Stopping the negative rumors

[SiliconShadow]

So many rumors spread around by grumpy people of the most, they rant how bad the game is coded, how things go untested, how there are no beta testers, hell how we pay to beta test for them (lammania)..

To the whole it is untrue, no one looks at the positive sides and ignore the truth in these are just rants by people who have had a personal bad experience and big mouths.

Beta servers: We know of the existence of the test server, the true beta server and have had talk of the developers who have thier own stand alone alpha servers, the test server or beta stage is what we know it to be called as "Mournlands" there is a private preview program going on there on a hush hush basis, yet certain people still maintain nothing gets tested or checked out.

No dedicated beta testers: This one really needs to be squelched for good, it would be impossible for the game to go out to lammania at the quality it is for there not to be, I would say there remains a 98% bug free game higher than almost any other mmorpg, the quality of the text and content is probably one second to lotro.. wait thats turbine too.

Turbine are a faceless corporation who don't care: Well we know they do, we talk to them all the time on the forums, on lammania, and not just customer reps, we get a little chat from developers and designers and the like, they do care and they love our input!

They don't know how to program: I have seen this comment quite a few times recently and I always laugh at the people who post the comments. Turbine really have some of the best games programmers going, the quality and accuracy of handling the amount of data that goes into this game is astounding.

Really bad customer service: Think about how many tickets per hour go into turbine, the speed and quality of the customer support is better than 99% of the games out there, if you go and ring up Sony, Eidos, Webzen to name but a few you won't get the same customer care quality as you will from turbine, this makes me believe and feel that the employees care.

So what is the suggestion? The above needs some PR work, show the developers, show the QA Team, who the testers, tell us how the game comes from the drawing board to our screens, those of us who partake on lammania by choice know you care and know and give feedback for you guys to alter, but globally the rest of the players seem to have this negative look on how things are done.

[MsEricka]

+1 to you.

Another myth that needs to be expunged is expanding on your "They don't know how to program" theme. I find it entertaining that people who have never programmed anything, can comment that programming is easy and fixing something should take 2 seconds.

A program like DDO has millions of lines of code. Making a single change in the code can affect thousands of other lines which means that changing effects or actions can affect other things that weren't intended.

It's not possible for someone to know even a tenth of the code of a program as big as DDO. Yes there are functions and calls and shared code that make many things easier, but it's still huge.

More on beta testing - When you make a build you test out the major functions, perhaps play a character or three and see how things go. It's not possible to test EVERYTHING. The complaint of "why didn't you see this before you released it" is complete bunk. Yes major bugs will make it through, that's what patches, hotfixes and service packs are for.

[LOOON375]

One of the better threads I have ever read on here.

[Cam_Neely]

Beta servers:
No dedicated beta testers:
Turbine are a faceless corporation who don't care:
They don't know how to program:
Really bad customer service:

While this is probably all true, and there have been some very baseless rantings, the fact of the matter is that turbine has dropped the ball on two major things in the very recent past. Breaking the biggest crafting that the game had (Green Steel) and letting a bug that was known and reported (handwrap +) go live, not to mention many of the minor glitches and issues that have gone through, is a worrying trend.

Yes these things happen, but that does not mean that anyone should like or expect it.

Personally I think the handwrap issues, while not having a huge effect on the game, speaks to more issues. Its long been rumored that bug reporting does nothing, but the handwraps was pointed out, with immense amount of work going into the back up, by lamda testers. This was ignored and allowed to go live. This is more of an issue in the way the do QC, and needs to be fixed before something major break on a class we care about (j/k monks, love ya).

Turbine relies on their paying customers to much for bug report, and pointing stuff out on the board. That should be internalized.

[zwiebelring]

I want to support a pro developper attitude but then some mistakes go into the public game like lately with the handwraps enahncement bonuses, like presitige enhancements do not work correctly (Stalwart iirc?), weapon features are broken (lesser vampirism) etc.pp.

It is the quality of mistakes in things which seem to give players some options but instead are totally useless because the wording cannot be trusted.

A few things to think about:
These things are upsetting people because they kind of limit the gameplay comfort. People who do not pay any real money for this game should not behave like mentioned in the OP but if I pay money then I sure have the right as a customer to be upset.

The quality of the (in my opinion) clear insults by upset customers is anyway not appropriate, though. Especially the mentioned lack of programming skills. This is a direct and uncalled insult. Sometimes crit. happens.

The developpers have to choose the lesser evil. Imagine they did server downtimes immediately after some problems occured, nobody would ever be able to play for 2 days in a row and then again people whine on forums.

On the other hand there are some really annoying time consuming bugs which shuold be eradicated immediately but well you cannot please everybody.

Anyway, there are some relevant problems and people have the right to be upset.. if they pay money otherwise: beggars can't be choosers.

Till then try to enjoy the game otherwise move on to another one, it is not like DDO is the one and only existing MMO. Or, which may be the best solution, become a tester yourself, go to Lamannia, indulge in DDO mechanics and try to improve the quality. You can complain because you pay money BUT you even pay money to have a little influence in the improvement. If you do not use this option then it is your choice. But then do not point to others, think about what you did not want to improve.

[Rinnaldo]

While this is probably all true, and there have been some very baseless rantings, the fact of the matter is that turbine has dropped the ball on two major things in the very recent past. Breaking the biggest crafting that the game had (Green Steel) and letting a bug that was known and reported (handwrap +) go live, not to mention many of the minor glitches and issues that have gone through, is a worrying trend.

Yes these things happen, but that does not mean that anyone should like or expect it.

Personally I think the handwrap issues, while not having a huge effect on the game, speaks to more issues. Its long been rumored that bug reporting does nothing, but the handwraps was pointed out, with immense amount of work going into the back up, by lamda testers. This was ignored and allowed to go live. This is more of an issue in the way the do QC, and needs to be fixed before something major break on a class we care about (j/k monks, love ya).

Turbine relies on their paying customers to much for bug report, and pointing stuff out on the board. That should be internalized.

I used to code for and run a MUD, and here's the thing you may not realize: When you make a bugfix, you usually test it directly. If you think you fixed monks' handwraps, you log on a monk, hit something, and note whether or not they worked. You may even swap chars, weapons, or whathaveyou, to ensure it works correctly now. You presume it's fixed.

Then, you put the update through, and you watch as a player on the live version logs in a monk, does something you didn't even think of (say, changes his set of clothing from one to another), and then has the old problem again. Sure, it's possible that you thought to test how changing outfits might affect the to-hit bonus applying correctly, but it might not have come up. At all. Because there might have been no reason to suspect it. So now it is bug reported, and you put it on your list of things to test for the next iteration of your presumed bug fix... And, on and on...

[Memnir]

So what is the suggestion? The above needs some PR work, show the developers, show the QA Team, who the testers, tell us how the game comes from the drawing board to our screens, those of us who partake on lammania by choice know you care and know and give feedback for you guys to alter, but globally the rest of the players seem to have this negative look on how things are done.

This would only mitigate a tiny amount of the negative rumors that abound. Only a small fraction of the game's population visits the forums. And, most of the negative things I've heard ingame have been from people who don't. When I correct them and tell them I read differently on the forums, I am usually told something along the lines of, "I don't have time/interest in reading the forums." I've also heard the same person, grouped with days or even hours later, still spreading the same rumor.


The other factor working against this idea is the Devs' own Code of Silence. In order for them to have such a dialog with us would require them to drop this, and let us peek behind the curtain a bit... and this is something the Devs seem loathe to do. No matter the general public perception that things would be better and happier if they talked to us more - they've remained tight lipped for the most part.


I'm not disagreeing with you at all, just offering my views on what stands against it. But, I vey much commend you for the post, and for trying to lessen the negativity.

[Primalhowl]

The Devs have said time and again that Lamaland is not for testing... it is a preview server. Unless it is game-breaking in a major way, what you see is generally what you get.

For those pointing at specific bugs that made it into the update...

The new update was on Lamaland for what... 2 weeks? By the time it hits Lamaland, it is all but released. How many bug reports do you think they received? 1000? Do you really think they had time to read, reproduce, plan for and implement a fix for every bug? Do you even think they had time to just review and decipher the random gobbledegook written in the reports (which I'm guessing often are incomplete in terms of information they'd love to have... I know some of the ones I've submitted have been less than clear) for all of those bugs? And which ones do you think get corrected first? The game breaking ones or the minor inconvenience ones?

Furthermore, there are some things that just would never be tested because there was no obvious coding connection between the implemented changes and the place the bug arose. Case and point: MinII. Yes, shroud items are a form of crafting but they are completely unrelated to the new crafting system. This was clearly a case of unexpected and unforseeable consequences.

I think the real problem is that people are always inclined to complain when something makes them unhappy whereas when people are content, nothing gets said. Not to mention the fact that people (in general) almost always take their anger to the nth degree because they are frustrated that their relaxation time isn't relaxing them. Understandable but sad that those who work hardest to interact with the players (Tolero, Cordovan, Eladrin, MadFloyd, Flimsy, etc) end up taking the brunt of the ire.

[Emili]

The Devs have said time and again that Lamaland is not for testing... it is a preview server. Unless it is game-breaking in a major way, what you see is generally what you get.

For those pointing at specific bugs that made it into the update...

The new update was on Lamaland for what... 2 weeks? By the time it hits Lamaland, it is all but released. How many bug reports do you think they received? 1000? Do you really think they had time to read, reproduce, plan for and implement a fix for every bug? Do you even think they had time to just review and decipher the random gobbledegook written in the reports (which I'm guessing often are incomplete in terms of information they'd love to have... I know some of the ones I've submitted have been less than clear) for all of those bugs? And which ones do you think get corrected first? The game breaking ones or the minor inconvenience ones?

Furthermore, there are some things that just would never be tested because there was no obvious coding connection between the implemented changes and the place the bug arose. Case and point: MinII. Yes, shroud items are a form of crafting but they are completely unrelated to the new crafting system. This was clearly a case of unexpected and unforseeable consequences.

I think the real problem is that people are always inclined to complain when something makes them unhappy whereas when people are content, nothing gets said. Not to mention the fact that people (in general) almost always take their anger to the nth degree because they are frustrated that their relaxation time isn't relaxing them. Understandable but sad that those who work hardest to interact with the players (Tolero, Cordovan, Eladrin, MadFloyd, Flimsy, etc) end up taking the brunt of the ire.

I do not consider min II crafting issue as some serious defect - to be honest I am sure they believe the same.

Yet, Apparently is realted. The bug obviously is due to code/data/resource they bugs do not creep in randomly from the outside. The fact that the new crafting system was delivered upon the same instance as this min II bug. One would speculate the issue was introduced with such ... and thus both systems are not mutually exclussive. Even if it were not the new crafting system which was the culprit... then it was some other "code", "data" they had touched. Again not mutually exclussive.

As a software engineer it is typically my job to write code, maintain old code sets and introduce new functionality and data management for such. The one thing you learn is to be as thorough as you may... the first scope before modifying old code, data ... is to identify every single bloody place it is used. You do so to help prevent creating issues. AND! you do so in order to identify what all comes under effect for "TEST PLANNING."

You cannot design something without knowing what you have already and how you plan to accomplish it... If you're planning on reusing objects such as code or data and altering it you need to know where it is used in every part of the application system as it stands now. You cannot even come close to publishing a general "test plan" for QA to work upon and "test" without knowing ALL parts of the code or data needing testing.

This includes any objects you plan to alter and introduce even if new. "ANALYSIS!" <- an intrigal part of software design ... know what you intend to do, identify where it fits and KNOW every place such change will affect... ANALYSIS leads to good desgin... ANALYSIS leads to easy and managable code changes, ANALYSIS leads to smooth QA, ANALYSIS leads to fewer bugs and issues, ANALYSIS leads to HAPPY CUSTOMERS.

People take attitude ... "it's just a game." Well "just a game" it may be but it is also "the publisher's livelyhood... Yes each and every dev gets paid and feed their families from this "it's just a game." Every customer goes to work in the morning(or night) comes home and spends leisure time on "it's just a game" with real money in one form or another.

Now ... while I have witnessed fellow developer's screw up and introduce a bug which costs a company $20k a minute, those were far between and often those "teams" responsible sureley held accountable come performance review times. All said a minor bug here or there... work arround, however when you cost a company customers and $ with a issue it becomes everyones issue.

I will say this... I do not judge Turbines developement cycle, their developers nor their business strategies or policies. I do not generally participate in letting my opinion on such known. Yet, the customers "collectively" should.

[ViolentEnd]

Careful.. last time i started a thread complaining about people spreading rumors, I got hit with neg rep lol

[Primalhowl]

All excellent points.

This includes any objects you plan to alter and introduce. "ANALYSIS!" <- an intrigal part of software design ... know what you intend to do, identify where it fits and KNOW every place such change will affect... ANALYSIS leads to good desgin... ANALYSIS leads to easy and managable code changes, ANALYSIS leads to smooth QA, ANALYSIS leads to fewer bugs and issues, ANALYSIS leads to HAPPY CUSTOMERS.

This is the one place I have to respond.

If it were actually possible to be 100% effective at what you describe above, there would never be a single bug or any other sort of oddness in software. And arguably, no software has ever been released that was truly bug-free (even if Microsoft keeps trying to tell us that they were "design features").

I think this holds true with any sort of design endeavor. It is impossible to predict all of the possible variations... Admittedly, I am not a software developer. I'm a chemist. But the same logic you describe above is used when planning experiments. And yet just last week I had an unexpected, undesired reaction occur in an experiment even though I knew what I intend to do, had identified the experimental change I was making and *thought* I knew everything such a change would affect.

And that is the key... fallability. No matter how many times we check to make sure all the "t"s are crossed and the "i"s are dotted, Murphy's Law dictates that we will have missed one and it will make something go wrong.

[Cyr]

The OP is entitled to their opinions, but so are others, and most of the OP is opinions and assumptions.

[Ugumagre]

Somebody knows matrixgames?
Well, I love that kind of games.
Sadly, when the games come out are full of bugs. Now I am waiting SEVERAL years for the game "World in Flames" to come out. The devs are trying the best with the bugs, they want to come out with a good product. And is taking them YEARS:
The first post of when?

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...9&mpage=1&key=


The last one:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm...&mpage=77&key=

I see people making an effort. Thats OK with me if is not running smoothly. As long as they do not do evil things like ATARI, I am OK.

[pie2655]

I think it is quite stupid how people are always saying the devs should spend more time fixing minor bugs and such, but also want them to talk to them more. In order for the Devs to spend mroe time interacting with players they would get less developing done, there is a reason we have Cordovan and Tolero who actually do talk on the forums quite a bit.

[TempestAlphaOmega]

While this is probably all true, and there have been some very baseless rantings, the fact of the matter is that turbine has dropped the ball on two major things in the very recent past. Breaking the biggest crafting that the game had (Green Steel)

As far as I have been able to figure out based on what was broken, it was confirmed that one certain item within greensteel was broken (heard rumors of a second but that appeared to be second hand info from the start). So 1 (or the more popular) item from one of 12 (give or take but yes probably the most popular) crafting systems.

and letting a bug that was known and reported (handwrap +) go live.

So you are the Turbine person who makes the call on to issue the patch or not. On the one hand you roll out the next stage of crafting which has a whole lot of changes the (crafting) masses are calling for. In addition you have the fix for the greensteel issue which players are begging for. On the other hand you have an issue that was reported on Lamannia with Monk hand wraps, along with a work around. Some Dev has told you that they have not nailed down the problems with the wraps (might have been tied to making the craftable one work correcty....or not) and they don't have a hard time estimate for resolution.

What do you do?

I would hit the big green "push patch out" button (or sign the paperwork, give the thumbs up, go to the bar, whatever).

Now I have no way of knowing if it was just a documentation error that it was not noted in the release notes known issues. Did so and so say something to what's his name and they forgot to write it down? We will never know (and just to be clear I am pro-documentation).

It would be wonderful if every publish was bug free,if they documented every issue, if they put up web cams (with mics) in the offices/dev areas so we could keep them on the straight and narrow. But we all know that isn't going to happen. Get ten people in a room and ask them to set priorities on and you will get ten (or more) different answers.

I have not encountered any issues that I was that upset with from this patch (yes I have a monk).

To the person I quoted, I was not trying to tear your post apart or debate your specific points, but you provided useful material for what I wanted to say, which given that it has been a loooong day (almost over) so soon after the full moon, well I am not even sure if I said what I started out to say.

[Chai]

I do not consider min II crafting issue as some serious defect - to be honest I am sure they believe the same.

Yet, Apparently is realted. The bug obviously is due to code/data/resource they bugs do not creep in randomly from the outside. The fact that the new crafting system was delivered upon the same instance as this min II bug. One would speculate the issue was introduced with such ... and thus both systems are not mutually exclussive. Even if it were not the new crafting system which was the culprit... then it was some other "code", "data" they had touched. Again not mutually exclussive.

Suspect, maybe. Conclude beyond doubt, which is what many forumites do on a daily basis when the make claims about devs not knowing their own game, not a chance.

As a software engineer it is typically my job to write code, maintain old code sets and introduce new functionality and data management for such. The one thing you learn is to be as thorough as you may... the first scope before modifying old code, data ... is to identify every single bloody place it is used. You do so to help prevent creating issues. AND! you do so in order to identify what all comes under effect for "TEST PLANNING."

Yeap, first in a long line of steps.

You cannot design something without knowing what you have already and how you plan to accomplish it... If you're planning on reusing objects such as code or data and altering it you need to know where it is used in every part of the application system as it stands now. You cannot even come close to publishing a general "test plan" for QA to work upon and "test" without knowing ALL parts of the code or data needing testing.

If this was an absolute, we would have bugless software. You as a software engineer know and understand that there is no such thing as bugless software. Turbine wrote an update and the "massive bugs" thread came up with like 8 issues players are griping about. Here we have altered a game in such that billions of intersections of code were likely affected and we have 8 issues? Id call that a success in the software world.

This includes any objects you plan to alter and introduce even if new. "ANALYSIS!" <- an intrigal part of software design ... know what you intend to do, identify where it fits and KNOW every place such change will affect... ANALYSIS leads to good desgin... ANALYSIS leads to easy and managable code changes, ANALYSIS leads to smooth QA, ANALYSIS leads to fewer bugs and issues, ANALYSIS leads to HAPPY CUSTOMERS.

The myth is they dont understand analysis. I bet they understand it better than 99% of the people who gripe about how easy it would be to alter the game in a way they deem appropriate. I bet there are people who play who are on par with that understanding, but not who have more understanding about their own game than they do.

People take attitude ... "it's just a game." Well "just a game" it may be but it is also "the publisher's livelyhood... Yes each and every dev gets paid and feed their families from this "it's just a game." Every customer goes to work in the morning(or night) comes home and spends leisure time on "it's just a game" with real money in one form or another.

I agree, but the myth often perpetuated here is that the Turbine staff doesnt take this stuff seriously, and dont care about their customer base, and I would have to say thats false. I say thats false from the same premise as quoted.

Now ... while I have witnessed fellow developer's screw up and introduce a bug which costs a company $20k a minute, those were far between and often those "teams" responsible sureley held accountable come performance review times. All said a minor bug here or there... work arround, however when you cost a company customers and $ with a issue it becomes everyones issue.

I agree.

I will say this... I do not judge Turbines developement cycle, their developers nor their business strategies or policies. I do not generally participate in letting my opinion on such known. Yet, the customers "collectively" should.

I think they collectively should too, but they way this is done is more questionable at times than the system they are questioning. It is also overexagerated when the feedback is negative. I see many claims made about how this could all just be easily fixed, and those of us with software coding and or QA knowledge know that these claims are over reaching, not just slightly, but to the point of hilarity. Its the whole "we want it all and we want it now" attitude and when we get it, its not good enough. Damned if they do, damned if they dont.

If the positive feedback was just as loud and overexagerated as the negative feedback around these parts, the devs would be the emperors of the known universe.

That being said, fix mah monk, and git off mah lawn!!!!

[SiliconShadow]

Thank you for the positive replies thus far, I do feel that a little more to be done could be a good thing, lotro had the developer diaries for this and it showed as we do get a glimpse here the developers DO get excited about thier product and our beloved DDO.

It would be easy to show this on the launcher, in mail shots and on the forums for the guys and it would really push the positive feelings that are being hampered as is.

[Mister_Peace]

Turbine DEFINITELY needs better public relations.

[sinpositive]

Its good to see others appreciate DDO as much as I do. I guess some folks just don't know how good we have it with the almost monthly stream of content. Up until recently I was playing DC universe and look what happened there, which goes to show it could always be worse.............

[mournbladereigns]

So many rumors spread around by grumpy people of the most, they rant how bad the game is coded, how things go untested, how there are no beta testers, hell how we pay to beta test for them (lammania)..

To the whole it is untrue, no one looks at the positive sides and ignore the truth in these are just rants by people who have had a personal bad experience and big mouths.

Turbine are a faceless corporation who don't care:[/COLOR] Well we know they do, we talk to them all the time on the forums, on lammania, and not just customer reps, we get a little chat from developers and designers and the like, they do care and they love our input!

This is blatantly false, Turbine is owned by Warner Brother's a ruthless mega-corporation that only cares about getting your money and hearing nerds whine about not getting new toys, and then more money.