[FEEDBACK] [SUGGESTION] Dear Ubisoft, here's some advice about QA. | Forums

[AI BLUEFOX]

This is not a defence of Ubisoft, what is happening is not acceptable. It is simply me sharing experience and suggesting a possible cause in what is a remote chance that it may help.

I think that they may a have a fundamental flaw in their overall integration architecture over the internet. To put that simply, the dimensions of the weapon parts in the 3-D model and other weapon parameters such as its sound and whether it is locked are not actually stored in the game engine or files. The game is looking them up from a backend datasource, either when you launch a game session for the first time or when a patch is first released and this is data held in the cloud or as data on your game save. When they test in the studio the correct bit of data is being loaded into the correct place because they are using a test system that works so they don't see an issue. Their live system, which they can not test, because it is the gamers on the internet, however, has a fault that is corrupting the data and not putting the right bit of data in the right place reliably. They are trying to fix that with workarounds that check for the faulty data, but they can't get it working.

I have had this on a system and no solution ever worked as the data sync issues were random over a busy network. After 3 or 4 years of trying to solve the issue unsuccessfully, in the end we simply coded the system to do the same thing as the users were doing. That was to re-run the process from start to finish again and keep doing that until it worked. It made no sense as the exact same code running the same way over the exact same network from the exact same data source produced a data set that had the incorrect sequence of data in some places. The workaround eventually used just checked for the error and repeated the download until it worked; mostly it was right first time other times it would take 2 or 3 attempts, sometimes it would even be a dozen.

Unfortunately that same workaround here would mean repeating the same download over and over until it worked and at 15Gb a time that isn't going to wash. I hope they can get a workaround somehow, but they are still trying to fix a problem that I think is more likely to be a Uplay/server issue than a game issue. I imagine right now there are some pretty heated xchanges going on between the different teams responsible for those aspects.

[Ghost-Ami]

This is not a defence of Ubisoft, what is happening is not acceptable. It is simply me sharing experience and suggesting a possible cause in what is a remote chance that it may help.

I think that they may a have a fundamental flaw in their overall integration architecture over the internet. To put that simply, the dimensions of the weapon parts in the 3-D model and other weapon parameters such as its sound and whether it is locked are not actually stored in the game engine or files. The game is looking them up from a backend datasource, either when you launch a game session for the first time or when a patch is first released and this is data held in the cloud or as data on your game save. When they test in the studio the correct bit of data is being loaded into the correct place because they are using a test system that works so they don't see an issue. Their live system, which they can not test, because it is the gamers on the internet, however, has a fault that is corrupting the data and not putting the right bit of data in the right place reliably. They are trying to fix that with workarounds that check for the faulty data, but they can't get it working.

I have had this on a system and no solution ever worked as the data sync issues were random over a busy network. After 3 or 4 years of trying to solve the issue unsuccessfully, in the end we simply coded the system to do the same thing as the users were doing. That was to re-run the process from start to finish again and keep doing that until it worked. It made no sense as the exact same code running the same way over the exact same network from the exact same data source produced a data set that had the incorrect sequence of data in some places. The workaround eventually used just checked for the error and repeated the download until it worked; mostly it was right first time other times it would take 2 or 3 attempts, sometimes it would even be a dozen.

Unfortunately that same workaround here would mean repeating the same download over and over until it worked and at 15Gb a time that isn't going to wash. I hope they can get a workaround somehow, but they are still trying to fix a problem that I think is more likely to be a Uplay/server issue than a game issue. I imagine right now there are some pretty heated xchanges going on between the different teams responsible for those aspects.

Fox. Darling. Light of my life. My sun and stars. I am 100% sure this is not what's happening.

The relevant game files are definitely stored locally. Why do you think the base game is like 70 GB or whatever? The lion's share of that is HD textures. Textures are basically always the largest part of any computer game, especially in this day and age where 4K gaming has become not just possible but common, even expected by many enthusiasts.

I may not know the specific tools and coding that Wildlands uses, but I know enough about how meshes and textures work that I can usually figure out what's wrong with a given item. Some mechanical glitches are beyond my ken, but when a mesh is in the wrong place or the wrong colour or when a texture looks wrong or paints the wrong parts of a mesh I can typically immediately reckon why, and if this were Fallout 4 I'd be able to fix it in a few moments.

The idea that gigabytes of data are being sent to a local machine every time you log into the game just to be able to see objects rendered in the world---and that objects look wrong because they are "corrupted" during transmission---just doesn't work. The assets are on your system drive. And they are broken because someone has not translated, scaled, weightpainted, attached, textured, or otherwise manipulated them correctly before those assets are sent out to us either in initial game download or in updates.

I have never designed a modded clothing item or settlement object in Fallout 4 that then looked wrong on someone else's machine.

The problem is at the source, believe me.

[AI BLUEFOX]

@ami, yep the parameters are stored locally, but they are downloaded at some point and this is where (in my opinion) they have the issue. There is something odd with the deployment system and i think this is out of the control of the studio. It's why some people suffer some errors and some don't and after the next patch who is effected changes, because it is a non-repeatable error - it's random so hard to trace. There are some issues where the deployment is the same error for everyone and some where the error is random. If you are familiar with databases you'll know what I mean when I say the index is getting corrupted. Essentially one missing bit of data isn't just a gap, the next in line bit of data is getting put in its place.

It doesn't matter that the designer has gotten the position data of the LVOA-C magazine right if the deployment system has a random error that puts the stock coordinates in its place. When you copied Fallout 4 mods to another machine the copy was identical. My point here is that what ends up on the customers machine is not the same as the original.

I've had these errors, they are an absolute pain to resolve and in the case of the workaround I mentioned above almost certainly a limitation in the operating system and application platform we were using. I can almost guarantee as well, I know how big companies work, that the Paris studio and the corporate authority on Uplay and network assets will be at loggerheads over who is to blame here. Both will be arguing it's the other's fault! They will not be having a great time right now and there will be SHOUTING,

They flew me over as a Ghost Recon gamer before, maybe they should fly me over in a professional capacity, LoL. I couldn't do any worse.

Lots of love, your darling Fox.

[biomag83]

I won' argue with AI Bluefox is saying, as it makes sense, but to me it still doesn't justify that Uplay has 15-17gb for the (broken) patch, while my Steam is happily downloading 1,7 gb for the same issue-creator. There is no justification that Ubisoft can't provide the same or even a better service using their own software than when adapting to third party provider...

Overall I am done with GR. The quality has become abmysal and the last 1,5 years have left a extremely bitter taste with a loss of trust that won't be regained easily. I won't complain about Ubisoft as a whole. I was very happy with South Park and I made primarily good experiences with the AC franchise, but Wildlands has started with a fantastic idea & pitch, that was reduced to a very fun coop game that utterly lacked depth in single player and from there on it was getting worse with each day they worked on it - showing that the design team didn't understand the franchise and as a whole the studio treated it as an afterthought...

[AI BLUEFOX]

They will absolutely have to resolve it if they are serious about games as a service, biomag. If they can't get the right quality product onto the user's platform it's all pointless. Whether it's the game or my speculation that it's the deployment mechanism is irrelevant to the end user of course.

[Ghost-Ami]

@ami, yep the parameters are stored locally, but they are downloaded at some point and this is where (in my opinion) they have the issue. There is something odd with the deployment system and i think this is out of the control of the studio. It's why some people suffer some errors and some don't and after the next patch who is effected changes, because it is a non-repeatable error - it's random so hard to trace. There are some issues where the deployment is the same error for everyone and some where the error is random. If you are familiar with databases you'll know what I mean when I say the index is getting corrupted. Essentially one missing bit of data isn't just a gap, the next in line bit of data is getting put in its place.

It doesn't matter that the designer has gotten the position data of the LVOA-C magazine right if the deployment system has a random error that puts the stock coordinates in its place. When you copied Fallout 4 mods to another machine the copy was identical. My point here is that what ends up on the customers machine is not the same as the original.

I've had these errors, they are an absolute pain to resolve and in the case of the workaround I mentioned above almost certainly a limitation in the operating system and application platform we were using. I can almost guarantee as well, I know how big companies work, that the Paris studio and the corporate authority on Uplay and network assets will be at loggerheads over who is to blame here. Both will be arguing it's the other's fault! They will not be having a great time right now and there will be SHOUTING,

They flew me over as a Ghost Recon gamer before, maybe they should fly me over in a professional capacity, LoL. I couldn't do any worse.

Lots of love, your darling Fox.

I might have believed this sort of thing possible like a couple of decades ago. But today? I can't imagine how just downloading a nif or dds file (or whatever they use for meshes and textures) from Ubisoft is somehow going to introduce transcription errors into the values in those files and cause them to look different or be shaped different or whatever. This sort of data corruption doesn't really happen in modern computing any more in my experience. Not saying it's totally impossible, but the likelihood is trivial enough to be safely ignored.

The sorts of bugs in game objects that I tend to complain about are consistent for everyone. Reproducible and observable. You never see these objects correctly implemented in anyone's game. They're wrong for everyone because the source mesh or texture file is wrong, it's that simple. The LVOA mag was wrong for everyone, the SCAR mags are mixed up for everyone, some optics and grenade launchers are in weird places for everyone, et cetera.

I don't know what specific issues you're referring to that are different for some people, and whatever they are I'd hesitate to try to come up with an explanation. But the sorts of bugs I'm talking about are what they are (and are thus for everyone) because Ubi don't check their mesh and texture work. ((((

[FREEMAN0129]

To be fair it's capitalism that is to be blamed for these sorts of business practices, not Ubisoft in particular. They're just conforming to the shape of their container as any unregulated or poorly regulated company will do. You get away with what you can and hope you make enough money before you get caught and shut down. It's a shame, but it's reality in a world where the Invisible Hand of the liberal free market has replaced the old gods.

Even I forget the world is like this sometimes. When I got an offer to sign up for the Division 2 beta I was like, "Ooh, cool, I hope I win!" and then I realised, "Oh, wait, they want me to pay for the privilege of playtesting their game for them."

I'm not asking to be paid to beta test content for a developer, but I'm not keen to pay someone to work for them either. I love Wildlands, and I love a lot of this new content, but the consistent pattern of sloppy work is really starting to bother even the most realistic, mature, patient members of this community.

I won't disagree with u, Ami.
I do wish they put more effort into QAing stuff.

But still at least for me, as much as I'm upset with the current state of the game, I still appreciate a lot of aspects that have been in the game, and also those that have been added to it.

I think they're doing their best of what little they've got, and looking at Far Cry 5, which had been released far later than Ghost Recon Wildlands but already received its last update, I appreciate, at least, they're still supporting this game and pushing out updates.

Now, I'm not going to say how easy nor how hard it could be to solve the issues that still persist, reason being that I don't know as much about computer programming/3D designing as you do.

And I don't believe that the devs are a bunch of lazy, incompetent people who show up to the workplace, do practically nothing and just care about collecting their payment checks, but people like us, who try to do their job as well as they can, even when the circumstances are... 'pushing'.

Yes, I was upset when they added lootboxes, but I think that kind of decision came from the suits who work upstairs, not the dev team.

I used to be really bitter about the direction that this game was headed to, but that changed when I realized when they changed their dierection and started adding functioning NVGs, HK416, the JPC, Armored buggies, Ghost Mode, and etc.

Yes, it sucks they locked most of them behind paywall, but I don't think that decision came from the devs either.

So, the bottom line, dear GRW dev team and all others who are responsible in supporting this game, please don't quit on it and keep on trying. Be in pursuit of excellence, and you just might get there.

As long as you do that and don't 'Far Cry 5' this game, I'll appreciate it, and I'm sure the rest of the community will too.

[Ghost-Ami]

I won't disagree with u, Ami.
I do wish they put more effort into QAing stuff.

But still at least for me, as much as I'm upset with the current state of the game, I still appreciate a lot of aspects that have been in the game, and also those that have been added to it.

I think they're doing their best of what little they've got, and looking at Far Cry 5, which had been released far later than Ghost Recon Wildlands but already received its last update, I appreciate, at least, they're still supporting this game and pushing out updates.

Now, I'm not going to say how easy nor how hard it could be to solve the issues that still persist, reason being that I don't know as much about computer programming/3D designing as you do.

And I don't believe that the devs are a bunch of lazy, incompetent people who show up to the workplace, do practically nothing and just care about collecting their payment checks, but people like us, who try to do their job as well as they can, even when the circumstances are... 'pushing'.

Yes, I was upset when they added lootboxes, but I think that kind of decision came from the suits who work upstairs, not the dev team.

I used to be really bitter about the direction that this game was headed to, but that changed when I realized when they changed their dierection and started adding functioning NVGs, HK416, the JPC, Armored buggies, Ghost Mode, and etc.

Yes, it sucks they locked most of them behind paywall, but I don't think that decision came from the devs either.

So, the bottom line, dear GRW dev team and all others who are responsible in supporting this game, please don't quit on it and keep on trying. Be in pursuit of excellence, and you just might get there.

As long as you do that and don't 'Far Cry 5' this game, I'll appreciate it, and I'm sure the rest of the community will too.

Yeah, I love this game unreservedly and don't regret any of the extra cash I've dropped in the store for weapons and clothes and such. I even bought the Year Two Pass just a couple of weeks ago and in so doing lost the 16,000 prestige I'd spent unlocking a couple of the PvP classes that are free with the Y2P. If anything I'm pleased to hold that loss up as an example of just how happy I am with so much of this new gear they keep putting out, much of which is Y2P exclusive. Who cares about a few thousand prestige when the JPC is so sleek and highspeed and stabbing people with a karambit is so satisfying? XD

Imperfect as it is I'd never deny that the game's worth it or that nearly every second of it has been a pleasure.

It's just disappointing when something this good fails to go that little bit extra to make it perfect when it's not that hard. We're not talking about diminishing returns here, the little pervasive bugs and mistakes that bother me and so many others are easy to fix.

I guess it's just that the Wildlands team have become "victims of their own success". The staggering scope of the achievement that is Wildlands and the promise of yet more a year and a half on just keep raising or reraising our expectations on people who are only human after all (don't put the blame on them).

And sometimes it's just hard to cope with the stupid little things that taint our enjoyment.

[FREEMAN0129]

Yeah, I love this game unreservedly and don't regret any of the extra cash I've dropped in the store for weapons and clothes and such. I even bought the Year Two Pass just a couple of weeks ago and in so doing lost the 16,000 prestige I'd spent unlocking a couple of the PvP classes that are free with the Y2P. If anything I'm pleased to hold that loss up as an example of just how happy I am with so much of this new gear they keep putting out, much of which is Y2P exclusive. Who cares about a few thousand prestige when the JPC is so sleek and highspeed and stabbing people with a karambit is so satisfying? XD

Imperfect as it is I'd never deny that the game's worth it or that nearly every second of it has been a pleasure.

It's just disappointing when something this good fails to go that little bit extra to make it perfect when it's not that hard. We're not talking about diminishing returns here, the little pervasive bugs and mistakes that bother me and so many others are easy to fix.

I guess it's just that the Wildlands team have become "victims of their own success". The staggering scope of the achievement that is Wildlands and the promise of yet more a year and a half on just keep raising or reraising our expectations on people who are only human after all (don't put the blame on them).

And sometimes it's just hard to cope with the stupid little things that taint our enjoyment.

Yeah, I get it. And don't get me wrong, I can totally sympathize with the general opinion here.

It' kinda like I'm thinking "Well, s***. But at least they're not ditching it like Far Cry 5." Pretty much like "better than nothing".

And I don't think little things are stupid(not that I thought u meant they're stupid). I , for one, started playing the game again only after they added the JPC. Little things can make a big difference. Like they say, the devil's in the details.

I just felt like the devs have received enough flak for the current situation, and not enough positivity for the change in direction they've taken, implementing the community's request, etc., to the point that if I were in their shoes, I'd be like 'Hey... I'm sorry guys. But... we did some of these things u guys asked for because we do care... And we're trying but it's not as easy as u think as we thought it would be...'

I believe the power of positive feedback, and more often than sometimes, I've found it's much more effective than 'correctional feedback'. Maybe this comes from my past-self who used to teach(not only children).

Sometimes, we, the people, tend to use magnifying glasses to find negativity, but take no more than just a brief glance on positivity.

We love the game, and I'm sure they do too. It took quite a while for both our & their paths of 'wants' to finally meet, which can be represented by the addition of functioning NVGs, the JPC, HK416, customizable LVOA-C, etc., and I think it shouldn't stop there.

A simple yet sincere positivity could go a long way.

[Ghost-Ami]

Yeah, I get it. And don't get me wrong, I can totally sympathize with the general opinion here.

It' kinda like I'm thinking "Well, s***. But at least they're not ditching it like Far Cry 5." Pretty much like "better than nothing".

And I don't think little things are stupid(not that I thought u meant they're stupid). I , for one, started playing the game again only after they added the JPC. Little things can make a big difference. Like they say, the devil's in the details.

I just felt like the devs have received enough flak for the current situation, and not enough positivity for the change in direction they've taken, implementing the community's request, etc., to the point that if I were in their shoes, I'd be like 'Hey... I'm sorry guys. But... we did some of these things u guys asked for because we do care... And we're trying but it's not as easy as u think as we thought it would be...'

I believe the power of positive feedback, and more often than sometimes, I've found it's much more effective than 'correctional feedback'. Maybe this comes from my past-self who used to teach(not only children).

Sometimes, we, the people, tend to use magnifying glasses to find negativity, but take no more than just a brief glance on positivity.

We love the game, and I'm sure they do too. It took quite a while for both our & their paths of 'wants' to finally meet, which can be represented by the addition of functioning NVGs, the JPC, HK416, customizable LVOA-C, etc., and I think it shouldn't stop there.

A simple yet sincere positivity could go a long way.

I just find myself wondering how issues like these can keep happening in Wildlands when so many amateur Fallout 4 modders on the Nexus never release anything this broken.

Protests to the contrary from wellmeaning CMs it's hard to feel the devs who work on some of these broken items are actually taking pride in their work. ((((