Ryzom

don't be fooled by appearances or my hopes, i'm aware this could break down any minute. i'll simply stick this out to the end, and if it doesn't work, too bad.
thing is, this is the only mmorpg i've been interested in so far, except for ragnarok online, and if nevrax folds, i'll shrug and return there =)

When people speak of 'replicating a bug' in terms of fixing it, that does NOT mean getting a wrong name once in a target box -- that means getting predictable results when trying to replicate it. What appears in the target box is anything BUT predictable. The experienced programmers here aren't lying or anything -- bugs can be this hard to track down. Some have said it wasn't like this before the patch. Nevrox would have been faced with these options:

1) Revert all the code in patch 2 and start programming the entire patch again from scratch. Weeks of work for many people.

2) Delay the patch for an indeterminate amount of time (possibly a number of weeks, yes, WEEKS for some bugs that seem simple to us players, just like the old PoK crashes in everquest).

3) Release the patch as planned with a bug that's cosmetic and doesn't affect play.

So ... which would you choose?

aelvana wrote:When people speak of 'replicating a bug' in terms of fixing it, that does NOT mean getting a wrong name once in a target box -- that means getting predictable results when trying to replicate it. What appears in the target box is anything BUT predictable. The experienced programmers here aren't lying or anything -- bugs can be this hard to track down. Some have said it wasn't like this before the patch. Nevrox would have been faced with these options:

1) Revert all the code in patch 2 and start programming the entire patch again from scratch. Weeks of work for many people.

2) Delay the patch for an indeterminate amount of time (possibly a number of weeks, yes, WEEKS for some bugs that seem simple to us players, just like the old PoK crashes in everquest).

3) Release the patch as planned with a bug that's cosmetic and doesn't affect play.

So ... which would you choose?

I would have chosen to delay. I don't think it's wise to release a patch with known, and very obvious, bugs. It makes the whole game feel unpolished and unstable, and tends to drive players away. It's unproffessional. Also, I agree with another poster who noted that bugs like this may lead to other unpredictable effects ("if they don’t know how to fix it, they don’t know what all it affects.").

Doctor Z.

aelvana wrote:When people speak of 'replicating a bug' in terms of fixing it, that does NOT mean getting a wrong name once in a target box -- that means getting predictable results when trying to replicate it. What appears in the target box is anything BUT predictable. The experienced programmers here aren't lying or anything -- bugs can be this hard to track down. Some have said it wasn't like this before the patch. Nevrox would have been faced with these options:

1) Revert all the code in patch 2 and start programming the entire patch again from scratch. Weeks of work for many people.

2) Delay the patch for an indeterminate amount of time (possibly a number of weeks, yes, WEEKS for some bugs that seem simple to us players, just like the old PoK crashes in everquest).

3) Release the patch as planned with a bug that's cosmetic and doesn't affect play.

So ... which would you choose?

I would have to say, fix the bug before releasing, because it does look bad for them to leave in such an obvious defect. I know how some bugs can be difficult to fix, or even find, having worked as a software tester for 4 years, but something that obviously a defect should've never made it to the live servers, IMO.

I know at least one person that quite night before last.
Cancelled the subscription and was gone with the wind.

Reason - endless bugs and what seems to be an inability of dev team to fix it. near absense or long vacation of a QA team.... you get the point

zukor wrote:I would have chosen to delay. I don't think it's wise to release a patch with known, and very obvious, bugs. It makes the whole game feel unpolished and unstable, and tends to drive players away. It's unproffessional. Also, I agree with another poster who noted that bugs like this may lead to other unpredictable effects ("if they don’t know how to fix it, they don’t know what all it affects.").

Doctor Z.