Developer Blog: Busting Bugs and Fixing Exploits

[Vewdo]

We do care about new content. Game is not as "broken" as some forum posters say.

 

Ive been playing since Dec. 18th and havent run into 1 gamebreaking bug. I have run into a few regular bugs. I submit my report, and continue having fun. I dont run to the forums and say the sky is falling we're all doomed!!

 

Excellent article. Thank you for letting us in on the process. I was actually curious as to how you guys handled these things.

 

Yeah come to think of it i have not seen 1 single bug. Mostly just game mechanics that fail. Like class balancing and what not. But i havent actually seen a single game breaking bug at all.

[iRouven]

One thing that was not talked about, maybe they don't count as bugs per se, are (apparently) last minute changes that lead to a bit of confusion. So the one thing that comes to my mind right now is: Elara Dorne carrying a blaster with cunning stats.

 

From my laymans point of view this should be an easy quick fix, of course not a pressing matter but it might shorten the to-do list. Food for thought.

 

Other than that I welcome and appreciate the communication.

[Pistols]

Does BW have any plans to address low pop servers? I know a ton of people have quit this game, with more on the way, and some servers are just wrecked due to faction control. This seems to be a very big issue right up with the amount of bugs in this game, any thoughts on this subject?

[Volksworgen]

I would rather have the game play out smooth than you guys fixing the exploits first. That's just me.

[matthewcreech]

Why would they eliminate all those beautiful features?

/getdown

[bchorn]

Pop quiz time! How many of the 13 paragraphs in this blog addressed bug fixes? If you guess 12 then you are correct![/quote

 

But the bug fixes don't work? So then are they actually bug fixes?

 

MMO's are complex games. This is not the first MMO where I've seen a bug fix causes other bugs to happen.

 

Did you even read the blog?

[LordRaevin]

If i was the developer of this game i'd work so hard trying to fix all these bugs the sweat would be running down my ***. There's so many it's completely ruining the game experience in both PvE and PvP. The patch notes indicate several are fixed, however once ingame one can easily see the fix that was mentioned isn't fixed at all. It's either giving another problem or it simply persists.

 

Very sadly i will cancel my subscription for next month as i don't find myself enjoying the game any longer.

The PvP gearing system is flawed, luck based and unfair.

The PvE content is too easy (even though i quite enjoyed Kaon Under Siege but that's it), even the so called "Nightmare Mode" is extremely far from being an actual challenge.

Illum had potential but has been completely destroyed, it was better before than it is now especially when i see guilds on my server trade kills, getting players to hit rank 60 in a single day which is absolutely pathetic considering i had to spend weeks getting mine.

There is absolutely zero communication between BioWare and the community, customers such as myself feel ignored and underapreciated. Americans are getting a huge advantage over European players. Even though we pay for the same (heck we even pay more!) we're getting terrible maintenance times and we have to pay 6 times as much for the security key in order to protect our account which should be something that's encouraged rather then shoo'd away due to the high price.

The Customer Service is one of the worst i have ever experienced as it, once again, lacks proper communication.

The Hero Engine seems to be terrible, even with a AMD 6950 it's extremely choppy in crowded areas (think illum, pvp in general) and i'm getting 20 FPS tops on a lucky day.

 

And the list goes on and on. I'm hugely dissapointed BioWare.

Edited January 31, 2012 by LordRaevin

[Drengir]

If i was the developer of this game i'd work so hard trying to fix all these bugs the sweat would be running down my ***. There's so many it's completely ruining the game experience in both PvE and PvP. The patch notes indicate several are fixed, however once ingame one can easily see the fix that was mentioned isn't fixed at all. It's either giving another problem or it simply persists.

 

Very sadly i will cancel my subscription for next month as i don't find myself enjoying the game any longer.

The PvP gearing system is flawed, luck based and unfair.

The PvE content is too easy (even though i quite enjoyed Kaon Under Siege but that's it), even the so called "Nightmare Mode" is extremely far from being an actual challenge.

Illum had potention but has been completely destroyed, it was better before than it is now especially when i see guilds on my server trade kills, getting players to hit rank 60 in a single day which is absolutely pathetic considering i had to spend weeks getting mine.

There is absolutely zero communication between BioWare and the community, customers such as myself feel ignored and underapreciated. Americans are getting a huge advantage over European players. Even though we pay for the same (heck we even pay more!) we're getting terrible maintenance times and we have to pay 6 times as much for the security key in order to protect our account which should be something that's encouraged rather then shoo'd away due to the high price.

The Customer Service is one of the worst i have ever experienced as it, once again, lacks proper communication.

The Hero Engine seems to be terrible, even with a AMD 6950 it's extremely choppy in crowded areas (think illum, pvp in general) and i'm getting 20 FPS tops on a lucky day.

 

And the list goes on and on. I'm hugely dissapointed BioWare.

 

Took the words out of my mouth!

 

^this

[Jasuk]

stop new content and fix the game. All your resources need to be put into fixing the game that exists now!!! You said you patched warzones not properly awarding wins, you lied. There is no argument there. You told the player base you fixed an issue when you did not. That is LYING.

 

Lying to your paying customers will result in you losing paying customers. As for the bug thing, it would be best for this "future" content you are working on to be tested this time. Please test it and increase the utility of the PTS. The PTS is useless as is right now. Add incentive for players to want to test your patches on there such as character copying!!!! Why is this so hard for you?????

 

If you think you can do better, get a degree and get a job at Bioware.

 

You have no idea what you're talking about and you're greatly underestimating the difficulty of the job.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Jasuk

[Galanaer]

Interesting Blog.

 

Course, already we have people crapping all over it, or didn't care to read the information.

My mistake, it must be those self-indulgent weiners with to much bloody money!

 

Every MMO that has been released had bugs all thru it. Name one MMO that never had em.

Oh, wait you can't. Because now that you live in a fast-food McDonald' fashion society, where I want it NOW NOW NOW!!!

 

Then all of a sudden you don't get what you want, you turn into the HULK AND NERD RAGE!!!

 

HULK SMASH!!!!!!

[Rasheth]

What a joke, basically a wall of text of BullCrap.

 

Bioware, you proved your true colour when you failed to act on the Ilum exploits (like that wasn't cause enough to shut down Ilum? Then what is..) and still haven't fixed that.

 

And the Slicing exploit took you even longer, with almost as big ramafications (altho, they are more hidden than Ilums was).

 

Would really like to see a post asking for our forgiveness and explain that you are just human or whatever you wanna use for a excuse.

 

Actions speak stronger than words, yet you continue to try and smoothtalk us into subscribing another month..If any single one of your last patches had actually fixed the problems, Or not added more bugs, I could buy it and keep subscribing. Altho the utter lack of endgame content probably would have stopped me instead

 

Conclusion; Open your eyes and stop bullcrapping us, Please!

 

Will people read? If there is a exploit that is bad they have to shut it down for emergency patch. They did a emergency patch to fix illum somewhat. There have been big bugs and small ones. If anything this post says that they don't want people to stop playing as little down time as possible. So while everyone here thinks that illum exploit was huge it might not have been that bad because the ones that new about it are minority but it was still addressed.

 

If they looked their metrics and concluded that the people upset about illum are only 1 percent of the population and that the rest of the pop has no clue about it or is unaffected then they act accordingly. It is actually I high probablity that the people posting on the forums and complaining make up just that less than 5% of the population.

 

There surely aren't 500,000 people posting on these forums complaining about the same things over and over again. Not that any complaint shouldn't be heard but honestly the forums are the minority IMO. That is a good thing. It's a fraction of the puzzle solving process

[ZephyJackal]

If you think you can do better, get a degree and get a job at Bioware.

 

You have no idea what you're talking about and you're greatly underestimating the difficulty of the job.

 

I like how all these people think that the employees who create new content have the same skills as the employees who fix bugs, and that they're interchangeable.

 

/rolleyes

[Volksworgen]

If you think you can do better, get a degree and get a job at Bioware.

 

You have no idea what you're talking about and you're greatly underestimating the difficulty of the job.

 

You don't need a degree for what he just said, unless, you have an extremely low IQ and can barely get a grip of what he just said.

Edited January 31, 2012 by Volksworgen

[LordRaevin]

Interesting Blog.

 

Course, already we have people crapping all over it, or didn't care to read the information.

My mistake, it must be those self-indulgent weiners with to much bloody money!

 

Every MMO that has been released had bugs all thru it. Name one MMO that never had em.

Oh, wait you can't. Because now that you live in a fast-food McDonald' fashion society, where I want it NOW NOW NOW!!!

 

Then all of a sudden you don't get what you want, you turn into the HULK AND NERD RAGE!!!

 

HULK SMASH!!!!!!

 

You're right, MMO's came out with bugs but atleast the Developers took care of them quickly and fixed the bugs as soon as possible instead of "fixing" them and making them even worse or creating even more bugs that weren't even there before.

[Bregah]

I gotta say - reading a dev blog about fixing bugs on a day when a patch gets implemented to fix a bug (warzone wins not counting) and doesn't actually work is a bit funny.

 

Other than that, nothing here seems to be new information about gaming and bugs. I'm sure I've read the exact same thing many times over the years from devs.

 

Not that the blog was bad, but it's seemingly rather pointless, and definitely uninteresting.

 

I'd much rather read a blog describing exactly what the UI changes are going to be (not necessarily when), a blog describing the thought process to NOT including dual spec or any kind of useful LFG tool, or a blog explaining why RNG was used for the PvP bags.

 

Also some sort of explanation of plans about low pop servers (mine being one) - as in is anything at all planned on being done.

[Zandar]

The big problem with big companies:

 

Talking, Meetings, Discussions, Evaluation, More talking, more meetings.

 

The bug fixing really feels slow and sluggish. QA too with their 8hour downtimes.

 

Maybe spend less time on discussing bugs, identifying, prioritising and more time on actually fixing those you curently have.

 

I'd suggest to call for a no meetings no discussions week.

Cancel all meetings this week and use the time that you gain by that on fixing any bug that you have currently identified that are fixable.

Ignore all new bugs that QA finds this week, just focus on the current ones.

And just assign them to devs in a random order, ignoring all priority for a week.

 

Yes you'll miss some priorities but if you fix half of the current bugs because of that, then people will forgive you that.

 

With all your prioritising and talking and meetings, the pvp game killing bug that doesnt count warzone wins is still here for weeks , so it seems all that discussing and talking about priorities doesn't help much anyway.

[xsmspiffs]

You don't need a degree for what he just said, unless, you have an extremely low IQ and can barely get a grip of what he just said.

 

What he just said was go get a job at Bioware and fix bugs... probably want him to have a degree for that...

[Pawpad]

Honestly they're ****ed. The only way to correct the GLARING exploit abuse that took place is to reroll everyone. But they can't because they'd lose subs like a heart beat. So the rest of us are left to SUCK IT UP while being FARMED in pvp for MONTHS to get what so many got in HOURS.

 

Not even going to get into the credit duping and quick gain exploits. THe infinite light/dark points. The infinite companion. The instant crafting. The pulling 12+ people into warzones. The 400k an HOUR doing circles in Cellia what ever grabbing chests. The coordinated side farming on illium. The green jedi area exploits. The PvP bots. The aldaraan chest exploits. The CE holodancer. The Powerleveling.

 

I mean this is so bad that you don't even have to pay to play. Once your time runs out it won't even disconnect you as long as you don't exit the game. My buddy played free for about 5 days by never logging off lol.

 

I give the game a year. Maybe less. The massive damage is done. PvP is utterly ruined thanks to illium. On my server it is ALWAYS popping pvp with 4 or 5 Imps vs 8-12 Reps. It's ruined. Absolutely ruined PvP.

 

 

And it sucks because the PvP was a blast before the illium exploit. It really was. Now I can find more enjoyable PvP on FACEBOOK. BW will learn quickly with pvp so screwed up, people aren't going to stay around long unless your absolutely PUMPING out content, which I don't see happening.

 

But I wish them luck.

[SarethX]

I wish these blogs had voice over so I wouldn't have to read it. Please work on that.

[LordMantequillas]

"All developers play the game" - Well then you're all a bunch of idiots, sorry to say. Why publish such a broken POS?!?!?!

[schwartzpedro]

Going a little bit off topic,but,where do I get the set showing on the picture?

[Jasuk]

You don't need a degree for what he just said, unless, you have an extremely low IQ and can barely get a grip of what he just said.

 

Much as I love your insults, at least attempt to make a point without them in the future. I'd like to think you're above that.

 

To think that developers intentionally lie about bug fixes is silly. Everyone can blatantly see after a patch whether or not it's fixed, so they gain absolutely nothing by doing that.

 

Things happen, and not everything goes to plan. If it were all so simple, the game would have been bug free at launch.

[OldBehn]

So basically the same way any development team approaches bugs except for one major issue.

 

Not one match for 'test' in the whole article.

 

Hence failures like Ilum.

[SkillzKillz]

Fix the damn buggs already and stop posting blogs. Stop the talk and walk the walk.

 

OH YEA stop nerfing classes to ****.

 

K THX BYE

[GoggleBoi]

The Dev post was about the process of finding, and repairing, bugs and, to a lesser extent, exploits. It was an attempt by a professional to explain the finer points of his profession to a largely uninformed, ill-educated, ignorant populace that scream for fixes to be made without truly comprehending the time and the effect such 'simple fixes' could have on the game at large.

 

I am no game-developer, but I have volunteered as a coder/wizard on MUDs in the past - the text-based precursor to MMOs, if you will. Often I would attempt to 'fix' a bug that, initially, appeared simple, even easy. It was, after all, a simple parsing error here, or a mis-called variable there. Inevitably I would break something else, particularly if the code I was working on referenced additional files spread out over additional directories. It took a great deal of time to find and clean the bugs from the code, without creating more errors. A 'simple' program can easily consist of hundred, or thousands of lines of code.

 

Now think about that for one second; The dev post above consisted of less than 100 lines, approximately 1300 words, and about 7000 characters. Most of you couldn't be bothered to read it all. If you were asked to find a single grammatical error, like say a missing comma (,) in all that, how long would it take you to find?

Now multiply that by a hundred, a thousand, and add in the chance that for every comma you add there is a chance another grammatical error could enter in somewhere else. That's bug fixing. Joy, isn't it?

 

Obviously there are those that will *****, and whine, and scream regardless of what the development team post or say. Many of the most vocal appear, in fact, to be those that have openly stated they are no longer subscribed. It amazes me that the moderators and development team allow such children to persist here.

 

TL;DR:

 

The devs explained how their industry works for those of you too ignorant to understand on your own. Fixing bugs is not 'easy,' it is not 'simple,' it is not 'quick.' If you think it is, you have no coding experience or knowledge, and should really just _not_ post your opinions on the matter.