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Constant Patching
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Skull Snatcher
Xtreme PartouzoCommandos
#1 - 2011-09-27 14:32:50 UTC
Good Day

I Would just like to know how most other eve players feel about ccp and there constant patch releases.

It feels like you cant play the game 3 days before being forced to download a 5mb patch to fix something.

Now i know in development you can expect a bug or two, but with X amount of GM's and developers and 3 regions worth of eve space to play around and test on, it just feels like a waist of money to pay who ever is doing your testing (if anyone is), since it seems like how it works now is release patch and wait for complaints to start rolling in, and based on those numbers you make your quick fix and rince repeat, till 8 small patches later there is a larger release and the process starts all over again.

I know a quick patch download is not an issue for the major % of eve subscribers but where i live most of the bandwidth is capped and charged for per mb depending on your connection.

I am not expecting eve to suddenly be bug free but please try improve to the point of weekly patches, or more testing before releases.

Thanks
Iosue
League of Gentlemen
The Initiative.
#2 - 2011-09-27 14:41:18 UTC
to be honest, the constant patches are the least of my concerns. they take less than a minute to complete and usually don't cause much inconvenience. i'd rather have the constant patches than have all the bug fixes wait until some set time to be addressed. yes, in a perfect world the game would work flawlessly the first time out, but this ain't a perfect world, now is it??

now i can see how being limited on bandwidth would make me feel differently, but fortunately this is not a concern for me either.

you know what they say: gotta pay to play...
gfldex
#3 - 2011-09-27 14:42:33 UTC
*cough* bot detection *cough*

If you take all the sand out of the box, only the cat poo will remain.
Kisuke Riva
Project Stealth Squad
The Initiative.
#4 - 2011-09-27 14:47:26 UTC
Yep, every time CCP patches if most probably mess up some of the bots. :)

Btw, check the price of tritanium on the market over the last year. That's a very good indicator on the impact from CCPs endeavors against bots. Good job guys!
Abrazzar
Vardaugas Family
#5 - 2011-09-27 14:47:33 UTC
Because 5 MB are such a massive amount of bandwidth use, CCP should just stop patching altogether and stick with bi annual releases. I'd also vote for hard discs send per mail instead of downloading, as it's both faster and cheaper.

Sovereignty and Population

New Mining Mechanics
Skorpynekomimi
#6 - 2011-09-27 14:48:08 UTC
Bugfix patches > no bugfixing.

Economic PVP
Rees Noturana
Red Rock Mining Company
#7 - 2011-09-27 14:49:07 UTC
Software is never done and never bug free. Regular updates are a good thing. Waiting months on quick fixes that were done and ready to go shortly after a bug was identified is not.

Keep on patching CCP.

_ _
AFKCloaked AltSpy
Doomheim
#8 - 2011-09-27 15:04:24 UTC
I log onto the forums and people complain that CCP doesn't fix enough

I log onto the forums and people complain that CCP patches to often.

I log onto the forums and goons and other douches are trying to manage CCP.

Boy, am I glad CCP doesn't listen to everybody.
Rees Noturana
Red Rock Mining Company
#9 - 2011-09-27 15:23:57 UTC
AFKCloaked AltSpy wrote:
I log onto the forums and people complain that CCP doesn't fix enough

I log onto the forums and people complain that CCP patches to often.

I log onto the forums and goons and other douches are trying to manage CCP.

Boy, am I glad CCP doesn't listen to everybody.



I would hate to be CCP management. They have to listen but set their own course. They have to keep their customers happy but still innovate. Half wants what we have today but "fixed". The other half wants new content. Then there is the tug of war between PvP and PvE. There are so many things that have to be considered and most don't survive contact with the players in any fashion resembling what their planning counted on.

It doesn't matter which path they choose they'll be criticized.

All this passion tells me one thing, people love this game.

_ _
Signal11th
#10 - 2011-09-27 15:24:19 UTC
AFKCloaked AltSpy wrote:
I log onto the forums and people complain that CCP doesn't fix enough

I log onto the forums and people complain that CCP patches to often.

I log onto the forums and goons and other douches are trying to manage CCP.

Boy, am I glad CCP doesn't listen to everybody.




Pretty much this.

God Said "Come Forth and receive eternal life!" I came fifth and won a toaster!
Florestan Bronstein
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#11 - 2011-09-27 15:42:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Florestan Bronstein
Ever since internet access has become widespread the notion of pre-release QC has gone out of the window and MMORPGs are just the tip of the iceberg in that regard.

When the only way you can get patches to your customer is via gaming magazines (which reach only a small subset of your customer base) and most of them will be stuck forever with the version you released on floppy/CD quality control has a different value than when you expect the customer to download the first bunch of fixes to your RTM version before he even starts the game for the first time.

People like to extend deadlines ad infinitum and the ability to patch an already released product without much hassle turns what used to be a "hard" deadline into an increasingly soft one.

Soon all software devs will tell you how great websites really are and that every product should be developed like a website... the only thing holding them back from this noble endeavor of removing deadlines altogether is that customers are still willing to pay for expansion packs.
Psychophantic
#12 - 2011-09-27 15:50:14 UTC
At the current rate they should make it through the thousand papercuts list in about five years.

Then add another five years to fix the bugs they introduced with the bug fixes. Sticky targeting, cargoholds...

Sure hope there's no bugs introduced with new content.

Ahhh for the good old days, before the internet made patching so easy for devs and users weren't paying to beta test software. You could actually buy a game that worked.
RaTTuS
BIG
#13 - 2011-09-27 15:54:26 UTC
patch Often
Patch fast
== good

http://eveboard.com/ub/419190933-134.png http://i.imgur.com/kYLoKrM.png

Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#14 - 2011-09-27 15:59:57 UTC
The small, frequent patches — to say nothing of the ability to actually do them in such a simple manner — are a vast improvement over how it was before…
Florestan Bronstein
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#15 - 2011-09-27 16:01:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Florestan Bronstein
Psychophantic wrote:
Ahhh for the good old days, before the internet made patching so easy for devs and users weren't paying to beta test software. You could actually buy a game that worked.

... or at least the games that didn't work would get appropriate reviews and would never be bought by you.

Today any review that dares to mention bugs at all goes along the lines of "we encountered a few bugs that might already be fixed by the time the game hits the shelves/the public servers open".

The possibility to change anything post facto means no magazine would be crazy enough to write a damning review because even if they did test the RTM version they are still unable to comment on the quality of the "finished" product with any confidence...

In an offline world (that plays MMORPGs, lol) CCP would probably have gone out of business with the boot.ini accident - recalling all boxes from the stores or mailing around new CDs asking store employees to swap the disks inside the boxes with the patched version would probably have been prohibitively expensive, created confusion with the customers (which version do I have? will this make my computer break?) and created a nightmare of negative attention.
Rees Noturana
Red Rock Mining Company
#16 - 2011-09-27 16:03:04 UTC
The complexity of games delivered by CD before the easy patch days of the internet pales in comparison to a modern MMO. Quality control on a game that runs on more than just a local PC and involves many servers and changes as the player load increases must be incredibly difficult to manage.

When I saw that CCP was trying to upgrade and package their core code I knew we were headed for a very rough patch in deployed software. They were replacing software that was stable but a nightmare to upgrade or even debug with something new and not battle tested in a production environment. We just finished the same thing on my project and it was painful at first, but now we are reaping the benefits in a major way.

Once the Carbonization of EVE is complete and they fix all the little bugs that slipped through testing I think we'll see things smooth out and hopefully future expansions will be more stable.

A fully Carbon-based EVE is an investment in time, money and effort but will be good for us all in the long run.

_ _
Tippia
Sunshine and Lollipops
#17 - 2011-09-27 16:10:53 UTC
Psychophantic wrote:
Ahhh for the good old days, before the internet made patching so easy for devs and users weren't paying to beta test software. You could actually buy a game that worked.
You mean the good old days when you could actually buy a game that didn't work because it was up to you to ensure that your hardware worked with the quirks and shortcuts the developers took, because there was no such thing as unified drivers and common interfaces.

What? You had the Rev2.2b of your GUS? Bwahaha! Sucker! Everyone knows it doesn't work with PopularGame II™
Refund? Sod off… it says so right here on the box!
Satav
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#18 - 2011-09-27 17:16:33 UTC
Skull Snatcher wrote:
Good Day

I Would just like to know how most other eve players feel about ccp and there constant patch releases.

It feels like you cant play the game 3 days before being forced to download a 5mb patch to fix something.

Now i know in development you can expect a bug or two, but with X amount of GM's and developers and 3 regions worth of eve space to play around and test on, it just feels like a waist of money to pay who ever is doing your testing (if anyone is), since it seems like how it works now is release patch and wait for complaints to start rolling in, and based on those numbers you make your quick fix and rince repeat, till 8 small patches later there is a larger release and the process starts all over again.

I know a quick patch download is not an issue for the major % of eve subscribers but where i live most of the bandwidth is capped and charged for per mb depending on your connection.

I am not expecting eve to suddenly be bug free but please try improve to the point of weekly patches, or more testing before releases.

Thanks


Uhh, welcome to massive MMO PC gaming dude. Any game of this caliper is going to have constant patches. The template, mechanics are simply just too complex to get everything right the first time.
Akita T
Caldari Navy Volunteer Task Force
#19 - 2011-09-27 17:20:17 UTC
Skull Snatcher wrote:
I Would just like to know how most other eve players feel about ccp and there constant patch releases.
It feels like you cant play the game 3 days before being forced to download a 5mb patch to fix something.

I could easily live with even larger patches on a DAILY basis. If only CCP would actually manage to push fixes that often.

Akita T evewiki profile | | | Build your own EVE-ready PC
Thorn Galen
Bene Gesserit ChapterHouse
The Curatores Veritatis Auxiliary
#20 - 2011-09-27 17:42:34 UTC
AFKCloaked AltSpy wrote:
I log onto the forums and people complain that CCP doesn't fix enough

I log onto the forums and people complain that CCP patches to often.

I log onto the forums and goons and other douches are trying to manage CCP.

Boy, am I glad CCP doesn't listen to everybody.



The above, totally true.
Damned if they do and damned if they don't.

COO - Bene Gesserit Chapterhouse  CEO - Sanctuary Pact Alliance
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