Are the dungeons gradually collapsing ?

[Solarpower]

For about a year now, I've been constantly finding more and more new graphical "bugs" in places where they (supposedly) weren't there before.
For example, torches hanging in the air

Cabinets are pushed away from the walls, although all the other cabinets nearby are pushed tightly against the wall

Here the table is levitating

Here, the wall has not been finished

And so on, so on.

I don't even want to talk about the pile of "trees" where the leaves just hang in the air, without trunks. The Ravens' Bane quest, for example, is full of them.

It feels like with every patch the old dungeons are getting more and more bugs.
Or were they always there, and I just managed not to notice them ?

 

[Owlbear]

I believe it started with server migration and when they were fixing area's that caused server lags. They even asked to bug report places like this

 

[Cmecu]

Myself, I never even pay attention to designs or layout, I just go through it and kill stuff and complete the dungeon..
But that is from a speed leveling point of view banging out past lives.
If I were a new player maybe I would pay attention, or maybe on a last life I would take in the scenery.

I would never seen this stuff unless someone pointed it out.
Not sure why they dont fix it, maybe they have better things to do fix like creating casting times on teleport scrolls or stopping the endless spawns on Grim Disturbance in Kings forest , you know things that have been that way for endless years and they just feel like there isnt anything more important to focus on.

I think there is this entire unfinished section in the last part of the lords of dust chain.. When you travel to eveningstar.. There is a hidden section unfinished.

 

[The Blonde]

Next time grab /locs please~

 

[Solarpower]

Myself, I never even pay attention to designs or layout, I just go through it and kill stuff and complete the dungeon..

Well, I never paid any attention to it before either. But now it catches my eye more and more.

They even asked to bug report places like this

Next time grab /locs please~

Yes, actually, I took screenshots (/loc is present) for the sake of bug reports.
But looking for example at the fact that NPCs in "Battle for Eveningstar" still say "String table error blah blah blah", and I've sent a bug report about two years ago... I just don't want to bother with new bug reports. There's no point in them. Nothing gets fixed.

 

[nix]

I remember seeing similar things in NWN mods when un-touched things would creep ... at the time I put it down to wierd roundings in their positioning (assuming floats were involved) ... without knowing details of the internal data structures it's hard to say, but if they're materialising single precision but using double internally that might account for some of the drift? floating point blows chunks

 

[nix]

don't get me wrong ... at least from the database perspective, fixed point isn't necessarily easier to deal with but it is at least more predictable

 

[The Blonde]

Well, I never paid any attention to it before either. But now it catches my eye more and more.



Yes, actually, I took screenshots (/loc is present) for the sake of bug reports.
But looking for example at the fact that NPCs in "Battle for Eveningstar" still say "String table error blah blah blah", and I've sent a bug report about two years ago... I just don't want to bother with new bug reports. There's no point in them. Nothing gets fixed.

I understand what you're saying, but I would like to mention that nobody will ever hand-type a /loc from a screenshot. Always c/p it.

 

[Primus]

A big red flag went up for me when they permanently closed the quest Memoirs of an Illusory Larcener.
The devs did not know how to fix their own coding, and make the quest playable.
Lets hope the downhill slide is slow and takes a long long time before we crash out completely.

 

[nicholas]

I hope its because of the New AI systems they use to create dungeons.... yes they use AI to create dungeons

 

[Solarpower]

yes they use AI to create dungeons

Nobody needs AI to create dungeons.
Maze-generating algorithms are over 40 years old. They worked perfectly well on punch cards, without any AI. At the same time, they produce much better results than the dungeons in DDO.

 

[Blaster]

While I don't believe SSG uses AI to create dungeons, they are lazy and will cut and paste things and take the easiest route to anything. Tolero admitted during a PAX East panel that things are more likely to get green-lit if they can reuse assets. The "art" team has really taken this to heart, just re-coloring as much as they can all year long for items/weapons.

Either way this reeks of the general laziness of SSG. They butcher quests and slayer zones in the name of reducing lag, say they'll go back and fix it all, then never bother to fix said things because that'd take work, and work is hard, so why strain yourself when you can phone it in or not do it at all, and still get paid below industry standards and maintain job security?

I mean, wouldn't you coast if your customers keep buying the slop you shovel out and they keep you out of the red? If you worked a job where you had no passion for it and took no pride in your work, you'd probably put minimal effort into it knowing that you'll get bailed out financially even if you screw up. It's hard to blame them I guess.