Failure Developments at it again

[Darkfyre99]

I dont think Frontier or anyone else finds it acceptable but its the nature of the beast when dealing with mmo game with a million moving parts.

I will accept though that buggy updates seem to be the norm now and it should be communicated by FDev that they will do better in the future instead of coming out with another mealy-mouthed apology.

I've only got one major issue with this update: it should've been tested in Open Beta before release. An Open Beta would've detected the game breaking bugs so that they'd be fixed when the patch goes live. This is the second time they've skipped that testing phase, with disastrous results. There's a lot of players willing to do this testing, for a variety of reasons.

Everybody knows that there'll be bugs when a patch is released. You beta test the patch to ensure that those bugs won't be the size of a large bird of prey.

 

[WinterKing2112]

I suspect pr droids. Most big companies astroturf.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

I always wondered.....

 

[Sunyavadin]

"You don't understand game development."

Where have I heard that before?

I have absolutely no idea what you could be referring to, citizen.

 

[galahad2069]

In MMO's some bugs wont manifest until it actually goes massive. Rubberbanding is a bandwidth thing, probably down to the number of people there are playing.

The worst bug I've heard of this time around is invisible engineering on stored modules. Don't touch them for a few days and everything will be fine. Engineering is hardly an urgent thing anyway.

NPC's rubberbanding as soon as there are more than 1 CMDR in the instance wasn't a thing the day before yesterday, so it shouldn't have been there after the update. It took me 30 seconds to discover it with a grand total of 3 ppl in the instance (including me). It shouldn't have taken more than that for a QA team either, if there had been one or they actually had bothered to test anything.

The "engineering mods not displayed" issue affects not only engineering, but the very basic task of outfitting as well (you need to see the mods to be able to choose which module to equip). There is literally zero chance that something like that could have slipped through even the most superficial tests. There were no tests, that's the problem.

 

[Nasc]

I have absolutely no idea what you could be referring to, citizen.

You have a nice cig by the way

 

[WinterKing2112]

Regardless of of the game a Reddit subforum is on, it's almost always the case that the people there are very devoted to it, it's the reddit mindset. The reason many people are devoted on this forum though, i feel is because the game is brilliant when it's working well, and shouting at the devs when things go wrong isn't going to make it any better.

Shouting at people always makes me feeĺ better! And it's also the best way of motivating people: shout at them until they do what they're meant to be doing!

 

[Stigbob]

NPC's rubberbanding as soon as there are more than 1 CMDR in the instance wasn't a thing the day before yesterday, so it shouldn't have been there after the update. It took me 30 seconds to discover it with a grand total of 3 ppl in the instance (including me). It shouldn't have taken more than that for a QA team either, if there had been one or they actually had bothered to test anything.

The "engineering mods not displayed" issue affects not only engineering, but the very basic task of outfitting as well (you need to see the mods to be able to choose which module to equip). There is literally zero chance that something like that could have slipped through even the most superficial tests. There were no tests, that's the problem.

The other CMDR's connection could be at fault then. There was one patch that gave me disconnects four or five times an hour, this ones better.

The engineering mods not displaying effects means nothing at all. Don't sell anything for a bit and you'll be fine.

 

[Sunyavadin]

You minimise the number of bugs which don't manifest until it goes live by having a proper PTS.

 

[WinterKing2112]

That's a reason to give reasonable criticism.

And maybe some unreasonable criticism too!

 

[galahad2069]

The other CMDR's connection could be at fault then. There was one patch that gave me disconnects four or five times an hour, this ones better.

The engineering mods not displaying effects means nothing at all. Don't sell anything for a bit and you'll be fine.

The exact same CMDRs were there pretty often the day before, the last week or a month ago, yet there were no rubberbanding NPC's anywhere.

As for the engineering mods thing, I wasn't looking for workarounds. The point was that fdev should have tested their goddamn update before releasing it. It's that simple.

 

[WinterKing2112]

ill tell fdev that thair crep is broken, im not beta tester to list whats broken or how to fix it, if they gonna pay me, sure

I really hate broken crep, especially when it's thair broken crep!

 

[Darkfyre99]

Yeah hes got a point. I have been pc gaming since the 80's on an atari 800xl and i cant think of an instance, including FD's previous incompetence, that rivals this update for sheer destructive, money grubbing idiocy.

Fallout 76? Star Citzen?

Those are just the first two that come to mind... since you specified "money grubbing" and "destructive idiocy." There's numerous examples of worse offenses if you separate the "destructive idiocy" from the "money grubbing."

This doesn't excuse Frontier from not putting their release candidate through Open Beta first, so that the game breaking bugs would get fixed. It's there for a reason, after all. Expecting everything to work well once the patch goes live is simply wishful thinking. There's too many variants of hardware, OSs, drivers, and software for a single company to test them all. An Open Beta takes care of the obvious stuff before the game reaches the rest of the player base.

 

[Deleted member 182079]

Not the best release, but probably the least buggy.

I'd consider it to be the update with the most immediately noticeable, game-breaking bugs. 3.3 introduced a lot of bugs (some which only got fixed with this one... 10 months later) but it was still playable with some minor annoyances. This one has fundamental issues that, depending of course what it is you want to do, keep you from playing the game normally.

 

[Urbanski101]

I tend to stay away from ED after updates because of exactly these reasons.

Unfortunately for me I've invested some time in starting a small civil war to flip a system and I wanted to see it through. Last night's gaming experience was pretty bad and has reminded me why I should stay away from the game after updates.

To be fair this happens in other games but I've never known any developer break so many things with an update. The laugh out loud moment for me was the crash to desktop when I tried to access the store, which happened more than once...it's just too funny.

I'm sure FD will stabilise the game in time and but I'm also sure much of this could have been avoided with some proper QA testing.

 

[Johnb09]

Fallout 76? Star Citzen?

Those are just the first two that come to mind... since you specified "money grubbing" and "destructive idiocy." There's numerous examples of worse offenses if you separate the "destructive idiocy" from the "money grubbing."

This doesn't excuse Frontier from not putting their release candidate through Open Beta first, so that the game breaking bugs would get fixed. It's there for a reason, after all. Expecting everything to work well once the patch goes live is simply wishful thinking. There's too many variants of hardware, OSs, drivers, and software for a single company to test them all. An Open Beta takes care of the obvious stuff before the game reaches the rest of the player base.

Lets be honest at the moment frontier are no better than the above mentioned thought better of frontier but their no different!

 

[Urbanski101]

I'm not a defender of FD, far from it but there is a world of difference between what FD are trying to do with the store and ARX and what that other game space game company are and have done for years which I consider nothing more than an elaborate scam. IMO of course.

 

[B1rdy]

Let's be fair, the majority of people complaining simply do not understand the complexities involved in developing, upgrading and managing "Elite Dangerous" and all of it's supporting components.

Is this an excuse for releasing a game with in-your-face broken features, especially headline features, even those that are directed at new players? What kind of image does that create of FDev?

If you have any knowledge about development you know pretty well how these things can go wrong. If not you can wonder all day and be none the wiser.

If you fired a developer every time something broke, there would be no programmers in America or anywhere else for that matter.

It is one thing to make a mistake, but releasing the built anyway, fully aware that your customers will waste their time due to that?

 

[babelfisch]

I'd consider it to be the update with the most immediately noticeable, game-breaking bugs. 3.3 introduced a lot of bugs (some which only got fixed with this one... 10 months later) but it was still playable with some minor annoyances. This one has fundamental issues that, depending of course what it is you want to do, keep you from playing the game normally.

I remember the update where we lost all our exploration data.
Or the one that introduced Skynet AI with impossible weapons that could kill you in seconds. Or the skimmer bug....

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

ill tell fdev that thair crep is broken, im not beta tester to list whats broken or how to fix it, if they gonna pay me, sure

Oh noes: My Crêpe!

 

[WinterKing2112]

Is this an excuse for releasing a game with in-your-face broken features, especially headline features, even those that are directed at new players? What kind of image does that create of FDev?


It is one thing to make a mistake, but releasing the built anyway, fully aware that your customers will waste their time due to that?

I'm not wasting any time. BECAUSE I CAN'T EVEN F@#$ING LOG IN!!