Please Delete the Turtles from Griefers' Inventories! They Are Still Being Released to Grief!

[redwoodtreesprite]

Just this morning one was released in Snowbourn's crafting area, and I have been hearing of other releases as well.

If the turtles are not completely removed from players' inventory and vaults, fall festival will be an utter disaster!

[Geldeger]

Just this morning one was released in Snowbourn's crafting area, and I have been hearing of other releases as well.

If the turtles are not completely removed from players' inventory and vaults, fall festival will be an utter disaster!

Oh wow, imagine 30 turtles in that little Bilbo's attic room, or in the basement where people spawn when they enter. Confined spaces + turtles + a stream of people who enter and get stuck on loading screens for a while. That would be slaughter!

[djheydt]

This is easier said than done. My husband the
programmer says, "They would probably have to
take the server down and do a sweep through
every level 100 character on all 29 worlds."

The turtles quest is currently down until the bug
is fixed, so no MORE turtles will be stowed in
people's overflow bags.

It may be easier to wait for all the griefers to
run out of turtles. This is, you'll recall, the
same bug that enabled griefers to store up
and release avanc a few updates ago. We
haven't seen any more loose avanc recently,
have we?

[Dmira]

This is easier said than done. My husband the
programmer says, "They would probably have to
take the server down and do a sweep through
every level 100 character on all 29 worlds."

I'm an ex-programmer and agree with your husband. However, an easier solution would be to disable the routine that summons the turtles. They would still be in inventory, but nothing would happen when clicked. Of course, this is speculation since I have no idea how the code was written, but in theory it should work.

[stubing]

I'm an ex-programmer and agree with your husband. However, an easier solution would be to disable the routine that summons the turtles. They would still be in inventory, but nothing would happen when clicked. Of course, this is speculation since I have no idea how the code was written, but in theory it should work.

Well my husband works at Burger King and he says it would be quick and easy to fix this problem. Turbine just needs to fix it now.

[djheydt]

Well my husband works at Burger King and he says it would be quick and easy to fix this problem. Turbine just needs to fix it now.

/sigh

................

[Gandie2]

I don't get this. When it first started happening I figured turbine did it on purpose to spice things up. I'm thinking they had the lvl 75 fishing quest where you could fish up the lizard and get the icon of a lizard in your inventory and go let it lose in low level areas and this went on for a month or so then turbine 'took the quest' down till they could fix it.

Fixed it by making so you could no longer drop the icon, or something along those lines. Now the turtle comes along another fishing quest, another little icon that appears in our inventory and another round of grieffing low areas. Somehow turbine is acting as if this is a surprise??

I don't get it. Where is the surprise this time around. Same exact thing as last time they made it so we could fish up a little icon of a max level mob. If this was truly an accident some programmer at turbine has his head where the sun don't shine.

[SabrielofLorien]

I don't get this. When it first started happening I figured turbine did it on purpose to spice things up. I'm thinking they had the lvl 75 fishing quest where you could fish up the lizard and get the icon of a lizard in your inventory and go let it lose in low level areas and this went on for a month or so then turbine 'took the quest' down till they could fix it.

Fixed it by making so you could no longer drop the icon, or something along those lines. Now the turtle comes along another fishing quest, another little icon that appears in our inventory and another round of grieffing low areas. Somehow turbine is acting as if this is a surprise??

I don't get it. Where is the surprise this time around. Same exact thing as last time they made it so we could fish up a little icon of a max level mob. If this was truly an accident some programmer at turbine has his head where the sun don't shine.

iirc that you could pocket the avanc and carry it to bree was a /bug. It caused a lot of grief for lowbees and wrecked a number of "undying" title attempts. It seems that this sort of "fun" has crept back in the game. Perhaps with the layoffs not that long ago, the continuity was lost (not uncommon after a layoff) and the new batch of devs didn't realize what would happen.

I would guess that the 2014PC has had an earful to carry to their forums about this.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Somehow turbine is acting as if this is a surprise??

I don't get it. Where is the surprise this time around. Same exact thing as last time they made it so we could fish up a little icon of a max level mob. If this was truly an accident some programmer at turbine has his head where the sun don't shine.

I see this behavior occurring in the software that I have worked on over the years. You have a specific kind of defect that is easy to create in the code. You do it the first time. Nobody in development, quality assurance, integration test, test system ... catches. It goes out to the customers. Blows up in our face. We have deliver a live fix to get rid of it.

A year later a new feature is being done. This feature is very similar to the one that blew up. You have developers working on the new feature that did not go thru the previous explosion. They see the more difficult and complicated solution that was used to avoid the problem. Yula is supposed to be so smart. Why did he do it this way? There is a simple elegant to do it. We will use the simple and elegant. That elegant way blows up when the customers get their hands on the feature.

None of the testing organizations catch it. The defect goes thru the same hole in the testing net. Odds are the folks testing the new feature were not involved in tracking the defect. The people that know about the issue. They got their own assignment. There is also the it has been a year. I forgot all about this issue.

How much do you remember of what you did in July, 2013 (a year ago)? I can not remember much what I did at work 12-13 months ago. I have a hard bound blank book that I use as a journal. Even with my journals, it can be a real hassle trying to find information. I have to remember that there was some issue. Have some idea about when I worked on that issue.

At one company I worked at we had a policy when something blew up in the field. A test case had to be added to make sure it never came back. After a while, the test suite got too big and expensive. All these safety tests would be flushed out of the test suite to reduce. It was very rare that one of these test case would catch a problem.

I got assigned to doing a study to see how many field problems reappeared in our software. It is well under 1%. The customers would go ballistic about every such failure.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Just this morning one was released in Snowbourn's crafting area, and I have been hearing of other releases as well.

If the turtles are not completely removed from players' inventory and vaults, fall festival will be an utter disaster!

Turbine developers are going to need to design a fix, code the fix, test the fix, build a release candidate, approve the candidate, bring the servers down for a few hours to apply the fix.

I suspect what is going to happen is that Turbine will correct the quest and get rid of the turtle items all at once. You are going to have to wait. Turbine going to want to make sure that they really fix the problem. Turbine is going to want to make sure they did not introduce a more serious problem. Turbine going to want to make sure the quest works. Doing it right takes time.

Turbine does not want to do what I seen happen a couple times in my career in software development. It is broke in live. Rush out a fix. Fix does not work - Makes it worse. Rush out a fix to the fix - does not work - Makes it worse. Finally on the fourth try after you the customers mad three times you get it right.

[bigsix66]

Well my husband works at Burger King and he says it would be quick and easy to fix this problem. Turbine just needs to fix it now.

May I please have some fries with that opinion?

[Arnenna]

I would think that in any case that Turbine cannot fix turtles in inventory bags by Fall festival, they would know the festival will be griefer prime time - and anyone who releases them there, is likely to get caught.

[Gandie2]

Turbine developers are going to need to design a fix, code the fix, test the fix, build a release candidate, approve the candidate, bring the servers down for a few hours to apply the fix.

I suspect what is going to happen is that Turbine will correct the quest and get rid of the turtle items all at once. You are going to have to wait. Turbine going to want to make sure that they really fix the problem. Turbine is going to want to make sure they did not introduce a more serious problem. Turbine going to want to make sure the quest works. Doing it right takes time.

Turbine does not want to do what I seen happen a couple times in my career in software development. It is broke in live. Rush out a fix. Fix does not work - Makes it worse. Rush out a fix to the fix - does not work - Makes it worse. Finally on the fourth try after you the customers mad three times you get it right.

if as yule says this is the same problem as with the lizard, that somehow everyone at turbine forgot about the lizard, all they need to do is ask the person that fixed the lizard to do the same thing with the turtle. Or even look back at what he/she did.

I mean this turtle thing is the exact same thing as the lizard thing from the fish up a lizard quest outside snow. Fish up lizard have high chance when doing so to have an icon of a lizard appear in your bag that on dropped spawned a live lizard. Fish up a turtle have a super chance to have an icon of a turtle appear in your bag that on dropping it spawns a turtle. Seems it had, has to be the same coding problem, fixable by the same coding solution. Someone needs to then make a note and post it on the door to the coders room about fishing up icons of mobs that spawn real mobs on dropping them.

[RJFerret]

Some seem to be presuming the same staff works at Turbine now as before. Their rate of churn is far greater. They also hire a fair amount of freelance talent apparently (the original Moria waterfall beards were designed out of house for example--the artist is on DeviantArt, talked about it, and was dismayed to witness the implementation in game).

Also, people might have moved up or to other positions in the company, or now work on other products.

There's been a lot of knowledge lost along the way, note how nobody in the company could figure out how the threat system worked? Their solution was to throw the entire system out. Now burglars and hunters tank when force taunts are on cooldown.

The developer that understood the stat system left. As such Finesse remains orphaned. Critical Defense has never been fully integrated either. Fate was made useless, then required, now returned to normal. Vitality is currently useless, any guesses as to what is coming for that? Stat caps were "removed" in favor of diminishing returns. Caps have been gradually added back in on top of diminishing returns and there's rumors the last stats without hard caps will be gaining them now that essence armour let's folks go over the top.

Every update has similar things break, and most classes know what to check for in beta (yes, it's broken again), and keeps complaining about how that broken skill effect lingers into live until it gets fixed a few months prior to the next update/breakage.

Yes, it's sad and amusing the exact same bug was implemented again. But guess what? I won't be surprised when a future version does it again. I'd be more surprised if it didn't. Admittedly hearing in /world, "What the heck? A giant level 120 frog just swallowed me in Bree craft hall", will be even funnier than avancs or turtles.

[djheydt]

Yes, it's sad and amusing the exact same bug was implemented again. But guess what? I won't be surprised when a future version does it again. I'd be more surprised if it didn't. Admittedly hearing in /world, "What the heck? A giant level 120 frog just swallowed me in Bree craft hall", will be even funnier than avancs or turtles.

It's amusing so long as you don't care how often
you get defeated. Since I get defeated A LOT
(I tend to make squishy characters that can wear
only light armour), I mostly ignore it.

Though there was the time I got defeated in the
Trollshaws, immediately after it opened, by a
fly.....

[Ogmu]

This is easier said than done. My husband the
programmer says, "They would probably have to
take the server down and do a sweep through
every level 100 character on all 29 worlds."

That's why they have databases and database servers. When you open your inventory, they don't shut down all the servers and do a sweep of all items on all 29 worlds to find your inventory.

[Aranglas]

I always "liked" people who come to the forums saying "x thing is too difficult to be done, it need a lot of work, developers can't do it blah blah blah". If it brakes the game it needs to be taken away ASAP. Why the hell am I even supposed to care about how difficult it is ? They are getting PAID to fix such things and I am PAYING to play a game, not get facerolled by a Turtle that is 80+ levels higher than me just because some people can't learn of how to do their job.

Even if the developers are not the same it is still their problem and not the customers'.