Question on Known Issue/Bug Reporting

[Trillea]

the problem with statements like this are that there are 2 distinct different bugs with ladders.

the first bug was getting stuck on ladders. this was caused by a misalignment in the ladders after they moved up to DX9. keeper had to go back through every ladder and realign them. these bugs have been pretty much eradicated from the game.

the second bug is a little trickier and affects every ladder in the game. this is the bug that causes you to rubber band back to the bottom of the ladder every time you start climbing it. the only way to fix it is to step off the ladder and start over.

theory 1 - your client recognizes that you are on a ladder but the server does not. when the new climb coordinates are sent to the server, it rejects them as "invalid" because you can't walk up a vertical surface so it starts you back on the ground. this is repeated until you step off the ladder and get back onto it.

reasoning - this bug only occurs when you try to get on a ladder by running into it (your feet are on the ground). if you jump onto the ladder you never see this bug.

theory 2 - you are caught in an out of synch loop with the server. basically, the client is sending an update for rung 3 when the server thinks you are on 1. the server sends back a reset message. rinse repeat.

reasoning - very dependant on lagged messaging.

This seems to mirror what I see for most ladder bugs.

[Zenako]

You know Tolero, keep this up and they are gonna add another button to the line up top. Dev Tracker, Service Tracker, Tolero Tracker.... cranking on the post count today....

[Hendrik]

So (and Keeper can correct me on this if I'm wrong) my general understanding of the way ladders work is that they can get bustificated in two ways:
A) If they're too far in the ground
B) If many moons ago in DDO's early life, the ladder was made using multiple ladder chunks.

One requires Keeper to scoot the ladder out of the ground (or something like that), another requires her to yank the "pieces" out and put in a nice whole ladder. If you're jumping onto the ladder and it's borking, it's like problem B ... usually. I'm sure I said the above wrong :P Keeper can spank me if I'm giving erroneous ladder anatomy.

If you sell tickets to this spanking in the DDO Store you will make a fortune!

[Folonius]

Last edited by Riggs; 08-02-2010 at 03:39 PM.

You done yet, or you still stealth editing? Honestly, how do people take you seriously if you keep changing your post.

[DagazUlf]

Incorrect. I was climbing all over ladders this weekend with no issue. The only funky ladder I found is one in the public space in House D. And... like a bad person... I didn't /loc it and will now have to go back and find it and /loc it for Keeper >>

Wrong!

Did you just walk up to all of these ladders and begin to climb without just hitching up and down over and over until you backed off and jumped on instead? If so, I salute you.

I have an entire guild full of people that suffer from being mangled by the many evil mimic ladders throughout Stormreach that insist you not touch that first bottom rung, but instead jump on to them.

Hmmmm... if you really don't have this issue, go try any of the gnoll ladders out in the SE part of the Vale. If they are working correctly, maybe it's an issue of solo vs. party play. Try it with a few people in the party.

[Asketes]

Lookey here Tolero. I find this talk flattering and all, but do you think we could focus more on the game and less emoting around?

.. I could poke........

......I'll have to poke..........

....can spank me.....

.......I'll have to poke .......

[DagazUlf]

I'll have to poke Keeper and see if there are any other types of situations that can cause the "sticky" ("looping climb" "broken ladder" "ladder rubber band" "infinite ladder climb" "dejavu ladder" everyone has a different description for it) situation. Any time I have it happen, it's on a ladder I haven't tried to climb before, and usually towards the bottom half rather than the top half of the ladder. Or on a ladder that I know to be broken but I'm not sure if Keeper's gotten a chance to correct. They're similar to "stuck spots" really.

Honestly, I quit reporting ladder bugs long ago because I'd see the release notes that said something like "fixed many ladders", and I'd test those specific ladders I had submitted and they were still borked along with just about all the others. So, I gave up after a couple times. For me, it still seems like almost every ladder in Stormreach is sketchy and uses some kind of tech that gets it out-of-sync with my client or something. Been that way since the beginning.

[DagazUlf]

Oh, and Keeper seemed so happy about "fixing" the ladders, I just couldn't bring myself to be the dark cloud on her sunny day.

[Junts]

I'll have to poke Keeper and see if there are any other types of situations that can cause the "sticky" ("looping climb" "broken ladder" "ladder rubber band" "infinite ladder climb" "dejavu ladder" everyone has a different description for it) situation. Any time I have it happen, it's on a ladder I haven't tried to climb before, and usually towards the bottom half rather than the top half of the ladder. Or on a ladder that I know to be broken but I'm not sure if Keeper's gotten a chance to correct. They're similar to "stuck spots" really.

Jumping onto and getting 'ladder stuck' to me seems like a lag issue, where the game loses track of where i hit the ladder and bumps me to the bottom of it continually.

This happens in a wide range of ladders old and new, and seems distinct from the old 'ladder bug' that people always complained about, and even happens with ladders reported many times as fixed.

the most obnoxious is the ladder you have to jump onto on the dagger side of von2, since if you bug when you hit it you have to release the ladder and fall to the quori and come back past the wind bridges.

[Blackbird]

That's your strawman. What they did in the past is irrelevant. What they are doing to make the game better is relevant.

That isn't a straw man. That is past experience with bug reporting. Turbine says the are using the same process now that they were using then, where all reports are read. Both in the past and now, many reports can go for months or years with no response from Turbine, only to have someone hear about it on the forums for the first time. Basing current expectations on past experiences when nothing in the process has changed is hardly an unreasonable position.

Freeman on Blackbird's Ipad

[BoBo2020]

First - Hello.

I've been lurking for months but this is my first post so someone please "Hi, Welcome" me and get it over with.

...

Thank you!

Ok, so I wanted to follow up on this part of Tolero's quote regarding the missing chest on Hard and Elite ToD:

...I know this seems 'lengthy' but in some cases something may very well be WAI, and reports like this help from a "quality of life" stand point. Maybe the intent was for it to work the way it is? But if we're getting bug reports from people who are confused, it gives the quest folks leverage to change it. Not always, but it's added ammunition.

If I read this correctly, then it is possible (as several of us have discussed on Sarlona) that there is something undiscovered in ToD.

I think it is interesting that most of the Amrath quests have alternate endings or supplemental optional objectives after the main quest concludes.

Is there a chance that ToD is not meant to be such a linear raid and the missing chests are meant to be a clue instead of a bug?

Not sure why my signature isn't working - but I am Mamatse on Sarlona.

[Strakeln]

/snort at this entire thread

Y'all can talk about how to better report bugs until you're blue in the face... nothing will come of it until Turbine starts paying attention and responding to them.

Go look up the path of the Supreme Cleave bug, Tolero, if you want to find some real issues. That bug was reported dozens if not hundreds of times, as early as 2 months before EU release and continuing post-EU release. MadFloyd first heard about it a month or so after EU, on the forums. And even then, it took several months to get it working properly.

Although the fact that it made it to live speaks to a much better problem: QA. I have yet to find another QA department that thinks not testing functionality on a new feature is perfectly acceptable. C'mon... really? No one thought to test out that new feature?

[moorewr]

Ok, here's an example of a bug report I submitted a few months ago, which contributed to the impression that they don't get read.

1. An update changed the duration of Fire Shield, but the Web immunity portion stayed at the old duration. (For example, 3.5 minutes for Fire Shield but 3.0 minutes for web immunity)
2. I file a bug report saying that the duration of web immunity is incorrectly different from that of Fire Shield.
3. Nothing appears in the Known Issues page.
4. The bug isn't fixed in game.

So what am I to think happened to this bug report?
1. The HTTP server completely dropped the submission.
2. Someone closed it without looking.
3. Someone read it and decided the behavior was correct, closing it as NOTABUG.
4. The report is still waiting in a queue for someone to read.
5. The report was confirmed and is waiting for a developer to someday fix.

From out here I can't tell what happened, and my motivation to spend time and effort on further detailed bug reports is reduced.

This is my experience with bugs and Turbine (and most any software project) to a T.

Turbine ought to provide a history to the submitter - merge, wontfix, notabug, assigned etc etc. and a bug you can visit on the web. They have it internally, after all.

[Pwesiela]

First - Hello.

I've been lurking for months but this is my first post so someone please "Hi, Welcome" me and get it over with.

Wrong

Hi Welcome

Right

And you did ask for it!

Thank you!

You're welcome.

Ok, so I wanted to follow up on this part of Tolero's quote regarding the missing chest on Hard and Elite ToD:



If I read this correctly, then it is possible (as several of us have discussed on Sarlona) that there is something undiscovered in ToD.

I think it is interesting that most of the Amrath quests have alternate endings or supplemental optional objectives after the main quest concludes.

Is there a chance that ToD is not meant to be such a linear raid and the missing chests are meant to be a clue instead of a bug?

Not sure why my signature isn't working - but I am Mamatse on Sarlona.

Just so you know, nothing really deserving the Hi Welcome treatment here. But like I said, you asked and I deliver!

[Folonius]

That isn't a straw man. That is past experience with bug reporting. Turbine says the are using the same process now that they were using then, where all reports are read. Both in the past and now, many reports can go for months or years with no response from Turbine, only to have someone hear about it on the forums for the first time. Basing current expectations on past experiences when nothing in the process has changed is hardly an unreasonable position.

I haven't really seen reports not being responded to. They do send out an email acknowledging the bug reports, but as for them not responding to bug reports in the present I don't see it. I admit it can be much better, but it's nice to have some response from Tolero on these issues.

The reason I say past experience is a strawman is because while past experiences may have been bad in regards to bug reporting, that's not what we are really talking about. We are talking about bug reporting, or at least the Op is, in the relative present, and not last year, or even the begginning of this year, but post U5. That's what I've been getting out of most of this convo. I'm not going to sit here and call someone in the Turbine team a liar when I have no proof in backing it up in regards to present bug reporting techniques.

[sephiroth1084]

Yup that's a good description. This is one we've gotten good reports on last I knew (though how it got in that state is another story, and that can determine how/when it gets fixed. It kinda comes down to whether Genasi or Phax have to fix it... bad things happen if Phax has to fix it and you know I'm just going to preemptively say that you never ever want Phax to have to fix something; not because he's not good at what he does, but because it means it's more elusive and the fixing is more complicated).

Well, wasn't there a change to the number of targets the Radiant Servant aura effects in the last partch/hotfix? The same one where these 3 spells that have odd targeting behavior to begin with got broken? I'm no programmer, but if I had to guess, I'd figure that whatever got changed on the RS aura, somehow either replaced the value on the spells in question, or reset the targeting values without having them scale.

Could be unrelated, but that seems like too much of a coincidence for that to be the case.

Also, since we're on the topic, if passingly, whenever rage gets fixed, could we possibly see if effecting more than 5 targets at level 20?

[AyumiAmakusa]

To be fair, major game-breaking bugs that were reported were promptly fixed. An example would be the spell-cooldown bug. I sent in three separate reports at three different times (each for 3 different cases) regarding that cooldown bug. One was that it affected spells, one was that it affected spell-like abilities and item clickies and the last was how to effectively reproduce that effect.

As we can see, it was promptly fixed. I do agree however that some bugs are so minor and easily fixed that there is little reason to leave it unfixed for years (such as spell descriptions, item descriptions and descriptions in general).

[Hendrik]

Hmm, I must be doing something wrong cause I get replies to my reports....

I even get PM's/email.

JUST got this back from a bug I submitted this morning;

"Thank you for submitting the bug titled 'GRAPHICS/ANIMATION: Fear Spell. Your bug has been sent to our Quality Assurance team to be reviewed.

We are not able to provide status updates or feedback on individual bugs, however, our QA team may contact you using the private messaging system of the DDO forums or by email if further information is needed about the bug."

[AyumiAmakusa]

We are not able to provide status updates or feedback on individual bugs, however, our QA team may contact you using the private messaging system of the DDO forums or by email if further information is needed about the bug."

Computer generated auto-reply email is not counted. Besides, I never got an email asking for further bug information.

[Cahira]

Computer generated auto-reply email is not counted. Besides, I never got an email asking for further bug information.

I've not gotten an email asking for more info...however I have gotten a PM on the forums to help me out with a bug I had submitted.

cathy_n QA sent me a PM about a bug that was affecting default keymapping and told me how to fix it, that it was a known bug, and that she didn't know when it would be fixed.

Granted, that was in March of 2007...but it did give me some amount of confidence that they read what we submit.