If so, I am...well dumbfounded doesn't even begin to touch it. I have been an SQA Engineer for over 15 years. I have worked at the smallest startup and at Microsoft and I have -never- worked for a company that didn't have VCS (even if it was a crappy flavor of VCS).

I think he just assumes that because of bugs that continue to re-appear.

More likely, this is due to spaghetti code and the constant refactoring needed in an old engine.