Don't Play on the First Day!

[FrizzFreston.5290]

> @"Substance E.4852" said:

> Sorry, but I'm not going to debase my basic expectation that a product be delivered in an at least semi functional state.

 

And by semi functional, you mean completely functional.Because it is already semifunctional, and thats the disappointing part.

[Despond.2174]

I am in the new zone and 1/2 through now I am caught in a DC loop. I can't do anything so I guess I have to meta somewhere else on an alt.

[Marxx.5021]

LS bugs are getting fixed quickly by anet. I wish they would put similiar effort into PvP.

[Danikat.8537]

In a weird way I think it's a credit to Anet that so many people are annoyed.

 

My other MMO had a problem where no one could log in through Steam - continuously for 24 hours and on and off for about a week either side. Hardly anyone even mentioned it until it had been going on for several days and was interfering with a special event in-game. (And that's a game many people pay a subscription for, so they were being denied time they'd paid for.) Even then the attitude seemed to be that of course there were connection problems, there's always connection problems, yes it's worse than usual but not remotely surprising, the concern was mainly that it was cutting into an event.

 

I know a lot of people have issues with disconnects in GW2, especially during story missions, but it seems like this issue has surprised a lot of people - it's annoying because it's unusual and it's unusual because normally the game is a lot more reliable than this.

 

On top of which at least we get to play in between problems. A bit part of the reason for the 'don't play on patch day' rule is that in most MMOs the entire game is taken offline when they start installing the update and no one can log in at all until they're finished and bring it back online, and then each time they need to make a fix they take the entire thing offline again. So even if you just want to play old content you have to wait until the new stuff is working. (Honestly I don't understand why more games don't do it the way GW2 does, especially newer MMOs with shared servers, but they don't.)

 

I'm not saying it's good that we have problems, because obviously it's not. But I think it's good that they're rare enough that this is surprising and annoying instead of 'business as usual' problems.

[Delweyn.1309]

This one beat all records of deco.

[Menadena.7482]

I typically figure the first few hours will be shaking out various small things. Being in EST this is perfect timing: by the time I get home I can at least get to the new zone. There may still be more bugs that take another day or so, but if I can get to the new zone and explore on my own the first day I am happy. I can always do the rest of the story later. What matters to me right away is the new map and the new home node.

 

Yesterday I was not happy at all.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

> @"Vyrulisse.1246" said:

> > @"Bloodstealer.5978" said:

> > > @"voltaicbore.8012" said:

> > > I'm just baffled by how these massive issues weren't caught before launch. It's not like you have to do a very specific, obscure thing to trigger the bug - you just get to a certain point and the quest straight up stops working. I was under the impression, since the game allows people on different patch versions to be logged in at the same time, that the dev team could have live-tested this with just a handful of Anet employee accounts running through the episode.

> > >

> > > Then again, I know almost nothing about programming or running an mmo, and fully admit I could be totally wrong about the ability to live-test this sort of thing. Feel free to correct my ignorance.

> >

> > A few is not the same as a few hundred thousand, but who knows the why's and wherefore's.. give them a day or two and much of the issues would of likely been sorted.

> > Its annoying but hey there are worse things in life.

>

> This gave me an idea. They should have something separate from the live game where people could log-in to stress test upcoming content updates. We could call it a Public Test Realm or Public Test Server I dunno I'm not good with names. I think that would be a really good idea and catch this stuff before it borks the actual game but maybe it's a dream.

 

Most MMO's I play/have played indeed utilise Public Test servers, but they cost, they need managing and some I have played have fallen into disuse pretty quickly, especially when community feedback coming out of them gets ignored and those same bugs still appear in launch/patch days.

Its just the nature of the beast imo, frustrating for sure, but not the end of the world.

[voltaicbore.8012]

> @"Substance E.4852" said:

> Sorry, but I'm not going to debase my basic expectation that a product be delivered in an at least semi functional state.

 

And that's really the core issue, one that started with whatever game was the first one - on a large scale - able to benefit from internet-delivered patches to fix the product after release. I feel like the ability to patch software after releasing it for consumer use has seriously degraded the standards we used to hold publishers to.

 

To be clear, I don't blame Anet for this shift in standards, and I'm perfectly fine with shaky launches that get straightened out over a few days. I'm just disappointed that players as a whole have come to accept non-functioning launches as legitimate releases these days.

[Majic.4801]

"True success is one percent iteration, ninety-nine percent more iteration."

 

_-- Researcher Irkz_