Are bugs the price of swift action?

Vhailorx
Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
edited December 2022 in MPQ General Discussion

We have all enjoyed BCS' proactivity when it comes to tinkering. From more complex powers to swift character revisions to to frequent feeder revisions the contrast with demi's pace for revisions and general design philosophy is marked and has been very well received.

There has also been at least an anecdotal increase in the number of bugs and technical issues, including numerous event rewards/boost list quirks as well as more serious issues like today's crashing issue on (edit: some) Samsung devices.

Could these things be related? Is a willingness to tinker with the game code on a short timeline also likely to increase the rate at which bugs creep into the game? And if that hypothesis is true, is the trade off still worth it? The swifter dev responses have been great (no snark at all, it's been great!), but frequent game breaking bugs would be hard to accept in a game like this where timing is so meaningful.

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Comments

  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,286 Chairperson of the Boards

    I run on a Samsung Galaxy S9+ and its run flawlessly for me today.

    KGB

  • DyingLegend
    DyingLegend Posts: 1,210 Chairperson of the Boards

    Its only on newer hardware from the looks of it. Its completely hosed on my S22 Ultra. Price of living on almost up to date on electronics lol

  • ThaRoadWarrior
    ThaRoadWarrior Posts: 9,471 Chairperson of the Boards

    Fast/stable/complete, choose the two you want

  • DeNappa
    DeNappa Posts: 1,398 Chairperson of the Boards

    Don't get your panties in a bunch. Gameplay bugs have always been there, I don't think that number has increased significantly. And todays bug seems to have do with hardware and/or OS versions. Releasing for multiple platforms is always a pain, especially with such a wide range of devices, can't expect to test on ALL of them.

  • Omegased
    Omegased Posts: 606 Critical Contributor

    Galaxy S21 here. no issues.

    To answer your question, 100%. the fresh air, the communication, the unique characters, the generosity of reward changes (which i'm cool with for now, but i do worry it'll dilute the value of some stuff.... that's for another topic), EVERYTHING really has been a plus (EXCEPT the PVE while a boss event is on. that makes me very sad once a month).

    I haven't had any game stopping bugs, but there's been a lot of ghosts in the machine (Chasm breaking everyone comes to mind) that may have impacted people but all in all it's completely a net positive.

  • Rhipf
    Rhipf Posts: 295 Mover and Shaker
    edited December 2022

    Doesn't really matter how fast or slow development is, programs are always susceptible to bugs. You can only test a subset of all situations that the program will encounter when released to the public (unless you spend all your time and money testing the program on every brand of hardware and every possible situation the user will put the program under but then the program never reaches the public anyway).
    It is more a question of how fast the problems are addressed than how quickly changes are made.

  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2023

    Just want to bump this thread back to the top as I think the topic is still live.

    Bugs definitely seem to be on the rise as BCS makes more and more changes.

    Perhaps some things about the "bad old days" with demi weren't so bad afterall?

  • dianetics
    dianetics Posts: 1,656 Chairperson of the Boards

    You have a new group of devs going in and making changes and additions to an old code base. Yes there will be bugs, but here we are a year later and the bugs seem to be reproducing.
    Maybe they are roaches. They fix a bug and 2 more pop up it seems.

    I like the devs openness but man they always seem to behind to 🎱 on this.

  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,503 Chairperson of the Boards

    D3 just took our money and let the code base rot. We were all there when they did the graphics engine revamp. Why wasn't the game engine documented and modernized? We all know how much money got spent in the early 5* days (luxury car money). You really gotta wonder where all our buy club dollars went?

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    @Phumade said:
    D3 just took our money and let the code base rot. We were all there when they did the graphics engine revamp. Why wasn't the game engine documented and modernized? We all know how much money got spent in the early 5* days (luxury car money). You really gotta wonder where all our buy club dollars went?

    Demiurge were the previous Devs. D3 have another name now but are still here?

  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2023

    I think we have a couple of players who work in game companies making mobile(?) games. Maybe they could share whether it's a norm that productiom environment results differ from testing environment. It seems that there are players who think that production must produce duplicate or 99% similar result as test servers. :|

  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,503 Chairperson of the Boards

    @HoundofShadow said:
    It seems that there are players who think that production must produce duplicate or 99% similar result as test servers. :|

    Huh? Whats the point of a test server if it doesn't produce duplicate or replicate the production environment? Otherwise its just another development build on a engineers laptop.

  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2023

    If this is a common thing even for big gaming companies that has multi million budgets, then testing is not as simple as what people think. Let's say if it's not a norm, then it means it's a skill/experience/knowledge issue. :D

  • Bowgentle
    Bowgentle Posts: 7,926 Chairperson of the Boards

    For God's sake it's the norm for every company that works on any kind of software.
    No need to wheel out the "poor small dev team" card yet again.

  • LavaManLee
    LavaManLee Posts: 1,461 Chairperson of the Boards

    @HoundofShadow said:
    If this is a common thing even for big gaming companies that has multi million budgets, then testing is not as simple as what people think. Let's say if it's not a norm, then it means it's a skill/experience/knowledge issue. :D

    If what is a common thing? Having a QA/Prod environment in sync? Or screwing up so badly between the QA and Prod environments? The first is not just common, it's industry best practice. The second is not as common.

  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited April 2023

    The reason we all (developers or not) know terms like "development" and "production" environments is because they are standard practices in software development.

    That does not mean that they are universal practices, nor that the standard model works for all products or implementations. But I think it's pretty safe to assume that BCS has something like this model in place for MPQ.

    And yes, development is hard and mistakes will happen in the real world.

    But all of that is beside the point. We are just players/consumers. There are lots of entertainment options out there for us, hell, there are lots of marvel-license mobile games we could use instead. So for us it's a straight cost benefit analysis.

    BCS has clearly brought a refreshing willingness to tinker with the game, try new things, and try new solutions, and change the underlying economy of the game. That is to their credit.

    On the other hand, it's basically impossible to ignore the number of errors that have arisen during the past year too. From the multiple bugged character interactions with major releases in Kang and Chasm, to to the weeks long galaxy S blackout, to all of the botched boss events, the errors crept into basically every part of the game.

    It seems clear that BCS' dev process, whatever it is, does not catch bugs before they enter production as well as demi's process. At this point that's less a criticism, or moral judgment than it is an objective statement of fact.

    In a perfect world we would all love for the bugs to go and the game revisions to stay. But this is the real world, so how do we feel as players? Are bugs a price worth paying in exchange for more active development?

  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards

    I'm playing another game running for 8 years and recently have changed in charge like this one, one month ago.
    Well, the new devs extended the capped level of the heroes and all structures with zero bugs. They designed new weapons and skills.
    They even fixed a few of the well known bugs.
    I was expecting a lot of bugs, for some reason.
    But I'm amazed with the outcome until now.
    So games can't be compared, but it seems effectiveness between different studios neither.

  • tonypq
    tonypq Posts: 557 Critical Contributor

    I agree bugs and technical issues seem a lot more abundant than with Demi. Maybe it's partly being new to this game and coding in place, who knows. All the botched events, overly complex chsracters and abilities that BC doesn't always seem capable of getting them to function properly. There's obviously quite a few known bugs with multiple characters, likely other bugs not even known yet.

    A lot of of us were probably amped when BC stepped in and we started seeing real changes and actions in the game. I know I was, but with how things have gone since, I think they may need to slow their role a bit. Would be nice to see them put out a few of the fireworks they've started before going ahead with some of the other revamps or new content they want to introduce.

    I really like this game but I have to admit the fun factor is taking a bit of a nose dive with all the craziness going on. I don't know how any of us can be overly confident they can revamp the support game with creating another mess.

    I'd like to see them fix all the issues we have now before worrying about supports or anything else. Obviously new characters have to keep rolling out, but I'd love to get the bugs fixed and BC learn how to properly roll out the different events before they start creating more hurdles for themselves.

  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,342 Chairperson of the Boards

    @HoundofShadow said:
    I think we have a couple of players who work in game companies making mobile(?) games. Maybe they could share whether it's a norm that productiom environment results differ from testing environment. It seems that there are players who think that production must produce duplicate or 99% similar result as test servers. :|

    Hilarious!

    Devs: Hey guys - we have invented this new thing that stops you falling to death out of an aeroplane! We call it a parachute! Wanna try it out?

    Customer: That sounds great! Did you test it out though? I sort of like living!

    Devs: Sure we did! We jumped out of a ground floor window and it worked great!

    Customer: So not an aeroplane then?

    Devs: Eh. Same difference!

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