Jump to content

Bioware, have you been changing things while the game is live?


TrixxieTriss

Recommended Posts

Things have gotten harder in master mode uprisings since 2 days ago. And they seemed to be harder as the week’s progressed. Are you guys using the live server as a PTS now to balance the uprising patch?

 

My wife and I have been running these for the last 2 months and do about 16 a day as a tandem with companions. So we are pretty familiar with how the mobs behave and how much damage the bosses do and the mechanics. Today has been a real eye opener on master mode because they all seem to have gotten harder all of a sudden.

 

As an example, Inferno on master mode was ok at the start of the week, still harder than last week, but still playable. Then 2 days ago seemed to get much harder and today is impossible. The first boss in the inferno map, now continuously stuns you every 2-3 seconds. We got past after 3 wipes. Then the second boss is impossible to pass. He instant kills your companions now and there is nothing you can do.

 

2 days ago we could do inferno on master mode and make it to the last boss fight. The fight was harder than usual and we wiped once, but then got through it ok. Now we can’t even get to those bosses to report if you’ve changed anything there. This uprising map was completely playable last week and early this week. But not now.

 

Also, noticed that many of the Star Fortress maps are backwards today and the graphics are weird and walls reflective in some areas I’m looking straight into space. When I say backwards, I mean you start in what feels like the wrong position and progress backwards. We’ve been doing them all week and I do know that they aren’t always the same, just today’s ones felt really wrong and they were extra buggy.

 

Both my wife and are also experiencing a bug since yesterday that when you mouse over your gear it shows no stats at all and you have to control U twice to fix it. This doesn’t last though as the bug comes back if you swap Alts.

Honestly, it feels like we are playing on the PTS version today vs the live version a couple of days ago.

 

And there is some really weird activation lag going on since the server maintenance with abilities, moving things into and out of storage, listing on the GTN or crafting all has this delay.

 

These last two points I could put down to network, but the first two issues with uprisings and star fortress makes me think you guys are changing things while the game is live or you’ve got a tech problem that’s degrading settings.

 

I don’t know what to think is going on. Care to chime in an let us know?

 

Edit: there is also a visual bug with the guild roster and names keep fading out or disappearing until you mouse over them.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The visual stuff might respond to a repair of the installation through the launcher.

 

I'm intrigued by the Star Fortress issues. I like Star Fortresses. If you mention which one and which difficulty, I'll try it out.

 

I'm giving up on the MM Uprisings. I have all the Uprisings achievements that can be done solo, including many MM ones. But things like the Trial and Error ones (The Legendary Rak Pack), Destroyer of Worlds cannot be done solo; there is little player interest in them as it is, with the absence of GF support not helping. Obviously, making them tougher is going to make them more popular. /s

Edited by mike_carton
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dev 1: [Points to his monitor] Check this out.

Dev 2: What?

Dev 1: I added a random health boost to this mob.

Dev 2: That wasn't in the specs to do.

Dev 1: Who'll know?

Dev 2: You're not giving players much credit, they know when a fight's gotten tougher.

Dev 1: Oh please! Who'll notice a little difference like this, and it's random for when it shows up? Gimme a break.

Dev 2: Somebody'll notice.

Dev 1: Go eat your doughnut. I got this covered.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I haven't done master uprisings, so I haven't experienced those bugs. The story ones seem to be working fine other than the bug in fractured where the final boss randomly disappears, but that's bug's been there for months if not years.

 

I've done Star Fortresses all week and didn't notice anything different, but I'm not good with details. I've never payed attention to the maps. I just follow the quest marker to get them done because they are pretty boring to me. I'm only doing them for the conquest points. I would do regular vet flashpoints if they gave the same points.

 

I have noticed ability lag randomly. I always check my latency but it's been good except for one time. The servers are probably just overloaded because of this week's conquest event. Lots of guilds pushing conquest because they have a chance to get the achievement and won't get another chance for another year when this event comes around next.

 

I've seen the guild roster fade bug for months. For me it happens if the guild roster has a lot of member listed. Whether it's a bunch of members online or you view offline members and there's a large number). If there's only 10 online it's very rare I see that bug. When it happens it also tends to mess up my normal chat windows as well. Closing the guild roster and scrolling the chat a little seems to fix the chat window, but the bug can come back when the guild roster is open. I'm wondering if it's a memory issue. Like the game is coded to use only x memory for UI but a large roster is too much and it causes weird display bugs.

Edited by ThanderSnB
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I should be clear. The story and veteran uprisings seem unchanged. If anything, the story ones seem a little easier this week, but that’s harder to quantify.

 

There are only two of us online in our guild at the moment. So the maximum amount of people logged in is no more than two. The guild roster page is bugged even with one of us logged in. We have two small family guild and no more than 130 characters. I wouldn’t call that a large roster.

 

I’ve another thread regarding the activation lag issues. I’ve tested and reduced a lot of it since the maintenance, but it is still there and noticeable.

 

I’m about to start playing again soon and will check star fortresses and when my wife gets on later, we will do some more uprising tests and see which ones seem to be harder. I will tell you now we don’t do all of them, only the ones we like.

Edited by TrixxieTriss
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The visual stuff might respond to a repair of the installation through the launcher.

 

I'm intrigued by the Star Fortress issues. I like Star Fortresses. If you mention which one and which difficulty, I'll try it out.

 

I'm giving up on the MM Uprisings. I have all the Uprisings achievements that can be done solo, including many MM ones. But things like the Trial and Error ones (The Legendary Rak Pack), Destroyer of Worlds cannot be done solo; there is little player interest in them as it is, with the absence of GF support not helping. Obviously, making them tougher is going to make them more popular. /s

 

Heroic star fortress difficulty and we started with Alderaan and worked our way through them all last night. The difficulty hasn’t increased, just doing them backwards feels really off putting. As well as the visual bugs when I was too close to the walls in the outer hallways I was looking into space. The surfaces also looks shinier and glossy in some parts where this was happening,

 

Our favourite uprisings are Inferno and landing party. We’ve done these the most at master mode level. If you’ve ever solo’d inferno on master, you should go test it now. That first boss will stun you to death before you can get him to half health.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Dev Post
Care to chime in an let us know?

 

 

Hi TrixxieTriss,

 

Regarding the difficulty concerns you bring up, no changes have been made.

 

For the the UI/graphics concerns, there could be something wrong with your client, so we suggest a repair for now. If you continue to experience further issues, please post a detailed bug report.

 

I was going to hop into the other thread you made, but since you mentioned it here as well, we thank you for the lag report and it is something we are keeping an eye on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi TrixxieTriss,

 

Regarding the difficulty concerns you bring up, no changes have been made.

 

For the the UI/graphics concerns, there could be something wrong with your client, so we suggest a repair for now. If you continue to experience further issues, please post a detailed bug report.

 

I was going to hop into the other thread you made, but since you mentioned it here as well, we thank you for the lag report and it is something we are keeping an eye on.

 

Thank you Jackie for confirming about the possibility that no changes were made while the game is live. I will endeavour to accumulate more info to see why things seem to have changed for us. Is it at all possible that some of the changes to uprising on the pts were accidentally pushed live when you did the backend maintenance at the beginning of the week?

 

We will run a repair on both seperate PCs and see if that fixes the graphics bugs. It’s very weird that it started on exactly the same day as each other. While that’s not impossible, it is improbable considering we did no PC software updates on either from the day before. Will report back if that doesn’t fix it.

 

To confirm, you are saying the activation lag bug is most likely your end or at least not totally our end?

Edited by TrixxieTriss
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

I'm intrigued by the Star Fortress issues. I like Star Fortresses. If you mention which one and which difficulty, I'll try it out.

 

 

To confirm. We ran Star Fortresses again last night and they were back to the way they normally progress.

With Jackie’s msg confirming no changes, and considering there are other random versions, I guess there was a daily version we’d not come across before which does them backwards. I can’t say I like the backwards versions, they don’t flow as well and feel “off” or “wrong”.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a follow up to post #2:

 

Star Fortress

I played (on Feb 7) with graphics set to (Fullscreen, 1920x1080, Ultra, VSync, Gamma at 100). Completed Story mode Voss and Heroic Alderaan. The combination of video settings and overhead light panels was producing shiny and glossy overlay kind of thing over surfaces and I had to move to a different position or scroll closer to the character to get rid of that effect. The sequencing of some rooms seemed different in the Voss FP; all SFs tend to have same structure: Upper Deck, Production (with Praetorian), Lower Deck with the decks glued together by semi-circular segments. They were all there and labeled correctly but the upper deck rooms seemed a little off; could be the path I took to get around, do the Bonus or something. Alderaan felt OK. In both cases, my character actually landed in the correct room (with the Alliance Specialist bonuses.)

 

At one point, I went to check out a Super Bowl play on the larger screen. By the time I was back, I was logged out and in prison. I got out thanks to Shae, but was never given back any of my abilities even after exiting the prison. Had to do "Exit Area" to Odessen and get back in.

 

Uprising MM Inferno

I played (on Feb 8) with influence level 50 Vette as healer and a DPS character (TK Sage in full battle regalia.) The first boss has 3.1m HP. Second boss has 1.8m and the third bosses each have 1.9m HP in MM. The adds for the first boss are mini-sorcerers (lightning). Some Imperial Troopers spawn in the middle of the fight. After getting rid of them, I got into the very frustrating boss fight where he continuously stuns you every 1-2 GCDs. This meant I had to start activated or channelled abilities as soon as the stun was over; saved the stun breaker for when I was stunned while at low health. Used Heroic Moment, some of the instant abilities twice.

 

The second boss (the droid) is the toughest fight. Died 2-3 times. Defeated the adds first, defeated the probes as they appeared until they spawned at a faster rate than I could defeat them; at that point just burned the boss. In addition to the usuals like DCDs, self-heal, used Sacrifice when at ~60% Health and Vette healed herself back up after some muttering. Bubbled the companion and self. Used Heroic Moment. On one pull, the droid kicked me all the way to the platform with the next boss; I had the objective to defeat the droid but no way to get back and so, I just jumped off.

 

Comparatively, the last fight was easier. Did not need Heroic Moment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As for the Star Fortress.. I ran them together with someone a lot, some years ago, not much recently, but even back then there was a (very rare) possibility of the layout getting sufficiently mucked up that it didn't seem to make sense, seemed broken. I had figured this to be the result of the way Star Fortress layouts are randomized, a sort of messed up result rare enough to have slipped through. I don't know if what you saw is that, but that's what it made me think of.

 

I don't play enough Uprisings to comment on those.

 

The guild roster thing is something I've seen in large guilds for years, but only very rarely in small guilds. I think maybe for some time it may have been fixed and it came back, or I may have been lucky for a while, but it's not new, at any rate, just not usually a thing for small guilds. I have seen it in my ~100-character guild, a handful of times, but regularly in the large guilds I'm in for conquest.

 

My suspicion is that you experienced a bit of a fluke situation where you ran into various (semi-)rare bugs in a short amount of time, making it seem like something happened recently. I can't be sure, of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Dev Post
Thank you Jackie for confirming about the possibility that no changes were made while the game is live. I will endeavour to accumulate more info to see why things seem to have changed for us. Is it at all possible that some of the changes to uprising on the pts were accidentally pushed live when you did the backend maintenance at the beginning of the week?

 

We will run a repair on both seperate PCs and see if that fixes the graphics bugs. It’s very weird that it started on exactly the same day as each other. While that’s not impossible, it is improbable considering we did no PC software updates on either from the day before. Will report back if that doesn’t fix it.

 

To confirm, you are saying the activation lag bug is most likely your end or at least not totally our end?

 

Hi again, I have a few confirmations that nothing has changed.

 

For lag, I asked around and everything looks normal. As always if you or others experience any issues, please let us know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi again, I have a few confirmations that nothing has changed.

 

For lag, I asked around and everything looks normal. As always if you or others experience any issues, please let us know.

 

Thanks again Jackie for the follow up.

 

We did the repair on both PCs and sadly the graphical bugs are still present. I’m hoping they will go when the next server maintenance happens or the next patch.

If they don’t, I’ll investigate it further on our end as it might require some more in-depth testing. I’ve discovered over the years that there are some weird things that cause bugs in this game that aren’t related to the actual game itself. At least this time, thanks to your timely follow ups, it’ll be easier to rule out any changes on your end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i can confirm issues with uprisings, since the latest maintenence.

we also did dozents of uprisings, to farm kills for the achievement.

the most runs are working als intended but then there is this single

run, when it seems that every add is enrage from the beginning.

 

i also did some star fortress runs. not a single decoration,

no loot from bosses. in the past you got a lot of decoration

and the endboss dropped a piece of their armor.

Edited by fabsus
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...