Jagex and Bugs (from 18 Aug 09 update thread)

[Sy_Accursed]

Possible solution - One update a month so catching more bugs? oh wait.. or would people complain yet again?

 

 

 

Well if people were rational it just wouldn't be an internet community, now would it ;)

 

 

 

And maybe they're a bit overstretched trying to simultaneously fix one massive game and create another massive game. We can see what is suffering.

 

 

 

As said before, the Mechscape, Runescape and Funorb teams are all indepenedent of eachother.

 

 

 

They're all one company. They have many projects going on at once. Even if independent they can have an impact on each other.

 

 

 

Not true.

 

 

 

The Co-Operative group (uk store chain) is made up on many companies and many societies, we have zero impact on each other.

[Me_Hate_Libs]

Possible solution - One update a month so catching more bugs? oh wait.. or would people complain yet again?

 

 

 

Well if people were rational it just wouldn't be an internet community, now would it ;)

 

 

 

And maybe they're a bit overstretched trying to simultaneously fix one massive game and create another massive game. We can see what is suffering.

 

 

 

As said before, the Mechscape, Runescape and Funorb teams are all indepenedent of eachother.

 

 

 

They're all one company. They have many projects going on at once. Even if independent they can have an impact on each other.

 

 

 

Not true.

 

 

 

The Co-Operative group (uk store chain) is made up on many companies and many societies, we have zero impact on each other.

 

 

 

You have seperate buildings, employees, etc. This is one company. If one thing is a failure, it will have an impact on the company and therefore the other interests of the company. Also, when they use the same software and technology, it will have an impact as fixes made on RS will be integrated in the coding of Mechscape. And you know they had to either hire a bunch of new people to do Mechscape, or cut staff from Runescape to put on Mechscape.

 

 

 

The point is, Mechscape is a big project. Jagex for a number of years had Runescape as their only interest. As soon as Mechscape comes into it, we see the RS begin to suffer. It's my opinion, it may be a coincidence, but I think they are impacting each other at present.

[Maximusa]

The reality is they have a falling standard this year more than ever. The game is getting bigger? So hire more staff. They making more money to afford it. With the extra staff they can continue to release updates without so much trouble despite a bigger more complex game. Perhaps its even time to readdress how they handle their testing with beta worlds. The game has indeed grown and maybe they should expand their testing methods to the players. In the beginning bugs made sense - Now its a big company and has responsibilties to its customers.

 

 

 

If they are not doing this or for whatever other reason that might be causing it its not acceptable for them to release worse and worse bugs into the game. It seems the 'upgrade' year is obviously rewritting old code which is messing things up. That doesnt make it acceptable for them as a company to release the content bugged.

 

 

 

The fala masacre thing was a one off for the most part. Big bugs happened but they were rare. Now big bugs are happening practically every update. We just been lucky its not been along similer lines as putting wildy into non wild worlds yet. However people are losing money, time, gameplay due to other just as bad bugs lately.

 

 

 

I mean once upon a time I would of trusted my butler to pay himself from my bank but no way was I letting him access my full gp while so many bugs were happening. I cant blame them for a bug that doesnt exist but what IF it did happen to everyone? Billions gone. Thats the kinda of bugs that are appearing in the game at the moment.

 

 

 

Many people are not idiots and find that unacceptable. Its not the coders fault so much but I dont find people blame the coders personally. They do great to deliver so much. People complain about bugs and testing their updates, that doesnt necessarilly mean people are putting torches up towards the testers themselves. Its more about a very real problem caused by the company as a whole.

 

 

 

I could only access my house 1/10 times and then it bugged up in construction for hours so I had to leave and go back in. I dont trust putting lots of my more difficult to gain pets into the house until other PLAYERS on a non tester server have tested for me that its safe. How can anyone find that acceptable is beyond me. I am a damn good paying customer and expect better from the leadership of jagex.

 

 

 

Anyway I dont care THAT much as it hasnt effected me personally too badly yet but its quite understandable why people are complaining about it.

[Sy_Accursed]

Possible solution - One update a month so catching more bugs? oh wait.. or would people complain yet again?

 

 

 

Well if people were rational it just wouldn't be an internet community, now would it ;)

 

 

 

And maybe they're a bit overstretched trying to simultaneously fix one massive game and create another massive game. We can see what is suffering.

 

 

 

As said before, the Mechscape, Runescape and Funorb teams are all indepenedent of eachother.

 

 

 

They're all one company. They have many projects going on at once. Even if independent they can have an impact on each other.

 

 

 

Not true.

 

 

 

The Co-Operative group (uk store chain) is made up on many companies and many societies, we have zero impact on each other.

 

 

 

You have seperate buildings, employees, etc. This is one company. If one thing is a failure, it will have an impact on the company and therefore the other interests of the company. Also, when they use the same software and technology, it will have an impact as fixes made on RS will be integrated in the coding of Mechscape. And you know they had to either hire a bunch of new people to do Mechscape, or cut staff from Runescape to put on Mechscape.

 

 

 

The point is, Mechscape is a big project. Jagex for a number of years had Runescape as their only interest. As soon as Mechscape comes into it, we see the RS begin to suffer. It's my opinion, it may be a coincidence, but I think they are impacting each other at present.

 

 

 

Yes they use the same office and software but they have 2 ENTIRELY SEPERATE WITH NO OVERLAP teams and have done for many years. Mechscape is due for relase this yr hence laods talk of it now, but its had its own team and been in production for a good 2 - 3 years. So you canot relate it to this 1 "bad" year as this "distraction" also exsited in the previous "good" years you reference

[Bauke]

Whenever something is severely bugged, then yes, your paying customers will complain about it. Obviously it ain't all that easy. If it was, I'm sure Jagex could handle it, since they have a lot of people working on the job. But complaining about customers who are complaining about something which is obviously not working as it's supposed to be is only natural.

 

 

 

Should we just keep quiet and accept all the failures in silence? No. There's a difference between whining about every update, and complaining about obvious and severe bugs.

 

 

 

But he, I like the stuff they release :thumbup:

[Kietaro1]

 

To Kietaro1, could you clarify a little on what updates last year did you consider amazing? Or any amazing updates in all your gaming years. I'm kinda curious as to what you define as amazing.

 

 

 

Certainly, though I will go off of my statement of quests being a tool of measurement that we might use as a standard.

 

 

 

Let us look at the quests released up until last month and their effects on Runescape. An update effect on my day to day Scaping is how I judge amazingness.

 

 

 

-Dealing with scarabas: water tiara making long stints of mining more bearable. To a lesser extent, new slayer tasks.

 

-As a first resort: spas offering numerous benefits to combat and general movement around Runescape.

 

-Catapult Construction: castle wars catapult upgrade that really changed nothing.

 

-Kennith's Concerns: new guam potion aka nothing much.

 

-Legacy of seergaze: Vyrewatch burning for prayer and blood runes for runecrafting.

 

-Perils of Ice Mountain: waste of programming. Making pickaxes is useless and do not even get me started on global warming...

 

-TokTz-Ket-Dill: no lasting rewards.

 

-Smoking Kills: truly one of the best updates I have seen in a while. Updated slayer with so much awesome content. New crafting, fletching, ranged, and slayer content make this truly awesome.

 

-Rocking out: Really neat quest, one of my favorites actually but no real lasting content (besides my ex-ex parrot :)

 

-Spirit of Summer/Summer's End: Coropel Beast and spirit shields.

 

-Meeting History: history lesson-nothing new

 

 

 

Now let us look at this year and their effects.

 

 

 

-In Pyre Need: some might argue that this could be considered last years but either way - repeatable phoenix fight, new familar, and pet.

 

-The Chosen Commander - new mace that no one uses, new agility course no one uses, and an upgrade to a crossbow that gets used sometimes.

 

-Glorious Memories: nothing

 

-Tale of the Muspah: partail quest with build up, nothing.

 

-Missing my Mummy: build up, nothing

 

-The Hunt for Red Raktuber: penquin hunting, hide and seek addition and new hats which are pretty neat tbh.

 

The Curse of Arrav: nothing too game changing.

 

 

 

With this comparison I want to show two things: half as many and less game changing content. These two things could be had in an either/or situation like I expected this year (less content/more quality) but last year we were given both; numerous updates with real lasting rewards. This year however the updates have left me wanting. It really has come to the point where I log in very liitle. Hell I have even been working on a machinima so I go over there and offer some ideas.

 

 

 

And stopping my membership would lose my grandfathered cost od 3.80 a month and boost it to 5.80 or whatever it is now. How would that help me in the long run?

[Laura]

There's tens of thousands of free beta testers, Jagex doesn't use them, their fault.

I have to agree. I write applications under Xcode for Apple mobile platforms and my server handles thousands of people everyday. Bugs hardly every slip by developer preview stages because the application is sent for free to fifty people. And really, that is all it would take for Jagex - fifty people to test an updated version of Runescape for a week playing as they normally would.

 

 

 

In addition, I expect the code to be bug-free because I am paying to play. The same would go for the car I pay my share on; I don't want any faults. Do I know how hard it is to build a car? No, probably not. Do I care? No, I am paying for the thing to be perfect. If I wanted to know the difficulties I would have built the thing myself. The complexity of building a car is far beyond that of an online game and the consequence of having imperfections increase to fatalities. Does that mean the next time my breaks don't work I should blame the intricacies of building a car?

[swampjedi]

Mechscape costs money to develop, and is currently not generating income. Where do they get that income? RS members. So yes, it directly affects RS, since that cash could be spent on RS. I'm not saying that it should be.

 

 

 

Heck, if anything, maybe Jagex is creating MS because the RS codebase is a disaster after so many years of updates. They know that it's reaching the point where it would need to be rewritten from scratch - but instead of doing that, they're doing something totally different.

[swampjedi]

The complexity of building a car is far beyond that of an online game...

 

 

 

No. Wrong. Very, very wrong.

[Kietaro1]

The complexity of building a car is far beyond that of an online game...

 

 

 

No. Wrong. Very, very wrong.

 

According to whom? You? Ans who are you?

 

 

 

On that merit of argument, I work on the maitenance end of a crane company where out fleet trucks are repaired all the time, sure I do not develop the truck (just as you do not develop a widely played game) but I can tell you, that you are wrong.

 

 

 

Now where does the discussion find itself?

[Pirate_Felix]

Possible solution - One update a month so catching more bugs? oh wait.. or would people complain yet again?

 

 

 

Sadly the only way to truly catch mass bugs is to make a beta server which would make the updates less fun.

 

they just need a larger bug team, some who are actually smart

[Laura]

The complexity of building a car is far beyond that of an online game...

 

 

 

No. Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Oh? You have a larger market to cater to which results in an increase in competition. You have to constantly fuel demand by designing and redesigning cars. You have to delve into new technologies to balance fuel to distance which now includes a myriad of technologies such as bio-fuel, flex fuel using E-85, hydrogen, DHMO, and gasoline. You have to continue to buy resources from other companies, including metals, rubber polymers, technologies for the dashboard, etc. When it comes to building the car, machines do most of the welding, all of which requires precision within a millimeter less the entire car is scrapped. To check the welding, are yet more machines which take pictures of the welds and run those pictures up against the "perfect" weld. Then you have thousands of people working for an independent company, which should the company go under, all of which are out of the job - directly effecting the market. I could go much further, but I don't see the need.

 

 

 

Machines require more precise software to do the job desired. This then impacts hardware, something Jagex lacks. Should any of the surrounding companies prices go up (including competitors and materials) this will devastate your income. I don't see how you can argue that an MMORPG is more complex. Jagex has a steady supply of income because it doesn't need to buy materials on the scale a car manufacturer does.

[swampjedi]

You're talking management, logistics, advertising, business, and economics. I'm talking technical - which is the whole point of this thread.

 

 

 

Is a automotive COMPANY harder to run that a game company? Sure! Is it easier to build a reliable car than very complex, bug free software? Not on your life.

[Laura]

Can you have one without the other? No.

 

 

 

Jagex needs a game to test bugs on with a player group to play the games. Just like an automotive company needs advertising to fuel demand to profit. The point is that I don't care how hard it is, it is their job to build and maintain the game. Anything less and I'm gone.

[Emmentail]

@Swampjedi: I'd like to see you build a car that doesn't blow up as soon as you turn the ignition. Which coincidentally is what happens everytime Jagex update the game. :roll:

[Me_Hate_Libs]

Mechscape costs money to develop, and is currently not generating income. Where do they get that income? RS members. So yes, it directly affects RS, since that cash could be spent on RS. I'm not saying that it should be.

 

 

 

Heck, if anything, maybe Jagex is creating MS because the RS [blocked due to abuse] is a disaster after so many years of updates. They know that it's reaching the point where it would need to be rewritten from scratch - but instead of doing that, they're doing something totally different.

 

 

 

You bring up a very good point. They've admitted how much clutter is all mixed up with the RS code. While I don't think they'll close down Runescape alltogether, after MS is released, they might shut it down for a few months, and completely rework it. It could stand it. They just need to make sure they have another sourse of income while they're doing it. Frankly the idea of fixing it as they go along doesn't seem to be working.

 

 

 

Aurian, it doesn't blow up. It's more like "total existence failure."

[swampjedi]

Laura,

 

 

 

Geez we might as well talk about civics and government and physics and chemistry too, by that logic.

 

 

 

I'm not the boss of you, but you're arguing on a different planet - and as such, it really isn't productive for this thread. Plus, I just agreed with you.

 

 

 

And nice edit while I was replying.

 

 

 

Aurian,

 

 

 

It's not hard. With a little experience, I could put together a kit car pretty easily. Oh, kit cars don't count? Do you really think car companies engineer cars from scratch?

[Laura]

Laura,

 

 

 

Geez we might as well talk about civics and government and physics and chemistry too, by that logic.

 

 

 

I'm not the boss of you, but you're arguing on a different planet - and as such, it really isn't productive for this thread. Plus, I just agreed with you.

 

 

 

And nice edit while I was replying.

 

 

 

Aurian,

 

 

 

It's not hard. With a little experience, I could put together a kit car pretty easily. Oh, kit cars don't count? Do you really think car companies engineer cars from scratch?

Your main point on the first post is that we should understand why the bugs are there. As the complexity of the game grows, so do the bugs. Or at least, that is what I grasped.

[Me_Hate_Libs]

 

Aurian,

 

 

 

It's not hard. With a little experience, I could put together a kit car pretty easily. Oh, kit cars don't count? Do you really think car companies engineer cars from scratch?

 

 

 

Hell, they did on Top Gear in less than a day. \

[Riemis]

I play the game, and if I notice a bug, I report it and just go do something else until it is fixed, easy as pie.

 

I know that there will be bugs after every update, and I don't care if they are major or small or if they affect my (actually, Jagex') account, I just enjoy the game like I always do.

 

The best thing about Runescape is that it is so big, even major bugs can't affect the entire game so people can still go do something else instead of complaining that they can't acces their house immediatly.

 

Just prepare yourself before an apdate, know that you won't be able to do some things for a few hours.

 

Edit: and don't tell me you pay 6$ a month specificly to acces a small feature of the game for the few hours it is broken.

[swampjedi]

Your main point on the first post is that we should understand why the bugs are there because of the complexity of the game. Or at least, that is what I grasped.

 

 

 

The complexity of the code base, yes. All of the crap about management was ancillary.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

Finally, someone else that gets it. I'm an undergraduate CS major right now, and I do a lot of programming in a lot of languages (Java, Python, small bits of C, C++, and some ARM assembly), and I'll just say that I agree with this entire OP. Let's begin debunking myths, then.

 

 

 

The reason that I think things aren't going quite as planned is that Jagex has begun or is continuing a major refactoring project on their engine. The bigger a piece of code becomes, the harder it becomes to maintain - and with an ever changing language like Java, things may become deprecated in the future that were perfectly acceptable two months ago. The "fun" part then becomes to make certain that all of the existing code works well with the new, refactored engine, and sometimes, things just don't go as you would expect them. It's for the simple reason that if you change one piece of code, or one seemingly obscure function around, the possibility exists that something else will break in a major way.

 

 

 

Lmao. You are a programmer, but that doesn't mean you should try and lord the forums and insult people like a teenager.

 

 

 

Guess what, i am fully aware of the stress most programmers have to work trough, and have a good friend who designed, developed and is running(l6vi, if anyone from scapeboard still remembers) a fully functional multiplayer game. I understand that people make mistakes, but what i'm mostly hinting in that post(and what you left out of my post, another nod there) is that construction is known to bring about bugs that can have catastropic effects, and knowingly releasing a construction update that has atleast 7 bugs in it and seriously hinderes playing the game(these weren't small bugs, they were there for everyone, easily reproduceable and confusing, also one of them granted you free planking(MAJOR bug)). I didn't make the post to say that jagex as a whole has bad progammers(and didn't make major insults towards them like some), but that this was a completely raw update and either rushed out or badly programmed/bad QA work. SOMEONE messed up, now it's not mine to determine, but yes, i do think, turning out such an appaling piece of programming, that someone should be dealt for what they did.

 

 

 

I don't get your contradictory statement. You said you are fully aware of what programmers have to deal with, but you thought that Construction would be released with zero bugs? First, Construction was something that they had to update their game engine to support - twice. Second, the bugs that came with Construction were most likely because they tried something new with their engine - and regardless of how much testing one could have did, I don't think that the case could have been that > 1,500 players would be ejected from a POH at the same time and allow a handful of players to continue attacking others, as if they were in a POH, would have been caught anyway.

 

 

 

I'll also tell you - the update wasn't badly programmed or tested, honestly - the testing environment is a much more sane environment than a live environment is, and while things should always be the same, they don't always react the same as if they would publicly (case in point: the alleged new server connections that didn't work as planned due to kernel memory not being large enough).

 

 

 

Lastly, there's a radical difference between "appalling" programming and a few oops glitches here and there; one of them means that players lose plenty of money, items or skills; the other means that it was some only quick annoyance. "Invalid teleport" sounds more like an annoyance to me.

 

 

 

"If you do not like it, quit."

 

 

 

First of all I want to say that this response, though widely used is very ignorant. I have not spent the last 7 years of my life playing a game on and off to quit because Jagex suck at upholding one of their key promises to their players.

 

 

 

I'm going to have to jump on the bandwagon here as well and say that the choice is very, very clear. The only way you can vote is with your feet; if you don't want to pay for seemingly bad upgrades, or you disagree with the quality of updates that they're doing, then all you can do is quit. What commercial programmer likes working for free?

 

 

 

In addition, I expect the code to be bug-free because I am paying to play.

 

 

 

We expect our operating systems' code to be bug free as well, but we all know how that goes, right? [Hint] Fact of the matter is, the bigger the project, the more bugs become present, full stop. You can't just blindly give someone $100 and expect their code to be bug free, but you can expect that it will be bug free to a certain degree, and it if isn't, you can hope/expect/demand/tantrum/whatever that the bug gets fixed within a certain amount of time (hopefully less than 24 hours), if it's critical.

 

 

 

This bug with the update wasn't all that critical. It stopped a few players from experimenting with the new POH room, big deal. It isn't like you guys lost your entire bank account, now is it? :? It was still a bug, and it should be fixed by now, but please, don't act like the world ended behind this one little thing.

 

 

 

Now that I look back on it...the only serious bugs were the one instance of someone losing their entire bank worth during a MA cutscene, and NPCs not being able to attack for an hour or less, but that was about it, really...

[swampjedi]

Yeah, you get it for sure - and wait till you get on a project team with 250k lines of source, horrible vague requirements, and crusty old engineers that give unreliable information. Dang, I miss school.

 

 

 

Refactoring breaks the crap out of things. For anyone who has never done it, imagine putting a box of glass sculptures in a paint mixer and then gluing them back together as good as new.

[Me_Hate_Libs]

Makato, I'd like to point something out again. Runescape is special because you can vote with your dollar while not quitting the game. If half a mill people let their subscription lapse, but still play the free game, they'd be accomplishing both.

[Kietaro1]

Laura,

 

 

 

Geez we might as well talk about civics and government and physics and chemistry too, by that logic.

 

 

 

I'm not the boss of you, but you're arguing on a different planet - and as such, it really isn't productive for this thread. Plus, I just agreed with you.

 

 

 

And nice edit while I was replying.

 

 

 

Aurian,

 

 

 

It's not hard. With a little experience, I could put together a kit car pretty easily. Oh, kit cars don't count? Do you really think car companies engineer cars from scratch?

 

With a little experience I could write an entire game from the ground up. Heck I already have. When I was I high school, using a TI-83+, I wrote a full RPG with movement like zelda using self created sprites for 18 different characters, a fighting system much like pokemon with move lists specific to the 18 individual characters with strengths and weaknesses as well as damage rates, and a link system that allowed players to fight others using the calculator link cord all in my junior year, second half. It was collectively about 40 hours of content and in my opinion very well done. I did all of this using self taught basic on a calculator. I also made monopoly with ai, hearts with a real card shuffle, and a text based version of worms.

 

 

 

Could I build a car that already has directions to follow? Um yeah probably, one from scratch, nope.

 

 

 

In truth though this has nothing to do with the quality of recent updates. It was an example that obviously went over the heads of those that are arguing. Focus too much on the example and you will miss the point.