Why is Bioware so silent on major gear issues from 5.10?

[olagatonjedi]

Sometimes, you get waxed so fast, you don't have the time to even hit CDs before you end up in spawn without knowing what happened.

 

PVP is toggled on - busy painting the respawn walls?

Might i suggest improving your accuracy stat. Miss, miss, miss, miss.....

[Shwarzchild]

Luck with what? I dont post to be argumentative, nor do i post to try to force my beliefs on others, nor do i post with the intent of trying to "fit in" and be one of "the cool kids." I post my beliefs, my conclusions, my open-minded reservations and understanding about how things are done, or might be done based on history, experience, and education.

 

The small amount of grief i receive for my posts is nothing compared to the possibility of enlightening at least one person enough to know that they dont have to be deterred by mob mentality that doesnt agree with them, especially when the mob mentality isnt substantiated by facts and data that gives their voices more weight.

 

This has nothing to do with fitting in or being cool or being left handed, right handed, or no handed...etc.

Might I suggest when you propose a secondary view point that will run counter to what is being said you phrase it in the form of a question instead of a point. Instead of saying "They're doing it because of X" a debate would be more encouraged if you responded by saying "I see what you're saying. However, what if they did X because of Y?"

 

That encourages the exchange of ideas. You're adversarial in your approach. Look at how you responded to me (a paragraph about being cool and fitting in immediately defending yourself from a point I don't think you understood the meaning behind) . And while you don't intend to attack, that is what your message comes off as being. From what I gather your goal is to have people think before posting. I support that, and seriously I wish more people would before they went off the hinges. Having people trying to encourage us to use the lump three feet from their backside is definitely needed. Be flexible in your responses to people, and less concrete. I think you'll have more success that way and you will reach that one person and probably more than that one. When you write a post, people see it as you are immovable. If you are immovable why should they be open to another view point?

[DawnAskham]

I understand you BW guys like RNG, we dont, but yeah. But how is the droprate of relics programmed? I got 14 relics so far, and 12 of those are of the wrong type. That is a bit of too much bad luck I would say.

 

Can you guys at least make it possible when you upgrade to 258, you can change the type of relic (or ear/implant), so mine are not totally useless.

 

Thank you.

 

All the RNG box ear / implant / relic items should be considered the same base item from a perspective of upgrading to a similar item with the crystal things.

 

Also agree the relic drop rate feels off - all I've gotten out of the box that supposedly has pants, belts, boots and relics are relics, and the vast majority are crappy ones at that.

Edited January 13, 2019 by DawnAskham

[NuSeC]

Might i suggest improving your accuracy stat. Miss, miss, miss, miss.....

But you were in respawn... from being CCed in the acid :/

 

It was sad to watch.

[NuSeC]

LMAO. Best post ever

 

Thanks

[olagatonjedi]

This has nothing to do with fitting in or being cool or being left handed, right handed, or no handed...etc.

Might I suggest when you propose a secondary view point that will run counter to what is being said you phrase it in the form of a question instead of a point. Instead of saying "They're doing it because of X" a debate would be more encouraged if you responded by saying "I see what you're saying. However, what if they did X because of Y?"

I do. You are welcome to read many of my posts.

 

When you write a post, people see it as you are immovable. If you are immovable why should they be open to another view point?

I see myself as one of the more open-minded forum viewers there are. If a complaint is portrayed very well, there are valid reasons for it, and they dont immediately make a conclusion about why it was present in the first place, then i will likely never have a contrary post. I may even make a positive post indicating it was very well thought out, concise, thorough, relevant, etc. My view is very flexible, but less so if there are concrete statements about things that a player not employed or behind the scenes of the BW dev team would not know with certainty. I cannot make everyone be open to alternate possibilities, but i can certainly try to help some see the light and be less concrete in their ways. Whats funny is that the majority of counter-posts i receive rarely even attempt to see the possibilities i present, which immediately indicates who is willing to actually have conversation, and who is simply responding to argue.

[olagatonjedi]

But you were in respawn... from being CCed in the acid :/

 

It was sad to watch.

Why was it sad? Even the acid wasnt hurting me.

[NuSeC]

Thanks Eric! The changes definitely add a new challenging element to the game, but the ability to optimize is still there.

Some people, as usual, and unadaptable and overexaggerate.

 

LMAO!!!!

 

I mean really LMAO!!!!

[olagatonjedi]

LMAO!!!!

 

I mean really LMAO!!!!

I appreciate the support!

[TrixxieTriss]

Really? That's why you bait and report right? Because you don't care. Yeah. Good one.

 

“People going phishing, beware of the weather” 🎣🎣🌊💨

 

Yep, I’ll admit I’ve ended up in the fish bucket. Sometimes it’s catch and release. But now I seem to be of legal size and they just keep me in the bucket. So I try not to swallow now

Edited January 13, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

But you were in respawn... from being CCed in the acid :/

 

It was sad to watch.

 

Those forum acid traps are nasty.

[TrixxieTriss]

Might i suggest improving your accuracy stat. Miss, miss, miss, miss.....

 

Only noobs use accuracy in pvp It’s better to have no accuracy and high crit so when we do connect it’s a doozy.

 

Kind of brings us back to why pvpers are pissed off being made to use Accuracy enhancements when they aren’t needed, esecpislly on classes like Sorcs.

Edited January 13, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

[Feanar]

So, I've decided to try this game again, after I've quit in 4.0. I was HM raider, where you would get a piece of gear from the boss, turn it in and call it a day.

 

Honestly, I wanted to return to raiding again, I have level 65 PT I want to play (and what have they done to that class, apparently PT tanks are crap), and I have no clue how to gear my character.

 

How do I return to raiding? Do I run SM raids, get gear from there and build my way up to HM? What guild is gonna accept me? What is CXP? I've read about it, but it looks so weird, you get some boxes that you open and you get gear from there? Do you open them, or save them until you increase your rank? How does that work?

 

I'll ride this referal link, but I doubt i'll sub until they make gearing more "normal". Also, do I have to finish that Valkorion story? I think I did 9 chapters, and it's so boring. Do I have a long way to go? Is there any other way to get to 70 aside from Valkorion stuff? And is there a rep tied to that now which I will miss on if I skip it?

 

Thx everyone!

[olagatonjedi]

Only noobs use accuracy in pvp It’s better to have no accuracy and high crit so when we do connect it’s a doozy.

 

Kind of brings us back to why pvpers are pissed off being made to use Accuracy enhancements when they aren’t needed, esecpislly on classes like Sorcs.

Wait what? How are you being forced?

[olagatonjedi]

How do I return to raiding? Do I run SM raids, get gear from there and build my way up to HM? What guild is gonna accept me? What is CXP? I've read about it, but it looks so weird, you get some boxes that you open and you get gear from there? Do you open them, or save them until you increase your rank? How does that work?

Welcome back. All of the above could be correct. Ops and CRates can both provide usable gear. Or savable components to get higher tier gear.

 

It takes a little grtting used to, but overall its one of the best systems that isnt limited to a specific area of the game. Ossus is new, has the newest gear, but gone are the days of expecting to gear up BIS overnight.

[NuSeC]

Wait what? How are you being forced?

 

Forced? NO... but adding ridiculously useless stats into gear and making that slotted item bound to the piece is ridicules. Especially when the only reason why would be to make the grind longer. There is no other reason to do it.

 

Again, you already know this don't you

 

The bigger point was that accuracy in PVP gear for many classes is a useless stat. Replying to your "miss miss miss" statement.

 

Constantly being sent to respawn can be disorienting - I've seen people rage quit from it.

[TrixxieTriss]

Well this threads now devolved so much they may as well close it.

Probably what the intent was all along. It’s usually what he does in every thread he (I’m sure I dont need to point out who) participates in.

So one really has to wonder what their agenda is?

I think there must be Bioware link somewhere because it’s usually threads that are extremely critical of Bioware ****ups

Edited January 14, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

[olagatonjedi]

Well this threads now devolved so much they may as well close it.

Probably what the intent was all along. It’s usually what he does in every thread he (I’m sure I dont need to point out who) participates in.

So one really has to wonder what their agenda is?

I think there must be Bioware link somewhere because it’s usually threads that are extremely critical of Bioware ****ups

Yep, the same people keep up the same posting tendency. Unfortunately BW will never do right in the eyes of some.

[TrixxieTriss]

Yep, the same people keep up the same posting tendency. Unfortunately BW will never do right in the eyes of some.

 

Or wrong in the eyes of others

[olagatonjedi]

Or wrong in the eyes of others

Ive been critical of BW many times, so not sure who you are talking about. Do tell.

[Lhancelot]

I want to add this post to this thread, because this guy explains in great detail exactly why and how this game has gone the way it has over the years.

 

The main reasons for not only the introduction of bugs but the time to fix them for this game is this:

 

* Poor in-house testing. Specifically, no established regression suite. (There are various ways to determine this, even from the outside looking in. If such a regression suite does exist then it either isn't being run, its results aren't being paid attention to, or it is written in such a way that data conditions are not varied enough.)

 

* No use of an orchestrator type tool, the use of which is very standard in MMO testing. (This is known because of the type of bugs we see but also because the Hero Engine is not, and has never been, amenable to orchestration to the extent that it could be.)

 

* Very tightly coupled code. Too much code is interrelated to other code, causing side-effect bugs. (This is demonstrable any time you have certain changes but then bad effects seem to occur in functionality that seems "far apart" from what was changed. A good recent example is the disappearing faces from some body types.)

 

* Lack of listening to feedback from PTS or, at best, very selective listening of feedback. This leads to problems introduced that eventually become part of the backlog.

 

* A severe backlog of issues that was allowed to build up over time. This led to bugs not getting fixed because there were too many. This in turn led to a lot of functionality being built on top of bugs, such that any fixes now risked breaking other functionality. Without the regression suite or the orchestration I mentioned, this becomes even more problematic to test and thus harder to verify in terms of fixing.

 

I wrote up some examples of this testing problem with SWTOR in particular here and here and here and, finally, here.

 

 

 

This post comes from this thread here: "WHY does it take so long to FIX something ? 6.0 is my last hope..."

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=959224

 

Kryptonomic wrote many other awesome posts going into even greater detail how the development and testing for games works in that thread. He has worked in the field of testing for MMOs, and isn't just theorizing as we all often do as to why the game has so many bugs and other issues as he actually has worked in the field of testing games, particularly MMOs.

 

I suggest anyone who finds themselves wondering what the heck is going on with SWTOR and why it's gone the route it has, and ended up the way it has read through that thread particularly what Kryptonomic wrote.

[olagatonjedi]

I want to add this post to this thread, because this guy explains in great detail exactly why and how this game has gone the way it has over the years.

 

 

 

 

 

This post comes from this thread here: "WHY does it take so long to FIX something ? 6.0 is my last hope..."

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=959224

 

Kryptonomic wrote many other awesome posts going into even greater detail how the development and testing for games works in that thread. He has worked in the field of testing for MMOs, and isn't just theorizing as we all often do as to why the game has so many bugs and other issues as he actually has worked in the field of testing games, particularly MMOs.

 

I suggest anyone who finds themselves wondering what the heck is going on with SWTOR and why it's gone the route it has, and ended up the way it has read through that thread particularly what Kryptonomic wrote.

Krypt makes some good points, and assuming his background is accurate, i place a bit more trust in his assessment of what is actually wrong with swtor and why. That said, if you look at the list presented, 90% of it is caused by past issues that were inherited by the current dev team due to the poor development and coding over the years. Krypt spells it out pretty plainly that there are ways to have more optimal MMO management and development, but the way SWTOR has been written makes it difficult, or impossible, to utilize these tools.

[Lhancelot]

Krypt makes some good points, and assuming his background is accurate, i place a bit more trust in his assessment of what is actually wrong with swtor and why. That said, if you look at the list presented, 90% of it is caused by past issues that were inherited by the current dev team due to the poor development and coding over the years. Krypt spells it out pretty plainly that there are ways to have more optimal MMO management and development, but the way SWTOR has been written makes it difficult, or impossible, to utilize these tools.

 

The main reasons for not only the introduction of bugs but the time to fix them for this game is this:

 

* Poor in-house testing. Specifically, no established regression suite. (There are various ways to determine this, even from the outside looking in. If such a regression suite does exist then it either isn't being run, its results aren't being paid attention to, or it is written in such a way that data conditions are not varied enough.)

 

* No use of an orchestrator type tool, the use of which is very standard in MMO testing. (This is known because of the type of bugs we see but also because the Hero Engine is not, and has never been, amenable to orchestration to the extent that it could be.)

 

* Very tightly coupled code. Too much code is interrelated to other code, causing side-effect bugs. (This is demonstrable any time you have certain changes but then bad effects seem to occur in functionality that seems "far apart" from what was changed. A good recent example is the disappearing faces from some body types.)

 

* Lack of listening to feedback from PTS or, at best, very selective listening of feedback. This leads to problems introduced that eventually become part of the backlog.

 

* A severe backlog of issues that was allowed to build up over time. This led to bugs not getting fixed because there were too many. This in turn led to a lot of functionality being built on top of bugs, such that any fixes now risked breaking other functionality. Without the regression suite or the orchestration I mentioned, this becomes even more problematic to test and thus harder to verify in terms of fixing.

 

I wrote up some examples of this testing problem with SWTOR in particular here and here and here and, finally, here.

 

I agree that the coding issue is real and creates a much more challenging job for the present devs but I do not agree that this issue removes all responsibility from the devs regarding all the issues the game suffers from. As he notes above, it's not just the fact they are dealing with old coding that complicates their newer work...

 

No amount of coding issues causes the lack of transparency they present in their intermittent and poorly ran platform of communication to the players on this game.

 

No amount of coding issues excuses them from doing what he outlines as very basic procedures regarding how new dev work is tested on MMOs before final patches are considered finished and added to a game.

 

There's really just no excuse for that, nor the lack of gathering feedback properly and utilizing it consistently. Whether that's a communication issue or a management decision to not use what feedback is given is something only someone on the inside can answer.

 

The highlighted in orange are just some of the more glaring faults that most likely explain exactly what is going on here with SWTOR, and these are elements that are completely 100% within the devs and representatives control.

[olagatonjedi]

I agree that the coding issue is real and creates a much more challenging job for the present devs but I do not agree that this issue removes all responsibility from the devs regarding all the issues the game suffers from. As he notes above, it's not just the fact they are dealing with old coding that complicates their newer work...

 

No amount of coding issues causes the lack of transparency they present in their intermittent and poorly ran platform of communication to the players on this game.

 

No amount of coding issues excuses them from doing what he outlines as very basic procedures regarding how new dev work is tested on MMOs before final patches are considered finished and added to a game.

 

There's really just no excuse for that, nor the lack of gathering feedback properly and utilizing it consistently. Whether that's a communication issue or a management decision to not use what feedback is given is something only someone on the inside can answer.

 

The highlighted in orange are just some of the more glaring faults that most likely explain exactly what is going on here with SWTOR, and these are elements that are completely 100% within the devs and representatives control.

The issues will be within the grasp and control of the current devs once they understand the entire code. Understandably, with the amount of different variations of coding done in 7 years time by multiple teams, they are likely to come across new bugs that they dont fully understand or have a fix to just by adding their own code with new content and updates. There is a reason for the software term "patch." Its expected that coders will come across new problems and have to take time to research the issue and patch it until another issue arises.

[Shwarzchild]

The issues will be within the grasp and control of the current devs once they understand the entire code. Understandably, with the amount of different variations of coding done in 7 years time by multiple teams, they are likely to come across new bugs that they dont fully understand or have a fix to just by adding their own code with new content and updates. There is a reason for the software term "patch." Its expected that coders will come across new problems and have to take time to research the issue and patch it until another issue arises.

 

I've seen this sentiment before. Why should we have confidence that this iteration of the development staff (if it's different from the last bunch) will understand the code at a deeper level? If the team is smaller than before how can we think they will grasp what you're saying they will? If the bugs seen have not changed through each patch it would seem to say that grasping and controlling the code might not be as close to in reach, no?