Maybe time to pause the beta?

[holdenballs]

I'm a casual Elite player, I'm not experienced enough to be looking to colonize anything.

It just seems that, because the beta is in the live game, we're losing so many hours to it - today, yesterday, last week.

It would be lovely to have some uninterrupted time just playing the game.

 

[vanFace]

I'm a casual Elite player, I'm not experienced enough to be looking to colonize anything.

It just seems that, because the beta is in the live game, we're losing so many hours to it - today, yesterday, last week.

It would be lovely to have some uninterrupted time just playing the game.

That ship has sailed. If you want them to pause the beta, they have to pause live, which is basically what they are doing at the moment. This is one of the problems with testing in production: no way back besides roll-back, which means deletion of customer data.
It is a possibility, sure, but would you be happy with that?

 

[Ydiss]

They did pause it.

I may be in the minority here, but I prefer a game that is always having new things added, which means downtimes, than a game that allows "some uninterrupted time just playing the game". Which... I think you get most of the time?

 

[Muirwen]

That ship has sailed. If you want them to pause the beta, they have to pause live, which is basically what they are doing at the moment. This is one of the problems with testing in production: no way back besides roll-back, which means deletion of customer data.
It is a possibility, sure, but would you be happy with that?

Yes, because this is going from bad to worse. It was a ridiculous decision in the first place, doing a Beta in a Live (production) environment, and better to just take your loss, and do the work properly. I have a lifetime in IT, and no serious company I worked for ever did a Beta in production. And for a very good reason. I predicted this whole f-up when I heard it announced, and I am not surprised it indeed turned out to be a big mess

 

[Kassad]

Downtimes wouldn't be so much of an issue for me if the server status indicators were even remotely reliable. Since I came back to Elite Dangerous, I've lost the count of times I've seen the launcher say "Server Status: Good" while the forums are being flooded with reports of servers not working and the game being unplayable.

 

[vanFace]

Yes, because this is going from bad to worse. It was a ridiculous decision in the first place, doing a Beta in a Live (production) environment, and better to just take your loss, and do the work properly. I have a lifetime in IT, and no serious company I worked for ever did a Beta in production. And for a very good reason. I predicted this whole f-up when I heard it announced, and I am not surprised it indeed turned out to be a big mess

Me neither. But a question here: have you worked in the game business? In my part of the IT woods (automation) this would be the nail in the coffin of a company, but it seems like they can pull that stunt in games and get away with it a lot.

 

[Factabulous]

Me neither. But a question here: have you worked in the game business? In my part of the IT woods (automation) this would be the nail in the coffin of a company, but it seems like they can pull that stunt in games and get away with it a lot.

Can you imagine the level of complaints if they did a beta and said 'now you get to do it all again in production!'. Especially as they need a few more weeks to find more bugs.

And the dude who found the exploit would have kept it quiet until it went live, so you'd still have issues in Live.

It's just the usual forum histrionics over a couple of hours of downtime - it will be fougotten just as fast.

 

[JJ Idaho]

Coming from Star Citizen I don't really see the big deal. So the servers are down a bit for a few hours...

 

[metatheurgist]

That ship has sailed. If you want them to pause the beta, they have to pause live, which is basically what they are doing at the moment. This is one of the problems with testing in production: no way back besides roll-back, which means deletion of customer data.
It is a possibility, sure, but would you be happy with that?

Yes.

 

[Ydiss]

Can you imagine the level of complaints if they did a beta and said 'now you get to do it all again in production!'. Especially as they need a few more weeks to find more bugs.

And the dude who found the exploit would have kept it quiet until it went live, so you'd still have issues in Live.

It's just the usual forum histrionics over a couple of hours of downtime - it will be fougotten just as fast.

There's no way any beta test for this that wasn't a live beta test would have given them the data they needed. They did the right thing with this release. The downsides are rapid expansion that they've now halted, and a few maintenance delays like today.

I spent the last couple years mostly playing other games and one game in particular has a developer who makes FD look like the best devs in the world; their public tests (which they no longer do these days), consisted of three weeks where they'd ignore the major issues everyone raised, and they then release a major patch, perform maybe one hotfix, if you're lucky, then leave the game alone for four months before doing the next major patch, with absolutely nothing in between but minor patches that fix maybe 2-3 things and break 10 others.

I remember feeling frustrated by FD in the past (though I think I was justified, I'm talking about the darker days when ED's future didn't seem very clear), but the way they've gone about this update has been pretty solid, much like the way they seem to have gone about it in the last year or so. Anyone complaining about a game actually getting development on a regular cadence where the devs do try to take care to fix things as quickly as they can, could probably do with trying some other games and then coming back. FD are not perfect but they're far away from being the worst.

 

[galahad2069]

Tbh the game hasn't been this stable in years as it has in the last few hours.

No flickering shadows, no crashes, no bugs whatsoever.

 

[Kassad]

I spent the last couple years mostly playing other games and one game in particular has a developer who makes FD look like the best devs in the world; their public tests (which they no longer do these days), consisted of three weeks where they'd ignore the major issues everyone raised, and they then release a major patch, perform maybe one hotfix, if you're lucky, then leave the game alone for four months before doing the next major patch, with absolutely nothing in between but minor patches that fix maybe 2-3 things and break 10 others.

Sounds like Conan Exiles

 

[vanFace]

Can you imagine the level of complaints if they did a beta and said 'now you get to do it all again in production!'. Especially as they need a few more weeks to find more bugs.

And the dude who found the exploit would have kept it quiet until it went live, so you'd still have issues in Live.

It's just the usual forum histrionics over a couple of hours of downtime - it will be fougotten just as fast.

I'm a bit curious why you ask me this question, having already stated that they get away with it in games. However, the question is based on a premise: that a "normal" beta test would include the same level of grind. It doesn't have to. Just as they did with FCs, they could reduce the numbers involved somewhat, so people can experience the features without the hours poured into it. Granted, a balancing run is certainly necessary in live still, but not so much bug fixing that the system is down for so long.

Also about "the dude": there is still no confirmation that this is true. In addition, not every hacker is a bad guy. Maybe someone would have reported a possible exploit when playing with that system in a beta.

Then again, I'm not the one complaining about it being testing in production. Just stating that it is so, and that this has the observed consequences.

 

[Ydiss]

Sounds like Conan Exiles

It's not, but I think it's more common than some people think

I think Paul C has done a good job communicating and working with us on this update. The game I'm talking about doesn't even have a forum. They deleted it years ago when they realised they couldn't sustain it (it was pretty toxic, but that's because they didn't moderate it at all). All we have now is a Discord channel. That's it. Oh, and Twitter. Reddit exists, and the devs do go there, but... it's reddit.

Coming back here has been a relief.

 

[Cmdr Nighthawk]

I dont mind the testing in Live. I decided not to play for a while simply because I found out I had lost quite alot of bio examples because of the last rollback. And it gets kind of boring collecting the same over and over again.

The problem is this is hitting thoese playing other parts of the game than colonization. Us doing exploration keeps getting set back. and we cant even take part in the update anyways since its ONLY for the bubble.

So I personally found the best solution was to just stay away from the game ontil it gets stable again. (if)

 

[Clip]

Tbh the game hasn't been this stable in years as it has in the last few hours.

No flickering shadows, no crashes, no bugs whatsoever.

lol, it's literally unplayable now

 

[Cmdr Nighthawk]

Can you imagine the level of complaints if they did a beta and said 'now you get to do it all again in production!'. Especially as they need a few more weeks to find more bugs.

And the dude who found the exploit would have kept it quiet until it went live, so you'd still have issues in Live.

It's just the usual forum histrionics over a couple of hours of downtime - it will be fougotten just as fast.

The problem is ITS NOT all who can take part in the update (colinization) Us out in the black playing other parts of the game get hit by there rollbacks. And to keep going to the same places to find biologi examples is not that fun. No to talk about being kicked back 2k ly of distance and a bunch of lost exploration. I think this is the problem with doing a beta Live it hits everyone even thoese who can't play that part of the game. since its only for the bubble everyone out in the black has to accept the fact that there is a big chance you loose a lot or get kicked back in progress.
Personally I found the solution to just not play until this settles down again. I my gues is im not the only one taking stepps like that. that eventually means player base down.

But again I dont mind they test it Live. its just making it harder to find the ballance in the playerbase.

 

[vanFace]

lol, it's literally unplayable now

I think it was meant along the lines of "where nothing works, nothing can be done wrong". It is also a common security/safety goal: restrict work so much that nobody can do anything anymore, and presto you have a perfectly stable and safe environment.

 

[galahad2069]

lol, it's literally unplayable now

but stably so

 

[Ian Doncaster]

It would be lovely to have some uninterrupted time just playing the game.

The Legacy game is near-guaranteed by Frontier never to be altered in any way, and only patched in emergencies, and therefore has much more consistent uptime. Catch is, of course, it's near-guaranteed to never be altered in any way (and so the two accounts aren't compatible).

Still, even if you generally wanted to use Live, you could get yourself a Legacy character and play them instead during the few weeks after a big release.

The downsides are rapid expansion that they've now halted

Is that a downside? Or rather [1], is it in any way unexpected given the parameters?

They said 8000 systems were completed. Let's assume most of them, at least, were outposts at ~20kT of cargo each.
Multiply up and that's 160 million tonnes of cargo.
(And sure, a bit more delivered to build things bigger than a Coriolis, and a bit more delivered to build things after the starting outposts and to incomplete-at-time-of-writing systems)

That sounds like a lot ... but it's only marginally higher than the all-time 1-week record for a trade CG (which was also a "build new systems" CG, interestingly), the purpose of these new features is to be popular and bring people back to the game who were taking a break, and the targets have been set well within the normal capabilities of an established player.

It's a lot more rapid expansion than players might have expected - we were presumably thinking more in terms of major tasks where a big group might have got its first system confirmed by now - but must surely have been no worse than the high end of what Frontier expected.




[1] I've been saying for a while that 20,000 systems is way too big for the bubble to be, so in that respect doubling the size makes things worse. But when it comes down to it, once you allow Colonisation at all you've clearly decided that's both unfixable and it's better to work with features which don't care about the bubble's size in future, so that's (like the introduction of Fleet Carriers was) the change in direction.