State of the Game 11/25/2012 - 4:45pm PST

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Smed, Nov 25, 2012.

  1. MistaN

    Wow, stop with the ********. You sound like they're out to get you or something. I think they would much rather have your money than for you to be mad and frustrated at a game that cost them millions to make. How is this uninformative? He's addressing problems that the community has been pointing out and giving a status update on everything. You act like these things are easy to fix and only take a few hours.

    Jeez, some of you....
    Keep it up Smedley, most of us really do appreciate it instead of you guys doing like other devs and just being silent and avoiding the community all the way.
    • Up x 2
  2. Zapon

    CommandoX411 Let me see....



    1) Server crashes - We've been chasing 2 separate server crashes. They have been tough to debug because in one of them they literally aren't leaving dump files. However we did manage to kill one of the two. We believe we only have one left. These are what we call "world server" crashes. So you are saying that you actually fixed something? I'd like to believe you are working towards a better game but sadly based on my experience in Alpha and since game launch I highly doubt that you actually know what the issue is and are just buying time with this vague statement.

    I wonder if you are trolling with this post. If not, then very well- but based on your experience? Can you elaborate? you didn't give enough information for us to see how you're drawing the conclusion that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

    I would think being the SOE president he does- and that statement he made is not vague really.

    Buying time? This statement won't stop those who want to leave from leaving- not all of them. However, he has done this MULTIPLE times- so this was inevitable anyway that he'd give this update as well.

    2) Zone Server issue - We currently have an issue that causes objects (including vehicles and corpses) not to despawn. Over time this leads to a zone server crash. Zones are continents. We're hard at work on this issue. We have it isolated and it's being worked on hard. I am glad that after almost a week of bug reports on this that it is finally being "looked" into, This has been a huge issue and needs to be a priority.We do NOT know what bugs and issues SOE has seen- therefore we aren't in the same positon as their development and coding teams and managers to judge what's a priority given their limited resources and especially unforeseen problems that no one could have predicted popping up/

    3) Intermittent lag on some servers - we are seeing isolated pockets where a lot of people on one or more servers are seeing pockets of lag. We are checking the root cause of this. Good ****, lets see if this gets resolved or breaks more things when you try and "fix" it.
    I am someone who has coded a lot- and let me tell you, you can't always gaurantee that some section of codei n complex prohects won't cause other issues later down the road. Having also seen this process go on with Zipper Interactive's development team- I'd say this is almost inevitable at times. However, they also have a system to address issues like this in a manner about as fast as possible. Anything more would be unrealistic expectations -and they already strive not to have any issues.

    We're working 7/24 on fixing these issues. They've cropped up since we launched at the massive amount of people playing is simply causing us to see issues we didn't see during the beta. We're fixing them as fast as we possibly can.. and the second we fix something we're putting it up. Alot of ******** in this statement. First off, You prematurely launched the game! At the end of Alpha there were tons of bugs, issues, and glitches that were unresolved and I think ignored, No open beta to test server loads or get a feel for the population interest. Quite frankly you rushed it and messed up, be a man and admit it. Second issue, After being in Alpha for 3 months I severely doubt that your team works 24/7, since alpha squad it seems that the "team" has lost interest in communicating with the players, Support works great...bug fixes suck and most of the time break things more then they fix. Thirdly, the "despawn" issue was in beta, but was ignored. I remember seeing this issue all the time and submitting countless tickets because of it.
    No game is going to come out without bugs. That , i can gaurantee you. No open beta? They had closed and a semi open beta.
    Feel for population interest? I dunno man, the forums here, the twitter stuff, facebook...... >_>

    Looks like they listen, after all.

    "you rushed it and messed up, be a man and admit it" They KNOW there are BUGS there. They are working on them. "Admit it"

    What do you want? They've gone out in public and noted this. Is this some sort of attempt to shame them? If so, it's not due shame, here.


    Rushed it? That's 1. an opinion 2. moving goalposts and jumping goalposts.

    he noted they were staying up late. You're saying he's lying through his teeth? Why would he do that? Seriously, in my opinion, there's no base for these claims. This is not constructive criticism. This is ad homenin .




    We appreciate your patience. These are obviously not the only issues, but they're the key things because they can affect larger numbers of people. We're continuing to work through the night tonight and we hope to make progress against all 3 issues asap.
    Look we have been patient, in short alot of these issues come back on your ignorance. Pre-mature game launch, no real stress testing, adding new content without testing/changing things during the down-time between alpha and launch, all of these add up to a bad launch week...
    we don't know their full testing process- or the stats- they actually may not be at liberty to discuss some game stats also.


    Thanks for all you do, but lets get some **** done and stop giving us these vague, UN-informative, and quite frankly useless posts that don't really tell us the state of the game, just tell us that you really don't know whats wrong with it.

    Useless? From the posts of everyone who responds to their updates- these are useful. So, you're effectively trolling in actually.

    Dont really know what's wrong with it? This is a broad statement.

    Now back to the game... someone has to submit all those ignored bug reports.
    Thank you for your work- i'm sure they have a long list of these- and get to them when they can. As long as they know about the bugs, they'll work on them...

    • Up x 3
  3. McFly

    Guys. Don't forget to get enough sleep, it helps productivity.
    I believe in you!! :)
    • Up x 1
  4. Cerberus_OZ

    @Smed, You guys should be celebrating this launch, not burning yourselves out till 4am rushing to put out fires. These bugs, whilst annoying, are not show stoppers. Be reasonable with how you are approaching the fixes......overworking your engineering teams (even if thats what THEY want to do) is the fastest way to lose quality productivity.

    Either case, youve mannaged to put out a damn fine follow up to PS1, im thoroughly enjoying it, despite the few launch issues.
    • Up x 1
  5. Moises J.Ramos

    Any news on ever scrapping the class based generic system, and adding the inventory system like in PS1?. Great job on the game though, but it still feels generic like there's no tomorrow.

    Technology :Hell of a good job
    Gameplay :plays like BF3/CoD not really changing. Look more into PS1, and fix it. You may say. "We are keeping it this way", but later on the road people are going to get bored of the generic gameplay you got here. Remember those words.
    • Up x 1
  6. Trignite

    The effort the SOE team are putting into this game is crazy high, but this is all because the launch date was way too early and deadlines had to be met. I am sure they had some sort of reason for the early release and probably didn't want to release it so early too.

    I do agree that the team is probably being overworked but these issues had to be fixed quickly, they were not small issues. Severs crashing and other sever related problems are pretty big. Do you think a game that you can't play for a few hours on launch will make new players want to invest time or money?
  7. TheShotgun

    one question smed if I buy a camo on one character do the other characters get it as well?
  8. lag

    Daddy Smedbucks, you're alright.
  9. Sparra

    The first thought that pops in my head upon reading this is...

    "So WHY didn't we have an open beta?"
  10. Khorneholio

    As always, thanks for the open line of communication. The game is great, and I know it'll only get better. :)
  11. Fubbles

    Thanks for keeping the communication open, much appreciated. I think the launch has gone rather well considering how some other mmos have launched. Things break, crazy bugs happen, servers crash and programmers get sleep deprived but this to me is expected.

    Being a F2P game I consider "launch" as an open beta with a working cash shop. I will reserve judgement to see how many big ticket problems have been solved in a few weeks. Once the major bugs are quashed we just have to see how well the optimizations can hold up. From beta until now has shown improvements but the optimizing still needs work.

    Lets see where we are at in a few weeks.
  12. ak47

    Brown tongue much?

    I love how you say " He's addressing problems that the community has been pointing out and giving a status update on everything"
    The truth is that all he has done is appeased you by telling you what you want to know, this is a age old tactic that SOE has employed in all there games I know of since SWG. If he/they adressed the issues(major bugs) the comunity pointed out in the first place they would not have these issues. Instead they rushed yet another game out and are now struggling with the issues once again

    I do love the game dont get me wrong, but I am used to SOE philosophy and spin. probably due to so many years of hearing the same old rubbish.
  13. Rylan

    I think that the thing that non-beta testers are missing is that many of these bugs were identified months ago, were reported and had huge threads dedicated to them. If you don't know this you can defend Sony and say they didnt expect the increased load etc.

    The problem is that, all through the beta, they would release patches with a total lack of thought. We'd see clients released with bugs so big that it was impossible to believe that they were employing an internal testing team and it hasn't stopped in release.

    What you might not also realise is that the beta was not truly a beta in the sense that you use this phase for bug fixes and stress testing. We were also seeing massive, and I don't use that word lightly, massive game changes weeks before launch - things you'd expect in alpha phases. The base capture system of generators and shields only went in about three weeks ago. The changes to the resource system were done four days before launch. Esamir was introduced four weeks ago, Amerish only two.

    The rate of cert gain was changed radically week after week and character resets were so frequent we could not balance test other guns because nobody ever had them save for a three day window when passive cert gain jumped to about 500 an hour. Even then, most of the guns and certs were not available. That's worth mentioning too - the certs we had two weeks ago were substantially different from what we have now to say they were untested.

    But still, we got to the end of beta in a fairly good state. Yeah, tthe game needed another 4 months of actual testing but it was getting there. Then beta ends and the game that launched 4 days later was again, hugely altered. New features no beta tester saw and that's before you look at obvious things such as the new guns, cosmetics and the store.

    So yes, we as beta testers are unsympathetic. You had us there as a resource and ever once bundled us onto the same server to see if it held up. You didn't give us access to the store and now you question why it doesn't work properly when you're screwing with people's cash. You introduced new things we never tested and, as a result, we share the blame of the non testers for not picking it up.

    The state of the game is as it is because SOE got it wrong and did what they've done through countless games. They've gone their own way without thinking or listening.
  14. Cardinal

    Rylan i agree with you in some aspects.
    But the points is that i am still having a blast with the game ;.)
  15. Rylan

    Yeah, me too. I just struggle with people who misrepresent themselves and for SOE to say this was unexpected is absurd.
  16. MrK

    I've been in enough technical issues, night-and-day long conference calls to sympathise a lot with your crew. Keep it up, guys (btw, who's the "manager-who-keeps-talking-all-the-time-in-conf-call" (there's always one!) and who's the techy boss everyone shuts up when he (rarely) talk? :) )

    Seriously, you owe your team a huge paycheck for the rushed release leading to this situation (well, whoever put the pressure for the rushed release, no clue where it came from).
  17. Jourmand1r

    Maybe if the developers spent more time developing and less time dancing and filming videos the game would be in a better place.

    Show everyone Maggie in a hot VS outfit again. It worked during beta.
  18. Adventzero

    I made a post regarding the new player experience. It's clear this is not on your immediate agenda, but I really think this is something you should be taking a hard, yet very fast look at. I can't imagine how many players you've scared off who enter this game for the first time and get blown up and spawn point camped without even understanding how the game works or even having the time to customize their buttons/graphics settings!

    I'm fairly certain your goal is to make money - that's usually best done by pulling out a chair and inviting new players to join the table... not grabbing their heads, shoving them into a toilet and saying: "NEWBS. NOT. WELCOME" as they drown. It's kinda hard to purchase stuff at the cash shop when your lungs are flooded with piss-filled water.

    Anyway, just my two cents.
  19. Ico

    Thanks for the communication and all the hard work all of SOE are putting into this game. As for those ranting at someone telling them issues are being worked on and fixed, grow up. As a programmer I can tell you these fixes take time, then in the pressure to get the fix out to stop that overly vocal group of people who believe that by ranting in structured English makes them appear intelligent, something completely unrelated is effected causing a bigger backlash.

    Let SOE know your dissatisfaction by all means, but don't come into a thread that has been created to address known issues and give the community an update and basically call them liars. You don't have to pay for this game, if you're truly dissatisfied, don't pay and further than that don't play.

    Again, thank you SOE for being responsive and open with communication, I for one and hopefully many others appreciate it!

    Keep up the good work!
  20. Jourmand1r

    Of course issues take time. Thats what open beta was created for.