Goblinworks
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Sorry for the late post on this, but as a heads-up to people who updated yesterday, we are rolling back to version 3.0 this morning. There were a number of issues that made the game very difficult, including the mob density and mobs around shrines. We are working on the issues, but do not want more people updating to 4.1 until we can get them resolved. Sorry for those of you who patched yesterday, but we will address the issues as fast as we can and notify you when we update.
Aww.... I was looking forward to dancing with the ogres all the way to Brighthaven for my training :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm sorry but bugs of this scale really make me question the release practices of GW. It would be nice to have an explanation about how this bug made it through their QA.
I am pretty sure that the QA team would like to know also. (Grin)
As for release practice, cut them a bit of slack eh? It is not like they ENJOY or PLAN to screw up the builds on purpose; over on the GW forums they have made it clear something happened that was not expected. They will investigate, correct the problem, and learn form the situation. This is all part and parcel of a game in Early Access/under development that is trying something different/new...
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CEO, Goblinworks
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It did not manifest on the Test Server. There are a couple of things that could be the culprit. It may have been due to a last-minute change to the code, or may have been something that only happened on the scale of the live server, or it may have something to do with the differences between the Test Server's architecture and the Live Server.
It appeared, from first analysis, that the code which determined when to spawn monsters was not being limited by the boundaries which are encoded into the hex data and it essentially spawned an encounter everywhere it could, and respawned them as soon as an encounter was removed. So that might indicate various places the team will look to see if they can narrow down the root cause.
There was an an unrelated bug found yesterday which was on the Test Server but nobody detected it. That bug allowed encounters to be created too close to the Shrines in Tower Hexes that were added to provide respawn points for attackers and defenders. Those Shrines are not correctly excluding a zone around themselves from encounter spawns, so it is possible that such spawns could appear immediately adjacent to the Shrine. That bug only became possible when the team deployed new code for EE4 which enabled the server to spawn encounters in a much larger number of areas than it was able to heretofore, but didn't manifest until the server tried to spawn encounters in EVERY possible location which is why we hadn't seen the problem on Test.
The game is an extraordinarily complex piece of code. Our team works very hard to ensure that the changes they make are working as intended. This time it appears a series of things combined to generate a pretty wildly non-spec condition on the Live Server. We'll learn from it and do better in the future.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As I am one of the testers, and I have participated in every patch before it has been released, this didn't happen on the test server. We were helping test camps, small holdings, and base camps and at no point did we ever see that many monsters. We played around for 2 hours, through 4 hexes, including a starter hex. No horde of starter goblins, no hordes of bandits, or ogres.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm sorry but bugs of this scale really make me question the release practices of GW. It would be nice to have an explanation about how this bug made it through their QA.
How do you know there is a big bug or little bug until it rears its ugly head? Have a little faith man. Or beastie, or whatever you are...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Crazy stuff happens even in games that have gone gold, released, what have you. This isn't the first time in a game that a ton of mobs have suddenly appeared after a patch/update. I think it makes the Early Enrollment experience interesting and one of the reasons I signed on. We'll have plenty of stories to tell!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I know it can lead to a lot of issues when mobs overspawn, but once in SWG, there was a bug that prevented Kessel and Deep Space from resetting properly, leading to hundreds of enemy ship spawns coexisting. For a casual pilot, it was a nightmare and deathtrap. For a diehard pilot, it was exhilarating.
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( OOC ) Thanks to Lee for his talk this evening at Pathfinder U. Many interesting questions asked and answered regarding game development.