This is exactly why we need a sit-in or other crusade here. Apparently the
only way to get Verant's attention is to make a huge fuss. One nerf in the
entire history of the game to monk's and they get a two page apology almost
instantly? We get nada, no mention, no eta, no explanation, nothing. It
isn't as if this is the first time they broke something concerning bards, or
nerfed it as I am still unwilling to take one GM's word as gospel on the
real motivation or lack thereof behind the change. I have been bugging
Lullaby for 2 weeks now with no response. I now continually see the same
things John(tm) was seeing earlier. About 50% of the time Lullaby is not
resisted, that is a get a successful nods message, the song does absolutely
nothing. I can nod a green Mob that is attacking or fleeing and 50% (or
more) of the time nothing will happen. The Mob will continue to attack or
walk away despite my doing absolutely nothing else. I know the song will
stop a walking away Mob in it's tracks when it nods it correctly because
that does happen nearly 50% of the time. I have still had no response on
this. I am not high enough level to Pixie Strike yet so I can't say on that
one, but John(tm) has reported the same problems with that song. So what is
going on? Did they decide that they wanted us to be resisted more, but knew
if we started seeing tons of resists that we'd all throw a fit so instead
they just inserted some code that would give a song a % chance of having an
effect if it wasn't resisted? Or is their coding just so suspect and their
testing so miniscule that this bug has slipped in unintentionally? Who can
tell with these guys. Its so obvious they don't even do minimal testing on
their changes, despite all their claims to the contrary, that you just can't
tell if the changes they make are intentional or hideous blunders. I mean,
damn they didn't even realize Alenia's was broken till we complained for 6
months it didn't do anything. Five minutes of testing showed Harmonic, not
only that it now did work, but even revealed some of the circumstances in
which its working appeared quirky. Five whole minutes. In his spare time
while at work. If that little testing was required to show that the song
works, it shows how little testing they did to see if it did work in the
first place. Zero, absolutely none. If the application development team
here, or anywhere I have worked for that matter, worked in such a matter we
would all be sacked. Every last one of us, without a second though or
minute's remorse. In the business world, behavior like this is totally
unacceptable, and would not be allowed to continue. Why is this not true at
Verant? Either because their attitude is its just a game, bugs are not
really important and they can fix them when the players find them; or
because they are so busy patting themselves on the back for having a
successful product, they can't be bothered to actually spend time making
sure the quality of the product doesn't suffer every time they need to make
a change. Verant has 300,000 customers. Most software companies with 1/10
that number do 100x better at making certain that coding changes do not
adversely affect their product in unforeseen ways. The job Verant does at
this is pathetic. They come across as a bunch of kid-whiz programmers who
may be technically sound, but so disorganized and undisciplined they have no
idea what the changes they make to their code might do, and don't give it a
second thought.
Kitasi
-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua R. Moore [mailto:
josh@...]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 9:15 AM
To:
eqbards@onelist.com
Subject: RE: [eqbards] Broken Song
From: "Joshua R. Moore" <
josh@...>
Yes, but Fixed at next patch is not good enough. that is one or two weeks
without levitate
-----Original Message-----
From: Katy Westerman [mailto:
katyw@...]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 10:33 AM
To: '
eqbards@onelist.com'
Subject: RE: [eqbards] Broken Song
From: Katy Westerman <
katyw@...>
> From: "Kimes, Dean W." <Dean_Kimes@...>
>
> >From: silky@...
>
> >This was reported to the list yesterday mornin - after the patch.
>
> >Veeshan went down last night - and there happened to be GMs in channel -
so
> >take this for what's it's work.
>
> >Q: To GM - fippy Bards levitate seems to only work for 3 tics after a
> >pulse, does not continue, and you have to land before it can be
restarted.
> >Secret Nerf - or unintended bug.
>
> >A: Unintended bug - it's amazing what can break.
>
> It should have said it's amazing what can break when you don't care enough
> about a class to test changes to it even to the level of "targeting a bat
in
> a newbie zone"
>
> Kitasi
Actually, I can see why it slipped by. They were changing ADM, and
whoever was working on it was probably not the person who originally
coded the spells, and didn't realize that Aria would be affected by
it. It happens, even to me. They don't have time to go back and test
*every* aspect of the game for each patch, simply because if they did,
the patch would be rather long in getting out. That bug will likely
be fixed in the next patch.
Robynn, programmer extrordonaire...who should be getting ready for
work right now.
--
Katy Westerman Don't lick something unless
katyw@... you really mean it.
http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~katyw -Advice from the Naked
CS/Comp Math Major, UC Riverside Dancing Llama
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