User talk:Mike Zadorojny/Temp

Bug Reports
AI Issues Art Issues Armor Art Issues Miscellaneous Quest Issues Skill Issues Text Issues Misc Issues

How to Report Bugs

If you're coming here to report an issue with Guild Wars, please post your problem on the appropriate page linked from the sidebox in the top right. Thanks! --Mike Zadorojny 22:07, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Greets!!!

Hi Mike! :) Welcome to the wiki! -- Emily Diehl (talk) 19:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's been a day and I haven't been mugged or stabbed so I have to say this hasn't been nearly as painful as some of my other explorations. --Mike Zadorojny 21:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

lucky u arent in charge for skill balances like izzy, he've taken alot of bashing :( --Cursed Angel 23:19, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I wish you all the best. Let's begin with this bug: "I cant stop playing Guild Wars since I got my hands on it, and God knows I tried...". This is partly your fault. Yseron

thats a irl bug, blame god --Cursed Angel 00:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Boo! Bobby Stein 05:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Redirects Problem

I think there's a bit of a problem with the redirects from Gaile's Page. It seems the contents from the Quest, Art and AI issues pages was copied from the old pages which were redirected to the new one. The Talk pages however weren't redirected, so for example there are now two AI issues pages: [[1]] and [[2]] with identical content. While you could remove the content from the old Talk page and redirect it as well, the new page won't inherit the entire history from the old one. I think the old pages should have been moved instead (see "move" tab on each page). For example I moved [[3]] to [[4]], and this will simply cause the page to be renamed instead so the "new" page still has the same history as the old one. I think it would be better for an admin to delete the new Quest, Art and AI issues pages, revert the redirect change on the old pages and then move them (with the option "Move associated talk page" checked) so that they all have the correct history. --Draikin 13:04, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

I decided to solve things the easy way for the AI issues page so I simple removed all the content from the old page and let it redirect to the new one. I also mentioned the move in the edit summaries of both pages so that the new page conforms with §4(I) of the GFDL. I think the same thing can be done for the Quest and Art talk pages. --Draikin 18:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I redirected all the old talk pages to the new ones and moved the remaining archives as well, I think that should take care of the problem. --Draikin 13:38, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of this. I believe Emily was going to help me take care of this problem, but she seemed pretty slammed. --Mike Zadorojny 17:58, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually she asked me if I could fix the problems with the other pages as well since she wasn't sure what I meant either (and after reading it again my explanation does seem a bit confusing). --Draikin 15:43, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that, Draikin! -- Emily Diehl (talk) 18:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

What happens with the issues posted here?

I'm not sure if you can answer this question, but I was wondering how many of the issues posted here we can realistically expect to be solved? Personally I've been adding AI issues here when trying new builds in Hero Battles, but as far as I know there have only ever been two (stealth) AI updates: the one that finally implemented the AI for weapon spells and one that fixed problems with the new GW:EN skills. Back when heroes were introduced we were told to compile the AI bugs and that they would look into it but unfortunately nothing happened after that. I assume this is simply because the devs don't have the time to solve them, and with the ongoing development on GW 2 I can only assume there will be even less time to fix these issues in 2008... --Draikin 17:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The people here at ArenaNet at passionate about their work and have a strong love for the game. That being said, obviously AI issues fall into one of the more complicated of bug categories we're tracking here, but there still is a desire to fix any problems that currently exist on Live. I have been assured that even the AI problems will be looked into when the programmers have a spare moment.--Mike Zadorojny 18:15, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

That's good to hear, thanks for answering my question. I realize that the programmers really want to make the AI as good as possible. With the new weapon spell AI for example they even tried to let the AI pre-protect allies, that's new functionality which didn't even have to be implemented. Things like that show that, if the developers were given the time, the AI could become really impressive. I hope the issues pages help you find and solve some of the problems more easily. --Draikin 19:40, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

A worrysome quest & the New Years Festival. :)

While last year was fun, a quest exploit was made where one would continually get 10 piles of dust on a level 2 Canthan character, and farm the quest, Fire in the Sky. The process is as follows, and can be done in less than 3 minutes total, resulting in around 20 runs an hour. This results to 500 tokens, 60 fireworks, 6 and 60, 000 EXP,

1. Make new character
2. Do the henchman quest and get Monestary Credit
3. Use to get Scroll for 100g.
4. Use 100g to open storage and obtain 10 glittering dust.
5. Turn in the reward for Fire in the Sky.
6. Rinse, and repeat.

The above method could result in hundreds of tokens and fireworks being "farmed" an hour. An exapmle of the exploit is found here. I wanted to let the devs know before the festival commenced, so it could be fixed. A great way to fix this would be to make it so that only characters above level 5 can obtain the quest. Drago 22:34, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Maybe remove the 300 gold reward, making the run more expensive? Lord Belar 22:54, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

The level 5 requirment fixed that...mostly :) 68.151.27.108 01:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Danika's Crazy AI

While helping a friend with a quest today we came across the craziest bug in Danika's AI. While doing The Count's Daughter quest in Sunjiang District, Danika was healing the Afflicted enemies we came across. We didn't notice this at first, but then there was only an Afflicted Ranger left of a mob we had encountered and there were no other monsters in range... Danika kept healing it. I'm pretty sure she's not supposed to act that way, so this might be a good thing to look at. -- Elv 22:44, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

All healer npcs are like this. It would be nice if it were fixed, though. Lord Belar 01:33, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

We're working on a fix for Danika at the moment. Hopefully it will go live soon. --Mike Zadorojny 16:43, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

Mind if we archive resolved bugs to a subapge? Those report pages are getting a bit unwieldy. Backsword 16:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, by all means. I'm pretty slammed at the moment working on a couple projects but I'll get Emily to teach me how to archive when we're both not "busy". --Mike Zadorojny 16:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Oi.

Kim said you're the boss and I should tell you that there's a problem with picking my ... picks, for the xunlai tournament. It's on the bug reports page of this wiki. *shrug* Vael Victus 19:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Bugs with neither Green or White ticks

Some of the bugs on the miscellaneous bugs page have been there a while with neither a Green (resolved) or White (reported) flag against them.

Its not clear if this means

• Its not a bug, thats how its supposed to work.
• You don't know if its a bug yet but investigation is on going
• It's being ignored for now.

I think it would be handy having a couple more icons so we can tell if these bugs/queries/misunderstandings are in the pipeline at all. Sadie2k 10:20, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not adverse to adding additional markers if it helps the community. The AI Issues page had an additional two flags added to it. However, usually the lack of an icon means one of a couple things: the team that can fix it doesn't have time to deal with the reported type of issue at the moment, or the QA group is busy working on something and doesn't have time to get to the wiki. --Mike Zadorojny 22:34, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Weapons of Deathbane and inscryptions.

I've been farming some Raptors for event items, and I noticed that most of the items that after IDing turn out to be weapons "of Deathbane" don't have any inscryption or an inscription slot! At first I thought that I was just unlucky with them, but no, this is pretty regural. Right now, I have in my inventory a gold Cruel Greater Sage Blade of Deathbane and it doesn't have any inspription :/ — Poki#3 07:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

We actually have a bug in the system tracking this issue. Also this should have been reported on the Miscellaneous bug report page. --Mike Zadorojny 22:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

ArenaNet namespace

As we now have an ArenaNet namespace, we are trying to figure out what kind of information that would fit there, and we would love some input from ArenaNet people. If you have an idea, please share it :) The bug report sections in your user space have been suggested to be moved to this ArenaNet namespace, so we would really like to have your opinion on this. If you want it moved, or if it should stay. And if moved, who should "take care" of it and how should it be handled. Community dicsussion is mostly centralized on ArenaNet talk:Portal, but feel free to respond here too :) - anja 13:59, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Redirect Bug

The link on Mike Zadorojny's page that opens a new thread for Art bugs has a redirecting issue. It redirects to an empty page, and the reports never make it to the actual page. Someone should change the link (it says "Click Here to view the current issues and check if its not already listed. If not Click Here to post a new art issue." and the second Click Here links to the incorrect page) or remove the redirect.--ChristopherRodrigues 19:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

This is probably a side effect of a move that's currently taking place. Hopefully this should be fixed shortly.--Mike Zadorojny 22:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

AI bugs

I'd just like to thank the QA team for reporting some of the bugs I mentioned on the AI bugs page, more importantly the delay when manually activating hero skills. That delay introduced another random element to Hero Battles which players were unable to control, and that's never a good thing in a PvP format. At first sight the recent updates seem to have reduced that random delay to the point where it's not that much of a factor anymore, which is definitely an improvement for HB. That said, I wanted to ask how your team selects which problems to report. From what I've seen, someone on the QA team occasionally reports a dozen or so problems which are then resolved in an update a few weeks later. However, those problems seem to be selected randomly. I was wondering if the community could be allowed to offer their input about which issues should be prioritized? --Draikin 16:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

In general, the QA team tries to investigate as many of the reported issues as time allows. How difficult a bug is to reproduce often plays a part in how long it takes us to escalate it to the coders. This is why detailed reports with explicit repro steps are usually resolved faster. We are sometimes aware of existing bugs before they are reported by the community, but determining exactly where the problem resides in the nearly countless lines of game code is a daunting task.

The resolution process for AI issues, however, is more time consuming because additional people are usually involved. How and when the AI uses a skill is a design decision and it is a balancing act, where making a skill change in a particular scenario will break the skill in different context.

Mostly it is because, up until now, there has not been a group dedicated to examining the existing problems in Guild Wars and having the time to address them. Most of the fixes thus far have been done in the spare time of people currently working on Guild Wars 2. This has changed recently with the formation of the Guild Wars Live Team. Joe has been working on fixing bugs and readying some new content we want to release for the players, but haven’t announced formally. I can at least tell you that skill balance and skill AI are two things that we are looking at in our next couple of builds.

With regards to community involvement on prioritization, it's not practical for a host of reasons. The biggest one is that the community cannot possibly know all of the dependencies when deciding between one fix and another. Sometimes AI changes only require a variable tweak, and other times they require re-writing the entire script in order to fix a problem, with the latter requiring much more additional time invested.--Mike Zadorojny 00:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I didn't actually take into account that ArenaNet considers balancing issues when upgrading the AI, although that does make sense considering past problems with certain hero builds in PvP. I noticed several people from the QA team are posting on the AI bugs page now, thanks again for that :) --Draikin 00:07, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Wont fix

Hello. As I understand it there are some bugs that wont get fixed ( game engine limitations etc, especially concerning collisions detections ). Would it be possible to list such bugs so that we know if they will, or will not, be fixed ? I am thinking of the doors of the luxon base at Kanai Canyon, when they are closing with you in the middle you get stucked until they open again or get blowed ( with you ). If I remember correctly it had been reported as 'closed', meaning it can be fixed. But It is still there, et least in the last build. So can it be fixed or should we be more carefull whith these doors ? Also, people exploit bridges to a level that sometimes makes me uncomfortable, we dont know if it is intended or if it cant be fixed ( traps set 100 feets under a bridge will harm players 100 feet above, warriors will be able to hit a player 100 feet above them, casters will be able to ignore rangers interrupts and every kind of projectiles by sticking to one side of the bridge etc ). Should the status of theses bugs also be changed to 'wont fix' ? Yseron - 90.14.99.141 22:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

When a bug is listed on the wiki and the team knows for sure that the issue will not be fixed, they are free to indicate this on the original report. The problem you are seeing is that some issues still remain active in our database waiting for a developer to address the problem. Since the case is still active, it's not considered a "Won't Fix," however, it is in a state of limbo. Unfortunately, the problem you're seeing with people exploiting the bridges is a limitation of how we calculate three-dimensional space in a two-dimensional pathable world. There are a couple of ways that this issue could be addressed, but no definitive response has come back from the programmers. With the formation of the Guild Wars Live Team, we should see responses on issues that have been left idle for extended periods of time. I am not promising that we will be able to fix everything, but Joe is a miracle worker, so you never know...--Mike Zadorojny 00:16, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Thx for your answer. Yseron - 86.64.70.44 17:19, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Can't post anything.

For some odd reason whenever I make a contribution and press "Save Page" what ever i typed can not be viewed later. This happen while I am under my account. But if im in as a guest the contributions always save. I may have been blocked or something as far as I know i have not given any Mod or Admin reasons to do so. So I don't know whats wrong.--Troy 15:57, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Update(Is me Troy):Can't post under my accoun again had to log off. What the hell. This is odd it only happens in different places of the website. Wasn't expecting this to actually post^^. This has happened to me on Storage talk Page and GW2 discussion. Sometime the error happens if I'm in a different PC. So crazy!--66.192.234.74 16:10, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what's going on, I've passed this on to the wiki team. -Mike Zadorojny 17:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Tombs

Hi Mike. I know you guys are busy with the April update you've promised us, which I am excited about. However, if you guys get a free moment, I know a lot of people would really love it if you guys could help rejuvinate the Tombs elite area. The place used to be a lot of fun back when BP teams used to go in there, and the founding members of my guild all got together solely for this activity. However, since then the permasin have totally taken over the place and now no one puts together a team anymore. The permasins solo farm the first level only (usually), and they don't even really talk in the outpost, the place has become, well, a tomb. I think a simple skill tweak of the mobs in the first level would really do the trick and bring back the team effort to Tombs. So, I know you guys are busy, but I think that could be an easy and really appreciated change to make some time soon. Thanks for your time. (Satanael 14:50, 3 February 2009 (UTC))

Regina was kind enough to field this question for you already. Sorry I wasn't more responsive, but things have been rather busy lately. --Mike Zadorojny 16:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

No worries, I am only demanding with my webcam bondage porn, not my computer game dreams. So as long as you keep your day job, feel free to ignore me completely to do that. Cheers, (Satanael 17:34, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

What's it Really Like?

What's it really like being involved in the QA of aNet products? What level of detail is involved and for adding something like a quest to Guild Wars, how long does QA actually take? Thanks in advance! Pkohler01 18:44, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I know it's a little late, but things have been a little busy...

My team and I have had a far different experience working in QA at this company compared to other companies we've worked at. For example, the studio has higher expectations of us, a useful atmosphere because we feel motivated and because we have more opportunities than in a traditional QA environment. Over the span of a given project we end up working alongside almost every development team at one point or another. It’s cool for us because we assist designers with refining ideas before coding, we talk to artists about how things look or feel, and it shows us in a very practical and salient way how much of a difference we can make in the final product. We have a small team and we always refine our processes to be more efficient at what we do: breaking the work of other people.

As to the level of detail involved, we hold ourselves to a high standard. Ideally, we would only push game updates to the live servers that we’ve carefully scrutinized from both conventional and even unconventional testing methods. Unfortunately, cruel reality will sometimes intrude and force us into a tight deadline, or we’ll find other projects demanding more attention than planned. Thus, a bug can either fall through the cracks or just lie unresolved because we don’t have enough time for the designer or programmer to find a suitable fix.

Testing a quest can take as little as an hour or as much as a week (depending on the type of quest). Things like a custom species, a custom skill set, or AI functionality can lengthen a process. Generally we do several passes through a quest before it gets the final sign-off. We first do a quick functionality pass to make sure that any of the individual tech elements involved do not cause any problems. This pass sometimes happens before a designer has gone back over the initial placeholder work. We do an initial polish pass after a designer has cleaned up the quest, evaluating things like text, art, how fun it is, general difficulty balance, and multiplayer testing. After the text has returned from the localization teams we do one final pass to make sure that the quest matches our expectations and that any additional new content doesn’t interfere before preparing it for live.--Mike Zadorojny 22:23, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Wow, that's really interesting! Thanks for the detailed response! Pkohler01 01:48, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

New namespace

Hey Mike! We are working on the new Feedback namespace, and I would like your your input on both the bug reporting sections and the localization section. Feedback:Bug reports and Localization We have simply copied over the format from the ArenaNet namespace. I have however set them all up so that all the bugs/issues are posted on the article itself rather than going to the talk page. Talk pages are for discussion. We are also setting up rules and FAQ pages for the namespace, and I would like your input regarding the bug reporting and localization for them. Thanks! I know you are super busy, but if you can take a few minutes to address this stuff it would be much appreciated. -- Wyn talk 22:18, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Hey Wynthyst! The new namespace looks fantastic! Regarding your questions

• Article/Discussion Pages: I'm going to talk to the team about this and get back to you. The initial concern I have is that if there's two different places where information about a bug rests this could be confusing to sync up responses from my team with those from the community.
• Rules: I don't know if there's anything specific in terms of rules that needs to be said. Providing as much detailed information to us as possible makes it easier for us to address concerns raised by players. And finally if they're available, including repro steps increases the turn around time on issues.
• F.A.Q.: Looks good so far. A couple minor things:

Use of "anet" instead of ArenaNet under, "Will Arena Net read and comment on every suggestion?"

Don't forget to answer the question, "How can I submit my suggestions?"

--Mike Zadorojny 00:42, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi Mike, thanks for your input. We'll try to recognize your concerns on the above and let you know when we have something for you to look at again, or feel free to jump in on the discussion any time you like. Regarding the FAQ, don't worry, we certainly won't forget to answer "How can I submit my suggestions?", we just have to figure out what the answer is, first :) (Satanael 03:31, 7 July 2009 (UTC))

I can adjust the template for the bug fixes to direct to a specific discussion topic on the talk page, so the discussion can be found with a simple click. -- Wyn talk 16:14, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

What exactly is the testing process like?

→ moved from User talk:Linsey Murdock

Considering the last few updates have needed their own updates to fix the new bugs introduced, I've become curious about the testing process. I know that you guys are understaffed and blah, blah, blah; but is there a process? There are hopes that the Testing Krewe will end this ridiculous losing streak of mistakes, but what do we currently have in place? Karate Jesus 20:11, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the fact that they intend to recruit a "Krewe" of players from the community to BetaTest (bug-hunt only) new skill updates, shows pretty clearly the current status of this issue. --ilr 22:51, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

← moved to User_talk:Ilr#What_exactly_is_the_testing_process_like.3F

There absolutely is a process and every update is tested quite a bit before it goes out. But this is really a question for Mike Z. - Linsey talk 00:10, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

There is indeed a process for testing upcoming patches. There is a small team that is dedicated to all things GW Live and a second team that assists them when testing larger projects or when there isn't sufficient time for the core team to do a full pass before a Live build. There are numerous things that can prevent these teams from catch issues that would require us to do a subsequent build. (See "What's it really like?" above) Unfortunately we can't catch everything, but at least we can at least mitigate the number of problems that appear on Live.

The Test Krewe wasn't just designed to be a "bug-hunt only" group. It is our intention to utilize them for balance feedback and in addition to providing coverage where the smaller team can't.

Edit: Forgot to sign. Thanks Jon! --Mike Zadorojny 23:28, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Here to watch your back. :) — Jon Lupen 23:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)