61 replies to this topic

[Acid Phase]

Homeless Bill, on 17 April 2013 - 11:23 AM, said:

My guess is that they want to, but the publisher demands new content take priority over stability until near launch. I wouldn't hold your breath. Enjoy it for what it is now (when you can) and hope IGP gives them a month to kill bugs before launch.

Because if this game launches in a state similar to what we have now, they're going to get panned in all the reviews, the new playerbase they hope to attract will laugh and eject, and the Founders will be left feeling even more ****** than many of them do now.

This exactly. It's unfortunate...but the problem here is that PGI is not calling the shots on the development, much less the supposed "roadmap" they laid out for us months ago. Under my sig is a link to a perfect example to what's going on here. Hence why my gripe is no longer aimed at PGI.

[Divine Madcat]

jakucha, on 17 April 2013 - 02:37 PM, said:

The game runs well for me honestly. Hopefully they fix it for everyone soon, but realize not everyone is having so much trouble with it.

Well, the anecdotal evidence (playing the game, and reading posts here) suggest that you are in the minority. That, and it seems people can go 10+ games before they hit a bug.. it is possible that more casual players may escape a game session with no bugs, simply by luck...

Acid Phase, on 17 April 2013 - 03:04 PM, said:

This exactly. It's unfortunate...but the problem here is that PGI is not calling the shots on the development, much less the supposed "roadmap" they laid out for us months ago. Under my sig is a link to a perfect example to what's going on here. Hence why my gripe is no longer aimed at PGI.

Indeed.. their silent partner is not helping (still believe it was them that pushed for Open Beta, not PGI themselves).. It really is sad to see how badly the schedule has slipped.

[Forestal]

Divine Madcat, on 17 April 2013 - 01:09 PM, said:

This is the other thing that bugs me..

At least in much of the public eye, we are already launched. Yes, I fully understand the devs call it beta still... but to Joe schmoe, it is as released as it can be (You can buy things with money, you can play all you want... may as well be released).

As such, like it or not, lots of potential players are already forming opinions, and i hate to think what news guys starting this month think..

The "new guys" that PGI/IGP is going for ("average male gamer"?) must really be some "new guys" to MMO/F2P games, who'll pay up on the basis of a cool-looking game or an awesome review-- personally, I've seen/known enough of these MMO/F2P "standard practices" to wait through at least 2 patches before plonking down any cash... cos i want to see their actual developmental process before I invest in a supposedly developmental product.

Edited by Forestal, 17 April 2013 - 03:33 PM.

[OneManWar]

THIS topic again? How many times does this need to be discussed? Do you actually think they like bugs? If they were easy to fix and track down, they'd already be fixed. NO developer likes bugs. The problem is when bugs only happen 1 in 100 games on your piece of hardware, it is not EASY to track down, and will often get through testing. In 1200 games I've hit bugs maybe 20 times. Try reproducing that. That is why WE are testing the game, because as someone said above nothing helps reproducing a problem like 50,000 people playing.


As for content, well, lets just stop adding anything new until everyone's problems are fixed. THAT IS NOT REALITY. Then you add new content and there's a bug. STOP THE PRESSES, NO MORE NEW CONTENT.


If developpers developped like that NOTHING would ever be released. Go talk about something you guys know because obviously none of you have ever worked on anything with millions of lines of code and tons of assets.

[Kyynele]

So, you know the guys who create the new content are not the same guys who fix the bugs. Most content at this point can likely be added to the game without the programmers wasting any time on them, since it's mostly more of the same.

If there's a bug that can't be reproduced in any known way, putting lots of resources into fixing it is likely a wild goose chase. You can't fix it if you don't know what causes it. Some of the new features they have in the pipeline are simultaneously workarounds to some of the mystery bugs, like the ability to rejoin a match after a CTD, so I'm all for those new features.

I don't think the new patch did much about the issues. The first 5 games after patch: 4 of them were without IFF, 3 of them with maps broken in various ways, 0 without any HUD issues. After that I've played 30+ games that were mostly flawless, one without HUD altogether. Seems just as random as it was before.

[Homeless Bill]

Kyynele, on 17 April 2013 - 04:09 PM, said:

So, you know the guys who create the new content are not the same guys who fix the bugs. Most content at this point can likely be added to the game without the programmers wasting any time on them, since it's mostly more of the same.

This is just flat-out wrong. Do you think the code for Community Warfare is just writing itself? HSR dropped out of the sky? Is Santa working on UI 2.0 and the new lobby system? If you're defining content as new 'mechs, maps, and other ******** that's just re-skinning, sure. But new "content" includes features, and that requires a ton of programming manpower.

And that's why bugs aren't getting fixed. PGI's programmers are largely being dedicated to implementing new features - not fixing bugs.

[LordBraxton]

Tie Ma, on 17 April 2013 - 05:29 AM, said:

yup.

definately need to prevent piliup of bugs. it only gets harder to track them down as mor changes come


thanks for having high standards. there are very few people like that on the forums. who understand the importance of nuances and attention to detail

as someone in the medical field where a certain level of excellence comes at a minimum, its very hard to watch PGI make this game.

no offense but I have been around the medical profession more than I would like,

and even the 'best' hospitals are so unorganized its amazing they function

[Divine Madcat]

Homeless Bill, on 17 April 2013 - 04:15 PM, said:

This is just flat-out wrong. Do you think the code for Community Warfare is just writing itself? HSR dropped out of the sky? Is Santa working on UI 2.0 and the new lobby system? If you're defining content as new 'mechs, maps, and other ******** that's just re-skinning, sure. But new "content" includes features, and that requires a ton of programming manpower.

And that's why bugs aren't getting fixed. PGI's programmers are largely being dedicated to implementing new features - not fixing bugs.

Exactly my point. Sure, i acknowledged that artists and modelers need not stop. But coders, real coders, should be able to help with bugs, even if they didn't write the code in question. Hence my real point.. new content needs to be put on hold for a while, and bugs be squashed.

And again, i understand bugs can happen. That isn't the deal.. The deal is that the number of bugs is ridiculous, and indicates a lack of testing all around. And worse, the bugs stack up for weeks (a bug isn't hard to track down if you actually test your code when you make the change right then.. It would limit the amount of changes that could be reasonable, hence making its solution that much easier to find.... believe me, been there, done that.. )

[LiminalSpace]

Divine Madcat, on 17 April 2013 - 04:31 PM, said:

(a bug isn't hard to track down if you actually test your code when you make the change right then.. It would limit the amount of changes that could be reasonable, hence making its solution that much easier to find.... believe me, been there, done that.. )

You seem like a good dude, just trying to make a point, but this statement makes me wonder how much experience you really have with software. Absolutely, it's easier to track bugs down immediately after you code them, but I'm guessing that each time you code, you are not doing a full regression test during unit testing, and because environments are almost never truly the same, and because of the huge number of variables involved, what you are suggesting is implausible. Again, I'm not saying they can't or shouldn't get better than they are (they can and should), but duplicating bugs that are sporadic in nature is very, very difficult. Those are *exactly* the kinds of bugs that get missed in testing (good or bad), and *exactly* the kinds of bugs that are most difficult to fix (because they are so difficult to duplicate; frequently they are simple to fix once you find a stable duplication).

[DrSecretStache]

This argument comes up a lot, and it's certainly valid, but I just find that telling them to 'step up the bug squashing' is kind of irrelevant.

For one, and I know it's been mentioned but it needs to continue to be mentioned, no one likes bugs, including the devs. You can bet that they're spending time trying to fix them, considering how well known they are. Making a call to action like that, while it may be harmless, looks like a claim that the devs aren't doing anything and don't care, which isn't fair.

Two, you can't just say that people who are having no problems are just lucky. Computers have nothing to do with luck. I've seen so many varying stories on here, my own being that I've had very few issues since I updated my drivers, that it has to have something to do with the end user. Not everything, mind you...I'm absolutely sure that the bug is in the code as well, interacting with the users.

Similarly, saying that they need to step up their testers isn't exactly fair either. There are only so many rigs that you can run in a company compared to the player base. Chances are there are thousands upon thousands of iterations of computer set ups that are set up in such a way that bugs that wouldn't affect the testers would affect them, either from a hardware issue, an game code issue, or a software issue on the user's end. And when people get bugs, they almost always immediately complain about it. It's probably similar to people and TVs... One of my folks used to work as customer service for comcast, and some of the stories she would bring home were borderline outragous. So you can't really rely on the user going through the steps to ensure that nothing is wrong on their end before complaining.

Trust me, I had the bugs a lot before I updated my drivers. They were frustrating. But at the same time, I lived with them, because I knew that there were a lot more variables than PGI's testing and bug squashing efforts. I can certainly sympathize with your position, but I don't think it deserves a call to action to raise the pitchforks, especially when we don't have all the information.

[nitra]

But they said it was so hard to fix these issues and they are prioritized an such ...

unfortunately in all this priority programming they have actually made the ui less stable.

to night was the first night i saw the enemy base as undefined ....

last night it was intermittent hud ..

but hey we complain about bugs we get threads locked or hidden and posts deleted because hey .. the devs know about em already .

and guess what their working on them, right after they add some more consumables and they get that one person off of working on 3rd person view, and maybe if they get some one else from making bobble heads they might actually have a team who can focus on these really hard bugs.

[August55]

Divine Madcat, on 17 April 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

That said, what drives me crazy, as a programmer, is seeing the game seemingly degenerate. I expect that new features will have issues, but why do old, previously working bits suddenly stop working?

But it's fun to have to report new bugs every patch! You feel like a useful beta tester

Quote

- Hud Bugs. We went from a pretty much working hud, to one that breaks several times a day. While old bugs were squashed, we got new ones (no map rotation, no IFF, no hud at all).
- Performance issue. One day, people were using a specific nVidia driver just fine, then bam... bugs galore. Mind you, the bug persisted on other drivers, but that makes the point even more.

Most of my problems with performance with this game is the HUD must be some fancy scaleform that isn't optimized. While the object detailing killing fps when raised is one thing, a Heads up Display is the LAST thing nomming up framerate.

I'm sure we can also complain about matchmaking, on how the matchmaker simply can't wait for a new person to replace the person that dropped before the match even started.

Or, how the game mysteriously runs better in Testing Grounds.

Edited by August55, 17 April 2013 - 06:28 PM.

[Divine Madcat]

LiminalSpace, on 17 April 2013 - 04:38 PM, said:

You seem like a good dude, just trying to make a point, but this statement makes me wonder how much experience you really have with software. Absolutely, it's easier to track bugs down immediately after you code them, but I'm guessing that each time you code, you are not doing a full regression test during unit testing, and because environments are almost never truly the same, and because of the huge number of variables involved, what you are suggesting is implausible. Again, I'm not saying they can't or shouldn't get better than they are (they can and should), but duplicating bugs that are sporadic in nature is very, very difficult. Those are *exactly* the kinds of bugs that get missed in testing (good or bad), and *exactly* the kinds of bugs that are most difficult to fix (because they are so difficult to duplicate; frequently they are simple to fix once you find a stable duplication).

Well, for what its worth, yes, when i complete a feature (not just one piece of code, but a full feature or bug fix), yes, we do run the test suite. I am sorry, but it is just good coding practice. There is no excuse to add new features and not make sure you haven't broken something. Furthermore, if you code base is logically done, testing the impact of your code should not be overly difficult (if your code works with say, the audio engine, logically you wouldn't need to run tests (as the developer) on the control systems per se).

I will say, my industry (defense) is probably more picky than others; but i am still going back to my fundamentals taught to me in school. Good practices should be followed no matter what type of programming. And more so, when presenting product to your customer (again, if they are selling us mechs and other items, they are presenting a product, not just a beta), your product should have been thoroughly tested by QA (whom for this game, i cannot defend at all. Glaring, obvious bugs have made it to us, that never should have). These failures are more than just on the coders.. but sadly, it is all up to the coders to fix...

[Homeless Bill]

Divine Madcat, on 17 April 2013 - 04:31 PM, said:

new content needs to be put on hold for a while, and bugs be squashed.

The publisher says no, and no amount of forum whine is going to change that. IGP wants core features done, and that's exactly what PGI is going to do.

PGI can't just say, "**** it; we don't need your money - we'll do what we want." If they get extra time (which they wont) or if IGP decides they need to focus on stability (probably won't happen until a month from release), they'll start a major crackdown on bugs. Until then, I wouldn't get your hopes up.

[jakucha]

Divine Madcat, on 17 April 2013 - 03:26 PM, said:

Well, the anecdotal evidence (playing the game, and reading posts here) suggest that you are in the minority. That, and it seems people can go 10+ games before they hit a bug.. it is possible that more casual players may escape a game session with no bugs, simply by luck...


Indeed.. their silent partner is not helping (still believe it was them that pushed for Open Beta, not PGI themselves).. It really is sad to see how badly the schedule has slipped.

I had been playing a lot last patch and little bit this patch; hardly anyone in-game ever complains about having major problems when I ask. They only talk about minor hud bugs. Of course people who have the most problems will post on the forums about it. Everyone else is playing the game.

Edited by jakucha, 17 April 2013 - 08:37 PM.

[Acid Phase]

I personally find myself sticking around this bug ridden mess only because it's called "MechWarrior". But the lack of consideration from PGI/IGP at times for it's community is slowly but surely driving a majority away. It's insane to hear that Hawken's community is satisfied because their concerns over some issues were addressed and reconstructed around to please their community. Also, I sense a great deal of maturity within that community that I don't quite find here...like when most here attack OP's for expressing concerns. Terrible.

[INSEkT L0GIC]

jakucha, on 17 April 2013 - 02:37 PM, said:

The game runs well for me honestly. Hopefully they fix it for everyone soon, but realize not everyone is having so much trouble with it.

Same. I get a HUD bug about once every 6 matches, usually a minor one. No CTD since patch. *knocks on wood*

[Divine Madcat]

Acid Phase, on 17 April 2013 - 08:53 PM, said:

I personally find myself sticking around this bug ridden mess only because it's called "MechWarrior". But the lack of consideration from PGI/IGP at times for it's community is slowly but surely driving a majority away. It's insane to hear that Hawken's community is satisfied because their concerns over some issues were addressed and reconstructed around to please their community. Also, I sense a great deal of maturity within that community that I don't quite find here...like when most here attack OP's for expressing concerns. Terrible.

Well, I can't take it too much to heart.. i know this is a passionate community, and when people feel that something they love is being criticized, they will protect it. And if i thought the game was perfect, i guess i might too.

As it is though, there are still too many bugs, and i hope PGI steps it up an addressing them better (or making it so they dont get out the door in the first place like they have been)...

[Acid Phase]

I understand being passsionate about it. I was that way from the beginning. Thinking that no game compared to the wonders. Anxiously awaiting the "roadmap" and proud to know that MWO was going to stick to the promises they made after it was all laid out. Then several things started to change. Not for the better, but for the worse. Promises such as the no 3rd person, no coolant among other things mentioned were announced to be implemented non negotiable. Lost credibility in my opinion. And what wound me up so bad is that the community in the forums are "not the target demographic" that they aim to please. As if our opinions are worth jack sh*t. Let's also not forget announcements made on outside sources rather than in these forums. Quite a lack of respect dealt to us don't you think?

[Krondor]

MaddMaxx, on 17 April 2013 - 07:57 AM, said:

Last nights Patch pretty much eliminated all Hud based bugs for myself. The frequency was down to 1-15 matches. Maybe some folks should look at their hardware and check the purchase date...

i JUST built a brand new gaming rig. As in turned it on for the first time last week. I get HUD bugs Every. Single. Match. Since July I have never had interface bugs that frequently.

Hardware has little to do with it. This game is horribly bugged.

Acid Phase, on 18 April 2013 - 05:13 AM, said:

I understand being passsionate about it. I was that way from the beginning. Thinking that no game compared to the wonders. Anxiously awaiting the "roadmap" and proud to know that MWO was going to stick to the promises they made after it was all laid out. Then several things started to change. Not for the better, but for the worse. Promises such as the no 3rd person, no coolant among other things mentioned were announced to be implemented non negotiable. Lost credibility in my opinion. And what wound me up so bad is that the community in the forums are "not the target demographic" that they aim to please. As if our opinions are worth jack sh*t. Let's also not forget announcements made on outside sources rather than in these forums. Quite a lack of respect dealt to us don't you think?

PGI's "target demograph" are those who don't complain about what they've done with the game.