This is the exact reason I quit planetside 1

It doesn't quite work like that; development teams are assigned a certain amount of work per cycle ("sprint" to most Agile / XP shops, or the "cadence" that you may have seen Matt Higby refer to), and a proportion of that cycle is devoted to bug fixing and unit testing. A product manager decides what exactly goes into that sprint, and that will (hopefully) be a good mix of new features and polishing or refining of old features.

The guy doing the coding gets to choose what he picks up off the pile, usually, but not what's in the pile. That's up to the guy in the suit, who, in turn, has guys in more expensive suits telling him that their pile of money is not quite comfortable enough, so he needs to add more features to get more sales.

It's a balancing act for all involved, and a difficult one, especially on a project like PS2, with such a high degree of complexity and so many passionate - and vocal - users.

Having said all that, though, it does seem like the QA team need to take a look at their regression testing practices. Some of the bugs that have appeared with GU4 really shouldn't have made it in.

Yeah like how they didn't fix the bugs with tanks on hills and fix the magrider and low res cloaks and ammo capacity andAOE weapons and flack at close range and map issues.

I'm espesially pissed that they didn't wait to impliment new rpgs. They just added them recklessly without looking at balance and they refuse to make platoons drag and drop

/end sarcasm

Every game I have ever played that had a test server still released updates with bugs. I am one of the lucky ones who has had the screen flashing only a couple of times and I was able to make it stop by just turning around and going back the way I came. I always thought it was being caused by someone hacking in that area. If they based bug fixes on my gameplay they would be having an easy time. I have not seen many bugs and even fewer cheaters.

QA cannot do everything, they need test servers.

That alone means only 70% of these ***** ups will not make it past release, the rest are all practices of keeping the patching solid.

Yep, because all the words of praise they receive on the forums have made them into overinflated egotists. /sarcasm

Different areas of the development team. Artists probably don't make very good programmers and vice versa. P2W? What in this game can't a free player obtain that a paying player can?

What stagnation? The game was officially released on November 20th, 2012 and today is March 15th, 2013. It has been less then 4 full months since this game has been released! I have seen games go months or even years with the same persistent bugs. Seeing that they just released GU04 a couple days ago and have already laid out a 6 month plan. I would say that SOE is driven enough to continue to develop and support this game for quite some time to come.

The basic charge, of introducing new bugs and not fixing old ones, it's kinda hard to deny. Triple loading screen, crash on exit, spawning with zero visible health, all old and unfixed bugs. Plus I had the first CTD in ages after yesterdays hotfix, plus the same FPS drop after GU04 everyone else has had.

And this is just actual bugs, let's not even get started on game design.

The general impression I get - the coders aren't on top of the project, and management have their priorities all wrong (I'm sure those two things are connected). You want more revenue SOE? - try making a quality product I want to invest in, rather than just throwing out as much junk as possible in the hope enough suckers buy stuff to keep things rolling along.

I personally won't be spending more money until this game takes a major turn for the better. I doubt I'll be playing anymore either - I've spent less than an hour in the game in the last month.

Planetside 2: All the bugs of Planetside 1 with none of the compelling gameplay.

Just having a test server doesn't fix problems in itself. The impression I get from Higby's twitter is that a lot of the changes that go into each update are thrown together at the last minute. SOE need to put stuff on the test server early enough for feedback and then spend the time to get it fixed, including delaying updates if necessary. And people need to use the test server, lots of people. It needs to be as full as the other servers for decent load testing. It's not a magic fix if SOE don't use it right.

Not sure why so many people are on a witch hunt to run every person that points out the problems with this game away from it and off of the forums. It's right in front of their faces yet they still keep shoving their money at SOE begging them for more table scraps.

Pretty sure I could take a break of 6 months and come back to some of the same old bugs, *one* new empty and unused continent, and an overwhelming number of new weapons. The game needs a jump start of some sort, and adding new weapons every few weeks isn't going to do the trick. The carrot on a stick method may work in subscription based, AAA MMOs, but it doesn't work when that carrot is accessible only through prohibitively long hours of gameplay or a single "low" payment. They're just trying to saturate their market with weapons in the hopes that people will continue to buy those weapons, ignoring the fact that the game isn't evolving and isn't changing in any positive ways.

Most of the changes are implemented to nudge people towards buying the next weapon release anyhow. e.g. Tank nerfs combined with an increase in vehicle kill XP coinciding with the launch of brand new anti-vehicle weapons. If players think these changes are in the interest of "balance" and not purely motivated by the need for more revenue from a dwindling subscriber and player base, I think they are naive.

And yet every major MMO still releases bugfix updates after the main patch.

The hotfix/patch/GU pace they've elected to keep is borderline breakneck.

They should probably release fewer things but more consistently. For example:

Bug fixes should be pushed and deployed after passing hypothetical QA. Performance patches should be pushed on an independent schedule. New content should be kept in patches and GU updates and released on a slower schedule.

Perhaps releasing less bugfixes at a time and testing them en masse will make it easier to isolate serious problems.

Push a quick nightly build. If you detect a major FPS problem, take down server, roll back change, send nightly build back to QA. Release tomorrow.

As it is now, it seems like they do a bunch of fixes, wait until "enough content" comes together and push it out. And in the rush to meet the "enough content" criteria there isn't enough due diligence.

What would be interesting is if they could set up two VR rooms: one to test content at the same version as the game, and another to test things on a more -development fork. You could go to -development VR to test new vehicle changes to detect stealth nerfs and texture problems, and maybe detect FPS-busting ahead.

That said, they should sneak-peek the weapons on VR before they are available for purchase. We will get a handle on them and pass along insights to the devs before release date.

It is all a matter of constructive comments. Whining, crying, and posting negavitve garbage DOES NOT improve this game. Taking the time to explain bugs that you come across and what steps you went through to reproduce it as well as the specifications of your pc does.

I have no problem with people being upset about a bug in game, but I do have a problem with people that waste the developers time posting garbage that is not the least bit helpful to the problem.

Here are the Patch Notes for each major update. Tell me again how nothing is changing.
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/game-update-1.64525/
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/game-update-2-02-02-2013.87343/
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/server-downtime-and-gu03-02-21-2013.95936/
http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/server-downtime-03-13-2013.103289/

Video games, like all entertainment, is motivated by revenue. It is kind of how you pay employees. But the fact still stands, you didn't have to drop $60 to buy this game, you aren't forced to pay $15 a month regardless of any content updates, you don't have to buy DLC. You don't have to spend a cent in this game to obtain anything, unless you want to.

Seriously why do you waste your time if you feel like SOE is cheating you? Move on with your life. No one is forcing you to stay.

Because they are spoiled children who were never brought up correctly by their parents.

It was called the "Reaver", and it was pretty tame compared to PS2 ESF's with rocketpods.

You have no problem with someone complaining about a bug, but you apparently view anything in the interest of improving the game for players OUTSIDE of bug fixes as stepping over the line, and is a complaint that you'll fight to the death to have ignored or belittled. Also, I don't believe that I'm wasting developer time by complaining about the nickle and diming of their few paying customers, and anyone that thinks that I am is probably just trying to justify to themselves the concept that their money spent has been worth it.

I have moved on, I've dropped my sub and am playing the game very little these days, and refusing to buy into any of the money motivated garbage they are continuously pushing on their (as said before and becoming more obvious) dwindling player base, and I consider what investment I made in PS2 a complete waste (being honest with oneself is a healthy thing). I understand that entertainment is motivated by revenue, that much is obvious, otherwise these companies wouldn't be able to pursue a profit in that area. However I don't believe that the free to pay market is anything but a method in which these companies can suck *more* money from *less* players without providing full, complete, triple A titles.

I have nobody to thank but the mentally disabled monkeys that have so hungrily ushered in this model, and I hold no grudge against the companies that exploit them in order to reduce costs and workload while increasing revenue without having to create a quality title that will attract a larger audience. Rather I blame the small market of advantage motivated players that are easily separated from their money for the new, shiny, digital toy.

SOE has put a high value on items that simply aren't of much value, they do not have to pay for storage of these items, shipping costs, or even much labor to create them. How can they justify a $7 price tag on something that for all intents and purposes holds no value other than what the easily exploited consumer *INDIVIDUALLY* places on it(a value they determine by weighing how much of an advantage it will buy them)? Why is there such a high price on something of unlimited supply and so small demand if not to make more money for less work while attracting a smaller audience? Obvious is obvious, friend.

Also, it's great and all that I don't *have* to buy anything in the game. With the P2W weapon launches and the nerfs to existing weapons (or in the most recent case, vehicles) pushing people towards purchasing those weapons and granting (at least temporarily, until the next weapon release requires the last to be nerfed for encouragement to buy it) an advantage to those players that do choose to buy early over the ones that would rather cert (seeing that weapon nerfed in the mean time, and losing their chance to exploit it for gain while they can) that becomes rather moot.

I'm sorry that I don't agree with you, and once again you've proven my point that your interest is to simply not hear people bring these issues up by telling me to go away rather than voice my opinion on them. The only people interested in this kind of payment model are those expecting to be able to buy an advantage over fellow players, all the while calling them freeloaders and quelling their opinions in order to make themselves feel better about paying for these items that only they put any monetary value in.

TL : DR The only thing SOE has given me for free is a bare bones and buggy game of questionable quality and nerfs to the weapons and items that I have *paid* for. I don't feel indebted or privileged by this, nor do I believe I should.

LOL, this is my favorite crash ever nomatter what game. Always gets a couple laughs.

But For a game that was supposed to be out of Beta months ago though... it's kinda sad

Somebody is streaming video in your house when this happens. Take it to the bank