Patch Notes Update April Update - Patch 2

[ferus]

Sorry but I don't agree, it's certainly not game breaking. For objects that can't resolve just exiting the FSS and fly a bit closer has always fixed it for me, and unmapped showing as mapped, surely you have already got a pattern sorted for just about any size object that works regardless of what is showing. I just fire off the probes in my already established pattern and it's mapped anyway.

I find it at at worst annoying and I agree it should be fixed asap, but it's certainly not game breaking even to a dedicated explorer like me.

It is game breaking when the only option you have in the void is exploration.
There is NOTHING else to do out there so it is game breaking.

And most of the time it is not a question of turning it off and on again.
At least not for me.
FSS is severely bugged for me.


For the mapping issue - I managed to lose quite a few efficiency bonus opportunities (not a big deal but I am making a point here). You can't always fire the probes exactly the same way... and since you are unable to see what is mapped and what isn't it's a problem.
Not as big as FSS but still a problem (which BTW they claimed is fixed and it isn't).

 

[ferus]

There's no game today that always works out of the box on the day the patch is released. Even Nintendo games, that are known for their crisp and stellar programming skills with almost zero bugs, sometimes they need to release quick fix for the patch (e.g. Splatoon 2).

This is however on a different level.
I just don’t understand how on earth did FDev manage to screw up the last patch.

According to the patch notes there were very few changes to FSS and yet they introduced 2 very big issues.
One of them is just so obvious that I don’t believe they did not catch it.
I believe they did not test it at all.

Not to mention reintroduction of old and already resolved bugs (the 10 cr repair all bug). Just how?

I understand that coding is complicated and everything but this requires nothing but a quick glance at the screen.
Again it suggests zero testing.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Excellent, should make my trip back from Beagle Point more pleasant

 

[varonica]

Doesn't work for everyone. Just today i flew as close as 1,5k ls from the guardian site( was at 72k ls originnaly) still FSS wouldn't work on it.
Sooooooooooooooooo annoying, but glad they are fixing it.

Can't imagine the levels of frustrtions other CMDRs are going through with this bug, while exploring the rim.

That's exactly where I am now, well technically not the rim, but the top edge of the galaxy. I suspect it's an issue to do with how close objects are together, your guardian site would be a big problem, I am only dealing with stars and lesser bodies, not things like USS's and other things that can be a lot closer together, and are probably a lot more problematic and is probably why some of us can manage ok and some have serious issues.

 

[varonica]

This is however on a different level.
I just don’t understand how on earth did FDev manage to screw up the last patch.

According to the patch notes there were very few changes to FSS and yet they introduced 2 very big issues.
One of them is just so obvious that I don’t believe they did not catch it.
I believe they did not test it at all.

Well that's part of the point isn't it, if you are making changes to the game in one area and don't expect it to affect another area why would you do detailed testing of that area, minor changes don't require detailed testing of every aspect of the game otherwise you would need a month of testing every time you made a minor change, but they can cause unexpected bugs. For instance everyone is now demanding a quick fix for this bug, but that doesn't allow time to test the entire game to see if this bug fix affects anything else.

They probably tested what they changed, but the bugs appeared in areas they didn't expect the changes to affect.

 

[ferus]

Well that's part of the point isn't it, if you are making changes to the game in one area and don't expect it to affect another area why would you do detailed testing of that area, minor changes don't require detailed testing of every aspect of the game otherwise you would need a month of testing every time you made a minor change, but they can cause unexpected bugs. For instance everyone is now demanding a quick fix for this bug, but that doesn't allow time to test the entire game to see if this bug fix affects anything else.

They probably tested what they changed, but the bugs appeared in areas they didn't expect the changes to affect.

If FDev did ANY testing (you know, like logging into the game, fly to a station and try to REFILL ALL... or, I don't know, trying to scan a few objects around a gas giant) they could have avoided some of the FSS problems and the 10 CR button problem - these are just so obvious that it suggests no testing at all from FDev side. There really is no excuse for this.

Many players were baffled why there was no beta for the April patch... If there was one all of this could have been avoided. No one would mind a testing period before a patch if it meant less bugs in the actual game.
FDev did nothing of that sort. Instead, they released a bugged patch (again).
After that they released a very quick hotfix which broke other aspects of the game.
And after that FDev left us in the dark.
So people were right to assume that if FDev can break the game quickly, they can also fix it quickly.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time they did something like this... not even the second time.

 

[Klepto]

Right you are!

 

[TruthSeeker]

 

[Dutchman141]

Great Just make sure you test it fully.

You'd better explain them the definition of the word "test" first before asking such question.
To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if this patch breakes something totaly irrelevant in return (again).

 

[Old Duck]

But surprise surprise, i didn't expected to ran in to a white knight here, actually defending/downplaying bugs.

Defending / dowplaying bugs is one of the criteria I use to separate the toxic "white knights" from the genuine fans of the game. The other criteria is those who attack other players who have any sort of criticism towards the game. IMO the "white knights" are a small subset of the fan base, and unlike the fans, their views are actually more harmful than good since they'd rather get rid of bugged players than bugs in the game.

 

[bigcee75]

Greetings Commanders,

We're aiming to roll-out a patch for all platforms on Tuesday morning (14 May) to implement a couple of bug fixes and address issues with the FSS (crashing when using the FSS, as well as graphical display and camera re-positioning issues).

We will update this thread with final times/dates as well as patch notes at the start of next week.

Thank you for your understanding.

Please check back soon for the full patch notes.

Thank you for the update Will and to all the Devs working hard on this game.

 

[FatFreddysCoat]

Still no word on the BGS being broken = no famine systems, or anything else?

 

[tarelen]

I understand that coding is complicated and everything but this requires nothing but a quick glance at the screen.
Again it suggests zero testing.

I get the frustration with bugs and I'm not paid by FDEV to say this, but as a developer of web based apps the standard development experience in this environment is that you develop, unit test, quality test and then when the code goes to production you discover that subtle differences in data and (necessary) configuration between test and production reveal bugs you didn't catch previously. Usually what are perceived as glaring stupid errors that need immediate hotfixes, but these were invisible on the development and testing environments.

Using a clone of the data from production is a good way to go, but only if you mirror the exact configuration and load. I guess a full beta would be best, but there is a big expense of spinning up a whole new public facing AWS server, this I've done and it took hours, and the resource/support costs to run that in a semi production environment might make it uneconomical for anything but a big release where there have been a lot of big changes.

Automated regression testing is the ideal, but this is difficult to set up and run even for websites, doing this for Elite would be an interesting project to say the least.

I feel FDEV's pain at every release and rather than plan to play elite I have the tactic of having a plan B for what I do to wind down of an evening and wait for the dust to settle. We don't pay a subscription (yet) and I think I've got more than my money's worth over the years out of the game. I do get the frustration though. I feel it too sometimes, but developer me feels for the dev team more!

 

[ferus]

I get the frustration with bugs and I'm not paid by FDEV to say this, but as a developer of web based apps the standard development experience in this environment is that you develop, unit test, quality test and then when the code goes to production you discover that subtle differences in data and (necessary) configuration between test and production reveal bugs you didn't catch previously. Usually what are perceived as glaring stupid errors that need immediate hotfixes, but these were invisible on the development and testing environments.

Using a clone of the data from production is a good way to go, but only if you mirror the exact configuration and load. I guess a full beta would be best, but there is a big expense of spinning up a whole new public facing AWS server, this I've done and it took hours, and the resource/support costs to run that in a semi production environment might make it uneconomical for anything but a big release where there have been a lot of big changes.

Automated regression testing is the ideal, but this is difficult to set up and run even for websites, doing this for Elite would be an interesting project to say the least.

I feel FDEV's pain at every release and rather than plan to play elite I have the tactic of having a plan B for what I do to wind down of an evening and wait for the dust to settle. We don't pay a subscription (yet) and I think I've got more than my money's worth over the years out of the game. I do get the frustration though. I feel it too sometimes, but developer me feels for the dev team more!

Thanks for the sensible comment.
I do understand this. I really do.
But... (and I don’t want to sound rude or entitled) is this my problem?
No, not really. I am a simple client/consumer.

Yes, we did get a lot of free extra stuff but only because the initial promises were either unfulfilled or fulfilled only partially.
Exploration, mining, engineers - all this was improved for free because the original aspects were... well, meh.

And from watching several video reports on FDev’s financial status it’s not about the money anymore. They seem to have more than enough finances (or so they claim) to fund all their current projects. It’s more about the passion at this moment (or the lack of it).

I can sympathize with FDev only for so long.
All I am asking right now is not to be FDev’s beta tester.

 

[varonica]

I ran in to planty of dense Star Systems. The only difference is on the rim, you don't scan all 50 - 60 of them, only high valuable ones. But the problem is exactly the same.

But surprise surprise, i didn't expected to ran in to a white knight here, actually defending/downplaying bugs. And out of all bugs this is one of the worse ones. I understand things look rather pessimistic on the forums because of II, but this is a new low CMDR.

Nope, I scan them all, every single one of them, every system with a single star has scanned fine so far, only systems with more than one star and small bodies has failed for me and that has always been fixed by flying closer to the secondary, or indeed lower order star. In theory a gas giant with moons far enough away from the primary could demonstrate the same behaviour but I haven't come across one yet and I have scanned a lot of systems since the last patch update dropped. FDEV would have had to specifically look for a system like that to test for this bug, and if they were going to do that then that would seem to imply that they already knew about the bug, which obviously they didn't or it wouldn't have made it into the live game.

I'm not downplaying bugs, but what I know from when I did database development, you can't test every single line of millions of lines of code to look for an unexpected dependancy and it doesn't matter how many testers you employ, there's always going to be something regular users do that programmers can't predict. In this case throwing it out live to thousands of players brought up an obvious bug or two, or more that may not have shown up on a limited test because they didn't test every single possible scenario the game presents to the players.

In any development bugs happen and get past testing, that's unavoidable for any programing scenario, sometimes you have to accept that and wait for it to be fixed.

 

[Maxx Thorogood]

The April release introduced new features that helped new players but at the same time hurt the game in important areas for everyone. Patch 1 for the April release broke the game for many. At this point, personally, I can hardly muster a congratulations or pat on the back. I just can't say great job communicating because that is not the case. I cannot say "great job guys annoucing a new patch" because the patch is simply restoring features they broke. Opinions aside, it is beneficial for FDev to continue to focus on their mission of keeping the game somewhat viable for a couple of more years. So far, not so good, we'll see how thing unfold next week.

 

[Jermanicus]

If FDev did ANY testing (you know, like logging into the game, fly to a station and try to REFILL ALL... or, I don't know, trying to scan a few objects around a gas giant) they could have avoided some of the FSS problems and the 10 CR button problem - these are just so obvious that it suggests no testing at all from FDev side. There really is no excuse for this.

Many players were baffled why there was no beta for the April patch... If there was one all of this could have been avoided. No one would mind a testing period before a patch if it meant less bugs in the actual game.
FDev did nothing of that sort. Instead, they released a bugged patch (again).
After that they released a very quick hotfix which broke other aspects of the game.
And after that FDev left us in the dark.
So people were right to assume that if FDev can break the game quickly, they can also fix it quickly.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time they did something like this... not even the second time.

Agree 100% - I'm all for keeping an update under wraps as a wow surprise when it's released - but I'd much rather have less 'wow' and more reliability through beta-testing. As I said in an earlier post, the beta-testing seems to have been forgotten about. What about those of us who paid extra for beta access?? If FDEV aren't going to beta test using players, it's surely incumbent on them to have some other effective beta-testing - which is clearly not the case.

 

[ferus]

Nope, I scan them all, every single one of them, every system with a single star has scanned fine so far, only systems with more than one star and small bodies has failed for me and that has always been fixed by flying closer to the secondary, or indeed lower order star. In theory a gas giant with moons far enough away from the primary could demonstrate the same behaviour but I haven't come across one yet and I have scanned a lot of systems since the last patch update dropped. FDEV would have had to specifically look for a system like that to test for this bug, and if they were going to do that then that would seem to imply that they already knew about the bug, which obviously they didn't or it wouldn't have made it into the live game.

I'm not downplaying bugs, but what I know from when I did database development, you can't test every single line of millions of lines of code to look for an unexpected dependancy and it doesn't matter how many testers you employ, there's always going to be something regular users do that programmers can't predict. In this case throwing it out live to thousands of players brought up an obvious bug or two, or more that may not have shown up on a limited test because they didn't test every single possible scenario the game presents to the players.

In any development bugs happen and get past testing, that's unavoidable for any programing scenario, sometimes you have to accept that and wait for it to be fixed.

All this does not explain the 10 CR bug and the constant scanner repositioning bug.
These must have been caught by a simple 5-10 minute gameplay.

I see two options:

1. They did no testing at all on this patch.

2. They tested it, saw the errors and couldn’t l be bothered to fix it before releasing the patch.

I don’t know which is worse.

 

[TruthSeeker]

 

[[DAX]]

This is however on a different level.
I just don’t understand how on earth did FDev manage to screw up the last patch.

According to the patch notes there were very few changes to FSS and yet they introduced 2 very big issues.
One of them is just so obvious that I don’t believe they did not catch it.
I believe they did not test it at all.

Not to mention reintroduction of old and already resolved bugs (the 10 cr repair all bug). Just how?

I understand that coding is complicated and everything but this requires nothing but a quick glance at the screen.
Again it suggests zero testing.

- Fix an erroneous loadout appearing at USSs​

Edward Lewis​

Dec 10, 2014​

Gamma 2.00 release notes.​

​

Still not working properly.