Forums » General
Stress Test.
As far as I know, all the significant escort bugs are fixed. The recreating a group w/ just you in it repeatedly, and a few other things will hopefully be fixed up today, but the mission is already loads better than what's in production.
The main concern I have is with performance under production conditions. Anyone who can spare a few minutes today to log into the test server (prepend 'test:' to your username at login), would be doing us all a great favor, since every problem not caught on the test server will likely be encountered by a lot more people. Later today I'll call for everyone that can come from the forums and production server at the same time for the major stress test; probably at 6-ish central-time.
In the meantime, the escort mission needs final testing, but also all the other deliverator missions need to be checked to be sure the lower-level work didn't mess them up (liberation, liquidation, border skirmish, hive skirmish). I've been spending half my time testing for weeks, and I've had the interns to help, but players always manage to make weird things happen that I never did. :)
Please report any problems you encounter in this thread. If you have suggestions for improvements or tweaks (especially reward-related), please start a thread in suggestions.
The main concern I have is with performance under production conditions. Anyone who can spare a few minutes today to log into the test server (prepend 'test:' to your username at login), would be doing us all a great favor, since every problem not caught on the test server will likely be encountered by a lot more people. Later today I'll call for everyone that can come from the forums and production server at the same time for the major stress test; probably at 6-ish central-time.
In the meantime, the escort mission needs final testing, but also all the other deliverator missions need to be checked to be sure the lower-level work didn't mess them up (liberation, liquidation, border skirmish, hive skirmish). I've been spending half my time testing for weeks, and I've had the interns to help, but players always manage to make weird things happen that I never did. :)
Please report any problems you encounter in this thread. If you have suggestions for improvements or tweaks (especially reward-related), please start a thread in suggestions.
I shall try to attend and break something.
hive hunt is ... well...
i can never tell when its ended. there is no like 'goal' set out at the beginning. no description of what the mission is supposed to be. and once, i got a message 'the sector is clear, but more rust buckets are coming'.
its like the war on terror.
i can never tell when its ended. there is no like 'goal' set out at the beginning. no description of what the mission is supposed to be. and once, i got a message 'the sector is clear, but more rust buckets are coming'.
its like the war on terror.
lol:)
It's true. I'm not sure what the best way to handle it is; I really don't like the gamey 'n bots to go!' messages. Any other suggestions, or votes for the gamey messages? It's something I can fairly easily change this weekend. I'm pushing the release to monday anyway, because the grouping-with-npcs feature isn't ready.
It's true. I'm not sure what the best way to handle it is; I really don't like the gamey 'n bots to go!' messages. Any other suggestions, or votes for the gamey messages? It's something I can fairly easily change this weekend. I'm pushing the release to monday anyway, because the grouping-with-npcs feature isn't ready.
You guys think like programmers is why, mom. A gamer is not logical :)
The current win/loss condition for those missions was when one side or the other sustains too many losses, correct? It's a good system in that it's logical (We win when they can't fight us anymore), but it means that the player doesn't have any indication of when that point is reached unless the mission gives some kind of count. Knowing about your own "acceptable losses" makes sense, but you wouldn't know how many ships your enemy is willing to sacrifice. And in the case of Hive Skirmish, the fixed spawn rate on the Hive bots means that often the sector gets cleared out and then the player has to wait for one bot to spawn at a time until the Hive gives up.
So an alternative goal: Clear the sector and hold it below some threshold of hostile forces for a given amount of time, at which point the enemy "gives up". This could work for Border Skirmish and other types of missions with players on both sides as well. This provides a known goal to works towards, yet allows for open-ended scenarios, especially in a mission like Border Skirmish where players participate on both sides.
So an alternative goal: Clear the sector and hold it below some threshold of hostile forces for a given amount of time, at which point the enemy "gives up". This could work for Border Skirmish and other types of missions with players on both sides as well. This provides a known goal to works towards, yet allows for open-ended scenarios, especially in a mission like Border Skirmish where players participate on both sides.
momerath42 said: "Any other suggestions, or votes for the gamey messages?"
Sure. Why not have a message saying something along the lines of "sensors indicate bots still in the area" or have the NPCs (if any are still alive) report in on their bot sightings (some still left or mission accomplished).
Disclaimer: I haven't yet tried out this mission.
Sure. Why not have a message saying something along the lines of "sensors indicate bots still in the area" or have the NPCs (if any are still alive) report in on their bot sightings (some still left or mission accomplished).
Disclaimer: I haven't yet tried out this mission.
I want more detailed descriptions.
I think the game should tell you, somewhere, (mission notes?) that many bots will come. Though there are 5 there now, maybe 10, maybe 50 will come, but that there will be an 'end' somewhere in a reasonable time frame.
It seems like when I die, more bots come...that is cool but i wish it would tell me somehow. like 'when you died, the hive sent more to the sector'. or whatever.
When you die, it should say something like 'oh noes!! but you can still finish the mission, go get another ship and head back to J6'. instead of 'too bad'.
When they all run off, i want it to tell me 'they are all running off! looks like the sector is clear and the mission is done, lets go home to L2' or something like that.
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bug - mission was not completed even after all bots ran off. i went back to station, hit 'abort'. but the mission window did not 'refresh' itself, it still showed me on that mission. i had to redock.
bug2 - friendlys just 'sit there', stationary, when they are not engaged to a bot.
bug3 - a combat level 20 xang xi NPC should not get pwned by an orun collector. but i saw it... the xang xi just sat there and let the orun blow it up.
bug4 - i did a 'hive skirmish' with 'last count: 1'. it was a fennrus observer. i killed it. the log said 'more rust buckets on the way'. i waited a few minutes, more rust buckets never showed up.
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also i would hope for some kind of automated regression testing of missions by a robot playing as an ordinary player, ... manual testing is a lot of work to do every time the game changes.
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I think the game should tell you, somewhere, (mission notes?) that many bots will come. Though there are 5 there now, maybe 10, maybe 50 will come, but that there will be an 'end' somewhere in a reasonable time frame.
It seems like when I die, more bots come...that is cool but i wish it would tell me somehow. like 'when you died, the hive sent more to the sector'. or whatever.
When you die, it should say something like 'oh noes!! but you can still finish the mission, go get another ship and head back to J6'. instead of 'too bad'.
When they all run off, i want it to tell me 'they are all running off! looks like the sector is clear and the mission is done, lets go home to L2' or something like that.
===
bug - mission was not completed even after all bots ran off. i went back to station, hit 'abort'. but the mission window did not 'refresh' itself, it still showed me on that mission. i had to redock.
bug2 - friendlys just 'sit there', stationary, when they are not engaged to a bot.
bug3 - a combat level 20 xang xi NPC should not get pwned by an orun collector. but i saw it... the xang xi just sat there and let the orun blow it up.
bug4 - i did a 'hive skirmish' with 'last count: 1'. it was a fennrus observer. i killed it. the log said 'more rust buckets on the way'. i waited a few minutes, more rust buckets never showed up.
===
also i would hope for some kind of automated regression testing of missions by a robot playing as an ordinary player, ... manual testing is a lot of work to do every time the game changes.
===
I like nerde's suggestion.
BTW, I don't know if this is a bug or what, but if you log in with Test:username instead of test:username, it logs you onto the VO production server.
I don't think case should matter in the "test:", however my main concern is that if the username doesn't match, shouldn't it fail the login attempt? I think there may be a security hole there that may need looking at. (admittedly, if the password is secure, it shouldn't matter much)
BTW, I don't know if this is a bug or what, but if you log in with Test:username instead of test:username, it logs you onto the VO production server.
I don't think case should matter in the "test:", however my main concern is that if the username doesn't match, shouldn't it fail the login attempt? I think there may be a security hole there that may need looking at. (admittedly, if the password is secure, it shouldn't matter much)