Feldon 
Yesterday, Test received an update with these auspicious line items:
- Kael and Drunder group BPs have been modified to better fit within the progression.
- Temple of Rallos Zek Raid Hard mode BPs have had their power increased.
The result of these changes, however, has been less than desirable. The Mitigation (not crit mit, but the basic mitigation) of all the Breastplates (Robes, Cuirassen, Hauberks, Gis, Tunics, etc.) from Kael Drakkel: Fortress Spire and Drunder: Tower of Tactics has been reduced by over 90%.
Gninja did attempt to mitigate the situation with this post on the EQ2 Forums:
The mitigation is obviously bugged. We will get it fixed asap. The crit mit we are looking into and I will have to get back to you guys when I have more information about what happened.
Most damning however, is that this issue was discovered and reported by players a full 12 hours before the changes crept from Test to Live.
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If SmokeJumper is wondering why dedicated members of the Test server are demotivated these days, he need only look at the increasingly permeable barrier between the Test and Live environment. Gone are the days of Pre-flight checks before changes are allowed to leap from Test to Live. Test used to be kept rigidly separate; Unintentional changes hitting Live used to be rare and a source of embarrassment. Now it seems to be common practice.
The trivialization of Test truly began with Leapers and Gliders, which completely bypassed the Test process. The souring of the relationship between SOE and its Testers can be dated to this single event. |
With the exception of a few developers who have shown genuine appreciation of the Test community, Test just seems less relevant these days. At a time of breakneck schedules (Age of Discovery is 7 weeks away and developers are already crunching 14 hour days), when it seems rigorous testing is needed most, SOE, or at least EQ2’s top management, seems to be turning their backs on Test.
SOE is trying to turn EQ2 into the most automated MMO they can while we suffer. It is all about the long term cost of the game. EQ2 is in a slow death and SOE needs to keep up with the falling subscribers. So they make it cheaper to run!
Thanks for that excellent summary Feldon. I’m no longer a regular on Test but it was my main server from 2005 until summer 2010 and I still play there off and on.
There have been times over the years when this or that change went to Live before it hit Test and there have been changes that were rushed through with only a day or two’s testing. There have been occasions where bugs and faults went through to Live even though they’d been reported by Testers.
I can’t recall an earlier time, however, when huge swathes of new content either bypassed Test entirely or were passed on to Live despite extensive and public reporting both in-game and on the In Testing forums. It seems to have become the norm. The separation of EQ2X and EQ2, leaving Freeport with no input into testing and no means of highlighting changes that affect players there differently to players on Live adds another set of problems that have never been adequately addressed, or even acknowledged. Test Copy, which was supposed to alleviate some of the problems with testing of very high level content and the low population of Test doesn’t seem to have helped very much.
It seems that SoE is now hell-bent on pushing out changes to a pre-ordained schedule, not just regardless of whether the content has been adequately tested, but even when it is impossible to believe that the bugs and errors aren’t known at the time the update is pushed to Live. Why they are in such a rush I have no idea, but it’s making a situation that has never been ideal very much worse.
All I can say is who is in charge of quality control, because they sure are not doing their job, and some training needs to go on.
This one was obviously something that was thrown at us and they were hoping nobody would notice.
Now the zek bp are worthless, they went down in stats across the board, you now want the fortress spire bp.
The normal mitigation wow is all I can say, that was totally messed up. I don’t know why we did not pull the servers down this morning when all this was found and we backed the stuff out. I had open tickets withing 10 minutes of the servers getting back online.
I have been told there is going to be a hot fix tomorrow. Also please give us a link to what gninja said I cant find that thread.
I am worried about this stuff were suposed to be getting in a month and call it an xpac, if they cant even get an update this easy right.
Well it’s official, SOE can’t do anything without messing something else up.
offtopic, I love the dog photo
If the best that can be said about this game is “At least we’re not FF XIV”, there’s a serious problem.
And even -that- may not be accurate for long at this rate.
It appears that the entire dev team has been replaced by monkeys running scripts.
Can we just get a petition going to fire Silius already? The guy has already proven just how lazy and incompetent he is when it comes to itemization.
So glad i canceled all my subs 2 weeks before 61 went live, I would love to come back (once my work schedule permits) but I cant see myself doing so until this mess has been at least mostly fixed, however I am not holding my breath for that to happen, very sad from a long time EQer
Silius hell, someone decided to push this through in this miserable state, yet again. FIRE SMOKEJUMPER.
“monkeys running scripts”
You’re not giving monkeys enough credit…
This isn’t Facebook you know…
I’m pretty sure Silius is not doing itemization anymore (that’s now Gninja). I heard a rumor that Silius is now one of the lead devs on the team (along with Lyndro).
Necro:
Silius has not been doing itemization since a month before GU61 went live, and was only part time weeks before that. The entire GU61 reitemization at release belongs to Gninja. If you’re going on a rage, at least rage at the correct name.
Ha ha… they are gonna update it again tomorrow and say something to the effect of “Ooops, didnt mean to do that…” seems to be the theme as of late
@stabs Well this is what happens when something gets put on test less then 24 hours before it goes live. And then you ignore testers warnings that it was bugged. Same thing happened with GU61 where some things were reported a week or more in advance and was still ignored and pushed live.
I just want my crit mit back! Yeah, I know it’s only 4.6% but dang it stop already! How long has this expansion been out and they are still adjusting stats?
Well, we were told to report to Silius when GU61 awfull changes were put on Test and we waited for weeks for updates. I know that, for my part, I waited for a word from Silius to look at the obviously broken crafted items… and when I finally got it one week before launch he said that “it was as intended and the bugs reported were fixed”. Well, obviously they weren’t.
Gninja did made a wonderfull job of logging in and taking directly our bugs feedbacks but it as way too late to start doing that. I did have some issues with Gninja and don’t always agree with him, but he does communicate.
As a regular on Test server, the lack of communication from most of EQ2 team and the lack of testing before pushing live in the past year is starting to get on my nerves. Especially when SJ comes in later to post barely veiled insults to our community.
Whilhelmina’s last paragraph is spot on. The true “Test” of character here lies in owning up to your mistakes and not trying to pass them off on others. Much like the QC (or lack of) SJ has failed this particular test.
I am developer by profession and I can say from experience: quality of code and testing vs marketing and management (and unfortunately most of the time second wins)
Okay, can we get a petition together where we can get gninja fired?
I propose that Smokejumper be fired first and foremost. He’s the guy in charge, so he should be held accountable for every problem. It’s not as if he hasn’t had enough feedback from the players.
Enough already!
With ya there STWSR, said it a few times already. That’s the man with ultimate responsibility for EQ2, and while he can’t be blamed for things before his time, the Round Robin Cluster-F###s on his watch come down to him.
Time for him to go.
One day on test server and they think thye can debug it ?
Why waste your time on test server when you can put everything on live and disregard the numerous bug report i have sent allready.
It looks like now the devs live in a bubble and have absolutely no idea to properly handle a project
Gninja fired? Not at all. SJ should be fired yes, but not Gninja. He does have his opinions on some things and I don’t always agree, but he’s competent but lacking manpower to fix everything.
a general mismanagement of the entire team(art dept excluded) this last year has been just terrible. when you are having catastrophes across the board you dont blame each department. why is SJ in charge or all 3 EQ games now, when you have 2 releasing expansions in a few months and 1 in full development?
even tho its so obvious that soe is going to take your money ppl will buy this xpac and its so sad.
this xpac and the new one will be the same shit different day. and yet you all will bitch, go to the official forums and be ignored.
stop buying the product.
gotta agree with others here that the game has taken a serious down hill run since SJ took over. The in your face Smed bucks, the EQ2x servers, the copy and paste expansions, the lack of testing, the lack of listening to the testers, the cookie cutter itemazations, the cluster f*** of stats and bugs making it to live, I could go on but you get the idea… All of this is on SJ’s watch and we can sit here and whine about it and eat cheese all day long or we can take back OUR norrath and OUR game and hold SOE responsible for it’s actions in our world. cause it’s very simple, without us there is no Norrath. So we as the gamers need to take back our game and speak out to SOE ABOVE SJ’s head and let them know that making the deadline to push to live to us as the player is less important that the Quality of the material getting pushed. IF IT”S NOT READY DON”T PUSH IT LIVE, End of story, period, don’t do it, it pisses us off, it ruins our experience of the game, Do I need to be any more clear?
This is my new signature on eq2 forum (unfortunately EX only)
~~~~SOE : FIRE SMOKEJUMPER~~~~
Might be harsh but he is clearly not up to the task