Tal-N Posted June 28, 2003 Share Posted June 28, 2003 It's fair to say that there is a certain branch of retail and service which is totally different to others like it and not like it on the planet, it is a unique and self contained market whereby it almost makes its own rules rather than abiding by acceptable trading standards of the rest of the world. I am of course talking about the PC software market. Ever since the days when the internet first appeared it has been the excuse for the developers and publishers alike to produce second rate software, goods which are incomplete to various degrees. When this first happened it was no doubt a complete travesty for the company who lost market shares and profit because they wanted to try and 'patch' the software by getting people to go online to download the addtional software. That MIGHT be how it happened, i don't know if that is how things transpired but what I do know is that at this point in history the 'patch' has become synonimous with pc software. Looking at this from any other markets point of view the concept of needing to get hold of addtional parts AFTER purchasing the item itself would normally have trading standards officials around the world up in arms and probably force the company into bankrupcy. After all, if you buy a DIY table you don't expect to have to send an order form off to the company who makes it because it was missing some screws to complete it. What you do is take it back and demand a complete replacement or your money back. It's odd really that pc software doesn't follow this same pattern. So where does the blame lie? Was it the companies faults for going with the option of getting a product out of the door and onto the shelves while working on the patch to fix it in the weeks between the first discs being printed and sold? No, not really. The blame lies with US, the consumer. Somewhere in history a company got away with 'patching' without the customers complaining enough to stop it from happening again, it might actually have been Microsoft since they could survive such a complete disaster for their public relations and shareholders. But still in the end the problem persists today because there are people who consider this kind of behaviour from manufactuers as acceptable so it'll never change until those people wise up and look at the damage they are doing to themselves. Try to remember this when you look at the current state of affairs with SWG, the game DOES have bugs. Everyone agrees on that account, but the fact is that it SHOULDN'T. The only reason people are defending the game is because this kind of behaviour from the developers and publishers has happened before, but when you look at ANY other software on sale which isn't capable of being patched then you find that all of them are near enough bug free and if they aren't then the software falls flat on it's face and no one buys it. This is how it SHOULD be for pc software. So to everyone calling those who are complaining all of the insults under the sun and repeating 'This has happened before with <insert software name here> so shut up' that you need to remember that the person complaining is the one who is right. It's the people who find this kind of thing acceptable who are wrong because they allow this to continue. We are the consumer, if SWG was any other product then it'd be recalled and the company suffer massive losses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tal-N Posted June 28, 2003 Author Share Posted June 28, 2003 Oh btw, i do realise the irony here to some extent. Someone who is talking about how it's our fault for buying software which is incomplete thus allowing this to repeat over and over again. However, I also know that if I stop buying incomplete software then it'll make no difference at all to the world at large. I only bring this issue to up to remind people who are complaining that you are well within your rights to complain and that people who are not complaining are the ones who are very much wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toolfan Posted June 28, 2003 Share Posted June 28, 2003 I think what people are failing to realize though is the main and most important point out of all of this... is Star Wars Galaxies fun in its current state and will it only get better as more patchs and updates are released? In my opinion yes to both of those. I so far am having a good time playing SWG, and of course the game will only get better with time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tal-N Posted June 29, 2003 Author Share Posted June 29, 2003 Depends on how you define fun, as beta testers (myself included) said there are parts of the game which are pretty much finished aside from tweaking. Mainly it's the combat side however there are still issues within the game which kill the fun dead in it's tracks. It's too late to moan about it now and frankly I had my moan on the release day. The issues still however isn't about fun as that is subjective, it's about the game being ready for all players not just 2/3 of them. All they needed was a month to sort out that last third which was unfinished, it would have meant so much to the players in the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Exar_reborn Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 Whats wrong with the combat interface? I don't have the game yet so i'm trying to get as much info as I can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordie8472 Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 Based on what I have heard, SWG has a ton of bugs. Everything from messy graphics to the interface not saving it's position. I haven't played it yet due to my computer needing upgrades, but I will be in the game by Monday (God willing my chips arrive). Nonetheless, I will stick with this game, no matter how many upgrades I have to get. I've waited too long and will not give up. BTW, I don't think reviews for this game will be that bad. Only the people who reviewed prematurely (a.k.a. hardly even playing the game) would give it bad reviews. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphy Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 For anyone who played WWIIOL on opening day, SWG's opening was smooth as silk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kai Daru Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 Tal-N I agree with your post in theory... but as you said the sotware market IS a unque market... and not only that, but multi-user internet software is absolute cutting edge right now... there will be two reasons why the game was released when it was.... MONEY and the NEED TO TEST IN THE FIELD as far as the money thing goes... i cant defend that, but what i can say is that as an ex software engineer myself, basically i believe we are paying to play on a beta phase system... this is wrong... Beta testing is a service given by the testers to the software company, not the other way around... so its wrong for SoE to charge for that... HOWEVER... there is simply no way to see how the game would perform out in the real world, beta testing or no beta testing... as a software designer, developer and programmer in the past i know that the fact is, beta testing can only take the testing phase so far... until a more reliable way of programming is available and programming techniques have come to the point where they are not so incredibly complex as they are every single peice of software released is incomplete... thats just a fact of the industry and will be for a very very very long time. and lets face it... i cant speak for everyone but i know most people have been mad for this game for about a year now at least... i personally WOULD pay for a bugged piece of software if i really wanted it, and so would we all... THATS why we bought it, not because we are fools and morons who'll buy anything... but because we know it will go through this rough phase... and be a very very good game... perhaps the best of them all... (not including the fools who thought they were getting a perfect product when they bought it off the shelf. if you were amoung them, and i dont think you were... well maybe you learned something?) Whether money was a factor or not... it was always going to be this way when it came out.... i knew that, and every software designer who is reading this now knew it... and they also knew that there would be people complain over something that they have no real control over at all.... for my money, the devs have put their heart and soul into this project and will do so for years to come... and they will have my support, because i know they will need players to be understanding over the next few months until all gameplay and bug issues are somewhat addressed... if you dont like it, then go back to Quake, or Doom, or Counterstrike.... personally those games bore me STIFF! SWG has its issues... but it has a MASSIVE future... and i'll be there to see it grow.... if you dont want to be there, then dont be there Kai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tal-N Posted June 29, 2003 Author Share Posted June 29, 2003 Whats wrong with the combat interface? I don't have the game yet so i'm trying to get as much info as I can. Sorry, that must have been a little confusing. The combat side is what is mainly fixed, that is part of that 2/3 i mentioned. Sure it needs some balancing issues and the devs pretty much threw what balance they had out of whack by trying to make the game harder and it's even led to additional bugs but still surely enough the combat system is all in there and it's working fine. What is still glitchy is the travel systems which have occasionally caused people to disconnect during shuttle trips and interplanetry trips, tickets not being accepted or 'eaten' by that damn 3PO droid ticket collector, then there was the issue I bug reported several times about how survaying was making a waypoint for EVERY survay result ending up with loads of clutter on your map. Plus you cannot easily place your own waypoints due to how the cursor works and at the end of the beta you still weren't able to rename the waypoints you placed by hand. Then there's the issues with the UI which is being reported, things like it resetting every time you play the game and that the trade window closes when you open a container within your inventory, some people also had it shutting down when they spoke while it was open. Well, there's loads of other things mainly related to the trading and crafting sides which aren't fixed. And mainly all in the elite professions that only the hardcore gamers are actually starting on now. There's also about 4 professions which simply aren't working right or have bugs related to them. Those are the droid enginer, the bio-enginneer, the smuggler and the chef which all need to be looked and totally revised since they aren't working as well in the 'fun' area as they should be plus items they can make are riddled with bugs. But that is all really, just 1/3 of the game left to sort out. Which isn't too bad really, as people who find this kind of thing acceptable the game is in good shape compared to others which were at this stage. But that really isn't a good excuse to tell people who are complaining to shut up nor should you expect everything else Sony release to be unfinished from now on. I haven't played it yet due to my computer needing upgrades, but I will be in the game by Monday (God willing my chips arrive). Yeah, thats another thing. SWG eats RAM for breakfast and asks for seconds, not all systems are effected but people with WinXP will run the highest risk since it tends to eat around 256mb just running it's own operations that you cannot turn off. The game then needs around 512Mb just to run itself otherwise you're gonna get terrible frame rates within busy areas as the game loads it all into the harddrives swapfile. Do yourself a favour and pick up two sticks of 512mb memory if you have an OS which is 2000 or XP otherwise windows won't use all of it anyway due to software limitations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kai Daru Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 Originally posted by Kai Daru if you dont like it, then go back to Quake, or Doom, or Counterstrike.... personally those games bore me STIFF! SWG has its issues... but it has a MASSIVE future... and i'll be there to see it grow.... if you dont want to be there, then dont be there My appologies Tal-N, i just re-read this section of my post and it sounds like a personal attack when its not meant to be... it was a reference to everyone who seems to think that SWG should be JKIII... im sure you see my point... it just gets on my nerves... as there seems to be a lot of them Kai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tal-N Posted June 29, 2003 Author Share Posted June 29, 2003 Kai Daru, i hear where you are coming from. I really do, there are millions of configuations of PCs out there and thus you cannot possibly test for them all. That is also why console games are typically bug free for the most part since there is a single configuration of the software and the hardware. But what about the non-hardware or compatibility bugs? You don't need to mass test the game to find and fix those at all, infact for those kinds of things you only need a single pc if you want to rationalise it. Let me take a perfect example of this using SWG. There is a bug which has been present for around about a month now, i don't know if they've fixed it for release but we'll find out within the week. It only happens when you take the tailor profession first, learn your way up to a certain point and then start learning Armoursmith skills from the armoursmith tree. If you do this you're gonna find (if they haven't fixed it yet) that you cannot use any of your tailoring skills until you lose all of the armoursmith ones. Only then will it return to normal. As far as I'm aware the only person who recognised the cause of the bug was someone i knew. Now if there isn't enough of similar reports explaining the bug then it's low on their priority list as being an isolated incident which is about to become quite a major incident now that you have a quarter of a million players. That is not a compatibility issue, it's known by the developers and the game went to release. It's these kinds of bugs I'm saying they can avoid but don't because they know us fools will buy the game and give them time to repair them. There are some excuses though, which are fair enough. You know the user inface bug which is causing them to reset each time you play the game? Well that happened in a patch after the game went to print, we reported it about 2 weeks ago so they are no doubt still working on it. If however they waited for the game to stabilise internally before releasing it they could have avoided that one too but instead they went too early and the patches that occoured between the time it went to print and the release date actually BROKE more than it fixed. As you can see now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urge Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 I agree with just about everything you're saying Tal, but if you're only gonna buy software that's 100% bug free you'll be using your comp as a paper weight. Something I learned during a accounting software conversion at work is that if you can get it 80% working send it out and patch it up later. If you wait for 100% it'll never go anywhere because no software is 100% complete...ever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tal-N Posted June 29, 2003 Author Share Posted June 29, 2003 Indeed that 80% figure is coming from the bean counters, who want to get the money in the bank and start the number crunchers rolling for the current fistral year. But you and I both know that it probably costs more in man hours to have all of those extra customer services people and systems in place to deal with the problems caused by your incomplete product than it would cost to hold into it for a little longer to work the problems out. But they don't see it like that, as long as they see the demand for the software and know that people will accept incomplete goods then it's a viable option. If everyone on the planet was to suddenly stop accepting incomplete pc software then you'd see a change. As i said at the very start, the consumers are to blame for this and if it was any other market you'd find people complaining. Thus people who want to moan have every right to and the people who are telling them to shut up need to do so themselves since they are indirectly the cause for the problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tal-N Posted June 29, 2003 Author Share Posted June 29, 2003 Oh and about the software never being 100%. That's fine, as i agree you cannot make software which is totally compatible for everything since the hardware moves too quickly. The point is that developers will often release while there are still non-compatibility related problems that can be fixed without mass testing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kai Daru Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 Originally posted by Tal-N There is a bug which has been present for around about a month now, i don't know if they've fixed it for release but we'll find out within the week. It only happens when you take the tailor profession first, learn your way up to a certain point and then start learning Armoursmith skills from the armoursmith tree. If you do this you're gonna find (if they haven't fixed it yet) that you cannot use any of your tailoring skills until you lose all of the armoursmith ones. Only then will it return to normal. As far as I'm aware the only person who recognised the cause of the bug was someone i knew. Now if there isn't enough of similar reports explaining the bug then it's low on their priority list as being an isolated incident which is about to become quite a major incident now that you have a quarter of a million players. The above basically proves the following HOWEVER... there is simply no way to see how the game would perform out in the real world, beta testing or no beta testing... as a software designer, developer and programmer in the past i know that the fact is, beta testing can only take the testing phase so far... until a more reliable way of programming is available and programming techniques have come to the point where they are not so incredibly complex as they are every single peice of software released is incomplete... thats just a fact of the industry and will be for a very very very long time. There would have been literally thousands of bugs, not just the ones you found... and if they knew about it and it wasnt fixed in time, then it was not as important as the other fixes that were needed that they DID get in... also... you can never know whats going to be trivial or important in these kinds of projects... its just an educated guess that such and such a bug is a much more important to fix than the so and so bug... so thats why the game needed to get out in the field.... these people arent einstein and stephen hawking, they are people like you and me, and it takes an incredible amount of time and effort to fix such things... everybody is just going to need a little patience... there is no peice of software in the world thats bug free...so how can you expect such a cutting edge project to be perfect on launch... this launch has gone BETTER than i expected, from a software design and programming point of view Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tal-N Posted June 29, 2003 Author Share Posted June 29, 2003 The above basically proves the following No, it proves that the developers only take notice of the bugs which are widely reported. What they should do is take the time to investigate every minor report too. You can argue that it will take ages, well it depends on the nature of the bug but yes it does mean taking the care to get things done right. In this age of speed and efficiency there is now less care put into work so the polishing which is often needed to make something special is lost. The professions i said are incomplete.. they are the minority professions that didn't have enough people testing them so their issues were swamped by bug with the more major ones. You might say that mass testing is the only way to sort certain things out, in the case of the more obscure ones then yes I can understand that. But if you gave all parts of some software equal attention then you'd not miss the minor wimper that is soon to become the mighty roar. SWG's testing was quite simply, unbalanced. everybody is just going to need a little patience... there is no peice of software in the world thats bug free...so how can you expect such a cutting edge project to be perfect on launch... LOL! Do you see the irony there. The customer is expected to have patience because the developers and publishers didn't. Yes, they have to meet deadlines, but it's costing them money for the damage control and the lost sales. Just imagine what the reviews are going to say for the game this month. They're gonna fall into two banks really. People who accept bugs as a way of pc software and the people who think that if a game isn't as close to finished on release then it simply isn't worth giving a good review. Also look at this from the view of the people who are new to the MMO market like me, i have never played one of these games before. If i hadn't been in beta I would be frothing at the mouth because of the issues and yet the devs said that they know they'd be attracting alot of new players to MMO style games. They needed to take that extra care. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kai Daru Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 I can assure you that the devs had nothing to do with the early release so dont blame them... they take great pride in all their work, and they would have held it back believe me, the early release is down to publishers... and chief exec's... all i can say is that if you have played any other mmorpg's... you'd be happy with SWG's current release state... EQ for example is years and years old yet they still fix bugs on a regular basis and the servers are down at least twice a month for a whole day while they fix issues... to put it simply... what you're asking for is just impossible... and as far as them reviewing every single bug goes... not a credible idea... that would take AGES... you're talking thousands of bugs for what is essentailly a smalll programming team of 5 or 6 to fix... and now you want them to review the bugs personally too? Even if they wanted to do such a thing the company would not allow it, programmers arent cheap, and they would have been refused on grounds of extra pay issues that the company were unwilling to reach an agreement on (this has happened to me, more than once some of my work has gone out that i am totally unhappy with but was put out because the company wanted to get rid of my salary). I know what you're trying to say just as you know what im trying to say, and it seems we are both resonable men... so you're just going to have to beleive me when i say... what you're asking for is impossible... if it was possible... the devs would have done it... i wish i could take you around a software company and show you the extent of the work these guys have to do... i wish i could show every whiner thats complained about bugs and gameplay issues... because 99% of them will just take one look at their workload and not even understand its basic concepts... give these guys a break... they work as hard as they can under the thumb of the fat cat chiefs who force themm to release their projects early and its them who ultimately are to blame for any release issues.... most of the devs wont be sleeping until the major bugs are fixed, a lot of them will be working flat out off their own back outside of working hours, because they have a passion for the game and their work... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaiser Isaac Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 You guys are sounding like the arcetect frome the matrix here i cant read 4 sentences without getting bored off my ass.......This might be due to the ADD I had as a child......... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kai Daru Posted June 29, 2003 Share Posted June 29, 2003 LOL, hi Keiser! Go back to bed mate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tal-N Posted June 29, 2003 Author Share Posted June 29, 2003 Kai Daru, yeah you understand me and I understand you. The difference is that I admit that the world sucks by the way it currently works and you're defending it. This was never going to be a discussion where it'll be settled since some people accept the world and some people simply hate it. All i wanted to do was remind people who are telling others to shut up that they are the ones promoting the problem with 'Teh Sys7em' while the ones complaining actually have a justified opinion which would benefit us all if it was paid attention to. About all this discussion will do is maybe give people a slap in the face as to why this is happening, for others like Kaiser it's the perfect solution for insomnia. lol But some of us like these somewhat high-brow conversations, it's a nice break from the usual nonesense that appear on GAT forums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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