Another fun example (Destiny)

by Claude Errera , Thursday, September 24, 2015, 20:37 (3444 days ago) @ Kahzgul

"Hey, people are making new characters to buy strange coins." Fixed that weekend(maybe even that day, I wasn't playing then).

"Xur isn't selling heavy ammo packs while everyone is complaining about losing 2-3 rockets on death." Takes month(s) to add back to his inventory.

Some things are trivial to fix. Other things aren't.

Are you saying that trivial things should be ignored until the important, difficult ones are fully finished? (Do you even think the same people are working on the two classes of bugs?)

While this example is one design bug and another code bug, his point really does strike me as valid. Destiny's exploits have been fixed very quickly (Aetheon grenade - dodging off the ledge, Crota disconnect during AoE grenade damage, others I can't immediately recall) while Destiny's more anti-player bugs (Aetheon not teleporting anyone, Crota attacking before standing up, sword disappearing during the Crota fight, etc.) lingered for very long times.

The net result is that it feels like Bungie is intentionally favoring bug fixes which aid the player, but leaving in bugs which put the player at a disadvantage. Heck, some of the "bugs" Bungie fixed were really just very novel approaches to the existing fights, but those got "fixed" anyway.

All of your examples of exploits are things players did voluntarily (after stumbling across them, or, far more likely, reading about them on the internet). All of your examples of 'anti-player bugs' are things that happen to (some) players, totally involuntarily.

That is: if something affects 5% of your userbase (well, probably way less than that - I've done a dozen Crota raids and Crota's never stood up for me, a huge percentage of Destiny players have never even TRIED Crota), that's one level of damage-vs-gain discussion, in terms of fixing.

If someone comes up with an exploit that affects double-digit percentages of your playerbase (and that number continues to increase, since it's a VOLUNTARY thing people are seeking out), it behooves you to spend a little extra time fixing it sooner.

Or, you know, buggy bosses could be harder to troubleshoot than, say, putting up a guardrail for your endboss.