A Rant About i16 (undocumented changes to TFs lead to bugs...big surprise)

Roderick Mueller is a red herring anyhow. A false objective. Or a broken one.

Just get to the final room (with Roddy) and defeat the mobs in there including the hero, then click on the objective yourself.

The outstanding hostage rescue will not block you from completing the mission.

If this is a bug consider it reported. If this is an exploit then consider it exploited.

I won't argue the Hess aspect; I don't know what changed there or why any more than you do. It sounds like someone dropped the ball, certainly.

However, the issue of Katie not following properly is a flat out bug. There's no way we can provide you with documentation on a bug, since by definition it shouldn't have happened, period.

Thank you for your honest reply about Hess. I will try and see if enough people are willing to do repeated KHtf runs to find out what is going with Katie.

My comments about getting a code logging system into beta testers and semi public users still stands though. Make them NDA up even harder if you're concerned about pre-announcements and leaking exploits. I think it you will benefit in the long run for putting together an implementation that includes those people.

Ow, thank you, negrepper, for making it sigworthy to me

P.S. I apologize for quoting myself

Not sure if its the same bug or not, but I've seen a problem with flying NPC's in the past. There fly animation will some how lock them in place preventing them from doing anything at all. I usually see this with Paragon Protectors, but recently have seen it crop up on Freak Stunners. In the case where I sent a bug report, the Protector originally engaged the team and followed us as we retreated down the hall (this was before the fix to manticore TF so he was to big for us). half way down the hall, he stops following, and began to shake violently side to side in mid air trying to alternate from a flying to standing pose. He seemed permanently stuck there, and the few of us still in the mission went and tried fighting him again, he just stood there shaking in place while we beat on him, since he wasn't fighting back the major level difference only meant it took us a while to take him down but he posed no threat.

Castle, dude that's a very stand-up reply. Even coming on here and telling us that Katie is a bug is a big help for us.

To reiterate the OP and the gist of it - if you want us to test things in Beta, let us know what. Not detailed reports of what you changed, just simply something akin to "We made some changes to the Hess. Can some of you run it a few times and please give us feedback?"

In other words, a somewhat more focused Beta.

Thank you for clearing that up, BABs. I'm glad you're on the job and that Katie will be back in form soon.

As much of a BABs fan as I am, I must point out that Castle is the one you quoted and that has come in here and discussed this issue.

You seem to have it in your head that somebody went in and changed something in these specific TFs. That's not real likely - possible, but not likely. It's more likely that they made a change to another part of the game to fix some other bug (like maybe Amy's tendancy lately to attack the team that summons her) and it broke something over here.

These things happen ALL the time in programming. The only way around it that works well is exhaustive testing. If any changes need to be made to fix bugs found in the testing, you start all over again. If they tried to take that tact with this game, we would probably have just gotten issue 3 - assuming the game even survived this long, which wouldn't be likely.

So they have folks run through a bunch for a few weeks and catch what they can. Beta testers will always miss things but they probably aren't game breaking bugs. Once the patch goes live, the players will find a bunch more bugs and those get fixed over the next month or two - assuming they are fixable and serious enough to fix.

Something that focused testing (and by focused, I mean informed) helps alleviate. To say nothing of the idea of being forewarned is forearmed.

Even if the Devs handed us a complete list of things they wanted looked at, it wouldn't help squash every bug that crops up with a new Issue. There's too much old content to revisit, and a lot of beta invitees aren't interested in doing anything but checking the new shineys. Until we get more folks into betas that are actually interested in doing what they're asked to do, instead of doing what they want to do, we'll be finding interesting new bugs like the Hess and Katie bugs.

You might note that this was actually the 1st bullet in my list of possible explanations for how this ended up live. In that scenario, no one knew it had changed, and so it would not have been tested internally or announced externally.

However, if no one actually touched Hess, I'd love to get a high-level of what actually caused this to happen to it. Specifically, I'd dig knowing how it, alone, seems to have this particular behavior. I'd expect a more general problem to be able to find its way into more missions, arcs, or Task Forces.

Katie I can easily chalk up to AI issues. It's not like they're rare.

These may be the most high profile exhibits of the problem. There may be hundreds of paper missions using the wrong maps right now...but you wouldn't be able to tell, because you don't know those by heart. Just sayin'.

I always new butterflies were teh evil, Teh EVILLLLLLLLL!!11!!11!!

In the case of KHTF, it could be a global AI change that caused it, but in the case of Hess, the map was changed in multiple missions.

Either the map IDs were overwritten with new ones, in which case someone should have logged that change, or the TF was updated with new maps, in which case someone should have logged that change. Do you have an alternate theory about how 3 (or 4) maps in a stable and well known Task Force got changed?

And if someone enough is bold enough to change Hess TF without making notes, why would it be so far fetched to consider that KHTF could have been changed without notes? Occam's razor can cut both ways and it is plenty sharp.

I noticed that Numina TF got it's last map changed the previous issue and nothing seems awry, but also no patch notes had mentioned it. I believe whoever was doing those kinds of updates borked Hess TF, and maybe KHTF as well.

I have a hard time believing that since people were noting the drop rate differential in i16 and went as far as to analyze what the difference was before launch.

People will test the things they are invested and interested in. If you haven't told them it was changed they will assume it works the same. If you tell them there is a change, they may test it or they may not.

In other words, Hess TF changes would have been easily caught if it was noted that changes were made and someone tried it out. KHTF likely not if there was a global change to AI noted, but it could have been caught if the AI change was noted for KHTF.

How is that so hard to understand?

You seem to expect more of the devs and us than we, i.e. omniscience.

The point is very simple - make us aware of the changes, even vaguely in the case of AI and somewhat more specifically in the case of Hess.

How can we intelligently test changes without being informed they've been made?

Also, to the "brave keyboard warrior" who left me anonymous rep with the following note:

"You know what he meant, and you know he didn't call you stupid. Now you're arguing just to argue. Let it go."

Actually, I didn't. I never suggested that "Even if the Devs handed us a complete list of things they wanted looked at, it wouldn't help squash every bug that crops up with a new Issue" because only an idiot would suggest or expect that any and all bugs would be found (let alone fixed) for a given release, I sought clarification.

Not only was someone putting words into my mouth (and again, those of a an idiotic belief), but my exact words were quoted, which made me doubt it being an accident.

There is far more wrong with the TF than "the wrong maps".

And saying it's not wrong because I haven't seen it is preposterous. It's not like there are 5 people playing the game.

I find it difficult to accept that you find this so hard to understand.

The objection is to undocumented, intentional changes. If the change was accidental, then no one expects them to notify anyone, (It would still good if they could find more such things on their own, but given the scope of the game, it's potentially understandable.)

I would love to know how you got that from what I posted. On the contrary, it sounds like that's what you expect of the devs.

You seem to be hung up on the idea that the change to Hess was some sort of intentional alteration gone awry, and clearly should've been communicated to us to test. Except that our buddy Occam notes that seeing as how the glowies are bugged, and there was no patch note concerning it, it probably wasn't intentional at all. The devs can't make you aware of a change if they themselves are unaware of it.

What are you looking for? Are you asking the devs to publish a complete and thorough changelog to the game with each patch sent to the Test Server? Do you understand how time consuming, and in many cases redundant or confusing, that would be?

Also
contradicts

Then I'd have to wonder what the purpose of raising that objection was in the first place, since as mentioned previously in this thread, the devs are well aware that undocumented yet intentional changes are foolish and would amount to nothing. Not to mention that it ignores the probability of a bug being a bug (or perhaps even an honest mistake), rather than a clandestine attempt to destroy the Hess TF as we know it.

What I'm saying is, objecting to undocumented/intentional changes is much like me coming out to object to the devs threatening to blow up the world - pointless, because there was no intention to in the first place. If you'd like to criticize their patch notes process, I can get behind that, since there have been clear failures of it in the past.

You would seem to expect us to know the changes they made.

You would seem to expect the devs to know what we know regarding the changes they made.

Simple truth. The maps changed.

The impact of said changes is often unforseeable, which I fully grant you but isn't the issue. And the unforseen impact is not a point of contention.

The maps or glowie positions were changed, unless you dispute that. Even if no one had run any Hess TFs on Beta, at the very least an informed populace would be able to know that map and/or glowie positions were changed and thus, *gasp* provide better feedback to the devs should the issue make it to Live.

And at the very least, such a policy would remove any element of FUD. FUD is a bad thing, unless you work for the government.

Oddly, I am well aware of what posting a complete changelog would involve. At what point were such specifics asked for? How hard is it to say, "Hey guys, we're messing with glowie placements and/or the maps on a tf. Please let us know if you see anything borked with either."

I do not know the level of programming experience or software testing experience you have, so I apologize in advance if I sound lecturing. Seriously.

When you ask people to test changes you made to a system, it is common procedure to at least clue your testors in as to the nature of the changes and while it is often counter-productive to detail specifics, you still tell them the areas affected.