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 agree that design is most at fault here. Test should have at least picked up on it though (it's not like Saronite Chain Gang was an unplayed card before this). Programmers and testers do have feedback with design, you must realise that. Sometimes it's frustrating (I have had "I think you are right, but just implement it that way anyway", and I have had lazy design [as in, the spec is vague, here are easy ways to tweak it with no programming involved on your side to tell me what you like best, they don't tweak anything and just go with the default parameters, etc.]).
Someone ok'd it all though and they are terrible at their job.
This is a minor issue when it comes to the crunch though, stuff like the tri-class drop rates cost them actual money people would have spent buying packs.
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 agree that design is most at fault here. Test should have at least picked up on it though (it's not like Saronite Chain Gang was an unplayed card before this). Programmers and testers do have feedback with design, you must realise that. Sometimes it's frustrating (I have had "I think you are right, but just implement it that way anyway", and I have had lazy design [as in, the spec is vague, here are easy ways to tweak it with no programming involved on your side to tell me what you like best, they don't tweak anything and just go with the default parameters, etc.]).
Someone ok'd it all though and they are terrible at their job.
This is a minor issue when it comes to the crunch though, stuff like the tri-class drop rates cost them actual money people would have spent buying packs.
I agree this is a minor issue, yes. Compared to the pack opening issue, which is way more serious (I haven't personally experienced that).
I kicked off because I'm just sick and tired of hearing "developers this, developers that" every goddamn time anything is wrong in a game/software. And people calling out developers for poor game mechanics, or bad designs, etc... are complete morons.
Guys , guys , some of you defending the programmer pride and job. This is getting out of point , I don't blame only the programmer . Blizzard in it as a whole that's why I pointed out testing. I know there are debugger , programmer , design manager etc bla bla bla.
You need to think , DO EVERYONE IN THIS FORUM KNOW EXACTLY WHICH ONE DO WHAT? no. No one cares , just to generalize I called them programmer , so some people can easily understand the point of this post. It is about the game . Now it is butthurt programmer war. We are here to discuss problem like random dc , super late fix (which they just do to chameleos , nice good job blizzard keep going).
Now some of you acting like programmer meme "sees a person , hey I am a programmer you know"
Yeah some of you don't get the problems ( nice , be grateful , I hope u will never face problem like us). I can run nearly all the AAA game without any lag , dc , so many problems compared to running hs. I just want to play.
I know this will be fixed , but the fix for hs ,not as good as any other game. It's like patching hole in boats that full of holes , one day , it will sink , we don't know when. That's why I suggest we moved to new game engine (maybe remade , not rework anymore) and asking what do you guys think of it.
I studied IT software engineering too, even though I no longer work in programing. Most of you are programers , I see about that. But we can't prove it ,aren't we? I am asking for apologies for anyone who is offended. But most of you don't contribute anything , you said you were programmer. Where is the problem? Point it out . Just saying "it's hard you know to debug and create program" no shit ,if it is easy everyone can make a game. Good comment is like mungo there. He pointed maybe about multithreading. Comment like this post is shit prove nothing. It only shows u are easily triggered without any good argument to make
Some have good answers and same problem as me , some of you just butthurt fighting each other . Thank you for some of you , so insightful. The rest can go if u don't like it . Have a good day ladies and gentlemen . Thank You
As we programmers like to say, it's only the bugs all holding hands that makes this software stable ;)
EDIT: I don't think they will fix the performance though unless there's some massive kickoff about it. It's been an issue for a year now (it started the day the Un'Goro patch went live), they must know about it, they don't care.
They only looked seriously at the disconnect issue when that guy got disconnected at the HCT playoff qualifier live on air when he clearly had no chance to lose and got so tilted in the restarted match he lost the series.
Guys , guys , some of you defending the programmer pride and job. This is getting out of point , I don't blame only the programmer . Blizzard in it as a whole that's why I pointed out testing. I know there are debugger , programmer , design manager etc bla bla bla.
You need to think , DO EVERYONE IN THIS FORUM KNOW EXACTLY WHICH ONE DO WHAT? no. No one cares , just to generalize I called them programmer , so some people can easily understand the point of this post. It is about the game . Now it is butthurt programmer war. We are here to discuss problem like random dc , super late fix (which they just do to chameleos , nice good job blizzard keep going).
Now some of you acting like programmer meme "sees a person , hey I am a programmer you know"
Yeah some of you don't get the problems ( nice , be grateful , I hope u will never face problem like us). I can run nearly all the AAA game without any lag , dc , so many problems compared to running hs. I just want to play.
I know this will be fixed , but the fix for hs ,not as good as any other game. It's like patching hole in boats that full of holes , one day , it will sink , we don't know when. That's why I suggest we moved to new game engine (maybe remade , not rework anymore) and asking what do you guys think of it.
Some have good answers and same problem as me , some of you just butthurt fighting each other . Thank you for some of you , so insightful. The rest can go if u don't like it . Have a good day ladies and gentlemen . Thank You
We're off topic, you're right.
I'm sure that if you were seeing thousands of people talking trash about your job, on a regular basis, and with no knowledge whatsoever on the topic, you would get kinda of butthurted too.
Well, developers = design + programming + test. Let's exclude management and marketing since they're cockwombles who probably failed at doing the other 3 more important roles and got promoted so you could do less damage. If you work in management or marketing and offended by that, great! You truly are cockwombles of the highest order ;)
The developers of this game are bad, I'm not saying programmers [in general] are bad [after all I am one], good programmers have pride in their work and want to release a polished, functional game which runs smoothly and doesn't lag or disconnect. They just seem to be lacking on this particular game (which is an excellent game when it is running smoothly even with all the broken cards nonsense. You can just concede against that - unless you are forced to watch the animations for 5 minutes first of course).
I personally never experienced a single issue with that game. Literally, not one. And that applies to other Blizzard titles (Overwatch and HotS).
The only thing that bugs me in on mobile when I get disconnected, once the game is finished I'm sent back to the main menu. That's it.
Off topic :
Let's exclude management and marketing since they're cockwombles who probably failed at doing the other 3 more important roles and got promoted so you could do less damage. If you work in management or marketing and offended by that, great! You truly are cockwombles of the highest order ;)
Through the years I've met people that I can recognize in your description. I've also met some very capable ones, who started as developers and climbed up to management. I don't think that's fair to put everyone in the same bag.
I personally never experienced a single issue with that game. Literally, not one. And that applies to other Blizzard titles (Overwatch and HotS).
The only thing that bugs me in on mobile when I get disconnected, once the game is finished I'm sent back to the main menu. That's it.
Off topic :
Let's exclude management and marketing since they're cockwombles who probably failed at doing the other 3 more important roles and got promoted so you could do less damage. If you work in management or marketing and offended by that, great! You truly are cockwombles of the highest order ;)
Through the years I've met people that I can recognize in your description. I've also met some very capable ones, who started as developers and climbed up to management. I don't think that's fair to put everyone in the same bag.
That's why I said "probably failed". They only became massive cockwombles after becoming management or joining the marketing team in that case. On second thoughts, the marketing guys were always cockwombles to begin with.
*cough* ben brode *cough* "Were releasing a shaman legendary that people will lose their minds about" Im pretty sure everyone mentioned in this thread knew shudderwock was going to break the game but it was the game designers plan all along
*cough* ben brode *cough* "Were releasing a shaman legendary that people will lose their minds about" Im pretty sure everyone mentioned in this thread knew shudderwock was going to break the game but it was the game designers plan all along
"Shaman, according to the stats I've seen through Vicious Syndicate and HSReplay is the least played, and worst class right now. Despite this card (Shudderwock) being the most complained about card. Shaman is awful." - Kripparrian
Shudderwock barely has 40% winrate. That is mostly because it doesn't do well against aggro, and meta right now is purely aggro, beside Cubelock. It might do better in the future if the meta leans more towards control archetype.
Some people have reasonable complains about this card, being that the combo animation takes ages, and that's annoying. I agree.
Some other people are crying because the card is OP. It's not. There are plenty of other decks that have a OTK combo. 2 recent examples:
Priest OTK with 30-30 minions thanks to Inner Fire.
Exodia Mage used to OTK with infinite Fireball
Why would they be okay but this one wouldn't?
If Shudderwock is nerfed because it can OTK, then all core cards of OTK decks must be nerfed as well. And that'd be stupid.
The only thing that needs to be changed is the animation being way too long. Nothing else.
Im pretty sure they can make it so after the time limit on a turn is off,all the rest battlecries of Shudderwock gets cancelled,this will destroy the infinite loop and the limitless "round timer"thats been going on with 10+ minutes of shudderwock interactions.After your turn is over,your turn is over.
They only seem to nerf cards after the HCT championship qualifiers at the moment. Probably because there are now lots of tour stops and it messes up preparation for the players I guess.
Most nerfs are just changing numbers, which is data stored separately from the executable code (it's bad to hard-code stuff in the program, it requires recompilation), so making stat changes should be trivial.
Changes which require new coding (Yogg nerf may have required this, Fandral change as well I expect) means they have to change the source code and rebuild it.
So the reason for them to sit on nerfs is probably just HCT reasons (and they always say they want the meta to sort itself out too).
EDIT: Actually, it is possible for them to change core gameplay mechanics in a hotfix (today's Voodoo Doll hotfix would have required code changes I expect), so they can update the server side game logic via a hotfix, but card info must be stored client side (and obviously server side too), so changing that requires a patch.
yes we do, yes we do...
Dead but dreaming
Guys , guys , some of you defending the programmer pride and job. This is getting out of point , I don't blame only the programmer . Blizzard in it as a whole that's why I pointed out testing. I know there are debugger , programmer , design manager etc bla bla bla.
You need to think , DO EVERYONE IN THIS FORUM KNOW EXACTLY WHICH ONE DO WHAT? no. No one cares , just to generalize I called them programmer , so some people can easily understand the point of this post. It is about the game . Now it is butthurt programmer war. We are here to discuss problem like random dc , super late fix (which they just do to chameleos , nice good job blizzard keep going).
Now some of you acting like programmer meme "sees a person , hey I am a programmer you know"
Yeah some of you don't get the problems ( nice , be grateful , I hope u will never face problem like us). I can run nearly all the AAA game without any lag , dc , so many problems compared to running hs. I just want to play.
I know this will be fixed , but the fix for hs ,not as good as any other game. It's like patching hole in boats that full of holes , one day , it will sink , we don't know when. That's why I suggest we moved to new game engine (maybe remade , not rework anymore) and asking what do you guys think of it.
I studied IT software engineering too, even though I no longer work in programing. Most of you are programers , I see about that. But we can't prove it ,aren't we? I am asking for apologies for anyone who is offended. But most of you don't contribute anything , you said you were programmer. Where is the problem? Point it out . Just saying "it's hard you know to debug and create program" no shit ,if it is easy everyone can make a game. Good comment is like mungo there. He pointed maybe about multithreading. Comment like this post is shit prove nothing. It only shows u are easily triggered without any good argument to make
Some have good answers and same problem as me , some of you just butthurt fighting each other . Thank you for some of you , so insightful. The rest can go if u don't like it . Have a good day ladies and gentlemen . Thank You
Wow
As we programmers like to say, it's only the bugs all holding hands that makes this software stable ;)
EDIT: I don't think they will fix the performance though unless there's some massive kickoff about it. It's been an issue for a year now (it started the day the Un'Goro patch went live), they must know about it, they don't care.
They only looked seriously at the disconnect issue when that guy got disconnected at the HCT playoff qualifier live on air when he clearly had no chance to lose and got so tilted in the restarted match he lost the series.
Well, developers = design + programming + test. Let's exclude management and marketing since they're cockwombles who probably failed at doing the other 3 more important roles and got promoted so you could do less damage. If you work in management or marketing and offended by that, great! You truly are cockwombles of the highest order ;)
The developers of this game are bad, I'm not saying programmers [in general] are bad [after all I am one], good programmers have pride in their work and want to release a polished, functional game which runs smoothly and doesn't lag or disconnect. They just seem to be lacking on this particular game (which is an excellent game when it is running smoothly even with all the broken cards nonsense. You can just concede against that - unless you are forced to watch the animations for 5 minutes first of course).
I personally never experienced a single issue with that game. Literally, not one. And that applies to other Blizzard titles (Overwatch and HotS).
The only thing that bugs me in on mobile when I get disconnected, once the game is finished I'm sent back to the main menu. That's it.
Off topic :
Let's exclude management and marketing since they're cockwombles who probably failed at doing the other 3 more important roles and got promoted so you could do less damage. If you work in management or marketing and offended by that, great! You truly are cockwombles of the highest order ;)
Through the years I've met people that I can recognize in your description. I've also met some very capable ones, who started as developers and climbed up to management. I don't think that's fair to put everyone in the same bag.
Yes YES , THAT'S THE MOST ANNOYING ONE, THANKS
Wow
That's why I said "probably failed". They only became massive cockwombles after becoming management or joining the marketing team in that case. On second thoughts, the marketing guys were always cockwombles to begin with.
this guy clearly said anything at all just to use that word
*cough* ben brode *cough* "Were releasing a shaman legendary that people will lose their minds about" Im pretty sure everyone mentioned in this thread knew shudderwock was going to break the game but it was the game designers plan all along
Why would they be okay but this one wouldn't?
If Shudderwock is nerfed because it can OTK, then all core cards of OTK decks must be nerfed as well. And that'd be stupid.
The only thing that needs to be changed is the animation being way too long. Nothing else.
Can somebody explain how they are able to make hotfixes on the fly but card nerfts take a month? this is due to the engine right?
"If Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People...
Does That Mean That Toasters Don't Toast Toast, Toast Toast Toast?"
Im pretty sure they can make it so after the time limit on a turn is off,all the rest battlecries of Shudderwock gets cancelled,this will destroy the infinite loop and the limitless "round timer"thats been going on with 10+ minutes of shudderwock interactions.After your turn is over,your turn is over.
Just Another Legend Player#Kappa
They only seem to nerf cards after the HCT championship qualifiers at the moment. Probably because there are now lots of tour stops and it messes up preparation for the players I guess.
Most nerfs are just changing numbers, which is data stored separately from the executable code (it's bad to hard-code stuff in the program, it requires recompilation), so making stat changes should be trivial.
Changes which require new coding (Yogg nerf may have required this, Fandral change as well I expect) means they have to change the source code and rebuild it.
So the reason for them to sit on nerfs is probably just HCT reasons (and they always say they want the meta to sort itself out too).
EDIT: Actually, it is possible for them to change core gameplay mechanics in a hotfix (today's Voodoo Doll hotfix would have required code changes I expect), so they can update the server side game logic via a hotfix, but card info must be stored client side (and obviously server side too), so changing that requires a patch.