Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Dr_Con wrote: »

They need a core combat ability bug task force to be on top of fixing it tbh.

Or maybe just a combat team who doesn’t shake up the etchasketch every patch and actually uses scalpels over sledgehammers instead of saying they will and grabbing the hammer anyways. A vision for combat would be very helpful as well - a real vision and not that non-committal marketing nonsense they gave us in their Q&A substitution post.

Nobody wants to hear that the vision is horizontal progression because shaking the meta etchasketch keeps ESO combat from looking stagnant and players engaged (if not necessarily happy).

Nobody wants to hear that ZOS is going to keep selling us power creep in the form of Mythic Items and then nerfing them (and our classes) in the following updates.

That's the vision that's been communicated to me, patch after patch, year after year. It's a pattern at this point and so I know that if I'm going to keep playing ESO, I might as well roll with the punches.

But nobody wants to hear it, so ZOS is smart to not officially say it.

Caribou77 wrote: »

Ive experienced the bug where bumper skills stop working (in pvp) and also ultimate won’t fire. I’m on XBOX NA.

There are significant bugs that make the game unenjoyable to play.

Block stops working after a minute or two in PVP.

Maybe bumpers and triggers are bugged?

You just wait, my friend. This patch comes out for you next Tuesday. If they don't fix it by then, you'll see how ridiculously broken combat will actually become.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Has there been an announcement for maintenance next week yet? I haven't seen a banner.

I don't even mean to be dismissive or toxic when I say that I'm concerned they might not have the resources to address issues

Honestly, I'm believing this is the case more as the frequency at which things like this occur increases. Hopefully it doesn't take many resources or man hours to simply roll back a minor bugfix that completely broke combat.

They know theres ill sentiment yet they continue on in the same vein. Then have the nerve to be shocked when we do not trust them or react poorly to events that we have reacted poorly to in the past.

I just don't get it

This game, this product, is a so called "one off" product.
Like a F1 race car.

Most of the products we enjoy in RL are mass manufactured.
Like your family car.

There is as good as nothing where you can compare this "one off" game with QA and all kinds of other performance control features of a mass manufactured product that has all kinds of QA layers in Research, Development, design up to the manufacturing and follow up service and trouble shooting.


With "one off" you need dedicated and determined high skilled workers, not a myriad of QA procedures & testing.

If you want to kill the effective working time and also the motivation and thus the performance of these skilled specialists you only need many QA procedures and many close by spectators.

Spectators, whether "bosses in suits" or customers like us, can be missed like toothache when specialists need to work.

Here a link to a PDF with on the first pages some info and pictures on that diff between "one off" and mass manufactured.
https://technologystudent.com/pdf14/display5.pdf

React wrote: »

Animar111 wrote: »

Well they did state in the second half of the year would not be an another dlc and would work solely on bug fixes and quality of life improvements.

I would say that that’s a step in the right direction.

They also stated that 2020 was the year of performance.

They also stated the code rewrite would be done before the end of 2022.

They also stated (word for word) that the servers weren't part of the performance issues, and that if they were they would have replaced them years ago.

They also have been stating that they're addressing server related performance concerns since as far back as 2016.

I hope that Q3 is a step in the right direction. That said, their statements are meaningless. We need actual commitment, and examples of them doing better, like rolling back hugely damaging changes such as those that came with u37.

Well, I'm willing to forgive the lack of activity from 2020 through 2021 due to the pandemic shutting down so many projects and 'work from home' IMO also leads to much less work being done. Also, Microsoft purchased them during this time as well, so more transitions and project delays. I know when the company I worked for was bought, all planned major work was put on hold until the new company could do an accounting of all projects in the works and approve them on a case-by-case basis.

Sadly I don't trust they are actually refactoring. The wording keeps changing when referring to this project and my trust levels concerning this are low.

And TBH the current block bug is hardly non-critical

No one should be surprised at this point. If you are, it's because you haven't played the game yet. The bugs present are unacceptable, and they haven't addressed it enough. These are core problems and are vital to the flow of combat and gameplay. It's so infuriating because of how good ESO CAN be when it's done right. Any PvPer can attest to the rare occasion where everything ran smoothly for that one fight and the combat was interesting and properly fun... Only for the server to get bogged down again [snip]

Certain bugs, like being stuck in combat, or the mail system, have been broken for YEARS... YEARS. We get not a single word on those issues anymore. Cyrodiil has continuously lost performance for years, and even PCNA, with a simple hardware refresh that was helpful for less than a month before they lowered the resources dedicated to it, is on track to be back to the same terrible performance it was at before. I shouldn't be having my ping spike and then stay at 700-999 for several minutes, but that's "just how it is" now. [snip] There is no point in making @ZOS_Kevin come in here to do a quick message of damage control before abandoning fixing these issues after several months.. CORE issues that affect EVERYONE, not just PvP.

There is also no point in stopping threads like these from being posted. It's the only way we can communicate with ZoS in any reasonable way, given how hard they make it to actually have conversations between players and developers nowadays. It's just disappointing. This year will see the least amount of content and the most amount of bugs, especially in Q3, the so-called big bug fix update. I'm not looking forward to it, nor the chaos of the instability that will come with the new class and code rewrite.

[edited for bashing]

unless they change the api radically, there shouldn't be a big effect.

Destai wrote: »

draft

Jaraal wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

why are we forced to dread every patch instead of look forward to them.

Destai wrote: »

QA is only supposed to find bugs, management and their developer resources have to prioritize it.

There's a few things I see as a software development manager myself.
1. It sounds like testing scope is larger than their current staffing levels can accommodate. Every organization is unique, but fundamentally a product manager or technical lead need to size that effort before giving it to the testing
2. It sounds like the technical backlog is larger than their current staffing levels or skillsets can accommodate. The persistent issues with block and other core combat mechanics tells me it's probably the latter.
3. There's a fog around the scope of their major efforts like the code reworks and server replacements. We don't have a clear list of what will be fixed by what and by when.
4. The communication around the bigger technical topics is some combination of vague and infrequent. Even on minor bugs, getting updates is proving difficult. Either they are unable to convey their efforts or don't feel like they have to for whatever reason. Hard to say which, but it feels like the latter.

As a former mid lever developer, this has been my assessment as well. I am especially dissatisfied with #3 & #4.

Their response about code/physical improvements has been, 'Well, we've been waiting on hardware, we don't know when it will get here, so we can't say.' The languid communication however, is probably because they know that anything they say can, and will be used against them. It's hard to get called on something you didn't say. I think the Update 35 Q&A debacle had a significant effect on communication forthcomingness.

They could have been forthcoming with the Q&A. I’m still blown away by the lack of updates on the thread for 3+ months asking when it’s coming. IMO, that was the biggest misstep in the whole slew of communication debacles last year.

While I believe that there are people who will use anything against them, I believe there are also others who get the complexities behind things and just want to know concrete details on where things are. We don’t have a list of what their major projects will actually fix. I would rather them err on the side of too much detail. The way they’ve communicated in the past hasn’t done them any favors.

"We don’t have a list of what their major projects will actually fix. I would rather them err on the side of too much detail"

Yes the technical nerd in me fully agrees.

However, I learned the hard way in RL that presentations I made or I saw within (technical) teams of technical colleagues like that, had to be fully rewritten to get an optimal chance for the desired support or formal approvals, to get the right message across to the "spectators".

Between colleagues with a more technical orientation, affinity you share a lot of common context of the situation and you can toss in insights, thoughts and often to much details, without having to bother about misunderstandings trolled or sincere from the "spectators" missing so much context, missing that same reality.
And from that not knowing the full picture are unnecessary concerned, troubled and overly risk-minded. Or from general convictions, also by lack of relevant insight, simply (often lazy !) flat against it and not capable or willing to have an open mind
In Dutch idiom we say: "seeing everywhere bears on the road"

A kind of technical gap, getting a boost from the size of trust gaps and then killing constructive discussions with mostly irrelevant questions and dragging on, on those bloody details.

Still, though it takes both some courage as leadership qualities, I think that we need here also more sharing.
Now an then some authentic info from the workgroups besides the damage control and polished fluff we get now.

blktauna wrote: »

Sadly I don't trust they are actually refactoring. The wording keeps changing when referring to this project and my trust levels concerning this are low.

Implementing something like "server side hyperthreading" would probably count as a refactor, but I agree it's not one where existing code will be comprehensively reviewed and rewritten.

blktauna wrote: »

And TBH the current block bug is hardly non-critical

If it doesn't crash the game or blocks progress it's probably not labeled as critical.

All of these bugs are still present after today's (3/27) PC NA incremental patch.