comprehensive bug list REPRODUCABLE!

[_____________Malakie]

Hi, enclosed is a bug list that I have been compiling. I have been able to reproduce these bugs and in some cases they are having a MAJOR affect on gameplay which has caused quite a bit of loss for me in the last few days.

Feel free to comment or send me question on any bugs I have listed here.

1) Charm/Calm nano in group bug - This bug is real nasty. When grouped, we have found that all of us using BOTS end up loosing total control of our bots when another in the group casts charm nanos or sometimes calm nanos. This bug has cost me over 350K in exp personally in last day or two. Once the caster does this, the bots will not respond to any command or if they do, it happens 2 minutes later and is usually not the command you gave. In some cases we have witnessed the bots attacking party members.

This bug IS totally reproducable. They are NOT casting on the bots. They are casting on creatures we are fighting. We have also been able to figure out that if the member that casts charm, leaves the group then suddenly bot control is returned to those of us using bots. This bug also seems to cause other problems almost like you are having a lag issue yet our pings are fine. And again once the person who casts charm leaves the group, instant return to full control and normal operations.

2) Playing along, again in a group, and fighting creatures. Suddenly party members start dying suddenly. They go from full health to dead in 1 sec. Unable to ascertain direct cause but no lag or connect problems are apparent at the time. This appears to happen much more when something like a second Lifebleeder suddenly appears right after you just killed one. That does seem to be a common factor.

3) Backpacks, bags - these loose organization after zoning or dying. I like to organize things in my bags in a certain way for access... like gem cutters, lockpicks and such. But everytime I zone my bags internal organization gets all messed up and I have to move things around again.

4) shoulder boards and tokens - After right clicking on shoulder boards, they appear nicely in view over your character. Plus you get bonuses for tokens you have. However after dying or zoning, everytime in fact, the visual of the boards goes away as does the effects of the bonuses. You have to right click on the boards after each zone to get them to appear again and to get the bonues. BTW we do like the fact they appear.. Nice to show off rank to everyone visually.

5) Casting bots nano - I am an engineer. I recently bought a bot that said I needed Matmet of 258 and TimeSpace of 258. No prob, I had exactly that IP for both since I just leveled and was able to buff myself to reach exactly that number. Buy the new bot nano. Cast the new bot nano and it appears in backpack. Great I think. Bt wait, what's this? I now need a 265 in each to activate the bot!

That's the bug. The nano says it needs a certain IP yet after you cast the nano, the bot activation icon that appears in your backpack now says it requires a HIGHER nano that what the nano spell says.

6) Recommendation - Through lots of trial and error, I have determined that users who have video cards that support anistropic and mipmaps need to turn them OFF completely to get rid of certain problems running the game or to remove certain visual artifacts. I suggest you post somewhere this information. I went from a 50% stability in the client to 100% client stability once I figured this out. Anistropic filtering needs to be trilinear and mipmapping needs to be off. I am running a Gforce 3 card BTW.

7) Shoot through walls, bot gets stuck and more in missions - I ended up so angry that for the last week I refuse to do missions. Repeatedly I find that enemies, once I am targeted, can shoot me through walls.. even when I am 6 or seven rooms away. Additionally, the bot I use gets easily stuck in walls or runs around away from where I tell it to go.

8) Mission room that bots cannot negotiate - There is one room in particular that bots cannot handle - ever. The room is a small square room with a large 'L' shaped desk and chair in it. No matter what mission or how you try, bots cannot and will not negotiate this room and in most cases end up stuck in there - stuck enough you have to terminate them and reactivate.

9) Since the last patch changing the treatment centers (stationary), I have to go through this routine EVERY time I want to change an impant. a) click treatment center, change implant. Select second implant to change and it tells me I need medical help with this (or whatever that statement is). I click again and have to wait. After 5 min I click again on treatment however it will still not allow me to swap another implant. Here is what I have had to do since you 'fixed' the treatment centers: a) Change first implant b) zone out of store c) right click on treatment, wait 5 minutes for it to go away. d) right click on treatment again, change implant, zone out of store e) start that whole process over again.

I HAVE petitioned IN game about this. It is a major problem for me.

10) Group leader issue - This problem is not as major but still a problem. When in group if the leader just leaves the group, drops from group then we end up with no leader and no group control. We all have to disband and regroup to re-enable group leader functions and buttons. In many cases, some members actually have to log out of the game and return to get buttons back working.

Well that's enough for now.. Other items are not as pressing. Many of us would prefer that you spend some time fixing these bugs instead of adding new features. Yes we want the 'new' things also but when a bug causes us to loose HOURS of hard work in game, they become a priority. Each patch I look forward to seeing what bugs you have resolved. But it seems lately that every patch adds more features or fixes bugs that are so obtruse that they affect a very minor segment of the game. These bugs I have listed affect ALL players and impact direct game play. To many of us those are the bugs that should be a priority with minor bugs secondary to that.

Anyhow, I sincerely hope this is looked into. For the first time since I started Ao from day one, I found myself wondering whether to continue playing the game because I was so frustrated with some of these bugs. I really enjoy the game and understand what it takes to create and maintain something this large. But I am not asking for every little thing to be resolved immediately. Instead I am simply asking for fixes for things that have caused me and others major loss within the game..hours worth of playtime down the drain due to them. Some items have reached the point where I will no longer play my soldier character because he does nothing but sit there and die. I am now relegated to playing my engineer until such time as a soldier can survive in game over level 50. And I find my engineer having almost as many problems now.

Feel free to contact me for more information if needed. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Todd B

char (Malakie lvl 54 soldier & Malakus lvl 54 engineer)

[______________Ampris]

2) Playing along, again in a group, and fighting creatures. Suddenly party members start dying suddenly. They go from full health to dead in 1 sec.

Yes, I recall that this happens when you typically get an "Attacked by -NONE-". MOB is at extreme range or moves out of targeting range. It seems that the damage messages are not sent to the client when this happens. You don't know that you are being attacked and your HP are not updating. Workaround: Target yourself and press 'T' to update your HP bar.

I also sometimes see mob dying without me doing any damage to them. Then when I fight another mob, it seems that all of those queued damage messages appear at the start of that fight and mob HP bar drops. But that damage isn't actually done since mob keeps fighting with an empty HP bar.


4) shoulder boards and tokens
(stuff deleted)
However after dying or zoning, everytime in fact, the visual of the boards goes away as does the effects of the bonuses.

I was upable to replicate this. The visual effects do vanish, but the bonus remains. You can verify bonuses by simply removing the merit board. Your HP should be reduced by the amount of the merit board bonus when you remove it. What merit board do you have? Perhaps that particular one is bugged.


5) Casting bots nano - I am an engineer. I recently bought a bot that said I needed Matmet of 258 and TimeSpace of 258.
(stuff deleted)
I now need a 265 in each to activate the bot!

Yes. Think this is a known bug.


7) Repeatedly I find that enemies, once I am targeted, can shoot me through walls.. even when I am 6 or seven rooms away. Additionally, the bot I use gets easily stuck in walls or runs around away from where I tell it to go.

From what I recall, they only seem to be able to attack through walls if they are inside the wall. So I guess that somehow they are getting stuck in the walls and are not warping out since they are still able to attack you.


9) Since the last patch changing the treatment centers (stationary), I have to go through this routine EVERY time I want to change an impant. a) click treatment center, change implant. Select second implant to change and it tells me I need medical help with this (or whatever that statement is).

I was unable to replicate this. After using the stationary treatment clinic I was able to take out an implant, swap in another one and then take that implant out and put back in the original implant. What specific implants were you swapping? Perhaps one of those implants is interferring with the operation of the stationary clinic.

I recall that there is a known bug when the 5 minute timer runs out.

[zophee]

9) You will get this if you move during the implant process. Do NOT move and the clinic works

[_____________Malakie]

I am not sure how to do like you did and quote certain areas of a previous message in this text, so I will just respond to each by mention...


As you described in #2, then it is a bug confirmed and needs to be fixed.


For #4, after playing around more with this, I was able to find that I do not always loose the 'bonuses' like I thought. It apparently happens randomly but always after zoning. However the VISUAL display of the boards does go away after every zone, as you agreed, and this does need to be fixed. I, for one, would like to see the display stay visual as I think, especially for us roleplayers, that seeing someone rank is pretty cool... not to mention it is a good feeling to be able to show everyone else the hard work one has put into their character by displaying our earned rank.


#5 Hope it is fixed soon.


#7 Again hope this gets fixed soon. It is very irritating to try and heal to save yourself when the enemy can hit you even when you are 5 or 6 rooms away and out of visual sight. Since my posting I have also found that this may also be related to npc's training on you in numbers in missions. You start to attack one creature/npc and suddenly a bunch come pouring out of doors until you are mobbed.


#9 I can reproduce this every time however thanks to the short reply from Darkzone, I have been able to isolate it even further. He is correct.. IF you move even once after your first right click of the treatment center, you end up having to go through the whole routine I outlined before. This is a big problem. Many times I may need to buy a new implant or purchase a new cluster for one of my implants because the one I have is not the right QL. Thus I move to the trade room to buy the new cluster or implant.

So this bug IS a problem as we should be able to move around inside the shop while working on our implants and clusters.

Once I saw Darkzone's reply, I tried it out and he is correct. AS long as you do not move you are OK. Move around buying items like I have and this bug is repro every time.



Thanks for the replies... Hopefully issues like this get fixed quickly. I know there are a lot of 'issues' but to me, it is universal issues like this that affect everyone that need to be addressed priority.

Take it light...
Malakie

[______________Ampris]

Originally posted by Malakie
However the VISUAL display of the boards does go away after every zone, as you agreed, and this does need to be fixed. I, for one, would like to see the display stay visual as I think, especially for us roleplayers, that seeing someone rank is pretty cool...

Actually, I think it is working as intended. I think that the epaulets are supposed to vanish after zoning.

A suggested enhancement might be that using an upgraded merit board toggles the display of the epaulets on or off.

So clicking an upgraded merit board would cause them to be displayed. While they are displayed, clicking the board would hide them.

[_______________Skara]

Malakie,

When I click on the treatment center, I am ready to INSTALL my implants. I have already done all the leg work like buying and installing clusters into the implants. I have also made sure I meet the reqs and have run any nanos to raise secondary skills to meet those reqs.

From a roleplay perspective, it makes sense that you not move after clicking the terminal until you are finished installing implants. It is after all allowing you to perform a type of surgery on yourself.

Bottom line is, I don't see that as a bug that needs to be fixed. Get your implants ready to go, then click on the treatment term.


Skara

[_____________Malakie]

Originally posted by Skara
Malakie,

When I click on the treatment center, I am ready to INSTALL my implants. I have already done all the leg work like buying and installing clusters into the implants. I have also made sure I meet the reqs and have run any nanos to raise secondary skills to meet those reqs.

From a roleplay perspective, it makes sense that you not move after clicking the terminal until you are finished installing implants. It is after all allowing you to perform a type of surgery on yourself.

Bottom line is, I don't see that as a bug that needs to be fixed. Get your implants ready to go, then click on the treatment term.


Skara

Hi Skara,

I would agree with you normally in the context of roleplaying however there is one problem with your theory.. Many people, myself included, are still trying to figure out how everything works together, what things do and how to do them.

As everyone knows, the documentation is very lacking in some key areas. Many times I have had implants ready with clusters only to find that the QL levels would not work together or that my treatment ability was not sufficient or other things. I would then have to go buy a different QL level cluster, different implant or whatever and in this I would then have to go through the whole process I outlined.

Additionally, if you read my post again , you will see that even with your method there is still a bug. At the very least, if I move, I should simply be able to wait the 5 minutes out and then click the treatment center again to start pasting my implants. But this is not the case. Instead I have to wait the five minutes, ZONE, come back in and click the treatment center, WAIT again for that 5 minutes to elapse and then click the center again at which time it works correctly FOR ONE implant placement. Only after zoning out and then returning at a later time does the problem seem to clear up where you can do more than one implant as long as you do not move.

I mentioned the documentation. There are some web sites one can get bits and pieces of information from. However many people run in full screen thus they must leave the game to access that information. And even so, there still is no comprehensive documentation explaining how things work, what to do with them etc etc etc.. I am not one that wants every little detail BUT something would be helpful.

For example, We know we can use gem cutters to make better quality gems. But did you know that the gem you cut is worth LESS than the original gem? Or you can use a metal reclaimer to create ingots of gold or silver.. But again did you know they are LESS valuable than the ring you may have reclaimed? Even farther.... all of those abilities were found by accident or trial and error. Many people do not want to spend hours trying to figure out what tool may work with something you find. Additionally, this trial and error methodology is way to expensive to be practical. This SAME approach has cost me and others when it comes to implants and clusters.

Not to mention the fact that I have yet to find any good documentation that explains exactly what clusters do in some cases, who should use what, and what benefits you might gain from implanting certain cluster types. Again lacking documentation.

You might say that is something people could enjoy... the trial and error of it all. To a point, yes. However AO is based on a 'futuristic' society where we have plasma weapons, teleporters and more.. At the least, that kind of technology should lead to some extensive computer database where anyone can look up detailed information on anything in Rubi-ka.

Your thoughts?

Malakie

[Zooth]

Blue blobs still after 6 month Fix this FC *&^%$#@!!!!!!!

[_____________Paldorr]

4) These would be OK if they actually appeared on the shoulders. They are annoying flying a few feet up in the air as all mine do - even my Atrox's. I, for one, do not want to drop resolution just to view a shoulderboard.

[_____________Malakie]

Originally posted by Zooth
Blue blobs still after 6 month Fix this FC *&^%$#@!!!!!!!

I take it they look like blue blobs on your machine? I know why. It is due to your video configuration and if you have ANTI-ALIASING and Mip-Mapping turned on for your video card, boards show as blobs and most text is blurry.

Turn off anti-aliasing and mip-mapping and you will amazed at how nice the game really looks.

Malakie

[_____________Malakie]

Originally posted by Paldorr
4) These would be OK if they actually appeared on the shoulders. They are annoying flying a few feet up in the air as all mine do - even my Atrox's. I, for one, do not want to drop resolution just to view a shoulderboard.

Myself and many that I have talked to about this like the idea of having them float above to show all. It looks nice as well.

But I was confused by your statement that you have to drop resolution to see the boards?

That is something up on your end as I am running in 1280x1224 at 32 bit and I have 49fps with NO visual problems.

The shoulder boards look good on anyone that uses them.

Malakie