TerraDraconis

What very mild sarcasm? I'm confused what in that was offensive?

They do spend time working on bugs. Why else are there bug fixes being released into the game constantly? If they didn't spend time fixing them then there wouldn't be any bug fixes going into the game.

As has been repeatedly and in fairly good detail explained in this thread just throwing people at fixing bugs won't get them fixed. The same essentially applies to just pulling all the programmers off of doing anything else and fixing bugs. Oh thy might do that for a few days but that is it. After that the easy to fix bugs are done and you are left with the ones that can't be fixed right now for some reason.

Which brings us to your real question. Why is the bug that annoys you specifically not getting fixed.

Well at a guess it isn't replicable or if it is it would require major reprogramming effort to fix what is essentially an annoyance.

See bugs are broken up into categories. Now these are just fast off the top of my head and will differ in each programming house but the general categories will remain.

Bug type 1 - Game breaking. Player draws the sword of the curmudgeon while casting the spell of youth and the game crashes. - Response, drop everything and fix. [Not that many bugs fall into this category.]

Bug Type 2 - Exploit. Player discovers that eating the roast mango pizza with pepper sauce gives you +5000 levels in everything for 10 minutes. - Response, depending on interaction and how easy it is to exploit drop everything and fix or fix and roll in with the next patch. [Not that many bugs fall into this category]

Bug Type 3 - Interferes in a major way with game play. Player draws the sword of the curmudgeon while whistling the happy woodcutter song and tugging on their left earlobe and no one can cast spells in 100 yard radius. - Response look at it and see if you can spot the interactions that cause it. If possible fix if not set it so no one can whistle while drawing a sword. [A lot of fixed bugs fall into this category.]

Bug type 4 - Has an annoying effect ie. Occasionally your wolf will run over to the next continent for no reason. - Response if their is a clear easy to repeat trigger that causes this and it is easy to fix then it will be in the next patch. [Most bugs fall into this category]

Bug type 5 - Doesn't work as designed but doesn't really hurt anything either. Item with charges that causes minor cosmetic effect say turning into a large furry critter never actually runs out of charges and can be kept after the quest that you got it in. Clearly not working as designed but doesn't hurt anything. - Response depending on whim of the programmers may never be fixed. [a number of bugs fall into this category.]

Bug type 6 - Working exactly the way the dev wants it to but the player doesn't like it. Player can't call their wolf to them while on the boat. - Response clear the bug from the bug list and move on. [A huge number of bugs fall into this category. Where the programmer sees it as working just fine but the player doesn't.]

Now for added complexity bugs also get sorted by system. Some systems are very twitchy and experience has taught the programmers that touching the wolf subsystem causes 5 new bugs for every typo, or other minor bug they fix if someone just goes in to fix the bug. Or maybe the Wolf subsystem has a major flaw but until it can be rewritten none of the bugs associated with the subsystem can be touched. So instead they are filed with the wolf subsystem and next time it is up for scheduled work ie adding a new feature etc then the bugs associated with that system are also targeted. But they won't just randomly go in and try and fix it.

Last you have an entire category of bugs where clearly something is wrong but there is no clue what is causing it. This could be for example the wolf running off to the next continent every now and again. If it just happens sometimes at random trying to track it down and fix it can be almost impossible unless you get lucky or have an inspiration.

What you ask can cause the last category of bug? I'm glad you asked, this is where one system causes something else in game to break. But it only happens when everything is lined up perfectly. Ie Suppose you have a transport spell that moves you from Cavern A to Forest B. Normally it works fine, but say it stores a value somewhere in the system while doing this and if a player with oh a name shorter than 4 characters uses that spell to do that action it accidentally over writes a value used by the wolf to tell it where to go. Now this only happens if the wolf's action is que'd up immediately after the player with the short name uses that exact transport spell to do that exact transport and the wolf is the next thing in game to act.

How the @#$@#%#!@ hell are you supposed to find that bug?

Throwing more people at it isn't going to find it. Basically at some point either the transport system or the wolf system will have a change that makes it go away but because the cause and effect are not even remotely linked trying to find the bug is harder than looking for a needle in a haystack.

Pizza Delivery.

They do put people who know the system to fixing bugs. Why do you think there is a constant stream of bug fixes going into the game. People even complain that they take the game down to often to apply a new patch and what is in those patches? Mainly bug fixes.

Throwing people who don't know a system at it to fix bugs is a recipe for disaster.

This is because most people don't have grasp of what is involved in large complex computer programming. They imagine that it is all very simple and you can easily fix any bug in 5 minutes if they would just bother taking the time to do that.

Programmers know better. Plus we do see them fixing bugs all the time so they clearly are not ignoring bugs.

Actually you have it. The new powers are an EMerit sink.

Why shouldn't they have new incarnate powers cost Emerits?

As far as I can tell there really is no good reason for not charging EMerits for these. Add in that they aren't spectacular must have powers then it even makes more sense for them to be something to spend the EMerits on.

Now the price they have them set at may be to high and it should be 10, 8, or 5 EMerits for them but the basic concept is sound.

I get that people think because previous powers didn't cost EMerits all new and future powers shouldn't cost anything. But why must that be true?

And isn't it better for it to be odd quirky special use powers that cost something than must have powers?

Again I'm not seeing a major crisis or issue here. I do think that there is more than a little wiggle room to complain that they have the price a bit high and that could be a good cause. But I'm not seeing any real valid cause in pushing that they shouldn't cost EMerits. Not when the best argument is that previous Incarnate Powers didn't cost any.

Exactly, I go play console games and other MMOG's when I don't feel like playing here. You don't have to dedicate your life to playing only one game. If you do that you reach a point where you look at the computer and just can't bring yourself to logon anymore.

Frankly if you are suffering burnout shuffle up the AT selections and try something different. If that doesn't work put COX to one side and don't play it for awhile. Perhaps in a few months you'll feel like playing it again. We will be here for you to come back to. As an added benefit if you don't want to maintain a subscription you can let it drop and have the account go premium. Then when you do come back you can always just login and give it a try to see if your interest has returned. If it hasn't there are other games to play.

It will be a shame to see you go but better that then finding yourself gritting your teeth and hating to login.

Yes because for every bug you fix 10 more are created.

Basically you never get perfect bug free computer code except for very small programs. Once past a certain complexity every time you touch the code no matter how good you are you risk new bugs being added.

This doesn't mean you don't fix bugs but it does mean you don't treat every bug you encounter as if the program were on fire and it must be fixed right this second. Instead you triage the bug and determine if the error is just something minor, annoying, or major and based on that you set about fixing it.

Well the other thing that gets considered is if you can fix it in 2 minutes because you know exactly what must have been accidentally typo'd to create the bug. But that is a different category.

Ok, That sounds like a perfectly good plan to me.

The whole concept that making money is some how evil is just well ... evil and wrong.

The Purple dude also mentions that they had to fight you because they had taken a dead end path to get there.

Since I tend to check out various games it speaks more to not being well listed or something. I do check out various games and the like and frankly have never heard of it.

Ok, I looked it up online and determined why I hadn't heard of it. I probably had looked at the information about it and completely dismissed it as a game I would ever be interested in playing. PVP centric from what I can see which type of games I avoid like the plague.

Oh then in other words the complaint is that they are giving you something to spend 15 Emp Merits on?

I'm with Samuel here. I read the I21.5 patch notes yawned and then went to trick-n-treat and run the SSA.

Never heard of it so it can't be doing that well.

Umm why shouldn't cash provide an advantage? Right now the advantage goes to people who have spare time on their hands to farm or work on earning inf and rewards in otherways. How is that any less fair than buying rewards for cash? Particularly if you have the option of using both methods to gain things?

The exploit was that you could get an alignment merit from the SSA without ever having done an alignment mission. Now you must have done one and it must be on record.

The bug if there is one is that apparently some people who have done the alignment missions have been set back to neutral and have to run another before the SSA will award them an alignment merit.

I'm not seeing the issue aside from the bug. You always where supposed to have run 11 missions per character before the SSA would award an alignment merit. It definitely made no sense if characters who hadn't run the alignment mission could earn alignment merits.