Why every patch brings more bugs than fixes?

[Ryox]

I just did a google and it appears that its back on both console stores.

Oh, my bad, that's how disastrous it has been for their reputation.

I just googled it too. It came back on PS4 in June 2021, 6 months after it got "suspended".

Also I just checked the PS4 store, it has a warning on top of the page:

"IMPORTANT NOTICE: Users continue to experience performance issues with this game. Purchase for use on PS4 systems is not recommended. For the best Cyberpunk experience on PlayStation, play on PS4 Pro and PS5 systems."

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Oh, my bad, that's how disastrous it has been for their reputation.

I just googled it too. It came back on PS4 in June 2021, 6 months after it got "suspended".

Also I just checked the PS4 store, it has a warning on top of the page:

"IMPORTANT NOTICE: Users continue to experience performance issues with this game. Purchase for use on PS4 systems is not recommended. For the best Cyberpunk experience on PlayStation, play on PS4 Pro and PS5 systems."

Apples and Oranges though. Cyberpunk had nowhere near the issues on PC 6 months after release and was at least playable on PS4 (not in a great state, but that's a far better place than Odyssey is right now!).

The issue that led to Cyberpunk being taken of the PS online store was due to an issue with how CDPR handled refunds, not directly that the game being broken. What they should have said is that the game had worked out to simply not be possible to run on old gen consoles. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though.

With people who want FDev to change how they do things- you can't argue reality. Nothing is going to change in regards to bugs so if you don't like the state of Odyssey, play in Horizons. If you don't like the state of Horizons, it's probably best to give the game a break and try something else. If they were willing to release Odyssey in the state it was, having players road-test for bugs after launch seems to be just part of the business model. I think people should set their expectations accordingly in light of that.

You can ask FDev to test more before release, but I'd guarantee that if you're still playing in a couple of years you'll be repeating similar words as the above to someone new making this case

 

[Ryox]

The issue that led to Cyberpunk being taken of the PS online store was due to an issue with how CDPR handled refunds

Oh right, this story rings a bell now!

not directly that the game being broken

I don't own consoles, I only remember many Youtube reviews. It seemed to me it was literally one of the most broken game ever released on PS4. Maybe that's why CDPR couldn't handle a proper refund of this scale.

Edit : also I know that on the other hand, on beafy PC rigs, the game is a masterpiece!

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Oh right, this story rings a bell now!

I don't own consoles, I only remember many Youtube reviews. It seemed to me it was one of the most broken game ever released on PS4. Maybe that's why CDPR couldn't handle a proper refund of this scale.

I can't remember exact details off the top of my head, but it was something to do with getting refunds through the PS store without getting Sony's go ahead first. What then happened was CDPR telling players to get refunds, which Sony refused initially and this didn't go down well at the time.

 

[Ryox]

I can't remember exact details off the top of my head, but it was something to do with getting refunds through the PS store without getting Sony's go ahead first. What then happened was CDPR telling players to get refunds, which Sony refused initially and this didn't go down well at the time.

Yeah, pretty shady business if you ask me.

Edit : both CDPR and Sony are at fault in my opinion.

 

[Mogen Teras]

You can ask FDev to test more before release, but I'd guarantee that if you're still playing in a couple of years you'll be repeating similar words as the above to someone new making this case

Exactly. If people actually want real change with how FDev does business, they have to be willing to impact their bottom line, and that means simply not playing the game until you see their company values change. As it stands, the community has proven that many of them will continue to play the game and buy ARX despite the perpetual carousel of fixing update bug regressions, which tells FDev they have no reason to change.

Every time someone says "there seems to be new bugs but here's hoping they'll get fixed in the next hotfix," FDev fires another QA tester.

 

[Commander Biscuit]

I dont understand that. Players should be riding the new srv now, but instead they are looking for problems and bugs in the game. I dont understand that.

Consume content, get excited for next content.

Actually players dont look for problems, the problems find us. Graphical downgrades in particular are very easy to notice when you've been playing for years.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Exactly. If people actually want real change with how FDev does business, they have to be willing to impact their bottom line, and that means simply not playing the game until you see their company values change. As it stands, the community has proven that many of them will continue to play the game and buy ARX despite the perpetual carousel of fixing update bug regressions, which tells FDev they have no reason to change.

Every time someone says "there seems to be new bugs but here's hoping they'll get fixed in the next hotfix," FDev fires another QA tester.

I've stopped spending as you describe (Alpha preorder of EDO was the last time FDev got hold of my CC) but looking at how many players seem to have gone the opposite way, there really is no real reason to change their ways at Frontier. Plus, they already got money from whales like myself in the past so even me not spending anymore won't have the desired effect - they had a good run with me already so all's good.

I guess instead of trying to "teach them a lesson" you can simply see it slightly differently and just refrain to throw good money after bad and spend it on something else. I'm currently more entertained by reading about the aftermath of the most recent patches than playing the game, no lessons have been learned at all, quite the opposite unfortunately. Each patch and hotfix seems to just make things even worse now.

 

[zimms]

Apples and Oranges though. Cyberpunk had nowhere near the issues on PC 6 months after release and was at least playable on PS4 (not in a great state, but that's a far better place than Odyssey is right now!).

[...]

I agree. Elite is "lucky" that it's a niche game with a smaller audience. That's the only reason it didn't catch as much flak as Cyberpunk.

 

[CMDR Anastasiya]

1. Releasing new features into an obviously borked engine is bound to cause problems. How can they expect a borked engine to handle new features is astonishing. Yes I'm aware that they have seperate teams and so on working on different products. But if the engine is borked. How are they going to expect new features to work as intended or the engine being able to handle them?

2. Performance. It appears from my point of view, looking at the various patch notes since release. Many of the bugs. Not all bugs. But many bugs would sort themselves out once the engine begins to perform as intended. So many of the bugs appear to be performance related.

3. I'd get rid of the isse tracker or at least the ability to vote on it. There is simply too much noise.

4. Performance. Does ODE really look better than games released ten years ago? Be honest with yourselves. Walk around a settlement. The concourse. Have a good think about that.

 

[photomankc]

Whatever the problem is, it is so entangled into the code I simply don't believe they CAN prevent it from happening. Their best bet would be a parallel beta server set where they let people in to try the new stuff and find the bugs. This routine of release the patch onto everyone before the weekend, gather a few reports of broken things and then patch the patch a few times is pretty sucky really. The worst part is they never squash them all so the overall menu of bugs just keeps rising.

 

[Scaletho]

I dont understand that. Really after every patch come swarm of bugs. Devs dont test it? Or what is wrong? I see no fixes. Perfomance is still horrible. Even after last update textures are worse. Dont work or new adds when the game is still broken. Fix it firts,then you can work on additional content.

Very good question. If you solve that, you'll see how messed up is Frontier's EDO approach since the beginning.

 

[ferus]

Very good question. If you solve that, you'll see how messed up is Frontier's EDO approach since the beginning.

As many others I too don't understand why FDev doesn't do some basic testing with the supposedly live patch.

Once they think the update is final and this is what they want to roll out, why don't they apply that update to 5-10 machines somewhere in the basement and get a few people to test the update? To actually play the game?
Don’t tell me they can’t crate an isolated 1:1 environment so they can work with real data.

Apparently they have over 600 employees so surely they can find 3-4 people who could sit down and test the game before releasing?
Or if nothing else I'm sure they could find hundreds of players who could test this willingly for them for free (and I don't mean on the live servers as we do now).

First they could go over issues that are supposed to be fixed with the new update (so that we don't end up with a buggy Scorpion for example), then they could focus on previously fixed issues (so that they don't reappear) and finally they could test the game in general.

One guy could test combat, other would test exploration, third could test settlements and AI etc.
And if there is an issue then just simply postpone the update so we, the players, don't have to deal with this.
By doing this they could catch so many obvious bugs and glitches that you can reproduce within the first 5 minutes of gameplay.

I mean the broken biology scanner, inability to scan dead NPCs, broken combat markers, SLFs not working in defense mode, missing fire groups, Scorpion ammo not able to be replenished, broken livery screen for the new Scorpion...
Some of these are pretty serious issues that prevent many players from playing the game properly. And when you realize that even the new additions (Scorpion) have so many issues then it's really a huge question on how does FDev actually test things.

And it's been almost a week now and many of these issues are still not fixed.

Although, maybe I shouldn't be surprised as they left the broken restricted zones in game for the entire duration of Update 8 (which was also pretty game breaking). Not to mention the months/years old bugs.

I just don't understand this.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Performance. Does ODE really look better than games released ten years ago?

Performance is all about looks?

 

[Ryox]

Game development is a lot related to Murphy's Law.

 

[CMDR Anastasiya]

Performance is all about looks?

The point I'm making is that for what EDO provides. I can not personally see how this game could be taxing the crap out of our systems.

 

[Rat Catcher]

The point I'm making is that for what EDO provides. I can not personally see how this game could be taxing the crap out of our systems.

Couldn't it be anything to do that it has performance issues that have been acknowledged by the developers?

A bit obvious, I know

 

[Agema]

As many others I too don't understand why FDev doesn't do some basic testing with the supposedly live patch.

Once they think the update is final and this is what they want to roll out, why don't they apply that update to 5-10 machines somewhere in the basement and get a few people to test the update? To actually play the game?
Don’t tell me they can’t crate an isolated 1:1 environment so they can work with real data.

Apparently they have over 600 employees so surely they can find 3-4 people who could sit down and test the game before releasing?
Or if nothing else I'm sure they could find hundreds of players who could test this willingly for them for free (and I don't mean on the live servers as we do now).

They could have playtesters, but that's also got costs attached: salary, equipment, etc. And I think a proper playtester is a skilled job, because playing a game to find bugs and providing effective, constructive feedback is a skill. Realistically, five or even fifty playtesters are still not going to be able to test a game to destruction in the way five hundred thousand players are: they don't have the time and manpower. Not least that many bugs may relate to hardware and game settings, with all the combinations out there.

Some games have test servers, where players can go and do things prior to an official roll-out and make comments. However, bear in mind a substantial amount of these players are just checking out what's new, not reporting bugs, nor necessarily very good at spotting bugs. This is also going to come with costs - setting up an entire parallel system with its own dedicated support (staff costs, etc.).

Frontier have an additional problem (partly of their own making) that Odyssey has required such extensive work and so angered the player base that they are under a lot of pressure to roll out updates rapidly which makes it even harder to squash bugs, with every change having the potential to break something somewhere else.

I don't say this to necessarily excuse bugs and failing to spot them, but modern games with huge scope are so complex that I suspect playtesting has also become equivalently difficult. To do it effectively pre-release would be very expensive, and we'd see this in increased game price. Thus perhaps the best business solution is to make basic checks just to ensure the game is not critically broken and release it, leaving it to players to find the problems.

 

[CMDR Anastasiya]

Couldn't it be anything to do that it has performance issues that have been acknowledged by the developers?

A bit obvious, I know

It's just from where I'm sitting. As I mentioned in my post. New features simply add bugs. Bug hunting shifts direction from the core issues to bugs. Bugs that may or may not exist if the performance issues are resolved.

 

[Rat Catcher]

It's just from where I'm sitting. As I mentioned in my post. New features simply add bugs. Bug hunting shifts direction from the core issues to bugs. Bugs that may or may not exist if the performance issues are resolved.

From where I'm sitting it appears that the alleged 'new content' already existed in the expansion but was disabled at launch.
Never mind though, the issues will get fixed as much as Frontier determine is needed over the coming months, even with more content being unlocked.