2.2 for fixes?

[CMDR Ash]

Now I/we can act like an entitled community sometimes, we "want" this, this "has" to change. I personally believe this is because we all love the game and we just want to see it do well and turn into the game we all believe it can be.

So when I ask this question it is not out of entitlement, more like frustrated curiosity. That question is, will we see any bug fixes during 2.1 or is it going to be the same case as 2.0 where we wait for what seems like an eternity for the bug fixes to roll in?

The only reason I ask is so I don't get excited about being able to access Palin anytime soon, or losing all my sound in supercruise. Bug reports are in for these so I'm not going to raise more and just make more work for them.

I think it would just be nice to know if hot fixes will become a thing for elite, I understand it takes extra time to fix these and roll them out, time that can be used in the next update, elite have let much bigger bugs than these wait for the next big patch in the past and I'm curious if this is going to be the norm.

thanks for reading, all thoughts/comments welcome below
Kind Regards
A thoughtful CMDR,who still loves the game!

 

[babelfisch]

We already had two patches since 2.1 release. I think we'll see more, that doesn't mean that they fix everything though.

 

[Shadowdancer]

There used to be a lot of small patches with lots of fixes, but it turned out that some fixes were too involved to be put into rapidfire patches, and there were unintended consequences, i.e., more bugs. So to handle that better, Frontier decided relatively early on (maybe half a year after release?) to fix only game-breaking issues in hotfixes and save the more complex stuff, e.g., AI changes or background sim, into bigger releases that would see more testing.

After it became evident that 2.1 would take very long, there were a few out of sequence updates to alleviate a few issues that were originally planned to be part of 2.1.

So yes, it's entirely possible that some things will remain an issue until 2.2 hits. You should, however, also respect that a game of this scope is a hugely complex piece of software, and some things just can't be changed within a week or two; even changes that seem simple at first can turn out to be blocked by architectural decisions or would just break other parts of the game. In those cases, it's really hard to communicate what's going on beyond acknowledging that there is an issue because nobody is yet able to say when, how, or even if something could be fixed.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

One patch will bring special effect roll trade off with Engie rep. And there will be quite a few bug fix patches due of 2.1 being quite a beast.

 

[rajziel]

There used to be a lot of small patches with lots of fixes, but it turned out that some fixes were too involved to be put into rapidfire patches, and there were unintended consequences, i.e., more bugs. So to handle that better, Frontier decided relatively early on (maybe half a year after release?) to fix only game-breaking issues in hotfixes and save the more complex stuff, e.g., AI changes or background sim, into bigger releases that would see more testing.

After it became evident that 2.1 would take very long, there were a few out of sequence updates to alleviate a few issues that were originally planned to be part of 2.1.

So yes, it's entirely possible that some things will remain an issue until 2.2 hits. You should, however, also respect that a game of this scope is a hugely complex piece of software, and some things just can't be changed within a week or two; even changes that seem simple at first turn out to be blocked by architectural decisions or would just break other parts of the game. In those cases, it's really hard to communicate what's going on beyond acknowledging that there is an issue because nobody is yet able to say when, how, or even if something could be fixed.

I'm hoping they fix things as they go along.
Seeing how they left the bugged missions in until 2.1 only for it to still be bugged is too much.
Fix things as you go along and allow 2.2 to be mainly content

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There used to be a lot of small patches with lots of fixes, but it turned out that some fixes were too involved to be put into rapidfire patches, and there were unintended consequences, i.e., more bugs. So to handle that better, Frontier decided relatively early on (maybe half a year after release?) to fix only game-breaking issues in hotfixes and save the more complex stuff, e.g., AI changes or background sim, into bigger releases that would see more testing.

After it became evident that 2.1 would take very long, there were a few out of sequence updates to alleviate a few issues that were originally planned to be part of 2.1.

So yes, it's entirely possible that some things will remain an issue until 2.2 hits. You should, however, also respect that a game of this scope is a hugely complex piece of software, and some things just can't be changed within a week or two; even changes that seem simple at first can turn out to be blocked by architectural decisions or would just break other parts of the game. In those cases, it's really hard to communicate what's going on beyond acknowledging that there is an issue because nobody is yet able to say when, how, or even if something could be fixed.

they had their mission fixes in place before the delay but held off until 2.1. Considering it's still bugged status I feel that was a mistake. they shouldnt do anything like that again

 

[CMDR Ash]

I think the message is getting confused here, I'm not asking for bug fixes to be done instantly I'm just asking for the information, just a quick will we be waiting or are they easy enough to be done before the next major patch

 

[sp0q]

No, I don't think we'll be getting storage before 2.2.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

I think the message is getting confused here, I'm not asking for bug fixes to be done instantly I'm just asking for the information, just a quick will we be waiting or are they easy enough to be done before the next major patch

FD don't announce bug fixes in advance, but given past experience they will release some fine tuning for 2.1 over the coming weeks and probably leave major changes to be included with 2.2 (when ever that is)

 

[babelfisch]

they had their mission fixes in place before the delay but held off until 2.1. Considering it's still bugged status I feel that was a mistake. they shouldnt do anything like that again

First: The mission system works quite well, there are something like 3 bugs. I did over 250 missions since 2.1 and didn't encounter one of them. I have the feeling that some players just don't know how missions work / need more hand holding.

Second: They didn't have mission fixes in place before the delay and they didn't hold off anything. In fact they didn't fix anything regarding missions, they have rewritten them completely. Those missions would not have worked in 2.0 environment because they requiere all the new mechanics that got introduced with 2.1.

 

[Thetele]

First: The mission system works quite well, there are something like 3 bugs. I did over 250 missions since 2.1 and didn't encounter one of them. I have the feeling that some players just don't know how missions work / need more hand holding.

Do you use large ships? Because almost 2 out of 5 or even half of the mission you take will then change during mission to mission you need to land on outpost to complete them. The original mission would have been possible because the delivery station would have had large pads but after that destination change you can't complete the mission. This bug was in when the chained missions came to game first but they fixed it and broke it with 2.1 again.

I would like them release fixes long before 2.2. Because then they have working game to work on. If they just do everything same time with 2.2 they will just introduce more new bugs or ignore some of the current bugs. Its easier to see if bug fix worked before 2.2 as it would probably other vice get hided under 2.2 features and not get fixed or fix don't work/cause new bug.

Then we have the current situation where players come after patch to play game and see same bugs still in place that they have reported many patches ago.

 

[babelfisch]

Do you use large ships? Because almost 2 out of 5 or even half of the mission you take will then change during mission to mission you need to land on outpost to complete them. The original mission would have been possible because the delivery station would have had large pads but after that destination change you can't complete the mission.

The funny thing is that from the 250 missions I played since 2.1, not a single mission asked me to fly to an outpost. Anyway, that's one of the three bugs I mentioned. Stop doing large vessel hauling until it is fixed. What is your point?

 

[rajziel]

The funny thing is that from the 250 missions I played since 2.1, not a single mission asked me to fly to an outpost. Anyway, that's one of the three bugs I mentioned. Stop doing large vessel hauling until it is fixed. What is your point?

The point is it's still broken, and if we had been given the fixes earlier, we could have pointed it out and had the extra bugs fixed.
Instead we waited for months and still have some missions where they cant be completed. Yes it's not as bad as before but that's beside the point.

Congrats that you havent seen the bug. You're quite lucky.

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Second: They didn't have mission fixes in place before the delay and they didn't hold off anything. In fact they didn't fix anything regarding missions, they have rewritten them completely. Those missions would not have worked in 2.0 environment because they requiere all the new mechanics that got introduced with 2.1.

Yes they did. It was specifically mentioned the mission issues had been fixed and would be part of 2.1 as part of the mission overhaul. That was well before the delays were announced.
I remember that post specifically as that was the main reason i was waiting for 2.1

 

[babelfisch]

The point is it's still broken, and if we had been given the fixes earlier, we could have pointed it out and had the extra bugs fixed.
Instead we waited for months and still have some missions where they cant be completed. Yes it's not as bad as before but that's beside the point.

You didn't understand my post. They couldn't give you the fixes earlier because technically they haven't fixed them. They have rewritten the whole mission system. The new system requieres mechanics that are part of 2.1, that's why we got them with 2.1.

Congrats that you havent seen the bug. You're quite lucky.

It has nothing to do with luck, just me being clever. I knew of the bug, that's why I don't do large vessel hauling missions until the bug is fixed.

Yes they did. It was specifically mentioned the mission issues had been fixed and would be part of 2.1 as part of the mission overhaul. That was well before the delays were announced.
I remember that post specifically as that was the main reason i was waiting for 2.1

Again, you didn't understand my post. They said they fixed mission issues because they have rewritten the whole mission system. The issues we are seeing now are new bugs, not those that they have fixed.

 

[rajziel]

You didn't understand my post. They couldn't give you the fixes earlier because technically they haven't fixed them. They have rewritten the whole mission system. The new system requieres mechanics that are part of 2.1, that's why we got them with 2.1.


It has nothing to do with luck, just me being clever. I knew of the bug, that's why I don't do large vessel hauling missions until the bug is fixed.




Again, you didn't understand my post. They said they fixed mission issues because they have rewritten the whole mission system. The issues we are seeing now are new bugs, not those that they have fixed.

Yes and they did this before 2.1 was delayed. It was going to be released with 2.1 as that was due out. However, I am saying once they delayed 2.1 for a few months, perhaps they should have released the mission update in order to iron out the bugs.

 

[E. Baley]

Do you use large ships? Because almost 2 out of 5 or even half of the mission you take will then change during mission to mission you need to land on outpost to complete them. The original mission would have been possible because the delivery station would have had large pads but after that destination change you can't complete the mission.

Very annoying indeed, but not undoable. I've completed a couple of those missions by changing to a medium sized ship.
Of course, you have to have a smaller ship close by, and it needs to have the required cargo space, otherwise it will not work out.

 

[babelfisch]

Yes and they did this before 2.1 was delayed. It was going to be released with 2.1 as that was due out. However, I am saying once they delayed 2.1 for a few months, perhaps they should have released the mission update in order to iron out the bugs.

Wrong. They could not release the missions update because it's part of 2.1 and requieres the underlying mechanics that are part of 2.1. Here are the relevant dev posts in case you missed them:

From the desk of Michael Brookes:

"Hi everyone,

For this week’s dev update I will talk about some of the planned changes for missions coming with 2.1 The Engineers release. There are a lot of details to cover so I’ll go through the high level goals and the details for the first of the goals and cover the remaining details over the coming weeks. I’ll also provide more details on the other features over that time as well.

Missions are a key component of the game and we reviewed how we can make them more meaningful for gameplay, in particular how the player interacts with them and their effects on the galactic simulation. With our review we identified five key goals that we’re tackling for 2.1 The Engineers:

- Personalisation

- Progression

- Variety

- Consequences

- Rewards

Personalisation is about reflecting the player’s presence in the world and providing persistence for their activities. We’ve already mention that mission givers will be getting faces for 2.1 The Engineers update and this forms a part of the core of this personalisation. The mission contacts will become the faces of the minor factions you deal with for mission and this will be accompanied by a new layout for the mission board to group things more effectively for dealing with the minor faction.

The new mission presentation puts these NPC characters to the forefront of missions. They are unique and have their own faces, names and status within their organisations. The type of organisation will be reflected in the tone of their communications. Their dealings with you are also influenced by your reputation with the minor faction, but also the relative differences in status between you and the character. So if you’re Elite ranked and they’re a minor flunky then they will show you the proper deference – assuming their governing organisation allows it!

Repeated dealings with a minor faction will see your own status within the minor faction improve or fall – depending on your activities. At certain points you will deal with more important members of the organisation or even sterner types if your reputation is lacking. This will also be reinforced by a new greetings message when docking to reflect your status with the station.

The mission contacts will also remember if they’ve dealt with you before. As well as providing consistency the contacts are the conduit for gaining missions and seeing the effects they have. So they will inform you if the minor faction has entered a particular state, or a state is incoming. There will also be much smarter selection of missions that tie in with the current state of affairs, there will be more details on this as part of the progression and variety goals.

As well as what is happening in local space the contacts will let you know what impact your efforts are having and so helping to communicate the galactic simulation states and trends more effectively.

As is customary with our major updates there is a swathe of fixes, tweaks and other changes. For those of you who won naming of planets and a station these will be in the 2.1 The Engineers update. We have a revised format for the options screen coming with collapsible sections for easier navigation. More huge weapons are coming and as well as the asteroid graphical fidelity improvements the star light has been fixed so that it retains its colour over distance.

I will be back next week with more details of what we have coming.

Thanks!

Michael"

It's major update to how you interact with the missions, and how the missions are generated, so they make better situational sense - more details on this in a future dev update.

Michael

From the desk of Michael Brookes

'Hi everyone,

In this week’s dev update I will continue on from last week’s with more details on the mission changes coming in The Engineers update (2.1). Don’t worry I will be covering other topics in the coming weeks as well!

Last week’s update covered the first of our high level goals – personalisation and this week I’ll cover the second with progression. Progression within a game can mean many different things, but in this case those aspects combine into telling your narrative while playing the game. Situations change and the game reflects those changes to you. Now we do quite a lot of these already, but we can improve the way we communicate these. And as with personalisation there is quite a bit of overlap in the details of achieving our aims for the update.

Currently there are five levels of reputation with a minor faction (Hated, Disliked, Neutral, Liked, Allied) and we’re adding an extra level on the positive side for a smoother, but also longer transition from working up from neutral. This should be a journey and rewarded accordingly, not only with the various in-game rewards, but also within the narrative of the experience by highlighting events like increasing your reputation level.

The mission givers will provide a sense of progression so that as you improve (or damage) your relationship with the faction your worth to the organisation is reflected in who you deal with. The ranks and tone of these mission givers in turn is coloured by the type of organisation they represent and feeds into their character portraits as well.

The mission board in station services replaces the old bulletin board, while some of the information remains the same, we’re working to make things much clearer and to present them in a fashion which highlights their importance to the minor faction. There are number of specifics here which will be covered in next week’s topic about variety, but some also apply to progression. One example is what missions are available. This is supported in game already, but where possible we want to ensure that the reasons the mission isn’t accessible is communicated correctly so that they know what to do to gain access to the mission, or another of its type later on.

This aspect also matters for the other end of the mission flow, so when a mission is completed or failed. In particular the mission giver will communicate what effects the mission ending has on their organisation. At the moment this is more opaque than we’d like and so player’s aren’t necessarily aware of the results their actions has. This aspect features heavily within the consequences goal.

Traditional gameplay progression usually corresponds with the difficulty of available activity increasing in line with developing skill with the game. This allows for an escalating sense of challenge being available as you develop the relationship with the minor faction, but also with other entities in the game. So missions requiring higher Pilots Federation ratings should also require extra effort to complete, but also providing appropriate rewards.

The final key aspect for progression is the communication within the mission itself. We’re expanding the functionality of the inbox so that messages will persist, so important or interesting messages do not get lost. This allows us to highlight the different stages in the mission more effectively and so creating a richer experience with it.

Last week I mentioned that we had some more huge weapons coming, but without providing any details, so we have huge beam and pulse laser and multi-cannons being added. There will also be a new large multi-cannon.

Thanks!

Michael'

Yes - we're overhauling some of the framework as well to address the issues.

Michael

From the desk of Executive Producer, Michael Brookes

"Hi everyone,

This week’s dev update is the penultimate update on the changes to missions coming in the (2.1) release - The Engineers. The topic I’ll cover is the variety goal and next week I’ll cover the final goals of consequences and rewards.

Variety at its most simplistic is making sure that more missions (and variants) are available, but beyond that tweaking them to make them more accessible and having a better sense of predictability, so if you’re looking for a particular type of mission then you can determine the best places to find them.

We’re tackling variety with a host of changes – the first is ensuring that more missions are available at the neutral reputation stage. Developing your reputation will reveal more missions, but more importantly – more valuable missions. We’re also removing the rank requirement for missions. The rank will now be an indication of difficulty (and by association, rewards) and generally will generated around your relevant Pilots Federation rank. You can take on more difficult missions to try and grasp some big rewards, but there is a risk in doing so.

Missions will be generated by stricter criteria so that the majority of missions offered will make sense in the location that are offered. A three stage hierarchy will govern how the missions are created.

First by the state of the minor faction, so if they are in famine, or at war, or any other state missions to address that state are generated.

Secondly, the type of market for the port, so that they match the economic activity for that market. An obvious example is creating mining missions from extraction economies.

The third stage is determined by the government type and this reflects the character of the minor factions and the types of operation that they indulge in. For example dictatorships are more likely to indulge in overt assassinations and so send a visible message, while democracies will conduct their wet work through covert operations.

Within the offered mission there will be a description for why that mission has been generated and what effect it will have for the minor faction. This clearer communication of the interaction with the galactic simulation will make it easier for you to pick the relevant missions for your goals.

We’re also looking to reduce the barrier of inconvenience for some of the mission elements – my favourite here is not having to drop out of supercruise to listen to alternate offers. The time limits for missions as well as which elements make them easier, or more difficult are being reviewed and addressed.

Another exciting change is how missions and USSs interact with each other. USSs for missions will now generally be located at specific bodies within a system which have can be located using a discovery scanner, although the usual ranges apply. If the system has a nav beacon then these can now be scanned and the scan will reveal these mission locations as well as providing any exploration data for that system.

In conjunction with these changes the general distribution and generation of USSs is also being updated. There are now concepts of different parts of space within a system, like traffic lanes and hubs and different contents can be generated at each. They are also created spatially rather than by time range so you can no longer just sit and wait for one to appear, you will need to look for it.

One other significant change for USSs is that they can be scanned to reveal more information about them without having to drop out of supercruise.

There’s still a ton of details for changes of other aspects of the game coming after next week’s look at mission consequences and rewards.

Thanks,

Michael."

It should be fixed as part of the update.

Michael

Hi everyone,

In this latest dev update I’ll cover the remaining two high level goals for the changes to the mission system coming in the 2.1 The Engineers update.

I’ve decided to tackle consequences and rewards in the same update as they are often different sides of the same coin. Missions already have a range of impacts on the galactic simulation, but this isn’t communicated as clearly as it could be. This is relatively easy to address for things like state and reputation as they are based on absolute values and with buckets that need to be filled or emptied. For aspects like influence this is much more complicated as the changes occur after the mission is completed and also relative to every other action during that period. So influence isn’t part of the mission changes (except to indicate that you’ve made a positive, or negative impact), but is planned for the future.

As mentioned in previous updates your success and failure in missions affects your relationship with the minor faction and these changes are clearly identified and communicated. With minor faction states we’re intending making their effects more noticeable on available missions, ship traffic and composition, and markets. At the moment these can be quite subtle, so beefing them up with add more drama to a star system.

Consequences also have a more immediate response, so authority response if they are attacked will be sharper.

For rewards our first goal is to provide a range that is wider than simply credits. Credits will still be a common reward for missions, but we’re adding greater variety. One such addition is that of ‘treasure’ locations – this is a bonus for certain missions that can lead you to a cache or other location with valuable vouchers or items that can be collected.

Materials for crafting can also be awarded for completing missions, along with certain hard to find commodities, or even salvage only items. More commodities and materials are being added to the game, I’ll go into more detail on this in a future dev update. Some of these commodities may only be available through missions and can be used for story events as well as rewards. Missions have varying rewards for effects on minor factions which are getting a balance pass to make changes in state more likely as well as more noticeable.

Credits will still feature as rewards and rewards will be balanced to scale better with difficulty and also be more lucrative if you’re well regarded by the minor faction.

Along with the changes mentioned we’re conducting a pass through the mission templates to make them more reliable and address issues seen in the current build. This is accompanied by adding more scenarios for the various mission types and also to better reflect the active states in the system.

One other small tweak is that the cockpit now has a clock to help keep an eye on the time!

As you’ll no doubt know by now we announced that we’ve delayed the 2.1 Engineers release - there is a lot in it, and we decided it was better to take some extra time to ensure that we get it to a quality we are fully happy with before releasing it. While we aren’t talking a specific release date at the moment we are aiming for a beta release in May. I’d also like to reiterate David’s post from earlier today that The Engineers isn’t the next build release, we have a few more 2.0x releases planned before then.

As usual when we are preparing for upcoming releases my dev updates will now be paused for a while – but I will return!

Michael

Now where does it say "we have everything done and working but don't want to give it to you just yet"?

 

[Sir.Tj]

Closed at Ops req