Why does it take so long to fix game issues?

Audaxxx

Audaxxx
I've been playing No Mans Sky recently and noticed that the rate at which the bugs are getting fixed compared to Elite is nothing short of a miracle. I was looking at the patch releases here

https://www.nomanssky.com/release-log/

and how many bugs are being fixed in such a short period of time and it really puts ED to shame. They actually seem to take the bug reports from players and fix stuff within a few weeks even the small issues yet Elite has bugs and games issues that are still around from years ago.

What are Hello Games doing differently and would it be possible for Frontier to maybe learn a few things from over there with regards to how development and bug fixing is tackled?

Would it be worthwhile Frontier assigning some more resources toward fixing game issues rather than releasing yet more weapons that I personally don't really care about?
 

Riverside

Riverside
The whole of season 3 is essentially about fixing the game.

You said it yourself about hello games, their current rate of progress isn't typical.

I do wish bug fixes wouldn't be left for months though, I'd prefer more small patches for bug fixes & leave the new content for the big updates.
 

ZeeWolf

ZeeWolf
Not sure what you are comparing with what.

Bug is an ambiguous term that can represent five seconds of work to years.

You can put together a list of "fixes" you make to anything. An email, a cake, a walk in the park, a forum post.

All lists are not the same.

###AMAZING FORUM POST FIX BUG LIST RELEASE 1.7 ALPHA###

1. Changed "An email" to "a forum post"
2. Added exciting bug list to email post
3. Added this line
4. Changed 1.3 to 1.4 making this the 1.5 post release
5. Clicked the save button. Fixed!!!!
6. Added a space under the title for this list
7. Made the title bold
 
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Hellfire85

Hellfire85
Maybe other people do care about new guns.

Also, nothing to learn from NMS. Not the same engine, not the same workload.
 

Ian Skippy

Ian Skippy
verminstar said:
In the minds of many, frontier are ¨special¨ and if yer not a coder yerself, ye will be lambasted fer so much as daring to question that and accused of having unrealistic expectations ^
Click to expand...

Its more that some of these complaints are demonstrably horsecrap. Look at the 3.0 patch list of ED, and compare that with the NMS logs. The 'NMS fixes more bugs!' thing is just something people who cant count very well came up with.
 

thistle

T
It's a little like complaining about how long your reliable trustworthy dealership takes to perform maintenance on your car, and comparing to that chancer in a back alley who sold you a wreck with no engine and then disappeared for a year. I'm not going to sing his praises for turning up with the engine now, 2 years later.
 

thistle

T
In fact the only comparison would be if Frontier had promised atmospheric landings and space legs were in version 1.0, honest, only for us to download and find was it @*#!

Audaxxx said:
What are Hello Games doing differently and would it be possible for Frontier to maybe learn a few things from over there with regards to how development and bug fixing is tackled?
Click to expand...
Aye, right.
 

mojonaut

mojonaut
thistle said:
It's a little like complaining about how long your reliable trustworthy dealership takes to perform maintenance on your car, .
Click to expand...

Except your so called 'trustworthy dealer' sold us a four wheel car but it was supplied with only three and four+ years later they still haven't got around to fixing that.

But never mind they have a fancy paint shop where you can buy a new look for your three wheeler.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Audaxxx said:
I've been playing No Mans Sky recently and noticed that the rate at which the bugs are getting fixed compared to Elite is nothing short of a miracle. I was looking at the patch releases here

https://www.nomanssky.com/release-log/

and how many bugs are being fixed in such a short period of time and it really puts ED to shame. They actually seem to take the bug reports from players and fix stuff within a few weeks even the small issues yet Elite has bugs and games issues that are still around from years ago.

What are Hello Games doing differently and would it be possible for Frontier to maybe learn a few things from over there with regards to how development and bug fixing is tackled?

Would it be worthwhile Frontier assigning some more resources toward fixing game issues rather than releasing yet more weapons that I personally don't really care about?
Click to expand...

First, comparitions even with more information is nonsense in general. Stuff doesn't work like that in real life. Also FD does not release full Changelogs for some time now - people complained that list is too big and lot of commit messages were spoilery. They compose it by hand now, effectively decreasing size of changelog by factor of four at least.

Now if you ask why bug fixes come slow in general - more complex software, harder to fix bugs. Act fact that FD avoids to refactor code till it is absolutely neccesary...yeah it is not ideal but NMS is single player game and ED is massive online game. Difference is so huge that it is not funny. Being single player allows for easier rollout of fixes as you know it won't impact other parts of game so gravely.
 
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Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
mojonaut said:
Except your so called 'trustworthy dealer' sold us a four wheel car but it was supplied with only three and four+ years later they still haven't got around to fixing that.

But never mind they have a fancy paint shop where you can buy a new look for your three wheeler.
Click to expand...

Not sure that's proper analogy. FD has delivered 95% of stuff it has promised. Only issue is offline mode which FD refunded anyone having issues with that.
 

thistle

T
mojonaut said:
Except your so called 'trustworthy dealer' sold us a four wheel car but it was supplied with only three and four+ years later they still haven't got around to fixing that.

But never mind they have a fancy paint shop where you can buy a new look for your three wheeler.
Click to expand...
No, they sold it with all 4 wheels. They proposed adding go faster stripes and a spoiler or two at a later date :D

What the other lot did was sell a car, promising 4 wheels, even to the extent of being asked in the runup to delivery if there were definitely going to be four wheels, yes, yes, there would. There were not.

And to be clear, I quite like their car. That doesn't excuse the way it was sold or the state it was in on delivery. It's an insult to our hypothetical 'trustworthy dealer'.

This analogy is twitching on the ground and breathing it's last, I think.
 

Barking_Mad

Barking_Mad
a) Frontier are lazy and love leaving bugs in their code to annoy players and give a bad impression of themselves and the company.

b) Code is complex and bugs could be hard to trace, reproduce or lead to other things being broken when fixed.

If you wear a tinfoil hat it's a) if you use your brain it's b).

FWIW There were over 1000 bug fixes in Chapter 1 and at least 60 in Chapter 2. NMS is a very different game with very different dependencies.

mojonaut said:
Except your so called 'trustworthy dealer' sold us a four wheel car but it was supplied with only three and four+ years later they still haven't got around to fixing that.

But never mind they have a fancy paint shop where you can buy a new look for your three wheeler.
Click to expand...

3 years 8 months since the release of 1.0.
 
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Barking_Mad

Barking_Mad
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