Guild Wars 2

Tonight’s Tequatl run was complete and utter BS. We had successfully done the first 2 defense and burn stages, but suddenly on the third, the counter hit zero, and stayed there for a good 20 seconds, we we’re all stacked and mighted up, but Teq never came until it was too late and a battery went down. Near the end of the hell that followed, everyone’s timers went haywire, some said their’s had already expired, while others, including mine, were still at 2 minutes. Just as we were about to finally do the last bit of DPS it randomly failed the event. So no spooning tonight, only a green chest, and a blue chest. Completely unacceptable from something that was working almost flawlessly before this update. Shouldn’t have rushed Anet, I wouldn’t have minded waiting a little longer for a much cleaner patch.

Sounds like the end of the world! :O

Our map had the same thing…only we succeeded with a clutch kill after the failed Megalaser. It felt like the most amazing Teq ever because of the clutch nature, with the entire map coming together to fight tooth and nail for that last bit of health in the waning 30 seconds before utter failure. Getting crushed by the massive Teq tidal wave and then coming back for the win…priceless.

However, I completely and totally agree with how crappy and unacceptable the lag and delay was. For as much as I love the camera options, this patch has a huge number of bugs:

Broken Guild Chat (fixed by opening friends list, going invis, and going back online)
Green Chat Text
Texture-less Triple Trouble Wurms
Uber lag/skill delay

Something clearly went wrong in implementation. I’m hoping they’ll get it under control soon. They need to if they want people to keep faith for updates and Heart of Thorns…

(Top success quote from that Teq run in my map though: “Where’s my precursor, because that clutch kill was kitten-ing LEGENDARY!”)

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

Just pretend you actually did defeat him but the chests gave you nothing, like they always do.

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

Sages.3496:

Purple Miku.7032:

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

You sound real entitled to this huh? well, sorry bud. you aint a dev, so bugger off.

So I am a developer, and I can tell you this update seems much buggier that it should have been.

yea man anet should give everyone a precursor for the fiasco hue hue hue

Purple Miku.7032:

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

Just about every patch I can remember downloading has resulted in bugs. It is not surprising that a large patch would have more than average. Am I thrilled that it took me a long time to finish loading my game client the second time? No. Do I enjoy having to go invisible and back again just to gain access to my guild chat? No. Do I like the green text and green downed meter? No. (Though I think that is a stab at St. Patrick’s day.) Was it nice that even my bug report window was bugged? No. Was I having a good time experiencing many other bugs through the night and/or hearing about them? No.

But I accept it because they’re bugs. They happen. They’re not the end of the world, or the game.

So yes, it is acceptable.
Throwing a hissy fit and saying it isn’t? You all can do better. This will pass.

Nick.9572:

Sages.3496:

Purple Miku.7032:

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

You sound real entitled to this huh? well, sorry bud. you aint a dev, so bugger off.

So I am a developer, and I can tell you this update seems much buggier that it should have been.

Indeed it was buggy, but considering the amount of content Anet has for a $60 game. this in MY opinion can be ignored, if you are a dev. then you would know that not everything can always come out properly ready, as in things will always have one bug or another. nothing is a “Perfect” patch.

“You paid only $60 for a game. Don’t except perfection!!!!!”

That’s why we can’t get good things in this game.

Phoenixlin.8624:

“You paid only $60 for a game. Don’t except perfection!!!!!”

That’s why we can’t get good things in this game.

90% of the time even the community doesnt know what it wants, therefore there is no “good thing.” literaly ever. we wanted a nerf for adrenaline on the warrior and so we got one, then people went kittening and moaning about it all. we wanted a nerf to certain classes and then people went and kittened about it, i’d leave it up to the devs what they put in the game and thats that at this point.

Sages.3496:

Phoenixlin.8624:

“You paid only $60 for a game. Don’t except perfection!!!!!”

That’s why we can’t get good things in this game.

90% of the time even the community doesnt know what it wants, therefore there is no “good thing.” literaly ever. we wanted a nerf for adrenaline on the warrior and so we got one, then people went kittening and moaning about it all. we wanted a nerf to certain classes and then people went and kittened about it, i’d leave it up to the devs what they put in the game and thats that at this point.

Different people want different things…

dietzero.3514:

Sages.3496:

Phoenixlin.8624:

“You paid only $60 for a game. Don’t except perfection!!!!!”

That’s why we can’t get good things in this game.

90% of the time even the community doesnt know what it wants, therefore there is no “good thing.” literaly ever. we wanted a nerf for adrenaline on the warrior and so we got one, then people went kittening and moaning about it all. we wanted a nerf to certain classes and then people went and kittened about it, i’d leave it up to the devs what they put in the game and thats that at this point.

Different people want different things…

You’re right they do, but they wont always get what they want and it changes so frequently that once something is changed. its more often than not kittened about and i for one am about to say this “Expect it and stop complaining.” ye get what ye asked for, whats the point?

It seems Anet’s hidden mantra is “we can fix this or add that, but in the end we know something else completely unintended will break”.

So it has been since the very early stages of this game, so it will continue to be.

Sages.3496:

Nick.9572:

Sages.3496:

Purple Miku.7032:

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

You sound real entitled to this huh? well, sorry bud. you aint a dev, so bugger off.

So I am a developer, and I can tell you this update seems much buggier that it should have been.

Indeed it was buggy, but considering the amount of content Anet has for a $60 game. this in MY opinion can be ignored, if you are a dev. then you would know that not everything can always come out properly ready, as in things will always have one bug or another. nothing is a “Perfect” patch.

No, nothing is perfect, and certainly not most software. However, there have been a lot of regressions in this patch. Way more than I would personally be comfortable with.

Purple Miku.7032:

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

Total crap. Do you think for every patch they test every single world boss every time? If there were no changes to Teq, they wouldn’t have tested Teq. They are testing the things they change. A bug that creeps into one specific boss is impossible to track down unless they’re specifically testing for it.

Sure the OP can be kittened off that a boss is bugged, but saying it’s unacceptable is silly because software updates come with bugs all the time in every program, not just every game.

Software bugs are a fact of life. Saying they’re unacceptable is like saying mistakes are unacceptable. It’s like saying that bad dreams are unacceptable.

Annoying sure. It’s annoying. But expecting every piece of older content to be tested every time there’s a patch…that’s not realistic.

Nick.9572:

Sages.3496:

Nick.9572:

Sages.3496:

Purple Miku.7032:

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

You sound real entitled to this huh? well, sorry bud. you aint a dev, so bugger off.

So I am a developer, and I can tell you this update seems much buggier that it should have been.

Indeed it was buggy, but considering the amount of content Anet has for a $60 game. this in MY opinion can be ignored, if you are a dev. then you would know that not everything can always come out properly ready, as in things will always have one bug or another. nothing is a “Perfect” patch.

No, nothing is perfect, and certainly not most software. However, there have been a lot of regressions in this patch. Way more than I would personally be comfortable with.

Well.. i can name a game that did worse xD try wildstar.

Why are you mad? After almost 3 years GW2 is going from alpha to beta state. Soon we’ll have the release!

Have you guys even seen the list of bugs? If it was just a bug or two, then sure. But at this point:

Bug reports bugged
Guild chat bugged
Guild workshop bugged
HoM portal Bugged
HoM achievements bugged
Multiple textures bugged
Item stacking bugged
Pvp reward tracks bugged
Vendors bugged (karma, dungeon, etc)
Audio bugs
EU WvW unplayable due to lag
… (Head over to the bug forums for more, there are many)

Some people can’t play, while others are getting massive exploits (accidentally or not)
It is unreasonable to expect them to catch every bug but come on. If they added a testing platform then many of these things wouldn’t have hit live.

What is with the mediocrity loving. Not being the worst is a poor standard.

Vayne.8563:

Purple Miku.7032:

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

Total crap. Do you think for every patch they test every single world boss every time? If there were no changes to Teq, they wouldn’t have tested Teq. They are testing the things they change. A bug that creeps into one specific boss is impossible to track down unless they’re specifically testing for it.

Sure the OP can be kittened off that a boss is bugged, but saying it’s unacceptable is silly because software updates come with bugs all the time in every program, not just every game.

Software bugs are a fact of life. Saying they’re unacceptable is like saying mistakes are unacceptable. It’s like saying that bad dreams are unacceptable.

Annoying sure. It’s annoying. But expecting every piece of older content to be tested every time there’s a patch…that’s not realistic.

Pretty sure you have no clue what your talking about here and are merely clutching at straws.. .. of course they will check.. anything that has code derived, linked, etc can and likely will have cascading effects across the game and TEQ and any other source of the game effected by new mechanics, new stat variances, new textures etc will be checked.

Lagasaurus Teq is one of their prime events and should of been checked for bugs more closely imo.
Then again lag is not always indicative of coding issues it may simply be a server wide issue or at an individual level, but to say that there was no need for any specific area of the game to be properly QA’ed/stress tested after what is quite a significant update is simply silly season guesswork on your part.

Sadly though every patch single the dawn of GW2 at beta has appeared to lack that polish to its QA and as such we become the test server for them to fire fight on over the next few weeks… maybe that’s the way ANET prefer it but imo the performance of the game over the last 12-18 months or so has dropped off significantly.
Sure every MMO suffers issues, they are tricksy beasts and hard to keep well behaved, but GW2 does seem to me to suffer more than most these days….

BTW ANET fix the kitten inventory resize bug that been allowed to creep back in for the umpteenth time!!

First of all, I do not mind bugs..they happen and will be solved.

I DO mind however the amount of it AND the fact that thousands of players are using this “system” on daily basis. If we should release our website with updates and the bug count should be this high..oh boy, we would be SOOO in trouble…(triple trouble to say the least :P )
The difference however is..our site is an “need to use” for our society..this is “JUST” a game..but still one who has a huge dedicated fanbase, so there are obligations to deliver at least a less buggier product.

Azhure.1857:

Purple Miku.7032:

Azhure.1857:

Its a bug. — Therefor its temporary. — Totally acceptable.

No, it’s not.

They delayed this update a week and still pushed it out wayyyyyyy too early. Rushing updates is just dumb.

If it wasn’t enough time to at least test to make sure something as basic as chat bubbles/down state not being green, random male charr noises coming from my human female character, and the plethora of other problems released this patch then it’s pretty obvious they’re understaffed. Tequatl is no exception to this and OP has every reason to be uptight about it.

Just about every patch I can remember downloading has resulted in bugs. It is not surprising that a large patch would have more than average. Am I thrilled that it took me a long time to finish loading my game client the second time? No. Do I enjoy having to go invisible and back again just to gain access to my guild chat? No. Do I like the green text and green downed meter? No. (Though I think that is a stab at St. Patrick’s day.) Was it nice that even my bug report window was bugged? No. Was I having a good time experiencing many other bugs through the night and/or hearing about them? No.

But I accept it because they’re bugs. They happen. They’re not the end of the world, or the game.

So yes, it is acceptable.
Throwing a hissy fit and saying it isn’t? You all can do better. This will pass.

Funny how all the people who are saying that it is acceptable. Try this kitten with any other game, and the community of that game will eat the Devs alive.

Somehow the Guild Wars 2 community is so backwards and brainwashed that they will say its okay to have a buggy and unplayable game. No, it isn’t acceptable, and it will never be acceptable. If you do not hold the devs of ANY video game to some sort of standard, you may as well just hand them your bank account now as they walk all over you.

But lets play devil’s advocate with you. At what point does it not become acceptable? When you cannot load into a certain map? When you cannot load into the game at all? What happens if you cannot login for a day? week? Month? Year? What happens tomorrow when you find that your account was deleted and you have to pay for the game again? You WILL draw the line somewhere and you WILL at some point say its unacceptable. Can I be there to tell you that you are throwing a hissy fit when you do decide that point? :-)

Vayne.8563:

Total crap. Do you think for every patch they test every single world boss every time? If there were no changes to Teq, they wouldn’t have tested Teq. They are testing the things they change. A bug that creeps into one specific boss is impossible to track down unless they’re specifically testing for it.

Annoying sure. It’s annoying. But expecting every piece of older content to be tested every time there’s a patch…that’s not realistic.

This is where you’re wrong. Any “major” update that they push out, they test everything with the game. This is standard regression testing with automation. What you need to understand is that when the term “tested” is used, it does not entirely involve a QA person testing an aspect of the game. Automated testing is done for the vast majority of software, including video games. QA almost always does their manual testing on new feature sets or changed features. For the case of Teq, nothing has changed so they will utilize automated test scripts for that and if they don’t “fail” then it’s a “pass”.

Now who knows what type of automation they use to test this but these things do get tested with every update. I speak from experience and as a current dev manager in healthcare.

I think they have such tight schedule in QA test team, that they are only testing those things what have been mention in release notes. They are testing only those part of game, and if it is working as release notes said, it is qualified. Testing is happening in Test servers. Sometimes it works perfectly in testservers, but when those packages are delivered to real game servers, something funny will always happens.

Imagine what it will be, when expansion will come out.

This is nothing compare for that

phokus.8934:

Vayne.8563:

Total crap. Do you think for every patch they test every single world boss every time? If there were no changes to Teq, they wouldn’t have tested Teq. They are testing the things they change. A bug that creeps into one specific boss is impossible to track down unless they’re specifically testing for it.

Annoying sure. It’s annoying. But expecting every piece of older content to be tested every time there’s a patch…that’s not realistic.

This is where you’re wrong. Any “major” update that they push out, they test everything with the game. This is standard regression testing with automation. What you need to understand is that when the term “tested” is used, it does not entirely involve a QA person testing an aspect of the game. Automated testing is done for the vast majority of software, including video games. QA almost always does their manual testing on new feature sets or changed features. For the case of Teq, nothing has changed so they will utilize automated test scripts for that and if they don’t “fail” then it’s a “pass”.

Now who knows what type of automation they use to test this but these things do get tested with every update. I speak from experience and as a current dev manager in healthcare.

Actually I’m sure this isn’t true. They couldn’t possibly test EVERYTHING in the game every time a patch comes out. Patches used to come out every 2 weeks. You think they test EVERYTHING in the game every two weeks. Why would you believe that.

It probably takes long enough just to test the new stuff.

But the Teq thing particularly is problematic. You can’t beat it with 5 people. You need what, 50-60 testers minimum to get to the point where it bugged?

This isn’t reasonable to expect and I’m pretty sure others who program will tell you the same thing.

Ok. Let’s be critically honest. Majority of the time, Anet pulls through with good updates on a consistent basis. Broken stuff gets fixed pretty quickly. But this update….it’s a first. Jeez Anet, what happened? Did you accidentally upload the wrong file or something?

There were so many bugs, glitches, and exploits, it was unlike you guys. An update this buggy – it’s something I’d expect from one of those ‘pay-to-win’ cashshop MMOs.

From my perspective, this is the first update where something got royally screwed up. But since it’s the first and they’ve done so many good stuff beforehand…it’s not that bad. (Or is it? Hall of Monuments, people?) don’t get me wrong, the camera upgrade is awesome, and I’m liking the stability updates (Yes, I like them).

Besides, what is there to do? It’s done, it’s done. Move on. Hey, people are only human. Instead of raging and strangling each other at the throats, time and effort would be better spent in reporting the bugs, amirite?

Vayne.8563:

phokus.8934:

Vayne.8563:

Total crap. Do you think for every patch they test every single world boss every time? If there were no changes to Teq, they wouldn’t have tested Teq. They are testing the things they change. A bug that creeps into one specific boss is impossible to track down unless they’re specifically testing for it.

Annoying sure. It’s annoying. But expecting every piece of older content to be tested every time there’s a patch…that’s not realistic.

This is where you’re wrong. Any “major” update that they push out, they test everything with the game. This is standard regression testing with automation. What you need to understand is that when the term “tested” is used, it does not entirely involve a QA person testing an aspect of the game. Automated testing is done for the vast majority of software, including video games. QA almost always does their manual testing on new feature sets or changed features. For the case of Teq, nothing has changed so they will utilize automated test scripts for that and if they don’t “fail” then it’s a “pass”.

Now who knows what type of automation they use to test this but these things do get tested with every update. I speak from experience and as a current dev manager in healthcare.

Actually I’m sure this isn’t true. They couldn’t possibly test EVERYTHING in the game every time a patch comes out. Patches used to come out every 2 weeks. You think they test EVERYTHING in the game every two weeks. Why would you believe that.

It probably takes long enough just to test the new stuff.

But the Teq thing particularly is problematic. You can’t beat it with 5 people. You need what, 50-60 testers minimum to get to the point where it bugged?

This isn’t reasonable to expect and I’m pretty sure others who program will tell you the same thing.

Ever watch the livestream when Teq first debuted at PAX? The devs had this nice little tool to set the health bar of Teq to whatever they wanted it to be at.

Arikyali.5804:

Instead of raging and strangling each other at the throats, time and effort would be better spent in reporting the bugs, amirite?

Except the in-game bug report option is broken right now. Kappa

Diviner.7405:

Arikyali.5804:

Instead of raging and strangling each other at the throats, time and effort would be better spent in reporting the bugs, amirite?

Except the in-game bug report option is broken right now. Kappa

Oh, really? Um, well then, uh-.

I…have nothing to say to that. Ehem.

Any major update, you better believe they’re doing regression on their current feature set. I don’t really take your word on this matter as you clearly have no real world experience in the matter.

They do not do a full regression on every patch as it’s not needed. Based on their major releases (next tier version), that’s when they do them. Again, basing this off of my real life experience, they do perform standard regression on their feature set with patches and full regression on major updates. That’s the standard for agile which I can make a very good assumption that’s method they’re using.

Is it innovative (and hip!) to not have a Public Test Server for things like this?

Tachenon.5270:

Is it innovative (and hip!) to not have a Public Test Server for things like this?

I have played multiple games with PTS, they also have bugs when release comes to the live servers.

PTS does very little to fix bugs.

lordkrall.7241:

Tachenon.5270:

Is it innovative (and hip!) to not have a Public Test Server for things like this?

I have played multiple games with PTS, they also have bugs when release comes to the live servers.

PTS does very little to fix bugs.

I think this patch goes a long way toward verifying that ‘very little’ would be better than ‘absolutely nothing’.

Tachenon.5270:

I think this patch goes a long way toward verifying that ‘very little’ would be better than ‘absolutely nothing’.

And yet it is quite likely that most of these issues turned up on the live servers while not existing on the test servers (they do have test servers after all, they simply not public).

lordkrall.7241:

Tachenon.5270:

I think this patch goes a long way toward verifying that ‘very little’ would be better than ‘absolutely nothing’.

And yet it is quite likely that most of these issues turned up on the live servers while not existing on the test servers (they do have test servers after all, they simply not public).

Based on the evidence at hand, these non-public test servers are not getting the job done.

I giggle every time I remind myself this patch was delayed due to more “tests”.

new day is coming soon in USA. Maybe we’ll see a hotfix.

Tachenon.5270:

Based on the evidence at hand, these non-public test servers are not getting the job done.

Even if they had these PTS and spent months testing every single patch issues that turn up specifically on the live servers would not be found. That is the key here. “Turning up on the live servers”.

You can never get a testing environment that is completely identical to a live one. And as such issues that turns up on the live server but not on the test servers are basically impossible to find before they go on the live servers.

Maybe Tequatl tried out the first person camera and flew wrong way due to not turning off camera shakes. He will be back soon.

Vayne.8563:

phokus.8934:

Vayne.8563:

Total crap. Do you think for every patch they test every single world boss every time? If there were no changes to Teq, they wouldn’t have tested Teq. They are testing the things they change. A bug that creeps into one specific boss is impossible to track down unless they’re specifically testing for it.

Annoying sure. It’s annoying. But expecting every piece of older content to be tested every time there’s a patch…that’s not realistic.

This is where you’re wrong. Any “major” update that they push out, they test everything with the game. This is standard regression testing with automation. What you need to understand is that when the term “tested” is used, it does not entirely involve a QA person testing an aspect of the game. Automated testing is done for the vast majority of software, including video games. QA almost always does their manual testing on new feature sets or changed features. For the case of Teq, nothing has changed so they will utilize automated test scripts for that and if they don’t “fail” then it’s a “pass”.

Now who knows what type of automation they use to test this but these things do get tested with every update. I speak from experience and as a current dev manager in healthcare.

Actually I’m sure this isn’t true. They couldn’t possibly test EVERYTHING in the game every time a patch comes out. Patches used to come out every 2 weeks. You think they test EVERYTHING in the game every two weeks. Why would you believe that.

It probably takes long enough just to test the new stuff.

But the Teq thing particularly is problematic. You can’t beat it with 5 people. You need what, 50-60 testers minimum to get to the point where it bugged?

This isn’t reasonable to expect and I’m pretty sure others who program will tell you the same thing.

No, automated tests don’t need any testers to actually run them. Thats what it means for a test to be automated. They are a very common practice in software development shops, and there is usually quite a bit of technology built up around it.

Now automated regression tests won’t catch every single thing. But the high number of regressions in this particular patch makes me suspect their regression testing process.

lordkrall.7241:

Tachenon.5270:

Based on the evidence at hand, these non-public test servers are not getting the job done.

Even if they had these PTS and spent months testing every single patch issues that turn up specifically on the live servers would not be found. That is the key here. “Turning up on the live servers”.

You can never get a testing environment that is completely identical to a live one. And as such issues that turns up on the live server but not on the test servers are basically impossible to find before they go on the live servers.

Perhaps not. But with a Public Test Server and actual players logging in, you can get much closer, and your customers can decide for themselves if they want to beta test your latest patch.

Tachenon.5270:

Perhaps not. But with a Public Test Server and actual players logging in, you can get much closer, and your customers can decide for themselves if they want to beta test your latest patch.

So, why do these game with PTS still end up having glaring bugs when the patches are released?
Clearly something doesn’t work, and I would rather have ArenaNet spending money on developing the game than spending money on a PTS that potentially will do nothing at all other than spoil content.

It is of course also rather easy to avoid any potential issues that comes with a patch: Wait a couple of days for any issues to get patched. It is not like you have a subscription that is ticking away.

I love how you argue as if not catching all bugs is equivalent to catching no bugs, Krall.

lordkrall.7241:

So, why do these game with PTS still end up having glaring bugs when the patches are released?
Clearly something doesn’t work, and I would rather have ArenaNet spending money on developing the game than spending money on a PTS that potentially will do nothing at all other than spoil content.

Beautiful transition. Still having bugs that were not to be found except under the stress of live went to potentially no bugs at all being found without blinking.

lordkrall.7241:

So, why do these game with PTS still end up having glaring bugs when the patches are released?

Because nothing is perfect.

lordkrall.7241:

Clearly something doesn’t work, and I would rather have ArenaNet spending money on developing the game than spending money on a PTS that potentially will do nothing at all other than spoil content.

I’d rather be spoiled knowing what’s coming than have what’s coming be spoiled by inadequate testing.

lordkrall.7241:

It is of course also rather easy to avoid any potential issues that comes with a patch: Wait a couple of days for any issues to get patched. It is not like you have a subscription that is ticking away.

Just don’t play. The perfect solution.

Personally I didn’t see anything being totally unplayable, I did my dailies just fine.
I expect many more bugs when HoT launches.

Frizz, people with sweetfx, gemfx or windows xp can’t play the game (there are workarounds now). WvW (europe at least) was hit by the return of the skill lag, making that game mode unplayable for many people. PvP’s scoreboard causes crashes, switching reward tracks either doesn’t work or crashes for quite a few people.

You’re just in one of the less afflicted demographics is all, or perhaps one of the lucky ones.

Also there was a major exploit (that seems to have been hotpatched) that gave large amounts of people HoM achievements.

This is on top of the less game breaking bugs that are flooding the bug forums, including the ingame bug report being broken. This is why there is so much negativity on the forums right now I think, because a bug that disrupts a player’s gameplay is usually just reported without coming to the forums to complain if minor.

Tachenon.5270:

lordkrall.7241:

Tachenon.5270:

Is it innovative (and hip!) to not have a Public Test Server for things like this?

I have played multiple games with PTS, they also have bugs when release comes to the live servers.

PTS does very little to fix bugs.

I think this patch goes a long way toward verifying that ‘very little’ would be better than ‘absolutely nothing’.

I think this patch doesn’t prove that a PTS would have made any difference at all. The patch has a lot of bugs. I get it.

The brass has been shuttling back and forth to conventions, they’re no doubt working full steam on the expansion, and a key player just left the company. kitten happens.

It’s possible a PTS would have helped. It’s also possible a PTS would have delayed the launch further and backed everything else up.

You have a bunch of bored players who want stuff to play with. Assuming that people regularly did Teq on the PTS server they could have caught that bug.

But that’s not necessarily a great assumption. I was on the PTS server for Rift and it was mostly empty most of the time. That’s because if you’re on the PTS you’re not actually working toward your account.

I know for a fact that there wouldn’t have been enough people on the Rift PTS (even shortly after launch) to test a major zone wide event. Surely not enough to get far in something like the Teq fight, so for those purposes the PTS might not help at all.

Arikyali.5804:

Ok. Let’s be critically honest. Majority of the time, Anet pulls through with good updates on a consistent basis. Broken stuff gets fixed pretty quickly. But this update….it’s a first. Jeez Anet, what happened? Did you accidentally upload the wrong file or something?

There were so many bugs, glitches, and exploits, it was unlike you guys. An update this buggy – it’s something I’d expect from one of those ‘pay-to-win’ cashshop MMOs.

From my perspective, this is the first update where something got royally screwed up. But since it’s the first and they’ve done so many good stuff beforehand…it’s not that bad. (Or is it? Hall of Monuments, people?) don’t get me wrong, the camera upgrade is awesome, and I’m liking the stability updates (Yes, I like them).

Besides, what is there to do? It’s done, it’s done. Move on. Hey, people are only human. Instead of raging and strangling each other at the throats, time and effort would be better spent in reporting the bugs, amirite?

Well said. Of course one could say these bugs and mistakes are “unacceptable”, in fact that’s it they are, however they are “understandable”. kitten happens and things go wrong no matter how much you test stuff.

It seems some players doesn’t understand properly how a development cycle works. Automated testing doesn’t help so much either, they just test for specific stuff and unexpected stuff can happen when system goes live (something that the automated test didn’t expect). Public Test Servers doesn’t help so much either, they usually doesn’t have the enough load as live servers would have and the same as I said above could happen: unexpected stuff could happen in live servers and not in the test servers. As a programmer myself I have lost the count of how many times unexpected things happened on a system which worked pretty fine during test stages, also several were returning bugs which had been fixed but got broken due new changes. Also it’s hardly possible to test everything, at times a change can break things that aren’t in any way linked and then it wouldn’t even be imagined if it would need some testing.

C’mon guys, it’s just a game and devs are also human beings. At least these issues were acknowledged and they are working on them and stuff doesn’t happen with a snap of fingers. There is also a life out of the game :P Things will get sorted.

P.S.: Bug Report tool is broken yes, but forums are also here for that.

shadow.6174:

It seems some players doesn’t understand properly how a development cycle works. Automated testing doesn’t help so much either, they just test for specific stuff and unexpected stuff can happen when system goes live (something that the automated test didn’t expect).

Yes, I understand how development cycles work. I have over a decade of experience as a software engineer. No, automated regression tests, when properly done, are not incapable of catching unexpected bugs. I have personally caught many unexpected bugs with automated regression tests (and what the hell is an expected bug anyway?).

Yes, they are not perfect and some bugs do sneak through. No, that doesn’t mean a build that is particularly buggy should be considered acceptable.

Yes this is just a game. No, that doesn’t mean they don’t need to worry about quality, especially if they are planning an expansion pack in the near future they are expecting people to pay for.

Sure, stuff happens, but when this much stuff happens across such a broad area of impact, one must wonder: who left all the fans running?

Then again, maybe it was the electromagnetic storms hitting our dear old planet today. It’s pretty certain even the best, most densely populated PTS couldn’t help much against that!