First MMO ever where I´m afraid of patches

Mephos

Normally patches are like christmas for gamers, but just more regular. They normally improve the game, enhance your play experience, give you new options and possibilities to play with. That´s what I normally experience in any other MMO. I read that a patch is coming and get hyped about the changes. I wait happy until the day comes and its really like a little present when I download and test stuff. Especially if my class got BUFFED a little or some stuff got fixed.

Yeah well Zeni. Just for your information you officially done it. You are the very first MMO where I don´t want to get patches in any way. I really would take the game like it is and keep it just to be on the save side. Yeah, people might complain how broken their stuff is but lets be honest. The chance that this gets fixed is pretty low, and the chance that something else breaks apart is pretty high.

Nearly EVERY patch that has come out has some flaws.. not small ones, not little ones. I really appriciate that you employee blind people, but not as QA .. make them game designers or just texter.. yeah. Please just try to get a ape or something as QA tester so that he can point with this hairy fingers at the screen when he sees something that is not right.

A content update patch that broke class skills and additionally increased the damage of all monsters in veteran area to an amount where people complained that it is not playable. *clapps hands* well done .. this is something no one could have tested ..

So.. then you reverted the broken changes from a patch with a new patch a week or two later and .. YES .. broke other stuff

Now the temps can spam their biting jabs again, but if I look at a critter I can´t heal/or dps or use any other skill in the game. WoW .. just wow.. this is unbelievable.
Not only that. WHY THE HELL did the passiv abillity of the temps break? CHECK IT OUT - Detailed report

Zeni, I´m really afraid of patches. Every time a patch comes out I log into praying that my class still works, that I can still play the game. I would personally not update my game if this would be possible.. I would let everyone update and then wait 1 month until all the bugs that appeared while fixing others bugs are handled and fixed.

Serious.. how far did it come that I don´t feel happy anymore when I read that a patch comes out.

well done..

deathperadoeb17_ESO

Long time ago, in 2007, EvE Online patch deleted BOOT.INI file from C drive on Windows XP comps. Well, after computer reboot people saw black screen with message "NTLDR: Fatal error reading boot.ini"

So - this was the most scary and hilarious patch ever, imho.

daneyulebub17_ESO

I don't know, any MMO I've touched, patches are a mixed blessing a lot of the time. Somethings fixed, and then out of the blue, some things broken or at least knocked off balance. Part of the never-ending break-fix-break cycle that they all seem to go through.

Maverick827

daneyulebub17_ESO wrote: »

I don't know, any MMO I've touched, patches are a mixed blessing a lot of the time. Somethings fixed, and then out of the blue, some things broken or at least knocked off balance. Part of the never-ending break-fix-break cycle that they all seem to go through.

Never to this degree, though. I, too, am very wary of Zenimax patches now.

Mephos

Actually I never had something like this in any other game so far. Yeah, sometimes patches break minor things but those patches seem to be untested (or not properly tested). I would really improve QA and only release patches that are working properly even if this means that I can´t hold the update process and need to delay it. Better to have a delay than a broken game.

Shaun98ca2

I have seen patches go VERY bad. Rift just 6 months ago had a HORRIBLE failure. They went and changed the chat program to fix the lag issue in the game. BAM chat went down for probably a week or 2.

OMG the Tears where beyond horrible, they went out of their way to fix a long going issue and the results provided a hidden bug that would have never been found till put on live.

Either learn to roll with the punches or simply don't play a game this early in the release.

Wintersage

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Either learn to roll with the punches or simply don't play a game this early in the release.

Thanks to a recent patch, plenty of people can't.

KerinKor

Totally agree with the OP.

Most patches in most software can generally be expected to fix some serious/critical bugs and maybe sometimes introduce one or two 'unintended consequences', but the litany of patch->breakage that we've seen in ESO is beyond anything I've ever seen.

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Either learn to roll with the punches or simply don't play a game this early in the release.

It's that kind of acquiescent attitude that let's ZOS and many others get away with shoddy software development practices.

I know about the Rift bug though don't know the cause, but the excuse about a bug not being able to be detect before going live is a RARE case, and certainly none of the game-breaking bugs some patches have introduced fall into that category I suggest.

Shaun98ca2

Wintersage wrote: »

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Either learn to roll with the punches or simply don't play a game this early in the release.

Thanks to a recent patch, plenty of people can't.

So what exactly is currently preventing them from playing.

Gilvoth

saddly i have to agree that i am scared to death of the patches and what will be now even less damage from my nightblade duel wield dagger user and more increased damage from all mobbs and sorcerers and dragonights. in addition to the more lagg each patch and also more crashes that were never there before and just keeps growing in more problems like taking away our apperiance for armor to made to look terrible and problems just grow. its true im now scared of patches from eso.

Wintersage

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

So what exactly is currently preventing them from playing.

Well, If I knew that I could obviously freelance out my skillz to ZOS and offer to help fix their game for them.

And then they could ignore me because it's ZOS.

KerinKor

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Wintersage wrote: »

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Either learn to roll with the punches or simply don't play a game this early in the release.

Thanks to a recent patch, plenty of people can't.

So what exactly is currently preventing them from playing.

One example:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/106354/quest-god-of-schemes/p1

A total game-breaker on the quest that gates the entire VR content.

Jeremy

You have a good point. Some of these recent patches have affected me in negative ways as well.

But this isn't unusual when it comes to MMORPGs. New patches often generate or cause problems that have to be fixed as a result. So this isn't anything unique to ESO and I've learned to be cautious about them generally.

Liquid_Time

I simply log in after work, play, and deal with it.. However I guess I have more pressing matters to deal with then some broken areas of a game. Others deal with it differently however and I respect that. Just not me

Mephos

ok guys, just to explain this shortly. EVERY GAME must (or should) have some guys called

QA (quality assurence)

Those guys test normally the stuff they will bring live and give it an ok or not.
In that case a lot of stuff went live that just broke the game which I just can´t understand how such things can go live.

I understand if they change stuff and it breaks on the OTHER END.. like stuff that nobody tested (I don´t say test the full game 100% every patch thats impossible). But comon guys.. you changed the skill for temps and then admited that it was broken and that it get reverted back.

THIS is unbelievable that a QA would let this go through without reporting it.

vyndral13preub18_ESO

Having played WoW, GW2, Marvel Heroes, and Rift i could not disagree with this more. Heck it became standard practice not to even bother trying to play the day of a patch on WoW. Rift was constantly breaking things when patching as was GW2.

Still outside of going down for a patch and not coming back up until 3 days later, the best bug ive ever seen a patch create was in WoW. Logging off would make shamans totems loose ownership and turn them agro. The horde of lowbies killed standing in town by shaman logging off after dropping all their fire totems was epic.

It almost made up for the patch that deleted the shamans off hand weapon if they were dual wielding at the time.

Shaun98ca2

Bugs appear on live that wont show up in test. Don't ask why just happens trust me. People like to blame the "QA" department for not doing their job but that's typically not the case, mmos suffer from a strange phenomenon where test and live seem to produce different results.

TESO beta test PVP was best ever no issues full on stress test. Live comes around and day 1 look at how SH hit the fan.

Gilvoth

it's because the developers do not play the game. plain and simple they might get a created character thats lv 30 or vet level 10 and spend 15 minutes in the game but they DO NOT play like we do. they simply DONT.
they say they do but they do not. you might see them ingame or hear about or see a video they did showing they played for maybe 20 minutes or something, but in reality it is us players who are playing the game on a dailly basis for hours upon hours and it is we players who know what needs ingame and what needs removed. the developers are basicly runing blind because they DO NOT PLAY.`

Phantax

I know what the OP means. Every time we get a patch, firstly I wonder if I will be able to log in, then I wonder what going to be broken next.
I have to admit though for myself personally I've only every had real problems with the recent Error301/Unknown Error issue.
(still not fixed yet Zeni BTW)

Ahh well,

Maverick827

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

Having played WoW, GW2, Marvel Heroes, and Rift i could not disagree with this more. Heck it became standard practice not to even bother trying to play the day of a patch on WoW. Rift was constantly breaking things when patching as was GW2.

Still outside of going down for a patch and not coming back up until 3 days later, the best bug ive ever seen a patch create was in WoW. Logging off would make shamans totems loose ownership and turn them agro. The horde of lowbies killed standing in town by shaman logging off after dropping all their fire totems was epic.

It almost made up for the patch that deleted the shamans off hand weapon if they were dual wielding at the time.

Yeah, in other MMOs it's often the best practice not to play on patch days. I've been in raiding guilds where we'd cancel raids on patch days preemptively, just in case.

But we'd still plan to raid the next day, because in every other MMO those problems would be fixed by then. In this game, we'll often have to wait 2+ weeks for those fixes.

McDoogs

Their QA is terrible, it's true.

Also, so many of their design decisions are......questionable at best.

PBpsy

I always expect a patch to introduce many unexpected features that I generally do not want.

Zershar_Vemod

I know right? I hate how TESO is the only MMO in history to ever have issues every once in awhile with patches...

yenkin2001b14_ESO

From experience when I used to design business software I learned that people will use the software in ways designers would never think of. Designers know how their software works, and therefore play or test what we like to call the "Happy Path". But if you only test for functionality as designed you will not find those weird exploits players find.

One of my biggest complaints was lack of Beta at the higher levels. we only saw the first few zones. So how will you know what to expect if you don't fully test other than the beginning zones.

What about going through every doorway, for instance I get stuck at the Manor house door, and have to jump and role to not get stuck, this only seemed to happen after the 1.1.2 patch. Classic example of they fixed one thing and then broke something else.

tuntuns

Releasing content to live environment without detailed testing it first is unaccetable. Even novice programmers knows that. The company which have already pumped bilions of $ in their product should be aware of that.

edu.journeymanub17_ESO

deathperadoeb17_ESO wrote: »

Long time ago, in 2007, EvE Online patch deleted BOOT.INI file from C drive on Windows XP comps. Well, after computer reboot people saw black screen with message "NTLDR: Fatal error reading boot.ini"

So - this was the most scary and hilarious patch ever, imho.

Haha, I got that as well. I can laugh now, but was not funny at that time.

Mephos

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Bugs appear on live that wont show up in test. Don't ask why just happens trust me. People like to blame the "QA" department for not doing their job but that's typically not the case, mmos suffer from a strange phenomenon where test and live seem to produce different results.

TESO beta test PVP was best ever no issues full on stress test. Live comes around and day 1 look at how SH hit the fan.

yeah, true fact. But a GOOD QA would bring the patch live, don´t open the login servers, only for internal company use and TEST IT ON THE LIVE SYSTEM AGAIN. this would make sure that the patch functions as expected.

Shaun98ca2

Mephos wrote: »

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

Bugs appear on live that wont show up in test. Don't ask why just happens trust me. People like to blame the "QA" department for not doing their job but that's typically not the case, mmos suffer from a strange phenomenon where test and live seem to produce different results.

TESO beta test PVP was best ever no issues full on stress test. Live comes around and day 1 look at how SH hit the fan.

yeah, true fact. But a GOOD QA would bring the patch live, don´t open the login servers, only for internal company use and TEST IT ON THE LIVE SYSTEM AGAIN. this would make sure that the patch functions as expected.

That I cant know for sure if they do that or not. But to bring a follow up SOME things can be test that way EXCEPT server load. But your right they should test of live but I believe that brings more down time just to miss the mark anyways why waste the time.

steveb16_ESO46

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

TESO beta test PVP was best ever no issues full on stress test. Live comes around and day 1 look at how SH hit the fan.

That is categorically not in the slightest bit true. The stress tests were such a disaster that a major and untested patch was rushed out to fix the problems with the phase engine that was breaking quests and making it almost impossible to group.

But it wasn't tested and it fixed jack-crap.

Tankqull

in 2001 DAoC told me never play on a patch day
sadly ZOS takes ages fixing things broken by a patch compared to mythic in those days.