I mean , every update , it's like downloading new game , they can't change stats value easilly. I am gonna talk about shudderwock here , okay do you really need to player to test it out that the animation is fricking long ? No, it's like they made the 135 cards with effect , programmed it so it can be played and no big bug testing . I don't believe IT Game programmer in big company like blizzard don't think about it . The problem more likely because the engine suck they can't have enough time to test it all, and they can do anything because they won't move to New engine. You know what I am talking about , the disconnect , the shitty arena win counts because of also disconnect , the random lagging even though you are at super high end computer, the annoying visual bug, etc you name it. It is like the engine limit interaction and development of hearthstone. So that's all , this is just a suggestion , don't take it so hard
The problem its the time, and the hype, they should release new cards when the hype went down, and in a card game thats very often, so they havent enough time for make that possible, thats why we didnt got the Beast Hunter mode yet.
It's a Unity Engine game so they can't change it without a massive amount of work.
The programmers are totally incompetent though I'll admit. The "Hearthstone (Not Responding)" issue has been live now for over a year (introduced with the Un'Goro prerelease patch) and if anything it has got worse not better since then.
The ranked ladder change fiasco was pretty telling too (clearly never tested, since the bug was obvious as soon as you either won or lost a game, which I admit is a rare occurrence lol).
They either can't find people who know how to program and optimise Unity games, or they don't give a toss. I worked as a games programmer for over 20 years, I would be ashamed if a game I worked on was riddled with bugs like this one is (my games weren't riddled with bugs though since they had to go through Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo for approval before they were released).
I will just quote kripparian here :"the more money you spend on hearthstone , the more they dumped it to overwatch" even though this is funny , this is the reality actually
U can find the video on twins tone salterino I think? It is when he dc in arena , reconnect again , win the game , but arena count it as kripparian lose because he dc.
He made some good point there , even though he was salty. Worth the watch
I too have a slower shitty PC and it is fine for most things, including games with much higher graphics/game logic requirements than Hearthstone.
Except when I switch to the Battlenet launcher and launch Hearthstone (can take over 2 minutes to do this at times, that's when the Battlenet launcher responds to the mouse input of course, which can take another minute or so sometimes).
Then when it is running every other app becomes unresponsive too.
I play arenas as well and it's just too risky to have a web browser open then since it disconnects much more and you get a disconnect loss then, which is bad when you invested gold for that :(
It's a Unity Engine game so they can't change it without a massive amount of work.
The programmers are totally incompetent though I'll admit. The "Hearthstone (Not Responding)" issue has been live now for over a year (introduced with the Un'Goro prerelease patch) and if anything it has got worse not better since then.
The ranked ladder change fiasco was pretty telling too (clearly never tested, since the bug was obvious as soon as you either won or lost a game, which I admit is a rare occurrence lol).
They either can't find people who know how to program and optimise Unity games, or they don't give a toss. I worked as a games programmer for over 20 years, I would be ashamed if a game I worked on was riddled with bugs like this one is (my games weren't riddled with bugs though since they had to go through Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo for approval before they were released).
And there you just revealed how little the average HS players knows about programming :D (I find it hard to believe that you claim to have programmed games for over 20 years..)
The ranked ladder change fiasco has absolutely nothing to do with the client, all that season rollover stuff happens on a server.
You do realize how developing something for a console bugwise is like riding a bike with training wheels on right? You know the exact hardware, drivers etc., your game won't have to fight for system ressources.
I am not saying Blizzard shouldn't have caught / fixed some of these things.. For the longest time I had an issue with the game just not opening on my pc, sometimes it took 5 tries / shutting the bnet client down to get HS to boot up.
Seems like they fixed that though, haven't had it since the patch just before WW I believe.
You caught me out! I'm just pretending to be a 40+ year old programmer so I look cool on the internets. All the cool kids are doing it these days. It makes them look really cool and knowledgeable. Like myself.
It seems that they don't know about multithreading for starters, since it goes into not responding mode when switching menus [which means loading or unpacking resources, or creating a lot of objects] or when doing anything concerning the network (like searching for an opponent, which involves packets being sent back and forth between both clients and the server acting as middleman). The Unity engine programmers clearly know about multithreading though, since the music keeps running and looping nice and smoothly while the rest of the UI is lagging.
When a windows app greys out and becomes "Not Responding" it means they haven't removed a message (i.e. your mouse has moved, it's time to repaint the window, the system wants to tell you about something) for over 5 seconds.
5 seconds is a long time when it comes to modern computers.
The solution to this is to handle the message loop on the main thread and delegate the loading and network stuff to other threads.
It's easy to create threads in C# (which is what they are using to do the Unity stuff judging from the behind the scenes video released the other day).
EDIT: It also seems that they have a "failsafe" kind of thing going on which assumes that if the client didn't respond to a server request within some time limit (due to them not responding to windows messages telling you about getting a message fro the server or something like that) then they assume you have disconnected even when your internet is fine, so when your client pulls the message from the queue and responds the server is like too late bro I'm disconnecting your ass.
Okay , so many programmer gathered here. Yeah I know programming is not an easy task . It is not just write doThis() and it worked , it doesn't work like that. I can feel the pain when our programs don't do like what we want.
But what are we talking here is professional programmer with a long time experience and don't forget an online game that has been running for years.
Don't compare hs to indie beta game, hs is comparable to dota , csgo , you name it
If they got bug they can fix it , for example dota 2. Exploit or bug video uploaded? Not 1 day , BAM! Gone! They changed their engine in the past for smoother experience and update frequently to "balance" things (even though not so balanced lol , looking at u icefrog).as mungo said this is a bit unprofessional. Some people invest money in this game , this is not a browser free to play game, they are getting paid.
Is hearthstone suck? No it's fun game no matter what expansion it is , but the experience with the program itself make it less fun.
Do you want to worry about crashing or disconnect in arena or matches? You have enough with ur opponents deck , it should be the only one we worry about
The truth is most games programmers are young and inexperienced, the staff turnover is very high in the games industry (since the pay is poor and the hours are shit). It's also very stressful. EDIT: It's not all bad though! I have worked on stuff like device drivers/chip development which pays much better and is less stressful and, to be frank, easier, but if the hardest task you have to do there is moving data from one buffer to another as fast as you can and the most complicated maths you have to do is a few multiplications, it's not as satisfying.
The experienced programmers don't seem to be leading the team like they should though.
Everyone posting excuses for the programmers is a fucking tool, there is no excuse for this shit, they have the money and it's a fucking card game, and you can't even make the timer run in a fair manner?
If the animation crashes halfway through for some reason, blame the programmer.
If the animation goes flawlessly but takes too long, it's not the programmer's fault. He executed what managers and people in charge asked him to do.
I think you don't know what a programmer is, and that in your head "programmer" refers to anyone working being the development of a video game/software.
Do you really think a programmer (someone who writes code according to specifications he gets from game designers), even has the power to decide anything about the final product? No he doesn't. Do you think he's the one play testing the finished product? No he is not.
The programmers received specifications saying that when X card is played, it should display all battlecries casted during the game, using a similar mechanic they used before (e.g. Yogg). That's exactly what they did.
Before calling people "tool", you might want to educate yourself with some extremely basic knowledge about video games/softwares development and production.
EDIT:
Reading all what the Video Game Development Experts Wannabes wrote in this thread is absolutely hilarious.
You are correct that it is the test department that should have caught the Shudderwock abomination.
Good programmers should have feedback with the designers and with test though. You don't just receive a spec and program it, you raise concerns you may have straight away, and if you see any issues while implementing it you mention that too. If test comes back with we found this issue you look at it as well before you release it.
Bad programmers do whatever is in the spec to the letter and say "job's done". Bad designers give them bad specs, and bad testers let them both get away with doing that.
Good programmers should have feedback with the designers and with test though. You don't just receive a spec and program it, you raise concerns you may have straight away, and if you see any issues while implementing it you mention that too.
Because obviously the programmers are paid to play the game, imagine and construct decks, and test them all.
They've done what the card is supposed to do. And unless you're able to picture every single interaction between the 2000+ cards in Hearthstone, you can't predict this as developer.
Good programmers should have feedback with the designers and with test though. You don't just receive a spec and program it, you raise concerns you may have straight away, and if you see any issues while implementing it you mention that too.
Because obviously the programmers are paid to play the game, imagine and construct decks, and test them all.
They've done what the card is supposed to do. And unless you're able to picture every single interaction between the 2000+ cards in Hearthstone, you can't predict this as developer.
Which is why I mentioned 3 different departments (design, programming, test) in my post.
Good programmers will stress-test anything they write though before even giving it to test (which would mean, replaying as many battlecries as you can in this situation).
It's not rocket science.
They didn't even stress-test new pack openings (via simulation) when they released MSG and fucked up the tri-class drop rates in packs - which they compensated everyone for with +33% extra packs, that must have cost them a metric shit-ton of cash.
I'd have just simulated 100000000+ pack openings in a few seconds using my computer and the code they planned to ship then had a glance at the card drop statistics myself before releasing that whopper ;)
Good programmers should have feedback with the designers and with test though. You don't just receive a spec and program it, you raise concerns you may have straight away, and if you see any issues while implementing it you mention that too.
Because obviously the programmers are paid to play the game, imagine and construct decks, and test them all.
They've done what the card is supposed to do. And unless you're able to picture every single interaction between the 2000+ cards in Hearthstone, you can't predict this as developer.
Which is why I mentioned 3 different departments (design, programming, test) in my post.
Good programmers will stress-test anything they write though before even giving it to test (which would mean, replaying as many battlecries as you can in this situation).
It's not rocket science.
They didn't even stress-test new pack openings (via simulation) when they released MSG and fucked up the tri-class drop rates in packs - which they compensated everyone for with +33% extra packs, that must have cost them a metric shit-ton of cash.
I'd have just simulated 100000000+ pack openings in a few seconds using my computer and the code they planned to ship then had a glance at the card drop statistics myself before releasing that whopper ;)
Testing environment can't be 100% identical to real use, I'm sure you know that.
They most likely stress tested this with hundreds of cards and thought : "Well yeah that works, of course it takes ages, but that's because it's a stress test with hundreds of cards. But it works as intended."
Imagine Saronite Chain Gang didn't existed. Shudderwock would be perfectly fine. The problem doesn't come from the animation itself, but from the fact that it repeats itself many times.
They haven't thought that through. And by "they", I'm not referring to the developers, because it's not their job. And I'm not referring to quality control either, because it's not their job either.
Problem comes from the game design. The game designers (it's THEIR job to imagine all interaction between all the cards) did not think that through. The issue has nothing to do with the technical department at all.
I mean , every update , it's like downloading new game , they can't change stats value easilly. I am gonna talk about shudderwock here , okay do you really need to player to test it out that the animation is fricking long ? No, it's like they made the 135 cards with effect , programmed it so it can be played and no big bug testing . I don't believe IT Game programmer in big company like blizzard don't think about it . The problem more likely because the engine suck they can't have enough time to test it all, and they can do anything because they won't move to New engine. You know what I am talking about , the disconnect , the shitty arena win counts because of also disconnect , the random lagging even though you are at super high end computer, the annoying visual bug, etc you name it. It is like the engine limit interaction and development of hearthstone. So that's all , this is just a suggestion , don't take it so hard
Wow
"I don't believe IT Game programmer in big company like blizzard don't think about it"
I'm a programmer. We don't think, we execute what superiors tell us to do. Don't blame them.
And the engine is fine.
The problem its the time, and the hype, they should release new cards when the hype went down, and in a card game thats very often, so they havent enough time for make that possible, thats why we didnt got the Beast Hunter mode yet.
Dr7 its back!
I think the same way, the engine is totally at its limit and on my PC the game crashs nearly every second Game (Windows 10, 1050ti, 16 GB RAM).
It's a Unity Engine game so they can't change it without a massive amount of work.
The programmers are totally incompetent though I'll admit. The "Hearthstone (Not Responding)" issue has been live now for over a year (introduced with the Un'Goro prerelease patch) and if anything it has got worse not better since then.
The ranked ladder change fiasco was pretty telling too (clearly never tested, since the bug was obvious as soon as you either won or lost a game, which I admit is a rare occurrence lol).
They either can't find people who know how to program and optimise Unity games, or they don't give a toss. I worked as a games programmer for over 20 years, I would be ashamed if a game I worked on was riddled with bugs like this one is (my games weren't riddled with bugs though since they had to go through Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo for approval before they were released).
I will just quote kripparian here :"the more money you spend on hearthstone , the more they dumped it to overwatch" even though this is funny , this is the reality actually
U can find the video on twins tone salterino I think? It is when he dc in arena , reconnect again , win the game , but arena count it as kripparian lose because he dc.
He made some good point there , even though he was salty. Worth the watch
Wow
I too have a slower shitty PC and it is fine for most things, including games with much higher graphics/game logic requirements than Hearthstone.
Except when I switch to the Battlenet launcher and launch Hearthstone (can take over 2 minutes to do this at times, that's when the Battlenet launcher responds to the mouse input of course, which can take another minute or so sometimes).
Then when it is running every other app becomes unresponsive too.
I play arenas as well and it's just too risky to have a web browser open then since it disconnects much more and you get a disconnect loss then, which is bad when you invested gold for that :(
It seems that they don't know about multithreading for starters, since it goes into not responding mode when switching menus [which means loading or unpacking resources, or creating a lot of objects] or when doing anything concerning the network (like searching for an opponent, which involves packets being sent back and forth between both clients and the server acting as middleman). The Unity engine programmers clearly know about multithreading though, since the music keeps running and looping nice and smoothly while the rest of the UI is lagging.
When a windows app greys out and becomes "Not Responding" it means they haven't removed a message (i.e. your mouse has moved, it's time to repaint the window, the system wants to tell you about something) for over 5 seconds.
5 seconds is a long time when it comes to modern computers.
The solution to this is to handle the message loop on the main thread and delegate the loading and network stuff to other threads.
It's easy to create threads in C# (which is what they are using to do the Unity stuff judging from the behind the scenes video released the other day).
EDIT: It also seems that they have a "failsafe" kind of thing going on which assumes that if the client didn't respond to a server request within some time limit (due to them not responding to windows messages telling you about getting a message fro the server or something like that) then they assume you have disconnected even when your internet is fine, so when your client pulls the message from the queue and responds the server is like too late bro I'm disconnecting your ass.
Okay , so many programmer gathered here. Yeah I know programming is not an easy task . It is not just write doThis() and it worked , it doesn't work like that. I can feel the pain when our programs don't do like what we want.
But what are we talking here is professional programmer with a long time experience and don't forget an online game that has been running for years.
Don't compare hs to indie beta game, hs is comparable to dota , csgo , you name it
If they got bug they can fix it , for example dota 2. Exploit or bug video uploaded? Not 1 day , BAM! Gone! They changed their engine in the past for smoother experience and update frequently to "balance" things (even though not so balanced lol , looking at u icefrog).as mungo said this is a bit unprofessional. Some people invest money in this game , this is not a browser free to play game, they are getting paid.
Is hearthstone suck? No it's fun game no matter what expansion it is , but the experience with the program itself make it less fun.
Do you want to worry about crashing or disconnect in arena or matches? You have enough with ur opponents deck , it should be the only one we worry about
Wow
The truth is most games programmers are young and inexperienced, the staff turnover is very high in the games industry (since the pay is poor and the hours are shit). It's also very stressful. EDIT: It's not all bad though! I have worked on stuff like device drivers/chip development which pays much better and is less stressful and, to be frank, easier, but if the hardest task you have to do there is moving data from one buffer to another as fast as you can and the most complicated maths you have to do is a few multiplications, it's not as satisfying.
The experienced programmers don't seem to be leading the team like they should though.
You are correct that it is the test department that should have caught the Shudderwock abomination.
Good programmers should have feedback with the designers and with test though. You don't just receive a spec and program it, you raise concerns you may have straight away, and if you see any issues while implementing it you mention that too. If test comes back with we found this issue you look at it as well before you release it.
Bad programmers do whatever is in the spec to the letter and say "job's done". Bad designers give them bad specs, and bad testers let them both get away with doing that.
Small indie company OMEGALUL