I’m leery of the “big patches” concept. I’m not overly fond of just how many things the upcoming “Pets” update seemingly wants to change at once. Hell, it’s even trying to test too many things IMO.
I can say for myself (just being honest) that I barely paid any attention to the change to the combat system, because I was preoccupied with the thralls & pets.
But we’ll have to see how it goes, I doubt it’d be worth the effort to split it up now, and these all-in-one patches are probably a consequence of how Funcom works so it might not even be possible. At least this time it’s having a good long time in TestLive, so hopefully that’ll mitigate some issues, though I have no doubts there’ll be “going live” issues, too.
I’ve always said the same thing: I’d rather have small fixes that actually adress bugs one by one, making sure they work and don’t bring new bugs along, than have a huge patch adressing hundreds of issues that are not thoroughly tested before implemented. I am no coder but I think it’s easier to adress one issue at a time, well tested, than several at a time, since maybe changing too much code at one time can lead to issues with other parts of the code. But again, that’s just a guess.
With how many bugs the game does have, if they only address one issue at a time then it will only slow down newer content which will in turn cause many players to be bored waiting for said content and cause them to stop playing. I understand why one would want things addressed one step at a time, but sometimes it’s best to do large patches like this so there’s also more things to play around with, keeping the players interested.
Sure, it’ll fix some bugs, create new bugs, but it’ll give people more to play with. I mean, seriously, if they only addressed one bug at a time, we wouldn’t even have the new combat system by now. I don’t know about you, but I like the combat system.
Maybe, but I personally prefer to play a stable game with less content, than a game full of content but not working stable as intended. I mean it’s like covering mistakes under the rug with new things that sometimes bring along new mistakes…
Go look at Sea of Thieves and see how well that mess of a rushed out game is. Pushed out too early, now they can’t keep up with the constant demand of new content and keep breaking the game as they push out temporary weekly events to appease their player base.
Everyone just needs to be patient. Let the devs do their work and don’t take the cake out of the oven till it’s done. Oh it might look good but then you start eating it. Just let them bake the damn cake.
I think a mix of both will be a better idea that way bugs will be addressed to help build a stable foundation while also adding new content that adds fewer bugs in to keep people interested as that way it pleases both sides.
In a vacuum, yes. But depending on your project setup (both technically and human-resources wise) that can be difficult or prohibitively inefficient to do. It’s also often the case that features that seemingly should have little or nothing to do with each other ends up doing so, so a bugfix in feature A ends up breaking a corner case on feature B. If it wasn’t documented that feature A and feature B shared any kind of relationship, then it’s easy for that kind of thing to slide “under the radar”.
That’s not to defend such things as building pieces exploding upon update (most recent example: corner stairs) - that really should have been found out before it went live (in an automated test, preferably).
Even though I understand and acknowledge that it’s not always easy, I’d still prefer somewhat smaller patches and content updates though, no question. Maybe not single-bugfix-patches, but there has to be a happy medium somewhere between mega patches that changes two core systems and adds one or more entirely new ones.
All of the above is based on practical (ie, far from ideal) experience, game/software development “theorists” will often have a multitude of techniques and processes that they claim prevents this - some are genuinely useful, others are more of a hindrance, none of them (in my experience) completely eliminates these kinds of issues.
That’s true, and I believe it’s the path Funcom is taking, or at least that’s my impression after the latest news from them. Which is good since keeps new players coming and ole players happier as the game stabilizes its issues.
I am very wary of big patches after the MOAP and Combat Update, which broke some things that still haven’t been fixed, like wells and AI. I can definitely understand that the majority of coders are working diligently on bug fixes, but it’s hard to see any of those fixes from what’s on Testlive.
Funcom is working very much to the tune of what is taught in Business Management courses, with the goal of keeping all employees busy without layoffs. For this I applaud them, especially with the flack they’ve taken here. But we really do need more bug fixes, so I would like to suggest that the animators and artists work on more character creation options and idle animations while the coders work on an AI Overhaul for NPC’s.
But wasn’t the AI outsourced? If it was, we don’t know the agreements made between these two parties. It could be that Funcom only gets tge final code, leaving debug up to the outsourced company.
As for one big patch vs many small ones, another factor is the process of vetting patches through Xbox and Sony. In both cases, a patch just can’t be released. It must go through an approval process and there is probably a fee. There msu also be limits onthe number of patches a company could submit at a time. If there was no limit, a company like EA could screw smaller companies by taking up a large number of patch slots. Several smaller patches may seem nice buy it may not be the most economical or even allowed by Sony amd Xbox.