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Ubi-Petter
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With the release of Episode 1 and Title Update 5, we fixed a whole bunch of bugs and issues on top of all the content we introduced. However, the issues around the Reviver Hive have been with us for a while now. Title Update 5 came with improvements to the skill but there are some aspects of it we are still looking into.
Because of this, we’d like to take the opportunity give you some insights into how things can go when investigating and fixing a bug. Some bugs are quite straightforward and easy to fix. Others can be much more complex and much more complicated than they seem at first glance. The Reviver Hive is one such situation.
Let’s start with the basics – players experience that the Reviver Hive doesn’t work in some instances. The Reviver Hive drops, you die… And nothing happens. You should have been revived, but you weren’t.
The first step on the way to a solution is to reproduce the problem. What was happening? Reports were coming in from players, but we didn’t have any consistent reproduction steps yet. We knew it was happening, we experienced it ourselves, but the circumstances were not clear. We tried everything we could come up with, all the different situations in which the Reviver Hive is used, while looking behind the scenes to see what was going on with the scripts involved, for example.
The community started sending us videos of the issue, which was a great help. We saw how players were trying to use the Hive. That allowed us to identify some of the situations the issue occurred in. For example, players were hammering skill buttons to heal when they noticed they were dying, maybe to get the Chem Launcher Reinforcer out in time. We saw that doing that could make the Reviver Hive fail to auto-drop - basically, the game tries to push the “deploy skill" button and you can only deploy one skill at the same time. So, someone spamming the other equipped skill would prevent them from being pushed at the same time and thus the Hive would not deploy. We looked at various states the player could be in and made sure that the Hive would auto drop and do its thing no matter what. That was a big fix and it helped most players.
The Reviver Hive is reliant on the overall revive system. While looking into the issues that were reported, we found a bunch of other problems in other systems that would interact with the functionality of the skill. Reliance on other systems made it easy to implement the skill but complicated to find workarounds. Whenever one system that the Reviver Hive relied on was changed, the Hive could become unstable. Communication about changes like this can be tricky in a team consisting of hundreds of people across the globe, all working on different aspects of the game.
Over time, we patched these problems with the Reviver Hive. The skill variant no longer listened to the client and relied on the server’s information. Problems with the other systems mentioned above were fixed and those fixes were added to the game. We found that there could still be occurrences when players experienced issues, even if they were rare.
So, we went back to the start, looked into reproducing the remaining issues, checking all the scripts and testing the Hive during stressful situations. For example, we checked what would happen if four players used the skill at the same time, trying to revive each other while a whole bunch of NPCs was shooting at them. A couple of other fail states were found and fixed. The flow of scripts and the various checks the skill would do got a complete workover. Now, one major issue with the Reviver Hive remains.
Turns out, the Hive works as intended most of the time, but it’s not very good at communicating to the player that it’s been destroyed by NPCs while you were reviving. It looks like it is there when it isn’t. You can’t see the health bar of the Hive when you’re in a downed state, the UI isn’t telling you that it’s gone, so it looks bugged. The Hive needs line of sight to the people it is supposed to revive. Status effects, like being shocked, get in the way. So, beyond the stuff happening under the hood, there are also issues on the surface.
Making sure that the Hive’s health bar is visible to downed players or adding other UI elements that will reliably tell you what’s happening, like line of sight indicators, is complicated. These new UI elements need to work with all the systems that the Hive itself relies on. It’s an intricate web of systems and aspects that the team needs to consider.
For now, we reworded the in-game description of the skill and removed the need to press a button to revive while in its area of effect. In Title Update 5, we made sure to optimize the scripts involved with the Hive as well. Other UI changes are being actively worked on and will be introduced in a future Title Update, including the health bar being visible no matter if you’re downed or not.
With Title Update 5, we’re still actively monitoring the Hive and its functionality. Being aware that it might have been destroyed might help your tactics. That said, we’re still working to make sure that you have all the information that we feel is lacking right now.
We’re hoping that this tale of the Reviver Hive can give you a better insight into how complex it can be to find where bugs come from, but also how much work the developers put into fixing them. It also shows how important player reports and videos are – we’re are incredibly grateful for all the information you give us, so that we can make the game the best it can be.
/The Division Development Team
Because of this, we’d like to take the opportunity give you some insights into how things can go when investigating and fixing a bug. Some bugs are quite straightforward and easy to fix. Others can be much more complex and much more complicated than they seem at first glance. The Reviver Hive is one such situation.
Let’s start with the basics – players experience that the Reviver Hive doesn’t work in some instances. The Reviver Hive drops, you die… And nothing happens. You should have been revived, but you weren’t.
The first step on the way to a solution is to reproduce the problem. What was happening? Reports were coming in from players, but we didn’t have any consistent reproduction steps yet. We knew it was happening, we experienced it ourselves, but the circumstances were not clear. We tried everything we could come up with, all the different situations in which the Reviver Hive is used, while looking behind the scenes to see what was going on with the scripts involved, for example.
The community started sending us videos of the issue, which was a great help. We saw how players were trying to use the Hive. That allowed us to identify some of the situations the issue occurred in. For example, players were hammering skill buttons to heal when they noticed they were dying, maybe to get the Chem Launcher Reinforcer out in time. We saw that doing that could make the Reviver Hive fail to auto-drop - basically, the game tries to push the “deploy skill" button and you can only deploy one skill at the same time. So, someone spamming the other equipped skill would prevent them from being pushed at the same time and thus the Hive would not deploy. We looked at various states the player could be in and made sure that the Hive would auto drop and do its thing no matter what. That was a big fix and it helped most players.
The Reviver Hive is reliant on the overall revive system. While looking into the issues that were reported, we found a bunch of other problems in other systems that would interact with the functionality of the skill. Reliance on other systems made it easy to implement the skill but complicated to find workarounds. Whenever one system that the Reviver Hive relied on was changed, the Hive could become unstable. Communication about changes like this can be tricky in a team consisting of hundreds of people across the globe, all working on different aspects of the game.
Over time, we patched these problems with the Reviver Hive. The skill variant no longer listened to the client and relied on the server’s information. Problems with the other systems mentioned above were fixed and those fixes were added to the game. We found that there could still be occurrences when players experienced issues, even if they were rare.
So, we went back to the start, looked into reproducing the remaining issues, checking all the scripts and testing the Hive during stressful situations. For example, we checked what would happen if four players used the skill at the same time, trying to revive each other while a whole bunch of NPCs was shooting at them. A couple of other fail states were found and fixed. The flow of scripts and the various checks the skill would do got a complete workover. Now, one major issue with the Reviver Hive remains.
Turns out, the Hive works as intended most of the time, but it’s not very good at communicating to the player that it’s been destroyed by NPCs while you were reviving. It looks like it is there when it isn’t. You can’t see the health bar of the Hive when you’re in a downed state, the UI isn’t telling you that it’s gone, so it looks bugged. The Hive needs line of sight to the people it is supposed to revive. Status effects, like being shocked, get in the way. So, beyond the stuff happening under the hood, there are also issues on the surface.
Making sure that the Hive’s health bar is visible to downed players or adding other UI elements that will reliably tell you what’s happening, like line of sight indicators, is complicated. These new UI elements need to work with all the systems that the Hive itself relies on. It’s an intricate web of systems and aspects that the team needs to consider.
For now, we reworded the in-game description of the skill and removed the need to press a button to revive while in its area of effect. In Title Update 5, we made sure to optimize the scripts involved with the Hive as well. Other UI changes are being actively worked on and will be introduced in a future Title Update, including the health bar being visible no matter if you’re downed or not.
With Title Update 5, we’re still actively monitoring the Hive and its functionality. Being aware that it might have been destroyed might help your tactics. That said, we’re still working to make sure that you have all the information that we feel is lacking right now.
We’re hoping that this tale of the Reviver Hive can give you a better insight into how complex it can be to find where bugs come from, but also how much work the developers put into fixing them. It also shows how important player reports and videos are – we’re are incredibly grateful for all the information you give us, so that we can make the game the best it can be.
/The Division Development Team