How long should a [well known] bug take to get fixed?

Obscure · July 2014

@ruze84b14_ESO
MMO's are colossal projects. They are mind bogglingly complicated, complex, and difficult to develop. Surprisingly enough there are people who get out of bed every morning, and have done so for many many years, specifically to collect a pay check to do exactly that: develop MMOs. It's their job to do it and more importantly it's their job to do it correctly. Yeah, its not easy, I know, that's why we pay them money because there's no effin way we could do it ourselves. It's hard, but it's their job to do and do right. I'm expected to do my job correctly and I expect no less of any other self respecting person who takes pride in their craft.

Bugs are not acceptable at all, period, genre is irrelevant. There's frankly no fair amount of time for them to fix a *** up. The time they we're given was to not *** up in the first place. It takes time and money to do the job properly. So take the time and money to do it properly! That doesn't take a genius to figure out if it takes X hours and Y funds to produce Z then your going to need to use X hours and Y funds if you intend to produce it.

It's not defensible in any way, but I enjoy ESO for other reasons. Though I suffer myself no delusions that there's some serious lack of quality in the product (I.E. a buffet of bugs) for which the game suffers greatly. Should they simply do their jobs correctly, then there will be nothing for me to say aside from praise and expectations for expansion. It ain't easy, and yes it's constantly under development, but if they keep ***ing things up and diverting efforts into fixing *** ups that never should have happened it isn't helping them develop.

Ser Lobo · July 2014

@Obscure‌

I understand your position, and obviously have a very different viewpoint, which I'll refer to as a 'pragmatic acceptance of the current environment'. Considering even Windows gets major bugs in it, and sometimes takes years to fix (looking at you, XP), I think it's a general haunt of programing in general.

I've yet to find any game, ever, that didn't have bugs. Lets not even talk about how buggy Asteroids could be.

In the end, the logic is simple: if we we are so very upset with broken or unfinished products, we wouldn't pay (or in this case, continue to pay) for said product or service, and the company would stop producing said service.

I'm personally very happy with the service. Of course, I like my old Chevy Blazer and I can be perfectly happy in a set of Walmart work boots for $40 (not arguing that they barely last half a year, mind).

But for those who absolutely cannot stand what they consider shoddy workmanship, the only real option is to stop paying the company. I'm sure many have. But I sincerely doubt WoW has become the mass-market force that it is because the gaming world is financed by players with such high standards. There's probably many more like me with a 'pragmatic acceptance of the current environment'.

Or as a wise man once said, 'wish in one hand and **** in the other, and see which one fills up faster.' There's the way the world *should* work, and the way the world works.

There is nothing wrong with wishing.

One key point of argument I will make, though: we pay Zenimax, and Bethesda, to use their product. We are not renting said product, nor are we somehow commissioning the creation of said product. We are buying it's use as is, for as long as they see fit to provide it.

The distinction is that we don't pay any employees. We pay a company that may or may not pay employees, as that company sees fit. The customer has absolutely no say in how the game is made, who is hired, or what the world becomes. The only have say on whether they want to continue paying or not. A very important distinction that puts a lot of things in perspective.

Your specific quote that caught this return:

Yeah, its not easy, I know, that's why we pay them money because there's no effin way we could do it ourselves.

Obscure · July 2014

@ruze84b14_ESO‌
Don't get me wrong. I'm still here, and likely going to remain here for some time. What I'm getting at is the cold hard reality, and not so much my personal, subjective perspective on the subject. Everyone will have different expectations for times to expect bugs to be fixed based on a wide variety of variables and preferences. Thus the only correct answers are immediately or never with everything in between being disregard-able as subjective mutterings.

My preference is bugs don't get in to begin with. The ones that slip through need to be small, slight, uncommon to rare, and in every case eliminated with extreme prejudice, if not at least isolated from the live code for more in depth fixing. Out of sight out of mind. If the dev's read just one thing from every post I've ever written I hope it is the following:

Take your time.
Do it right.

Lalai · July 2014

As long as it takes for them to fix it correctly given whatever their priority list is.

No software ever is going to release bug free. Just isn't going to happen, that's the nature of programming. When considering all users, there are so many different system setups that a software program working on literally all of them just isn't going to happen. A bug can be well known and only effect a small percentage of the player base. A bug can have existed since the game/program first came out and still only be effecting a small percentage of the player base. That's not exclusive to MMOs, or games; it happens with software in general. It sucks when you personally get hit with an issue, especially when that issue is game breaking, but some stuff is just harder to pin down and fix than others. Programming isn't really a case where you can put 6 programmers on one bug and have it fixed faster than if you only had 2 or so.

Even big companies like Amazon have bugs in some of their software that have been around for literally years. You can see numerous examples of the specific error (error code 13) I have in mind if you do a Google search, creating the false sense that it's hitting a large percentage of users, when in reality it's a fraction of a percent. Sometimes it takes complaints to the big wigs of the company to get things moving on something that's been on the back burner because it has a work around. That was the case with quite a few kinks with the Kindle Fire software when it launched.

You can try and place a set time frame on when a bug should be fixed after it has been discovered, but that's really not how programming works. Each bug is different, replicating some (especially those only a small percentage of the population is experiencing) is extremely hard, and then working out a fix can be difficult as well. Some things that seem like they should be a cinch to fix are actually the most painful, and others that seem as if they should be overly complex are simple.

At the end of the day you have to decide when a bug has become too frustrating, and how it's effecting your fun level. If it's getting on your nerves bad enough to destroy your fun, then stop giving the company money until it's been fixed (or just altogether if you're that mad). I'm not saying not to get upset over bugs or anything like that. If I got hit by some of them I've seen posted, I'd likely be pretty upset as well. I'd want it fixed fast (though I wouldn't be posting on the general forums about it, or making demands of how fast, but that's just me). If it was destroying my enjoyment of a product then I'd take my business elsewhere, and have done so in the past with other games/programs.