Am I the only one......

...that thinks that with all the long standing bugs in this game....adding a few furry NPC's to the club 55 and Pocket D maps and fixing one veteran power bug is kinda a slap in the face?

No.

Fixed that observer walk bug as well.

And they can't all be winners.

No, you're not alone.

First bug fix should be the one that puts enemies in walls if you knock them back.

Here's the thing.
Add new npc: lionnpc = new NPC(top = 12, bottom = 6.....)
Fix things getting stuck in walls: Spend weeks trying to replicate. Test collision code. Test character model code. Test power code. Test map. Try some fixes. Test some more.

I have no problems getting stuff junior level programmers can do in an hour while senior level programmers try to figure out what is wrong with the legacy code. A better comparison is are you upset that time was spent working on Incarnate tasks and such instead of getting things unstuck from walls? Because that's likely the team of people that would have to fix a transient bug with no clear culprit.

I said it elsewhere and I'll post it here...

There's a thing called art. Part of this product is just that (all of it, really).
They added in some vastly different appearances into the game with those animal heads and are sprinkling it into the game world for a bit of congruity.


As for the "slap in the face" comment...........

LMAO

Some people might could use a good slap.

Paragon Studio's philosophy in development (from what we see, and what War Witch claims) seems to be "Full speed ahead!". In summary, they always favour introducing polished new "things" rather than publishing old "things".

And as with any other approach, this one has its advantages and disadvantages too. I think at this stage, the cost of going back and fixing very fundamental game mechanics (such as enemies getting stuck in the walls) is way, way too high. So much that it might be more cost-efficient to just make a new engine and start from scratch. So instead they focus on giving us new things to play with to ease the effect of the old stuff. This is especially true in the area of character costumes (an area I believe needs a really good polishing at this point).

I'm not an expert on how CoH's managed or how the code is run. But with my little experience in game development, I can tell you that "fixing" something is usually much, MUCH harder than most people like it to be. And sometimes if you spend all your time trying to "fix" something, soon you'll realize that it's been 3 months and you haven't been able to make any new additions; and this can really hurt an MMO from a business standpoint...and afterall, CoH is a business, and money has the first say in everything. So you just have to ignore them and move on from time to time.

Personally, I don't disagree with this approach. Nor do I agree with it. It's just one of the ways to do things.

I am of the opinion that adding more non-interactive NPCs to the D is not in any way beneficial, and their presence is a pointless irritation.

The vendors? Useful. War Witch? Useful. Tailor? Very useful. Desperate Guy/Turndown Girl? Amusing every so often, and not really in anybody's way.

Parking a small herd of pointless furries on stools filling up one of the bars? Bad. Just plain bad.

Mobs stuck in walls has been a problem literally since day one, seven years ago, and the game has seen at least three different dev teams during that time. Players have been complaining about it for all seven of those years. Safe to say there's a reason why over all that time it stll hasn't been fixed. I doubt we'll see it go away without, as Bright Shadow suggested, a total engine rewrite.

I think it's a cute little addition, and I'm happy to see more nonhumans about!

...What do you mean, "Biased?" o.o

Think of it this way:

You have this really giant tower. Each month, you've been adding a new level to this tower...and you've just been building higher and higher. Your goal is to make a really big tower that looks cool and attracts attention.

So now you're on the 1253th level, and you realize that one of the blocks you put on level 3 is a little loose...which is now making your tower a little wobbly. You're pretty confident that that loose block won't ruin your tower because of how well you designed everything....but it's there. And it's making your tower look less "cool".

To fix this loose block, you probably need to take out a giant chunk of your tower. Fix the block, and then put it all back together all over again.

So what do you do?

Do you go back and try to fix that loose block at the cost of potentially ruining your tower? Or do you keep building higher and just ignore it cause it's not breaking your tower?

To answer the question, you need to sit down and do a cost vs. benefit analysis. When you factor in things like money, tangible resources, an all sorts of project management nonsense, it gets pretty darn complicated to answer that question...let alone fix the loose block.

Personally, I think that's where CoH is right now. A big, giant, wobbly tower that serves its purpose.

Add to that analogy the fact that it was actually someone else (Cryptic) who designed and built the first several levels of the tower, and when you took over no one bothered to explain to you exactly how it was designed or how all of the architecture behind it actually works. You've had to figure some things out as you go along, all the while maintaining construction on the upper levels of the tower.

Remember, the studio running the game now isn't the same one that created it, not entirely anyway. I remember Castle having to admit that the way taunt effects work was completely different from how he had been told, a few years after the game's release. It makes sense to consider that Paragon Studios probably had to figure out other things about how the game's guts work, too. I know that doesn't make it suck any less when a stuck mob screw up a long, un-fun mission, but it's the way it is.

As it's been said, adding NPCs to an area is an entirely different animal then fixing physics issues. "Slap in the face"? No. A little disheartening? Yeah.

Sure, I'd love to see a fix to enemies getting stuck in walls and my character getting hung up between scenery and a wall on certain maps, but it doesn't upset me that much. The bugs aren't game breaking and they don't show up often. They're just an annoyance, which, being an MMO, there are plenty of. =P

Now, another good question would be: What's the better idea, having the seasoned professionals poke around the code until they can figure out a decent fix quietly or making a big deal about how they're putting a huge effort into fixing it... even if a fix may take many, many updates before anything comes of it? Personally, the current situation sits better with me.

They should fix the bug that makes the game less fun now than it was on my first week playing it.