104276-why-do-we-have-unintended-new-bugs-and-issues-after-every-patch

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Hello folks,
 
I really wonder how after EVERY PATCH things that have been working break? I mean, looking at patch notes, there are a ton of fixes, updates and additions there but in reality, things that either got fixed in a previous patch or have already been working break!
 
I work as a lead developer in a software company, and I know how production pipelines work. I, and the teams I've managed NEVER released a software upgrade that reverted or broke working or previously fixed things. I am really amazed how Carbine's release flow feels flawed, incompetent and to be frank - no offense - amateur.
 
Some of the ridiculous "post-patch" bugs I've seen are:
 
- Stalkers drop out of stealth because of an item special's internal cooldown. HOW on earth you don't test it and let it go live?
- Spellslingers' wild barrage hits 360 degree and pierce through everything. Really? HOW? Don't you test all class abilities at least once before going live to check if they are working as intended?
- [before the sabotage drop] All quest names in blighthaven were empty. I mean, literally, they were empty strings. REALLY? How on earth you don't fix it asap?
- Nano field and HtCC implementation... Without an exception, EVERY DAMN PATCH how nano field interact with hold to cast changes! Have you ever tested this ability before going live? It is useless beyond imagination now (don't mean the nerfs, they were required)
- A wrong breadcrumb quest goes live. Now I think this is somewhat intended to make people wonder, but if it is not, HOW?
- When you swap professions, your previously unlocked schematics get locked until you RELOG. How did you test this feature seriously?
 
There are maybe other things that I didn't notice but others did. But you get the idea, I sincerely wonder how Carbine manage to make these rather childish mistakes. This is a huge piece of software, and it needs more serious quality control and more strict release proccess which in my honest opinion, Carbine slightly fails at.
 
I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I'm not flaming anyone here. I honestly do wonder why those mistakes happen?
 
~Tequila	
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why do we have new bugs?
 
welcome to software design
 
I work in tech support for a software company and as of yet, have never seen something as complicated as an mmo that hits a live server that you can test of the load or any and all eventualities.
 
not saying it shouldnt be perfect, but it seems like you have not been exposed to mmo releases or patches much.
 
perhaps they should hire you	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Hello folks,
 
I really wonder how after EVERY PATCH things that have been working break? I mean, looking at patch notes, there are a ton of fixes, updates and additions there but in reality, things that either got fixed in a previous patch or have already been working break!
 
I work as a lead developer in a software company, and I know how production pipelines work. I, and the teams I've managed NEVER released a software upgrade that reverted or broke working or previously fixed things. I am really amazed how Carbine's release flow feels flawed, incompetent and to be frank - no offense - amateur.
 
Some of the ridiculous "post-patch" bugs I've seen are:
 
- Stalkers drop out of stealth because of an item special's internal cooldown. HOW on earth you don't test it and let it go live?
- Spellslingers' wild barrage hits 360 degree and pierce through everything. Really? HOW? Don't you test all class abilities at least once before going live to check if they are working as intended?
- [before the sabotage drop] All quest names in blighthaven were empty. I mean, literally, they were empty strings. REALLY? How on earth you don't fix it asap?
- Nano field and HtCC implementation... Without an exception, EVERY DAMN PATCH how nano field interact with hold to cast changes! Have you ever tested this ability before going live? It is useless beyond imagination now (don't mean the nerfs, they were required)
- A wrong breadcrumb quest goes live. Now I think this is somewhat intended to make people wonder, but if it is not, HOW?
- When you swap professions, your previously unlocked schematics get locked until you RELOG. How did you test this feature seriously?
 
There are maybe other things that I didn't notice but others did. But you get the idea, I sincerely wonder how Carbine manage to make these rather childish mistakes. This is a huge piece of software, and it needs more serious quality control and more strict release proccess which in my honest opinion, Carbine slightly fails at.
 
I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I'm not flaming anyone here. I honestly do wonder why those mistakes happen?
 
~Tequila
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Speaking of livestreams....Frost actually answers the OP's question in this one.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziz4gCnIhks&list=UUhg9HfiT-DbivZnnMtjPUGw	
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{| class="blockquote"
why do we have new bugs?
 
welcome to software design
 
I work in tech support for a software company and as of yet, have never seen something as complicated as an mmo that hits a live server that you can test of the load or any and all eventualities.
 
not saying it shouldnt be perfect, but it seems like you have not been exposed to mmo releases or patches much.
 
perhaps they should hire you
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{| class="blockquote"
I haven't released a software that as complicated as an mmo too @Kestriel, however I did release many complex softwares (in their own segment). I do understand it is impossible to release without bugs, but look at the examples I gave please, do you seriously think any of those examples couldn't have been realized during a simple 'features' test? Honestly?
 
Look at quest logs bug for example, how can it not be seen before going live?
 
And no, I'm not really skilled in game development, if they hired me they'd go bankrupt before the next content drop :P
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{| class="blockquote"
agaion, as I have said elsewhere, the coders did it fast instead of doing it right, and things break in live that "they never touched" for a reason
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{| class="blockquote"
Hello folks,
 
I really wonder how after EVERY PATCH things that have been working break? I mean, looking at patch notes, there are a ton of fixes, updates and additions there but in reality, things that either got fixed in a previous patch or have already been working break!
 
I work as a lead developer in a software company, and I know how production pipelines work. I, and the teams I've managed NEVER released a software upgrade that reverted or broke working or previously fixed things. I am really amazed how Carbine's release flow feels flawed, incompetent and to be frank - no offense - amateur.
 
Some of the ridiculous "post-patch" bugs I've seen are:
 
- Stalkers drop out of stealth because of an item special's internal cooldown. HOW on earth you don't test it and let it go live?
- Spellslingers' wild barrage hits 360 degree and pierce through everything. Really? HOW? Don't you test all class abilities at least once before going live to check if they are working as intended?
- [before the sabotage drop] All quest names in blighthaven were empty. I mean, literally, they were empty strings. REALLY? How on earth you don't fix it asap?
- Nano field and HtCC implementation... Without an exception, EVERY DAMN PATCH how nano field interact with hold to cast changes! Have you ever tested this ability before going live? It is useless beyond imagination now (don't mean the nerfs, they were required)
- A wrong breadcrumb quest goes live. Now I think this is somewhat intended to make people wonder, but if it is not, HOW?
- When you swap professions, your previously unlocked schematics get locked until you RELOG. How did you test this feature seriously?
 
There are maybe other things that I didn't notice but others did. But you get the idea, I sincerely wonder how Carbine manage to make these rather childish mistakes. This is a huge piece of software, and it needs more serious quality control and more strict release proccess which in my honest opinion, Carbine slightly fails at.
 
I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I'm not flaming anyone here. I honestly do wonder why those mistakes happen?
 
~Tequila
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Also appears to be problems with pvp D and O formulas + amps that effects those as well.
 
ie. PvP Defense amps on my esper lowers it 1% for every point I put into it.
 
That was an unhappy 2 plat worth to find that out.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Also appears to be problems with pvp D and O formulas + amps that effects those as well.
 
ie. PvP Defense amps on my esper lowers it 1% for every point I put into it.
 
That was an unhappy 2 plat worth to find that out.
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{| class="blockquote"
May be a display issue in our UI.  One of our UI designers was looking into a bug that sounded related to this earlier today.
 
Cheers 
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{| class="blockquote"
Hello folks,
 
I really wonder how after EVERY PATCH things that have been working break? I mean, looking at patch notes, there are a ton of fixes, updates and additions there but in reality, things that either got fixed in a previous patch or have already been working break!
 
I work as a lead developer in a software company, and I know how production pipelines work. I, and the teams I've managed NEVER released a software upgrade that reverted or broke working or previously fixed things. I am really amazed how Carbine's release flow feels flawed, incompetent and to be frank - no offense - amateur.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I couldn't agree more on this.
 
This actually narrows down the possible reasons in my head. It is either the lack of good quality coders -a.k.a they don't test their own code - or they are under pressure on marketing side and rushing development to keep up with promised non ideal deadlines.
 
All in all, it saddens me to see this happen. I never see such 'simple' (nothing is simple in sytems development but couldn't find a proper word without being disrespectful) bugs go live in, say, WoW's content patches.
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			Just think about the bugs they did get... :)	
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			I'm not sure I'd prefer intended ones.	
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{| class="blockquote"
I couldn't agree more on this.
 
This actually narrows down the possible reasons in my head. It is either the lack of good quality coders -a.k.a they don't test their own code - or they are under pressure on marketing side and rushing development to keep up with promised non ideal deadlines.
 
All in all, it saddens me to see this happen. I never see such 'simple' (nothing is simple in sytems development but couldn't find a proper word without being disrespectful) bugs go live in, say, WoW's content patches.
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{| class="blockquote"
they seemed to design a game engine where changing the text on an item tooltip can cause a dungeon instance to go unstable.
It must be quite a mess
 
and now apparently we have dev's getting all defensive whining on the forums that it's too hard to do the job properly and we should just be happy and understanding that a service we are paying for isn't working properly.
Work would be awesome if when a client called in that lights aren't working in an office I could just go "electricity is difficult you need to just deal with it"
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			Because it is software design, with the combined effort of 100's of people. Last I heard Wildstar's code was over 7,000,000 lines long. Even in programs that are several thousand lines long in a small team you will find bugs after release. They may seem like obvious things to you but when you are actually sitting right in the thick of the project it is hard to know what little details you may be missing (little compared to the larger problems you have been tackling). Does more QA help? Always. But no matter how much of it you do there are deadlines to meet on each team's end and a lot of communication that goes on that can get lost in translation. Trying to wrap your head around just how complex of a piece of software Wildstar is and trying to comprehend the amount of work that needs to all come together in just the right way to make it even run is just so hard to do -.- Kudos devs!	
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{| class="blockquote"
no, software design means that many things are interconnected and changing or adding one may affect another.
 
I dont read anywhere that devs are saying its too hard to do the job. do you have any experience in software design at all or just equating it to your work?
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{| class="blockquote"
why do we have new bugs?
 
welcome to software design
 
I work in tech support for a software company and as of yet, have never seen something as complicated as an mmo that hits a live server that you can test of the load or any and all eventualities.
 
not saying it shouldnt be perfect, but it seems like you have not been exposed to mmo releases or patches much.
 
perhaps they should hire you
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My full respect to programmers of anything and what they do to keep new content coming in the game while playing whack-a-bug!
 
Although I hope the life of Carbine programmers aren't as mad as what's described in this here essay: http://stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks - very amusing read though :)	
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By far the most intriguing thing about these bugs is how many affect only a single tier of a skill - meaning those skills all have independent data sets for each level and are being updated by hand.
 
That strikes me as a particularly crazy way to run a rail road. If nothing else, you need to develop better tools for updating those data sets.
(and possibly a better checklist/process for your QA team to test fire every skill at every tier...)	
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Nice to see an official response to this, it does help to provide some insight. But the "oh, but don't you realise what a complicated thing a MMO is" argument only gets you so far. Yes it's complicated, we get that. But so are many many other software environments which don't seem to have the poor QC that the games industry has - not just WS, not just MMOs, but the industry as a whole.
 
I'm sure the software that runs a nuclear power station or air traffic control system is pretty complicated too. But they can't afford any major mistakes, for obvious reasons. Yes yes, I know this is only a game, but that's precisely the problem. Because it's not life and death, games companies don't really care if they push out buggy products. They rush stuff out half-baked and poorly tested and then try to pick up the pieces once it's gone live, which is always going to be problematic. Patching things up as you go along is like a juggling act and very rapidly you can drop all the balls.
 
Just one small example - trying to balance classes and buffing and nerfing before all class abilities are bug free and working as intended seems like madness. It's like trying to fine tune a car engine when you know that a significant proportion of the components are broken, missing or faulty. You're balancing around broken abilities. Crazy.
 
Another major problem here is constantly feeling obligated to push out new content before existing content is as clean and bug free as possible.  Yes, this is partly a problem caused by us the players who love to consume content. But I for one would prefer a slower content schedule if it meant less bugs. It's also a problem caused by the marketing department and bean counters, who really should be told to back off a bit and let the devs get the existing content ship-shape before attempting to move forward.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Nice to see an official response to this, it does help to provide some insight. But the "oh, but don't you realise what a complicated thing a MMO is" argument only gets you so far. Yes it's complicated, we get that. But so are many many other software environments which don't seem to have the poor QC that the games industry has - not just WS, not just MMOs, but the industry as a whole.
 
I'm sure the software that runs a nuclear power station or air traffic control system is pretty complicated too. But they can't afford any major mistakes, for obvious reasons. Yes yes, I know this is only a game, but that's precisely the problem. Because it's not life and death, games companies don't really care if they push out buggy products. They rush stuff out half-baked and poorly tested and then try to pick up the pieces once it's gone live, which is always going to be problematic. Patching things up as you go along is like a juggling act and very rapidly you can drop all the balls.
 
Just one small example - trying to balance classes and buffing and nerfing before all class abilities are bug free and working as intended seems like madness. It's like trying to fine tune a car engine when you know that a significant proportion of the components are broken, missing or faulty. You're balancing around broken abilities. Crazy.
 
Another major problem here is constantly feeling obligated to push out new content before existing content is as clean and bug free as possible.  Yes, this is partly a problem caused by us the players who love to consume content. But I for one would prefer a slower content schedule if it meant less bugs. It's also a problem caused by the marketing department and bean counters, who really should be told to back off a bit and let the devs get the existing content ship-shape before attempting to move forward.
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{| class="blockquote"
How many source code branches does your team work in (not meant as a snarky tone, just genuinely curious)?
 
At any given time our code environments look like the following: 
Dev (Drop 7), Dev (Drop 6), Dev (Drop 5) | Staging (Drop 4), PTR (Drop 3), Live (Drop 2)  
Our Dev environments run CI (continuous integration) with hundreds of our devs checking in work on a daily basis. For shipping environments, we have some proprietary tech we use for integrations and code promotions (our Build team rocks and they work really hard).  Branches iterate on a monthly basis (imagine a conveyor belt moving from left to right.)
 
We also have a fairly aggressive monthly Live release cycle which can be seen as follows:
 
1 Content DropWe iterate our branch numbers when this occurs and this represents major changes in our database structures, system overhauls, new features coming online, etc. 
Typically, large scoped features and high risk changes are deployed with Drops (Sabotage, Blighthaven, The Defile, etc.) 
Content drops contain literally thousands of changes made by hundreds of developers while the branch resides on our Dev environment 
2 - 4 Weekly PatchesWe iterate build numbers and not branch numbers with these
Smaller and manageable changes are deployed (sometimes we get whacky and throw something big in)
These only include promoted code (we also have another system we use for fixing things directly on shipping which I can't delve into details on)
~# Hotfixes (unknown number of hotfixes depending on severity of issues)We do not iterate build numbers externally when hotfixes occur
Small and targeted fixes for exploits/critical issues occur during hotfixes 
These only include promoted code (we also have another system we use for fixing things directly on shipping which I can't delve into details on)
Here's just a few examples of how something may break: 
 
We don't catch something in QA (hey, we're not perfect and we're the first to admit that, but damn do we try hard and are we pretty diligent in what we get.  FYI our QA team is really on the ball with a lot of things and they deserve a badge and a hat.)
During the build and/or code promotion process to Live a code dependency or integration issue occurs and we break an unforseen system (typically Build/QA catches this)
System X comes online and System Y depends on it in such an obscure way that until the code is live in a production environment we don't see the issue (today's crashes are a good example of this, we needed a LOT of players online doing a LOT of different things for the system to stress to the point that causes the break)
 
It's a lot to juggle and hopefully that helps shed some light on things.
 
Cougar also has a good post on patches here:
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/16069-carbine-processes-patch-types/
 
Cheers 
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{| class="blockquote"
Nice to see an official response to this, it does help to provide some insight. But the "oh, but don't you realise what a complicated thing a MMO is" argument only gets you so far. Yes it's complicated, we get that. But so are many many other software environments which don't seem to have the poor QC that the games industry has - not just WS, not just MMOs, but the industry as a whole.
 
I'm sure the software that runs a nuclear power station or air traffic control system is pretty complicated too. But they can't afford any major mistakes, for obvious reasons. Yes yes, I know this is only a game, but that's precisely the problem. Because it's not life and death, games companies don't really care if they push out buggy products. They rush stuff out half-baked and poorly tested and then try to pick up the pieces once it's gone live, which is always going to be problematic. Patching things up as you go along is like a juggling act and very rapidly you can drop all the balls.
 
Just one small example - trying to balance classes and buffing and nerfing before all class abilities are bug free and working as intended seems like madness. It's like trying to fine tune a car engine when you know that a significant proportion of the components are broken, missing or faulty. You're balancing around broken abilities. Crazy.
 
Another major problem here is constantly feeling obligated to push out new content before existing content is as clean and bug free as possible.  Yes, this is partly a problem caused by us the players who love to consume content. But I for one would prefer a slower content schedule if it meant less bugs. It's also a problem caused by the marketing department and bean counters, who really should be told to back off a bit and let the devs get the existing content ship-shape before attempting to move forward.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
why do we have new bugs?
 
welcome to software design
 
I work in tech support for a software company and as of yet, have never seen something as complicated as an mmo that hits a live server that you can test of the load or any and all eventualities.
 
not saying it shouldnt be perfect, but it seems like you have not been exposed to mmo releases or patches much.
 
perhaps they should hire you
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Nice to see an official response to this, it does help to provide some insight. But the "oh, but don't you realise what a complicated thing a MMO is" argument only gets you so far. Yes it's complicated, we get that. But so are many many other software environments which don't seem to have the poor QC that the games industry has - not just WS, not just MMOs, but the industry as a whole.
 
I'm sure the software that runs a nuclear power station or air traffic control system is pretty complicated too. But they can't afford any major mistakes, for obvious reasons. Yes yes, I know this is only a game, but that's precisely the problem. Because it's not life and death, games companies don't really care if they push out buggy products. They rush stuff out half-baked and poorly tested and then try to pick up the pieces once it's gone live, which is always going to be problematic. Patching things up as you go along is like a juggling act and very rapidly you can drop all the balls.
 
Just one small example - trying to balance classes and buffing and nerfing before all class abilities are bug free and working as intended seems like madness. It's like trying to fine tune a car engine when you know that a significant proportion of the components are broken, missing or faulty. You're balancing around broken abilities. Crazy.
 
Another major problem here is constantly feeling obligated to push out new content before existing content is as clean and bug free as possible.  Yes, this is partly a problem caused by us the players who love to consume content. But I for one would prefer a slower content schedule if it meant less bugs. It's also a problem caused by the marketing department and bean counters, who really should be told to back off a bit and let the devs get the existing content ship-shape before attempting to move forward.
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{| class="blockquote"
Nah not hire him, but maybe some blizzard employees. In my 8 years of WoW post Vanilla almost every update rolled out smooth and with little to no bugs as a result to an update.
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			Sounds to me like we need a real life Caretaker... I'm on the case! * tries to invent sentient quantum computer AI*	
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{| class="blockquote"
I have in WoW. in every one since launch, but since they ALSO tend to change everything each content launch, people dont usually notice since you are trying to relearn the game each and every time. which is still  bad since its a 10 year old platform and still things slip through, they always will due to unintended usage or just sheer numbers of users.
 
what is important, is that they get addressed in a timely fashion, not that the bugs are there. nothing is perfect, all they need to do is step up and fix whats broken.
 
if they dont do that, then feel free to be disrespectful. thats what you need to be sad about, not something put out by imperfect humans
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{| class="blockquote"
Carbine won't win either way, the longer it takes for new content to be released the other side of that coin get's frustrated and annoyed comes to the forums and has a whinge and the "I quit" threads still keep being made.
 
The issue isn't carbine they are doing the best they can better than any single person that posts on these forums.
The issue is the shitty entitled stuck up retarded player base.. Flame me all you want.. you're still a shitty person online.
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{| class="blockquote"
I see where you're coming from, and understand your point, but, have you ever seen a "missing quest text" bug (for example) in WoW in a relatively new zone? (content) after a patch after that content's initial release?
 
When talking about bugs, I mean those kind of bugs that makes you say "oh come on, how could you possibly break this" when you encounter them. :)
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{| class="blockquote"
Nah not hire him, but maybe some blizzard employees. In my 8 years of WoW post Vanilla almost every update rolled out smooth and with little to no bugs as a result to an update.
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{| class="blockquote"
in wow? sadly yes lol
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{| class="blockquote"
Seriously? Damn I mised that. I lost all my respect to big B. now lol :P
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{| class="blockquote"
At any given time our code environments look like the following:
Dev (Drop 7), Dev (Drop 6), Dev (Drop 5) | Staging (Drop 4), PTR (Drop 3), Live (Drop 2) 
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{| class="blockquote"
"They're doing a better job at it than you could" is not a defense in the least it's just a poor attempt at evasion
Most all of us aren't programmers, no shit they're doing a better job but it isn't any of our jobs to produce the game to begin with.
It's like saying a damaged knife cuts better than a pristine spoon and then using that comparison to say the knife is doing a great job
 
having patch notes saying they fixed path skill tiers after 2 months of being broken just to have them reverting back to base level again within the same day is some pretty shoddy work. Or the sheer amount of things they messed up on spellslinger in one fell swoop
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{| class="blockquote"
Oh my~
That explains a lot.
The question is, why would anyone do such thing? Why can't you have just one "dev" environment, that everyone merges with, and another "stable" environment, that gets backported patches?
 
Low standards — yes. Everything else — what's different?
 
That.
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			Armchair developers are the best kind of developers.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Armchair developers are the best kind of developers.
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the same reason we get a post like this in every flippin mmo to date after every patch.
 
nature of the beast.
 
entirely too many lins of code to prepare for every eventuality of 100's of thousands of people using it.
 
as for you never breaking anything you every worked, i call shenanigans	
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{| class="blockquote"
why do we have new bugs?
 
welcome to software design
 
I work in tech support for a software company and as of yet, have never seen something as complicated as an mmo that hits a live server that you can test of the load or any and all eventualities.
 
not saying it shouldnt be perfect, but it seems like you have not been exposed to mmo releases or patches much.
 
perhaps they should hire you
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{| class="blockquote"
Deflections, excuses, more deflections, more excuses...
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{| class="blockquote"
I work as a lead developer in a software company, and I know how production pipelines work. I, and the teams I've managed NEVER released a software upgrade that reverted or broke working or previously fixed things. I am really amazed how Carbine's release flow feels flawed, incompetent and to be frank - no offense - amateur.
 
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{| class="blockquote"
Bahahahahahahaha *gasp* hahahahahahaha.   You lost all credibility right there.  
 
Yes, it seems Carbine's patches contain a lot more undetected bugs than those of other developers, but that's what happens with new companies.  Plus....they probably stick their interns on QA and testing.  
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{| class="blockquote"
Let me tell you a story about a raid patch called Ahn'Qiraj.
 
It started with probably the outright coolest patch launch ever.  There was an epic questline (which would make the people griping about attunement right now shit their pants) to build a mallet.  This was used to strike the gong that opened the gates to Ahn'Qiraj.  After that, Horde and Alliance alike had gathered because the gates of Ahn'Qiraj could only be opened once, ever, on every server.  I was there for the opening of Ahn'Qiraj on our server, and it was gorgeous.  I was only getting like 15 FPS and I think we, at one or two points, crashed the server.  But it was amazing.
 
Then came the raids.  Raiding was going relatively well.  Yes, there were bugs and things had to be fixed, but I'm not hard on Blizz or Carbine for bugs existing.  Very often, I'm fine with them no matter how big they get.  To that point, the last boss of Ahn'Qiraj was C'thun, probably one of the straight-up best raid fights I've ever had the privilege to see.  Especially at the time, it was cutting edge.  Yeah, a little buggy sometimes, but not in any serious way... until the tentacle phase.
 
Blizz had to put out a hotfix because C'thun would spawn tentacles you would need to kill before you wiped, and the tentacles were spawning in the wall.  Nobody knew, they just thought, "Man, this boss is intensely hard, WTF is wrong?  What are we doing wrong?"  Turns out, they weren't doing anything wrong.  The last boss of the most epic patch raid they'd ever dropped was bugged and, for all intents and purposes, unkillable.
 
I'd never get on Blizz's case for that, even though it seems obvious.  "How could they not know about that?"
 
You'd be amazed what you can miss, no matter how hard you're looking.
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{| class="blockquote"
Oh my~
That explains a lot.
The question is, why would anyone do such thing? Why can't you have just one "dev" environment, that everyone merges with, and another "stable" environment, that gets backported patches?
 
Low standards — yes. Everything else — what's different?
 
That.
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{| class="blockquote"
Your example is not really accurate on this matter I'm afraid. I do agree a software should release with minimum amount of bugs or bugs should be fixed in shorter times, but a 'nuclear plant' or 'traffic light' type software is not as "alive" as a game. A traffic light software probably won't need monthly content updates. Such software should only need regular "bug fix", maintenance branches in my opinion.
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Worried about new bugs?
 
I'd settle for them fixing the bugs they list as fixed in the patch notes...	
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{| class="blockquote"
how does any of that even relate at all to people using difference to muddy an argument?
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{| class="blockquote"
"They're doing a better job at it than you could" is not a defense in the least it's just a poor attempt at evasion
Most all of us aren't programmers, no shit they're doing a better job but it isn't any of our jobs to produce the game to begin with.
It's like saying a damaged knife cuts better than a pristine spoon and then using that comparison to say the knife is doing a great job
 
having patch notes saying they fixed path skill tiers after 2 months of being broken just to have them reverting back to base level again within the same day is some pretty shoddy work. Or the sheer amount of things they messed up on spellslinger in one fell swoop
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Aftershockz
 
"You guys are the ones saying "how hard can it be" and a Carbine has clearly stated why their can be issues, yet you still *cupcake*ing say "omg that's bullshit it doesn't/shouldn't work that way cause I know a guy who works on these shitty iphone apps that *cupcake*ing suck ass and he says it doesn't work that way."
 
So your defense about my response is the biggest load of hypocrite crap you could ever spout...
 
Left hand needs to meet right hand yo cause clearly they have no idea what they are each *cupcake*ing doing at the moment."
 
 
 
exactly. again, you get it in every flippin mmo.
 
"i don't work in the field, so i can't possibly know how things are done there, but at my job they'd never let me get away with that crap!!!!!" as if that mattered in the slightest.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
When you work for a security software company, you actually lose your job if you "revert" a feature unintentionaly with a patch, or, break a working feature in the same way.
 
I couldn't care less how much credibility I have in your eyes... Do I need to go cry in a corner or what?
 
Pft.
----
			
@OP ( and all with similar views ),
 
You are playing an MMORPG.  Seems to be par for the course for EVERY MMORPG especially in it's infancy.
 
Is this frustrating? Yes.
 
Is it worth getting "mad about"? Not really.
 
I don't think the "I worked on software systems" defense justifies YOUR knowledge of THEIR problems.
 
As to the tool above that said The Dev that posted in this thread was "making excuses", TBH, the Devs response was quite a reasonable explanation, AND it didn't NEED to be done.  It was a courtesy and shows That the Dev team is listening and willing to explain things EVEN THOUGH THEY DON'T HAVE TO.
 
Look am I frustrated by certain things that get broken with each patch? Why yes, yes I am.  Does it do me ANY GOOD to make a "special cupcake" thread about "my frustrations"? Nope not at all and contrary to Adler and Rodgers "voicing ones feelings" only makes one more angry.  It's better to practice patience. ;)
 
Bottom line just do your part and report the bugs using the IN GAME bug report AND the bug report forums.  Be as detailed as you can to help the problem get fixed.  Stop complaining and provide observations and feed back so hopefully the problems get resolved sooner rather than later.
 
Am I "being a white knight", I am sure some may view it like that, but I make this same observation OVER AND OVER AND OVER again with each MMORPG I have played for the last 13+ years so ... SSDM ... get over it cupcake! ;)	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
You guys are the ones saying "how hard can it be" and a Carbine has clearly stated why their can be issues, yet you still *cupcake*ing say "omg that's bullshit it doesn't/shouldn't work that way cause I know a guy who works on these shitty iphone apps that *cupcake*ing suck ass and he says it doesn't work that way."
 
So your defense about my response is the biggest load of hypocrite crap you could ever spout...
 
Left hand needs to meet right hand yo cause clearly they have no idea what they are each *cupcake*ing doing at the moment.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I sat next to a guy who used to write s/w for airbag controllers.  The same held true there, only when they messed up, people died.  That still didn't stop them from releasing s/w with bugs.  "NEVER" is the only word you posted I have a problem with.  
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Only one dev branch means you have to merge all your bugfixes, features, content drops to that branch and in that case, frequent 'rebase' required by sub branches to keep up with all that merged fixes or changes.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I never said anything like that, now your just straight up lying to try and win.
 
I said I don't care how difficult it is, a professional does what it takes to get it right
They aren't even fixing bugs specifically stated in the patch notes as fixed as well as introducing a whole slew of new ones
They have a ton of issues that aren't even bugs like all the gear that is itemized for non-existent classes or for classes that had base stats shifted way back in closed beta yet they never changed the items to match.
They had a department lead pretty much admit on a live stream that the various design teams don't even interact with each other
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I said you guys,,, plural..it the term was used because that's how a lot of people are acting in here and you are agreeing with them..you know the old guilty by association..
 
bottom line you know nothing about programming on this scale and neither does anyone else here.. so until you do how about shutting up and let carbine fix the shit in peace.. whiney brats.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
So i'm like that because you say I am? Your quite the moron aren't you?
It's not the customer's responsibility to know how to do the job. It's the customer's responsibility to want it done well
 
when carbine releases a patch where they at the very least fix the things they actually claimed they fixed I'll consider not criticizing their performance as harshly
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Don't like it leave.. that simple. no one is forcing you to play the game. Maybe accept some personal responsibility here yeah ? or did your parents not teach you about that.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Don't like it leave.. that simple. no one is forcing you to play the game. Maybe accept some personal responsibility here yeah ? or did your parents not teach you about that.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
no, software design means that many things are interconnected and changing or adding one may affect another.
 
I dont read anywhere that devs are saying its too hard to do the job. do you have any experience in software design at all or just equating it to your work?
----
			
Honestly, is no one else interested in the patterns the bugs reveal? To me they hint at the engine's underlying architecture, reveal interdependencies that would otherwise be invisible.
 
The blank quest text in Brightvale (which I encountered directly at the end of my leveling up my main) isn't ONE bug, it's 20-30 bugs of the same sort. That suggests a single error in the process that then iterated into a bunch of visible faults. Any time you have the same type of bug popping up repeatedly, its a blueprint for how QA can step up their game now-ish and eventually new requirements for content check-in/verification soon-ish.	
----
			
It's great that the devs share their process and I do appreciate it.
 
The thing is... Your players don't care. They just want to log in after a hard day's work and play the game they pay a subscription for. It's really cool that you share this stuff, but your dev process is not part of the subscription fee. Or at least it shouldn't be.
 
That's cool that your dev pipeline is very complex and it's hard to manage. Your players don't care.
 
I don't care how hard it is for, say, Apple to make an iPhone. I bet it's incredibly difficult, with thousands of people involved, multiple countries, etc. But the thing is... as an end of the line customer... I just don't care. It's not my job, I just want my damn phone. And guess what? If it keeps breaking I'll just buy another brand and tell my friends about the shitty phone I wasted my money on.
 
 
PS: In all actuality this isn't the perspective I take personally, I sympathize with the devs, as much as I get frustrated by the process. But it's the reality of the market unfortunately. I don't know that the best response to player frustration is to be transparent about a complex development process. Maybe it does some good and assuages a small minority, but if things keep breaking it just won't matter for most of the player base.	
----
			
I care. Any job is harder than it seems from the outside. Insight into what the specifics are is usually helpful. 
 
With that said, I do have one pet peeve. Why do you guys take patches made during the previous cycle and reapply them during the big content drops? I've had to talk people down twice today who thought rampage's damage got nerfed again, both in the patch the 15th and the one today. What is a change made on the 15th doing in the notes for today? This is not an isolated incident. Additionally, a couple of medics didn't really understand what was happening with their class changes, and the notes did not point them toward a summary so they could read for themselves. 
 
Is there some specific reason you guys prefer to reiterate these changes, or provide no context on major new ones? Obviously you can't include justifications and reasons for everything, but for the primary issues I would think players would find that helpful. 
 
Just a thought. Thanks for supplying some feedback in any case. 	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
It's great that the devs share their process and I do appreciate it.
 
The thing is... Your players don't care. They just want to log in after a hard day's work and play the game they pay a subscription for. It's really cool that you share this stuff, but your dev process is not part of the subscription fee. Or at least it shouldn't be.
 
That's cool that your dev pipeline is very complex and it's hard to manage. Your players don't care.
 
I don't care how hard it is for, say, Apple to make an iPhone. I bet it's incredibly difficult, with thousands of people involved, multiple countries, etc. But the thing is... as an end of the line customer... I just don't care. It's not my job, I just want my damn phone. And guess what? If it keeps breaking I'll just buy another brand and tell my friends about the shitty phone I wasted my money on.
 
 
PS: In all actuality this isn't the perspective I take personally, I sympathize with the devs, as much as I get frustrated by the process. But it's the reality of the market unfortunately. I don't know that the best response to player frustration is to be transparent about a complex development process. Maybe it does some good and assuages a small minority, but if things keep breaking it just won't matter for most of the player base.
----
			
Chua cares.
And Chua care not about Humans bitching on forums about it.
Stuff can go wrong, always will.
 
And instead of whining like little kid, might show some understanding or do something with life when waiting for game.	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Chua cares.
And Chua care not about Humans bitching on forums about it.
Stuff can go wrong, always will.
 
And instead of whining like little kid, might show some understanding or do something with life when waiting for game.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Chua having a personality dissorder or something?
 
I can moan and whine to my hearts content because I've paid for this product/service. Simple as that.
 
I'm off.... Craving for a Chua burger with bacon.
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{| class="blockquote"
Hello folks,
 
I really wonder how after EVERY PATCH things that have been working break? I mean, looking at patch notes, there are a ton of fixes, updates and additions there but in reality, things that either got fixed in a previous patch or have already been working break!
 
I work as a lead developer in a software company, and I know how production pipelines work. I, and the teams I've managed NEVER released a software upgrade that reverted or broke working or previously fixed things. I am really amazed how Carbine's release flow feels flawed, incompetent and to be frank - no offense - amateur.
 
Some of the ridiculous "post-patch" bugs I've seen are:
 
- Stalkers drop out of stealth because of an item special's internal cooldown. HOW on earth you don't test it and let it go live?
- Spellslingers' wild barrage hits 360 degree and pierce through everything. Really? HOW? Don't you test all class abilities at least once before going live to check if they are working as intended?
- [before the sabotage drop] All quest names in blighthaven were empty. I mean, literally, they were empty strings. REALLY? How on earth you don't fix it asap?
- Nano field and HtCC implementation... Without an exception, EVERY DAMN PATCH how nano field interact with hold to cast changes! Have you ever tested this ability before going live? It is useless beyond imagination now (don't mean the nerfs, they were required)
- A wrong breadcrumb quest goes live. Now I think this is somewhat intended to make people wonder, but if it is not, HOW?
- When you swap professions, your previously unlocked schematics get locked until you RELOG. How did you test this feature seriously?
 
There are maybe other things that I didn't notice but others did. But you get the idea, I sincerely wonder how Carbine manage to make these rather childish mistakes. This is a huge piece of software, and it needs more serious quality control and more strict release proccess which in my honest opinion, Carbine slightly fails at.
 
I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I'm not flaming anyone here. I honestly do wonder why those mistakes happen?
 
~Tequila
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{| class="blockquote"
Hello folks,
 
I really wonder how after EVERY PATCH things that have been working break? I mean, looking at patch notes, there are a ton of fixes, updates and additions there but in reality, things that either got fixed in a previous patch or have already been working break!
 
I work as a lead developer in a software company, and I know how production pipelines work. I, and the teams I've managed NEVER released a software upgrade that reverted or broke working or previously fixed things. I am really amazed how Carbine's release flow feels flawed, incompetent and to be frank - no offense - amateur.
 
Some of the ridiculous "post-patch" bugs I've seen are:
 
- Stalkers drop out of stealth because of an item special's internal cooldown. HOW on earth you don't test it and let it go live?
- Spellslingers' wild barrage hits 360 degree and pierce through everything. Really? HOW? Don't you test all class abilities at least once before going live to check if they are working as intended?
- [before the sabotage drop] All quest names in blighthaven were empty. I mean, literally, they were empty strings. REALLY? How on earth you don't fix it asap?
- Nano field and HtCC implementation... Without an exception, EVERY DAMN PATCH how nano field interact with hold to cast changes! Have you ever tested this ability before going live? It is useless beyond imagination now (don't mean the nerfs, they were required)
- A wrong breadcrumb quest goes live. Now I think this is somewhat intended to make people wonder, but if it is not, HOW?
- When you swap professions, your previously unlocked schematics get locked until you RELOG. How did you test this feature seriously?
 
There are maybe other things that I didn't notice but others did. But you get the idea, I sincerely wonder how Carbine manage to make these rather childish mistakes. This is a huge piece of software, and it needs more serious quality control and more strict release proccess which in my honest opinion, Carbine slightly fails at.
 
I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I'm not flaming anyone here. I honestly do wonder why those mistakes happen?
 
~Tequila
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{| class="blockquote"
Can you provide screenshots and detailed notes of all the testing you did yourself on the PTR, I mean most of these patches were on the PTR before release presumably with the same bugs. Just send me all the notes you took and copies of all the bug reports you submitted while you were on the PTR testing. You were the last line of defense for the bugs, I blame you for patches being released with bugs, I mean since we're playing the blame game and all.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
I see this stance all over the place in regards to games that allow for PTR testing or similar features. And boy does it reek of bullshit.
 
Let's use an analogy. A train station is opening up nearby my house and they're inviting a few guests to come see it before it's finished. But wait! For some reason, several of the rails are malformed and would derail a train. It slips by my notice. When the station is opened, the unnoticed and untested problem actually derails a train. Am I to be blamed for their engineering failure?
 
It's the same deal in games as a whole and in this situation Wildstar. Blaming other customers for what the company should be doing is incredibly absurd. Would you blame nearby patrons if your food at a restaurant was poor? Or would you blame the people that actually made the food and sold it to you?
 
P.S. A shitload of the bugs on live currently WERE reported on the PTR. I know a multitude of the Spellslinger bugs were reported, and yes, I was one of them. Carbine did not address them. Still blaming me?
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Except cannot compare situations, as complexity, development cycles and rules are different.
Chua think is even absurd to treat everything same or comb over same side. Simply does not work.
More complex a system, more easier to break.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
 3 casuals sit infront of a pc
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
So I guess Carbine is beyond reproach and it's all those damn PTR testers fault then. I mean, they only reported the bugs, they didn't actually code the game to fix them as well, those lazy gits. I mean, Carbine's paying them for all this work they're expected, why aren't they doing a better job? Oh, right, they're not paid employees.
 
It's sad your singleminded Chua intellect cannot compare two systems for the purpose of an analogy.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Chua sad Human cannot understand concept of complexity and needs to resort to insults to make point.
Chua try one more time. Chua often forget Human not think as fast as Chua:
 
Software, Games in particular, are complex
A QA Team can only test so much. Adding more QA/Testers does not solve issue. Is impossible to cover all bases.
Software has bad habit of breaking somewhere when introducing new feature
Certain parts unable to be tested by a QA team. Example : Class Balance and PvP
Just because bug reported does not mean can be fixed easy: Needs investigation, research, testing and deploying.
All have priority, just something more important then others.
If Chua was too fast, then ask and Chua try explaining again.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
What you're typing doesn't actually match what's happening. Every patch, or even hotfix, is a guessing game as to how many broken systems were introduced into the game. According to your points, this game is so complex that it is impossible to cover all bases (and pvp is untestable  :rolleyes:). We'll call it a fair assumption. But nobody is harping about one single bug in these patches; there are absolutely loads of them. It's to the point that when I see patch notes, I have to go into the game and verify if the game has actually changed to how they've said it has. Oftentimes, it has not or has changed in a completely different way.
 
But all that said, Wildstar does not exist in a vacuum and is not the most complex piece of code to ever be assmbled. Now, I'm going to try another one of these comparisons. I know you had difficulty with the last one, so I'll try to take this one real slow.
 
For this example, I am going to compare two video games. One is Wildstar, the game we are talking about. The other is a video game in the same genre as Wildstar, a game called World of Warcraft. It is currently the largest market share for the MMO genre; it's the staple. It is the product that consumers are going to be comparing your product to if you release in the same genre, like any product or service where there's not a monopoly. Still following? Do you see how these could be considered similar this time around?
 
Both of these games release content updates or smaller bugfixing updates. But, World of Warcraft's releases are typically rock-solid and any bugs that crop up are fixed within moments, oftentimes a mere hour after the bug being found depending on its severity. Something like a skill hitting an area 18x larger (see: Wild Barrage) than it's supposed to, would be fixed immediately, if it even made it into the game. Having the UI not show cooldowns properly (see: all Spellslinger abilities after using Quick Draw with Trigger Fingers) would be considered unplayable by the majority of the playerbase, since they have much higher standards. I cannot recall a point in WoW's history where a similar bug has made it into the game, but if it had, I know it would have been patched the day of.
 
In Wildstar, releases are greeted with patch notes that have been copy and pasted from previous patches, leaving the user to weed out which changes are actually new. The new patch notes themselves are so unreliable that you have to test them ingame to verify they've actually changed; as many times they have not or have changed in a completely different way. The really exciting stuff happens when you begin scraping the surface for the loads of bugs that were introduced. Examples: Repair all not working, Mordechai Redmoon exploits being fixed when they weren't, Nanofield functionality being changed frequently, decor items no longer able to be used outside of housing, Vitality Burst never really working as it's supposed to at C1, etc. You then have to wonder when these will actually be patched. In the case of Repair All, I think it was about a week. In Mordechai's case, players were still cheesing him prior to yesterday's patch (and possibly now, but I have not run Skullcano since Sabotage).
 
So, one of these games has much more reliable patches than another, despite these games both being complex or software having the habit of breaking. This would lead us to the idea that these factors can be mitigated if not controlled and that Wildstar is not doing as well as competitors in this area. According to your points, more QA/testers does not solve the issue. So, then the only systems in place responsible for the huge gap in stability between these two games would be either the architecture of the devcycle (4+ coding environments being worked on simultaneously) or those that are working within that cycle. In the end it doesn't matter which it is, because the end result is all that matters for the consumer. The result is that Wildstar's patches up until this point have been amateur hour and they need to be improved. Hence, this thread.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
What you're typing doesn't actually match what's happening. Every patch, or even hotfix, is a guessing game as to how many broken systems were introduced into the game. According to your points, this game is so complex that it is impossible to cover all bases (and pvp is untestable  :rolleyes:). We'll call it a fair assumption. But nobody is harping about one single bug in these patches; there are absolutely loads of them. It's to the point that when I see patch notes, I have to go into the game and verify if the game has actually changed to how they've said it has. Oftentimes, it has not or has changed in a completely different way.
 
But all that said, Wildstar does not exist in a vacuum and is not the most complex piece of code to ever be assmbled. Now, I'm going to try another one of these comparisons. I know you had difficulty with the last one, so I'll try to take this one real slow.
 
For this example, I am going to compare two video games. One is Wildstar, the game we are talking about. The other is a video game in the same genre as Wildstar, a game called World of Warcraft. It is currently the largest market share for the MMO genre; it's the staple. It is the product that consumers are going to be comparing your product to if you release in the same genre, like any product or service where there's not a monopoly. Still following? Do you see how these could be considered similar this time around?
 
Both of these games release content updates or smaller bugfixing updates. But, World of Warcraft's releases are typically rock-solid and any bugs that crop up are fixed within moments, oftentimes a mere hour after the bug being found depending on its severity. Something like a skill hitting an area 18x larger (see: Wild Barrage) than it's supposed to, would be fixed immediately, if it even made it into the game. Having the UI not show cooldowns properly (see: all Spellslinger abilities after using Quick Draw with Trigger Fingers) would be considered unplayable by the majority of the playerbase, since they have much higher standards. I cannot recall a point in WoW's history where a similar bug has made it into the game, but if it had, I know it would have been patched the day of.
 
In Wildstar, releases are greeted with patch notes that have been copy and pasted from previous patches, leaving the user to weed out which changes are actually new. The new patch notes themselves are so unreliable that you have to test them ingame to verify they've actually changed; as many times they have not or have changed in a completely different way. The really exciting stuff happens when you begin scraping the surface for the loads of bugs that were introduced. Examples: Repair all not working, Mordechai Redmoon exploits being fixed when they weren't, Nanofield functionality being changed frequently, decor items no longer able to be used outside of housing, Vitality Burst never really working as it's supposed to at C1, etc. You then have to wonder when these will actually be patched. In the case of Repair All, I think it was about a week. In Mordechai's case, players were still cheesing him prior to yesterday's patch (and possibly now, but I have not run Skullcano since Sabotage).
 
So, one of these games has much more reliable patches than another, despite these games both being complex or software having the habit of breaking. This would lead us to the idea that these factors can be mitigated if not controlled and that Wildstar is not doing as well as competitors in this area. According to your points, more QA/testers does not solve the issue. So, then the only systems in place responsible for the huge gap in stability between these two games would be either the architecture of the devcycle (4+ coding environments being worked on simultaneously) or those that are working within that cycle. In the end it doesn't matter which it is, because the end result is all that matters for the consumer. The result is that Wildstar's patches up until this point have been amateur hour and they need to be improved. Hence, this thread.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Silly Human.
Paid for access to server and lease to use said product.
Maybe should read EULA more closely.....
 
But is okay, Chua understand entitlement.
----
			
Wow releases rock solid.........
Chua not sure if want to be using that argument.............	
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
EULAlalolo's my ass.
 
It's the same old sheit we've been hearing for the past 20 odd years from people in quasi funny T-shirts and grey suits alike  
It doesn't matter how complex a game is. It should be balanced, bug free and play as advertised once it's offered to the consumer.
Pay upfront, patch it up while breaking other things, all this over a stretch of say 6-8 months before it's the game we all want to play, should be forbidden by law ffs.
 
Guess Chua got same T-shirt as developdude.
 
 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
How many source code branches does your team work in (not meant as a snarky tone, just genuinely curious)?
 
At any given time our code environments look like the following: 
Dev (Drop 7), Dev (Drop 6), Dev (Drop 5) | Staging (Drop 4), PTR (Drop 3), Live (Drop 2)  
Maybe that's the problem. Unorganized code and departments making it hard for many people to work on one project. Splitting it into different departments will make it even worse. 
 
 
Our Dev environments run CI (continuous integration) with hundreds of our devs checking in work on a daily basis. For shipping environments, we have some proprietary tech we use for integrations and code promotions (our Build team rocks and they work really hard).  Branches iterate on a monthly basis (imagine a conveyor belt moving from left to right.)
 
There's your other problem. Companies with less dev's and branches manage to release code that's tested and does not contain as many bugs. Sure it's human nature that things can go wrong no doubts and blame here, but maybe organizing your working environment and having a actual lead doing their job with proof reading and testing,  would maybe help with minimizing those kind of issues. It's no surprise that if 100's of people trying to "fix" something leads to chaos. 
 
 
We also have a fairly aggressive monthly Live release cycle which can be seen as follows:
 
1 Content DropWe iterate our branch numbers when this occurs and this represents major changes in our database structures, system overhauls, new features coming online, etc. 
Typically, large scoped features and high risk changes are deployed with Drops (Sabotage, Blighthaven, The Defile, etc.) 
Content drops contain literally thousands of changes made by hundreds of developers while the branch resides on our Dev environment 
2 - 4 Weekly PatchesWe iterate build numbers and not branch numbers with these
Smaller and manageable changes are deployed (sometimes we get whacky and throw something big in)
These only include promoted code (we also have another system we use for fixing things directly on shipping which I can't delve into details on)
~# Hotfixes (unknown number of hotfixes depending on severity of issues)We do not iterate build numbers externally when hotfixes occur
Small and targeted fixes for exploits/critical issues occur during hotfixes 
These only include promoted code (we also have another system we use for fixing things directly on shipping which I can't delve into details on)
 
I am sorry but that's your own fault if you roll out broken content every 3 days and hope fixing it with a patch every 24 hours. Maybe you take some more time to look at things or actual read the ptr forums since players report these bugs before they even go live. To no point anybody forced you of releasing code that wasn't finished or tested. 
 
 
 
Here's just a few examples of how something may break: 
 
We don't catch something in QA (hey, we're not perfect and we're the first to admit that, but damn do we try hard and are we pretty diligent in what we get.  FYI our QA team is really on the ball with a lot of things and they deserve a badge and a hat.)
During the build and/or code promotion process to Live a code dependency or integration issue occurs and we break an unforseen system (typically Build/QA catches this)
System X comes online and System Y depends on it in such an obscure way that until the code is live in a production environment we don't see the issue (today's crashes are a good example of this, we needed a LOT of players online doing a LOT of different things for the system to stress to the point that causes the break)
 
Eh no, I worked many years in the gaming industry and we always had servers running the so called backup. Servers that weren't open to the public with the exact same build than the live servers. I do understand that 100's of people can not stress a server compared to thousands however if the code fails already on the backup server maybe someone should be looking into that before releasing it to the masses. Or if at the end something is broken or wasn't working as intended try to communicate with your player base. It's an excuse to just sit there and tell us that everything possible has been done and was working perfectly fine but the current engine of the live server broke some pieces here and there. I don't wanna sound harsh or total *cupcake* but if you would put a little bit more effort and care in your product before releasing it to the public it might change the attitude of your player base. 
 
 
It's a lot to juggle and hopefully that helps shed some light on things.
 
Cougar also has a good post on patches here:
https://forums.wildstar-online.com/forums/index.php?/topic/16069-carbine-processes-patch-types/
 
Cheers 
----
			When you want subs to cost what it does to maintain software for nuclear power plant, then you can get the same QA that a nuclear power plant requires.	
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{| class="blockquote"
Both of these games release content updates or smaller bugfixing updates. But, World of Warcraft's releases are typically rock-solid and any bugs that crop up are fixed within moments, oftentimes a mere hour after the bug being found depending on its severity. Something like a skill hitting an area 18x larger (see: Wild Barrage) than it's supposed to, would be fixed immediately, if it even made it into the game. Having the UI not show cooldowns properly (see: all Spellslinger abilities after using Quick Draw with Trigger Fingers) would be considered unplayable by the majority of the playerbase, since they have much higher standards. I cannot recall a point in WoW's history where a similar bug has made it into the game, but if it had, I know it would have been patched the day of.
 
 
 
 
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
lol bug free software...lol did we miss the whole windows vista thing?...windows me....windows 8...etc etc.
Now..would it be nice if that were the way it was of course. But its never going to be that way. Nothing made by man will ever be flawless 100%
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
you were almost doing okay up to this point. short term memory is my guess.
 
in recent memory, patch 5.4 that dropped Timeless Isle in. September 10 2013. patches and fixes occurred nearly daily for the rest of September. in fact, almost every couple days for the next several months.
 
yes, thats quite rock solid.
----
			
{| class="blockquote"
Thats why I said this industry needs to blow itself up earlier in this thread. It's one big shady pile of poo generating more piles of poo each and every month.
Most consumers have accepted digital products for what they are, uncomplete and bug ridden. I simply can't fathom why one should accept this
And it's getting worse everyday.
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Chua recommend not to forget bug at launch that allowed player to kill entire city using console commands.
Or game not playable because airships not spawned.
Oh let's not forget bosses resetting in raids.
Oh did Chua mention Farm crops dissapearing?
Or dragon not attackable?
Chua maybe forgot quests not spawning....
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Thats why I said this industry needs to blow itself up earlier in this thread. It's one big shady pile of poo generating more piles of poo each and every month.
Most consumers have accepted digital products for what they are, uncomplete and bug ridden. I simply can't fathom why one should accept this
And it's getting worse everyday.
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It sounds like you had an unfavorable experience with a lot of these things happening, am I correct?
 
Identical and worse issues exist in Wildstar and they're not being as fixed as quickly, to boot.
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Chua recommend not to forget bug at launch that allowed player to kill entire city using console commands.
Or game not playable because airships not spawned.
Oh let's not forget bosses resetting in raids.
Oh did Chua mention Farm crops dissapearing?
Or dragon not attackable?
Chua maybe forgot quests not spawning....
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I'm curious why the number of branches is relevant.
 
You don't release from a branch, you do your changes in a branch, merge them into the mainline, and release from mainline.  It's the mainline the generates the binaries and that's the code that would be tested.  It's not like the testers have 7 different versions to have to test before propping changes to the live environment.	
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I'm curious why the number of branches is relevant.
 
You don't release from a branch, you do your changes in a branch, merge them into the mainline, and release from mainline.  It's the mainline the generates the binaries and that's the code that would be tested.  It's not like the testers have 7 different versions to have to test before propping changes to the live environment.
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I'm curious why the number of branches is relevant.
 
You don't release from a branch, you do your changes in a branch, merge them into the mainline, and release from mainline.  It's the mainline the generates the binaries and that's the code that would be tested.  It's not like the testers have 7 different versions to have to test before propping changes to the live environment.
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I work as a lead developer in a software company, and I know how production pipelines work. I, and the teams I've managed NEVER released a software upgrade that reverted or broke working or previously fixed things. I am really amazed how Carbine's release flow feels flawed, incompetent and to be frank - no offense - amateur.
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Funny thing, Chua encountered none of these.
Chua leveled to 50 without problems.
Chua now found issues with few vet-adventures and dungeons, and quest text not fully visible here and there.
Guess what, Chua find way around is having fun.
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{| class="blockquote"
I'm curious why the number of branches is relevant.
 
You don't release from a branch, you do your changes in a branch, merge them into the mainline, and release from mainline.  It's the mainline the generates the binaries and that's the code that would be tested.  It's not like the testers have 7 different versions to have to test before propping changes to the live environment.
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