Developer Blog: Busting Bugs and Fixing Exploits

[WuphonsReach]

Wow i havnt seen whining like this since my eve online days.

 

Funny thing is that CCP (developers of EvE Online) have done a bang up job the last 6 months.

 

Of course, the player base there had to force them up against the wall by cancelling about 20% of accounts (about 1/5 of all CCP employees were laid off). Which has done wonders for focusing CCP's attentions back on core game play and getting bugs (new and old) squashed within a few weeks rather then taking a year or two.

 

I suspect EA/Bioware will not learn that lesson either until the layoffs hit.

[AjStylZ]

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.

 

correct. 6-3. and i refuse to go back to WoW, after they said their new instalment is kung fu panda's

[Cibetka]

I am not so much concerned about exploits or lack of balance etc. We had that in other MMOs too and it didnt prevent us from playing and enjoying them for years. I can even forgive engine problems, we can reduce some graphic settings etc.

 

What shocked me and made me sad and depressed after a while is the amount of plain bugs and flaws.

Example: Few days ago we spent 5 hours in False Emperor HM due to amount of bugs.

- 1 guy had client crush and after that every time we wipe we all had to abandon q and leader had to share it again so we can enter, or instance would reset.

- Mobs pushed off the edges came back under floors hitting us and not being targetable.

- pushing some mobs caused whole wave to respawn in addition to the surviving mobs from that pack creating double packs that wipe us.

- The space ship on first boss after 1 wipe moved to platform where we fight boss and covered consoles so we couldnt click them

- some mobs evaded also causing double spawn of packs

- bonus boss went crazy and 1 shots people even 50 yard range from him without casting or using any visible ability. We still didnt kill him although we now clean rest of instance easily, cause of this.

- a guy got knocked off the edge on last boss and couldnt enter instance again, nor loot, nor did he get commendation although we killed boss with 3 ppl.

-my healer couldnt heal me cause I am 'not' visible, although I stand 5 yards from him without any object or obstacle between us, in plain sight of healer.

 

List goes on and on... and thats just 1 FP! This is not metter of balance or exploit, these are bugs.. ridiculous, extremely anoying bugs that kill your desire to play (I already stopped pvp cause of all the pvp bugs). And this is not new instance, it came with realese, and thus it should have been thoroughly TESTED and such bugs discovered and fixed BEFORE release. Endgame in swtor sometimes looks like a damn alpha, not a release.

 

I LOVE Bioware and DA and ME made my life happier, but now.. I am angry and disappointed. You must NOT let this game fail and people leave cause of this. Start FIXING things.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Cibetka

[SWTOR-GR]

Richard Vogel,

 

The guy who destroyed SWG?

 

is this confirmed ?

[RyomaNagare]

Okay I don't know if it's a bug or not but still.

 

I've been doing Prefix Reverse Engineering. Artifce. A Focus for my Sorcerer.

 

I got the item up to Prefix Tier 1. And after several more hours of farming up to Prefix Tier 2 but not the result that I wanted (got Tempest instead of Endowement).

 

NOW...

 

I've been farming mats like crazy again. Created several of the Prefix 1 items. And started Reverse Engineering.

 

When after several attempts that left me depleted I got a message on the screen telling me:

 

"You already know this schematic"

 

In red letters.

 

I've been wasting hours of my life getting those mats. Making those items.

 

And by sheer bad luck I got the same Prefix Tier 2 schematic AGAIN? I don't know if it's possible but couldn't you guys (the programmers) remove the Prefixes that I already have from the list that is randomly chosen by the Reverse Engineering? So that I don't waste even more time and mats and randomly getting schematics I already know for all that work? You know. So that I don't farm for days only to get Tempest after Tempest after Tempest?

[Newsinz]

Hm ... what this text is about ? sigh ...

 

We dont care about new content, fix your game ...

 

Pretty obvious you bother to read the blog post.

[Newsinz]

I really dislike some of SWTOR's community. They could say they fixed EVERYTHING and you would STILL say the game is broken. Honestly, if you dislike a game so much and all you do is use the forums to vent your hate about it, you should really not play. Not only is it not worth it if you are not enjoying the game but it truly is unhealthy for you.

 

I cant tell you how many personality disorders and social disorders I have run across in this game.

[Esaru]

I really dislike some of SWTOR's community. They could say they fixed EVERYTHING and you would STILL say the game is broken. Honestly, if you dislike a game so much and all you do is use the forums to vent your hate about it, you should really not play. Not only is it not worth it if you are not enjoying the game but it truly is unhealthy for you.

 

I cant tell you how many personality disorders and social disorders I have run across in this game.

 

Honestly if you dislike the community so much and all you do on the forums is vent your hate about it, you really shouldn't be talking with the community on the forums. Not only is it not worth it, but it is truly unhealthy for you!!

 

:rolleyes:

 

Talk about personality disorders.

[RagnarokJT]

Perhaps with all these bugs, in a month or two I can get on without the crashing, but damn, I will be wasteing my Game time of 80 days because I can't get on.... please Bioware let me know if you got an asnwer to why my game app crashes after the loading screen when you first start the game after I log in on the launcher! I've been looking forward to this game for months now, I really do not want to go back to WoW because it works because I'm more the Star Wars person!!

[Spangles]

I'm still getting some problems in combat, but fairly minor and rare now. It seems to be related to the end point of movement slowing cc...maybe. Playability is 95% improved since the serverside fix.

 

It's a shame people start raging off topic about "community", but it's a forum....

 

Really the reason we folks are such haters is because this appears to be a massive phallic symbol of all that is rotten and broken about capitalism. If it is true the devs simply bought a single player game engine and messed about with it, instead of creating a working one, then it is hardly surprising it doesn't work.

 

What is criminal is that the game can be shipped and we pay hard earned (in some cases) money to buy the game AND subscribe. I was not given the thing I payed for, and did not get the service I continue to pay for.

 

Furthermore, while I have few problems, I have a buddy who since the recent updates has the dc problem. Sometimes every hour, sometimes just 5-10 mins he dc, freeze up, takes 10 mins to get relogged - the enjoyment and immersion is gone. We are leveling together so my game is equally affected.

 

Meanwhile the devs, the team, the corporate fatties all laugh their way to the bank because "OOPS" we accidently voted with our wallet to be ripped off again. They thought "all they care about is lightsabers" and we collectively said "ooh lightsabers!".

 

This problem is endemic in capitalism though. Uncomfortable chairs.. that break; teapots that don't pour straight; handles that fall off because they are just not strong enough. Humanity has evolved for millions of years and technology has perfected many things, so why do we keep being handed out third rate cons?

 

These forums are where we can air our views and take stock, they are the only bastions of true democracy left on this god forsaken planet.

Edited February 4, 2012 by Spangles

[babayako]

Here's the thing about any claim involving how WoW started out: it's pointless! SWTOR isn't able to pad excuses based on how WoW STARTED because they're in competition against what it IS.

 

As for Bioware... I implore you, stop treating your customers like they're a bunch of idiots. Stop trying to argue that the major graphical issues are our fault. Stop trying to flat out lie about fixing things, leaving them broken afterwards. I love Bioware, but the way that you've handled SWTOR has really strained my trust to the breaking point.

 

But they are our fault. I was having issues with FPS, and did some magic things with the pc and my fps increased from a regular 30ish to 70-80 ish. Sucks to be your PC then I guess.

[Devoter]

If an exploit is discovered that threatens players’ experience in the game or the in-game economy, we will usually try to create an Emergency Patch to fix that exploit. Before we declare something an emergency though, we have to validate the issue with our internal Quality Assurance, or QA team.

 

 

Really? Look at D7 third boss. It happend two times this day, that ppl dont want me as a BH with them. All because of the bug that there will spawn adds every 2 seconds when a BH/trooper is scanned and the clone is in the chamber too long.

Created a bug report over a week ago and here you read it in the forum very often. But i don't eve read something in the 1.1.2 patch notes about it...

Edited February 5, 2012 by Devoter

[Strayjack]

Will we see nerfing first before fixing the bugs? If so, can you post the end date of beta testing? Thanks.

[Tiaa]

Wow.

 

What a long post, mostly just dragging on simple things like :

 

"Fixing bugs is not as easy as it may seem!"

 

"We are watching for exploits!"

 

This was a bunch of drivel, purposely made long to confuse people because you know the average person won't read it.

 

I sure don't need "pep talks" or excuses as to why the game is in this state every hour just so we know every staff members name. This doesn't show me you [bioware] care, it shows everyone just wants their turn to post useless crap which always start the same way:

 

"OMG THIS GAME WAS A HUGE SUCCESS...HERE'S WHY THERE ARE A TON OF PROBLEMS THOUGH!"

 

QA team obviously is clueless as well since you still managed to release Ilum 1.1, knowing FULL well the server population balance would make it any issue. People posted about how bad it would be constantly, and well, LOOK at what happened. Valor system was a mistake and failed system to begin with but that's another discussion.

 

What makes something an exploit? Users taking advantage of broken systems your developers created? And you don't correct the exploits like Ilum. You just brush it under the rug and pretend it never happened.

 

And it's not the players fault, it's your TEAMs fault for not properly testing content before they release it. You can't expect the player to do what is right because most of the people that play MMOS are FOTMers, Exploiters and people who will take the easy road out.

 

Your staff seems very out of touch with the MMO genre and the player base of the MMO genre. And these blog post post-release just cater to the gullible people looking for comfort and a chance to say "OMG THEY CARE!".

Edited February 6, 2012 by Tiaa

[StaticRupture]

Our level of involvement is crucial to this game because WE are the community who plays. That being said, its not always the most desireable method of spending time, we have to continue the positive feedback and educated commentary. Reading before posting, caring about the game, and feeding our individual passion for keeping this MMO full of great ideas and content is our task if we choose to partake. Problem is we keep getting majority of trolls, whiners, and overall impatient jerks on the forums and not enough positive people trying to make the game better. Idiocy is contageous, and like most who wont read this entire post before commenting... stupidity is a disease carried by ignorance. The man clearly explains the process on how they are going to fix this game, however we keep getting posts about "unsubscribing if Bioware doesnt fix _______ (insert already responded issue that wasnt read by the raging idiot)". I'm not the usual poster to blogs and forums kind of guy. Ive played other MMO's for years without posting, but this game is soooo much fun and sooo awesome that I refuse to allow idiots ruin it with their individual incompetance and lack of aptitude for gameplay. Here's my point, quality posts please! Know what youre talking about before you post please! Be more involved with posting Please! Dont allow the whining gaggle of drooling rakguls rule the forums with nonsense and hamper the game development PLEASE!

[Mythikul]

...the game developers are already hampered. this game was in the works for what...over 4 years? if they couldn't get it right in 4+ years and $150+ mil, they aren't going to get it right at all.

[The_Red_Guard]

Wow.

 

What a long post, mostly just dragging on simple things like :

 

"Fixing bugs is not as easy as it may seem!"

 

"We are watching for exploits!"

 

This was a bunch of drivel, purposely made long to confuse people because you know the average person won't read it.

 

I sure don't need "pep talks" or excuses as to why the game is in this state every hour just so we know every staff members name. This doesn't show me you [bioware] care, it shows everyone just wants their turn to post useless crap which always start the same way:

 

"OMG THIS GAME WAS A HUGE SUCCESS...HERE'S WHY THERE ARE A TON OF PROBLEMS THOUGH!"

 

QA team obviously is clueless as well since you still managed to release Ilum 1.1, knowing FULL well the server population balance would make it any issue. People posted about how bad it would be constantly, and well, LOOK at what happened. Valor system was a mistake and failed system to begin with but that's another discussion.

 

What makes something an exploit? Users taking advantage of broken systems your developers created? And you don't correct the exploits like Ilum. You just brush it under the rug and pretend it never happened.

 

And it's not the players fault, it's your TEAMs fault for not properly testing content before they release it. You can't expect the player to do what is right because most of the people that play MMOS are FOTMers, Exploiters and people who will take the easy road out.

 

Your staff seems very out of touch with the MMO genre and the player base of the MMO genre. And these blog post post-release just cater to the gullible people looking for comfort and a chance to say "OMG THEY CARE!".

 

Why do you feel the need to troll around the best Star Wars MMORPG to date...

 

The game has so many amazing features. It far outweights any issues the game might have. Surely some things might be unbalanced and little glitches here and there. But if you truly are a Star Wars fan , you wouldn't even consider complaining about this.

[Pianistastic]

Thumbs up to all of you involved in the development, upkeep, and expansion of the game. We really appreciate all of the work that you do.

 

 

 

-Piano-

-The Deadweight-

[onesul]

Guys, don`t stress your self, the result will be able to see, next year! :-) Suck`s... really sucks, the jobe they are doing here.... :| They are lossing customers, and they will see it after 2 - 3 months... how much money they will lose. And then they will start doing something for us

[Tiaa]

Why do you feel the need to troll around the best Star Wars MMORPG to date...

 

The game has so many amazing features. It far outweights any issues the game might have. Surely some things might be unbalanced and little glitches here and there. But if you truly are a Star Wars fan , you wouldn't even consider complaining about this.

 

Is "troll" the only word you people know as a retort?

 

There is a reason most parents give their children dictionaries.

 

So you can EXPAND your vocabulary.

 

If I am truly a Star Wars fan, I probably wouldn't even be playing this game.

 

Because it does nothing for the original Star Wars series some of us grew up with. This game doesn't "feel" like Star Wars other than the name and use of lightsabers. My character appears to be more of a demi-god than an actual person if I were to judge by the story.

 

...Unless you are insinuating that if you are a Star Wars fan, you will pick up all junk and faulty merchandise. In which case you will love it no matter what?

 

Even if it's a Jar Jar Binks doll spitting razor blades out his mouth.

 

As far as the OP post is concerned, if any of you actually READ it, you would know it is nothing more beyond claptrap. Regurgitating words and subjects in a long wall o' text that in the end still says nothing.

 

I play this game and I pay for this game.

 

I don't really care if you don't like what I have to say.

 

I'm not here to impress you.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Tiaa

[Jan_Pobili]

Well I understand that they have a ton of bugs to go though daily and that some might be lost. But it seems like these game breaking bugs they talk about fixing right away... Well they do not get fixed right away like mentioned. The Sith Inquisitor class quest right before tationee well that is bugged for me really bad. I have been there for 4 days now with three tickets and still no response from anybody. Well I understand there is alot to do but this is a game breaking bug that should have already been fixed since it dates back to December 24th... To be honest, yes I am upset that MY fixes haven't been done. But yet I understand there is another million players that have bugs as well. So I guess what im trying to say is just try to be patient. If you are one of the ones saying BW has horrible CS then leave the game. None of us want to hear you whine in EVERY single post about it. Try to be constructive. Also if your boss ordered you to make a presentation for a HUGE meeting and it had to be done within a week. Lets say you did not finish it or it was not as polished as you would like but the meeting can not be moved... Well you would still present it I am sure since you want to keep you job. They have done the SAME EXACT thing. They had pressure to realize so they did. Oh well its not perfect and there is some bugs get over it and play though it. I can honestly say my computer is HORRIBLE with SWTOR. I only have a 1ghz proccesor but yet i still fight though 5 to 10 FPS all the time because i honestly love this game. Tell everybody I can to give it a shot as long as they don't mind a bug here and there. And one thing that is really stupid. People getting upset that there is not enough chairs? CHAIRS? For gods sake get real. There is alot more important things than chairs out there for them to worry about. Sorry for the rant but I am a forum reader and go over a ton of forum threads every day out of the customer service area so just sick of all this complaining. Well i guess I will end my rant here. Until next time! May the Force be with you!

[Rasticles]

These guys couldn't bust their way out of a wet diaper......much less bugs.....

[psunseri]

I have 350 tionese crystals and 20 columi badges, the tionese gear is garbage compared to my moded gear. Directive seven boss Interrogator, FIX this fight. All hard made glitches should be fixed asap as level 50's have nothing to do but these and operations.

[JDTIII]

So far i have had a very good experiance with this game and find it very enjoyable.

 

Having played many mmogs from startup this game has not been that bad.

 

People need to understand a few things about mmo's and servers, servers often are odd acting at start up and require burn in time to stablize, no mmo ever starts up without problems no matter how well they did in beta, and when they say that they are working on the problems 24-7 they do not mean that the same people are working around the clock on the same problem but that they have different teams working on different problems in shifts that equal 24-7.

 

24-7 could be day shift, swing shift, and night shift with a weekend shift just colecting data to pass on to the other shifts.

 

For the WOW people out there i have played from start to about a year ago and my experiance has been this: start was a horrid bug fest and every patch broke something else it took some time to finaly get things strightend out and as soon as they did they did a content patch and boom it started all over again. 7 years later not much has changed every patch brings new problems that take time to iron out and every content change brings a month or 2 of bugs and fixes. Even the mighty Blizzard is not as good at getting it right as some would have you believe.

 

Every one just sit back and enjoy what you can, if you are patient for a while things will get better, if you flame the game and leave so be it but if every one just leaves and never gives them the chance then you doom the game to become just another of the many mmo failures.

I for one plan to stay and see where this ride takes me.

 

For those of you who wish to flame me for what i have posted have fun, I will not be back to this thread as i have seen what i wanted to see, said what i wanted to say, and have no reason to return to this thread unless something new is posted by the devs that leads me back here.

[HirraetH]

I didn't know where to post this, buuuuut, ALOT of the questlines ahve a hard time with the weapon being unsheated (atleast in the movies) and makes a VERY poor integretion with your questline. + there is a quest where you meat up with your undercover allies and there is a bird with octypyss (hair) that can't stop bugging out during the movie and it's really irritating