119 replies to this topic

[KursedVixen]

martian, on 23 August 2023 - 10:20 PM, said:

Could anybody tell me how difficult would be to prepare a hotfix patch?

with comp happening it's kinda not horribly hard people are busy, though it would require changing a single number,it highly depends on how well they've commented the code...

Edited by KursedVixen, 24 August 2023 - 10:48 AM.

[Khalcruth]

JumpingHunter, on 24 August 2023 - 08:09 AM, said:

And it's definitely not worth throwing crap in the dev for making a mistake, considering that we got a lot more than we could have get. **** happens.

The problem isn't the mistake - you're right, it happens.

The problem is NOT FIXING IT IN A TIMELY MANNER.

That's what has people upset more than anything.

[feeWAIVER]

Khalcruth, on 24 August 2023 - 10:16 AM, said:

The problem isn't the mistake - you're right, it happens.

The problem is NOT FIXING IT IN A TIMELY MANNER.

That's what has people upset more than anything.

It's fine though.
Barely an inconvenience.

[pbiggz]

feeWAIVER, on 24 August 2023 - 11:04 AM, said:

It's fine though.
Barely an inconvenience.

As I said I already find I fire 2 and 1 rather than alpha-ing Binary Lasers on my orion. They are already hot. When HSL drops itll just mean you HAVE to fire 2 and 1 or 2 and 2. This is really not a big deal.

[KursedVixen]

feeWAIVER, on 24 August 2023 - 11:04 AM, said:

It's fine though.
Barely an inconvenience.

during a comp tournament??? the might have to ban binaries...

[ImaginaryFireball]

KursedVixen, on 24 August 2023 - 11:08 AM, said:

during a comp tournament??? the might have to ban binaries...

Dude, only a small percentage of the player base even play comp. I can understand why comp players would be upset, but I would also hope that comp players could understand why a lot of people aren't all that bothered.

[Mechsniper]

Binary lasers are so hot and heavy they do not need ghost heat. I only found a couple mechs out of 350 that they work ok in for me. The mechs they work in need 3 to make it worth carrying them or they just aren't' worth the bother. Single laser lights being the exception to that, but not my mug of beer.

[KursedVixen]

ImaginartFireball, on 24 August 2023 - 11:40 AM, said:

Dude, only a small percentage of the player base even play comp. I can understand why comp players would be upset, but I would also hope that comp players could understand why a lot of people aren't all that bothered.

yeaaah sure tell that to an investor when your making a company or buying a house I'm sure they'd be interested IF YOU MESS UP A SINGLE DIGIT ON YOUR LAST INVOICE AND DON"T FIX IT!!


You do realize there's money in this comp tournament right??? somebody is paying for it..

Edited by KursedVixen, 24 August 2023 - 02:55 PM.

[Meep Meep]

Mechsniper, on 24 August 2023 - 02:34 PM, said:

Binary lasers are so hot and heavy they do not need ghost heat. I only found a couple mechs out of 350 that they work ok in for me. The mechs they work in need 3 to make it worth carrying them or they just aren't' worth the bother. Single laser lights being the exception to that, but not my mug of beer.

There are many mechs that can do two and still have tonnage for other weapons. Thats effectively 4x ll but two tons less fittings and those two tons can mean bigger engines or enough tons for mounting another heavy weapon or more sinks etc. Blazers are a straight upgrade over normal larges. Hell you can even run two blazers and a single large on many mechs for a no ghost heat 5x ll fit.

I'll use this as an example.

cda-3m

Before blazers it would be impossible to fit 4x ll on this mech due to slot restrictions let alone have it be useable due to having to shave off too much armor and too low rated an engine.

After blazers this is a very usable 4x ll build that can toss out 144 damage in alphas before the heat bar is filled and you are forced to go to chain fire if you take all the heat related skill nodes. I've been getting steady 600~1000 damage games in it so far by abusing the ecm poke/trade meta everyone so loves.

Edited by Meep Meep, 24 August 2023 - 03:08 PM.

[confracto]

martian, on 23 August 2023 - 10:20 PM, said:

Could anybody tell me how difficult would be to prepare a hotfix patch?

Yes.
For the designer to make this change, it's 5 min work.
For QA to verify, it's a bit more, maybe half an hour.
For the Build Engineer who actually puts the hotfix onto the game servers, it's a good chunk of time and also delays several other scheduled tasks from happening, enough that it's why you don't see this game being hotfixed much anymore.

[Meep Meep]

confracto, on 24 August 2023 - 05:04 PM, said:

Yes.
For the designer to make this change, it's 5 min work.
For QA to verify, it's a bit more, maybe half an hour.
For the Build Engineer who actually puts the hotfix onto the game servers, it's a good chunk of time and also delays several other scheduled tasks from happening, enough that it's why you don't see this game being hotfixed much anymore.

Or a simpler explanation. Its super easy to fix with a quick file edit. However ~applying~ it to the game servers and then scheduling a download time and expense for the entire active playerbase to download is another matter.

[martian]

confracto, on 24 August 2023 - 05:04 PM, said:

Yes.
For the designer to make this change, it's 5 min work.
For QA to verify, it's a bit more, maybe half an hour.
For the Build Engineer who actually puts the hotfix onto the game servers, it's a good chunk of time and also delays several other scheduled tasks from happening, enough that it's why you don't see this game being hotfixed much anymore.

Thanks for the reply.

By the way, I noticed that you have moved to a higher Tier. Congrats!

[MechMaster059]

confracto, on 24 August 2023 - 05:04 PM, said:

Yes.
For the designer to make this change, it's 5 min work.
For QA to verify, it's a bit more, maybe half an hour.
For the Build Engineer who actually puts the hotfix onto the game servers, it's a good chunk of time and also delays several other scheduled tasks from happening, enough that it's why you don't see this game being hotfixed much anymore.

I'm not here to pile on Tiy0s, he's clearly aware some people are upset. That being said...

This need to be hotfixed.along with the clan MASC bug mentioned in this thread.

I work in IT as a programmer. I know about DEV, UAT, and PROD deployments. Much of the deployment is automated with Jenkins. You don't need QA to "verify" the change of a single character in a flat file. Verifying the Clan MASC fix might take a little time.

It appears PGI has turned over a new leaf with this latest patch fixing the piss-stain issue and making the paper-doll more responsive. It's sad to see those improvements tarnished by the presence of careless bugs. This is the kind of thing that diminishes the faith of the community in the dev team.

Also, there needs to be consequences for devs that let stuff this simple get through. They need to know they risk forcing a hotfix patch if they don't catch this stuff.

[Der Geisterbaer]

MechMaster059, on 24 August 2023 - 10:56 PM, said:

I know about DEV, UAT, and PROD deployments.

If that is the case ...

MechMaster059, on 24 August 2023 - 10:56 PM, said:

Much of the deployment is automated with Jenkins.

... then why exactly do you also think that you know the exact deployment tool chain that is used by PGI?
Just to show the fallacious nature of such assumptions: While Jenkins is certainly used by some of the many teams that my rather large company (with quite a "few" different dev teams) has the environment that I'm personally working in doesn't use Jenkins at all ... neither for compile nor for actual deployment.

MechMaster059, on 24 August 2023 - 10:56 PM, said:

You don't need QA to "verify" the change of a single character in a flat file.

So you're saying that QA should not make sure that once the number in the flat file was changed the game objects truly exhibit the expected behaviour (ghostheat at the expected values) and to also confirm that the particular number was really the only thing that changed?

Sorry, Mr. Programmer that's not a good approach to QA on software products of any kind .. not even one as ultimately uncritical as a computer game.

MechMaster059, on 24 August 2023 - 10:56 PM, said:

It appears PGI has turned over a new leaf with this latest patch fixing the piss-stain issue and making the paper-doll more responsive. It's sad to see those improvements tarnished by the presence of careless bugs. This is the kind of thing that diminishes the faith of the community in the dev team.

So much for allegedly not being here to pile on Tiy0 ... and it get's worse:

MechMaster059, on 24 August 2023 - 10:56 PM, said:

Also, there needs to be consequences for devs that let stuff this simple get through. They need to know they risk forcing a hotfix patch if they don't catch this stuff.

What kind of "consequences for devs" (persons) are you talking there? An official reprimand in their personell file? Salary cut? Firing? If anything this demands consequences for the dev processes but that's about it.

MechMaster059, on 24 August 2023 - 10:56 PM, said:

They need to know they risk forcing a hotfix patch if they don't catch this stuff.

Any not totally oblivious dev is aware of that risk. Nothing you wrote actually helps with solving / avoiding the problem. As a matter of fact it was your low effort QA model that actually caused the issue: Tiy0 made a change to a flat file that set a number too high and pushed it upstream. QA did't properly test if the effect of that upstreamed flat file was in accordance with the design intent and thus the faulty flat file was then also pushed to the production environment during the deployment. Are you going to demand consequences for QA personell as well after first unilaterally declaring that such flat file changes do not require verification?

Edited by Der Geisterbaer, 25 August 2023 - 01:29 AM.

[kalashnikity]

I bought that stalker and put 5 BLC on it. Unskilled alpha shuts it down and damages the ct. The hsl error is not game breaking. Even with the quirked stalker, after fix it will boat 4, which is still too hot to even use while unskilled. After skill 4BLC will be barely usable IMHO. OP needs to calm down. As others have said, you can't put on enough heat sinks to use 5 BLC effectively 4 is still too hot unless you are willing to stick with the group so you can hide long enough to cool down. I can see the concern with 3BLC, but frankly it needs to be able to mass fire 3. That would maintain the same paradigm as other clan vs IS laser weapons. The weight penalty of using BLC justifies allowing 3 to group fire.

[pbiggz]

kalashnikity, on 25 August 2023 - 12:59 AM, said:

I bought that stalker and put 5 BLC on it. Unskilled alpha shuts it down and damages the ct. The hsl error is not game breaking. Even with the quirked stalker, after fix it will boat 4, which is still too hot to even use while unskilled. After skill 4BLC will be barely usable IMHO. OP needs to calm down. As others have said, you can't put on enough heat sinks to use 5 BLC effectively 4 is still too hot unless you are willing to stick with the group so you can hide long enough to cool down. I can see the concern with 3BLC, but frankly it needs to be able to mass fire 3. That would maintain the same paradigm as other clan vs IS laser weapons. The weight penalty of using BLC justifies allowing 3 to group fire.

As I have said now numerous times, I already fire 2 and 1 on any mech that has 3 Blazers. Even without the HSL, the magic number seems to be 2, and they seem far to hot to fire 3 with any regularity. A couple of edge case stalker builds will disappear when the HSL gets changed to 2, but for the most part, i doubt anyone is going to notice any kind of change. I have already been experimenting with combining blazers with other laser types; thats probably going to be the play going forward; 2 blazers to push alphas up to clan levels and then a number of accompanying lasers to fill that alpha out without blowing your CT up on the spot. People can act like the notion of firing 3 together is some kind of competition-breaking catastrophe if they want, but you are going to look very silly when you do.

Edited by pbiggz, 25 August 2023 - 06:37 AM.

[KursedVixen]

I wouldn't pile on the dev for this mistake but somebody is at fault for letting this bug go through, likely not the dev, there should be people checking this stuff before it's allowed out the door... That is whose at fault, unless this was intentional....

I want to bring up a infamous quote from the US "How do we know what's in the bill, unless we pass it?"

Edited by KursedVixen, 25 August 2023 - 06:44 AM.

[Typhlon]

Eyo quick update: T-Comps don't work on XPulses or binaries lol lmao for real did they test nothing outside of the demo? Mech is a MAD-4A with no range skills, T-Comp 1. Note that the ER Meds have their ranges buffed, the regular pulse does, but none of the XPulses or Binaries do. Did nobody think to just add all the new beams to the list for the thing that explicitly affects all lasers? Get real how did not one person at PGI think of that and how did nobody ever test it?

[KursedVixen]

Typhlon, on 25 August 2023 - 02:43 PM, said:

Eyo quick update: T-Comps don't work on XPulses or binaries lol lmao for real did they test nothing outside of the demo? Mech is a MAD-4A with no range skills, T-Comp 1. Note that the ER Meds have their ranges buffed, the regular pulse does, but none of the XPulses or Binaries do. Did nobody think to just add all the new beams to the list for the thing that explicitly affects all lasers? Get real how did not one person at PGI think of that and how did nobody ever test it?

it's a feature new advanced weapons are too sophisticated for TC's to work with.. This is why you don't take tech from the future and put it into the past.

Edited by KursedVixen, 25 August 2023 - 02:47 PM.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

This thread is ridiculous. People thinking that MWO comp these days is serious business off the bat is funny. People thinking that numbers should be triple checked, in a game that is on maintenance mode is also hilarious. I don't know how much a QA team they probably have but I doubt there is much, but also the bigger the patch, the more likely something is to slip through.

In the dev world, this kind of stuff happens, fat fingers suck and can easily sneak past MULTIPLE people in reviews (staring at XML especially, it is pretty easy for things to just blur together). I think the more disappointing thing is the lack of a hot patch, but again that impacts timelines. However you can generally tell how much care a company gives a game by the willingness to fix some stuff that is clearly impactful to the game in a timely manner (then there of course goofier things like break dancing mechs, definitely the best bug/feature). I hardly think this is around the level of LRMaggeddon of yore though.

Edited by Quicksilver Kalasa, 25 August 2023 - 07:00 PM.