Secret Bugs

[Enig]

Well, this is a response to another post made in the suggestions forum (about the trading system), but I didn't want to throw it off track and this seemed the best place to present *this* thought, so here it is! Let me re-present what prompted my response.

There's currently a bug in that trade items do not add to one's carry weight. I've been working on it, and haven't advertised it, but it's come up so I should be explicit:

Trade items *are* big and heavy, appropriate to their type. This is often factored into their value. (For example, a bundle of fine wood planks weighs 20 pounds.) Presently, the game does not add their weight to your carry limit. This is a bug, and SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF. Do not carry more weight in trade goods than your max carry wt. would allow. Examine them and purchase accordingly [Be thankful that carrying your limit of them doesn't weigh you down in battle - that's advantage enough!]

Now, with all respect, this seems to me to be the sort of bug that *should* be mentioned somewhere in the forums or in the game. Personally when I pick up an item I don't check for weight, material, or etc. Now that I know about it I can obviously take actions to avoid doing it in the future but you could justifiably say that I've already exploited a bug for my own gain. Nonetheless I wouldn't really be thrilled to see someone like myself punished for accidentally taking advantage a bug like this. As far as I'm concerned keeping existing bugs hidden just makes people wary about trying new things, and it offers a plausible defense of ignorance for people who *are* aware of them.

Anyways, I suppose I'm curious about what you fellows think about this. I'm not trying to be adversarial or to suggest that the players ought to be given a list of every single bug in the game, only that a quick heads up be given about any that could reasonably go unnoticed by someone abusing them, to avoid any possibility of confusion over a PC's intent to cheat.

[Emrys]

Yes, I have a thought!

I have been trading, and was not aware this was a bug. I generally load trade goods into saddlebags, but never bothered putting it on my mount because my encumbrance was not affected. I would be quite annoyed if I was punished for 'exploiting' a bug I was not aware of. I'm not sure it is reasonable to leave it up to players to guess the proper weight, but certainly we should be made aware of it. I think most players generally follow the forums pretty regularly so they do know about this sort of thing.

Also, the bug should be fixed

Edit: Having actually read the post in question, my understanding is that this bug was kept quiet because they expected to fix it quickly. That's a different thing.

[Raona]

Actually, most bugs go through a "discovery" phase, where the code team works to figure out if it really is real, if it is a bug, and if it is area or hard code. This problem was in that category. I'd noticed the problem on a few trade goods, checked that is was general to all trade items on the testport, and checked with Dalvyn about whether there was anything obviously wrong in the area code. Now I'm asking Japcil to check whether he experiences the same thing, and to look at the hard code (he can do that! ). If he confirms it is hard code, he will bring the problem to Mask's attention, setting it to the appropriate priority level.

I don't think we usually advertise a bug like this at any point in the process, though, unless we see it impacting the actions of a significant number of players. Maybe that should change? There are a goodly number of bugs that are discovered but never brought to the attention of the playerbase as a whole. Some are solved quickly, some take a long time or just aren't high enough priority to warrant fixing. There's a lot to read on the forums already. With our bug reporting system, bugs are moved off (the visible forum) as they are added to the Bugzilla engine (that tracks bugs), so there isn't much of an archive of current bugs that most people can rummage through. This does lead to a good deal of duplicate bug reporting, which isn't good for the morale of those taking the time to report bugs.

I want to be clear, I didn't post the above warning with the intent of wagging a finger at anyone, or making them feel guilty, or make them fear that we would hunt them down for past actions. The purpose was two-fold, and simple: 1) To make people aware of the problem and 2) To warn people not to take advantage of it, now that they know about it. I was prompted to do so by 1) Having just become reasonably confident that it was a "real" problem without a trivial fix and 2) A vague impression from the forum discussion that people might be loading up on mega-quantities of trade goods because of it. Nothing in the game is (should be) a really easy way to make coin, in my experience!

That said, these questions remain:
A) Do people want a public listing of current bugs and their status?
B) What would the purpose of such a listing be?
C) Would it be worth the time and effort required to keep it up to date?

It's really C that drives the silence, not a desire to keep anything secret. Though, that said, there are a few bugs that I've not advertised for fear of leading a few twinky types into temptation. This isn't one of them, though - here the concern was that I wasn't sure it wasn't just me!

[Emrys]

This bug cause a kind of knee-jerk response in me because I have been trading, and therefore guilty of exploiting this bug (although I didn't fully realize it). Generally speaking, I think the players are already well informed as to where we are on critical issues and there's no need to make any major change inthe way things are being done.
I dislike the idea of players being punished for bugs they were not aware of. However, I don't think that has bben the case. And from my limited experience with the imms, I suspect they would not levy a punishment simply for ignorance. That's good enough for me.

Oh, and the bug should be fixed But fix the one where mobs assisting cast area spells and kill us first

[Selveem]

That said, these questions remain:
A) Do people want a public listing of current bugs and their status?
B) What would the purpose of such a listing be?
C) Would it be worth the time and effort required to keep it up to date?

I'll go ahead and answer these in order:

A: I can't speak for everyone, but for myself: Yes. It is important to understand (much alike my post requesting code updates - I suspect they could even go in the same list since FK defines bugs as code issues for the most part) as players where bugs currently are so that it decreases the ignorance of players and those genuinely attempting to help the game. This will also cut back on the number of people submitting the same exact bug if they can see it's still being worked on.

B: To inform the players and increase accountability and to be fair regarding issues in-game that can affect the longevity of their characters and/or their ability to continue playing at FK. I'm not going to go into details when I say that often administrators _do_ expect you to know things that you may not when you've been a player here for some time. When the issue is published, however, and a player decidedly ignores it, it is easier to say 'Well, we made the information available to you but you chose not to read it or completely ignored it.' That is not to say, however, that those who 'exploited' the Merchant Trading wares bug should be severely punished.

C: Yes. For the reasons outlined above, I say yes.

[Japcil]

Just to make clear, I dont see the hard code. I just have a knack for tracing an issue to its roots because i'm stubborn.

Edited to add:

The current bug forum, is a current listing of all known bugs, reported to the tracker or not. If you do not see a bug there, then do not hesitate to post please. Even if you don't know for sure if it is a bug, asking will only grant knowledge. No one in my playing experience has ever been subject to code abuse for a bug they did not know about. The staff is very fair and reasonable. It is very easy to tell when a character knows they are exploiting a bug or not.