Have Faith in our Devs

[Raithe]

i. testing is not given the importance it is due; in other words, the arbitrary deadline schedules assigned by management override the level of stability evident in the candidate code

Two things:

1) Just like playstyles (I'm trying to emphasize in all of my forum responses the fact that we as players DON'T all get along or have the same vision for the game), there are different types of development practices for every engineering firm. (I have worked for and with several.) No one has the high ground, software development is not so much a science as an art.

2) I don't think people understand the current position of many MMO-like offerings (DDO isn't an MMO in my book, but it faces competition from similar games like GW2). Bugs are not a high concern. Client stability may still be, but I have not had the game crash on me more due to MotU and later releases. If anything, the client has been more responsive and less prone to problems (at least on my multiple computers and ISPs).

[Ungood]

Actually, stopping to buy a "bug riddled" product from one company and instead purchasing a "bug riddled" product from another company is not an effective way in dealing with the issue of companies releasing products riddled with bugs.

It's like saying it is bad to be a Turbine fanboi, but it is fine to be a Blizzard or ArenaNet fanboi. Why? My point was if you are no longer content with game developers releasing products that have bugs you'd need to stop giving money to all companies that engage in the business practice.

Actually this is a painfully good way to express your feelings, and it is the most effective way to do so, because as players we have funds to spend, and we want to play games, this is a given. It is not up for discussion. period. The only question every MMO maker asks, "is will they spend their money on my game?"

Thus, if Game A begins to see a decline in their income and game B sees an incline, game A will make efforts to adapt to what game B is doing, hence all the popping up F2P models in older dated games based on DDO success in such a venture.

If Players flock to Game C because it is "The Most Stable game" and they "Are getting fed up with the bugs in other games they used to play" you better believe that "Bug fixing" just became very profitable, if not survival dependent.

Bill Gates by the German weekly magazine FOCUS (#43, October 23, 1995, pages 206-212); from the executive summary:

Granted, lots has changed with Microsoft ever since but it does not change that Mircosoft was already very successful in 1995 and that the negative publicity of the interview did not really harm them (not even in Germany).

He has changed his tune quite a bit, that is for sure, and it's called being trenched in, it is the same reason why Ford did not change their business model till Chevy began to outsell them.

It does not change the fact that MMORRGs are not generally rated on the amount of bugs (not to the extend of how they are rated for graphics, features and content, anyway),

Actually they are. MMORPG.Com, includes ratings in regards to bugs, technical issues as well as CS. In fact WoW lost it's 10 Rating due to CS issues.

In the end, every company will build it's own reputation with it's customer base, how it opts to do that, or whatever, is it's own call.

You can argue this, or better yet, *TRY* to argue this, but I'll leave you with a thought to ponder.

"Take care of your Customers or someone else will"
Harvey Mackay

[Vint]

I am not nor do I see myself bashing any Dev. I am also sure that they work just as hard at their job as any other.

The frustration comes from the big wigs at Warner Brothers and Turbine. People can easily forget that the Devs don’t set the price or make the release dates. I am sure they were not happy that they had to rush out a product that they were not happy with, but the guys in charge that want our money thought otherwise.

I also think that the devs would love nothing more than to spend an update doing nothing more than fixing or repairing the old bugs that have been around forever. Even if these bugs are not game breaking, they would still want their work to look good. It is just too bad that the people making the decisions don’t have the same conviction.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Actually, stopping to buy a "bug riddled" product from one company and instead purchasing a "bug riddled" product from another company is not an effective way in dealing with the issue of companies releasing products riddled with bugs.

It's like saying it is bad to be a Turbine fanboi, but it is fine to be a Blizzard or ArenaNet fanboi. Why? My point was if you are no longer content with game developers releasing products that have bugs you'd need to stop giving money to all companies that engage in the business practice.

Agreed, and done. There are plenty of other entertainment options available to most of us.

Online games can be quite addictive (most use psychological techniques amazingly similar to Las Vegas casinos to hook their customers), and there is some interesting literature discussing it. Simply google "mmo addiction" and take a peek.

Most gamers are just having fun, but clearly some people do become at least psychologically dependent upon gaming. These are the people who descend into fanboi status, and like a junky tend to be unable to quit cold turkey. Flitting from one bad game to another doesn't help their situation.

Its not that hard to determine whether you are addicted. Just vow to stop for a week. After a week, you should find you care a lot less about what seemed so important just a week ago. If not, or if you can't even make it a week without a "fix", its probably time to uninstall and get some help.

[Missing_Minds]

With the bug reporting tool bugged and lamma forums bug complaints ignored, what would be 'proper' reporting of bugs? Just curious as to how far you think the players should go to do turbines job? perhaps we should drive to boston and just code it for them?

It is a simple statement of logical assumption that 1000 people can find more issues than 10 no matter how good that team of 10 may be.

That team of 10 also have a direct leash to developers of what is and is not intended.

Frankly we shouldn't touch their code, honestly. It is already a spagetti mess as is. Tossing in random people will only make it worse.
What I'd like to see is some system that actually rewards players for reporting bugs.

The forums are also a jackpot of... everything. What is whining, what is asking for changes, what is bugged, what is ______. You do NOT use forums as a place to report bugs unless you are willing to hire people who's sole job it is, is to track the forums and reproduce the bugs as best possible.
Heck we've seen it before that people complained that XYZ was reported on the lama forums (but not bug reports) only to go looking and OOOPss.. it wasn't. Just some forumites who complained but did nothing at all other than tell guildies about the issue.

[tasebro]

... The new combat system, nerfs to freedom, and disease/poison immunity (particularly on warforged) is what shakes my faith in them again....I think they take nerfs entirely too lightly and are too inclined to take the easy way out instead of creatively solving problems....

No doubt about it.

That is the direct consequence of them giving positive reward for their negative behavior; thus rendering bugs/nerfs into de facto "job security".

That is model is upside down, and it will remain so until people have sense to stop throwing money at them to make *more* bugs/nerfs.
Dev behavior will not improve until they are forced to improve.

[smatt]

It is a simple statement of logical assumption that 1000 people can find more issues than 10 no matter how good that team of 10 may be.

Of course it is, there's simply no way that with the amount of revenue in play Turbine can totally debug this game. I think most players understand this.... The use of Lama as a tool is great and all.. And now that at least some of the time, they're getting content up there much earlier than in the past, interacting more, as well as reacting more to player feedback and reports. It's also NOT a live server enviroment..... THAT is oen fo the big downsides, while they do have all their fancy diagnostics tools etc built into the Lama client, it simply doesn't act like the live client.

That team of 10 also have a direct leash to developers of what is and is not intended.

It's sad that it's so common in DDO now that the players, many of which have been playing this game for 4-5-6 years don't know and cant' get answers to what is and what isn't intended. That so many things jsut are as they are and players assume that since they are like that it's intended, and then come to find out... It's not... How can you possibly evaluate something when you dont' knwo EXACTLY what it's suppossed to do.

Frankly we shouldn't touch their code, honestly. It is already a spagetti mess as is. Tossing in random people will only make it worse.

LOL

What I'd like to see is some system that actually rewards players for reporting bugs.

They can barely run a contest with 5 winners without messing it
up...

The forums are also a jackpot of... everything. What is whining, what is asking for changes, what is bugged, what is ______. You do NOT use forums as a place to report bugs unless you are willing to hire people who's sole job it is, is to track the forums and reproduce the bugs as best possible.

I will say again, that since early MOd 8 when the ingame bug reporting system went completely haywire, I've never understaood hwo they could run this game without fixing it. Heck, even prior to that A LOT of hte reported bugs ended up in the trash somewhere. The Dev team would least claim to have never known about them. Why in the fricken heck they can't even get a decent bug reporting system within the game that WORKS is fricken amazing, and frankly proof there's a total 100% lack of competance somewhere within the system at Turbine.

Heck we've seen it before that people complained that XYZ was reported on the lama forums (but not bug reports) only to go looking and OOOPss.. it wasn't. Just some forumites who complained but did nothing at all other than tell guildies about the issue.

Look, myself as well as MANY others I know gave up reporting bugs long ago, when they were ignored for years, when the system was bugged as it is now. A lot of people dont' even know HOW to report a bug within the ingame bugged bug reporting system. And going back to WAI.... When you don't know what WAI is then how in the heck are you going to accurately bug report something. When you add in all that, even IF they have a decent WORKING bug reporting ssytem, there will be so much noise, they wont' ever be able to get accurate reports through....

These same problems have existed here in this game for years... The same discussion, the same complaints... The same lack of action by Turbine.... A little bit of lip service every once in a while.... It's either they simply don't give a ****.... Total lack of competance in leadership, or laziness.... I'd go with #2 there......

[susiedupfer]

+1 to the OP. I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, but I appreciate the fact that you, like me, are a bit tired of the rant/hate on devs theme going on.

I think what we all need to remember is that Turbine is trying to stay in business. Just like every other business. Are they going to improve their practices because 5% of players get on here and rant? Nope. A well thought out, well reasoned, calm post will get far more attention than ranting. Be specific, be concise, most of all, be polite.

[pie2655]

+1 to the OP. I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, but I appreciate the fact that you, like me, are a bit tired of the rant/hate on devs theme going on.

I think what we all need to remember is that Turbine is trying to stay in business. Just like every other business. Are they going to improve their practices because 5% of players get on here and rant? Nope. A well thought out, well reasoned, calm post will get far more attention than ranting. Be specific, be concise, most of all, be polite.

If anyone deserves a +1 its you. You just put it much better than i ever could.

[Captain_Wizbang]

*waiting for the car analogy*........

[smatt]

*waiting for the car analogy*........

This game is like an AMC Pacer....

[lugoman]

It's not the Devs you should or should not have faith in. They do not make any decisions. It is management who is to blame.

Yes, whoever is making the release date decisions is to blame.

[Missing_Minds]

Total lack of competance in leadership, or laziness.... I'd go with #2 there......

Honestly, I go with leadership. The grunts, aka developers, do seem to care. Leader$hip must look at the higher calling, esp now under WB. There is a reason why I ratioed 1000 to 10.

[Captain_Wizbang]

This game is like an AMC Pacer....

Sorry Pie, didn't mean to derail, your thread needed some pizazz, and nothing says pizazz like an AMC Pacer

[Gara]

As the title says, have faith in our Devs. They are here to make the game as good as they can. It will NEVER be perfect because they, like us are human. The devs are NOT trying to make you miserable, DDO is a business and that would be bad for business. If they do something you dont agree with that doesnt mean the majority of DDOers agree with you. Turbine is a business, they need to make money to keep this game going therefore they have to appease the majority before the minority. Most importantly remember there arent TONS of devs, im sure they work hard, and you CAN help apply for the mournlands and bug report on live and lammania it DOES have an effect. NOT bug reporting does more harm then good.
Overall have faith in the devs, they are NOT out to ruin the game (that would be stupid! Use common sense!). If bugs, well bug you that much do what you can to help the devs find them and fix them!

Common sense?! You want us to use common sense? Time and time again there have been decisions to gameplay that violate common sense. I may not understand the intention behind every move but clearly the devs in this game have little to no common sense. Most of them don't even play the game I am guessing.

The one thing I have faith in is that even if the devs created a bug that deleted every character on the players account there would still be a person like you on the boards acting like they are getting paid to spout this stuff.

Every bug thread also has a person like you in it telling everyone how some crippling bug doesn't effect them so just don't worry about it.

Either way it doesn't make any difference. There is zero transparency on who makes these decisions and often things are changed without any notes at all. So good luck even finding someone to point a finger at if you have a valid complaint.

[smatt]

Honestly, I go with leadership. The grunts, aka developers, do seem to care. Leader$hip must look at the higher calling, esp now under WB. There is a reason why I ratioed 1000 to 10.

Oh there's no question..... Having had at least some interaction with a number of the various Devs, they do try. I may not agree with some of their decisions, but that's different than the overall thrust of the game. There have been some awesome additions to this game. And the communiation from individual Devs has been much better than it was for the first 5 years. But there are various glaring issues that seem to always be put on the back burner.... That's leadership or lack thereof plain and simple... And I'm not trying to be mean, just honest after all these years I've been playing and watching it all unfold.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

+1 to the OP. I don't necessarily agree with everything you said, but I appreciate the fact that you, like me, are a bit tired of the rant/hate on devs theme going on.

Personally, I agree here.

This makes the forums so much full with sour/acid/aggressiveness that it isn't no more fun reading here.

In terms of programming, I'm at the side of the developers,
in terms of software quality I demand a little bit more quality from the management.

Too many non-bugfixing Updates in a too short time can become a problem, imho.

I firmly believe that DDO should get several "sabbatical" months dedicated to only bigfixing, and to bugfixing alone.

The result would imho be a great, stable and solid basis for all future Updates.

This is my opinion.

[AuraAten]

It is best practice to have test and live environments be as similar as possible. Usually the test environment is less powerful (for obvious reasons) but if there are differences in code that would be applied to live vs. whats in test, then its not really a test environment.

Typically you'd expect Live to throw up issues you don't see in Test for a couple of reasons:

i. testing by its nature is limited, particularly regression testing. In other words, whilst its straightforward to test the changes you've made work as you intended, its often less easy to determine what other parts of your code are affected by those changes. This is an area where having standardised processes and objects helps, as does good documentation. When you promote to live, suddenly you have a lot more people using the code and using it in ways that your test scripts didn't cover. This is very likely to throw up bugs that were not identified through testing.

ii. server performance issues - live environments typically handle more volume, and whilst you can make estimates of how heavily your new code will affect server performance, it tends to be more rule of thumb than anything else. This often leads to issues such as lag.


What we seem to be seeing with Turbine processes at the moment is the following:

i. testing is not given the importance it is due; in other words, the arbitrary deadline schedules assigned by management override the level of stability evident in the candidate code

ii. testing feedback is ignored as being outside of the testing parameters. This is particularly galling for veteran players, who can often see consequential effects of changes better than isolated QA teams who may not play the game extensively and are not aware of wider repercussions than those listed on their test scripts

iii. its quite possible that live and test are not similar to each other, and that version control has to some degree broken down between environments. This is evident in dev comments on the forums to the effect that some issues are simply not replicable for them on their dev or test boxes, even though they are commonly seen in live (mob spell damage scaling is a classic example here)


There are probably a whole host of other issues at play here, but the above seems quite likely based on what we're seeing in terms of recent releases.


Edit: one other thing occurs to me: normally, you have user acceptance testing before final promotion to live. This is where expert users are given access to the code before it gets promoted to live, and they are told to use the software as they normally would. Whist Lammania exists, its not a true UAT environment, largely because the users do not have the ability to reject the code. I don't know if Turbine has a team that approves changes from a user perspective, but there certainly seems little evidence that there is based on the type of design decisions that are put forward and then quickly changed after they have gone live.

^^agreed..and thank you for an insightful and informative reply containing no insult to the original post.

[AuraAten]

Ahhhmmm I'm sorry but bugs were experienced on Lamma, with it's non-live quality... I mean if it impacts gameplay on such a small scale imagine on a live server.... And they did nothing before putting the content live. I don't particularly care if they consider Lamma a test server or not, the fact is they put out a product having been told of gameplay debilitating issues. Making another live test server will not fix such indifference.

To OP: faith?! I have issues in general with the concept of faith... Believing in an outcome or ideas in the absence of proof. Perhaps if you had said I should trust in the developers... That is earned. And they have earned me expecting every hot fix or update to bug something new. That is what experience has taught me. They have not earned trust. Why do I play? Because I like the character development and I work around bugs. They've ruined it enough for me that I went back to never winter nights 2 for a while and enough for me to put down money to try other RPGs and MMOs. One of these days one of these games will have enough I don't know what to beat the pros and cons of ddo. If ddo didn't have so many bugs lately I wouldn't be looking to cheat on it. I'd be loyal. But I feel loyalty would be an illogical course of action.
And no, I don't care if the programmers are ****, the project managers are ****, the managers are ****, wb is ****... I don't care whose fault it is. They are all one entity to me... Turbine. Those dudes/duddetes putting out ddo.

Actually SEVERAL issues that were reported on the test server were addressed and fixed. No one is forcing you to play this game, nor reply to a post like you know what you are talking about even when its apparent you dont.

[AuraAten]

This game is like an AMC Pacer....

WHAT?!!? NO!!! its like a Pinto....keeps blowing up when smashed in the end....