Bugged vs. Disliked

[GalenKnighthawke]

I have oft-noted over the years that one important source of miscommunication between us as players and the UO team is a lack of distinction between what's bugged and what we don't like.

For example. When Honor was first implemented I and some other players voiced our frustration with the way you couldn't Honor a mosnter if it buffed itself. The UO team's response was something like "this is working as intended. This is because the monster is no longer at its top HP."

I was puzzled by this reply until I realize that they thought we were mistaking this for a bug; an unintended result. No, we knew it was intended, we just didn't like it. (I still don't.)

How many threads are there calling on the team to "fix" something when we really mean "we don't like how this works." "This is underpowered" or "this is overpowered."

The artifact drop system is one example. I refer to the thing where a healer, a tank, or a damager can get a drop. Some of us like the idea, but think it's not working correctly. Some of us don't like the idea. I have to wonder if the team sometimes sees the former ("we think the system is not working correctly") and mistakes it for the latter ("we think the system works by its own terms but we don't like it").

This is an important distinction, the distinction between "so and so is bugged -- it is not working as intended" versus "so and so is disliked -- it may be working as intended but its doing so hurts gameplay in some way."

The two imply different kinds of responses.

-Galen's player

 

[Merus]

The Dev team does not understand the difference either... All the evidence you needs is pub 80 "bug fixes" some of which are obviously not bugs.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

If the health bars disappearing off the screen when you break a party isn't considered a bug then running my face over a cheese grater til my brains look like hamburger meat isn't considered deadly. This is something that is disliked too. At least I dislike it.

There is a hefty amount of neglect, bugs, questionable motivations and lack of "know how" that this game exhibits at this point. At varying periods of UO's existence making golem training impossible would have been a splendid "improvement", or some of these bug fixes would have made sense to focus on; but some of these "fixes" are 5 to 10 years over due in some cases. That's wild! I suppose the phrase better late than never really needs to save the day here. That bug fix list looked massive; sure it may have been massive, but multiply it by about 20 and that's just the amount of crap I can find that could use some attention. I don't even pvp.. and the folks that do find all kinds of stuff that's clearly jacked.. (and we just see the ones people actually report; there's probably a ton of crap people just take advantage of that isn't meant to be). I have put in a lot of naysay lately, but the fact remains I loved this game for a very long time; and I've left and come back to it, but I've left and don't really forsee myself coming back to it out of disgust really. Fix this or that, and ignore the blatant requests and keep telling us whatever flavor of the moment excuse there is Devs.

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

The Dev team does not understand the difference either... All the evidence you needs is pub 80 "bug fixes" some of which are obviously not bugs.

I only noticed a couple of those. The flesh golem graphics change is one example.

There's always going to be things they didn't intend for us to do that we've gotten used to doing and see no problem with.

And sometimes they decide a bug is really a feature. Black horses; blessed runebooks. Wasn't intended originally, but basically is now, by default.

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

If the health bars disappearing off the screen when you break a party isn't considered a bug then running my face over a cheese grater til my brains look like hamburger meat isn't considered deadly. This is something that is disliked too. At least I dislike it.

There is a hefty amount of neglect, bugs, questionable motivations and lack of "know how" that this game exhibits at this point. At varying periods of UO's existence making golem training impossible would have been a splendid "improvement", or some of these bug fixes would have made sense to focus on; but some of these "fixes" are 5 to 10 years over due in some cases. That's wild! I suppose the phrase better late than never really needs to save the day here. That bug fix list looked massive; sure it may have been massive, but multiply it by about 20 and that's just the amount of crap I can find that could use some attention. I don't even pvp.. and the folks that do find all kinds of stuff that's clearly jacked.. (and we just see the ones people actually report; there's probably a ton of crap people just take advantage of that isn't meant to be). I have put in a lot of naysay lately, but the fact remains I loved this game for a very long time; and I've left and come back to it, but I've left and don't really forsee myself coming back to it out of disgust really. Fix this or that, and ignore the blatant requests and keep telling us whatever flavor of the moment excuse there is Devs.

Everything I have read suggests to me that golem training is still possible now.

How many things, I wonder, due to a regretable combination of poor communication on their parts and paranoia on ours, do we just make up and pass off as fact?

-Galen's player

 

[Sauteed Onion]

How many things, I wonder, due to a regretable combination of poor communication on their parts and paranoia on ours, do we just make up and pass off as fact?

-Galen's player

Probably way too much.

 

[ShadowTrauma]

I believe Galen's first post is an astute analysis, there are definately areas where issues are being perceived differently. I must admit overall with the bug publish I am still very pleased they fixed a great many bugs, but I am increasingly finding annoyances with some of the new changes (Don't want to hijack this thread, so will hold off here). Obviously this is a tricky subject as people's views on the bug fixes will be heavily based on opinion and how said changes effected their play-experiences.