Analysis of Hicks BS, srsly ive been defending this game for years, been playing since Arma 2 mod, i can live with all the crap, glitches, bugs, delays, etc, but at least let us play. :
Why won’t you just push 0.60 to stable now? / It has to be better than 0.59:
Well, simply put we just can’t do that. There are quite a few issues that would flat out prevent a large amount of the userbase from playing DayZ at all. From the ever present “Application Error” to black screens on launch, server crashes, and many more – The build *has* to stay on experimental so we can get it to a state that allows the vast majority of the DayZ playerbase to play and test it on stable branch.
Lets not forget that all branches of DayZ Early Access are testing branches! The testing base and goals scale up from our Internal QA, to Experimental Branch, and finally to the Stable branch as the default build you play when you install DayZ on Steam. I know it is not the popular thing to say, and the less fun part of my job involves having to take the brunt of passing on bad news – but your patience, participation, and feedback is and will help us get this build to stable as soon as possible.
I understand, but we've seen much much worse iteration of stable over the years, at that point, i would take it over not being able to play
Why are the experimental servers down in my region? / Why aren’t the devs saying anything about the server being down in my area?:
Keep in mind the DayZ Dev Team operates out of Central Europe, and depending on where you are in the world there is a high chance the developers are in bed / haven’t had time yet to analyze the issues causing the outage. Time Zone differences can be confusing, trust us we know! Pair that with the fact that server availability, distance from the Prague offices, and latency can fluctuate greatly depending where you are in the world – and it can and will lead to server downtimes in your region. A good example of this is the Oceanic and Asia regions – of which we’ve been fighting server issues and connection speeds throughout experimental branch usage. So please, be patient with us – we haven’t forgotten anyone and will get the servers up as soon as time, and process allows. As well, sending tweets out every time a server crashes or goes offline due to a bug or server hardware issue isn’t practical given how frequent this can happen on the experimental/unstable branch.
MOAR SERVERS
Why aren’t there more player slots? / Lots of people want to play, let us all play:
The experimental branch testing phase is *not* set up to ensure availability and accessibility to all. Besides it not being practical on an infrastructure point, the nature of how we use experimental branch means we need to be able to create false stress situations for the game server instances, the central hive, and in some cases even the server hardware. Now, as experimental branch testing moves forward on any given build we slowly increase the player slots for that branch whenever possible. Be it actual game server instances slots, or allocating additional hardware when possible. Simply put, especially at the initial stages of a build being on experimental branch, we *need* to see how the build operates under extreme demand, we need to see it fail, and we need to analyze that data and make changes where necessary. That said, we are looking into increasing the branch player capacity within reason. Don’t expect several thousands more player count capacity, as that is what stable branch is for – but we recognize the demand and are doing everything we can to help alleviate the issue.
Way to lose your loyal fanbase wich is 99% BORED with 0.59, even if u want to crash your servers, you could have 20 more, they would still be all full but at least you would allow more chance to actually play and not aggravate your fan base. How do you expect bugs to be reported if you don't have enough ppl to test it.
Why are streamers given special treatment? / I should be able to play there too:
Early on after the first build of 0.60 was pushed to experimental I realized we just didn’t have the infrastructure or hardware available to let everyone who wanted to see 0.60 on experimental branch that wanted to, and we wouldn’t be able to flex up to accept all of the demand. Realizing this, at the end of the work day a development box that I use to capture footage for our Youtube Channel, and bug bash internal development builds was taken offline and converted to point to the experimental branch in the hopes that we could at least through allowing content creators to showcase the build let those who couldn’t get onto an experimental branch server *see* how 0.60 was operating, performing, and moving along. The hardware used was not powerful enough to actually operate an actual experimental branch server, and would for certain buckle under the demand, but through reallocating this one small instance we could at least provide 30 or so content creators from across the globe, and across multiple languages give thousands more people a look at how things were looking on the march towards 0.60 stable branch. Creators of all audience sizes, and regions across the globe were given access to the box and asked to use said access to help alleviate the stressed demand on experimental branch by sharing their experiences on their distribution methods (Youtube, Twitch, Twitter). Through this method we were able to allow thousands of additional people to see and experience 0.60 experimental branch that we would not have been able to otherwise.
Some people seem to think that experimental server resources were diverted to allow content creators access to 0.60, or player slots that could have been used for general experimental branch usage were given to these users. Simply put that is not the case, as mentioned before the server utilized was my personal work box and would not be able to handle such a demand. This was easily demonstrated earlier this morning when some enterprising folks acquired and distributed the IP address to this PC and the game server rapidly failed and stopped operating for several hours.
No one was being denied playable server slots on experimental, and while we did ask content creators to be discrete so as to not compound the issue with experimental branch being at capacity that plan upset a small portion of the community, and for that I am sorry. It was never my intention to make anyone feel less important than anyone else in the community, the intent was explicitly to allow as many people as possible to at least *see* 0.60 experimental.
I don't want to WATCH dayz i want to PLAY DAYZ
Why don’t you just take stable servers offline and convert them? / No one is using stable servers, switch them over:
While it may seem that way to some users, DayZ has an active player base of several hundred thousand that cycle in and out (call it turnstile if you will) and it is important that we not just switch off game servers that users call home. We already fight issues with this in the case of some stable branch official servers, you may have seen it visible in forum posts asking where a specific official branch server that went offline was, and how users could get their camps, vehicles, etc back. As we move forward with development and push changes such as the final redesign of our server browser out, increasing visibility and thus reliability in these stable branch servers becomes even more paramount. For a game that is effectively a service in some definitions, like DayZ can be, we need to provide a certain amount of stability and reliability with the official DayZ servers. Switching them off and converting them to experimental branch due to a short term increase in demand is – in short, as I like to call it – “A bandaid on a broken leg”.
We all recognize that as we continue to move forward with major engine updates to Enfusion/DayZ demand will likely increase on this branch, and while we still have to keep the experimental branch within a certain limited capacity compared to stable branch, we *are* working on being able to increase (flex) experimental branch player slots to try and alleviate the demand as best we can with resources that do not compromise the integrity of stable branch official servers.
SRSLY???? go see on stable there's like 50 official servers wich are EMPTY 24/7!!!! BS
