Developer Blog: Busting Bugs and Fixing Exploits

[Aloro]

The community is rather frustrated about having been repeatedly lied to and treated like a bunch of idiots. =/

 

You don't speak for the community.

[Galendril]

well, i already knew these kinds of things, but maybe this article will shut SOME people up, lol

 

keep up the good work BW.

[Tyrven]

I hope the afk warzone players show up on the exploit list very soon.

[Darkdrone]

I think they are doing a great job! We just need to chill a little we live in such an impatient world! They have done well you can tell these guys have brains its a MMO its a ever-changing game its not a game you buy once and that is what you get this game will always have something new and something that needs to be done to it simple fact common sense!

[Darkdrone]

well, i already knew these kinds of things, but maybe this article will shut SOME people up, lol

 

keep up the good work BW.

 

 

 

totally agree with you some people are just un-smart and dont really understand what it takes to handle a MMO

[Solemnone]

All of that text, and Docs "crazy talk" companion quest is still bugged, BH end game, still bugged, AH still a mess, orbital station doors still cause memory dump/ crash... The list goes on and on.

[Dosris]

No one is ever happy with what they get.... *sigh*

 

Haters gonna Hate AMIRITE? Thats all they ever gonna do because thats all they can do.

 

No, people don't bother to read anymore. They just see a thread by the devs and crap all over it.

 

Also +9001

 

I think it's great that they are fixing the bugs. And despite what every single needlessly-hateful person on these forums has to say, they ARE fixing them. They just dont like not having something to hate about.

 

Keep up the good work Bioware and dont listen to the Peanut Gallery. The people who actually matter know your doing what your suppose to be.

[Celticprince]

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!

 

that blog is all fine and dandy, but if that was all true *** has nothing been done about the following? Why has there been no feed back from the team letting us know there is a fix incoming or at least that they are aware and working on it before now, or atleast some sort of bone to alleviate our concerns?

 

instant crafting exploit

http://www.elitepvpers.com/forum/swtor-hacks-bots-cheats-exploits/1655338-instant-craft-anything.html

 

Speed hack (instant score in huttball)

http://www.elitepvpers.com/forum/swtor-hacks-bots-cheats-exploits/1678913-spot-utilize-speed-hack.html

 

Infinite energy, rage, force, or heat hack

 

http://www.elitepvpers.com/forum/swtor-hacks-bots-cheats-exploits/1606065-swtor-speedhack-infinite-energy-hack.html

Edited February 1, 2012 by Celticprince

[Ryat]

The warzone issue was fixed for me. No game breaking bugs. Few minor bugs (graphics, odd items, some issues with cool downs). More content coming. Fun stories. And comedy relief from all the griefer/whiners.

All in all not bad BW.

[Xumagai]

How about fixing all the bugs before you release a game?

 

I would love to see Ford release a new car with no windshield wipers or break lights that only come on some of the time.

 

Sorry BioWare but you guys are a bunch of scrubs.

 

Have you ever been a part of an MMO launch before this? I was a part of wows launch (for one) and it was much worse than this after 6 weeks, we couldn't even get on the game for all of the ques and paladins just killed everything (not like now, like.... really really bad) we all thought blizz played ally, nowadays everyone thinks they favor horde. Now, that game is a well greased machine. This game will be what it is depending on how much this community loves it and subscribes to it. Maybe we have a few bugs that are really holding people back, I really wouldn't know. My frames are great, my vcard doesn't get very hot and my latencies almost never go over 99ms and this is a NEW MMO. I do get occasional ability delay on long c/ds which sucks and I hate the warzone quests but if that's all the bugs this game has to throw at me then fine.

 

I dealt with pals as horde at wow launch who could solo small groups of people ('course only allies had them then), before that I dealt with that nasty rubberbanding in swg that would send you kilometers back in the other direction not to mention classes that just never got fixed. In the original EQ I would sometimes get on a boat to zone and the server would lag to where I had to swim across the ocean bc the boat would just kind of leave me behind, no joke lol it was one way to get your "swimming" skill up! These bugs we have are kind of mild (or I'm simply not having them) and progress is being made. My only story for this game will be that I had to do more pvp/dungeons than necessary for several weeks and I had to spam the holy moly out of things at times to get them to pop. I can live with that. Trust me, a year from now we are going to look back and say "remember when the empire owned ilum with an iron fist and i had to press my saber ward a thousand times before it would pop? that was gnarly... glad they fixed all of that stuff!" or you can choose to not support the game and go back to something more polished, but the thing that will going to help this game is your SUPPORT and your SUBSCRIPTION. Without those things we won't make much of an MMO. This issue breaks every MMO that comes out bc people are impatient and rage quit which dampens development on the game.

 

For those who do have serious unexplained issues... Idk what to say I've heard some nasty stuff about crashes and dcs for no reason and I feel your pain as an online gamer. But- my client has never once crashed, i've been sent to character select a few times but that's it. Don't tell me it's irreparably imbalanced bc I have seen some build of literally every class do extremely well in the right hands, empire or republic.

[DarthChamberlin]

yay and excuse for there laziness raises flag ya right

[Triandkilmi]

Do the Devs farm Valor with each other via fight clubbing & /stuck?

 

Just curious.

 

 

 

No, but we have screen shots of yours and another guild (FIGHT and FOAD from THE FATMAN server) doing that.

 

 

Also, the main post was meh. Thats nice he explains how they do things but obviously they let people get away with anything in this game. I mean no valor rollbacks, no punishing for "Fight Clubs", no good pvp balances, Resolve bar being a complete waste, etc, etc..

 

BW makes me sad right now

Edited February 1, 2012 by Triandkilmi

[DarthRavnos]

Every single one of us on the development team plays the game, and we see the same issues you do and where we need to expand.

 

• Is the development team fully aware and seeing for themselves the performance issues that a majority (yes, I say majority even though some would like to call this group the minority) of the community is experiencing?
  

 

A guide to performance increases was practically hand delivered to the Community Support staff through the hard work of the community attempting to resolve this issue themselves. After eager anticipation there was a major let down when this refurbished guide was handed to the community the other day. Based on what you say here...

 

Our most important goal is remove as many annoying bugs as fast as we can;

 

...I would like to know:

 

• Is the performance guide the last real response we can expect from the development staff regarding the performance issues players are having? In other words is "It is your PC" the company's stance?
  
• If that performance guide is only a part of your overall solution, when can we expect tangent results for performance increases? (the next two questions tie to this)
  
• Are you actively optimizing your game engine to accommodate some of the "trouble areas" such as Ilum, Warzones, and Fleet?
  
• Are you actively working with driver manufacturers to help resolve these issues overall?
  

 

Please remember, if we don’t respond publicly to a bug that does not mean we are not going to fix it. We want to make sure we provide a good playing experience to our players.

 

Some comments of the Customer Service staff imply otherwise. Specifically your Game Director informing people in the media that "most of our players aren't really having performance concerns". Statements like this give the impression that you are placing low priority on items that your gaming community sees as a high priority.

 

It is a bit disheartening to see responses like this when it simply isn't true.

 

My concern as a 6-month subscriber is that there won't be anyone to play with in 6 months. Server populations are already starting to drop. And this is two-fold:

 

1. Your PR team is doing a horrible job getting information back to the customer. And I seriously recommend you reconsider your "over seas" support staff. They make you look very bad when they auto-close tickets, talk in half sentences, and don't provide meaningful help to your customers.
   
2. You're not addressing the big bugs and only working on the small. Start knocking some of the heavy items out and you will see a much happier community. In otherwords, the group handling your prioritization isn't doing a very good job.
   

 

My 2 credits worth.

[Karnyvor]

Bug fixes are neat. However, there are so many "working as intended" borked mechanics in this game which make it broken, that even the working as intended stuff is not.

 

Further, the game is a month old... and you are working on new content, when a large number of your player base is dealing with bugs?

 

Wanna triage something? How about your horribad customer service? I mean srsly... live customer support? You mean the guys who hang up the phone on tech support callers after leaving them on hold for 2+ hours? Or the guys who go through the ingame tickets and mis-categorize them then close them unresolved... See if this is the customer service team you are working with, I would fire all of them, because you are NOT getting the full picture of your situation if all you are going on is their input.

 

Game imbalances are not always bug fixes... sometimes they are poor design.

 

Your insight into how bug fixes get resolved in over generalized terms, while entertaining, does nothing to actually fix them. So rather than pontificating about how you are fixing them, maybe you and your team should actually do it, instead of talk about it.

[Dexxius]

It's like they think we are all five year old children....lol *** we are not retarded BW Thanks for the post that we need to read when the game came out and Are still beta testing for you with you unfinished game that looks like something we should have seen in 2005 GG guys.

[Candyflipz]

How about adding target of target for the love of Pete!? I'd love you forever.

[Karnyvor]

Have you ever been a part of an MMO launch before this? I was a part of wows launch (for one) and it was much worse than this after 6 weeks, we couldn't even get on the game for all of the ques and paladins just killed everything (not like now, like.... really really bad) we all thought blizz played ally, nowadays everyone thinks they favor horde. Now, that game is a well greased machine. This game will be what it is depending on how much this community loves it and subscribes to it. Maybe we have a few bugs that are really holding people back, I really wouldn't know. My frames are great, my vcard doesn't get very hot and my latencies almost never go over 99ms and this is a NEW MMO. I do get occasional ability delay on long c/ds which sucks and I hate the warzone quests but if that's all the bugs this game has to throw at me then fine.

 

I dealt with pals as horde at wow launch who could solo small groups of people ('course only allies had them then), before that I dealt with that nasty rubberbanding in swg that would send you kilometers back in the other direction not to mention classes that just never got fixed. In the original EQ I would sometimes get on a boat to zone and the server would lag to where I had to swim across the ocean bc the boat would just kind of leave me behind, no joke lol it was one way to get your "swimming" skill up! These bugs we have are kind of mild (or I'm simply not having them) and progress is being made. My only story for this game will be that I had to do more pvp/dungeons than necessary for several weeks and I had to spam the holy moly out of things at times to get them to pop. I can live with that. Trust me, a year from now we are going to look back and say "remember when the empire owned ilum with an iron fist and i had to press my saber ward a thousand times before it would pop? that was gnarly... glad they fixed all of that stuff!" or you can choose to not support the game and go back to something more polished, but the thing that will going to help this game is your SUPPORT and your SUBSCRIPTION. Without those things we won't make much of an MMO. This issue breaks every MMO that comes out bc people are impatient and rage quit which dampens development on the game.

 

For those who do have serious unexplained issues... Idk what to say I've heard some nasty stuff about crashes and dcs for no reason and I feel your pain as an online gamer. But- my client has never once crashed, i've been sent to character select a few times but that's it. Don't tell me it's irreparably imbalanced bc I have seen some build of literally every class do extremely well in the right hands, empire or republic.

 

This is a poor excuse and pathetic to compare this to Wow's launch... and I was there too.

 

First of all, during the beta the devs ignored the issues that are currently being raised... During builds during the beta, the devs DELETED the forums, so that new beta testers did not know what was already reported. Secondly, the technology that exists today, which is considered mainstream, was bleeding edge and untested during the WOW launch. comparing a new care to a 8 year old car, when the car companies had years to learn from their competitors mistakes, is a straw man argument... at best.

 

The devs knew about these issues and responded with a egotistical, "I got this" line dismissing all those who were geniunely concerned about this. People care about this game, we all want it to succeed, that is why so many are venting on the forums... its because they care.

[Karnyvor]

How about adding target of target for the love of Pete!? I'd love you forever.

 

That will come out in year 2.

[Nightsong]

- want to compare SWTOR to World of Warcraft's community communication ? Didn't think so, because we both know who wins on that department.

 

Yeah, Bioware wins. I played Wow until shortly after Cata, and when you have devs insulting their customer base on the forums, or used their patented "working as intended" I don't call that effective communication.

 

The devs here actually use sentences, and if your threads are getting locks, then you either need to use the search function or stop being inflammatory.

[Dosris]

This is a poor excuse and pathetic to compare this to Wow's launch... and I was there too.

 

First of all, during the beta the devs ignored the issues that are currently being raised... During builds during the beta, the devs DELETED the forums, so that new beta testers did not know what was already reported. Secondly, the technology that exists today, which is considered mainstream, was bleeding edge and untested during the WOW launch. comparing a new care to a 8 year old car, when the car companies had years to learn from their competitors mistakes, is a straw man argument... at best.

 

The devs knew about these issues and responded with a egotistical, "I got this" line dismissing all those who were geniunely concerned about this. People care about this game, we all want it to succeed, that is why so many are venting on the forums... its because they care.

 

It would seem like they care if they instead posted CONSTRUCTIVE posts instead of just flaming every single thing the Dev's fix/post/do in a wave of insults and crappy grammar.

 

Yea the game has problems, we know that, but the haters are acting like it's the complete and total end of the world. And yes, compared to past MMO's, this one's launch has been exceptionally smooth in comparison. So, yes, they did at least learn SOMETHING from past MMO experiences, which even that is more then the Hater's would give them credit for.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Dosris

[Karnyvor]

Yeah, Bioware wins. I played Wow until shortly after Cata, and when you have devs insulting their customer base on the forums, or used their patented "working as intended" I don't call that effective communication.

 

The devs here actually use sentences, and if your threads are getting locks, then you either need to use the search function or stop being inflammatory.

 

Well I don't know about after cata came out, but prior to that, every interaction I had with WOW customer support was both friendly and professional. Further, if they escalated my ticket, they did not close it. It was geniunely escalated and followed up on. Once that happened, they would contact me with the resolution.

 

With regard to the forums... there aren't even designated community representatives that interact with the community... they dont even have server forums.

[Karnyvor]

It would seem like they care if they instead posted CONSTRUCTIVE posts instead of just flaming every single thing the Dev's fix/post/do in a wave of insults and crappy grammar.

 

Yea the game has problems, we know that, but the haters are acting like it's the complete and total end of the world. And yes, compared to past MMO's, this one's launch has been exceptionally smooth in comparison. So, yes, they did at least learn SOMETHING from past MMO experiences, which even that is more then the Hater's would give them credit for.

 

valid criticism is not flaming, contrary to your attempts to make it such. Pointing out how horrible the customer service is in this game is truth, not an insult. About the grammar... srsly? This is the interwebz, da home of de craptastic grammir. Git over EET

 

Further, it is clear you missed the point. The point was not that people are upset that the game has issues. They are upset that the game has issues and Bioware was aware of them early on in the Beta and chose to ignore them. Further, they even censored forum posts that brought these issues to the table. Again, to underscore, many issues that are happening now, were brought to the devs attention during the beta and the devs chose not to address them.

 

Regarding the perceived hate... there is none, you missed the part of my post where I state clearly that I and others want this game to succeed.

 

I know its easy to call those you disagree with haters and flamers, but bringing valid issues to the table, even if they are uncomfortable to talk about in a meaningful way, is neither flaming or hating.

[Xumagai]

This is a poor excuse and pathetic to compare this to Wow's launch... and I was there too.

 

First of all, during the beta the devs ignored the issues that are currently being raised... During builds during the beta, the devs DELETED the forums, so that new beta testers did not know what was already reported. Secondly, the technology that exists today, which is considered mainstream, was bleeding edge and untested during the WOW launch. comparing a new care to a 8 year old car, when the car companies had years to learn from their competitors mistakes, is a straw man argument... at best.

 

The devs knew about these issues and responded with a egotistical, "I got this" line dismissing all those who were geniunely concerned about this. People care about this game, we all want it to succeed, that is why so many are venting on the forums... its because they care.

 

I'm pathetic and a straw man, that's cute and all. Every mmo I have ever played has had issues at launch. Whether it was ten years ago or last year or this one. I didn't know about forum deletion that's pretty effed up. I don't understand how you compare a product like a car to something that costs 60 initially and $15 a month but some people have weird views on economics. What is it that is concerning all of these people? I'm only experiencing the little annoying things that really don't make much of a difference to my play so I'm happy. I'm a happy strawman and you sir, are a namecaller.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Xumagai

[Kaheal]

So now i cant even log in the game since the patch ... will they fix this cant even make a in game ticket

 

the graphic are a mess they flicker from the load screen to the character loging screen

[Dosris]

valid criticism is not flaming, contrary to your attempts to make it such. Pointing out how horrible the customer service is in this game is truth, not an insult. About the grammar... srsly? This is the interwebz, da home of de craptastic grammir. Git over EET

 

Further, it is clear you missed the point. The point was not that people are upset that the game has issues. They are upset that the game has issues and Bioware was aware of them early on in the Beta and chose to ignore them. Further, they even censored forum posts that brought these issues to the table. Again, to underscore, many issues that are happening now, were brought to the devs attention during the beta and the devs chose not to address them.

 

Regarding the perceived hate... there is none, you missed the part of my post where I state clearly that I and others want this game to succeed.

 

I know its easy to call those you disagree with haters and flamers, but bringing valid issues to the table, even if they are uncomfortable to talk about in a meaningful way, is neither flaming or hating.

 

No I wasn't calling you a hater actually, that was aimed at the actual ones. I guess I didn't word that well enough.

 

I'm not saying I am bashing every single person that doesn't agree with me. A lot of the people I've seen pointing out problems may be passionate but they at least make Valid arguments and reasons as to why they believe what they do and such and such, like you.

 

I was talking about the people who do NOT provide any kind of constructive criticism. Or anything constructive at all. The people who simply post just to bash the Dev's or the people who dont bash along with them. THOSE are the people I cant stand. The ones who know only the bad parts of life and the only time they will ever praise something is if it is to spite another thing they hate more.