The block bug fix is scheduled, and it's coming on the 5th of December.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/622366/update-on-next-pc-console-incremental-patch#latest

I get it - I play a tank in higher-level content, so I'm really suffering from it. But because of the way the game is set up (Stadia still exists, and the console versions have the same issue), the patches need to go through an authorization process from Google/Microsoft/Sony before they can roll out. And those companies are on Thanksgiving break this week, so we're getting the patch a week later than normal.

It's annoying, but at least we've had plenty of transparency about this issue. And I'm not going to ask the people who work at Google to work through a holiday just because I can't wait another week.

Now hopefully when Stadia officially dies on the 18th, we won't have to wait so long for massively gamebreaking bugs to be fixed. The raiding community is suffering enough as it is.

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The block bug fix is scheduled, and it's coming on the 5th of December.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/622366/update-on-next-pc-console-incremental-patch#latest

I get it - I play a tank in higher-level content, so I'm really suffering from it. But because of the way the game is set up (Stadia still exists, and the console versions have the same issue), the patches need to go through an authorization process from Google/Microsoft/Sony before they can roll out. And those companies are on Thanksgiving break this week, so we're getting the patch a week later than normal.

It's annoying, but at least we've had plenty of transparency about this issue. And I'm not going to ask the people who work at Google to work through a holiday just because I can't wait another week.

Now hopefully when Stadia officially dies on the 18th, we won't have to wait so long for massively gamebreaking bugs to be fixed. The raiding community is suffering enough as it is.

For something as extreme as the block bug there should have been a hotfix weeks ago. Stadia is not a valid excuse for the delay.

They literally said in the post linked above: “As these fixes are client issues – which means they cannot be hotfixed – we have to go through the normal client build process, which includes a certification pass.”

We do not know their contract language, so we are not in a position to know whether it would have been difficult or actually impossible to get an emergency fix through certification before the holiday, assuming it was ready in time - the fact that Gina describes it as an issue with multiple components that took weeks to fix internally might suggest it would not have been possible to rush through certification before this week.

We also know when it was fixed internally.

On the 11th

There ended up being a few different components to this that needed to be fixed. The good news is these have now all been fixed internally, though there wasn't enough time to get them into Monday's patch. We recognize this news is frustrating but please trust we will get this fix out as soon as we can.

That means they had to include it in the patch they sent to the consoles that week, which should have come out on the 28th. However, with the holiday, they said it would have to be delayed a week.

Yes this is annoying and should never have happened, but we have gotten multiple updates on this from the time it was discovered, fixed, and sent to authorization, unlike any of the other bugs. Because of that, even though this bug is really getting in the way of my groups since I'm a tank and I have a very twitchy bash finger (so I end up dropping block unexpectedly a lot), I'm still satisfied since we have gotten transparency on this bug.

Jaraal wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/622366/update-on-next-pc-console-incremental-patch#latest

"We are working to get these fixes to you as soon as possible and if we could do this faster, we would, but we need to ensure that the build is stable and ready to go as well as fixing the issues."

I'm curious why the original build was not ensured to be stable and ready to go as well as fixing the issues? Why go through the process twice?

While I'm not trying to let anyone off the hook here, I will point out that there are several things that make sense about this.

• The PTS has not had as many people testing as it used to. In a lot of cases, PTS testers have felt their feedback has been ignored, which led to a loop of most PTS testers only going to test the newest of the new gear or for content creators to show off the new items.
• This last PTS update was only a zone DLC, so most of the people who actually were testing were only doing overland stuff. As such, any combat problems wouldn't be easy to see.
• Furthermore, U36 didn't change much about combat beyond the introduction of a few new sets and trying to pigeonhole Wardens into being frost mages. Nobody was expecting a bug to pop up with core combat mechanics, which meant nobody was really testing things like that. See also the bug we had with DKs, which went unnoticed since the only classes that god changes were Wardens and a bit for Sorcs, so nobody was testing their DKs since ostensibly nothing changed.
• Bugs that affect group content are more easily found in the Q1 or Q3 DLCs since they bring new dungeons, or the Q2 that brings a new trial. Without group content, most of the players that normally test group content didn't need to run anything there. Because of that, anything that popped up that affects group content went unnoticed.
• And the PTS is a test server that people only go on out of the goodness of their hearts. Nobody in their right mind is going to take the time to organize a Dawnbringer run on PTS just because, especially when nothing was expected to have changed with anything. It's hard enough to organize raids on live where people might get achievements/gear/etc. out of it. On a server that'll just delete everything in two weeks so nothing matters? Yeah, right.
• U35 took the wind out of a lot of peoples' sails. We can argue all day as to whether that was a reasonable direction to go in, but a lot of people were expecting the Q&A (that we haven't gotten) or the adjustments to all group content damage output (to account for the massive healing nerfs from U35). As none of that was addressed in U36, a lot of people just didn't feel like going in to test.

I'll admit, I didn't test any combat anything on PTS this round. I don't know if the block bug was there, or if that was something that popped up after the PTS cycle. But since players feel like their feedback isn't valued, there's a lot less testing, and that leads to bugs coming live if they aren't found. See also why nothing PvP related outside of simple duels can be tested on PTS - there just isn't a population for that.

Again, we're in the holiday season in the US, so it's also understandable that it's taking longer. I wish we could get patches without a two-week certification time, but hopefully that will change after Stadia is gone.

Also any bugs that aren't fixed in this patch on the 5th may end up sticking around for a while. We might get the next patch on the 19th (that's getting close to holidays though), but the one after that definitely won't come until like the 9th of January at the earliest.

my guild is basically dead in the water.

all prog is stopped. open runs aren't filling.

@ZOS_GinaBruno this has been a disaster for my guild at the very least. U35 was bad. U36 has been a buggy mess and no one cared in the slightest about the guar. we're dispirited and angry and have low confidence that things are going to improve.
please, try and check in with the members of the community you talk to and listen to and trust and work something out because we desperately need something.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

We also know when it was fixed internally.

On the 11th

There ended up being a few different components to this that needed to be fixed. The good news is these have now all been fixed internally, though there wasn't enough time to get them into Monday's patch. We recognize this news is frustrating but please trust we will get this fix out as soon as we can.

That means they had to include it in the patch they sent to the consoles that week, which should have come out on the 28th. However, with the holiday, they said it would have to be delayed a week.

Yes this is annoying and should never have happened, but we have gotten multiple updates on this from the time it was discovered, fixed, and sent to authorization, unlike any of the other bugs. Because of that, even though this bug is really getting in the way of my groups since I'm a tank and I have a very twitchy bash finger (so I end up dropping block unexpectedly a lot), I'm still satisfied since we have gotten transparency on this bug.

What does "they have it fixed internally" actually mean? Does it mean they've tested the alleged fix and they know it's going to work when it goes live?

I don't think ZOS employees have the faintest idea how U35 and more than a month of block bug is doing to the end game PvE community, especially when you put these two issues together for over a month.

We have no fix, and we have no guarantee it will be any better with the next incremental patch either. We've been told it will be fixed, but until the bug is actually fixed on the live server the player base is stuck blowing in the wind and apparently isn't getting any sympathy or understanding what so ever from ZOS.

[snip]

And Stadia shuts down forever in six weeks, so that excuse doesn't fly at all in my book.

[edited for bashing]

beer781993 wrote: »

You can't rely on random pts players to find all of your bugs.

Random PTS players have routinely reported bugs for six weeks of a test cycle, and most still make it to live unfixed.

Tannus15 wrote: »

The simple fact is that someone in their dev team changed code and either they didn't tell the QA team to test the areas that might be affected, or they didn't properly look at the code to work out all areas that might be affected by the code change.

@tomofhyrule you're exactly right in that there was no reason for any players to test this functionality in PTS. There was nothing in the patch notes which indicated that block might be affected and there was no group content added.

However someone made the code change, and that person should have been aware of the possible repercussions and QA should have regression tested the appropriate functionality.

Moreover, this code was merged into release branch, it means that it should have passed code review. I have questions. Many, many questions.

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The block bug fix is scheduled, and it's coming on the 5th of December.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/622366/update-on-next-pc-console-incremental-patch#latest

I get it - I play a tank in higher-level content, so I'm really suffering from it. But because of the way the game is set up (Stadia still exists, and the console versions have the same issue), the patches need to go through an authorization process from Google/Microsoft/Sony before they can roll out. And those companies are on Thanksgiving break this week, so we're getting the patch a week later than normal.

It's annoying, but at least we've had plenty of transparency about this issue. And I'm not going to ask the people who work at Google to work through a holiday just because I can't wait another week.

Now hopefully when Stadia officially dies on the 18th, we won't have to wait so long for massively gamebreaking bugs to be fixed. The raiding community is suffering enough as it is.

For something as extreme as the block bug there should have been a hotfix weeks ago. Stadia is not a valid excuse for the delay.

It's 100% valid reason for the excuse. There are things called contracts. Perhaps you clicked you agree to a couple when you setup your account to play. They CANNOT legally just push updates with it going through Sony, Microsoft, and Google at this point.

Stop acting like your needs super seed everything else. They can't do it.

As a console player, I am just disappointed. Usually the PC people get this kind of thing sorted out for us.
In all seriousness, we have been working around the block bug. It's just a lot more resets and extra random deaths from tanks who usually never die. But I would have preferred a delayed dlc.