Is there a reason we don’t see frequent bug fixes?

[Windscreen Smudge]

Because many small releases are not efficient, neither in workload nor in fixing stuff.

Efficient in what context? Finances or keeping players?

Great for finances short term. Horrible for keeping players and thus a death sentence long term.

They don't fail and therefore they don't need excuses. They don't want to release updates every week because it isn't efficient for them. They could, but it would likely create more issues than it would solve.


PS
Your "hire more devs to fix issue x faster" just shows that you don't have any idea about software development.

They do absolutely fail in this regard. Game-breaking bugs being left to fester like an open wound on the live servers for months at a time is a complete, irredeemable failure that cannot be excused. You're driving off players, and games live or die by their player base.

Wrong again. The player base was even worse two years ago. Stop making stuff up just because you need something to back your agenda. If your argument is any good it will be better without it.

No, the player base wasn't worse. Speaking as someone that's been active on the forums since March 2014.

Almost 3 years now and this place has been like riding the short bus down the highway to hell.

 

[Cobra1984]

The game is ridden with bugs, unfortunately... Some are still there from day one. I remember the times when small bug fixes used to roll out every week or so. What happened to that? Why do we have to wait for months for a major update to get something fixed (and something broken again LOL)?


Is this the case of consoles screwing us over again? As I understand it, there are some extra procedures involved with rolling out updates on Xbox Live or something. But why do we have to keep up with consoles since there is no cross platform gameplay anyway?


Now that the PS4 release is on the horizon (ba dum tsss!) that got me worried even more. The SRV scanner will probably remain broken for another year...


Or does the QA team need a pay raise?

A lot of really basic stuff has slipped through QA since the latter half of 2016.

I spent a few weeks scanning and reading the Frontier bug report and support forums daily, as I'm waiting on a bug to be fixed since 2.2. If you spend enough time in those forums reading the responses from the QA team, it's eye opening.

- - - Updated - - -

No, the player base wasn't worse. Speaking as someone that's been active on the forums since March 2014.

Almost 3 years now and this place has been like riding the short bus down the highway to hell.

I dunno man, I was around in 2014 and I saw plenty of forum veterans and folks who I had respect for suddenly start acting like their secret private whiskey and cigar club had been infiltrated by filth and vagabonds.

 

[Mikey2305]

I seem to remember in the old days that we could have a civilised discussion. I see little evidence of that these days. Every thread seems to quickly degenerate into a toxic state. My view on bugs is they get reported and identified and tested and resolved as and when they can. I trust the developers to have a workable system. I am patient enough to know that this takes time and that some bugs (eg mission instafail) would appear to be simple but are actually complex and can have unexpected knock on effects on the rest of the game. Every download has about 300 items on it and i have no reason to think the next one will be different...

 

[Mengy]

The Xbox version is the reason we see much fewer minor updates now than we used to.

Microsoft's patch/update approval process is rather cumbersome and takes time. Microsoft prefers devs to patch larger and less often rather than smaller and more often, and their approval process is geared towards this. So because Frontier wants to maintain version parity now, the PC version's updating process is essentially just as hampered as if it was a Microsoft game too. It's why we regularly see minor bug fixes languish for months waiting for large point updates, when in the past we'd see many minor updates to fix bugs in between large point updates.

The good news is that the PS4 version won't make this any worse, but all three platforms will still remain hamstrung by the Xbox version unfortunately.

 

[John Stoutbeard]

I seem to remember in the old days that we could have a civilised discussion. I see little evidence of that these days. Every thread seems to quickly degenerate into a toxic state. My view on bugs is they get reported and identified and tested and resolved as and when they can. I trust the developers to have a workable system. I am patient enough to know that this takes time and that some bugs (eg mission instafail) would appear to be simple but are actually complex and can have unexpected knock on effects on the rest of the game. Every download has about 300 items on it and i have no reason to think the next one will be different...

Yes, people seem to get easily upset and think the whole forum needs to learn about their rage & frustration.
Personally I've been writing posts and then pushed *Cancel* before posting it.

But still on topic, the bugs that I've been pulling my hair our about re "Exploring":
- Wave scanner. For months on end while not being able to use it properly due to the overlap/shadow issue. The while SRV Horizon experience is in tatters when you search on ground.
- Adjudication server errors when exploring ruins. For weeks.
Combined they shatter my gameplay.

And no word on hotfixes is really frustrating.

What else I find a bit worrying, is that some live-stream mentioning the Adjudication-problem being a player created one.
Because of mission stacking. But then again I just overheard this as paraphrase, I may be wrong.
People have been mission-stacking for over a year, all the way back to gamma-release. Long before v2.2.
So what changed?
Well, at least back then we didn't have any ruins to explore and obelisks to scan. (All been bug-properly reported though).

Ok, sorry. I didn't press cancel on this post. I hope it's civil enough.
o7 All.

 

[Ian Phillips]

The Xbox version is the reason we see much fewer minor updates now than we used to.

You could not be more wrong.

Early on after the game released, FD would bring out bug fixes almost every week. The down side of that was that everyone had to update the launcher and download the new patch every time, which generated a LOT of complaints from the player base.

Eventually FD agreed with the players and changed the policy of fixing bugs straight away, to a much less frequent update policy.

So don't go spouting rubbish about diferent platforms being the reason for long waits between bugs updates. The long waits are exactly what the player base asked for - long before there was any Xbox version.

 

[babelfisch]

And your spelling is rubbish.

It's the autocorrect of my mobile that is rubbish...

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

I dunno man, I was around in 2014 and I saw plenty of forum veterans and folks who I had respect for suddenly start acting like their secret private whiskey and cigar club had been infiltrated by filth and vagabonds.

Hey, I didn't say it wasn't just as bad, or a different kind of terrible, I just said it wasn't any better now than it was then.

 

[Mengy]

You could not be more wrong.

Early on after the game released, FD would bring out bug fixes almost every week. The down side of that was that everyone had to update the launcher and download the new patch every time, which generated a LOT of complaints from the player base.

Eventually FD agreed with the players and changed the policy of fixing bugs straight away, to a much less frequent update policy.

So don't go spouting rubbish about diferent platforms being the reason for long waits between bugs updates. The long waits are exactly what the player base asked for - long before there was any Xbox version.

Well it's not rubbish, Microsoft does have longer update approval times than Sony and PC games. That's just a fact of the industry, so it does't take a long stretch to bridge the gap between Frontier's change in updating schedule coinciding with the release of Elite on the Xbox.

It's common with games that do not value version parity to regularly update for minor bug fixes and such on Sony and PC while their Xbox version falls behind and lumps the same updates into less frequent but larger patches. This is always due to Microsoft's approval process. With games that value or require version parity, the other platforms get held back due to Microsoft's rules.

It may be very possible that Frontier willingly allows bugs to linger in the game for another reason, I'd just find that odd and unlikely? Especially given the timing of the updating change and the Xbox release, coupled with Frontiers first year of very regular updates...

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

You could not be more wrong.

Early on after the game released, FD would bring out bug fixes almost every week. The down side of that was that everyone had to update the launcher and download the new patch every time, which generated a LOT of complaints from the player base.

Eventually FD agreed with the players and changed the policy of fixing bugs straight away, to a much less frequent update policy.

Which is quite possibly one of the most idiotic decisions I've heard of them ever making. People complaining about a game getting fixed should not be given the time of day, let alone influence design development philosophies for a company they neither work at, own or influence in any significant way.

The majority of us were not only happy with constant patching, but find it to be a mandatory behavior for any company that maintains a persistently online multiplayer game.

 

[Ian Phillips]

Read what I wrote.

The rubbish is the unfounded and inaccurate statement that the infrequent bug fixes are due to the Xbox port. That is simply not true, and if you had bothered to do a bit of research you would know that.

 

[babelfisch]

Efficient in what context? Finances or keeping players?

Great for finances short term. Horrible for keeping players and thus a death sentence long term.

Efficient for fixing stuff rather than creating new bugs with an untested update. Death sentence? 2014 called, they want their "the game is dying back".

They do absolutely fail in this regard. Game-breaking bugs being left to fester like an open wound on the live servers for months at a time is a complete, irredeemable failure that cannot be excused. You're driving off players, and games live or die by their player base.

Which is why I said the game needs better beta tests rather than more releases. Would be nice if you could apply some logic. Also 2014 called again.

No, the player base wasn't worse. Speaking as someone that's been active on the forums since March 2014.

Almost 3 years now and this place has been like riding the short bus down the highway to hell.

Maybe not worse but at least just as bad. I've been active since 2014 as well and I remember all the good rants.

 

[ErichZann]

I'd like more bug fix updates, but that comes with more server downtime.

For some reason, Devs always pick my day off for maintenance, so I'd rather have a monthly fix, than weekly.

But fixing one big can often create several more, so I dunno.
Devs know best.

But we dont get monthly fixed either.

 

[babelfisch]

Which is quite possibly one of the most idiotic decisions I've heard of them ever making. People complaining about a game getting fixed should not be given the time of day, let alone influence design development philosophies for a company they neither work at, own or influence in any significant way.

The majority of us were not only happy with constant patching, but find it to be a mandatory behavior for any company that maintains a persistently online multiplayer game.

Most of the time they did break more things than they fixed. Which is why I am for fewer releases and more testing. (it's so logical that it hurts)

- - - Updated - - -

But we dont get monthly fixed either.

We had ~20 updates during the last year (not counting the beta updates). I'd say this is a little bit more than monthly (on average...).

 

[bitstorm]

Most of the time they did break more things than they fixed. Which is why I am for fewer releases and more testing. (it's so logical that it hurts)

With smaller updates, it's a lot clearer where the issues are and they're more easily found and fixed.

For me I would prefer many small updates rather than a monolithic update, for releases too. This way releases become routine, so bugfixes happen much faster, and are found quicker too due to smaller changes going out each time.

ie Once passengers was done, push it, don't wait for SLF to be done, queuing things up for an almighty 2.2 release.

Do not wait, push it out and move on.

Is the Dolphin or Beluga done? Push it out, let players have it, move on, don't hold it back.

Release and put emphasis on dev teams getting it out the door...

Is it done? RELEASE, RELEASE, RELEASE!!!



I understand there's probably more marketing benefit for the big headline releases though.

 

[babelfisch]

With smaller updates, it's a lot clearer where the issues are and they're more easily fixed.

For me I would prefer many small updates rather than a monolithic update, for releases too.

ie Once passengers was done, push it, don't wait for SLF to be done, queuing things up for an almighty 2.2 release.

Push it out and move on.

I think most bugs in Elite aren't related to a typo in a new line of code, they are usually very complex and can be spread over several iterations and releases going back to stuff they did 3 years ago. Smaller patches wouldn't help in that regard.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Efficient for fixing stuff rather than creating new bugs with an untested update. Death sentence? 2014 called, they want their "the game is dying back".



Which is why I said the game needs better beta tests rather than more releases. Would be nice if you could apply some logic. Also 2014 called again.





Maybe not worse but at least just as bad. I've been active since 2014 as well and I remember all the good rants.

So are you suggesting we have less bugs now than we did in 2015? Patch notes would seem to disagree with that... They already rely on the player base to find the majority of the bugs, by patching less they just give us less opportunities to provide feedback. Internal testing obviously doesn't compare to having thousands of hours played across all fields of play in the game 24 hours after you release the next hot update. And you know players love finding bugs. It's not efficient in that respect either. You're just reducing the efficacy of your test platform by leaving broken releases out in the wild.

Game has been dead, but people are desperate for space sims. I used to think Star Citizen was going to be the death knell of ED, but since they're in development hell they're just acting as a free advertising agent at this point when fans of that game start looking for something that's actually been released.

How are you going to improve the beta tests? Serious question. You've seen FDev's pattern with betas and you know it isn't going to change, which makes the game a perpetual beta test. If your perpetual beta test isn't getting updated then are you helping or hindering progress?

There were good rants but if you go back and look you'll realize the language was a lot less flowery and expressive. Given, the mods were pretty quick about cleaning up the really prolific emotional posts back then so it's a bit sterile compared to the live experience, but things were still pretty clean back then.

 

[bitstorm]

I think most bugs in Elite aren't related to a typo in a new line of code, they are usually very complex and can be spread over several iterations and releases going back to stuff they did 3 years ago. Smaller patches wouldn't help in that regard.

I think it absolutely would.

A small change area is better than large area, it's that simple. Perhaps one person's changes to a function aren't mixed in with these other changes someone else did.

The dependencies exist regardless.


I'd also add that devs are intimate with the code at that piont.

Maybe you finish engineer mods for weapons, then 2 months later it goes live. (due to other features being required for the "arbitrarily" grouped 2.2 release)

On release turns out there's a problem with weapon mods, you're then head in hands :

"Oh god I forgot how complex this bit of code was, why did I implement it that way again, there was a specific reason wasn't there?".​

 

[babelfisch]

So are you suggesting we have less bugs now than we did in 2015? Patch notes would seem to disagree with that... They already rely on the player base to find the majority of the bugs, by patching less they just give us less opportunities to provide feedback. Internal testing obviously doesn't compare to having thousands of hours played across all fields of play in the game 24 hours after you release the next hot update. And you know players love finding bugs. It's not efficient in that respect either. You're just reducing the efficacy of your test platform by leaving broken releases out in the wild.

No, I am not suggesting that. What I am suggesting is that fewer releases and more beta testing would mean less bugs.

How are you going to improve the beta tests? Serious question. You've seen FDev's pattern with betas and you know it isn't going to change, which makes the game a perpetual beta test. If your perpetual beta test isn't getting updated then are you helping or hindering progress?

Simple: Stay in beta until all known bugs are fixed. Also test the RC. "But FDEV is not going to do that"... True, but it's still more likely and makes more sense than releasing a hotfix every week.

 

[jonesskill]

Yeah, no bug fixing:

Just tree exemples:

Premium ammo bug reported more than a year: not fixed yet. ( If they don't know how to fix yet, why don't disable the sintetize until they work in a solution)
Unstable connection playing in private mode (Players don't see eachother, need several loguin/logoff to work): reported in 2015 - Not fixed yet.
FeedBack cascade torpedoes immune to ECM and Point Defence: reported in August 2016 - Not Fixed Yet. ( If they don't know how to fix yet, why don't disable this experimental effect until they work in a solution)

Common guys, let's stop to live in the wonderland: they launch new content and don't fix OLD bugs, clearly showing that they don't care.

"The community complain about small patches" - i don't belive in this, EVERY game have update to fix bugs. Even the smallest ones.