Goblin Squad Member
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In a hypothetical situation, an item duplication bug is found, what will Goblin Works official response be? (ElderScrolls Online just experienced a massive item dupe bug/exploit)
I know most of it will depend on what technology or how far back the logs go to index items and actions.
But I am curious because some exploit will eventually be found, and there never seems to be a contingency plan, and its always knee-jerk reactions at the time.
Can we crowdforge it out before it eventually happens?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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(Remember, I'm not a GW employee)
Suppose that the bug in question is "If five or more characters attempt to remove the last stacked item from storage at the same heartbeat, only three of them fail to withdraw the item; the others all grab it."
There's the possibility that this could be used accidentally without noticing: A smallish company returns from an outing and all start grabbing potions as fast as possible, and it's likely that eventually they might meet the apparently unlikely condition.
It's also quite clearly possible to abuse it intentionally.
By basic logic, there's some area in the middle where it's not obvious whether a group accidentally duplicated, was attempting to abuse the system, or was doing something misguided like trying to figure out the exact conditions under which an exploitable bug occurred (I assume that replicating a non-exploitable bug and reporting the exact conditions under which it happens is desired, which could be legitimately confusing to some people)
The response must be based on several different tiers of response, with the full knowledge that there will be both false positives and false negatives involved. Burning every character of every account that was involved in an item duplication event is probably overresponding. If there's a detectable economic disruption, not burning any characters is probably underresponding unless they cannot be identified.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... doing something misguided like trying to figure out the exact conditions under which an exploitable bug occurred (I assume that replicating a non-exploitable bug and reporting the exact conditions under which it happens is desired, which could be legitimately confusing to some people)
I would expect that figuring out the exact steps to reproduce an exploitable bug would be invaluable information for the developers. I would also hope that anyone who did find the exact steps to reproduce an item duplication bug would destroy the duplicated items and report their findings.
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Goblin Squad Member
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During Early Enrollment, the only thing we're going to consider sacrosanct is XP. Everything else is subject to rollback, removal, and alteration as necessary to protect the integrity of the game.
XP is really the only important thing. I wouldn't even mind a server wipe if that were needed to make major repairs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wouldn't even mind a server wipe if that were needed to make major repairs.
I would hope nothing approaching "requires server wipe" to fix ever happens in Early Enrollment. The description of Alpha's capabilities / play-ability and GoblinWorks' stated program / development cycle make server wipe events something that missed several catch blocks.
Having the game not be playable for some number of days and with a rollback as well is very upsetting; I will get over it in a day or two while harvesting.
My hope is any BUG requiring an immediate reboot patch happens as:
- all players notified of "unscheduled reboot in X mins"
- any player not logged off is forced
- database backup (snapshot update)
- reboot
Power surges killing an array has been known to happen and could also cause the above condition.
I do expect regular or irregular patch or upgrades that will require server shutdown, but those will likely have player notifications days in advance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You can safely assume that Early Enrollment will see a lot of disruptions in service.
And some of those will be unannounced, unplanned and may take a while to fix. Not only do I expect it to happen during alpha, during EE, but also during the early days or even a week or so after OE.
Then you have the server hacks to deal with. Some of those west coast servers have been under attack these past few months, Fallen Earth being affected on at least two occasions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In siege PvP I've seen some really game breaking exploits as well including passing through breaks in the mesh of objects such as walls to allow access that an attacker shouldn't have, thus allowing them inside the defenders area prematurely or to fight from inside the wall where they cannot be attacked.
I've also seen bugs allowing line-of-sight magic attacks to bypass objects by altering camera position.
Lack of collision with character models allows an unlimited number to stack on each other. That makes it nearly impossible to focus fire on a target in the stack and anyone not doing the same thing is defeated extremely quickly. This has also bugged out AoE attacks, keeping them from working.
The point is, this being a game heavily focused in PvP, there will be exploits that are discovered. How will a player be able to report such exploits? Will the dev team have tools available to investigate such allegations without relying entirely on player screenshots/fraps/etc.? Players will get very passionate and accuse each other of exploiting. There needs to be ways to find the truth of the matter without just playing Judge based on the testimony of the accuser and accused.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see the Alpha time period being extended, just to allow for players to go out three and to see what they can find, exploit, break or crash.
Usually there is a bug reporting system built into the game. But if there is not, a section on the forms for bug reports might work as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see the Alpha time period being extended, just to allow for players to go out three and to see what they can find, exploit, break or crash.
Usually there is a bug reporting system built into the game. But if there is not, a section on the forms for bug reports might work as well.
Potentially, but seeing as most systems will not actually be in the game this is probably not as necessary as it is in more complete games. A lot of exploits are actually introduced in the addition of systems as the entire thing grows more complex. You would not think implementing player taverns might break combat with 2-handed weapons, but somehow that manages to happen on occasion.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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You would not think implementing player taverns might break combat with 2-handed weapons, but somehow that manages to happen on occasion.
Future Patch Note: The "Give 'em a Hand" action to reward performers in taverns will no longer temporarily reduce your total number of hands.
;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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The fun thing with 'Epic' bugs in the testing phases of the games is that if there is one player, or one group of players, that are very good at finding bugs and/or crashing the game while finding bugs, you can immortalize them as NPCs and make it a fun/fond memory, rather than "Oh GOD why did we let that happen?"
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Goblin Squad Member
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The fun thing with 'Epic' bugs in the testing phases of the games is that if there is one player, or one group of players, that are very good at finding bugs and/or crashing the game while finding bugs, you can immortalize them as NPCs and make it a fun/fond memory, rather than "Oh GOD why did we let that happen?"
Kind of like the "Leeroy Jenkins" of server wipe/crashes? Famous for all time? ;)
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Goblin Squad Member
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You would not think implementing player taverns might break combat with 2-handed weapons, but somehow that manages to happen on occasion.Future Patch Note: The "Give 'em a Hand" action to reward performers in taverns will no longer temporarily reduce your total number of hands.
;)
Have another ale, Stumpy :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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The fun thing with 'Epic' bugs in the testing phases of the games is that if there is one player, or one group of players, that are very good at finding bugs and/or crashing the game while finding bugs, you can immortalize them as NPCs and make it a fun/fond memory, rather than "Oh GOD why did we let that happen?"Kind of like the "Leeroy Jenkins" of server wipe/crashes? Famous for all time? ;)
Pretty much. If it's suitably funny or epic, a team of NPC adventurers that has the title 'Dungeon-Bane' because the original PCs they were named after made a name for themselves with finding each and every single clipping, evade-bug and 'bottomless pit' bug in the Dungeons could be a hilarity with them bemoaning their fate as they are verbally denied access to a Dungeon by a Goblin in a foreman's outfit, little salutes and "wait, what?" moments for players who come in at a later date.