BioWare's Patch Messed Up The Old Republic

[vansau]

BioWare's Patch Messed Up The Old Republic

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Patches generally fix problems with a game, but this one has caused some new problems. Whoops.

The 1.1 patch for Star Wars: The Old Republic was supposed to fix issues and exploits. Unfortunately, players who downloaded the update have discovered that - while it did solve some problems - it also created some new ones.

It turns out that Imperial PvP players have been taking advantage of faction imbalances on the world of Ilum. You can see a video example of this in action here, but here's the Reader's Digest version (as provided by the video's author, <a href=http://www.youtube.com/user/suzpaz>suzpaz):


This video shows how incredibly unbalanced the factions are. There are hundreds of Empire on Ilum, and only ~40 Republic.

For the past 40 minutes they've been camping our spawn killing everyone and everything. They also get a huge valor bonus for each kill due to the faction imbalance and owning all the Ilum points.

Players have - unsurprisingly - been complaining on The Old Republic's forums about the problem, and the developer has set up a specific thread to deal with the issue. According to community manager Joveth Gonzalez, "We're currently investigating potential issues related to the Ilum open world PvP area post-1.1. We understand that this is a topic of much discussion and we ask that you please direct all discussions to this thread."

At the moment, there's no word on when the issue will be resolved.

Source: Massively

Permalink

 

[Pandaman1911]

Hey, can anyone else hear that sound? That's the tell-tale whistle of a Banhammer in full swing. Quick, somebody make popcorn, I wanna watch it hit. Sayonara, campers.

 

[KeyMaster45]

So it sounds like the republic is QQ'ing because they don't have enough people. Someone explain to me how that's the dev's fault? They can't control what faction people roll.

-EDIT-
Ah, now I see what the issue is.

Our intended design for Ilum Open World PvP is that players are instantly killed when entering the enemy's base safe area, just like in Warzones, and that the defending faction can take taxis to other points within the zone. As of Game Update 1.1, this is not working as intended. We have found the issue preventing this from happening under server load and will be publishing an Emergency Patch to address the issue. We're aiming to have this patch published early tomorrow morning (January 19th, 5 AM US CST).

Okay makes sense, least they've already fixed the issue and are rolling out a patch come the morning.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

So, Bioware, the moment of truth. you searched out and banned people who danced their way out of bad encounters. A bit overzealous, but there it is.

Now, you have hundreds of players abusing an exploit. Will you ban those? Will reparations be made to those ganked Republic? Do you want to actually enforce the law and order facade you created?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Oh my god, people are exploiting game mechanics! BAN ALL OF THEM.

 

[graverobber2]

I wonder what it is that made BioWare decide to hire Obsidian for their QA testing

 

[Scars Unseen]

So, Bioware, the moment of truth. you searched out and banned people who danced their way out of bad encounters. A bit overzealous, but there it is.

Now, you have hundreds of players abusing an exploit. Will you ban those? Will reparations be made to those ganked Republic? Do you want to actually enforce the law and order facade you created?

That would be stupid. The exploit Bioware previously banned people for was a specific action one would only take in order to make use of the exploit. A temp ban would be justified in that case(though I'm not sure if that's what happened... permaban would be a bit much). This situation is occurring simply by people playing the game as normal. Now the honorable thing to do would be to just not engage in PvP(in the affected areas) until this is fixed, but most people likely aren't even aware of what's going on(on the imperial side, at least). This is far from being the same as an intentionally triggered exploit.

 

[Carnagath]

I watched about 30 seconds of this video and I can already feel the beginnings of a headache. I had read that the game's engine is unoptimized, but holy shit, that is fucked up.

 

[The Dutchess]

Oh thank god they're fixing it already. The complaining was getting seriously annoying. I love how people think Bioware would just leave it like that.

"Bioware better fix this!" /rage etc

No they want you all to be pissed off and leave forever ... it's not like they need your subs or something.

Yes they ballsed up, yes they're going to fix it and yes years from now someone will probably complain about getting the shit beat out of them in pvp and some of us can say "Should've seen the patch of 2012 my boy."

 

[Sixcess]

I'd hate to be whomever is put in charge of clearing up this mess.

PvPers are notoriously competitive and sensitive about balance at the best of times, and they will ruthlessly exploit any flawed or broken game mechanic or bug to gain advantage.

They can't ban everyone who's taken advantage of this - if the PvP guilds in TOR are anything like those in other MMOs then they'll have been flocking to Ilum en masse so banning them all would wipe out entire guilds.

There's been lots of talk/pleas/demands for a rollback of the PvP gains made from this, but so far no indication from BW that they'll do that, or even if they can do that.

And the timing couldn't be worse... days before that all important first month renewal.

On the plus side, maybe this - along with the admission that the high res graphics used in trailers and screenshots aren't actually available to players - will be enough to silence the Bioware propaganda machine, because their launch is rapidly becoming nothing to brag about.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

So, Bioware, the moment of truth. you searched out and banned people who danced their way out of bad encounters. A bit overzealous, but there it is.

Now, you have hundreds of players abusing an exploit. Will you ban those? Will reparations be made to those ganked Republic? Do you want to actually enforce the law and order facade you created?

That would be stupid. The exploit Bioware previously banned people for was a specific action one would only take in order to make use of the exploit. A temp ban would be justified in that case(though I'm not sure if that's what happened... permaban would be a bit much). This situation is occurring simply by people playing the game as normal. Now the honorable thing to do would be to just not engage in PvP(in the affected areas) until this is fixed, but most people likely aren't even aware of what's going on(on the imperial side, at least). This is far from being the same as an intentionally triggered exploit.

Because people are so honorable that they wouldn't contact all their friends or just anyone on their servers the second they sense an exploit?

If your reasoning that it's justifiable for Bioware to ban if players are exploiting a bug that allows them to operate outside of the games perimeters, the Empire players are funneling the Republic into their spawn points (which they aren't supposed to do) to a.) control all points on Ilum and b.) rack up huge valor points. How is that different?

 

[Snotnarok]

And the best part is? Till they fix it the players will still be handing over subscriptions. MMOs are super aren't they?

 

[Giftmacher]

Meh, patching big games always runs the risk of borking something. It's a pain but is it really news?

 

[Gather]

Heh... Potential Issues

Edit: Also this could be considered news because of the massive amount of players who "called it" on the Public Test realm and yet Bioware didn't listen.

Along with several other bugs/problems that Bioware didn't go about fixing.

 

[Giftmacher]

Edit: Also this could be considered news because of the massive amount of players who "called it" on the Public Test realm and yet Bioware didn't listen.

Along with several other bugs/problems that Bioware didn't go about fixing.

Ah, well if that's the case more fool them.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I could just fill this post with relevant Star Wars quotes, but that'd be uninspiring.

Instead, "Why didn't you think that by making the Dark Side easier and more seductive, there'd be more people following it?"

Which computer game recently - or even ever - had a Good side that was more numerous than the Bad side?

Why did you not hardwire in limiters for the Empire - given that it should be the weaker of the factions?

Everquest 2 did - Freeport is a shit-hole compared to Qeynos.

If you cannot understand the idea that people want to be evil, why are you making games again?

 

[Max_imus]

Well this just goes to show: Never play on Patch Day.

Or the day after, for that matter.

Anyways, people need to chill out. This game has been out for a month (and change), it's the first big content patch, and Bioware is already fixing the problem.

 

[Kragg]

There's always bugs that go through test servers and beta and people "called it" shit happens, in all MMOs there will be patches that break certain things. All of this doesnt even bother or interest me yet, im taking it very slow, char level 30ish. To me the biggest gripe is global patches, the server being down everywhere US and Europe, and for Europe that means most of afternoon and into the evening, which is very annoying.

Hoping for free days added to subscription soon, i remember i got like a week free days in WoW after first terrible launch month