Updates and Patches

[PseudoCool]

Kiwi and Scapes,

You guys have been doing a great job this evening with a lot of upset people.. keep up the good work.

Now.. that being said.. you should NOT HAVE to jump through every hurdle in the known and unknown Defiance-Verse to get things that are "patched in" fixed for players. And players shouldn't have to deal with a buggy patch and all the stress over pixels.

So.. that being said.. I'm going to re-iterate a suggestion I made back in Alpha Testing.. and Beta Testing.. and a couple of times after the game went live..

Defiance NEEDS an open-world test server. A lot of these bugs just won't happen in a world where you've got people running around "testing" things with all the developers tools running. This is normal for any game, not just Defiance. "In the Wild" is where things happen the most frequently.

These issues CAN be picked up on and fixed BEFORE launch by having a live test server. Most games that I've ever played DO have a live test server where patches are put up and COMMUNITY TESTED for weeks before they go to the live server. Bug reports are taken and investigate, characters are "cross generated" so you get to do things at all different levels and in all different respects without loosing anything (other than playing time on the live server).

I've suggested this before, which was not very well received by Sledge at the time. But it's the reality of the game world. Call it bugs, call it ghost in the machine.. heck.. call it whatever you want. But.. don't call it ready for deployment until it's been tested on a live test server.

I'm sure that with the proper attitude, and a willingness to listen and investigate any issues found, many of us from Alpha and Beta testing days wouldn't have any problem jumping onto a live test server for a few hours within the weeks before a patch or DLC goes live to really get into testing it and check for all sorts of things. I know I sure wouldn't mind.

[D Lizzard]

I would help to test that way

[dramaQkarri]

I'd do it, I play on PS3 but beta tested Defiance on PC. Now that I'm almost 100% complete, what else is there to do?

[OverDoneOne]

Wow what a great idea, Hmmm Defiance has a test server in case you didn't know it LOL and anyone with a PC can be part of it. Goto the Defiance game site and login your account you can opt to use the alpha test server there.

[PseudoCool]

Wow what a great idea, Hmmm Defiance has a test server in case you didn't know it LOL and anyone with a PC can be part of it. Goto the Defiance game site and login your account you can opt to use the alpha test server there.

Yes, you can. Problem is.. they haven't put up ANY of the upcoming patches on that server for the community to test. And, that's a CLOSED server, even those of us who where part of close Alpha don't have access to it anymore until they "open" it, which to my knowledge they haven't done since the game went live. In that respect, it's a dusty resources that needs to be cleaned up and readied for use to avoid this problem in the future.

[OverDoneOne]

That's odd I remember on there testing patch 1500/dlc 5 back alittle bit ago, think I'll check it now and see whats up

[Mathuu]

THIS. None of this not working as intended would have made it to the live patch with an open to public test server. Most MMO's I have played had this, and they had a few minor things slip through, but everything major has been caught prior to the big launch. Heck, even SWGEmu has a test server where they test publicly before pushing things to the alpha play server...

[3rdpig]

The last time the alpha server was up did they even listen to and fix any of the bugs that were reported? My memory isn't that great, but I seem to remember a bunch of the alpha people warning them not to let certain bugs go live and they did anyway.

An alpha server or PTS is only as good as the people fixing the problems reported by the testers. If they won't fix them, it's a wasted resource.

[rebtattoo]

That's odd I remember on there testing patch 1500/dlc 5 back alittle bit ago, think I'll check it now and see whats up

You're right.

Unfortunately, The Company didn't listen to 80% of what was relayed. Hence, the terrible results. It has been this way with EACH and EVERY DLP...

[Etaew]

I remember my early experiences on alpha where we didn't even have any notes, they just opened it up and left us to it