I never said bugs were new, I said they have become widely acceptable in the industry (not by the users, but by the makers). Obviously with all you have written below, you already agree with this... Comment I heard from a like-minded individual such as yourself: "Now that we have the internet, it's cheaper to push out bugs onto customers and patch them later than it is to prevent them".
I'm sorry, but I side with one of the best programmers in the world on this Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob): "When did bugs become inevitable and acceptable? When did it become someone else's job to find them? Where are all the responsible engineers?"
What games are good is your opinion. I'm not even going to argue with you on this, because nobody will win. I will say however, I refuse to open my wallet for a product that doesn't work.
As I have already explained many times over, we have processes to counter this. Agile, Scrum, TDD, Design Patterns, SOLID principles, and so forth... If managers weren't constantly threatening the H1B's with deportation to quickly throw in some hacks together to make one big pile of hacked up crap, we wouldn't be in this mess.
This is the most irresponsible thing I have ever read from a programmer. If you have to fix bugs, the game is not finished. What company do you work for? I want to make sure I stay away from them.
Right, you're using the phrase "have become widely accepted" and that implies something has changed. But no change happened. It's always been this way. It actually is way easier/cheaper to release fixes nowadays but that doesn't really reduce the negative impact of bugs on players in a significant way.
Perfection is great to strive for. But the fastest way for us to seem like insufferable assholes is to demand it of others without a proven track record. Does Mr. Martin have a proven track record of large, complicated bug-free games? (Other software whose requirements are similarly volatile would be acceptable too, of course, though you'd be hard-pressed to find some.)
If you thought the statement was about my gaming preference, then you missed the point. The point was that bugs don't prevent a game from being fun.
Those processes are designed to reducebugs, but they cannot escape the inherent entropy of the system. It's unavoidable that there will be hard-to-find bugs. It's unavoidable that there will be hard-to-fix bugs. It's unavoidable that some bugs will impact the final product more than others. Those three factors conspire to create a system where there are inescapably harsh diminishing returns involved to tracking down the final bugs of a product. Stronger processes can get you further, but a trivial bug (low impact) which was found in the final hour before release (hard-to-find) and requires an entire re-write to fix (hard-to-fix) is never going to result in a decision to stop the release to fix the bug.
How is it irresponsible? I'm telling you (as a professional designer) this is what players demand. Players are not spending money on a 100%-bug-free Pong. They're spending money on new entertainment experiences.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I never said bugs were new, I said they have become widely acceptable in the industry (not by the users, but by the makers). Obviously with all you have written below, you already agree with this... Comment I heard from a like-minded individual such as yourself: "Now that we have the internet, it's cheaper to push out bugs onto customers and patch them later than it is to prevent them".
I'm sorry, but I side with one of the best programmers in the world on this Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob): "When did bugs become inevitable and acceptable? When did it become someone else's job to find them? Where are all the responsible engineers?"
What games are good is your opinion. I'm not even going to argue with you on this, because nobody will win. I will say however, I refuse to open my wallet for a product that doesn't work.
As I have already explained many times over, we have processes to counter this. Agile, Scrum, TDD, Design Patterns, SOLID principles, and so forth... If managers weren't constantly threatening the H1B's with deportation to quickly throw in some hacks together to make one big pile of hacked up crap, we wouldn't be in this mess.
This is the most irresponsible thing I have ever read from a programmer. If you have to fix bugs, the game is not finished. What company do you work for? I want to make sure I stay away from them.
Right, you're using the phrase "have become widely accepted" and that implies something has changed. But no change happened. It's always been this way. It actually is way easier/cheaper to release fixes nowadays but that doesn't really reduce the negative impact of bugs on players in a significant way.
Perfection is great to strive for. But the fastest way for us to seem like insufferable assholes is to demand it of others without a proven track record. Does Mr. Martin have a proven track record of large, complicated bug-free games? (Other software whose requirements are similarly volatile would be acceptable too, of course, though you'd be hard-pressed to find some.)
If you thought the statement was about my gaming preference, then you missed the point. The point was that bugs don't prevent a game from being fun.
Those processes are designed to reducebugs, but they cannot escape the inherent entropy of the system. It's unavoidable that there will be hard-to-find bugs. It's unavoidable that there will be hard-to-fix bugs. It's unavoidable that some bugs will impact the final product more than others. Those three factors conspire to create a system where there are inescapably harsh diminishing returns involved to tracking down the final bugs of a product. Stronger processes can get you further, but a trivial bug (low impact) which was found in the final hour before release (hard-to-find) and requires an entire re-write to fix (hard-to-fix) is never going to result in a decision to stop the release to fix the bug.
How is it irresponsible? I'm telling you (as a professional designer) this is what players demand. Players are not spending money on a 100%-bug-free Pong. They're spending money on new entertainment experiences.
I come from a different industry (online transactional Pension/Banking systems) and the Software engineering principles are no different, in fact its universal just as Axe suggests. With a good design and development pipeline the user will often request for features over bug fixes when they are close enough to the dev process to understand the costs involved. In fact 100% bug free code indicates poor prioritisation. You aim for 100%, but you will often not achieve it, this is healthy.
Refusing to release until 100% free is irresponsible and naive unless you happen to be building critical systems like missile guidance systems etc etc.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
One thing i will totally agree with the guy on the video is when people got paid for being serious testers the games worked better. Now they charge for testing and the games always suck and launch broken. People who pay for alpha/beta access dont test games, they are paying to play before anyone else. Period. And companies love to exploit that because clearly they are making money that way while not caring at all how bad the game is at launch.
Originally posted by RedAlert539 Well, the video started nicely with highlighting the points he would discuss(which were nice points) and then it took the downhill from that point on. He sounded like your average troll with too much cursing and too much of the usual "this sucks, that sucks" bullshit. Left after 3 mins since i couldn't stand him anymore.
Yep....me too
I don't understand why everyone has to talk about "the current state of" anything involving entertainment. It is what it is....like it, play/watch/listen. If not....don't.
I disagree. I think it's important to voice opinions good and bad, it's how we as players influence the industry. I like MMOs and want to see them succeed, but developers are just so short sighted these days. They sell promises, "Founder's packs", XP boosts, cosmetics. Instead they should be making quality games that sell themselves.
Expansion packs should never be "more of the same" but ALWAYS are. Why are new game-modes and activities NEVER added to games in any grand fashion. Usually minigame type things, new zones featuring more fetch quests, new dungeons, new raids, new pvp map etc. This is all just Fluff but people eat it up as "content".
Or they just make the game a grind, P2W-fest, and only cater to whales of this scene.
Now Playing: Bless / Summoners War Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
I come from a different industry (online transactional Pension/Banking systems) and the Software engineering principles are no different, in fact its universal just as Axe suggests. With a good design and development pipeline the user will often request for features over bug fixes when they are close enough to the dev process to understand the costs involved. In fact 100% bug free code indicates poor prioritisation. You aim for 100%, but you will often not achieve it, this is healthy.
Refusing to release until 100% free is irresponsible and naive unless you happen to be building critical systems like missile guidance systems etc etc.
Actually (and to back up what you and Axe have stated with this particular point), it is impossible to have a 100% bug free code. This is based on Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proved that no finite set of rules (of which, programs are a finite set of rules), can even fully describe basic arithmetic while still being internally consistent. If basic arithmetic can not even be dealt with, how is it that anyone would think that any other system could be? This is why bugs, glitches, and backdoors for hacking are never 100% secure. It is physically impossible for mortals to accomplish. It is for this same reason that I will never trust automatic cars that drive for us (although that is based on my ability to drive, most people would probably be better off), unless I were drunk.
Oh, and to state when this Incompleteness Theorem was proven, it was somewhere between 1910-1920's.
Well his comments are accurate,there is a lot of lying and bull shitting going on and extends well beyond Steam.
Early access is a huge problem right now,developers are misusing this term and big time,the law really needs to step in.
When you are offering a pile of crap for 20/30/40 bucks that is not early access that is a PURCHASE and a SALE of a product a very bad product.
Steam SHOULD be monitoring these gimmicks because they don't like charge backs.Well then get your act together and make sure people are not buying shareware or games that a developer has no intention of turning into a game.The Zombie games he mentions are big time proof,TONS of those games have had nothing done beyond the initial cash grab and are STILL for sale on Steam.
You know why Steam doesn't care?They are TOO big,a couple pissed off customers they can afford to lose,they likely already made a ton of money off of you.Steam knows it can sell any trash and piss off tons of customers and their business will keep on trucking.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Your entitled to your opinion but none of those are truly questionable or false allot of them started out sub based like eq2 and others and they are not making enough thats why they go f2p 90 percent of the time. Allot of people who do work for companies to defend these things and are completely biased, especially people who simply have allot of money for pay to win mmorpgs.
You seem eager to disagree with me, yet you haven't really said why.
For example you're saying here MMORPGs go F2P "90% of the time" because they're "not making enough", which doesn't contradict what I said about it being the stronger business model. In fact you're basically saying exactly the same thing as me (they're not making enough with the weaker model, so they switch to the stronger model.) This contradicts your earlier post where you implied they go F2P because of your "points above".
These facts are questionable because until you have shown evidence of them being true, we can't treat them as facts. Without evidence, your claim that they're facts is flimsy and weak.
First of all I waited a long time before you replied to me if anyone who is eager to disagree here its you, and it does contradict because it just shows they are not doing very well anymore and its time to go f2p some mmorpgs did not go f2p till some years later down the road, games like eq1 and others never needed to go f2p because they did stuff right instead of trying to appeal to everyone and making a horrid buss model. If you watch the development of lotro or eq2 you quickly see old players leaving due to them making everything easier, stripping rpg elements, and making a worse cash shop, so it basically turns into a more of a single player rush to endgame quick scam cash shop mmo. The reason they keep going more casual is because they are loosing there other fanbase which shows how desperate they become.
Why do you think eso and tsw went buy to play? Because they are doing much better then the f2p, hek wow is still not doing to bad still being sub based, while others on this site go further down the ranking list and becoming less popular. And I really dont care what you think of as facts ive played these games I been playing mmorpgs since the 90s ive been gaming long before then and I know exactly whats going on, I certainly dont need your approval or anyone elses.
Unmm.. I'm pretty sure TSW and ESO has cash shops. So you pay more than F2P since it is now CS + box. Wow has a cash shop as well. So wow is CS+sub+box.
No, you really don't know what's going on cause you can't even bother to use g
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
One thing i will totally agree with the guy on the video is when people got paid for being serious testers the games worked better. Now they charge for testing and the games always suck and launch broken. People who pay for alpha/beta access dont test games, they are paying to play before anyone else. Period. And companies love to exploit that because clearly they are making money that way while not caring at all how bad the game is at launch.
This is one of the biggest problems in gaming now. Its these people willing to pay to play games in early stages of crap. So these companies are already making money on this crap. And these gamers willing to do this crap are at as much fault as anyone. Online games are getting worse with every launch. I find myself playing older games now more than ever. One thing in that video stood out to me. The fact that no big AAA U.S. game companies are making mmo's. They are all coming from the east or are indie games.
Originally posted by JohnP0100 Unmm.. I'm pretty sure TSW and ESO has cash shops. So you pay more than F2P since it is now CS + box. Wow has a cash shop as well. So wow is CS+sub+box.
No, you really don't know what's going on cause you can't even bother to use g
I play tsw and the cash shop is just clothes and dlc when they release it thats it and boosts but you really dont need them at all, eso im pretty sure its the same and in the secret world very few costumes or sets look much better then the in game sutff you can already get. You dont have to pay anything for vanity so you really dont know what your talking about.
When the government steps in and starts regulating the industry, we will have "professionals" like you to thank for this.
Again, what company do you work for? I want to make sure I stay away from games with the attitude of "jam shit in & rip shit out"
You're crazy if you think that's even a remote possibility. The fact that you aren't playing a 100%-bug-free version of Pong is support of what I've described: by your own actions you're choosing to purchase new games, not to stick with some older bug-free game. This is because the value of gaming lies in whether companies deliver fun experiences, not in whether their products are absolutely bug-free (which is of course a good goal but an unrealistic reality, as anyone familiar with software development will tell you.)
I won't reveal the company I work for, because people are unable to distinguish companies from individuals.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You know little about softwar engineering, have you red nothing in ths thread, are you incapable of learning? Software engineers do aim for 109% bug free code, but professional development means making pragmatic decisions to not go after bugs where the opportunity cost is too high.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
It would be nice if MMORPG could be more like a virtual RPG life simulator where the players are given the world as their sandbox and they make the stories and adventures unfold.
Let the story telling be left for the single player games or co op gaming with a few friend to play through an RPG as a small group and enjoy the story. Trying to fit a Balders Gate for example into a MMO does not work, it does work making it Co op though for as many players as there were member for a group you'd put together in a single player like Balders.
Maybe even take a page out of Dark Souls book and make a certain part of the game have a dungeon where a group from another game enters too and compete for the dungeon etc, have places in the game where two groups of players games crosses paths and affects another another.
This is much better right for RPG story telling, and keeping MMO about the players. Smart Ai mobs in these worlds would go a long way too. Games like Shards that's letting people in for Alpha testing seems to be popular, each person can build their own realm and all the player made realms get linked together which you can adventure through and enjoy other players creations, and of course minecraft games have been popular. Give player the world and they'll do the rest for MMO.
"That is not even western, that is like from Paris or Germany"
Stuff like that makes me more sad then the state of MMO's tbh The government should do something about the education in the US instead of doing something about lying in the MMO industry.
However its hard to stop this. Went to the movies with a child of 8. Watched the movie the minions and everything in the candy store was minions this and that. Tic-tacs in a box with a minion on it tasting like banana. Minion shaped candy. It works with kids and still works with adults.
Lying should already be covered by your rights as a consumer. I believe in most westen countries it is. If they lied, then you can claim false advertisement. The problem is that most people do not know there rights and are to lazy to do something with it. The lazyness is what companies hope for and use (like the free 30 days trails that you have to stop yourself or they automatically continue)
Originally posted by Bladestrom You know little about softwar engineering, have you red nothing in ths thread, are you incapable of learning? Software engineers do aim for 109% bug free code, but professional development means making pragmatic decisions to not go after bugs where the opportunity cost is too high.
At what point does this become an excuse for a "professional" to write and deliver slop that doesn't work half the time?
you've went from 100% bug free to 'doesn't work half the time' So tell me what modern AAA mmorpg fails to work for 50% of its running time.
I will give you a concrete example, WOW at one point had 180 thousand bugs (yes 180k) being tracked while live, do you think blizzard devs are being irresponsible by continuing to produce new content instead of stopping all development until these bugs are all investigated and closed/fixed? read this article then maybe you will understand. And Yes, 180k bugs does suggest the code base is less than DRY but this is a great example, customers want content in WOW, it, and no-one appart from the developers care about these bugs, customers don't see the level of bugs as an issue.
Originally posted by Bladestrom You know little about softwar engineering, have you red nothing in ths thread, are you incapable of learning? Software engineers do aim for 109% bug free code, but professional development means making pragmatic decisions to not go after bugs where the opportunity cost is too high.
At what point does this become an excuse for a "professional" to write and deliver slop that doesn't work half the time?
you've went from 100% bug free to 'doesn't work half the time' So tell me what modern AAA mmorpg fails to work for 50% of its running time.
I will give you a concrete example, WOW at one point had 180 thousand bugs (yes 180k) being tracked while live, do you think blizzard devs are being irresponsible by continuing to produce new content instead of stopping all development until these bugs are all investigated and closed/fixed? read this article then maybe you will understand. And Yes, 180k bugs does suggest the code base is less than DRY but this is a great example, customers want content in WOW, it, and no-one appart from the developers care about these bugs, customers don't see the level of bugs as an issue.
Again, these were the words axe put in my mouth. What I said was:
If you have to fix bugs, the game is not finished.
Just because a product is shipped does not mean it is finished. If a product is shipped unfinished, developers need to take responsibility for this. If you really want a list of bugs I think should be fixed before released I'll tell you:
Characters head fails to instantiate with the body and rolls off into the air.
Physics get messed up to the point where your character starts doing weird floating animations and cannot get back to the normal footing state.
Going through objects and getting stuck in them.
Important quests bugging out.
Items disappearing from your inventory.
Instances bugging out to the point where you cannot exit them, and cannot move forward. Delete your character.
entire cities disappearing and re-appearing.
I could go on, but what is the point. If you can't see this, I'm just wasting my time.
Again, with bugs like these failing to make it feel like a game I can immerse myself into, and more like I'm a QA tester, why should I pay for this?
Then don't. Where you see horror, disaster, calamity others don't or OBVIOUSLY it would be prioritised by the dev company. This is actually a rant about a game masked behind a pseudo technical discussion though. Put it this way i don't know any mmo where the above happens so much that it ruins my experience, if it did I would stop playing because it wouldn't be fun right. I remember falling regularly through the floor in WOW - in several expansions, e.g remember Ulduar? falling through the floor when you used blink spell was never fixed, but Ulduar is finished.
As i said and you have chosen to ignore, this is about skilled development and testing where people are capable of identifying the opportunity costs involved.
Think on this, there are professional QA testers involved in the testing of these products and I work with many QA testers and like developers they do care about quality, these games are no different.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Originally posted by Bladestrom You know little about softwar engineering, have you red nothing in ths thread, are you incapable of learning? Software engineers do aim for 109% bug free code, but professional development means making pragmatic decisions to not go after bugs where the opportunity cost is too high.
At what point does this become an excuse for a "professional" to write and deliver slop that doesn't work half the time?
you've went from 100% bug free to 'doesn't work half the time' So tell me what modern AAA mmorpg fails to work for 50% of its running time.
I will give you a concrete example, WOW at one point had 180 thousand bugs (yes 180k) being tracked while live, do you think blizzard devs are being irresponsible by continuing to produce new content instead of stopping all development until these bugs are all investigated and closed/fixed? read this article then maybe you will understand. And Yes, 180k bugs does suggest the code base is less than DRY but this is a great example, customers want content in WOW, it, and no-one appart from the developers care about these bugs, customers don't see the level of bugs as an issue.
Again, these were the words axe put in my mouth. What I said was:
If you have to fix bugs, the game is not finished.
Just because a product is shipped does not mean it is finished. If a product is shipped unfinished, developers need to take responsibility for this. If you really want a list of bugs I think should be fixed before released I'll tell you:
Characters head fails to instantiate with the body and rolls off into the air.
Physics get messed up to the point where your character starts doing weird floating animations and cannot get back to the normal footing state.
Going through objects and getting stuck in them.
Important quests bugging out.
Items disappearing from your inventory.
Instances bugging out to the point where you cannot exit them, and cannot move forward. Delete your character.
entire cities disappearing and re-appearing.
I could go on, but what is the point. If you can't see this, I'm just wasting my time.
Again, with bugs like these failing to make it feel like a game I can immerse myself into, and more like I'm a QA tester, why should I pay for this?
Then don't. Where you see horror, disaster, calamity others don't or OBVIOUSLY it would be prioritised by the dev company. This is actually a rant about a game masked behind a pseudo technical discussion though. Put it this way i don't know any mmo where the above happens so much that it ruins my experience, if it did I would stop playing because it wouldn't be fun right. I remember falling regularly through the floor in WOW - in several expansions, e.g remember Ulduar? falling through the floor when you used blink spell was never fixed, but Ulduar is finished.
As i said and you have chosen to ignore, this is about skilled development and testing where people are capable of identifying the opportunity costs involved.
Think on this, there are professional QA testers involved in the testing of these products and I work with many QA testers and like developers they do care about quality, these games are no different.
I'm not playing them. That is my whole point. I won't open my wallet for bad games. To answer you're WoW question, I never played it during bc and above. I played vanilla WoW 2 weeks (because my roomate pulled me into it), and another few weeks a couple months later when my friends wanted me to play with them. So I don't even know what "Ulduar" is. I don't follow WoW, because pretty much everything about the game I don't like (which I have already listed in my other thread). But the WoW and my disgust for it is a discussion for another topic.
Back on topic. The excuse of it's a business is a scapegoat. Opportunity costs are a scapegoat. What ever happened to developers creating games because they liked doing it, not because it was just good money? This attitude of "it's took costly to make stable games", and "lets just ship shit in and rip shit out" is one big reason why games are just shit. And even worse, you blame the players for not buying into it.
So yes, I do feel the need to point out this charade, because as many many posters have already expressed our discontent and disgust with the genre ("as I/we/they said and you have chosen to ignore"). We want to play a game, not a business. If you can't realize this, then I'm done arguing with you.
Well myself and others have tried to tell you why decisions are made re bug fixes. You said you were a QA so you should understand the decision making process but your opinion appears to be based on a naive view on how development works and a cynical view of the world at large. Ofc gamers want games that was my whole point, gamers want fun games, ALL games have bugs, all software has bugs. Great games have bugs, poor games have bugs. Pick the great games and be happy and avoid the overly buggy ones - its easy enough since all the AAA mmo are rock solid.
edit, ah your the guy that's hates everything after lineage and was going to teach yourself to be a programmer and create your own mmo, now i understand.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
This is anecdotal, empathise with the development team and understand why they made the decision to ship that bug (or maybe you are truly in a bad company)
looking at your sig and history you have an overly cynical view of the world. This is a generalisation. The fact is GW2, ESO, TSW, FF14, Eve, Wildstar and others are all high quality high budget AAA mmoRPG that millions of people love so you are incorrect, ipso facto.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Again, you put words in my mouth. What I am saying is a developer should look at bugs as an unfinished product, and react in horror in recognizing how that bug got in there. Having bugs is acceptable, as long as you take responsibility. That is what professionals do, They take responsibility for mistakes they make. They don't just make a mistake, and call it finished with an unhappy customer who already paid them.
What I find unacceptable is bugs being released with a product that cause it to go completely unstable. No no no no no, keep it stable all the time! It's always right, it's always stable, and it should always work! What are we paying you for?!?!?!
And yes, there are companies out there who operate with honesty and integrity who value professionalism as #1 trait:
Game companies can't afford to treat every bug as making the game unfinished and unshippable.
They do treat bugs as serious. The seriousness is relative to perceived player impact.
Perceived impact isn't always perfect. Sometimes an issue seems small but isn't (and vice-versa.)
Not every bug is found. For Mechwarrior 4 there was a large server room for config testing that probably sat ~24 people, uncomfortably close together, with 2 computers each, and a switchbox to switch between them. Every single one of those machines tested a different combination of videocard, RAM, etc. Yet even with that rather staggering investment in config testing (only affordable in a large company using it as a shared resource for multiple teams) there were still config bugs.
Not every youtube video is a widespread problem. A single player can record unique texture corruption that can only happen with his particular videocard overheating in a weird way, and in that case the
So between these factors, hopefully you begin to understand that while aiming for zero bugs is of course great, it's obviously not realistically going to happen.
8th Light's video went craftsmanship, craftsmanship, craftsmanship, and then in their own promo video they displayed a code typo ("new relase"). Quality.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
Right, you're using the phrase "have become widely accepted" and that implies something has changed. But no change happened. It's always been this way. It actually is way easier/cheaper to release fixes nowadays but that doesn't really reduce the negative impact of bugs on players in a significant way.
Perfection is great to strive for. But the fastest way for us to seem like insufferable assholes is to demand it of others without a proven track record. Does Mr. Martin have a proven track record of large, complicated bug-free games? (Other software whose requirements are similarly volatile would be acceptable too, of course, though you'd be hard-pressed to find some.)
If you thought the statement was about my gaming preference, then you missed the point. The point was that bugs don't prevent a game from being fun.
Those processes are designed to reduce bugs, but they cannot escape the inherent entropy of the system. It's unavoidable that there will be hard-to-find bugs. It's unavoidable that there will be hard-to-fix bugs. It's unavoidable that some bugs will impact the final product more than others. Those three factors conspire to create a system where there are inescapably harsh diminishing returns involved to tracking down the final bugs of a product. Stronger processes can get you further, but a trivial bug (low impact) which was found in the final hour before release (hard-to-find) and requires an entire re-write to fix (hard-to-fix) is never going to result in a decision to stop the release to fix the bug.
How is it irresponsible? I'm telling you (as a professional designer) this is what players demand. Players are not spending money on a 100%-bug-free Pong. They're spending money on new entertainment experiences.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I come from a different industry (online transactional Pension/Banking systems) and the Software engineering principles are no different, in fact its universal just as Axe suggests. With a good design and development pipeline the user will often request for features over bug fixes when they are close enough to the dev process to understand the costs involved. In fact 100% bug free code indicates poor prioritisation. You aim for 100%, but you will often not achieve it, this is healthy.
Refusing to release until 100% free is irresponsible and naive unless you happen to be building critical systems like missile guidance systems etc etc.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
One thing i will totally agree with the guy on the video is when people got paid for being serious testers the games worked better. Now they charge for testing and the games always suck and launch broken. People who pay for alpha/beta access dont test games, they are paying to play before anyone else. Period. And companies love to exploit that because clearly they are making money that way while not caring at all how bad the game is at launch.
I disagree. I think it's important to voice opinions good and bad, it's how we as players influence the industry. I like MMOs and want to see them succeed, but developers are just so short sighted these days. They sell promises, "Founder's packs", XP boosts, cosmetics. Instead they should be making quality games that sell themselves.
Expansion packs should never be "more of the same" but ALWAYS are. Why are new game-modes and activities NEVER added to games in any grand fashion. Usually minigame type things, new zones featuring more fetch quests, new dungeons, new raids, new pvp map etc. This is all just Fluff but people eat it up as "content".
Or they just make the game a grind, P2W-fest, and only cater to whales of this scene.
Looking forward to: Crowfall / Lost Ark / Black Desert Mobile
Actually (and to back up what you and Axe have stated with this particular point), it is impossible to have a 100% bug free code. This is based on Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, which proved that no finite set of rules (of which, programs are a finite set of rules), can even fully describe basic arithmetic while still being internally consistent. If basic arithmetic can not even be dealt with, how is it that anyone would think that any other system could be? This is why bugs, glitches, and backdoors for hacking are never 100% secure. It is physically impossible for mortals to accomplish. It is for this same reason that I will never trust automatic cars that drive for us (although that is based on my ability to drive, most people would probably be better off), unless I were drunk.
Oh, and to state when this Incompleteness Theorem was proven, it was somewhere between 1910-1920's.
Well his comments are accurate,there is a lot of lying and bull shitting going on and extends well beyond Steam.
Early access is a huge problem right now,developers are misusing this term and big time,the law really needs to step in.
When you are offering a pile of crap for 20/30/40 bucks that is not early access that is a PURCHASE and a SALE of a product a very bad product.
Steam SHOULD be monitoring these gimmicks because they don't like charge backs.Well then get your act together and make sure people are not buying shareware or games that a developer has no intention of turning into a game.The Zombie games he mentions are big time proof,TONS of those games have had nothing done beyond the initial cash grab and are STILL for sale on Steam.
You know why Steam doesn't care?They are TOO big,a couple pissed off customers they can afford to lose,they likely already made a ton of money off of you.Steam knows it can sell any trash and piss off tons of customers and their business will keep on trucking.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
First of all I waited a long time before you replied to me if anyone who is eager to disagree here its you, and it does contradict because it just shows they are not doing very well anymore and its time to go f2p some mmorpgs did not go f2p till some years later down the road, games like eq1 and others never needed to go f2p because they did stuff right instead of trying to appeal to everyone and making a horrid buss model. If you watch the development of lotro or eq2 you quickly see old players leaving due to them making everything easier, stripping rpg elements, and making a worse cash shop, so it basically turns into a more of a single player rush to endgame quick scam cash shop mmo. The reason they keep going more casual is because they are loosing there other fanbase which shows how desperate they become.
Why do you think eso and tsw went buy to play? Because they are doing much better then the f2p, hek wow is still not doing to bad still being sub based, while others on this site go further down the ranking list and becoming less popular. And I really dont care what you think of as facts ive played these games I been playing mmorpgs since the 90s ive been gaming long before then and I know exactly whats going on, I certainly dont need your approval or anyone elses.
No, you really don't know what's going on cause you can't even bother to use g
It shows what PvP games are really all about, and no, it's not about more realism and immersion. It's about cowards hiding behind a screen to they can bully other defenseless players without any risk of direct retaliation like there would be if they acted like asshats in "real life". -Jean-Luc_Picard
Life itself is a game. So why shouldn't your game be ruined? - justmemyselfandi
This is one of the biggest problems in gaming now. Its these people willing to pay to play games in early stages of crap. So these companies are already making money on this crap. And these gamers willing to do this crap are at as much fault as anyone. Online games are getting worse with every launch. I find myself playing older games now more than ever. One thing in that video stood out to me. The fact that no big AAA U.S. game companies are making mmo's. They are all coming from the east or are indie games.
I play tsw and the cash shop is just clothes and dlc when they release it thats it and boosts but you really dont need them at all, eso im pretty sure its the same and in the secret world very few costumes or sets look much better then the in game sutff you can already get. You dont have to pay anything for vanity so you really dont know what your talking about.
You're crazy if you think that's even a remote possibility. The fact that you aren't playing a 100%-bug-free version of Pong is support of what I've described: by your own actions you're choosing to purchase new games, not to stick with some older bug-free game. This is because the value of gaming lies in whether companies deliver fun experiences, not in whether their products are absolutely bug-free (which is of course a good goal but an unrealistic reality, as anyone familiar with software development will tell you.)
I won't reveal the company I work for, because people are unable to distinguish companies from individuals.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
+1 for being the most factual statement seen out of this one
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I like this guy!
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. - Carl Sagan
It would be nice if MMORPG could be more like a virtual RPG life simulator where the players are given the world as their sandbox and they make the stories and adventures unfold.
Let the story telling be left for the single player games or co op gaming with a few friend to play through an RPG as a small group and enjoy the story. Trying to fit a Balders Gate for example into a MMO does not work, it does work making it Co op though for as many players as there were member for a group you'd put together in a single player like Balders.
Maybe even take a page out of Dark Souls book and make a certain part of the game have a dungeon where a group from another game enters too and compete for the dungeon etc, have places in the game where two groups of players games crosses paths and affects another another.
This is much better right for RPG story telling, and keeping MMO about the players. Smart Ai mobs in these worlds would go a long way too. Games like Shards that's letting people in for Alpha testing seems to be popular, each person can build their own realm and all the player made realms get linked together which you can adventure through and enjoy other players creations, and of course minecraft games have been popular. Give player the world and they'll do the rest for MMO.
Yeah, well y'know, life is a dynamic process, "older and wiser", and all that stuff...
Or maybe he realised that his viewers will get bored if he keeps singing the same tune ?
"That is not even western, that is like from Paris or Germany"
Stuff like that makes me more sad then the state of MMO's tbh
The government should do something about the education in the US instead of doing something about lying in the MMO industry.
However its hard to stop this. Went to the movies with a child of 8. Watched the movie the minions and everything in the candy store was minions this and that. Tic-tacs in a box with a minion on it tasting like banana. Minion shaped candy. It works with kids and still works with adults.
Lying should already be covered by your rights as a consumer. I believe in most westen countries it is. If they lied, then you can claim false advertisement. The problem is that most people do not know there rights and are to lazy to do something with it. The lazyness is what companies hope for and use (like the free 30 days trails that you have to stop yourself or they automatically continue)
you've went from 100% bug free to 'doesn't work half the time' So tell me what modern AAA mmorpg fails to work for 50% of its running time.
I will give you a concrete example, WOW at one point had 180 thousand bugs (yes 180k) being tracked while live, do you think blizzard devs are being irresponsible by continuing to produce new content instead of stopping all development until these bugs are all investigated and closed/fixed? read this article then maybe you will understand. And Yes, 180k bugs does suggest the code base is less than DRY but this is a great example, customers want content in WOW, it, and no-one appart from the developers care about these bugs, customers don't see the level of bugs as an issue.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/17/blizzard-is-tracking-180-000-bugs-in-wow/
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Then don't. Where you see horror, disaster, calamity others don't or OBVIOUSLY it would be prioritised by the dev company. This is actually a rant about a game masked behind a pseudo technical discussion though. Put it this way i don't know any mmo where the above happens so much that it ruins my experience, if it did I would stop playing because it wouldn't be fun right. I remember falling regularly through the floor in WOW - in several expansions, e.g remember Ulduar? falling through the floor when you used blink spell was never fixed, but Ulduar is finished.
As i said and you have chosen to ignore, this is about skilled development and testing where people are capable of identifying the opportunity costs involved.
Think on this, there are professional QA testers involved in the testing of these products and I work with many QA testers and like developers they do care about quality, these games are no different.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Well myself and others have tried to tell you why decisions are made re bug fixes. You said you were a QA so you should understand the decision making process but your opinion appears to be based on a naive view on how development works and a cynical view of the world at large. Ofc gamers want games that was my whole point, gamers want fun games, ALL games have bugs, all software has bugs. Great games have bugs, poor games have bugs. Pick the great games and be happy and avoid the overly buggy ones - its easy enough since all the AAA mmo are rock solid.
edit, ah your the guy that's hates everything after lineage and was going to teach yourself to be a programmer and create your own mmo, now i understand.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
This is anecdotal, empathise with the development team and understand why they made the decision to ship that bug (or maybe you are truly in a bad company)
looking at your sig and history you have an overly cynical view of the world. This is a generalisation. The fact is GW2, ESO, TSW, FF14, Eve, Wildstar and others are all high quality high budget AAA mmoRPG that millions of people love so you are incorrect, ipso facto.
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I couldnt care less about the status of Steam ... if your game requires Steam, I'm not gonna play it, end of story.
Life is too short to support police state fantasies of some rich people.