You know, I'm gonna have to be honest and say the way this was handled was definately sub-par, the trends of the computer industry in general notwithstanding.
I remember the "don't worry guys, we're delaying it till its perfect" post by Statesman, and I have been directed (by other posters in other threads) to the list of known bugs. I have also noted the dates on which the bugs were identified.
The "delay to make it perfect" post by Statesman occurred after the known bugs were identified, and yet the issue was released with those very bugs. This raises the question of what exactly the bugs that caused the delay were?
Edit --- Statesman answered this query here
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Because the changes we made are not necessarily things you would notice. Stability. Networking. Databases. Just because a power wasn't changed didn't mean there weren't people working on the game.
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However, that fact aside. If the Dev team decided, as Statesman has said, that the bugs present were not sufficient to delay the rollout, then they should have said so BEFORE rolling out the issue. If this post:
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Yes, there are some bugs - that's inevitable. Typos, etc. A team gathers these from the forums, puts them in the database, and then we have at them.
But sometimes a bug isn't serious enough to hold up a release - that's when we decide to go live with something. We know that there might be some niggling details to address over the next few weeks.
As for the Invulnerability, Kheldian, Burn, etc. feedback - all of it was read and considered. We were pleased with the data we received and thought that the changes met our goals. That isn't to say that we might not tweak these things further - but by and large, we are happy with the changes.
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or a variant thereof had come before everyone dug their teeth into the release, there wouldn't be so many threads dedicated to pointing out the documented issues that weren't fixed.
A little pre-emptive damage control works much better than an explanation after the fact.
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That's two bugs (both of which were fixed and are in the pipeline). Neither are crash bugs. When you go live, there are inevitably some bugs - nothing is perfect. We need to make our judgment whether an issue holds up release or not.
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And sometimes, bugs are not found until a product goes live / ships because one's users are often a much more creative bunch than one's testers. Typical, casual users will often do things in ways seasoned users and testers wouldn't dream of doing.
The CoH codebase is probably hundreds of thousands of lines long. I know from working in software development that sometimes making an innocuous change in one part of the code can have a tremendous, unanticipated change in others.
For some things, the developers deserve some slack.
Although, I'm still miffed that the respec didn't go out with Issue 3. My fire tanker is currently without sleep protection because she hadn't taken Plasma yet.
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What if the bug was reported and discussed on the test board before release?
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The process for i3 boggles me almost as much as you guys' release of i2. Maybe by i7 we can expect smooth, disciplined, and thought out releases.
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Well, I can't speak for everyone, but I know I can sleep easier at night knowing that Harker, the perfect coder, will be submitting their resume to NCSoft and will be taking over the releases of CoH from now on.
Being a beta tester on many, many products I can say that I3's release was comensurate with the industry standard. There were no critical bugs or crash bugs. This is what holds up a test/beta edition from going live. Once those are hashed out, the gameplay can be fixed later after a larger base have tested.
If you think I am crazy, I have beta tested some pretty interesting games, like Alpha Centauri and Civ III that went out the door with us screaming, "No give it more time." Often, they would fix the "bugs" we found before it went live in a patch released within a week or two of release. This is where I3 is headed. Nothing in I3 prevents me from playing the game. A few things might hamper the fun I have playing, but that is not at issue here...
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Neither are crash bugs. When you go live, there are inevitably some bugs - nothing is perfect. We need to make our judgment whether an issue holds up release or not.
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In your judgement, do you think the massive rubberbanding and mapservering should have held up release, or not?
I like almost everything (he invul changes didn't affect me so i don't know how thats fairing) only thing thats getting on my nerves is the kheldian shapeshift casuing mapserver lost connections.
Guardian Server
Fury 50 NRG/ELC Blaster
Alecto 23 MA/Reg Scrapper
Megarea 22 Ill/Storm Controller
Gloomwave 23 Warshade
Among many others...Part of Guardian's Evolution
G Handle: @Fury. with the period sigh
I'm glad it was released. I was sick of waiting for it. There are problems? Of course there are. And they will be fixed. Oh no, your character isn't 100% perfect until you can respec? Oh no.....your life is over!!!!! You have to wait like two days to be perfect again.....that's just......horrible.
It's like you people have the patience of a 1 year old. Gotta have the toy NOW. Five minutes from now is unacceptable!
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Pushing issue three when there were regressions in the code was foolish in my opinion. The blinky sound no longer working is a clear regression from Issue 2.
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A regression isn't a show stopper bug. Missions can still be completed.
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Armors not useing resistance enhancements to protect against toxic was another clear reason to wait.
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We didn't have toxic resistances before issue 3 and did ok. The new villian group doesn't do huge amounts of toxic damage. You'd delay shipping for this?!
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Heck any of the reasons on that bug list are a good reason to wait. Especially when the free respec was not ready. The respec not being ready alone was enough of a reason to wait.
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I can kind of see this, but I like the fact there is a little delay. At least people can learn a little about the changes before making uneducated choices they may regret. Playing an alt for a few days or taking a couple days off won't kill anyone. There is always grouping. A group can cover for even the worst mistakes in a build.
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You guys said before the HOlidays "balance and bug issues make i3 not ready before jan 1." Then nothing. You guys come back, say nothing, change nothing... then BAM release it. SO if nothing changed, nothing was said... why didn't you release it BEFORE the holidays. You released the same version on the Live servers, that 10 days before "wasn't ready" on the Test server.
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Because the changes we made are not necessarily things you would notice. Stability. Networking. Databases. Just because a power wasn't changed didn't mean there weren't people working on the game.
I so far personally have not seen anything SOO horrible that it couldn't wait a week for a patch, myself, however I have noticed a few things which are clearly bugs, and that ( when I was working QA for an MMO) would be relagated to the bottom of the list.
Things are released and go live all the time and these minor bugs are never fixed, but they really DON'T interfere with gameplay mechanics, text bugs, minor graphics and collision bugs, that sort of thing.
(and yes I know there is the Khel crash and some bugs with the powers, I am not talking about that stuff)
And we can all sit here and say "Well it seems like it would be such an easy fix, why don't they just fix it?" well that's why exactly
We didn't report anything that their own internal QA didn't already report, and I am sure there were some real nose ripping, game crashing, bad bad bugs that we will never see because those had priority when internal QA found them.
The stuff that is easy and quick to fix gets fixed when the stuff that is time consuming and hard to fix gets done.
there are certain little bugs that the game will always have, just because there will always be something more urgent to fix, or develop in the first place.
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That's two bugs (both of which were fixed and are in the pipeline). Neither are crash bugs. When you go live, there are inevitably some bugs - nothing is perfect. We need to make our judgment whether an issue holds up release or not.
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And sometimes, bugs are not found until a product goes live / ships because one's users are often a much more creative bunch than one's testers. Typical, casual users will often do things in ways seasoned users and testers wouldn't dream of doing.
The CoH codebase is probably hundreds of thousands of lines long. I know from working in software development that sometimes making an innocuous change in one part of the code can have a tremendous, unanticipated change in others.
For some things, the developers deserve some slack.
Although, I'm still miffed that the respec didn't go out with Issue 3. My fire tanker is currently without sleep protection because she hadn't taken Plasma yet.
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What if the bug was reported and discussed on the test board before release?
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That is what bothers me. Same thing happened in previous issues and when they hit live there were, well, issues. So I cancelled. I just came back, whammo, few days later a new update. And it sucks again, heh.
I'll keep checking back because I'm a glutton for punishment, but I really have a hard time convincing old friends to come back. Game seems to be doing fine though, so I guess most people are happy enough.
no flames please, I'm not really knocking the game, I just can't pay for 'average' mmo treatment, and it's funny because there is a perception that these devs are treating players better than other mmo devs - they aren't.
Same ol same ol, except some of the competing games now give free gametime when they screw the pooch, and cryptic/nc don't own up to mistakes and dont play their own game (which is normal for mmo devs, again, no offense)
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Not so much a bug, just a bone head idea: MAJOR POWER CHANGES RELEASED WITHOUT THE PROMISED RESPEC ON TIME.
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To cut Statesman some slack he didn't promise the free respec would be released with I3
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When Issue 3 goes live (or shortly thereafter), we will issue a FREE "holiday" respec to ALL characters. Yep. All characters - regardless of Archeype.
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I purposely didn't train a character for two levels so I could get my EPP power at 41 and was leary of "(or shortly thereafter)"
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Neither are crash bugs. When you go live, there are inevitably some bugs - nothing is perfect. We need to make our judgment whether an issue holds up release or not.
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In your judgement, do you think the massive rubberbanding and mapservering should have held up release, or not?
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No way that the lag you were experiencing could possibly be related to a larger than normal server load due to the release of Issue Three?
Because the changes we made are not necessarily things you would notice. Stability. Networking. Databases. Just because a power wasn't changed didn't mean there weren't people working on the game.
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Statesman You keep saying stability was fixed. In the 2 hours I attempted playing last night the game was more unstable then I have ever seen it. I personally lost map server connection multiple times. Also I would be in a fight attack lose an attack and the party I was attacking never lost heath never showed the miss nothing power just fired into never never land. So my question is how was stability fixed?
Note: See the Bugs forum. I'm building an Unofficial Issue 3 Bugs thread, and trying to list them all, with speculation. So far the most interesting are the "Random Black Wall" bug that prevents missions from being done, the "Invisible Room" in FBZ, and what one guy is reporting about randomly unsidekicking.
Losing half health from zoning is interesting, too.
None of these are bugs causing the game to crash, I suspect patches for most of them are in the pipeline, but we might as well list 'em all.
PERC Supporter
La Pucelle (BS/SR)
Miseria Bella (Sonic/Dark)
Wrangler Annie (SS/Elec)
Coldsmoke (Ice/Dark)
Saber Maid (BS/Regen)
and others...
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What crash bugs have you found?
What bugs are there that are so critical?
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Energy Absorption for ice tankers buffs the player's defense as if you had only landed it on one enemy regardless of how many enemies are about you when you do it. This has caused several ice tankers to turn down jobs they would normally be able to do - task forces, respecs.
it was reported as bugged on test, it is on geko's known issue list and he acknowledged it, but no word on when it will be done.
i think ice is just perhaps cursed. maybe up there with gravity. why do i always pick the cursed AT's first, then pick the nerfed-shortly-thereafter AT's next, anyone know? 
The original poster cannot be a software developer of any kind. First of all, there is no way to find all the bugs in testing short of extending testing into years rather than months. For those few known bugs, they were minor enough that they were far outweighed by the bugs and problems fixed by I3. I had stopped playing my tanker until I3 came out. So, why it may inconvenience some people minorly that it has some minor bugs, others of us feel it was a good decision to rescue toons we had thrown in the "on hold" bin waiting for I3.
The one exception I would have to agree with a later poster on is that the free respec should have been in place. Some of the changes to certain classes were radical enough that an immediate respec is an absolute necessity.
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(Much snippage)
Now the known issues were not enough to delay the release of issue 3- because that is how the industry is run. This is not honorable nor should it be something that we as consumers swallow without a complaint. There was no posting saying here are the known issues with Issue 3, and we feel it should not hold up the release of it. It was only after the release and the complaints came that the statement was made that the known issues were not enough to delay the release.
I would respectfully simply say this. Please be better than the industry standard, and if you feel that you can’t or won’t, at least be upfront and make a statement about known issues with an issue as it is released.
I realize for a lot of reasons this won’t happen. I truly wish it would though. It would make us players happier for numerous reasons.
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All right, come on, now - this is whining for the sake of whining.
First off, I am no fanboi; I am a programmer myself and know a little about the development process of any application.
Look at all the whining that happened when I3 wasn't going to be released before the holidays. Now look at all the whining when it's released soon after the holidays. How do the devs win ?
Ya know what ? This is a MMOG - with not only constantly evolving and additional content, but constantly and additional content *AT NO EXTRA CHARGE*.
You want absolutely no bugs at all ? Then perhaps you'd be happy with new content being released on a yearly basis, instead of a quarterly one ?
You whine about how there should have been more testing, or more QA, or more supernatural powers of foretelling (Hint: The superpowers are available in-game only): With _any_ software development process, there will be unforseen bugs or quirks: There are _thousands_ of playstyles, _thousands_ of PC builds, _thousands_ of play choices... In other words, there are _tens of thousands_ of variables that can not possibly be tested or foreseen when a new piece of code goes live. The devs can only test for so much. Those using the test server can only test for so much. It is not until it hits the live servers where the full brunt of the playerbase will suddenly apply all of these tens of thousands of variables at once where certainl glitches or quirks will become visible.
So if you see an issue, /bug it, and/or report it here on the forums. Don't go whining about how Cryptic is being "just like other software developers" (emphasis mine), because they are not. The free content on a quarterly basis is clue number one. The much, much higher level of developer participation in the public forums is clue number two. The free comic, which, admittedly doesn't enhance game play, but is nonetheless a _cool_ additional feature is clue number three.
The list goes on. I know for a fact that I am by no means alone in saying "If you're so damned upset at a few glitches after a major code release, then leave".
Noting issues, glitches, bugs or requests for new/changed features is one thing, but incessant whining because one refuses to accept the reality of a live, changing game world is quite another.
Flame away, I expect it.
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Mission objectives make no sound--in old-style cave missions or in orenbega, that can cause hours of searching time to find the last glowie
Touch of Fear buffs instead of debuffs--disasterous to use in a tight fight
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That's two bugs (both of which were fixed and are in the pipeline). Neither are crash bugs. When you go live, there are inevitably some bugs - nothing is perfect. We need to make our judgment whether an issue holds up release or not.
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And weren't both of those (and many others) extensively reported on by people playing in Test?? How in the world did those not get fixed before I3 went live?
Now, I can understand thoroughly-reported bugs not being fixed if there were some fixed deadline you had to meet, and had the choice of missing the deadline and catching hell from PHB's, or putting I3 live, bugs and all.
But, you had to know these bugs along with many others were there prior to I3 going live. I3 should have had the majority of player-reported bugs fixed before it went live, barring PHB pressure.
Well hold on there everyone.
Sorry I was busy at work for a while and did not have a chance to see that people actually responded to something I wrote.
In answer to Statesmen, I havent found crash bugs. I am sorry if what I wrote wasnt clear and made you think I found some. I have not seen crash bugs. I in fact did not repeatedly crash with Issue 3.
Nor am I saying I found critical bugs. My point isnt that there were critical bugs or even that there were bugs, but that there were KNOWN bugs, and no statement was made about them till after the masses started whining and yelping about how this or that bug was known years and years ago and the cow jumped over the moon and thier toon got debt.
I had no intention of whining about such things, as there are plenty of those posts out there.
I used the word broken because if there is a fix in the works then something is broken. The size of the break is not something I even wanted to touch.
The fact that many people responded repeatedly saying all the known issues were not great enough not halt the release furthers my point. We as consumers accept flawed products. Like I said it would be a totally different conversation if we didnt but that is neither here nor there.
I was just asking that the company be better than the rest. I agree the bugs that exist are really not that bad, and most companies would release it with them. But I dont want CoH to be like every other game out there I want it to be better. If there are known bugs dont release it, fix them then release.
The second part of my request was that if it can not or will not happen as I stated above, that we get a post that is out when the issue is released saying here are the known issues/ bugs that we felt would not ruin the experience for you and we did not want to delay the issue any longer. Add frosty words make it sound nice, but the important thing to me is being up front with us your customers. To me this simple action would show an awful lot of respect to us.
It would also eliminate all the useless threads saying, I told you the issue wasnt ready! The devs are crazy for releasing it as is.
As I said I am torn, this is a FREE update and complaining about it even in the slightest makes me feel dirty. In my opinion this is the best game Ive ever played. It is the first MMORPG Ive played too. From my understanding the amount of attention the Devs give all us whiners and complainers and constructive helpers on these boards is more than any other game.
But that doesnt affect what I said. Nor am I expecting a perfect game or issue. I stated in both my posts about what I would like. I am sorry if what I said was confusing or sounded like another this issue sucks thread because it wasnt intended to be.
no offense Statesman but all the boss hp boost has done is turn this game into City of Inspiration chewers, I am feeling less and less of a hero with every publish. The mobs remain mindless zombies and I have rainbow colored lips from all the inspiration gum i have to keep chewing
without inspirations I cannot take down a boss, with them I can take him down eventually and win, i never lose. I do not come across even con bosses so inspirations are a must, I just need even more.
This is not fun, this is not "good and fair gameplay", can you not see how polarized your game is? Your either eating dirt, or with enough inspirations...home free and the damning thing is, my ability to take down a boss has very little to do with my "skill" or build but the amount of purple/green/yellow/blah candy I have chewed - this is not what it feels like to be a hero.
Make no mistake, I can still solo and have yet to die in I3, I just need more trips to the inspiration dealer. I don't enjoy doing this and you should realise inspirations are in fact papering over the cracks in a very broken combat engine.
Excuse me but how about this no-brainer, why did you not just scale Boss dmg/hp boosts to the mission slider? (yeah i know that it wouldnt cover street sweeping).
my background: former teamplayer ice/ice blaster, now lvl 48 and jaded from repeating tilesets etc and now a soloist (also due to RL issues) playing on hardboiled, doing FBZ missions only. Max session time 1hr. DM/DA blaster: lvl 30, still awaiting stacking :/ Ice/Ice Blaster: Active lvl 48 going to open EAT or go to WoW euro beta whichever comes first :P
btw I do realise you have a business to protect and you want to slow people down in xp terms, before they hit the content wall, but you need to be a little smarter with your solutions than the current "one size fits all" response. Although heck, bet you saved a ton of dev time with that one 
might be time to expand your team if you're feeling the pinch, don't let your playerbase suffer hits from your shortcut solutions because your behind schedule.
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As I said I am torn, this is a FREE update and complaining about it even in the slightest makes me feel dirty. In my opinion this is the best game Ive ever played. It is the first MMORPG Ive played too. From my understanding the amount of attention the Devs give all us whiners and complainers and constructive helpers on these boards is more than any other game.
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You really shouldn't feel guilty about complaining about bugs in the so-called "Free" update. NCSoft is calling these things "free expansions" to make it look like we're getting something for nothing just out of the goodness of their hearts when in fact regular updates consisting of new content, bug fixes, and gameplay balances are a standard part of most MOGs.
They don't give us these new issues because they love us, they do it to keep us interested enough in the game to continue paying our monthly subscription fee. They are in no way "free."
These games are a business and absolutely _everything_ they do is calculated to maximize profit. And that includes the shift towards forced grouping and slower leveling. Forced grouping and a slow level grind are the standard way to make us feel more attached to our characters. If we've made friends within the game that we socialize with and if we've had to dedicate large amounts of time to developing our characters we're _far_ less likely to cancel our accounts and move on to the next shiny new game. Everquest is probably the best example of this type of game. It's the MOG that everyone loves to hate but it's still one of the biggest even though it's getting pretty old in MOG terms.
I think the OPs point is that listing the known issues, regardless of if they fixed them in thier own unreleased internal build already, would have been nice because the players could do some things to avoid them and not get debt due to bugs, etc...
if you're going to leave bugs in, and you know about them, tell us what bugs you know of but did not fix - in the patch notes. reading known issues in the test forum and guessing which ones cryptic felt like fixing isnt what we should have to do to play the game. Debuffs *buffing* enemies? WARN US. Not doing so when you know about it is just inconsiderate.
We know there'll be bugs, fine, we know you dont know of each one or wont fix each one - but warn us when they are intentionally left in due to time or perceived lack of seriousness.
You have an internal list, control-C, control-V can't be too much effort.
For all of those complainng about the devs "not doing their jobs"...
How many of you are reading and posting here when you are at work and should be "doing your jobs?"
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That's two bugs (both of which were fixed and are in the pipeline). Neither are crash bugs. When you go live, there are inevitably some bugs - nothing is perfect. We need to make our judgment whether an issue holds up release or not.
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And sometimes, bugs are not found until a product goes live / ships because one's users are often a much more creative bunch than one's testers. Typical, casual users will often do things in ways seasoned users and testers wouldn't dream of doing.
The CoH codebase is probably hundreds of thousands of lines long. I know from working in software development that sometimes making an innocuous change in one part of the code can have a tremendous, unanticipated change in others.
For some things, the developers deserve some slack.
Although, I'm still miffed that the respec didn't go out with Issue 3. My fire tanker is currently without sleep protection because she hadn't taken Plasma yet.