For sure, reputation should always be above profit.
Why every patch brings more bugs than fixes?
- Thread starter Salmonea
- Start date
Not that hard to comprehend, annoying sure but that is the modern Agile release method for software these days, release fast(er), fail fast(er) ie dont be scared of releasing bugs because you can fix them quickly. Cosmetic or niche bugs will always fall down the priority list even though some seem to be either repeats of previous issues or quick wins but a software bug is a symptom not always the same underlying cause. Throw in computer gaming going for vast open worlds with ever more complex AI and multi-player interactions to trigger emergent gameplay then you basically make automated QA impossible and manual QA prohibitive. Computer Gaming has always been about functionality rather than stability and that is probably why it such a successful industry.
It isn't critically broken, though. You can boot up, fly around, shoot stuff, trade, and play the vast majority of the game satisfactorily. If player fire groups have been messed up, that's just annoying and inconvenient. The point therefore is that they almost certainly are doing basic checks. Just not a great deal more than basic, I would suggest for the reasons stated.
I would agree that few games are released as broken as EDO, though: it was severely compromised with all the coloured snake CTDs.
This is precisely why EDO hasn't been released on console yet. Consoles have 'quality standards' that PC sales do not.
And after the Cyberpunk drama they've probably tightened those 'quality standards' even more so who knows when Odyssey passes the test. The fact that it's a closed and fixed architecture should help with the optimization but in the other hand Frontier might be short-staffed to deal with all of that and the development of it's other ongoing games (new and old).
I think what OP intends to say, is why are there regressions with each new patch? It's one thing to move the puck forward with new features (which could have bugs) but Elite's problem is the regressions they introduce into already working features. F-DEV is clearly not changing their QA practices any time soon (or they would have already based on EDO) . What they should do is offer beta access to an update before pushing it live for live. I bet only 1 week is enough to find issues in the wild. Then they wouldn't need to panic patch 9.01 for example.....
and original issue still remains.
Working as intended?
Deleted member 182079
D
Rubbish.
Google "Life of Black Tiger" on the PS4 as exhibit A.
And Cyberpunk only got pulled because CDPR were being cheeky around refunds, with Sony in particular. Not because the game ran like a dog (though the refunds were caused by that - but it's not as direct a reason as many think it was).
And while I'm at it, I still vividly remember Skyrim and Fallout New Vegas on my PS3 (plenty of other trainwrecks for sale on consoles over the years). The latter in particular made me worry about my console, it was in horrendous shape.
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Difference is that MSFS2020's bugs are extremely minor and never affect main gameplay loops.
With FDev, patches often break core parts of the game, and with disturbing frequency. Such as exobiology for Update 9. This is NOT just the "consequence of games being complicated." This is still FDev/FDev management being incompetent.
If you genuinely believe this level of patch breakage is commonplace, I really urge you to start playing games outside of Elite.
From a Software Engineer perspective, to me it looks like a lack of play testing and deploying with your fingers crossed. Nothing is perfect but some of the bugs are pretty obvious. To me, it sounds like those developing the game, do not play the game. It's like fixing a car and never driving it to make sure. Bad practice.
What I do with my team, I define teams for each bug/problem and confirm resolution before deploying. This is how is should be done and one more note... this whole "Vote On A Problem" system, is just downright asinine. Problems should be fixed in order of severity, crashes and gameplay (i.e. lack of higher tier raw materials) issues should be tackled first.
Just my two cents.
What I do with my team, I define teams for each bug/problem and confirm resolution before deploying. This is how is should be done and one more note... this whole "Vote On A Problem" system, is just downright asinine. Problems should be fixed in order of severity, crashes and gameplay (i.e. lack of higher tier raw materials) issues should be tackled first.
Just my two cents.
If you work in software development then you should know that the problematic is often more about manpower / budget than workflow. With the current cost of engineers and QA, being able to test "everything" in a game is a luxury, even for big companies.
You're probably talking about "classic" software. A game is much harder to test, the number of scenarios is almost infinite.
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Indeed, something that many seem to forget, the bigger the game and it's range of mechanics the harder is to test stuff or make updates without breaking old and new content. Such is the way.
Since last MSFS2020 I just can't play anymore...got a crash to desktop everytime I try to load a flight. I have no add-ons installed so it will require a full uninstall / dowload / install.
Kind of game breaking yes and never had to do that in ED.
Yes, I deal specifically with Manufacturing Software, while no where near the complexity of a game, they still share similar processes and outcomes if the end customer is not happy at the result.
While my business model/staffing/budget may not be similar, the testing should always remain the same. Before deploying, play it for a day or two (depending on time/staffing/budget/interest). Try different activities and see what happens. To me, this just makes sense.
Understanding of course, not all have that luxury, and not all things can be found but for a larger Game Developer, I would expect a somewhat higher standard before deploying. Like everything, just my opinion. Overall the game is still playable and enjoyable but would prefer a bit more care into testing before deployment if possible.
One thing that irks me is the "Go to Horizons" response for certain aspects of the game. This should never be the answer. Fix the problems (i.e. Raw Material gathering) that are known and causing a larger impact on playing the game as whole. If you want to engineer ships, you need raw materials. Why should you return to Horizons when you paid for Odyssey?
The fact that apparently completely unrelated things break, too - the hostility indicator bug in ships is pretty obvious in certain circumstances but I can certainly understand them not testing out that area particularly thoroughly (and you could easily miss it in a basic test run of ship-to-ship combat, since ships you shoot get marked properly) because why would that suddenly go wrong, after seven years of working basically fine, in a patch which has apparently nothing to do with that display?
Since it's still not fixed after two hotfixes, presumably what did break it isn't obvious either ... wonder if it's one of those cases where one bug was cancelling out another, so you get a "why did that ever work?!" moment when you finally track down what's causing it.
Number of people affected and whether they perceive it as critical or mildly annoying, which voting provides a vague proxy for, is a component of severity ... equally, it's pretty obvious if you look at what does get fixed that they don't consider the vote count a particularly large component of their prioritisation scheme: I've had several bugs fixed none of which got anywhere near even a second bar of votes; the megaship hatchbreaker bug which took them over a year to fix was in second place on the voting table for most of that time. So they're doing what you suggest here, but managing to do so in such a way that it looks like they're not.
(The actual "reporting" and "getting Frontier to acknowledge it exists" parts of the bug tracker are far worse; at least the voting bit does largely what it says mostly as documented)
Reinstalled the game after a long time to test out Odyssey.
So far I fell through the planet as I loaded into the Odyssey tutorial, seems like a great start. Then I glitched into a doorway in the second building I walked into, figured out that I can actually leave the boring glitchy tutorial and figure stuff out myself.
The first thing I noticed back in my ship was that all my fire groups had been wiped clean, which is real fun in a ship with 4 kinds of limpet controllers, a bunch of scanners, shield banks and 9 different weapons with specialized engineering for different purposes, it was quite a chore to get em all rebound the correct way for piracy.
After that was done, I finally found some prey and tried going after this commander, my interdictor of course didn't work for x reason, and I got fined every time I clicked to try it again.
Amazing.
My cover was pretty much blown by this point, and the guy started high waking, so I slowed down to let him jump and scanned his wake... Lined up for the chase and engaged my FSD... Only to be fined about a million times in a row and my fps getting tanked.
I quit to desktop and uninstalled, see ya.
So far I fell through the planet as I loaded into the Odyssey tutorial, seems like a great start. Then I glitched into a doorway in the second building I walked into, figured out that I can actually leave the boring glitchy tutorial and figure stuff out myself.
The first thing I noticed back in my ship was that all my fire groups had been wiped clean, which is real fun in a ship with 4 kinds of limpet controllers, a bunch of scanners, shield banks and 9 different weapons with specialized engineering for different purposes, it was quite a chore to get em all rebound the correct way for piracy.
After that was done, I finally found some prey and tried going after this commander, my interdictor of course didn't work for x reason, and I got fined every time I clicked to try it again.
Amazing.
My cover was pretty much blown by this point, and the guy started high waking, so I slowed down to let him jump and scanned his wake... Lined up for the chase and engaged my FSD... Only to be fined about a million times in a row and my fps getting tanked.
I quit to desktop and uninstalled, see ya.
I hope you paid your fines before uninstall, because with the current inflation you'll be ruined when you'll be back next time!
You just sound like you're running away from justice
