The "hard problem" thing is definitely annoying. A lot of really smart, talented, and hardworking people obviously work at Bungie, but even those people can make really dumb mistakes. People that are talented often have trouble admitting mistakes, and in this case Bungie is taking the "this problem is so hard, you could barely understand it!" route, which is a poor choice.

"Hard problem" (or "huge technical challenge" or however else this has been referred to) probably makes this sound more difficult than it actually is. We're not exactly talking about the moon landing! The reason it's difficult to understand isn't because it's some mind-bending brain twister that only Hawking could grasp, but simply because the systems where the problem exists are entirely custom to Bungie. Anyone not familiar with them in detail lacks 95% of the context of the problem. It's like trying to figure out the picture on a 1000-piece jigsaw when you can only see 50 pieces.

I look at bugs in other games (or even in systems I'm not familiar with in Destiny) and while I can sometimes take educated guesses at the cause, the only sure thing is that I can't possibly know without having the code open in front of me. Not because I'm dumb (although I am), but because I lack the context of the problem.

Unfortunately, communicating over the internet has a way of stripping all nuance from an issue :)

It is not my preferred social media outlet, though.

My guess is the problem is related to the API, but if it's really impossible, that still doesn't help my postmaster being full of shaders.

I think the problem is that it's really easy to fix, but it's also really easy to break a lot of other systems in the process. So the hardest part is actually make sure nothing else breaks.

I wonder if they could do the same fix that Guerilla did for Horizon Zero Dawn (even if it's a temporary solution). Rather than buying stacks, the longer you held down the button, the faster you'd buy them. In seconds, you'd have a steady stream of a resource being added to your inventory.

I wonder if the same process could be used to delete shaders.
Even if we can't delete them in bulk, it would save so much time for them to reduce the time to hold the button down to half a second. Honestly, I'd love to see reduced time-to-hold across the board.

That seems... tricky. I feel like they have X amount of seconds to delete anything right? I don't think they have any instant deleting of items. If they did, it might be easier to just set it to that. Maybe. It's so hard to say without seeing the code.

It's like designing the car without power steering. You could, and you could technically drive it, but nobody would want to.

You know, my mom drove a 1966 Ford Custom with arm-strong power-streering (aka no power steering) with manual brakes (no power brake booster on the master cylinder). She chose to drive that car over one that had powersteering and power brakes because she enjoyed actually using her muscles to operate the vehicle.

Anyway... I haven't read your post, but I just had to share that. :)

It's like designing the car without power steering. You could, and you could technically drive it, but nobody would want to.

Well, not nobody. There's a Miata sitting in my garage right now (it's not mine, but it's located there, LOL) which was very intentionally ordered without power steering.

Maybe the easier solution is to expand the shaders slots so that you have X slots, where X is the number of different shaders in the game. You wouldn't have to delete them if you would never run out of room.

For real. It's actually kind of baffling that this is even an issue. I mean, I understand WHY they're inventoried items - because Bungie wanted them to be something you work/grind for. I don't like that, but I understand that with that system, there needs to be an inventory so you can track what X amount of each item the player has. I just don't understand why it's possible to run out of room for them.

Cool: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. That's on us. We're going to redesign the system for next time. It's a standard feature, especially since deleting all your shaders would literally take hours.

Not cool: This is a hard problem.

I don't mind when people make mistakes, but I mind when they don't admit it and learn from them. Bungie literally said they were going to improve communication, then didn't communicate during faction rallies. They are just not learning from mistakes and making them over and over. And that makes me feel embarrassed for them. They are written about as a joke by major publications.

The "hard problem" thing is definitely annoying. A lot of really smart, talented, and hardworking people obviously work at Bungie, but even those people can make really dumb mistakes. People that are talented often have trouble admitting mistakes, and in this case Bungie is taking the "this problem is so hard, you could barely understand it!" route, which is a poor choice.

This isn't a Bungie-specific issue: computer science as a field struggles with this problem, probably because it's relatively new. Things-that-seem-simple-but-are-really-actually-complicated is a problem in all science and engineering endeavors, but those fields have had many more years to develop responses to the issue.

I agree with all of this as someone in the industry. I will also add that developers don't normally make decisions. They make input and do the work, but if someone told them to make shaders to exactly like other items then that is most likely what they will do. Now, I don't think that the gaming industry is exactly like other areas, nor do I assume that Bungie is like every other gaming company. But my bet is that someone told the developer to do it how it is and the developer got half way through it and thought that maybe there should be the ability to discard multiply shaders. This person either said "well, it's not on the Spec doc" and kept going or he told a manager and the manger said either "it's not on the spec doc" or "it could introduce more problems than it's worth at this point"

Ultimately, I don't care how it was created. I care how they are planning on changing it (not fixing it, because technically I don't think it's broken). And if it's as hard as the Heavy ammo bug, then they need someone to get up on stage and explain why to alleviate some of the pissed off people.

Cool: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. That's on us. We're going to redesign the system for next time. It's a standard feature, especially since deleting all your shaders would literally take hours.

Not cool: This is a hard problem.

I don't mind when people make mistakes, but I mind when they don't admit it and learn from them. Bungie literally said they were going to improve communication, then didn't communicate during faction rallies. They are just not learning from mistakes and making them over and over. And that makes me feel embarrassed for them. They are written about as a joke by major publications.

The "hard problem" thing is definitely annoying. A lot of really smart, talented, and hardworking people obviously work at Bungie, but even those people can make really dumb mistakes. People that are talented often have trouble admitting mistakes, and in this case Bungie is taking the "this problem is so hard, you could barely understand it!" route, which is a poor choice.

This isn't a Bungie-specific issue: computer science as a field struggles with this problem, probably because it's relatively new. Things-that-seem-simple-but-are-really-actually-complicated is a problem in all science and engineering endeavors, but those fields have had many more years to develop responses to the issue.

I don't know if this is a joke, serious, or something in between.

Crap, you've discovered my secret!

It's more like, the developer is someone who works at a bird sanctuary that the bird is flying around in.

Man, Bungie did not capture shaders from the coding wilderness (or did they...they are a lot like Chroma from D1...)

Cool: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to redesign the system for next time.

Don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it.

Realistic: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to LOOK AT HOW TO redesign the system for next time.

In a field this competitive, you can't do that. You have to actually measure up and meet minimum standards.

And you are assuming that gamers create the only standard. And the most vocal gamers have absurdly unrealistic standards.

Not spending 30 minutes deleting a stack of shaders is not unrealistic. Again, many games, even modern ones, let you do this. This particular issue is not unrealistic. It's not game breaking, but it's crazy when it would literally take you hours to clear all your shaders.

Maybe the easier solution is to expand the shaders slots so that you have X slots, where X is the number of different shaders in the game. You wouldn't have to delete them if you would never run out of room.

And I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I agree with you on that, it should be fixed. I'm disagreeing with you on the extent that this is game breaking.

And yes, I can believe they could have easily made that oopsie when trying to ship Destiny 2. And being able to scrap multiple shaders was not even thought of compared to all the other things. Is it their fault for not implementing this now? Sure. Is it their fault for not foreseeing this? I'm not entirely sure. Should they get this much shit for missing this? As a developer, I say hell no.

This is why I say a lot of this is over trivial shit. Each problem on its own is not that big a deal, but multiply problem after problem and the perception becomes that of incompetence.

And it is completely their fault for not getting it right immediately. Especially when you have a limited inventory, being able to delete items is crucial. Being able to clear all items from a stack of multiple is crucial. It's like designing the car without power steering. You could, and you could technically drive it, but nobody would want to.

I agree that there should be way to discard multiple items in relation to shaders. Because it's ONLY relevant to shaders. And yeah, I think they should have looked longer at shaders because it's a new way type of item that you will be holding multiple of them.

But, to compare that to power steering... that is way overboard. steering is the main component in cars that allows you to use the thing. Power steering is a luxury version of that. If we were talking about aiming, running or jumping in Destiny then I will take that comparison. Because then the aim magnetism would be equivalent to power steering. This, IMO is more like a car maker making the inside of a car funking to the point where it really hard to clean the inside of the car effectively.

Cool: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to redesign the system for next time.

Don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it.

Realistic: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to LOOK AT HOW TO redesign the system for next time.

In a field this competitive, you can't do that. You have to actually measure up and meet minimum standards.

And you are assuming that gamers create the only standard. And the most vocal gamers have absurdly unrealistic standards.

Not spending 30 minutes deleting a stack of shaders is not unrealistic. Again, many games, even modern ones, let you do this. This particular issue is not unrealistic. It's not game breaking, but it's crazy when it would literally take you hours to clear all your shaders.

Maybe the easier solution is to expand the shaders slots so that you have X slots, where X is the number of different shaders in the game. You wouldn't have to delete them if you would never run out of room.

And yes, I can believe they could have easily made that oopsie when trying to ship Destiny 2. And being able to scrap multiple shaders was not even thought of compared to all the other things. Is it their fault for not implementing this now? Sure. Is it their fault for not foreseeing this? I'm not entirely sure. Should they get this much shit for missing this? As a developer, I say hell no.

This is why I say a lot of this is over trivial shit. Each problem on its own is not that big a deal, but multiply problem after problem and the perception becomes that of incompetence.

And it is completely their fault for not getting it right immediately. Especially when you have a limited inventory, being able to delete items is crucial. Being able to clear all items from a stack of multiple is crucial. It's like designing the car without power steering. You could, and you could technically drive it, but nobody would want to.

Cool: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to redesign the system for next time.

Don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it.

Realistic: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to LOOK AT HOW TO redesign the system for next time.

In a field this competitive, you can't do that. You have to actually measure up and meet minimum standards.

And you are assuming that gamers create the only standard. And the most vocal gamers have absurdly unrealistic standards.

It's not that situation. Games since the early 80s have let you dismantle or delete multiple copies of items easily.

It is self inflicted. There is just something a bit off putting about saying something is hard publicly, but not admitting it was only hard because you made it hard.

Cool: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to redesign the system for next time.

Not cool: This is a hard problem.

It could have been self inflicted. It was probably a manager somewhere who didn't get the memo that in (code speak incoming) the "item class" didn't have a special case for shaders that allow you to delete multiple items.

Because I'm about 90% sure that there is an overarching class for "Items" where all items that can be discarded/scrapped fall under that. But they didn't add any additional code to do that. And it's much harder to add that code now because it's apart of the "Items" class which, as you might imagine, affects a ton of stuff.

And yes, I can believe they could have easily made that oopsie when trying to ship Destiny 2. And being able to scrap multiple shaders was not even thought of compared to all the other things. Is it their fault for not implementing this now? Sure. Is it their fault for not foreseeing this? I'm not entirely sure. Should they get this much shit for missing this? As a developer, I say hell no.

Cool: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to redesign the system for next time.

Don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it.

Realistic: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to LOOK AT HOW TO redesign the system for next time.

In a field this competitive, you can't do that. You have to actually measure up and meet minimum standards.

Cool: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to redesign the system for next time.

Don't make a girl a promise if you know you can't keep it.

Realistic: We designed the system a certain way, and that made it hard to delete multiple things. We're going to LOOK AT HOW TO redesign the system for next time.