Unprofessional.

I can understand you not noticing a few new bugs in the game when you've just changed up the code. Really, I don't mind, as long as the game is still working decently. If I can log in and play the game in almost the same fashion as I used to until you get it sorted, it doesn't matter - new content and getting the features down is more important to me.

But this was a hotfix. It was supposed to fix things. What did you fix? Do you even have a QA-team for this game? If no, do any of your developers actually look at anything but the code? If no, does anyone on the whole team play the game ever? Or did you fire all the employees that actually played the game, since that might be seen as wasting time?

You spent 90 minutes applying this hotfix. I'm guessing there was - or should have been - plenty of time to go into the game to check if the shields for your warpgates are still there, and make sure that the infiltrators didn't get any new content they weren't supposed to have. You know, before you reopen the servers so all your subscribers can play the game they've spent quite a great deal of money on. This was so embarrassing, I'm thinking about quitting right now and never looking back.

You spend a month without giving us any updates or any real information about what's going on, except an ominous message about layoffs. When you finally put up some info about what you've supposedly been doing - you know, optimization - you follow it up with a long awaited hotfix that just completely screws up the game. You are going to lose the majority of your playerbase if the supposed optimization falls flat as well. Myself included.

ITT: OP doesn't really understand how programming and server updates work.

In this answer - Wiseguy who thinks lack of professionalism and certain quality standards are fine cause op hasn't coded his own gaming engine or had a server running before. The lack of communication, the game breaking bugs, the miserable show that is this hotfix is fine cause OP can't code.

And what feedback have we gotten since the introduction of these bugs happened today? 1 tweet saying "we're on it". Nothing more. Nothing on Reddit. Nothing on the forums. No more tweets. Just being stonewalled once again.

So yeah, forgive me for me for being blunt but your answer is so misplaced here and OP is asking questions that deserve answers. Not a sarcastic code monkey laughing at him while adding nothing to the original post.

Optimization? Where? Last thing I read about that was "This is a pre-performance patch".

Edit: Oh, never mind, I may have misread the op. Still though, these things happen. SOE doesn't seem to be very focused on QA.

I'm curious, was this stuff on Test Server?

did people who use test server completely miss these problems?

Since there is rarely over 20 people on the PTS (lack of incentive) it's hard to get an idea what hotfixes does on large scales

It doesn't take a background of understanding code to understand the process at at least a macro level. Allow me to attempt to elucidate.

A game is a project, a piece of work, much in the same way as a craftsman would make a table. However, the thing about programs is that you can't see flaws until you start either examining it with a microscope (examine the code individually, which is somewhat similar to pouring through a book for grammatical errors) or you start putting things down on the table. If the table is crooked, you could see it just looking at it, but the game doesn't show that. It's a package of code that looks like...code that works when you run it.

Now, they have several builds, or several tables. Each of these is like the first table in that you can't really see it until it's running. Planetside is huge. Can you imagine trying to run through it 'bug testing' by just looking at stuff? These patches would hardly ever come through. What happened here, likely, is that a test server 'table' was mistakenly loaded into the patcher and sent through. This was not caught because that 'table' looks like Planetside 2, but with some variables changed.

The PPA balls the size of houses has been on the test server for quite some time yes.

Nothing they've said counters the point that it's extremely unprofessional to deliver a broken product to your customer and go radio silent on acknowledging the breakage and telling the customer you're working on fixing it as your top priority. All of that is said with me ignoring SOE's obvious lack of following good programming practices.

maybe no one bothered to report it?

Yup. Let's have everyone at SOE responding to complaints rather than working on the root cause of the complaints. Seems legit.

If it were an easy problem to diagnose and fix, it wouldn't have happened in the first place.

So it's okay, is what you're saying.

It doesn't matter in which way I'm wrong about how the game is updated. They are the ones that are supposed to know how to do it, not me. So when they put out the first update in months, after failing to deliver several things on the roadmap that were supposed to be released last month, you'll excuse me if my expectations are too high - wanting the same game as before or better.

This wasn't the time to screw up. They look incredibly unprofessional, screwing up the optimization after this would surely doom this game on the PC. Even if it isn't their fault due to technical limitations, they are gladly taking their subscribers' money. That implies that they won't make the game unplayable at a whim. If they can't handle a game of this magnitude, then they shouldn't make promises that they can't keep.

The best explanation I've seen is that this is a test server release that wasn't meant to be the live update. Notice that there is a recon drone for the infiltrator that wasn't at all announced. Looks like they made a mistake.

Calm down yo

It was reported weeks ago.

To be honnest SOE doesnt seem to know either...

Reported, filmed and documented.

Most don't show up on the test server, most of the ones that do have been reported. So, what's your next suggestion? Should I fly to San Diego and test their release build myself?

Not everyone. Just the guy in charge of Community Feedback. One guy. The others can work on fixing it.

The PPA bug is stated in a previous post as having been logged weeks ago.

The trouble is the PTS will never be a testing ground for the kind of integration bugs from today because PTS is NOT a true test server. If it were, this patch would have gone up there first and everyone could have ripped it to shreds so that it got fixed before getting anywhere near live.

Lol. It's seriously been half a day. if this happened on any other MMO, the servers would be down, period. Just don't play until it's fixed, if it's that game breaking to you.