End of the week with Major Malphunktion - Kobold Union Edition

[cdr]

Maj -

Another one of my personal bugaboos.

The True Seeing part of the Tinker's awakened set bonus has never worked, and when I bug reported it the response indicated it was a "known issue".

This is U11 content, does that count as "old bugs"? Is fixing bugs like that so low priority that we're going to have to wait till 2012 to see it fixed?

[Auran82]

Already in discussion. I'm not sure where that landed at the EOD yesterday...

And please don't forget the whole "So you have been farming collectables in the graveyard for the past couple of hours, and had to go afk at the wrong time and missed your 10 minute window to get into the dragon fight, oh well, time to farm items for the next several hours again" thing.

[Ovrad]

NO Platforming please!

Character stats NEED to matter more not less - This is D&D - I play it to be better than I am in real life thank you.

I don't have the speed or coordination on a computer to play most games - I only started playing this because it was D&D.

Can we get quests that are closer to the original ethos of D&D please.

SUGGESTION: Sovereign Host Priest approaches you in House P and asks you to protect some worshippers from a Silver Flame fanatic's mercenaries.

You missed the point. Yes, that is exactly how quests work. I was saying challenges should be different than quests, because right now they don't feel any different to me. Devs will never change the mechanics for quests, we all know that, but it would be nice for challenges to bring something new, and hopefully each of them would be varied as well.

[oradafu]

And please don't forget the whole "So you have been farming collectables in the graveyard for the past couple of hours, and had to go afk at the wrong time and missed your 10 minute window to get into the dragon fight, oh well, time to farm items for the next several hours again" thing.

That's why I thought static 20 or 30 minutes for the doors to open in Mabar or the Cove would have been a better alternative. The quest would be available at a reasonable rate in all timezones that didn't depend on the farming of ingredients. Additionally, it would end the speculation of when the doors will open. Sure, the drawback would be that there might not be enough people to do the Spectral Dragon each time, but perhaps a failed attempt is perferrable to no attempt at all.

[umplehat]

a death match hockey game with exploding pucks

I would love to see that, seriously. maybe even put use it with the ice games?

[FeralKittie]

Quick question; any word on UI skins? I saw they were working on Lamannia but didn't notice anything in the notes to indicate this would carry over to live.

I got a chance to run a couple of the challenges on Lamannia and thus far I'm loving the break from traditional questing. Can't wait to see what else is in store! What about something with puzzles? The "aha" moment the first time my bf and I figured out the Sane Asylum puzzle; priceless. And I always hit Ghost of a Chance on all my characters 'cause I think the puzzle's neat. Anyway, it's great to have a variety of mechanics to enjoy in the game, for whatever I'm in the mood for.

Thanks for working so hard to keep in touch with us!
Happy Halloween!

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

if it is on lama, it will make it to live.

[FeralKittie]

if it is on lama, it will make it to live.

Awesome. Thanks for the quick reply!

[BadBuy]

Yes! I want Angry Kobolds! Citizens of Stormreach have stolen their eggs (they do lay eggs right?), and they're trying to get revenge (but end up mostly splatting themselves on buildings).

EDIT: On a more serious note, one of the thing that disappointed me a bit on the challenges, is that they still use most of the same old core mechanics of quests. Granted I only tried out the 2 first releases on lam, but defending resources from endless incoming mobs or exploring a kinda generic looking dungeon is hardly original. Sure, special resources management, finding crests, finding power-ups all adds a bit, but essential you're still defending some helpless stuff or zerging through a dungeon. Even the variants don't seem to change much. I have not tested the other 2 challenges, but so far, challenges haven't really peeked my interest.

However, I'd much rather have stuff that you can't do in a normal quest, like:

• Wacky games like you described, where character stats don't matter, only skills as a player.
• Survive for as long as possible vs an endless horde of increasingly powerful monsters (with no mana pots and no raises allowed). This challenge should never be won, and SHOULD end in horrible death.
• Navigate though a random maze of insanely deadly traps and occasional puzzles and/or monsters. Maybe even some platforming involved. (no raises again)
• a HUGE scale battle were you are not participating, but rather commanding troops and upgrading stuff. ...and maybe manning a catapult 'cause that's always fun!
• Some sort of reverse-dungeoncrawl, where you roam the place, place traps and monsters are the ones that explore and try to steal your treasures. The more you save, the more you keep.

You know, different stuff than you usually do, 'cause my first impression of challenges was: normal quests, except more repetitive because of variants.

Yes, I would love something very different. So that it could be a real "break" from the questing and raiding.
They don't have to give rewards that would be unobtainable otherwise, then people that don't want to run them wouldn't be upset about them.

Talking about platforming this video was one of the first ones I found before starting to play DDO and I think that one of the challenges could be like this (yes, I know it's crazy):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVE4cnzUEpI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z81T6FycBz4

PS. Please make Radiant Burst work without having to select yourself each time.

[smatt]

Greatly appreciate the updates Maj.....

Hopefully things get sorted a bit on the "Lag-like issues".... It realyl doe sdrag the game down for A LOT of players.... Not all.. But a lot... I bet it realyl cuts into the bottom line with new players though. And yes a good nubmer of us understand it's not an easy set of problems(s) to find and solve, as well as being a never ending stream on new ones every update. The same goes for bugs... I'm glad there's talk of dealign with MORE of the long standing ones as time goes forward. It just like the 2 former items get left in the dust heap, along with too many unfinished items too often. Again, myself or anybody else "out here" don't see the isnide, the numbers etc.. But I'm betting those 2 subejcts send a lot of people packing far sooner then they should be....

Oh and Mabar shoudl be changed to a 12 man instance fight.... Tweak the quest..... 40 people per instance is killin' it..


P.S. Told you Texas was goin' down.... Cards! (Lucky game 6)

[Fiall]

Mabar is terrible...farm spawns and fight off all the singles hoping to tap mobs so you can kill them for them.
Then when you do get in you are so lagged you cannot move so you die...and then get punted...no scale.

This is not a fun event it is a time sink that adds no fun at all.

Terrible.

[WanderingGrump]

Maj -

Another one of my personal bugaboos.

The True Seeing part of the Tinker's awakened set bonus has never worked, and when I bug reported it the response indicated it was a "known issue".

I notice that this is yet another "bug" that is not on the "Official" Buglist posted. Is there going to be a effort to publish the real known bugs or are players going to have to report each individually and yet not realize what parts of the content aren't working?

I also noticed that there were never any release notes for Update 11 Patch 1. Yet this particular patch introduced one of my current pet peeve bugs, the User Skin fail.

Since update 12 fixes this particular bug, any word you can release when it will be released?

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

maybe because we didn't see that bug, hard to put something on a list if you dont know about it.
This goes back to 'you have no idea how big this game is from the inside' that I've mentioned. QA is a spec ops team, not a branch of the Armed Forces. When things break outside of where the scope of the release is, yes it will be missed. If we did a full regression every release, we would do one release a year. Since that would suck for everyone involved-including you guys, I need to go with picking prime targets. Custom UI was not on the target list, and from our perspective there was no reason it should have been.

[Phemt81]

If we did a full regression every release, we would do one release a year. Since that would suck for everyone involved-including you guys

Not for me if that could mean no bugs at all

[Cleanincubus]

Not for me if that could mean no bugs at all

+1 I could deal with no new content, for a one shot deal, that fixed things. Like fixing every known issue, fixing hirelings once & for all, taking a huge chunk out of the serious lag problems.

[WolfSpirit]

And please don't forget the whole "So you have been farming collectables in the graveyard for the past couple of hours, and had to go afk at the wrong time and missed your 10 minute window to get into the dragon fight, oh well, time to farm items for the next several hours again" thing.

~
~
Im with this. That very small window suck with SUCH a long wait period. Plus during "off" hours where its REALLY takes forever to open up, its nuts to come back from bio and making a bit to eat (for example) to find 3 mins left of opening and RUN to get in ASAP, only to find there are less than 16 people in the instance and you waited ALL that time to (sure enough every time!) FAIL! This has happened to me a HORRIBLE 3 times already.

[mystafyi]

maybe because we didn't see that bug, hard to put something on a list if you dont know about it.

hey maj, didja fix the bug reporting function yet? I know it was taken down recently since bug reports were not being logged properly and then there was a blog for bugs. I would like to know where i can post exploitable bugs other then on the alternative forum

on another note, why dont players get TP or other rewards for helping ya'll troubleshoot and identify bugs/exploits?

[MnaSidhe]

Not for me if that could mean no bugs at all

+1
some time spent taking care of everything that does not work (handwraps etc) would also not be wasted!

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

hey maj, didja fix the bug reporting function yet? I know it was taken down recently since bug reports were not being logged properly and then there was a blog for bugs. I would like to know where i can post exploitable bugs other then on the alternative forum

on another note, why dont players get TP or other rewards for helping ya'll troubleshoot and identify bugs/exploits?

Because you can't pay non-employees for bug hunting. See: http://www.gamespy.com/articles/492/492177p1.html

Did I fix something? I don't fix a thing. I just tell people they are busted.
Exploits- just PM me, Kookie...well, anybody.

Edit...I laugh at you for thinking you are ok with nothing new for a year. You folks are already asking about the next thing! Easy to type, but you all would be raging by Dec. if you knew there was nothing in the pipeline until Nov 2012.
And it would not be bug free. It is a statistical impossibility. Mostly free? Pretty Clean? Sure...bug free...never. There is a reason they are called bugs, squashing them is like trying to kill an cockroach infestation.

[mystafyi]

There is a reason they are called bugs, squashing them is like trying to kill an cockroach infestation.

hahaha... thats nothing compared to the impending zombie infestation coming in 2012!

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