Pushing Your Luck

Discussion in 'Player Support' started by Pandora's Lunchbox, Oct 31, 2014.

  1. Pandora's Lunchbox

    So I've read several posts from 'techies' at SOE, one of which, at least, supported the idea that the developers are doing a good job.

    I disagree. You don't need me to point that out. Just log in and see for yourself.

    This game has been running for, what, two years now? I'd say that it's 'still buggy as hell', but that would be wrong - because the bugs are being fixed. The issue is more in either the carelessness of updates, lack of manpower or the game just being very unmodifiable (perhaps a combination of the three?). Maybe the engine isn't very modifiable. I don't know, I'm not that technical with games.

    Bugs are being fixed as MORE are added and readded - and I'm not just talking ******** 'heads sometimes don't render properly', either; some are horrendous and unacceptable for an MMO game of this scale, for the paying portion of SOE's customers - the worst is the ever-present (AT LEAST since the Valkyrie update) memory leak that I believe STILL hasn't been fixed.

    Priorities are all wrong. Who designs a ******* game, realises it has gained heavy amounts of bugs and glitches and STILL opts to develop new cosmetic items before it gets fixed? SOE does. Well, read this, SOE and read it carefully; you're now (if you weren't before) pissing off your consumers and if things don't get better, the complaints will get VERY loud.

    It's high-time you began offering refunds for those who've funded your little project into ******* up this game. Really. Look into my account's purchasing records (if you even hold those). Look at All-Access members' account purchase details. don't you think you're wasting our time, now?

    When I downloaded this game - a couple months before the Valkyrie update - it ran smoothly. Then said update happened and this is when the memroy leak got real for me (admittedly my system is an older build, but there is absolutely no denying the fact that it ran smoothly in pretty much every aspect, beforehand). I failed to notice other flaws because of the screen-freezing alone. I've done so much research into it, tried so many different options in an attempt to fix my own issue; but when I contact a technnical assistant at SOE, what do I get? My connectivity is probably the issue. **** off. Ever since then, it's like the performance has been thrown out of the window. Eventually I forced myself to use and put up with the apparent random crashing of the broken 32bit version of PS2, since my 64bit version screen-froze pretty much every few seconds for five seconds, at least. There was a short period recently where the 64bit issue for me was relieved a little (not fixed, but nowhere near as awful - it was actually playable), but now it's gone straight back to being unplayable. This time, however, it is both versions that are affected.

    I don't know exactly what the **** you put into that 9mb update, but it has dwarfed the major issues the preceding update presented. I, for one, can play in the 64bit version for around three mintues before my computer tells me that it is not responding. As for the 32bit version, well, as soon as I attempt to render anything, I get the error telling me that it is not responding.

    A friend told me that he got an error report from the game itself (haven't seen that in a while, I thought you were going to ditch it for good after the initial memory leaks?); G9...ironically, the wiki suggests reinstalling the game entirely - basically, in this context, you ****** the directory up so much even you suggest reinstalling it with exactly the same ****. Other than that, he experiences large MS gain (100 up to 4000) as well as screen-freezing for at least four seconds each time (especially as enemies begin to engage) and general hitching on a machine more than realistically capable of playing this game.

    Why is Planetside treated with such disregard? Why are you backing a ******* rip-off zombie survival game that WON'T get very far, instead? This game is almost entirely unique - and best of all - initially free to play; WHY is it not your flagship project? Who the hell is running that joint?

    This is a game and I do not have to pay for it or play it. But you know what? I played as it worked, played as it 'kind of ' worked and tried to play it when it 'probably wouldn't work'. I did my best to contact you for help to fix my issues, if it was a fault at my end (it ******* isn't and you know it isn't). I did my best to research my own fixes, including constant memory cleaners, defragments of my Planetside directory, file replaces and changes in the directory, graphic alterations, forcing the game into 32bit version...yaddayaddayadda. I paid for a HELL of a lot of **** - some cosmetic, some with some actual use - and now I feel completely let down. Money I make is being wasted on a game (which screams to me, personally, that I need a lifecheck, anyway) which is now getting worse, even TWO years into general release. What sucks the most is that in all that time, SOE have brought nothing to show for it but ******** excuses, cosmetic updates that I can't see for very for crashing and layers of lies and ****ups. The constant chain of bugs being introduced, while they were at least cosmetic issues and marginally amusing technical ones, has completely lost its novelty. The failupdates aren't funny anymore, I feel that it is actually a rather serious issue that you developers are going to have to face.

    The game needs overhauled, end of. You should keep well-working, stable backups of versions of the game at hand so that in the event you do break something, you can always let players use an older working version while you fix it. It needs to be revised. You need to focus entirely on performance issues - not stupid ones like how spawnroom shields work, or what weapon has a glitched model. Changing those thigns are useless if players can't actually play the ******* game. I can't imagine you're making much of a profit, now - hell, why else would you put updating pleas for donations and encouragement to go for premium meberships, in-game? If that's the case, then I can only imagine that it is feasible that Planetside is in danger of being closed as a project, because at this rate, it's going to be costing you too much to keep going (especially given the track record so far...).

    I don't intend to play this game properly, for a while yet, now. Unfortunately, I bought Station Cash yesterday while the game was still relatively playable (despite MY random MS increases from around 100 up to a ridiculous 300,000) and totally regret it now more than I ever have done with previous ****-ups.

    How can you regard 300,000ms as still being a connection, in a modern time? I'd probably get better connectivity using two cans and a piece of string.

    It's at the point, here, where I am going to encourage readers, now, to demand their money back and stop any memberships with the game and to generally stop playing if any issue has recently arisen for them. I think SOE has a false sense of security going when they look at their active server populations, when in fact, most of the players listed are simply 'putting up with the ****' in order to play a game they like. Test your damn updates and provide links on your LaunchPad News section that explicitly list ALL fixes and updates - even the ninja ones that go more-or-less unnoticed. Your community features players who even experiment with the game to locate causes of issues that you (SOE) probably aren't evena ware of, yet. If you give them a good, easily-found, clear description of your updates, then you might even begin to call them your 'third-party' development team. For free.

    For those reading this that are either new to the game or recently began playing it, I would strongly recommend going no further with playing it. It is, or will be, both a strain on the system and at some point in the future, will undoubtedly become an unnecessary strain on your patience. SOE should not be thanking players for their 'patience' so frequently - they should be providing a product that is 'as-described' and as flawed as little as possible. It should be a continuously-tested product on a variety of machines. The devlopers should keep in constant, direct contact with a wide group of dedicated players, so that they have a larger workforce for finding issues, at least, across many kinds of computer builds.

    There are other developers out there that provide their players with HUGE updates that introduce very few new bugs and produce a lot of fixes to existing ones. Sony should not be stupid enough to waddle into the MMO or FPS markets with a game that drastically fails to live up to player expectation. When i pay for this ****, I expect it to work as intended and as described. Right now and for a long while, now, it has not.
    • Up x 7
  2. A3DELITIST

    I understand exactly why you feel this way. Your correct as far as im concerned.

    They do so much that baffles me, why the game has been this wrong for so long can only mean they are other wise engaged...with other games or projects. As each patch goes by the chances of this game ever getting out of the HUGE hole its in are getting slimmer and that makes me feel sad.

    This is my favourite game, i have 250 on my Steam account yet this one i play the most and the money i have pumped into this game reflects that. At this point i feel that they need to invest hugely in this game to stop it falling further off the cliff, if they dont lay out then they wont get a return and im sure it wont be long before we will be seeing even more server merges due to amount of people that have stopped playing.

    Last time i checked a lot of my outfit had stopped playing and theres 400+ of us. They all migrated to another game, sad that they had to do this but i can understand them coming to a point where their patience runs out and enough is enough. Clealry i either have a longer patience or am just plain stupid to keep trying to play a game that just CTD every 5 mins or less.

    There will come a point where i wont come back, i have only been back 2 weeks after taking a month off because i got so annoyed at the state of the game after evey patch broke more than it fixed. 2 weeks back and im ready for a break already.
  3. Hank

    Game runs GREAT for me...Even Looks better.
  4. Pandora's Lunchbox

    Hank,

    You have a high-end specification of a PC as far as I'm concerned. My computer should be able to handle the game's official minimum spec', as quoted by the technical support assistant from SOE, who targetted my connectivity.

    I have noticed that those using powerful CPUs seem to rarely/never experience the hitching, freezing and crashing; but let me assure you that the leak is still there; as proven by other users, testing their hardware. It seems simply a matter of your system's ability to handle the game more effectively than mine. I'm not saying I need an upgrade (I shouldn't have to, especially seen as the build was approved by SOE, for this game) because my components are all able to handle the game on at least its minimum spec's.

    I actually believe, Hank, that you posted here simply to boast, rather than to add anything helpful. Of course that build shouldn't see any issues. If it did, then the game definitely is ******.

    A point I was making, is of SOE's disregard for the wide variety of hardware that people are going to be using in order to play the game. I understand developing a game under those conditions and on the sort of scale that Planetside is on is difficult, to say the least, but may I reiterate to you that this has been plodding on for two years. In that space of time, it is my understanding, the performance has bounced up and down and more so, recently, basically hit the floor.

    We're playing a game that is being fiddled to be more optimised for more powerful machines, which is not a good marketing scheme.
    • Up x 2
  5. chevyowner

    With this last patch the game runs like crap for me and I have a better PC. (some will say the GPUs would make this debatable)
    The game loves to drop to 1 fps (yes that is correct(one frame per second)).

    MB: ASUS P9X79 LE
    CPU: i7-4930K
    Ram: 8x8GB DDR3 1333
    GPU: 2x EVGA GTX 660

    I don't see the need for "faster" RAM.
    • Up x 3
  6. iUFO

    TODAY 1/11/2014 I AM FINISHED WITH THIS GAME
    I REGRET SPENDING SO MUCH MONEY
    I WILL MAKE SURE ALL MY FRIENDS WILL STOP TOO
    WILL COME BACK WHEN IT IS STABLE FOR A LONG PERIOD OF TIME NOT JUST 24H
    I REGRET AGAIN FOR MY TIME AND MY MONEY
    SOE YOU HAVE FAILED BIG TIME
    • Up x 1
  7. Damz49

    Pandora is 100% right.

    They create useless weapons and cosmetics to get more and more money while there a 1yo bugs still not fixed (Aegis MAX shield)

    They should stop all cosmetics and updates, and focus only on bugs and performance.
    • Up x 2
  8. dreamcast87

    I feel your frustration Pandora. I first started playing PS2 around March/April of 2013 after I finished building my new rig to get back into PC gaming after 5 plus yr absence. I was blown away at how great the game looked, during big battles my FPS dropped into the mid 30's but the game was still playable. Then during summer of 2013 game became unplayable for me, no matter what i did i just kept crashing or poor performance, i tried a bunch or fixes/ tips suggested by other players but it didn't help, so i deleted my characters and tried different servers but it was the same problems on each one. After the 1st OMFG patch the game became playable for me again while taking a significant hit in the visuals. For the most part the game has been stable for me since then, but with this last 10/30/2014 patch it brought back memories of my 2013 crashes. I'm did a clean install on a new SSD and downloading PS2 as i type this so hopefully i can play without crashing. ( I do personally believe PS2 is being butchered so that it can be put on the PS4 but this shouldn't happen at the expense of the PC players )
    • Up x 1
  9. denni49

    any american lawers willing to give a opion on a class action suit for Soe non performance?If this game was a car would it be subject to a mandated recall??
    • Up x 1
  10. EricAurum

    I too started playing before the Valkyrie patch, and things ran pretty smooth for me. I'm not concerned with maxing GFX as long as my FPS remain around 50-60. I could do it in smaller battles and larger battles get down to around 30, but the game never froze or crashed.

    After the Valkyrie patch, it all went to hell. Some hotfixes allow me to play with mostly no freezing, some hotfixes completely freeze my game every 5 seconds, and this latest patch or hotfix or whatever it was apparently fixes the freezing...until it freezes permanently and I have terminate the process in task manager.

    I know my specs are not the best, but what frustrates me is that before the Valkyrie patch I could play the game just fine.
    • Up x 1
  11. MajiinBuu

    This thread reminds me of when crying little children on Youtube threaten to "unsubscribe," as if anyone cares if they leave or not. :D
    The people in charge of cosmetics are not associated with people who handle bugs, it is incredibly stupid to think that everyone at SOE has the same job, and everyone is in charge of everything.
    Whenever a few lousy players leave there are several good players who join. Maybe those newer players won't feel like they are obligated to have everything they want, when they want.
    Nobody will miss you.
  12. volth

    PS2 on Cobalt is unplayable today. I got 450 ping now :/ + server lag and fps drops. Bad hit detection and more things.
    They need to fix this now!
  13. KiraValtraut

    Please, SOE.
    • Up x 1
  14. Pandora's Lunchbox

    For the care of P1GG, you have managed to evade an internet-wide anti-troll that was so epic that even I could feel the burn that you would have, after reading it.

    One of the useful comments I made, in it, included something about a better company employing people who could work in different departments when they needed to and not just do the same old job over and over; thereby making the idea of focusing entirely on game faults with performance and suh entirely feasible. A lot of companies work like this, not namely in the games development industry. Go back to Googleschool and read up on simple etiquette. People will miss your comment even less than they will miss me in-game.
  15. P1GG

    First off, I urge you to edit out the name calling. You just give the moderators a valid reason to the lock the thread, and it can't really go anywhere good anyway.

    Secondly, I agree that this game just gets worse and worse. I don't even understand how a game that has been constantly patched for 2 years can be so buggy. My only guess is that they don't do proper testing on things because the test server doesn't have enough players, and they don't want to hire more testers. That and they want to keep adding content to keep making more money. That is understandable, except when you do it at the expense of the quality of the game, it is just a cash grab. Looks like they are just trying to squeeze everything they can out of PS2 before it becomes irrelevant, and it will become irrelevant, probably in the next few years once all of the upcoming mmo shooters start coming out of beta.
  16. S7rudL

    Why are you even comparing a game to a car?
    A car needs to be recalled if it has a design flaw that could endanger peoples lives, common sense wtf. even if you are not sure if there is a law for it or not.

    If you google there appears to be one, same for eu/asia what ever,..
    The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (originally enacted in 1966 and now recodified as 49 U.S.C. Chapter 301) gives the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) the authority to issue vehicle safety standards and to require manufacturers to recall vehicles that have safety-related defects or do not meet Federal safety standards. Since then, more than 390 million cars, trucks, buses, recreational vehicles, motorcycles, and mopeds, as well as 46 million tires, 66 million pieces of motor vehicle equipment, and 42 million child safety seats have been recalled to correct safety defects.
  17. Pandora's Lunchbox

    I apologise, guys, for the ragey parts of my original post. Is it possible to blame me, though? Like I said, I wouldn't give a complaint the time of day, had I not been paying for this - but the fact is, I have been paying. A lot. That's enough to piss anyone off. Some would call it a 'bad investment' - and they would not be wrong - but I just stick with it being 'the company let me down'. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one left out here, wondering what I've been doing with my money. It would look silly, otherwise...

    I didn't expect a response like that, in all honesty. I expected more comments as from Margarine...boob...maaaghgh...whatever the **** his name is.

    Edit;
    MajiinBuu (copied and pasted),
    I am nineteen, going-on twenty years of age. I felt that you had this urge to know, despite the irrelevance.
    What children have you witnessed producing a complaint like that on YouTube? What the hell kind of videos do you watch?
    Alright, I think I'm done anti-trolling you. You didn't give me a lot of material to keyboardwarrior the **** out of you, so, you understand my boredom, hopefully.
  18. Pandora's Lunchbox

    You have no idea how badly I would like to say 'he started it'.
  19. SGT-Bilko

    My game was buggy before the update, and they fixed mine. I was calm, and through the forums offered my bugs, opinions and ideas. And suddenly my game works. Perhaps the best idea is not to get mad, but to help them fix the nix by posting your system specs, your specific issue, and the exact time as close as you can as to when it happened. Just an idea.
  20. SGT-Bilko

    I would buy membership for a decade to prevent rollback...