Come on Zenimax

Crumpy · August 2014

Nothing to do with "armchair coders", this game should not have been released unless ftp.

Greybarren · August 2014

JessieColt wrote: »

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

I'm paying a sub for this game, I expect it work.

http://www.zenimax.com/legal_terms

11. Disclaimer of Warranty

(...) IF YOU ARE NOT SATISFIED WITH THE QUALITY, FUNCTIONALITY, AVAILABILITY, ACCESSIBILITY OR PERFORMANCE OF A SERVICE, YOU MAY CANCEL YOUR ACCOUNT OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTION TO THE SERVICE.

This is the key point right there. If you are dissatisfied the product you are paying to access on a monthly reoccurring charge, discontinue to do so.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO · August 2014

The argument "new versions of software always have bugs" is invalid for two reasons. First, this game is updated a lot, way more often than most other software, or even most other games. Second, and more importantly, everybody is forced to run the newest version. A user cannot choose to stay with a previous version that worked - all new bugs are forced on everyone at once.

This should prompt ZOS to be extra careful with testing. Instead, they seem to take the opposite approach and leave all the testing to us.

And now I will go play the game for a bit. Bugs and all, it's still fun, and I still send in bug reports, despite the categories being overlapping, incomprehensive and confusing. I hope someone is actually reading them, because I spend quite some time writing them.

BBSooner · August 2014

Game works for me. Sucks it doesn't for you. Shrug.

andrantos · August 2014

Every ESO session, I am guaranteed to run into at least a handful of bugs. They hinder my enjoyment of the game to various degrees. Of the countless number of MMOs I've played, this actually is not normal.

I can't name a single MMO with the exception of ESO that this occurs. This is not normal. This is not good for the overall health of the game as it conveys a level of polish that will impact subscriber numbers.

Bugs happen and they will occur. That is okay. But at this rate, I question whether the ESO team is learning from their mistakes. I doubt this is the best that the ESO team has to offer.

How many more times are features going to be disabled. How many times can a quest be fixed, broken, fixed, and rebroken? This is not normal for a AAA MMO experience.

Nocturnalfox · August 2014

Why do people feel so entitled...
If you don't like it, its simple, leave, cancel your sub, speak with your money. - that's your consumer rights.

Next point its a game, not worth stressing over.

Lastly this topic will get shut down assuming it doesn't disappear into Oblivion. Because its not constructive. its just pointless bitching.
Whats wrong, why is it wrong, what can be done to fix it, what suggestions do you have if any.
And if you have it (And I very much doubt it as I expect this sort of complaining from most MMO players with access to a forum) offer your technical expertise.

starlizard70ub17_ESO · August 2014

steveb16_ESO46 wrote: »

Adonikam wrote: »

I write code everyday. I test my code before moving it into the QA environment for testing. I usually receive a couple bugs which I fix right away and then test before moving an update to QA. When my code is released into the Production environment, it works...

Seems a bit unnecessary when you could just throw some code together and then wait see what happens when your customers start using it.

^ And get paid while your customers are testing it for you, just like some MMOs we know and love are doing.

Spottswoode · August 2014

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

I am still here, playing the game, patiently dodging the bugs, glitches and imbalances and quite enjoying myself for the most part. No plan on quitting for the near future. However, from a software development perspective, the code for this game appears to be a rushed, badly designed and badly written mess that only barely works.

wrote:

There are serious issues with every part of the code: the graphics engine, the network code both at the server and client side, the thread balancing, the memory management, the database backend, the user interface, the combat mechanics, the quest scripting, the error handling, even the loot tables and the items themselves. The developers have a terrible code management which introduces and re-introduces bugs with every patch. They take way too many shortcuts with internal quality assurance and testing, and it takes them a long time to hunt down and fix serious, game breaking bugs

Well, most developers use a premade engine and don't build their own. Mostly because building your own engine is prone to cause problems down the development line. (Sound familiar yet?) WoW has done this, but WoW has also had a number of years to fine tune and develop their own engine. ESO has only been out for 5 months. This would tend to indicate that ZOS is still in the process of developing its engine. This is not surprising. WoW also had a number of problems following it's initial release. (Corrupted Blood being the most glaring example.) I find the number of bugs in the game neither surprising nor significant compared to most games. We are definitely on the buggier side around here though.

wrote:

I am not an armchair coder. I have been programming professionally for three decades, and I feel confident saying this: it is not normal for a software product to have this many problems after release.

Huh..I must have been on another planet when Windows Vista first came out. And Windows 8. OH yeah, let's not forget the Windows XP piracy lockouts. Or the god awful Apple Maps.
Bad software releases happen everyday.
Also,
http://www.bucketbros.com/text/worst-videogame-bugs.html
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GameBreakingBug
It's a lot more common than you think to release a game that has numerous game breaking bugs if the bugs can be avoided 90% of the time when playing normally. Developers will also sometimes avoid bugs that can be bypassed by reloading a game and playing a level over again. When developers have deadlines to meet, like annual releases, expect some bugs in a game.
This certainly doesn't happen with most releases, but to say it isn't normal (meaning common) is a misnomer.
ZOS, you do need to get your ***** together. That much I'll agree with here.

andrantos · August 2014

I think we all can agree that bugs in software are normal. However, when 100% of my game play sessions go like this...

"Fun, fun, fun... Oh there's a bug.... Fun, fun, oh another bug... Bug, bug, fun, fun, bug, fun!"

That is not normal. In all the time I've played FF14 1.0 and 2.0, I can't remember ever consciously experiencing a bug during any of my play sessions. They probably happened, but they'd have been so minute as to not garner my attention. This could also be said for any number of games and MMOs I've played.

Like I said. I like ESO. But its level of polish is abysmal in my experience.

Spottswoode · August 2014

I can assure you I've had buggier experiences playing vanilla WoW. And laggier.

twev · August 2014

Spottswoode wrote: »

I can assure you I've had buggier experiences playing vanilla WoW. And laggier.

Using your analogy, I can say:

I broke my neck in a car accident a number of years ago.
Since then, every day I get caught in traffic for several hours during a commute that I survive intact is a good day.

I play this game, not the others.
I don't care what happened in those games.
I'm paying to play this one.

Quit the game?
Sure.
I've had this conversation.
When can I expect ZENI to refund the balance of my 6 month sub?
If one wishes to say I should have known better than to sub for 6 months, why would one want to imply that a company like ZENI would be untrustworthy enough to keep money for the balance of a sub if they were unable to deliver consistent product quality?

Spottswoode · August 2014

twev wrote: »

Spottswoode wrote: »

I can assure you I've had buggier experiences playing vanilla WoW. And laggier.

Using your analogy, I can say:
I broke my neck in a car accident a number of years ago.

Since then, every day I get caught in traffic for several hours during a commute that I survive intact is a good day.

That is completely irrelevant (and nonsensical) to the point I'm trying to make. Normal means that something is unexpected. It is clearly not if you've had a longer history than 5 years in video games.

Homm · August 2014

Eso reminds me of Apple - let's overprice our product, advertise the crap out of it and then give our clients something worthless. After the hype goes down, let's slightly upgrade our product. It will still be worthless but we will get our clients back!

Spottswoode · August 2014

ZOS hasn't charged us for the newest upgrade though.....

I don't disagree with the blatant fact that there are numerous problems with the game, I just think it's a little early to torch the whole thing to damnation and flush the ZOS reputation down the toilet on their first go around. There have been other games with major problems that have sorted them out when the devs were given time. The amount of time needed and some indication they have recognition of the problems and a method to go about it would help improve the outlook around here.

Pierre.Steegb16_ESO · August 2014

Some of the ignorant posts here are just to die for :'D

twev · August 2014

Spottswoode wrote: »

twev wrote: »

Spottswoode wrote: »

I can assure you I've had buggier experiences playing vanilla WoW. And laggier.

Using your analogy, I can say:
I broke my neck in a car accident a number of years ago.

Since then, every day I get caught in traffic for several hours during a commute that I survive intact is a good day.

That is completely irrelevant (and nonsensical) to the point I'm trying to make. Normal means that something is unexpected. It is clearly not if you've had a longer history than 5 years in video games.

I quoted your entire post.
How is it irrelevant?
You cite ancient history.
This is 2014.
We don't care how poorly things worked back then.

btw, since we discovered that the Earth orbits the Sun, we don't care about all that 'Earth is the center of creation' stuff anymore, either.
Just sayin'....

And I hope you have a great day in the game.
Good hunting.

Spottswoode · August 2014

We also based those conclusions on years of research. Which is kinda the whole basis of the argument. (Y'know, ZOS is a new company new to mmos and what not. And every other game maker was when they started out. And things got better.) But whatever.

andrantos · August 2014

I don't think any reasonable player expects a bug-free experience. I think it is reasonable to promote a relatively polished, mostly painless experience... Something ESO has yet to achieve.

The number of bugs experienced in any given amount of time will imply some level of polish and quality. It also speaks ZOS' ability to maintain and enhance the game.

New features and functionality are great. However, I would like to think that the perceived level of polish would be increasing. Instead, I would argue its decreasing because I experience more bugs more frequently with every update.

Less polish = less subscribers = less support for the game.

At this point, its clear. ZOS is focusing on quantity not quality. I'm having fun now. More then enough fun to dismiss the bugs. But, at this rate, eventually the quality will reach a point where I'll take my money elsewhere.

It's that simple. I'm not raking ZOS over the coals. I'm simply stating the obvious... Their dev and/or qa efforts need to improve, otherwise this game will just become another Vanguard.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO · August 2014

Really it's the lack of communication more than anything else for me. Keep me updated and I'll be much more happy.

Spottswoode · August 2014

Agreed.

Zebug · August 2014

eh...no problems on my end, must be you

Royalroacho · August 2014

Raash wrote: »

Royalroacho wrote: »

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

I'm paying a sub for this game, I expect it work.

I get it. I pay for alot of things that I expect to work. But they dont. My toaster oven caught on fire. My refridgerator is concerningly loud. The air conditioner has failed at least 3 times this summer. Dont have enough time to list all the car problems ive had. And ive never played a video game in my life that didnt have some slight bug in it, and im not going to. The more complicated a system is, the more potential there is for error, and mmo's are at the top in regards to complexity in a video game.

I dunno what my point is...dont manage your expectations, and experience recurring disappointment, I guess.

You really compare bad coding you pay a sub for with wear & tear of stuff you bought and broke?

Yes! As far as I can tell, toasters and computers are pretty much exactly the same. Theyre both kinda rectangular and metal. They both get sorta hot. They both have slots that you can put crap in. Although for some strange reason, whenever I try to toast my bread in the optic tray, the thing stops working....maybe I need a blue ray drive...

SirAndy · August 2014

I do this for a living (Software development) and i can tell you that if my team ever released something so broken and untested we'd be in a heap of trouble.

Every major ESO update has introduced more bugs than it fixes and often old bugs that were fixed before are back.

Whatever the QA process is at ZOS, it clearly is *not* working ...

rsciw · August 2014

99 little bugs in the code
99 little bugs in the code
Take one down, patch it around
117 little bugs in the code

and that'll be every program / application really.

rsciw · August 2014

Crumpy wrote: »

Nothing to do with "armchair coders", this game should not have been released unless ftp.

why not ftps or sftp?

PF1901 · August 2014

rsciw wrote: »

99 little bugs in the code
99 little bugs in the code
Take one down, patch it around
117 little bugs in the code

and that'll be every program / application really.

Myth.

Probitas · August 2014

Bad coding is a sign of people lying on their resumes.

Rune_Relic · August 2014

Agreed.. anyone else has stable versions and beta version.
ZOS keeps feeding us beta stuff instead of the stable versions.
Beta stuff is for the test server.

Elsonso · August 2014

I can spend hours playing and not encounter more than the occasional glitch. The last big glitch was pretty cool, I went into the bank and the game forgot to draw the insides. A couple dozen people, along with objects, were just floating there in an open room with no walls. Unfortunately, the game would not allow me to take a screen capture. In time, it drew the room, but until then no way was I stepping off my flying carpet at the door for fear of falling back to Molag Bal.

The last actual game error that I found was in a quest that did not progress. This was last week and the quest has apparently been broken since beta. It has been a long long time since I found a bugged quest.

Most of the bugs that I see are minor inconveniences. A lot of the complaints I see in here are about things that I have not seen, so your mileage may vary.

I play a software developer on a popular soap opera. I also stayed at a Hampton Inn last night. As a well-rested professional actor, I can say that I do not agree with the way they do QA and the ability of their QA department to catch bugs. Many people moan about keeping it in PTS and making sure that the final version is on PTS before release, but honestly, it is not the job of the people playing PTS to find these bugs. That is the job of QA, with or without a PTS.

That said, and again as a well rested professional actor, the software that runs ESO is complicated and has a lot of parts. No one person understands it all and it is diverse enough where different groups will have different responsibilities. Each of these groups has the potential to make changes to the system that impact other groups, sometimes in wonderfully unexpected ways. Like when your favorite soap opera actor comes back from the dead.

So, while I do not have confidence that QA can catch everything, the reason for this is that there is no way the QA can catch everything. It is too complicated and too intricate to be able to test everything and make sure that no unintended breakages happened.

So, yes, on my soap opera we would have delivered ESO in the state it was in March when they rolled out Early Access. Bugs and all. When the director yells, "Action!" it is too late for the actors to say they aren't ready.

However, it became clear shortly after that rollout that something was going horribly amiss. Patches introduced bugs. Patches did not fix bugs. Emergency server updates were required. All things that were indications of a fundamental QA process problem.

The gaming industry is well known for squeezing their developers like oranges until nothing more comes out, then squeezing some more just to make sure. I have always thought, being a well-rested professional actor, that a large part of the issue with the game in the first 30 days was due to developers who were not well-rested trying to fix the game and making mistakes.

But, the silver lining is that it is getting better. Yeah, they flubbed up big time with the guild migration, but that seems to be resolved for the vast majority. Migration issues will always be a problem since that stuff is hard to completely test in advance.

NewBlacksmurf · August 2014

Royalroacho wrote: »

Sometimes these troll posts are hard to resist...this is a semi rhetorical half sarcastic question, but I wanted to know-are you a proffesionalsoftware developer, or ever dabbled in any kind of amatuer coding? It sounds snotty, but thats not my intention. I see these posts, and I wonder if theyre made by super genius programmers that have never been up all night scanning thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of lines of code again and again and again to find some interaction that causes a domino chain of sometimes unpredictable errors to show up. its not always an issue of competence, bugs happen.

Using the domino analogy, try to imagine setting up, like, a thousand chains of millions of dominoes, that fill up your entire town. Theyre supposed to fall and interact with eachother in a way that will display an animated moziac of like..I dunno...the Opening theme from futurama when viewed from the sky, in laterally moving frames. How could anyone possibly *** that up?
Its not a perfect metaphor, but I would imagine working on an mmo would probably be kinda like that. I dont think its realistic to expect there to not be bugs, but they Should be accountable for them

Im going to school for CS, so im probly kinda oversensitive to these kind of posts. also, Im pretty sure that if theres a hell, theres a whole plane where you're chained to a desk, forced to spend eternity debugging source code. In fact, I heard it was such successfully sanity peeling torture, that theyre converting that ring of hell where you're being eaten alive by giant flesh burrowing insect larvae while being forced to watch your significant other cheating on you to more desolate chambers of debugging.

Anyway. Its only been a day. Cut them some slack, dammit.

When you enter a field, criticism should be viewed by someone like yourself as opportunity. If its seen as negative and downgrading then you will burn out.

When companies decide to open up paths of communications where their customers can directly speak and give feedback, whether its negative, positive, helpful or in your terms "Trolling" its a result of the companies desire to hear the customer's voice.

The tone of any post is determined by its reader.
If you cant take things like this, I would suggest going into another field.

I'm in corporate sales and product development for over 42 states. The field is very different but the customer's voices are the same.

"Perspective"