Why do the devs continue forward with broken systems?

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

Tolero posted that the ML issue with bound crafted items are not WAI but we still have not seen a dev comment on a fix and the next phase of crafting was just released on live. If the bound ML issue is now WAI then why would the devs continue to push out and/or enhance a broken system before fixing this issue. This isn't the first time that issues have been brought up with a system change and those issues has still made them to live.

I may have missed it in all the responses, but I didn't see anyone point this out- the devs did throw a blanket on crafting issues by calling it beta and sticking a warning on the crafting hall. Caveat emptor, and all that.

That's a cheap way to stick some content out there that isn't quite ready. But hey, least it's not Windows ME (or Vista, for you kids).

[HettarDDO]

I'm going to try to keep this in the direction I think was intended. I think when you try to talk about this stuff the focus gets to small. This really has nothing to do with crafting. It's just another example of a bigger problem.

As far as crafting goes...It's very clearly stated when entering the craft hall that crafting is in beta. They very wisely covered their backsides. Something like crafting could destroy this game if done wrong. To fully test all the different possible ways crafting could break parts of this game would take sooo long. They took something that was totally new to the game and are trying to mesh it together with everything that came before. Crafting was going to need fixing before it worked right. I knew it and so did they. That's why there is a msg stating its in a unsupported beta. Don't craft if you can't handle parts of your hard work disappearing one day. I don't think crafting would have ever made it into the game if they had to make it bug free before release. They are using thousands of players to poke the system in all the different ways possible. I doubt their budget could handle the cost of doing it in house totally. I don't think crafting would have ever made it into the game if they had to make it bug free before release.

Bottom line...They better have the courage to make large chunks of peoples crafting disappear if that's what it takes to make it work. I don't think crafting would have ever made it into the game if they had to make it bug free before release.

Just to be fair and balanced I had to say all that to start with. Makes me feel better about this...

The real problem is they give stupid stuff priority over way more important things. I'll explain what I mean and others will have their own version of the same problems.

I play a monk. I like monks. Always have. They fit my playstyle. Even when people didn't want to take more than one monk in a group for fear of a wipe I still cheerfully played a monk. I'm a 40 year old not a kid. So when I say that the class has been broken bad plz understand I'm not crying.

Everytime I change my wraps my to-hit modifier drops to a point that hitting anything in a epic is impossible. Almost wiped the von 6 party I was in when I first discovered it. I couldn't hit a genie. At all. My 36 point monk with alot of very nice epic equipment using very nice handwraps was taken to the point of not being able to hit a genie at all. I might have rolled a 20 once and hit it but that's it.

Yes you can fix it by unequip/equip a item that modifies your attack modifier after each handwrap switch. I carry over 10 sets of wraps on me. It's how I make up for the dps hit we light monks have taken recently. Using the best kind of wrap for what your fighting atm is important to make a good monk into a great one imo. Changing wraps now is slow and can cause groups to wipe. Sounds like I'm making more out of this then I should? If that was all of it maybe.

Add in the fact I paid Turbine money to be able to use the half elf class for it's cleric dilly. Oh I can use heal scrolls.greater restore scrolls and so on...makes me able to survive without a cleric right by me stuff that without the dilly would be impossible. I like it. Except now if I use a scroll it breaks my to-hit modifier. If I need to heal myself then things aren't going good in my group which means its the WORST time to have to mess with the unequip/equip fix thing. I don't even want to heal myself anymore. Do the whole unequip/equip thing over and over and over and you'll understand. It's been a month or more now.

Now to get to the point of what I was trying to say in this...I read a post from a dev stating they know about it and how it "fix" it. Ok that's fine. I want to read about how it will be fixed in the next update. But what is the only thing I've seen talked about as far as changes to the monk class goes??? How they are nerfing disruption on mabar handwraps because they feel their overpowered.

All I got to say is that if they make someone spend time nerfing those wraps,which are in no way game breaking enough to not wait for another month, before fixing the REAL things that are important for my class...I'm just going to lose it. My character has been nerfed recently and I tried to be positive. Adapt and over come and so on.

I'm reaching my limit. They need to fix what is broken before stuff that is so small in comparison.

It's not just about crafting or monks or the number of other things that need fixing that I have no idea about. It's that if they can make me this upset about this stuff than other people must be even more tired of it because I'm one of the most laid back type of person.

It feels like alot of people are leaving the game recently. I know alot of people who don't play their light monks anymore. They need to change their priorites imo and soon.

I want them to read this so maybe they'll understand what their customers want. Instead I fear the only thing they will do is lock/delete this thread and ban me from the game for a few days for breaking some forum rule on negative posts. When all I want to do is try to make them understand.

Edit:I think more communication from them about why they decide on some of the stuff they do would make people alot happier. I know if they say why they can't fix my classes problems next update I'd be way more understanding. Tell me how you had to all your time this month on a problem that is worst than mine and how your sorry but will have it done asap. Customer service 101 fellas...don't make customers think you don't care. How long does posting something on the forums explainng alittle bit take? Don't you have interns there?

[ehcsztein]

That's a good point. When I was involved with software development, our QA staff could block software from going live even if it was non-critical issue if they could show a good reason to block it.

I worked in a shop that was just like that.

The downside was I could block the release... and then tag-team a fix with engineering on overtime while managing client/admin complaints.

Or we could release the code and then tag-team a fix with engineering on overtime without interference from the clients/admin.

It was like I was empowered to make my job as complicated as I wanted it to be.

A couple of our engineers and I built up a pretty good rythym for 0 impact "shadow fixes" to the system to get around a lot of low hanging fruit.

Better to beg forgiveness than request permission as they say... permission requires a committee whereas forgiveness was often a single point of contact.

The various complexities involved with DDO (as I imagine) probably make the DC for similar "shadow fixes" to be practically off the charts... like rolling 100 20s in a row.

[zorander6]

There is a cost benefit ratio that is taken into account when software is released. I work for a small software company and we try to release clean code. However 1. humans are imperfect and 2. end users will always find a creative way to break things.

While any good programmer wants to make things work perfectly there are a couple issues, to wit: 1. time (many people left over the long silence, turbine doesn't want to loose players so they have to keep a fast code cycle) 2. profit (will they make more money by releasing something with a few bugs or taking the extra six-12 months to fix the bug?) 3. perception (many users have a very short attention span, look at the complaints between the last update of 2010 and the first update of 2011, there is a history there of long silences that makes long term players edgy) 4. management (management makes the decisions, not anyone else. If management had decided that a small bug would stop the code because it's life threatening then the code will stop. Nothing in DDO is life threatening) 5. Cost to fix (talk to the bean counters, no we can't see the numbers but seriously if it's going to cost 6 months of MadFloyd's time to fix something it may be better to wait and let him fix when he has a couple minutes spare time while developing new code.)

Crafting is in beta and is a huge change to the environment of the game. While some high level players are spending millions in plat to get their crafting levels up that is making a slight change to the economy. Unbound crafting will also make slight changes. Players have complained for at least the last year and a half about how borken the economy is. If they wait 1. they get more complaints and 2. it gets more borken. Will crafting fix it? No, but it might help deflate it a little bit or it might make it worse. Many had been calling for crafting so they are implementing it as a beta so people can try it out. This does two things, they find bugs and people relay how much they like/dislike it by their use. If a lot of people use it then management can look at the numbers and justify more development time.

When you boil it all down to the nitty gritty it's about the dollar bill (peso, peanuts, or whatever you are paid in.) If the bean counters think it's more cost effective to release new updates then that's what will be done. They have a planned development cycle that is at least a year out, so many fixes are already planned they just didn't make live release since that would have delayed the release. It's all a balancing act between coding problems, user problems, and money. The big decider is money. Doesn't matter who spends the money, yes a vocal group really really wants high level stuff. However there are a lot more people who play low level stuff so that's where turbine sees the potential income. As people level and stay in the game more of the high level stuff gets played.

[donfilibuster]

If deadlines are a neccessary evil might at least publicly schedule the fixing.
After all, the cycle is such that we are getting updates that have been in the works for months.
Yet won't matter if it is two or three updates ahead as long as we are not left in the dark.

[Yaga_Nub]

There is a cost benefit ratio that is taken into account when software is released. I work for a small software company and we try to release clean code. However 1. humans are imperfect and 2. end users will always find a creative way to break things.
...

Responses to :

1. I am perfect so am I not a human?

2. exactly but this means you have to actually be ready to move very quickly to fix something IMHO.

[Thlargir]

But to really get back to my original point, what was the thinking regarding the release of crafting, as an example? If there are known issues, and it was something that wasn't on active on live, then why release it to live before fixing. Now forget about Turbine all together, what makes any software development team decide to go gold in a project if there are know issues? Do they release it before they even start working on fixes? Do they start working on fixes right away before the release so that it minimizes the inconvenience to their customers? What does a typical development team do in this situation.

Typically bug priority is a vector based on a number of factors, eg.
1. Impact (Crash=10;...;Spelling Error=1)
2. Affected (Everyone=10;...;No-one=1)
3. Resources (External Resources=10;...;The Whole Team=1)
4. Code Stability (Change in outlying stable area=10;...;Change in core module used by the entire app=1)
etc.

Each factor is weighted for various reasons (e.g Resources are more important closer to the deadline as they are fewer). Thus, a crash that affects everyone that can be fixed using external resources in outlying code is an obvious winner candidate to be fixed. However, a spelling error that no-one sees that requires The Team to fix because some bonehead hard coded it into the core is not going to get addressed - unless of course there is literally nothing else to do (and even then probably not)

So in your issues case:
Impact=probably middling to low. Folks that run into the issue are not highly impacted - they can still play the game in spite of it.
Affected=probably again low. How many folks use crafting, of those how many are crafting useful items, and of those how many are affected by this issue.
Resources=Real Team members, therefore medium low
Code Stability=Given that this piece of code is undergoing many changes, and will continue to do so over the coming releases this factor will most likely also be rated low.
etc.

The priority vector therefore will therefore be very low. Furthermore, the weighting for bugs in the crafting area will lower it even further as this is not a "gold" release but rather a "public beta" release with all the attendant caveats.

Compare that to the Monk issue earlier in this thread:
Impact=high, for a monk this is almost a game breaker (not quite, but close)
Affected=low, only Monks (and among them only the ones who are swapping wraps a lot)
Resources=Real Team members, therefore medium low
Code Stability=tough to tell where the fix for this should be made, if it is monk handling code then relatively high, if in general code than relatively low.
et.

As this functionality is code that worked before and was broken the priority vector would likely be magnified. Also, as monk class is a purchased feature the vector is further magnified.

I only present two examples to give a rough idea of what may be going on behind the scenes. It should be pretty clear to most that the second issue should be dealt with before the first.

In a piece of software as complex as DDO I would expect the current issue base to have thousands, if not tens of thousands of outstanding issues. As crafting is being "pre-released" as a beta I would expect issues found in it to be resolved organically as further functionality is rolled out.

[donfilibuster]

While bug priority can be as complex as to use these 'vectors', it might be the case that it follows other less complex methods such as the rule of 80/20 and Ishikawa's fishbone diagram, to name two.

For a highly scientific algorithm used by skilled professionals see this link.

[phalaeo]

While it's nice to throw out BS like the 80/20 rule and terms like ROI, without hard facts and figures they are just words with no true meaning. Looking at WB 2010 yearly report, Turbine is mentioned once. No where does specifically break out revenues and expenses for Turbine. In fact, as a wholly owned subsidiary of WB, you will never see an individual break down of Turbine's revenues and expenses. This is important because I see a lot of people talking about how much money is being generated by Turbine but we don't and can't know actually numbers and, much like the tech companies of the late 90s found out, revenue does not equal profit. Now if you have access to Turbine's books then by all means share so those of us with a business background can start tearing into them and posting our thoughts on the financial viability of Turbine.

As for your comment about end game content being poor ROI, I think you really need to reconsider that statement. A lot of people that came to DDO when it went F2P have stayed around, are hitting 20, and are looking for things to do. So you have the old people looking for new stuff and you have the new people looking for new stuff and none of them are looking for new stuff at the 1 to 18 range. They want top end and epic quests.

What is ROI?

[fluffybunnywilson]

What is ROI?

Return On Investment

[zorander6]

It's what the bean counters use to convince manglement to not do something like fix bugs.

[Valindria]

I'm curious as well.

[Chai]

Software rule #1: There is no such thing as bugless software.

That being said, "the devs" (those entities who some forumites feel are in charge of everything, heh) dont continue on with anything. Project management continues on with it and assigns priorities to all tasks for the devs to complete. The devs do their jobs as assigned.