Developer Blog: Busting Bugs and Fixing Exploits

[Kortak]

I feel ya on the support, I've sent a few tickets out on possible bugs/exploits and such and after 3 weeks, not a single reply. And as a result of the PVP issues.. yeah, you guessed it, I don't PVP that much. I could rant on about the issues with it and such, but there are thousands of other threads that are already doing that for me.

 

But yeah, basically I can't even PVP right now because there is no conceivable answer for my abnormally low FPS during PVP. It's not that bad, just completely undesirable and unnecessary. I've seen what could be classified as "heavily taxing" games run smoothly on mine and others PCs when this games PVP results in massive frame loss, resulting in me not even wanting to play it.

 

I've run through as many possibilities as you can imagine to fix this, and what fixes I've seen have been marginal. My conclusion to the whole issue, something is massively flawed in the engine or something. Actually, what I've noticed is it has something to do with all of the games effects from other players going off, along with the fire, fluid, fog/smoke effects, all rendering in one place.

 

That said.. here's an idea. Bioware, give us an option to turn off effects, fog/smoke and other things. Almost every other game I've played has options like these, except this one.. and as far as I'm concerned there is no excuse for that, this may be your first MMO, but it's certainly not your first game by any means. Additionally, you have 15 - 20 some years of past MMO's to look at for these kinds of ideas. Bottom-line, game was rushed, problems were ignored or certain features were not thoroughly examined well enough. Haters gonna hate, I don't care..

 

Untrack the quest..track it again.. fixed

[dreamrogue]

sure..untracking and tracking quests will fix the crashes as soon as you entr an Ilum fight.

 

currently the only thing that worked slightly, was alt+F4 as soon as the framing stats to hit and then reload the game...but seriously is THAT the solution that is offered?

 

It is not acceptable for BF3 to work perfect in my pc and SWTOR to crash randomly when massive graphic appear..

[lucasomega]

cheers for that.. but really, that couldnt wait till the proper day of maintenace and why is going to take all day to fix that??

 

"Hey some people are having a horrendous experience and we have a hotfix ready for that, should we go ahead and take an hour or two to fix it?

 

Nah, AjStylZ is running the game fine so let all those other people down. He needs to play more than them."

 

Seriously guys, read the blog. It was an issue severely degrading the experience of a group of players (apparently significant enough to warrant an emergency fix).

 

The servers are up anyway. Go play!

Edited February 2, 2012 by lucasomega

[ammberae]

Loved the blog post, very interesting and informative.

 

To all the whiners who threaten about unsubscribing... PLEASE DO...get the frak off a great game that doesn't need your unconstructive input. SWTOR is still a new mmo and bugs are inevitable, and your 'high priority' bug may not be occuring to other players. Be patient and enjoy a good game, report bugs when they occur and leave CONSTRUCTIVE suggestions in the suggestion area of the forums. If you can't play nicely then go back to WoW, your qqing is welcome there.

Edited February 2, 2012 by ammberae

[Hobnobb]

Great blog post!

 

Know that most of us enjoy the game and think you are doing a great job!

 

 

SWTOR User Rating:

8.32 out of 10 based on 5196 user ratings

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=259406

[Joogsw]

Thanks for an insight into the work that is done to make thisgame even better, sometimes i really think i'm playing a totally different game than some people here because i'm still having a ton of fun.

[Lupious]

You overestimate your customer base with a post like this, Bioware. It's as simple as this:

 

1) We pay (or will be paying) money on a monthly basis for this game.

2) We expect the game to be up 24/7, 365. We are willing to allow 8 hours per week for maintenance. This is not unreasonable. Other monthly services such as my cable tv, cable internet, phones, etc. do not go down at all for maintenance.

3) We expect bugs to be fixed as soon as feasible, and we do not expect it to cause additional downtime. Taking the servers down several times a week is not an acceptable solution.

4) We except new content on a fairly regular basis - We have much more leniency on this and are willing to accept a longer time frame for new content.

 

Ultimately, you are a business and we are your customers. Take the actual game out of it. As a customer of any company, we/I have expectations. I expect my cable company to have minimal, if any, down time. Each time it snows I expect the maintenance company for my town home to clear the snow, etc. etc. etc. When the business does not meet the expectations of the customer, or if a rival business offers a better product, the customer goes elsewhere. Simple as that.

 

Personally, I'd just be happy if you stopped taking the servers down (what seems like) every freaking night. That annoys me more than the bugs. It feels like there is an "emergency" patch every night. I know there isn't, but with the frequency of the server downtime, it's what it is starting to feel like.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Lupious

[Vexysle]

You overestimate your customer base with a post like this, Bioware. It's as simple as this:

 

1) We pay (or will be paying) money on a monthly basis for this game.

2) We expect the game to be up 24/7, 365. We are willing to allow 8 hours per week for maintenance. This is not unreasonable. Other monthly services such as my cable tv, cable internet, phones, etc. do not go down at all for maintenance.

3) We expect bugs to be fixed as soon as feasible, and we do not expect it to cause additional downtime. Taking the servers down several times a week is not an acceptable solution.

4) We except new content on a fairly regular basis - We have much more leniency on this and are willing to accept a longer time frame for new content.

 

Ultimately, you are a business and we are your customers. Take the actual game out of it. As a customer of any company, we/I have expectations. I expect my cable company to have minimal, if any, down time. Each time it snows I expect the maintenance company for my town home to clear the snow, etc. etc. etc. When the business does not meet the expectations of the customer, or if a rival business offers a better product, the customer goes elsewhere. Simple as that.

 

Personally, I'd just be happy if you stopped taking the servers down (what seems like) every freaking night. That annoys me more than the bugs. It feels like there is an "emergency" patch every night. I know there isn't, but with the frequency of the server downtime, it's what it is starting to feel like.

 

I do understand what Lupious is writing about but expectations and what is actually meant to happen are totally different. The Credit Card company expect you to pay your bill by the the due date - not after, the bank expect you to bend forward and grab ankle but in actually I wouldnt. the good thing is that the server maintenance and downtown should be expected as well, since all technology when running constantly need to be monitored. Hopefully Lup, once they get the major bugs and whatnots taken care off we won't be suffering multiple downtimes.

[BlueIndigo]

Thanks for the info, BW, great blog. I personally have only experienced very minor bugs in the game at lvl 36, so honestly I don't know what all the furor is about. Maybe the bugs are more evident in the last 14 levels? (I keep making alts and playing them up to the thirties because the various classes are all so much fun to play, it's like potato chips, you can't stop at one!).

 

The game is excellent as it stands, IMO, and will only get better with time, especially with the addition of new content/stories/legacy perks and so forth. Keep up the great work, Bioware and thank you for creating such a killer game!

 

Indigo, Saga, and many others....

The Evenstar Legacy

Edited February 2, 2012 by BlueIndigo

[RagnarokJT]

I actualy have trouble with starting the game, it lets me log in and start the game and plays the begining movie then after that the app crashes, when I do it again it crashes once more no movie so I'm guessing it the log in screen maybe because I just got this game and it should be compatible with my computer, also not to mention its also a brand new computer that I got yesterday, any idea whats wrong here?

[Hansuki]

Shock and awe....

 

I do believe there is a bugged elevator in the Bounty Hunter questline that kills you instantly and with no reason upon use. There are several multipage threads about this bug which has existed since launch. YOU CANNOT PROGRESS in your class story without going through this elevator.

 

How fortunate for bioware that some helpful player posted a workaround, no doubt found after hours of failed attempts and needless frustration. You can not die if you mount up and stand on the ledge of the elevator when you press the button - problem solved.

 

And this is where the blog post makes me mad, because according to your process, a bug of this magnitude SHOULD BE FIXED ASAP, triage would place this elevator high on the list. Except that, there is a workaround which you can find by searching the fourms. THEREFORE BW must have said, nope, dont need to fix this, they can do it themselves, screw immersion, screw the players, lets work on something else instead (what else, I can never seem to tell - he mentions the large team they have in Austin, but you never see any of the big bugs being fixed, save a couple - SOA is still not dropping loot for people...)

 

In short, the blog is there to remind us that BW knows we're on to them, knows they move way too slow, and to demonstrate that they do not care at all, since its all windy BS. I call thee out Bioware - y u no fix elevator of death?

[Lorealin]

My friends, we were "Deceived"...Hero Engine fooled us all...

 

Hero Engine is a joke.

The developers are more like scripting mental midgets.

The fact they chose to purchase an engine as opposed to create one speaks volumes.

They would rather spend time on voice acting then actual game mechanics.

 

Unfortunately for Bioware they are stuck with the HeroEngine and it can only do so much. Sadly you will have to loose something to gain something.

 

On the good news I got my beta key for diablo III Hopefully when I come back in a while they will have fixed some of the basic things like ("worst UI of any MMO").

 

We have been deceived this is a single player game at its core. The end game content is just not there. Have fun leveling because that is all your going to get.

 

Edited February 2, 2012 by Lorealin

[Brad-]

I think you should remove the part of the Rules of Conduct that prohibit exploiting or abusing bugs or flawed designs. Since you don't punish exploiters (i.e. Ilum exploiters), why should the rule even be there?

[Mordrihm]

And that is downtimes/maintenance during daytime/peaktimes in Europe (now even on weekends, unbelievable), a very easy bug to fix which involves no risks at all for you and will increase the return of investment (that you said you would do anything to keep high for your paying customers) for your European customers CRITICALLY!!

 

Like many other players have stated, focus more on your customers satisfaction (i.e no downtime other than night time) and less on new content...man the WHOLE game is still new content, its a new game and I dont think every gamer has tried out all the classes and quests yet.

 

Thank you for a great game, only fix the maintenance times and I will be a more than happy customer.

 

Have a nice day

[Aloro]

this falls under the old saying:

 

you cannot make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time...

 

yer us aussies and others arecopping it pretty hard, but thats cause we all cheated and got it inported but in the end we are still paying customers and they have a day that is their maintenance day...

 

but at the moment it feels like maintence weeks...

 

i can see were both sides are commin from....

 

Aussies get hit hard with these maintenance times. I used to live in Brisbane and feel your pain. Maintenance is at, what, 6pm to 2am there now? Ouch. People elsewhere complaining about maintenance times really need a sense of perspective.

 

I do think though that it's essential to get these fixes out quickly.

[Aloro]

You overestimate your customer base with a post like this, Bioware. It's as simple as this:

 

It's as simple as this: you don't speak for the community.

 

You have some good points, and I agree with much of what you said, but when you present your own views as those of a larger group, you're being disingenuous. Don't assume that anyone else feels the same way. Don't try to add impact to your own views by suggesting that others share them. Just say what YOU feel.

[Spangles]

Only played 2 WZ since the last serverside fix, but so far I have met several "Bugged" players (imp abilities?) and situations in heavy combat and I would say my problems are fixed

 

Tank you very much machine gnomes and if you want me to properly beta test anything for you again I charge very reasonable rates - wait don't I pay...?

 

edt- Yup at least my medic trooper is functional now. So does this mean exploits like the Huttball gamebreaker are now top priority? (force pull ballcarrier into res area to reset ball and ballcarrier) or more ABC work to do?

Edited February 2, 2012 by Spangles

[Opix]

Greetings.

 

I am entitled and as such I believe every wrong that has been perpetrated against me should be corrected post-haste, no excuses.

 

And yes, before you ask, I know how difficult it is to debug and/or effectively run a project such as SW:TOR. You'll just have to trust me on this.

 

Furthermore, if the character's class I play has abilities diminished by even .2% I will unsubscribe and deprive BioWare of my $14.99 a month which, according to my college educated mind, will single-handedly sink BioWare.

 

You have been warned.

[Loaf-Master]

So after the 1.11 patch I (like many) began experiencing crashes. At random intervals (sometimes ten mns. some time an hour), my screen would freeze for about 30 seconds and then the blue screen of death would appear. It would state "beginning physical memory dump" along with a ton of other gibberish and then restart. SWTOR is the only program that causes this, and only after the 1.11 patch.

 

I had hoped the 1.11a patch would address the issue, but alas I'm still experiencing crashes. Oddly enough they are not as frequent. I'm not sure if it's due to the patch or to the trouble shooting I've done, but the crashes usually only take place after a solid hour of play, some times two. Heavy activity or just standing still, either way a crash is possible.

 

From what I gathered in the forums, this is probably a memory issue or a GPU issue. As a result, I completely wiped my video card drivers and uninstalled the Catalyst control center for my ATI card. I then ONLY re-installed the drivers to the card and left out the CCC. Then, I completely disabled virtual memory and also ran the AVG registry error program that fixed multiple issue. Lastly, I ran AVG for viruses/spyware and malware while de-fragging the hard drive. When this only reduced the frequency of crashes, I re-installed the game all together.

 

After all that I'm still getting a blue screen of death every hour or so in random situations. I've done everything aside from physically replace the RAM/video card or wipe the whole hard drive and re-install windows. Seeing how I can play company of heroes, Dragon's Age, Star-craft 2 and WOW with out so much as a hiccup, I'm assuming it has to do with the SWTOR program. I hope this issue will be addressed in the next patch, if not I'll have to stop playing in fear of damaging my computer. That would be a shame seeing how this game is wonderful.

 

Thank you for anyone who addresses this post, I hope the general forum was the right location.

 

Tech Spec:

Intel Core 2 Quad 3.00 ghz

4 gigs Ram

ATI Radeon HD 5770 1 gig vram

WD 500 gig HD 7200rpm

Windows 7 home premium 64 bit

[Esaru]

Typical PR crap to smooth over their failure of a programming/QA team. This is their 'excuse' for why bugs like the warzone daily have been around for months and are still not fixed (even though they were in the patch notes). Sorry Bioware, I don't buy it.

 

Edited February 2, 2012 by Esaru

[Esaru]

Honesly, I don't care what you do, I don't care how you do it, and I don't care why.

 

I do care that something is getting fixed and commitments to a time frame to fix it.

 

Any good development team has all the stuff you mentioned. However the first major patch was basically a disaster and teh second did not achieve what was promised.

 

You're still letting people trade kill on Illum.

You still have a faction balance issue.

There are still unanswered questions about class mirroring

We still don't have a combat log

Players have deomonstrated various portions of your game not working as intended.

 

Yet not one statement made of when this stuff will be fixed.

 

If anyone in your house thinks most peeps went imp just cause they look cooler, then your being dumber than dumb.

 

Spot on. Really as simple as this

 

"Honesly, I don't care what you do, I don't care how you do it, and I don't care why.

 

I do care that something is getting fixed and commitments to a time frame to fix it."

 

The problem is we're not seeing it. Don't talk about how you fix things and how the process works when you can't even get your patch notes and fixes correct, Bioware.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Esaru

[HollowVamp]

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.

 

how about dying during a CC in a warzone and being stuck in that CC for UNLIMITED time when you spawn being force afkd out, thats game breaking to me.

[allotetraploid]

Hello everyone! We’ve posted a new blog from Richard Vogel that talks about busting bugs and fixing exploits. Click here to read the blog!

 

 

An informative and somewhat reasuring article, though I still consider it's something morally wrong with selling a broken product and let the costumers pay for the repairs if this is not an explicit and clear condition in the terms of sale. Even more odd is the fact that so many find this practise unproblematic and with a shrug of their sholders say that this is how the industry works and there beeing no reason to be critical of the state of affairs. But keeping to the content of the article, informative and perhaps even a bit educational on how the repair work is progressing.

[hategambit]

i have submitted several bug reports with details on how to reproduce the bug. i have been doing bug/beta testing for games and professionally for years, and i am extremely disappointed with your customer service team.

 

i select the option "bug report" and file my bug report, and then i get some generic canned response from the customer service rep to 'type /stuck to unstuck yourself". well isnt that great, seeing as how in the text of my bug report i said that /stuck did not fix it. so i get the canned response and then they close the ticket without giving me any ability to reply and say, "hey guess what it says in my bug report that didnt work!"

 

then i submit another bug report for another issue and i get a response from customer service saying that they were the person to help me in game and therefore my issue was solved and closed the ticket. guess what???? no one helped me out, and obviously this customer service rep did not take the time to read my bug report because i was reporting a bug not asking for help. i know how to fix the problem, i just exit the warzone (this bug report dealt with the frequent instances of falling into space on voidstar and then respawning in space - oh and guess what? /stuck doesnt work - do you even know about this bug? cause if you rely on your customer service reps you certainly would not).

 

what i find most upsetting about this whole situation is that i applied for the customer service job and i know for a fact i would be doing a 1000% better job than the people who respond to my bug reports without even reading them and then closing them right away.

 

i would really like to report these bugs but how am i supposed to when i speak to a wall at customer service that has a sign saying "TYPE /STUCK IT FIXES EVERYTHING"?

 

 

well... i actually got decent responses to the 2 newest bug reports i filed.

 

they actually acknowledged the issue i was reporting, and stated whether or not it was being worked on and said they would forward to relevant department.

 

so i dunno if i just got a better employee or if bioware is trying to up their standards across the board. in any case, i was satisfied with the response to my latest bug reports. i hope it continues.

[Artkil-E-]

who cares about content fix what you have.. that will be better start.. your new content team just puts more new bugs into the game..

 

also if you post that something fixed make sure it is..

 

PVP: WZ not counting fixed - NOT!!