Dev Interaction
I realize that most folks would like to see more posts from the actual programmers on the forums. (I'm not a dev nor do I play one on TV.) While I empathize with that desire, you also need to look at it from the overall community perspective: Rumors start easily within the community without devs possibly adding to the fodder.
Our team is proud of the work they do and are more than happy to talk about it. They also like to talk about the possibilities of the game--all MMOs start out as a simple possibility, after all. That's also where the danger lies.
The current perfect example is the Zen Master Discipline. This made it out onto QA Test and it has been a recurring topic ever since. Several times now, I've stated that Zen Master is nowhere near entering the live game. However, I've seen posts as recent as today talking about it arriving in the next patch.
When a dev team representative gets in a discussion with people about the game, what that person says is often taken as set in stone. No amount of retraction or explanation will ever make that change in some people's minds. I guarantee that we'll see posts in the next few months asking what the heck happened to Zen Master which was "promised" back in May.
That being said, we are working on ways to get more time for dev interaction with all of you. The first step has been the weekly questions about the game which are going directly to the team. In the future, we'll see what other ways we can get them involved more directly.
This Week's Question
Speaking of the weekly focus question, this week we're talking about the Marketplace. We're aware that the whole system needs an overhaul to make it useful for both buyers and sellers. The designers are looking into both the long- and short-term things we can do to make the Marketplace work.
There have been many conversations on the forums about what would make the Marketplace work better. However, as I've mentioned to some folks, it's much more efficient to ask you to provide all your feedback in a single location (such as the Feedback queue in the CCR system) than it is to try and piece it together from all the forums.
So here's your chance to tell us directly about what you think the Marketplace should be. Please keep in mind that we're looking at both short- and long-term fixes and just because a change seems easy it doesn't mean we'll make the change (or that it actually is easy).
You can find this week's Focus Question on Broadcast Depth.
And since I know someone's going to mention it: The idea of ripping out the whole thing and starting from ground level has come up. Until we decide what's going to work best for the life of the game that will be held in reserve as a final resort.
Last Week's Focus Question (Bugs)
After collating the information in the Bugs thread, we came up with a pretty good list of what the current top issues are right now. The team did a review of the items and here's where things stand as of today.
- Hotbar doesn't remember Abilities no longer loaded by the player
Your feedback reopened an old discussion on this issue. If you'll notice, just swapping out Abilities won't necessarily remove unloaded ones from your hotbar. Instead, the system checks at different times to verify what Abilities you have loaded. When a check discovers the Ability is no longer loaded, the hotbar shortcut is removed.
Design took your feedback and we'll be implementing changes that leave unloaded Abilities on the hotbar, but grayed out.
- Marketplace problems
This covers a wide range of complaints about the current Marketplace. The team already has a handful of open issues for Marketplace improvements, but there's no silver bullet (at 11 or otherwise) to fix the whole system. The design team is currently investigating possibilities for short- and long-term fixes to the Marketplace.
- NPCs evading then returning to attack
This is one of the most difficult issues to deal with--it has come up several times and fixes have been put in that took care of those instances. Unfortunately, there are still situations where this can occur, but are difficult to reproduce. Any time we do come up with a consistent reproduction of this, (and other) Evade-state problems, the team begins working on a fix.
- Sound loop bug
The fix for this bug is currently slated for the next large patch. While your feedback on the prevalence of this issue made us want to push the fix forward, it's a fairly complex issue that requires significant testing before we release it.
You can, however, check out the fix for yourself on the current QA Test version.
- Stability problems
Stability is always a top concern for the engineers and problems can come from many sources and from either software or hardware. Whenever the engineers have changes that improve stability, they're hot issues. Unfortunately, they also tend to require the most testing and stability issues can be the most difficult to nail down.
- Getting stuck in Interlock
Like the Evade issues, we've already put in fixes for this problem, but evidently haven't covered every situation it happens in. We'll take care of these issues as we uncover them or as they're reported.
- Code bits don't autostack in the Code Archive
Code bits were always supposed to autostack in the Code Archive. However, there was an un-reproducible bug that prevented it from being implemented and so it never made it into live. Given your feedback, the team bumped this back up the priority list and will be looking to implement it in a future build.
- Mission completion-preventing bugs
Every major patch so far has had fixes for mission-blocking bugs and the next one is no exception. Sometimes we have a single issue that causes problems in many missions, which means one fix makes a big difference. Sometimes each issue is very specific--especially on storyline missions--which means the fixes aren't as noticeable. There is a fairly long list of mission fixes in the next large patch as well, and we'll keep making them as they come up.
- Lag issues
If anything, dealing with lag and perceived lag is more complicated than dealing with stability issues. There are so many possibilities as to the cause--network traffic, server issues, or even a client problem--that specific issues can be difficult to track down. Unless we find enough evidence to point to a specific problem, we can only hope to find code optimizations to relieve a player's issue.
- Martial Arts styles and Weapon selections aren't remembered in the hotbar
The devs were already on top of this one as well. A fix for this is slated for the next large patch.
In case you're wondering how the sound looping bug didn't end up on top, I only counted individual users mentioning an issue. While repeating "Sound looping" for an entire post gets the point across, I only count it once. ;)
The next large patch is already in testing and most of the fixes are available on QA Test. We're aiming to release the patch next week sometime, depending on how the testing goes. For a longer (if not complete) list of changes in the upcoming patch, check out the QA Test patch notes.
While we're always working on new content, you can see that current issues and improvements are also being worked on at the same time. I'll keep you updated on what's coming down the line as I get the information.
See you on the Other Side of the Looking Glass.
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Posted by The MxO Team
