Bits from Jessica : Content, information and undocumented features

[grimjim]

To my mind...

The original addition of bulk to tickets was undocumented but intentional.

The intent was to give tickets bulk.

This has now been reduced due to the adverse effect the higher level bulk had on gameplay, but they ARE going to retain bulk.

Personally I think 0.1 would have been far better than 0.2, but I'm not going to quibble any more at this stage.

The problem here is with communication.

If we'd had an announcement or poll from staff.

"We are adding bulk to tickets to make them a more valued item within the game and increase the importance and difficulty of remote locations. What are your opinions on the matter and the bulk of the tickets?"

We could have had our say and the tickets could have been implemented at the more acceptable level from the start.

Much like Patch One, the initial changes went too far and then we get a speedy ramp back.

I would have thought the melee problem would have been addressed first though and patchnoted if it had been.

[helbreat]

oh sorry, was'nt qutoteing or refing your post, just pointing out the release note as i saw it pop up in the patch notes.

I understand you post perfectly and agree completly.

hehe opps

[sehracii]

The problem here is with communication.

I agree. We can deal with bulk on tickets, just tell us why.

I would have thought the melee problem would have been addressed first though and patchnoted if it had been.

And I agree with that too... this is a serious bug that can cause deaths, yet I can't imagine it's that hard to address.

Has anyone verified in-game if this bug is still there or was it fixed and not mentioned?

[helbreat]

i asked in klients and tigane said the stuff in the patch notes was fixed

i gather from this the melee bug is still around o.0

[helbreat]

just heard from someone in-game a timmari was killing 2 zerx pretty easily using the melee bug so it is still around

[blaah]

I would have thought the melee problem would have been addressed first though and patchnoted if it had been.

those notes are for patch 75.. but patch notes for (72)/73/74 are missing

(yep, useless information)

[mmatto]

those notes are for patch 75.. but patch notes for (72)/73/74 are missing

75 is just an internal number. Maybe 73 & 74 were essentially same patch but did not go past internal testing because of errors.

[dazman76]

75 is just an internal number. Maybe 73 & 74 were essentially same patch but did not go past internal testing because of errors.

Absolutely Nevrax use 'build numbers' rather than version numbers, i.e. Build 74 instead of version 74.01

Patches will go through development, testing, fixing, testing etc. - to avoid internal confusion, each and every release given to testers must have a new version number. So as Mikos said, these lost versions will have failed testing for some reason or another, and required more work - hence they finally appear as version/build 75.

[blaah]

So as Mikos said, these lost versions will have failed testing for some reason or another, and required more work - hence they finally appear as version/build 75.

hehe, didnt actually expect answer and i know what/why that number is, but ty for answers

[Jessica Mulligan]

OK, so I've been talking to people here about why the ticket bulk change was made. As is usually the case in the situations, it resulted from the effects of another change and was done with the best of intentions. Where we fell down was in neglecting to discuss it with the players beforehand, because the change makes a certain amount of sense when viewed in context.

Briefly:

This patch expanded the inventory slots available, as 250 was too few (as you told us more than once, ). At the same time, tickets were made stackable.

Thus, instead of having 250 slots for 250 total items, the expansion of inventory blew that out to 500 slots of stackable items, with a limit of 999 per stack.

At this point, we hit a dilemma… and this was where we made our mistake. There has been some discussion internally on whether we could and should remove the inventory limit entirely. The problem with that is, if we did it, everything would need to have some bulk, if just to prevent us having to buy 100 terabytes of storage to hold everyone’s inventory and slowing the game to a screeching halt as the server loaded it in and saved it back.

So, in case we decided to remove the limit entirely later on, we slapped some bulk onto the tickets and moved on to other patch items. Unfortunately, the change was not broadcast out internally or to the players, so there was no discussion about it.

What should have happened was:

A) We realize everything needs some bulk to keep our options on removing limits open for the future;

B) We post that on the web site and discuss it with you, so you can point out things we might have missed or overlooked;

C) Once we’ve seen all the debate, we make a decision;

D) We tell you what that decision is and implement it in a patch.

In this case, we skipped steps B) and C) and about half of D). On the bright side, we got step A) 100% correct <grin>.

Seriously, though, one of our challenges as a development team is obviously to intercept these knock-on decisions before they are implemented and get them posted for discussion. The four-step information process posted yesterday for discussion is a good start, I think.