This week's patch is horrific.

[belialle]

I find it pretty galling that they chose to respond to customers on REDDIT, rather than right here on the forums. The motivation is clear, though. We are already paying, while the people on Reddit are not, necessarily. It was a marketing ploy. If they had decent communication with us here on the forums, it wouldn't be an issue with me at all.....but they don't, and I'm starting to feel pretty upset about it.

 

I am fine with them fixing small quality of life issues while they iron out the bugs....but I have NEVER seen ANYONE ask for the ability to emote from a mount....not even once. There are so many other little quality of life things that have come up over and over again on the forums (server forums, chat bubbles, mouseovers, UI fixes, the ability to sit in chairs, etc). So it's weird to me that emoting from mounts is one of the first QoL priorities.

 

It's like they are operating in a vacuum. I am starting to feel like they don't value us as customers. If they don't improve their customer service, I am outta here on principle alone, no matter how much fun I am having with the game. An MMO is a luxury good to me. I don't need one in my life. There are other ways to pass the time.

Edited January 2, 2012 by belialle

[Kurenar]

Just to please a previous poster. can I have your stuff?" and "if you don't like it go back to WoW

 

Hehe

[Jordan_Hoffman]

Hehe

 

you knew I was here and lurking... didnt you? If I didnt work at a 24/7 Operations Center I would be off like every other human being!!

[JimG]

Read the Dev Tracker, they are working on pretty much everything you mentioned. It's not like they have 1 guy working on this stuff and he is prioritizing everything else first. Obviously they are working on many issues.....they are patching stuff as it's ready to go. The stuff that is more complex will obviously take longer. Better than them waiting 5-6 weeks to patch everything at once. I'd rather them give us whatever is ready to go as it's ready like this.

[Wingfoot]

I agree with some of your thoughts, but in this patch there are 3 of the bugs that have been bugging the hell out of me getting fixed, so I'm content with that. There obviously are many bugs that are annoying, but the game has been out 2 weeks...There are other MMO's I've played where MAJOR bugs didn't get fixed for years...

[Kurenar]

Read the Dev Tracker, they are working on pretty much everything you mentioned. It's not like they have 1 guy working on this stuff and he is prioritizing everything else first. Obviously they are working on many issues.....they are patching stuff as it's ready to go. The stuff that is more complex will obviously take longer. Better than them waiting 5-6 weeks to patch everything at once. I'd rather them give us whatever is ready to go as it's ready like this.

 

The problem is that the major issues such as ability lag, UI issues, performance problems were reported early in beta and completely ignored by bioware. Now all we get is "we are working on it" and a new huge content patch. Get real people the game has been in dev 6 years and loads of beta feedback was plain ignored over the last year. The "this game has only been out X days" argument does not hold up.

[Orvish]

I find it pretty galling that they chose to respond to customers on REDDIT, rather than right here on the forums. The motivation is clear, though. We are already paying, while the people on Reddit are not, necessarily. It was a marketing ploy. If they had decent communication with us here on the forums, it wouldn't be an issue with me at all.....but they don't, and I'm starting to feel pretty upset about it.

 

I am fine with them fixing small quality of life issues while they iron out the bugs....but I have NEVER seen ANYONE ask for the ability to emote from a mount....not even once. There are so many other little quality of life things that have come up over and over again on the forums (server forums, chat bubbles, mouseovers, UI fixes, etc).

 

It's like they are operating in a vacuum. I am starting to feel like they don't value us as customers. If they don't improve their customer service, I am outta here on principle alone, no matter how much fun I am having with the game. An MMO is a luxury good to me. I don't need one in my life. There are other ways to pass the time.

 

Keep in mind, not all bugs are reported and documented on the forums. Many of these issues could simply be responses to to in-game bug reports. Or they could just be something a developer noticed and fixed.

 

I imagine the reason reddit was chosen as a venue for that discussion is because it allows for a more direct feedback than forums would. For example, when Blizzard did their Dev Q&As, questions were submitted to the thread up until the thread cap, then voted on, and the developer's chose from those highly rated questions what to answer. There was an acute lag in this process, with answers coming as late as two weeks after the initial thread.

 

While I'm not pleased myself, and I think that BioWare needs a marker to denote threads that forum staff have responded to such as Blizzard does with their blue "BLIZZ" icons next to a thread, I'm ultimately okay with using a venue such as reddit for a discussion, so long as it is made known on the forums.

[brokentelevision]

Except Reid isn't a developer. He's in charge of community management, which is the forum presence of BioWare. And no MMO developer will ever give an exact date for anything. Just look at Blizzard's Developer Q&A they ran awhile ago. Most of those were just statements of awareness, or clairification of design intent. They can never commit to a hard and fast date for anything, as any number of complications could arise (again, coding is complicated) which would delay the release of something. It's the same reason Blizzard has never annouced the release date for a patch until the day before it releases. If they fail to meet a deadline, the community would riot, despite any provisions they threw in.

 

If he was to say: "We hope to have a fix for x issue on y date," the community would assume date y to the be the date that it would come out, and as soon as it 12:01 AM on that date, they would be screaming about why it wasn't fixed yet. I believe he even alludes to that exact situation in that Q&A. Besides, it's usually just comforting to hear that the company is aware of the bug and is working to fix it.

 

There is that, and then there is questions like:

 

What the hell is legacy? I get levels for what? Should I roll an alt or am I going to unlock the race I wanted the first place later?

 

And all we get is: we're working on it.

 

 

Seriously why put in legacy if you're not going to tell us what the hell it even is?!

[flunkorg]

Except if a real software developer is informed about a bug, they don't sit on it for 6 months doing nothing about it.

 

This games been out for 6 months?

Could have fooled me...

[archifikoss]

This games been out for 6 months?

Could have fooled me...

 

He means it was present in the beta.

[MasterOfEnts]

The current PTR patch notes include such major issues as performing emotes from vehicles.

 

...

 

Why?

With such a large team, Bioware has a lot of various specializations. Be sure of that. So, the programmers that can fix some of the game breaking problems you see may not be available (due to vacation or otherwise). Or they might be busy with issues that you're not aware of. I'm sure they'll get to them all in due time.

 

Although, I do agree that releasing a patch that fixes irrelevant issues is almost a slap in the face. But, it's not on purpose.

[Thiussat]

He acknowledged several of them here:

 

While I'm not fond of reddit being the chosen venue for communication between BioWare and customers, he does acknowledge several of the issues here.

 

As for the space combat issue (which I didn't see when I first read this thread), there is a fix in the upcoming patch that will remedy the issue of crashing out when a space station is destroyed.

 

Thanks for that link. It looks like they are addressing many of the concerns raised on these forums and are at least aware of the others.

 

I am glad the are aware of the random "green lines in the sky" bug. Happens to me a lot and wasn't sure if it was just me or if it was common. It is the same effect as those green door barriers, except sometimes these barriers will randomly appear in the sky.

 

Also glad they are aware of the "big butts" bug, where male toons have J-Lo butts.

 

Software development is hard. Look at some of the major products out there with millions of lines of code. Operating systems come to mind: there are bugs in Windows that probably will never be fixed. Same with OS X and other OS's. When you have millions of LoC, it is impossible to EVER get all of the bugs out. The best you can do is just get the most concerning ones squashed. Changing even one variable in one LoC can cause catastrophe, so it is no wonder they take their time finding, testing, and fixing the bugs.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Thiussat

[RavenGlenn]

Folks that complain about bugs, instability, etc make me laugh. It becomes obvious that they haven't played any MMOs at launch and likely jumped on the WoW bandwagon years after its release.

 

EVERY MMO launches with instability, lag, bugs, missing features/content, etc. Every single one. If you've experienced a lot of MMO release days, like I have, then you'd know that this is one of, if not THE, best releases to date.

 

World of Warcraft, the big daddy of the MMOs right now, had a terrible release. The game was practically unplayable for 2 weeks. Massive queues, server downtimes, crashes, lag, ability delays that lasted 5 seconds+ at times, loot lag that could get you stuck kneeling on the ground for 10 minutes, quests that didn't work, NPCs that you'd click on and have to wait 5-10 minutes for them to finally respond, banks/mail that would suddenly be empty as the server searched for your things, taking upwards of half an hour to find them.

 

This game is one of the smoothest and best releases we've gotten. I could count the number of MMOs that released this smoothly on maybe...three fingers.

[Lomerell]

I am fine with them fixing small quality of life issues while they iron out the bugs....but I have NEVER seen ANYONE ask for the ability to emote from a mount....not even once. There are so many other little quality of life things that have come up over and over again on the forums (server forums, chat bubbles, mouseovers, UI fixes, the ability to sit in chairs, etc). So it's weird to me that emoting from mounts is one of the first QoL priorities.

 

This.

[Baizak]

And where did Reid say they are working on these? Cite it.

 

He did a whole big Q&A on Reddit I am not going to do your research for you. Look it up yourself. I could care less if you actually believe it or not.

[QckslvrGrl]

Honestly, where the hell are all these 'bugs' the OP mentioned? I have not experienced any of those, and usually if something does happen, a quick UI refresh fixes.

[StephenReid]

I am fine with them fixing small quality of life issues while they iron out the bugs....but I have NEVER seen ANYONE ask for the ability to emote from a mount....not even once. There are so many other little quality of life things that have come up over and over again on the forums (server forums, chat bubbles, mouseovers, UI fixes, the ability to sit in chairs, etc). So it's weird to me that emoting from mounts is one of the first QoL priorities.

Unfortunately, not every part of a game's development is an equal sized task, and we must prioritize fixes as best we can.

 

To speak to your example, while you may have never seen someone ask for emoting from a mount, it may still have been asked for (either in threads you've not seen, or in bug reports, for example). It's also possible this was a fix that was being worked on before launch, and has only just now made it into the game, or that fixing this bug clears the way for other bugs to be fixed, or that adding it allows other features to be implemented. And sometimes, it's just something we wanted to fix.

 

While we cannot acknowledge every single post and every single request made on these Forums, we're reading and passing on the desires to the development team. Every major request that's been made by players since launch is being discussed and prioritized. That doesn't mean every feature requested will make it into the game - we'd end up developing a very schizophrenic game if we did that. However many requested features will ultimately end up in the game.

 

While I'd suggest everyone does check the Dev Tracker from time to time, you should also keep an eye on our new Community Blog, which has already hosted a post from James Ohlen about some future features, and will have more insights as we go forward into additions to the game.

 

The team is hard at work on improving and where required fixing the game. Not every fix is easy and not every feature can be added overnight, but we'll continue to work to make the game even better.

[MBirdy]

You're best off looking at twitter. Reid posts on twitter about game updates more then the game forum.

 

 

And that reddit thing was a complete waste of time.

 

 

Q: anything about legacy

A: we're working on it.

 

Q: anything about ability delay?

A: we're working on it.

 

Q: anything about adding pvp brackets?

A: we're working on it.

 

 

see a trend there? That whole thing should have been renamed: Ask a developer anything but get nothing as a response.

 

 

I've almost had it with bioware completely, like never gonna buy another bioware game had it. This is gonna be the most epic failure of an MMO to date, if they don't get their *** in gear and start fixing stuff.

 

What the hell do you want other than "They are working on it" .... you people make me sick sometimes.... you dont disclose the entire development process because it can change at any time.

 

What the hell do you want? "Oh the team is on lunch but later today they are going to change several methods and rewrite the blah blah" in detail just for you? and then give a release date that they cant promise because its so complex?

 

Seriously...

[Cherme]

Unfortunately, not every part of a game's development is an equal sized task, and we must prioritize fixes as best we can.

 

To speak to your example, while you may have never seen someone ask for emoting from a mount, it may still have been asked for (either in threads you've not seen, or in bug reports, for example). It's also possible this was a fix that was being worked on before launch, and has only just now made it into the game, or that fixing this bug clears the way for other bugs to be fixed, or that adding it allows other features to be implemented. And sometimes, it's just something we wanted to fix.

 

While we cannot acknowledge every single post and every single request made on these Forums, we're reading and passing on the desires to the development team. Every major request that's been made by players since launch is being discussed and prioritized. That doesn't mean every feature requested will make it into the game - we'd end up developing a very schizophrenic game if we did that. However many requested features will ultimately end up in the game.

 

While I'd suggest everyone does check the Dev Tracker from time to time, you should also keep an eye on our new Community Blog, which has already hosted a post from James Ohlen about some future features, and will have more insights as we go forward into additions to the game.

 

The team is hard at work on improving and where required fixing the game. Not every fix is easy and not every feature can be added overnight, but we'll continue to work to make the game even better.

 

I like that this ssmall thread gets an answer, but the other with over 1200 pages on the ability delay gets zero

[dingoperson]

Guys, I have been complaining about things as well, but I feel we should cut these guys some slack until mid January. Developers were probably pushed into overdrive for the last six months before launch and then sent on a well deserved ten days vacation until the new year. There's pros and cons to releasing over the holidays, but knowing how IT works I can't begrudge them a little bit of time off.

 

I've switched off my recurring billing because I'm pretty p'd off about one thing, but am pretty sure I'll have cause to switch it back on soon.

[dingoperson]

I like that this ssmall thread gets an answer, but the other with over 1200 pages on the ability delay gets zero

 

My hope is that the people who are important enough to comment on this (because it's probably a fundamental design/network issue) have been stuffing their faces for the past couple of days and the guys answering here are the front liners who have been told to hold the fort in the meantime

[engrey]

I like that this ssmall thread gets an answer, but the other with over 1200 pages on the ability delay gets zero

 

BioWare is not going to address or fix those major bugs in a timely manner. Starting this Thursday, it will have been four weeks since early-access started, and the game started for millions of players. That is just about a month since the game came out and some of the more glaring bugs have not been fixed. BH story, hard mode and operation bosses/loot issues, and the countless other bugs in warzones and other aspects of the game.

Edited January 2, 2012 by engrey

[Rogueish]

I like that this ssmall thread gets an answer, but the other with over 1200 pages on the ability delay gets zero

 

It's nice to see that the generic MMO gamer hasn't changed over the years. According to that generic gamer:

 

• The bug (large or small) that bothers him the most must be fixed immediately
  
• Any other bug fixes have obviously taken time away from your bug fix, and developers should be castrated for such heresy
  
• Did I say developers? I meant developer. All bug fixes are worked on one at a time by one person: Luigi. Luigi is legally blind and has an IQ just above that of a tube sock. That's the only explanation for how long bug fixes take
  
• Community managers never respond to player complaints or requests for information
  
• Any responses from community managers are not in the proper thread, do not address the issue at hand in enough detail, are outright lies, or are automated marketing speak
  
• The developers hate the player base, want them to have a terrible gaming experience, and only care about that monthly subscription
  

 

I just wonder if these are gamers who are new to MMOs, or who just have never learned how all this works. You play the game and overlook the bugs. If you can't overlook the bugs, or if you're not having fun because of them, move on and come back when/if the game improves.

[belialle]

Unfortunately, not every part of a game's development is an equal sized task, and we must prioritize fixes as best we can.

 

To speak to your example, while you may have never seen someone ask for emoting from a mount, it may still have been asked for (either in threads you've not seen, or in bug reports, for example). It's also possible this was a fix that was being worked on before launch, and has only just now made it into the game, or that fixing this bug clears the way for other bugs to be fixed, or that adding it allows other features to be implemented. And sometimes, it's just something we wanted to fix.

 

While we cannot acknowledge every single post and every single request made on these Forums, we're reading and passing on the desires to the development team. Every major request that's been made by players since launch is being discussed and prioritized. That doesn't mean every feature requested will make it into the game - we'd end up developing a very schizophrenic game if we did that. However many requested features will ultimately end up in the game.

 

While I'd suggest everyone does check the Dev Tracker from time to time, you should also keep an eye on our new Community Blog, which has already hosted a post from James Ohlen about some future features, and will have more insights as we go forward into additions to the game.

 

The team is hard at work on improving and where required fixing the game. Not every fix is easy and not every feature can be added overnight, but we'll continue to work to make the game even better.

 

 

Fair enough! Believe me, I understand that not every requested feature can make it into the game. I'm even grateful for that, as I think that some of the requests that pop up are somewhat unreasonable at times. It's no coincidence that the quality of life examples I listed are some of the ones that I would most like to see implemented, even though I know that it's not practical for us to expect the devs to cater to every individual's personal pet peeves.

 

I very much appreciate that you took the time to reply to my grumpy post. It's good to know that you folks are watching the forums, even though you aren't able to make time to post here as often as we might wish. It's a hectic time of year, and with a large project like this, I can only imagine how busy everyone must be.

 

Despite any criticisms that I might give voice to here on the forums, I am having a great time with the game, and I do have confidence that everyone is working hard to make the game better.

Edited January 2, 2012 by belialle

[Amdarius]

Bioware is EA. The levels of bureaucratic nonsense involved in including anything worthwhile in a patch are going to kill this game.

 

How can we still have ZERO guild functionality in this game almost a month after it was "launched" (early launch). All we can do is chat. That's it. No guild bank. No guild ship. No guild base. No guild rank/level. No guild equip. No insignias. etc etc.

 

They spent more time pre-launch putting in functionality for guilds and did nothing for in-game guild functionality. Heck, they even allowed us to declare adversaries.. but that was pretty pointless.