Conspiracy Theories

[StrixHiraeth]

Concerning the recent GSF bugs, beginning with when we saw a stealth nerf to EMP missiles/field and several tooltips were broken... What do you all think happened?

 

My own theory is that GSF was developed, programmed, tested, and rolled out by the awesomest person on BioWare's payroll. This person is a super-hacker, crack programmer... a real computer-science genius. Also, extremely good looking. This person is currently working on some other super-sweet project and is unreachable because she (yes, she) can only be immersed in one masterwork at a time to the exclusion of all else.

 

BUT she never told her secrets to anyone... so once things broke, no one at the company possessed the eldritch, arcane knowledge necessary to repair GSF. The secrets have been lost...

 

Thanks for the information!

 

We will have someone look into this.

 

-Tait

 

See? They are at such a loss as to not even have a candidate to decipher the mind-boggling craftsmanship that went into GSF.

 

But what do you all think?

Edited December 3, 2014 by Ymris

[Verain]

I think that they have a bunch of pretty game breaking bugs in the ground game too, but the GSF ones are very shocking. For the ground game to be this broken, whole talent groups would have to not function for classes.

 

So I hope a lot of them will be staying up pretty late!

[Nemarus]

When it was just DF broken, I thought it might have been another half-baked changelist that got into the wrong branch and slipped out too early, without tooltips being updated to match reality.

 

And there's a slim chance that's still want happened--that we are living in some half-baked version of what GSF will be after the "balance pass" that was mentioned months ago in a stream.

 

But given that it seems like most tree upgrades simply don't work, I suspect what happened is that there was some common code, originally used for ground-game skill trees, and that a portion of that code was reused for GSF, and that when that code was thrown out or rejiggered for Disciplines, the GSF cousin got messed up.

 

I'm curious--do we have confirmation that any upgrade effects related to use of an active ability (i.e. not those which just increase passive shield capacity or damage) still work?

 

So far, it seems like pretty much any upgrade related to the active use of an ability or weapon is borked.

 

Actually, has anyone even verified that the passive upgrades work? Once in flight, we have no way to know our real shield health, hull health, speed, energy capacity, or evasion. The only things we have numbers for we can judge is weapon damage and damage reduction.

Edited December 4, 2014 by Nemarus

[Verain]

When it was just DF broken, I thought it might have been another half-baked changelist that got into the wrong branch and slipped out too early, without tooltips being updated to match reality.

 

I knew it wasn't that, because the effect wouldn't become "lol, this talent point does nothing".

 

I did think it was deliberate as a nerf at first, maybe a dev who has a bit of time to do that but can't task the full translation / patch notes team on GSF stuff.

 

And there's a slim chance that's still want happened--that we are living in some half-baked version of what GSF will be after the "balance pass" that was mentioned months ago in a stream.

 

No, definitely not. There's no way that arbitrary talent points and entire component tiers are meant to do literally nothing. This isn't part of a partial commit, this is just a bunch of bugs.

 

No part of this is deliberate. Even the DF change, if deliberate, would be a wild and game balance changing nerf, and we would absolutely expect to read some justification about it.

 

But given that it seems like most tree upgrades simply don't work, I suspect what happened is that there was some common code, originally used for ground-game skill trees, and that a portion of that code was reused for GSF, and that when that code was thrown out or rejiggered for Disciplines, the GSF cousin got messed up.

 

Definitely. This game forgot what talent trees are, and GSF suffers for it.

[MiaowZedong]

So, when do they tell us they pruned old branches from source control and can no longer restore the trees the way they were?

[Asbetos]

So, when do they tell us they pruned old branches from source control and can no longer restore the trees the way they were?

 

Most likely never, just like we've never heard any explanation (or bug acknowledgement) of the EMP nerf or the Sabo probe mess up.

[zaskar]

Actually. The dev lead that ran GSF "retired" last month.

[Altheran]

Most likely never, just like we've never heard any explanation (or bug acknowledgement) of the EMP nerf or the Sabo probe mess up.

So far, the Sabotage bug seemed to be a general bug from what I noticed. I noticed that rooting Master Strikes and Saccage weren't able to stun weak and standard NPC anymore.

I didn't check how it evolved with 3.0, but it seemed that adding a CC on a skill ended overriding the pre-existing one, regardless of whether it was the ground game or GSF.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Altheran

[zaskar]

So far, the Sabotage bug seemed to be a general bug from what I noticed. I noticed that rooting Master Strikes and Saccage weren't able to stun weak and standard NPC anymore.

I didn't check how it evolved with 3.0, but it seemed that adding a CC on a skill ended overriding the pre-existing one, regardless of whether it was the ground game or GSF.

 

We figured out that the T5 upgrade that slowed the ship was broken, choosing it would disable the sabotage part of the probe. To get around it, you choose the regen debuff.

 

These bugs look the same, the upgrades are not work as designed.

 

Yet another example of how there is ZERO SCM on this product. If there is, whoever is in charge of it should be fired. There has been so many cases of changes being reverted, just cause. How many times have they applied the fix that makes the textures not pop in and out? six, eight times?

[Danalon]

When it was just DF broken, I thought it might have been another half-baked changelist that got into the wrong branch and slipped out too early, without tooltips being updated to match reality.

 

And there's a slim chance that's still want happened--that we are living in some half-baked version of what GSF will be after the "balance pass" that was mentioned months ago in a stream.

 

Then let's find out what the "broken" talents do now. If they do something else now, then it might be a intended change.

But I doubt it.

[Verain]

Actually. The dev lead that ran GSF "retired" last month.

 

Wait, what?

 

Who?

[Verain]

Then let's find out what the "broken" talents do now. If they do something else now, then it might be a intended change.

But I doubt it.

 

Are you claiming that the 6-9 talents that got broke on Tuesday actually do something else?

 

The sab probe talent is pretty vintage, but it actually disables the whole move. I think it technically replaces the rest of the debuff with just the meaningless snare.

 

These talents seem to just not do anything at all.

 

 

If these talents were all repurposed DELIBERATELY, entirely quietly, we really have a lot to do for documentation, because if that's true then the in game documentation is pretty much just to trick you. I figured that some changes could be applied like that (to get around the hassle of a commit that invokes the documentation and translaltion teams).

 

 

But goodness. I think we can dismiss this theory of yours pretty quickly, because wouldn't the talents that replaced these actually be pretty noticable in some way? I mean, if missile break was replaced with more evasion, that could be fair and also untestable, but what about all the others? No way.

[tunewalker]

Are you claiming that the 6-9 talents that got broke on Tuesday actually do something else?

 

The sab probe talent is pretty vintage, but it actually disables the whole move. I think it technically replaces the rest of the debuff with just the meaningless snare.

 

These talents seem to just not do anything at all.

 

 

If these talents were all repurposed DELIBERATELY, entirely quietly, we really have a lot to do for documentation, because if that's true then the in game documentation is pretty much just to trick you. I figured that some changes could be applied like that (to get around the hassle of a commit that invokes the documentation and translaltion teams).

 

 

But goodness. I think we can dismiss this theory of yours pretty quickly, because wouldn't the talents that replaced these actually be pretty noticable in some way? I mean, if missile break was replaced with more evasion, that could be fair and also untestable, but what about all the others? No way.

 

Its possible what they mean is they MEANT to add something else, but forgot to do that part.... so they took something away and INTENDED to add something but they forgot step 2.

 

 

WHOEVER.... I find this EXTREMELY unlikely. its more likely something to do with the transition between Talent Trees and Disciplines and had to do with shared resources between the ground game and GSF... Maybe GSF will be overhauled with a Dicipline thing.... which will be SOOOOO wierd lol.

[Danalon]

Are you claiming that the 6-9 talents that got broke on Tuesday actually do something else?

 

The sab probe talent is pretty vintage, but it actually disables the whole move. I think it technically replaces the rest of the debuff with just the meaningless snare.

 

These talents seem to just not do anything at all.

 

 

If these talents were all repurposed DELIBERATELY, entirely quietly, we really have a lot to do for documentation, because if that's true then the in game documentation is pretty much just to trick you. I figured that some changes could be applied like that (to get around the hassle of a commit that invokes the documentation and translaltion teams).

 

 

But goodness. I think we can dismiss this theory of yours pretty quickly, because wouldn't the talents that replaced these actually be pretty noticable in some way? I mean, if missile break was replaced with more evasion, that could be fair and also untestable, but what about all the others? No way.

 

A better version of what I wanted to say.

Edited December 5, 2014 by Danalon

[zaskar]

Wait, what?

 

Who?

 

I'm fairly sure it was Damion Schubert, he led all the F2P stuff and gave us pretty much everything but combat and story.

[LilSaihah]

Actually. The dev lead that ran GSF "retired" last month.

 

Why is this in quotation marks

 

was he killed

[Zoom_VI]

Clearly the devs thought stock night was such a good idea that they made it mandatory by making it so all da upgrades don't work.

[Jordalx]

This is not such an odd idea. This is going way back. But in Star Wars Galaxies the dev that handled beast master stuff stopped working for the devs. So they had no real updates for years because they couldn't figure out the code and couldn't rewrite everything.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

This is not such an odd idea. This is going way back. But in Star Wars Galaxies the dev that handled beast master stuff stopped working for the devs. So they had no real updates for years because they couldn't figure out the code and couldn't rewrite everything.

 

That would really suck since it means not only wouldn't we get bug fixes in a reasonable time. It also means we won't get any real balance passes much less new content. At this point I'm more concerned about bug fixes and balance passes than new content. The GSF community won't be able to survive in meaningful numbers if they keep introducing bugs (which they can't fix) and don't balance things the community has know for months need tweaking.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Gavin_Kelvar

[AlrikFassbauer]

I currently hold the theory that these bugs might have something to do with the overall damage decrese with the levels up to 60.

 

Taken from the 3.0 Patch Notes :

 

Damage + Health

Towards the end of the 2.0 patch cycle, classes began to exceed the baseline damage values that we intended. In order to get back to where we wanted the damage output to be, we are lowering the damage output across the board. Players at level 55 will find that their damage has dropped, while players at level 60 end up having about the same amount of damage output that they did pre-3.0 at 55.

 

My "conspiracy theory" is that this programming had some influence into GSF, too.

[Verain]

No, it is not that.

 

It COULD be something about how talent trees worked. As you'll notice, GSF still has talent trees that work mostly like the old ones, and the new ones are their own thing. Or it COULD have had something to do with base combat engine changes. Or it could be some obscure technical thing, like a library looks good but can't make a call because words words who cares.

 

Butt the thing you cite is about class tuning overall.

[Zoom_VI]

No, it is not that.

 

It COULD be something about how talent trees worked. As you'll notice, GSF still has talent trees that work mostly like the old ones, and the new ones are their own thing. Or it COULD have had something to do with base combat engine changes. Or it could be some obscure technical thing, like a library looks good but can't make a call because words words who cares.

 

Butt the thing you cite is about class tuning overall.

 

Actually I think the GSF trees work like the new system more than the old one. The GSF and discipline trees are both perfectly linear where you go up block by block rather than putting "points" into various blocks.

 

Its also worthy of note that GSF is not alone in the bugs, I have confirmed at least two talent boxes on my Vanguard that do not function as advertised and suspect a third.