Pls turbine take your time with future updates!
People are paying money for playing this game and so they should get a working product for it. After finding some bugs myself (major ballad bug on my minstrel for example) and reading around in the forums i think it was a really bad mistake to release this update.
-Bugged skills on several classes
-Nerfed crafted gear
-Jumping two handed weapons
-Changes in caracter settings (fat female hobbits (no offence))
Just to give a few points...
The crystals are obviously just a new way to make more money from the players (i didnt see anyone complaining about too low base damage or healing raiting), or should be puchaseable via skirmish camp.
As well i am personally a bit dissappointed about the new loot from Fornost lvl 75 t2 CM. The lootquality is way too bad considering it isnt that easy or quick to do; each of the isengard instances on t1 contains far better loot. Even though it is a nice instance am afraid at the end hardly anyone will run it after some time (like the GB´s) and ppl will just keep on grinding out Foundry and RoF.
In general i think the most people dont mind waiting for another 2 weeks to get an update with maybe only half of the bugs. After all i would like to know if there is anything else planned, or if 'Riders of Rohan' is going to be the next update in the end game content.
All updates or new editions are released according to the release dates of their competitors rather than the status of the update or expansion itself. The last big update came out when SWTOR was released, this one corresponded to diablo, and the next new large update or expansion will be released when Guild Wars 2 comes out. I believe those in charge of telling the developers to release something assume they can always fix the bugs later rather than worry about it at release. I mean why would they need more than a week on Bullroarer to test everything. Of course each new bug compounds on the past until over time the number of bugs is quite extensive - though the official known problem list appears quite small.
I personally think Turbine is trying to "take out two birds with one stone". They need to launch now to keep up with the competition and by putting it on their live servers they will be able to identify a wider range of bugs over a shorter period of time. Since essentially, their entire customer base is currently testing it!
Welden
Character is currently retired since Dec 2008 in response to account being hacked.
+Rep for OP, I logged onto the forums to open a thread like this myself.
Put simply Update 7 wasn't ready for release yet IMO. There's an unacceptable number of glaring bugs, mostly visual, that should be screaming to delay the release:
Weapons are visibly behind player movement. This is most obvious on 2h weapons on the back, but I'm seeing it on one handers and shields too just more subtle.
The LI weapon glow is also not keeping track of weapons.
The LM does an invisible man act when activating often used skills.
My LM's staff is visibly behind his hands in attack animations.
Female Hobbits experienced an overnight weight gain.
Champ's so-called Swift Blade was slowed down by having the Blade Wall animation attached.
Top-tier crafted weapons were nerfed with no mention in the change notes. This is a big change at the very least worthy of a line in the patch notes. What about the player who never rolled on a nice weapon because they were happy with the one they had? What about weaponsmiths who finally found their output in demand again?
An update should have me logging in and getting excited to run the content - just like Update6 did, not submitting bug reports and then quitting in frustration to complain on the forums.
More care needs to be given to the user experience - because if no other reason dropping TPs is an entirely voluntary event on behalf of the player.
Here's how U6 went: Update - logon - played the new book - instantly bought the Great River QP and wallet.
U7: Update - logon - yuck, what's with my weapons? /bug - char switch - yup still happening on my LM - oh, I'm under attack - woah I just disappeared! What's with my staff? /bug /bug quit.
Quality > quantity. I'd rather fewer quality releases like U6 than being spammed with incomplete content. If this was a patch to a single player game I would have chosen to roll back to the previous version, but being an MMO I'm just going to have to do something else until they get some bug fixes out... and if I ain't playing I ain't spending.
The problem is that Turbine staff are no longer in charge of when updates are released. For every update/expansion/whathaveyou, there's a vice-president in charge of making money from LotRO who wants a new release in time for HIS quarterly report, to make HIM look good to the senior VP in charge of making money generally. That is how large corporations work.
The latest release of U7 on BR wasn't a testing situation, it was a sneak preview. Real testing by players is done on Palantir, and none of us who are not in that testing group have any notion of how long that testing phase lasts, and those who are are under NDA and won't say.
Pls turbine take your time with future updates!
People are paying money for playing this game and so they should get a working product for it. After finding some bugs myself (major ballad bug on my minstrel for example) and reading around in the forums i think it was a really bad mistake to release this update.
-Bugged skills on several classes
-Nerfed crafted gear
-Jumping two handed weapons
-Changes in caracter settings (fat female hobbits (no offence))
Just to give a few points...
The crystals are obviously just a new way to make more money from the players (i didnt see anyone complaining about too low base damage or healing raiting), or should be puchaseable via skirmish camp.
As well i am personally a bit dissappointed about the new loot from Fornost lvl 75 t2 CM. The lootquality is way too bad considering it isnt that easy or quick to do; each of the isengard instances on t1 contains far better loot. Even though it is a nice instance am afraid at the end hardly anyone will run it after some time (like the GB´s) and ppl will just keep on grinding out Foundry and RoF.
In general i think the most people dont mind waiting for another 2 weeks to get an update with maybe only half of the bugs. After all i would like to know if there is anything else planned, or if 'Riders of Rohan' is going to be the next update in the end game content.
Regards
Led
This happens every update what do you expect when the test server is only open for 3 days?
Im just glad ToO is open for raiding again, I would love a full week of testing where everyone can log on and test for a small reward of TP like they did when F2p came out.
Is it possible that Turbine (Warner Bros.) wants this game to go away. What other reason is there for one bad update after another. In one form or another, each and every one of us pay real money to play this game. That make us retail customers of Turbine (warner Bros.) and what have we been getting lately has been garbage.
I, as a retail customer, will no longer pay for a sub-standard product. If I shop at a store and the quality of the merchandise goes down even if the price stays the same which is in reality an increase in price, I look for a better place to shop, ie. spend my money elswhere.
Maybe it's hard for the developers to understand this from the perspective of the other side of the counter. If something works, leave it alone. If your going to release a new an improved product, make sure it works one hundred percent. If you have to, test the product for a longer period of time.
You may not be aware of this, but when an update is announced, there is no anticipation. Instead, the players wonder how much stuff is going to get broken.
Get back to basic, build a quality product (Like the way the game was before warner bros took over) and test the heck out of it to make sure it work 100% before its released.
makes one wonder if there is anything like a quality department at all, and if any of the developers making these changes actually bothers to check if they do what they are supposed to..
It's been like this for a while: As soon as an update is on track for release, there's basically nothing changed anymore. Despite all warnings to the contrary, what you see on Bullroarer is what you'll get on live. The only changes they're going to make at that point are slight tweaks to text, numbers etc.
Anything else that you report is going to be fixed in the next update, which, obviously, is going to contain its own set of bugs... which are fixed on the update after that etc. etc. The quality of the game we're playing is basically up to luck of how many bugs they introduce in each update.
The issue isn't the testing (I'm pretty sure most of the bugs have been recorded), the issue is that after testing they'd need to change stuff and test again.
Ingaras, lvl 75 Elven Hunter; and others... The Western Alliance, Laurelin "The priority now is the store not the game. The store no longer supports the game, its the other way around."
It's been like this for a while: As soon as an update is on track for release, there's basically nothing changed anymore. Despite all warnings to the contrary, what you see on Bullroarer is what you'll get on live.
Maybe it was that way on the past, but actually there are a lot of bugs that wasn't on Bullroarer but there are on the Live version. Nobody see the 'dancing two-handers' thing on BR, neither the texture/lighting or the fat hobbits issues.
So, imho the problem is on the patching side. Maybe they aren't using a good enviroment on BR so the patch goes good on BR but it messed up with the Live version.
It makes me chuckle that people would like the test period extended when they themselves have no clue as to the length of time of the current test period :P
All content will have bugs. I myself haven't experienced any of these bugs listed on the forums, not even the female hobbit 'weight-gain'. So for everyone complaining, just understand that not everyone is suffering because of the bugs.
-Tails-
The ends justify the means. The beginning of evil. The spark for insanity. - Boraxxe
It makes me chuckle that people would like the test period extended when they themselves have no clue as to the length of time of the current test period :P
one basic thing in releasing software should be that you test what you release. You don't test stuff, then make changes untested followed by a release.
And of one thing I am certain: all these bugs werent introduced in the time period between bullroarer update and patch day. Either the bullroarer patch was something extra than the stuff on palantir, or there are major discrepancies between palantir/bullroarer and the 'real' system. I really hope for turbine their devs are so bad that they t program changes or redesign content without ever looking at the game (bobbing weapons anyone? start game -> move -> ooh something is wrong!? ).
Considering the recent tweets about job openings imho turbine really should add some QA people to their stuff educating the staff (and management) on how to handle software testing with a proper test & release scenario.
I really have to think long and hard to remember any other game introducing so many new bugs with an 'update'.
True, some things always get broken, and usually there are side-effects noone had in mind when effecting one change.
Please: try to make the bullroarer patch a proper last test for the final update. extend that test period for a week. Advertise the new bullroarer release on the launcher, getting more people to look at stuff, or do just basic things the devs never directly changed (hobbit look-change?).
If the amount of bug reports during that period is too much, FIX them and do ANOTHER bullroarer test week..
We certainly can live without a revamped fornost instance for two more weeks. As it is now, you have a too early release at the expense of reduced gaming fun for quite a few people (judging from the usual forum uproar).
We certainly can live without a revamped fornost instance for two more weeks. As it is now, you have a too early release at the expense of reduced gaming fun for quite a few people (judging from the usual forum uproar).
Another thing to bear in mind is that unhappy customers tend to start looking for new things. As for the uproar, i think it's larger than usual. Though that is probably because of the new "Load-your-game-to-immideately-notice-major-bugs-scenario" than to the content itself.if you open your game and the first thing you see is a bug you know the programmers and devs did a lousy job in quality control
Another thing to bear in mind is that unhappy customers tend to start looking for new things. As for the uproar, i think it's larger than usual. Though that is probably because of the new "Load-your-game-to-immideately-notice-major-bugs-scenario" than to the content itself.if you open your game and the first thing you see is a bug you know the programmers and devs did a lousy job in quality control
As a software developer, I resent this statement. If we had our way, there would be no bugs in the product. It would probably never get released to live either. We always be tinkering with it.
The release decision is not made by Quality Assurance and Development. It is made by a "Launch Decision Team" which is heavily populated by the financial, marketing and sales departments. Along with more pragmatic members of Customer Service, Development and QA management.
The decision is made based on risk of massive product failure by allowing any more changes. The bug level of the product. The need to start revenue generation so that members of Customer Service, Development, Financial, Marketing, Quality Assurance and Sales can continue to be paid their wages.
In many software industries, you are better off releasing a buggy product than waiting. There are far more people will leave do to no new features. Or no fixes for old problems. Versus the folks that leave because new products were introduced. Or the product changed in an unacceptable way.
It is interesting aspect of real life that manifests itself in software products. Many customers are more interested in a company like Turbine trying and changing their product frequenetly than in infrequent near perfect performance.
Obviously the goal of customers is large, low cost, frequent, perfect updates. You can not have all of these. It is easy to achieve two - low cost and perfect update - you spot a misspelled word 'ot" change the spelling "to". That is all you release.
I personally think Turbine is pushing the lower limit of quality with Lotro. I work in a software area where products cost more and better quality is expected. I understand the need to launch Update 7 so that "Star Light Crystals" can be sold. I had to work on Christmas holidays one year so that a customer could start selling a product when the new year arrived. It was nice having the beginning of January off as a reward. It was suck situation for those of us involved.
Unless stated otherwise, all content in this post is My Personal Opinion.
If there's a bug that causes characters to becoms invisible and weapons to jump around one would think that it would be one of those kind of things people WOULD notice. Now, this wasn't mentioned on BR so one could safely assume that the bugs didn't exist then. If the bugs didn't exist on BR but exist on live that means something happened between BR and live.
So if the changes happened between BR and live and there was testing done on it by quality control people these kind of things wouldn't be there since they are kind of obvious (not to mention annoying and imo definately falls into the category "delay until fixed"). If quality picked up on it we'll never know but they should and should have fixed it... and not in a future update (I'd assume we're getting a hotfix soon as well). That is scenario one. In scenario two you have the same thing happening only this time there is no testing just changes. In neither case you can make the argument valid that quality did their job good since the result is the same.
The people in charge of release will also have to hear the people in quality before release and if quality hasn't brought it up they fail again. In no circumstance have quality done a good job so iI stand by my statement
Pls turbine take your time with future updates!
People are paying money for playing this game and so they should get a working product for it. After finding some bugs myself (major ballad bug on my minstrel for example) and reading around in the forums i think it was a really bad mistake to release this update.
-Bugged skills on several classes
-Nerfed crafted gear
-Jumping two handed weapons
-Changes in caracter settings (fat female hobbits (no offence))
Just to give a few points...
The crystals are obviously just a new way to make more money from the players (i didnt see anyone complaining about too low base damage or healing raiting), or should be puchaseable via skirmish camp.
As well i am personally a bit dissappointed about the new loot from Fornost lvl 75 t2 CM. The lootquality is way too bad considering it isnt that easy or quick to do; each of the isengard instances on t1 contains far better loot. Even though it is a nice instance am afraid at the end hardly anyone will run it after some time (like the GB´s) and ppl will just keep on grinding out Foundry and RoF.
In general i think the most people dont mind waiting for another 2 weeks to get an update with maybe only half of the bugs. After all i would like to know if there is anything else planned, or if 'Riders of Rohan' is going to be the next update in the end game content.
As long as the bugs are not too serious, they're probably better off releasing the upgrade, and fixing it later.
Sure, if you play a hobbit and your bottom's now bigger, you might be a little bit annoyed. But really, that's not a big deal (assuming it gets fixed in a reasonable timeframe of course).
The kind of bugs they need to focus on are bugs that crash the game, or exploits (like the Invitation letters). Those should be fixed before the upgrade is released.
The other ones, meh.
That said - there probably are some more serious bugs in this release (skills not working and such). Hopefully, those are on the top of the list to fix.
And Yula's right - you can't blame the devs for this; it's out of their hands.
This is my suggestion : do bi-Weekly patch that FIX one thing at the time
ie the Mini/Capt/LM Bugs first
Dont test it as usual as it dont seem to work
You want Free QA, give player a reward for it and you have a New dedicated QA team
What about 5TP per new bug found and keep an active page on Known issue / Currently working on ... next to be tentative fix
you will be flooded with bug reports.
Currently only a SMALL amount of player base are reporting thoses issues.
Give everyone a reward to report those. hey its the QA jobs!
Release more SMALL fix every week that may fix ONE thing but brake NONE.
Keep player base informed ...
Like the Lag since U6 ... you should already have fixed it. Hire someone do something your loosing players
This is my suggestion : do bi-Weekly patch that FIX one thing at the time
ie the Mini/Capt/LM Bugs first
Pardon my mirth....
First, the complete fix/unit test/QA test cycle is a lot longer than two weeks. You'd be holding all subsequent fixes while the "one" you're fixing is put through it's paces. After all, something someone else has been assigned to work on might affect that "one" thing.
Second, your definition of "one thing" is...rather broad. Fixing problems with a class is likely to involve a great many individual fixes...and take a lot longer than two weeks to do.
Face reality...releases will ship on time unless there is something truly--overwhelmingly--game breakingly wrong with the update. If there is, the broken part will be removed and sent back for rework and the rest will be released. None of the problems people are complaining about make the *game* unplayable. Some are just cosmetic. Some impact skills on selected classes. Some may make specific quests or instances unusable. But none of them kill the entire game.
The problem is that Turbine staff are no longer in charge of when updates are released. For every update/expansion/whathaveyou, there's a vice-president in charge of making money from LotRO who wants a new release in time for HIS quarterly report, to make HIM look good to the senior VP in charge of making money generally. That is how large corporations work.
While it's tempting to blame the 'suits', the simple truth is that most software companies underfund QA, and game companies are by far the most egregious of the lot. There are a lot of reasons why this is true, but the net result is that there's often only about enough QA to make sure that the code doesn't set the servers on fire.
When gamers stop accepting buggy products (and show that they're willing to pay a premium for quality products) this will change. Not before.
(By the by, complaining on forums doesn't count as "not accepting." Only voting with your feet/dollars will.)
While it's tempting to blame the 'suits', the simple truth is that most software companies underfund QA, and game companies are by far the most egregious of the lot. There are a lot of reasons why this is true, but the net result is that there's often only about enough QA to make sure that the code doesn't set the servers on fire
Well said, & another thing: in the end, to the consumer, it doesn't matter to whom the blame is assigned, because the customer sees very bad-looking glitches, & understandably is angry that such got by the testing phase.
IMO, if testing is only being done to make sure the servers don't explode, then someone at Turbine needs to very seriously re-think the entire idea of Quality Assurance. I've also worked in software development, & IMO such a policy is unprofessional.
Fare you well ... let your life proceed by its own design
Nothing to tell ... let the words be yours, I'm done with mine.
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