Look, publically asking why handwraps aren't fixed EXCEPT Viscous?

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Originally Posted by Wizzly Bear

i doubt very much that anyone truly believes that anyone at turbine is "out to get the player", but many of us cant help but have some suspicion that 90+% of the bugs that give us some extra benefit that we shouldnt have are "easier fixes". that, and one of the main features of the main attraction of a whole module being broken for, what...a month now i think....is rather disheartening. doesnt feel quite as bad as the abbot mod (which worked and then was broken, rather than starting off broken (except for the cheaters of course)), but still sucks.

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Picking and choosing like this doesn't make any sense, for every bug that impacts us positively that is fixed, I can come up with another bug that impacted us negatively that gets fixed.

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Originally Posted by Angelus_dead

Yes, that's clear. That was a really bad design choice by your programmers.

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This I COMPLETELY agree with. I don't see why handwraps had to be coded SO much differently than weapons. The simple fact that handwraps worn stats show up in your characters buff sheet should be a clue that this application of the weapon was perhaps not the best route.

I get the idea, since monks' damage dice increases with level, it was easier to code the monk himself as the weapon as opposed to the handwraps. However, I think that you probably would have saved yourselves a lot of work if the time had been taken to code handwraps as a weapon type rather than a character buff.

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Originally Posted by Eladrin

Contrary to popular belief, we prefer to have patches fix more problems than they cause, and don't order things to do by "do they hurt the player". (Tempest constant +2 AC bonus, Monk metamagic, and Marilith misbehavior are three bugs I can think of off the top of my head that help the players but haven't made it to live either.) This was just a bug fix....

If it makes people feel better to think that I'm out to get them, uh... Good for them, I guess.

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I think the truth is best exemplified by a favorite few words of many parties: "Let's form a shield wall." That benefit has existed from the beginning.

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Originally Posted by Zaodon

By making this decision to rate player satisfaction as a inferior criteria to, as you say, a "very high" consideration for stability, the end result is things that adversely affect players can be left in the game longer while fixes that annoy us make it in

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I would consider game stability to be the main thing that gives players satisfaction. I'm sure if the game started crashing or fixes started adding more bugs than they fixed, then player satisfaction would drop a lot faster than the level it stays at if these minor issues are left unfixed for a while.

Garth

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Originally Posted by willphase

I would consider game stability to be the main thing that gives players satisfaction. I'm sure if the game started crashing or fixes started adding more bugs than they fixed, then player satisfaction would drop a lot faster than the level it stays at if these minor issues are left unfixed for a while.

Garth

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I didn't mean to imply that stability should be abandoned for player satisfaction when evaluating bugs. I meant to say that stability should not, IMHO, be such a "trump card" to player satisfaction. i.e. Rate bugs that affect players negatively a little higher even if they are slightly more risky. Not to just throw stability out the window.

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Originally Posted by Wizzly Bear

indeed, but the percentage of each is very different. and so is the perception. if we have to suffer bad bugs, why cant we enjoy good ones through the course? also, as zao said, fixing in order of ease implies that customer satisfaction is not at the top of the list.

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They didn't say they make priorities based on the EASE of the task, but more based on the relative levels of RISK.

In fact, this shows they have customer satisfaction at the TOP of their list, because they purposely avoid creating more problems than they fix.

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Originally Posted by Aspenor

They didn't say they make priorities based on the EASE of the task, but more based on the relative levels of RISK.

In fact, this shows they have customer satisfaction at the TOP of their list, because they purposely avoid creating more problems than they fix.

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Its not like Vicious was Risk Level 1 and Ghost Touch was Risk Level 947,635 or anything. You make it sound like if they fixed ghost touch first, it would have crashed the servers. It was a small amount of additional risk as compared to fixing vicious, and even then that's just an educated guess on the developers part. For all they know, fixing vicious could have caused more problems than fixing ghost touch from something they didn't foresee.

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Originally Posted by Zaodon

Its not like Vicious was Risk Level 1 and Ghost Touch was Risk Level 947,635 or anything. You make it sound like if they fixed ghost touch first, it would have crashed the servers. It was a small amount of additional risk as compared to fixing vicious, and even then that's just an educated guess on the developers part. For all they know, fixing vicious could have caused more problems than fixing ghost touch from something they didn't foresee.

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Risk can be calculated, and don't be so ignorant to think it can't. The devs know how their coding is formatted, and do understand how to determine what fixes are more likely to cause more coding issues. Of course sometimes they miss something, hence the blade barrier bug that seemed to be affected by change to firewall and other AoE's.

I'm not saying it would have crashed the servers, you put those words in my mouth.

Who are you to say it was a "small amount of additional risk?" Do you know the code? Do you work at Turbine? No, you don't.

Pretending that you know how to do Turbine's job better than they do is arrogant. They are not perfect, but nobody is, and although YOU might prioritize things differently, that doesn't mean that you're right.

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Originally Posted by Aspenor

I get the idea, since monks' damage dice increases with level, it was easier to code the monk himself as the weapon as opposed to the handwraps. However, I think that you probably would have saved yourselves a lot of work if the time had been taken to code handwraps as a weapon type rather than a character buff.

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In fact, if it was too difficult to make monk levels override the damage dice of "handwrap weapons", they could have simply worked around it by giving monks a +2, +4, +6... damage bonus at levels 4, 8, 12 etc. That would be implemented exactly like a variation on Weapon Specialization or Dwarf Melee Damage, and it would bring unarmed monks up to the same average damage they're supposed to have, without replacing the dice.

Then the only other potentially tricky part is how to convey the Magic/Law/Adamantine properties onto the handwrap. Well, the magic one is irrelevant because the handwrap is already enchanted... and as for Law and Adamantine, if they had been simply left out, hardly anyone would care. Players would much prefer to have their Holy, Enfeebling, and Transmuting wraps working properly than to have the ability to beat DR/Law.

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Originally Posted by Aspenor

Risk can be calculated, and don't be so ignorant to think it can't. The devs know how their coding is formatted, and do understand how to determine what fixes are more likely to cause more coding issues. Of course sometimes they miss something, hence the blade barrier bug that seemed to be affected by change to firewall and other AoE's.

I'm not saying it would have crashed the servers, you put those words in my mouth.

Who are you to say it was a "small amount of additional risk?" Do you know the code? Do you work at Turbine? No, you don't.

Pretending that you know how to do Turbine's job better than they do is arrogant. They are not perfect, but nobody is, and although YOU might prioritize things differently, that doesn't mean that you're right.

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There is no "right" or "wrong" here, this entire discussion is about opinions. Its my opinion, as well as others, that Turbine should give more consideration to bugs that affect players negatively, even if that *slightly* increases the risk to a patch, or even if they have to take a little longer to QA the patch to mitigate that increase in risk.

Ultimately, its the Management at Turbine who's opinion counts. However, good managers are always open to hearing the opinions of others. Turbine has now heard our opinion on this matter. Whether they change or not is not up to us.

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Originally Posted by Zaodon

There is no "right" or "wrong" here, this entire discussion is about opinions. Its my opinion, as well as others, that Turbine should give more consideration to bugs that affect players negatively, even if that *slightly* increases the risk to a patch, or even if they have to take a little longer to QA the patch to mitigate that increase in risk.

Ultimately, its the Management at Turbine who's opinion counts. However, good managers are always open to hearing the opinions of others. Turbine has now heard our opinion on this matter. Whether they change or not is not up to us.

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You have to remember this patch was more than about handwraps.

They fixed blade barrier (I think?), they fixed assassinate, they put the buffing chamber in VOD, they added no-reentry mechanics to Hound and VOD, and I could go on.

Why on earth would they delay the patch for up to 2 months just to QA and fix a risky bug, when they had all the previously mentioned fixes already QA'd and ready to go live? I know from private conversations with developers that the bugs fixed in this patch had patches in QA before Mod 7 ever went live.

I would rather patch now the bugs that have been conclusively fixed, rather than wait an indeterminable amount of time for a non-essential fix. Several of these bugs WERE major issues for many players. Leaving them around just to satisfy the handwraps issues would have been a poor choice, especially when a monk can just pick up a quarterstaff or kama and deal with the fact that he's not unarmed, at least until the bug is fixed.

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Originally Posted by Angelus_dead

There's no reason that handwraps should've functioned differently from regular magic weapons in this regard.

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Are you sure? I'm definitely not an expert in unarmed combat, but I thought it wasn't simply replacing the fists damage with the handwraps damage.

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Originally Posted by tihocan

Are you sure? I'm definitely not an expert in unarmed combat, but I thought it wasn't simply replacing the fists damage with the handwraps damage.

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the ability for a monk to overcome various DR (based on monk level) was probably their biggest reason for the method they chose... scaling damage would be easy to implement (as it's already being done with enhancements, sneak attack, etc).

personally, i'd try to find a way to involve handwrap features (DR overcoming and damage) as "locked" enhancements for handwraps: unlocked by having the appropriate monk level.

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Originally Posted by tihocan

Stability is a major factor of player satisfaction.

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"Stability" also happens to be an armor enhancement that checks your characters alignment before it grants bonuses. If (and only if) you are TN, the bonuses are applied.


This same tech should have been fairly easy to apply to check for class/level, and this technology would have useful applications for other classes/items as well... except that we're talking about providing an "item buff" instead of a "character buff". Item buffing issues have been the reason for us not getting several spells already (sorry pallys), and apparently lacking the tech is now branching out to cause other problems.

Of course, perhaps they tried, and it was found to be too difficult. We'll never know.

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Originally Posted by Zaodon

I didn't mean to imply that stability should be abandoned for player satisfaction when evaluating bugs. I meant to say that stability should not, IMHO, be such a "trump card" to player satisfaction. i.e. Rate bugs that affect players negatively a little higher even if they are slightly more risky. Not to just throw stability out the window.

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Stability is a major factor of player satisfaction. You should know yourself since you're getting so upset about some bugs.

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Originally Posted by Zaodon

I don't think you're "out to get us" or any such nonsense. However, you've confirmed what I said in my other thread, which is that prioritization of fixes is not done from a "what benefits the players most" point of view, but instead from a "what is the easiest, least risky thing we can do" point of view. By making this decision to rate player satisfaction as a inferior criteria to, as you say, a "very high" consideration for stability, the end result is things that adversely affect players can be left in the game longer while fixes that annoy us make it in.

That doesn't mean I think you hate us, it just means I disagree with the way you prioritize issues.

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So if players felt that a fix that was more risky needed to make it into the game immediately over an easy fix, and the Dev's rushed it through QA and bad things happened, you would be more satisfied?

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Originally Posted by willphase

I would consider game stability to be the main thing that gives players satisfaction. I'm sure if the game started crashing or fixes started adding more bugs than they fixed, then player satisfaction would drop a lot faster than the level it stays at if these minor issues are left unfixed for a while.

Garth

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I approve this message!!

nm, included in previous post

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Originally Posted by Laith

the ability for a monk to overcome various DR (based on monk level) was probably their biggest reason for the method they chose... scaling damage would be easy to implement (as it's already being done with enhancements, sneak attack, etc).

personally, i'd try to find a way to involve handwrap features (DR overcoming and damage) as "locked" enhancements for handwraps: unlocked by having the appropriate monk level. Mainly because this technology would have useful applications for other classes/items as well...

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I see what you mean... keep in mind that unarmed combat must work both with and without handwraps though, so you'd have to duplicate stuff if you wanted to code everything on the handwraps.
Plus, A_D mentioned how any new effect will be more complex to code since it will need to work on handwraps. That's true, but if you change it so that handwraps are coded like weapons, then the problem is any new unarmed feature you add will be more complex to code since it will need to properly work with/without handwraps as well.
In the end, I doubt we (players) can criticize the implementation when we have no clue about how DDO is coded.

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Originally Posted by Eelpout

So if players felt that a fix that was more risky needed to make it into the game immediately over an easy fix, and the Dev's rushed it through QA and bad things happened, you would be more satisfied?

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Or, you know, they could not rush it and test it properly ......

o.O

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Originally Posted by tihocan

In the end, I doubt we (players) can criticize the implementation when we have no clue about how DDO is coded.

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We have many clues. And overriding all that, we have the unescapable result: Turbine was unable to make existing weapon properties work on handwraps prior to the module 7 release.

That means they did do something wrong.

It's true that customers have incomplete knowledge to make these judgements... but you know what? Their producers have incomplete knowledge too.