Pending Changelog: Experimental Branch: 0.42.116002

[finnpalm 312]

Spending money to write some lines every some days?!

Anyway, this is not a finished game, but an alpha. Yes, they should involve more their testers, explaining things.

 

 

Thats total BS, it would take a couple of minutes to write a tweet/post with a simple explanation, they don't need to go into depth just how they are getting on with it and the problem its causing. And to be honest with all the money they have made, YES i would love for them to hire a community manager like any decent company would have already. 

 

It might take a couple of minutes, but they're game developers. Not community managers. Community managers, people usually with a degree in communications or similar, are usually hired after a game goes live. Not during the development phase.

[Ellen Ripley 71]

Yeah a couple of minutes everytime someone gets something wrong or has a question which has been already answered somewere. Be it Twitter,Reddit, the Forums, weekly report or Montly Devblog. You know, most questions asked over and over again have already been answered somewhere. People just don't search for those answers. Or they don't give a damn to understand them.

 

You for example are calling me a fanboy.

Yet I am not. I am not even playing as much as i could, because I don't care so much about the game.

I don't even think I will like the final release of it because I have other ideas about how to build upon the main idea of a zombie-survival-game.

I just have a better understanding of how such work gets done. Or at least I think I have. Our opinions are different about that and thats the only reason you think I am into them.

 

I called myself Ellen Ripley on these forums because I needed a new Nickname, I am not using the same everywhere. And thats what came into my mind for whatever reason, i have no Idea. But you on the other hand seem to know some connection between those two names, was Hicks on of those Marines? I didnt realize there was a connection until you've made me think about it.

[crazzekiff 93]

It might take a couple of minutes, but they're game developers. Not community managers. Community managers, people usually with a degree in communications or similar, are usually hired after a game goes live. Not during the development phase.

Well, they made us already pay for the game. I call that going "Live" :D

And we're not simply a community, we are their paying testers, they should treat us as a part of development. Communication is a big point imho.

[eisenmaik 17]

so enyone know the date for a new patch?....

it is boring at the stable branch , and the bugs makes me insane :D..

 

 

[Gugolas 228]

Damn, really? A degree to tell people "this thing we are doing is difficult, it will take some time, we might not solve it for wednesday, we'll update you during mainteinance" on Twitter instead of making them wait?

Really?

You must have got wrong what we were suggesting/talking about, now and before (I talk about this topic since weeks).

[Zjasuu 337]

This week probably.

[Rancor 90]

As long as we dont get an experimental update, we wont get one on stable.... Easy as that..

[Guest]

snip

Edited March 12, 2014 by Guest

[Ellen Ripley 71]

Well, they made us already pay for the game. I call that going "Live" :D

And we're not simply a community, we are their paying testers, they should treat us as a part of development. Communication is a big point imho.

Nope.

They didn't made us pay.

We decided to buy an unfinished product which still is at least a year away from final.

They even advised us NOT to buy it.

[theswedishcathead 59]

so enyone know the date for a new patch?....

it is boring at the stable branch , and the bugs makes me insane :D..

My opinion

 

For the current game? No

For the price? No (it will stay this price for some time)

To see the game? No (you can watch streams)

To participate in development? Possibly

 

Overall, I would not recommend it. But I think in a few weeks, it might go from "possible" to "yes" on the last one. <-- DON'T BUY IT WAIT ONE YEAR ATLEAST.

[Guest]

Well, they made us already pay for the game. I call that going "Live" :D

And we're not simply a community, we are their paying testers, they should treat us as a part of development. Communication is a big point imho.

Test the game, report some bugs, get involved in the community not just with brainless postings/moaning and even then you'r not in the position to claim sth.

you'r just here, waiting for the next misstep of devs so u have somebod you can throw your shit at. poor lil boy.

did somebody found that animalfood some ppl talkin about?

Edited March 12, 2014 by Guest

[entspeak 374]

As long as we dont get an experimental update, we wont get one on stable.... Easy as that..

Not true. There have been periods during this development where the build went stable and the experimental and stable branches have been the same for a week at least. And there will likely be more exp updates before a stable is released.

People will moan, but updates will come when they come. And, while we are testing the game, there is no obligation to tell you anything other than what they state in the warning. We paid for early access... this is what that is. It's like this for other games in early access, too. I've got a couple of other early access games and it's the same thing - things get fixed when they get fixed... sometimes new content comes in before bugs are fixed. Why is it believed that this game should be any different? I think it's because this game existed already as a mod... so, in many ways, this is feels like starting over, ironically - much like dying in DayZ. That may be it for some people. Others just feel they are owed more than they actually are. These people should've paid more attention prior to release of the alpha... Rocket was saying that most people probably shouldn't buy during early access for the very reasons people are whining now. If these people bought anyway, this is their own problem.

Edited to add: the animal meat configs and models may only have been added to the code, but not activated. You're not going to find animal food simply lying around. Until the animals and hunting features are activated, you won't see the meat.

Edited March 12, 2014 by entspeak

[Nibashe 52]

so enyone know the date for a new patch?....

it is boring at the stable branch , and the bugs makes me insane :D..

Quote from rocket:

 

Anyone who wonders why the patch has not been moved to stable only needs to play on the experimental and you can see the reasons there. If you are disappointed the update is not on stable, simply go play on experimental and you can see these changes. You also quickly see issues as to why it is not out on stable.

Believe me: we want this patch out much more than the community. Because continuing like this is a major headache for development as branching and merging becomes an absolute nightmare. This is occurring at the same time as us finishing our planning/roadmap process and starting up our new feature scrums. However, this desire doesn't change the fact that for the patch to be pushed onto stable we must not introduce new serious, game-breaking bugs.

Currently we are tracking two new major issues that we see as being blockers:

Invisible Characters/Zombies

We believe this is caused by them becoming stuck in geometry on client(s) and therefore rejecting new updates. In order to fix this our QA has been going back through different build revisions and checking to see if this occurs so we could isolate the exact point in development it started occurring. That was an extremely labor intensive process and through this we managed to narrow it down to an exact revision that caused the issue.

Now that we have found out exactly when that occurred, we start to look into why that happened. Once we fully understand the project we can implement the solution. The problem is that these are not simple issues or bugs, they are complex bugs that can result from a variety of factors. They can be caused by multiple issues, or simply just a symptom of a much wider problem. They are also often very hard to reproduce, and are exceptionally difficult to produce estimates for on fixing.

Network pauses roughly every 30 seconds

This recently appeared on experimental, and has been noticed by many. What happens is regularly the server stops sending updates for a second or so, which is caused by the server hard-locking for some reason. It lasts only a second before the server starts sending updates again. It looks like desync or rubber-banding for the client.

The current most popular theory for this is currently that the Experimental Server Architecture itself is causing the issue. I.e. the Experimental "Hive" central database simply cannot handle the load, and therefore when a players is killed or dies, the updates are delayed and the server is forced to stop and wait for the central server to respond. I've vastly oversimplifying the issue but I am sure you get the point. We're again testing this in detail with our 30 fulltime, onsite, QA staff. It's a huge job and it's been a major effort.

 

 

source: http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/207ueh/no_patch_today/

[entspeak 374]

Yep.

For all the whining about not having a stable release, trust me... you don't want the current Exp to be released as stable.

[Guest]

Edited to add: the animal meat configs and models may only have been added to the code, but not activated. You're not going to find animal food simply lying around. Until the animals and hunting features are activated, you won't see the meat.

Thanks for reply, i expressed myself not very well and/or probably misunderstood ppl talkin about animalfood.

I'm aware bout the meat cfg/models added but not implemented, i thought/was talkin about food FOR animals but i probably just misunderstood.

[LeftLegDontWork 5]

Yep.

For all the whining about not having a stable release, trust me... you don't want the current Exp to be released as stable.

 

Trust you??? Never!!

[entspeak 374]

But, I'm so trustworthy, though. I got a degree in trust from Trust U.

[windchimepuppet 15]

Mask can no longer be worn with helmets. Are you gonna make gas mask accessible with ballistic helmets at some point? I really enjoyed the look.

[finnpalm 312]

Well, they made us already pay for the game. I call that going "Live" :D

And we're not simply a community, we are their paying testers, they should treat us as a part of development. Communication is a big point imho.

 

Nobody made you pay anything. You did it on your own accord, and against advice not to.

 

Damn, really? A degree to tell people "this thing we are doing is difficult, it will take some time, we might not solve it for wednesday, we'll update you during mainteinance" on Twitter instead of making them wait?

Really?

You must have got wrong what we were suggesting/talking about, now and before (I talk about this topic since weeks).

 

Do you even know what sort of work a community manager does? They work with communications both ways. Currently this is done by the developers, and you're complaining that it's not satisfactory. Do you see the pattern?

 

There's a huge difference between being good at writing code and and being good at explaining the problems you're encountering to a community of hundreds of thousand players. I highly doubt you'd be satisfied with a reply such as "this thing we're doing is difficult, it will take some time, we might not solve it for wednesday, we'll update you during maintenance". Such a message just spawns follow-up questions, and those few minutes it took them to write that grows into hours as they try to straighten everything out and answer a million players' questions.

 

But I guess you and the others are too busy patting yourself on the back as if it was your nagging that squeezed the new update out of the developers.

 

Edited March 12, 2014 by Strawman

[slaske255 2]

im not sure, but wasnt they supposed to update the game today under the maintaince?

[lucianpin 80]

Anyone who wonders why the patch has not been moved to stable:

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/207ueh/no_patch_today/cg0njmh

Edited March 12, 2014 by lucianpin

[Gugolas 228]

Lol, you totally made yourself a wrong idea, that happens.

I don't care about development speed, not beeing a lead developer I would trust whatever I'm told about technical aspects.

But yes, having been one I guess I know what a CoMa (fairly different communities and situations though) does and I still think that it would be a waste of resources, in this type of project/situation. Clearly, that's just an opinion.

But still, I believe that communication here has several problems, and I still believe that in many situation a but especially in this one, is extremely important: for the team and for the people. If you believe (I don't) that only a CoMa could give what here is needed, then in my opinion they should find one - for the wellness of the community and thus of the project.

But, as they say, 2 cents.

[finnpalm 312]

im not sure, but wasnt they supposed to update the game today under the maintaince?

 

Hicks on twitter:

 

"No update with todays maintenance, however - Our programming team has narrowed down the fix on the blocking bug."

[finnpalm 312]

Lol, you totally made yourself a wrong idea, that happens.

I don't care about development speed, not beeing a lead developer I would trust whatever I'm told about technical aspects.

But yes, having been one I guess I know what a CoMa (fairly different communities and situations though) does and I still think that it would be a waste of resources, in this type of project/situation. Clearly, that's just an opinion.

But still, I believe that communication here has several problems, and I still believe that in many situation a but especially in this one, is extremely important: for the team and for the people. If you believe (I don't) that only a CoMa could give what here is needed, then in my opinion they should find one - for the wellness of the community and thus of the project.

But, as they say, 2 cents.

 

A community manager could possibly be a good idea, seeing as how they created themselves a community of over a million players simply by releasing the game to the public. I have never argued otherwise.

 

To be honest I'm not sure what our argument is about, because you seem to change standpoint from post to post. Or I'm just reading them wrong. I've never said I think they should not get a community manager nor have I said they should get one. I did say that a community manager is usually hired after a game goes live.

 

EDIT: I think the conflict lies in game developers usually not needing a community manager until the game goes live, because that's when a community forms. In this case there is a community formed before the game has gone live, which might be a consequence they forgot to consider when they released the alpha to the public.

 

EDIT2: I guess I read your comments wrong, Gugolas, and instinctively lumped you together with the "we're entitled to this and that" crowd. Yes, more info would be nice, but I can totally see why that isn't working out for them. And in that case they might need to hire a community manager.

Edited March 12, 2014 by Strawman

[lucianpin 80]

Lol, you totally made yourself a wrong idea, that happens.

I don't care about development speed, not beeing a lead developer I would trust whatever I'm told about technical aspects.

But yes, having been one I guess I know what a CoMa (fairly different communities and situations though) does and I still think that it would be a waste of resources, in this type of project/situation. Clearly, that's just an opinion.

But still, I believe that communication here has several problems, and I still believe that in many situation a but especially in this one, is extremely important: for the team and for the people. If you believe (I don't) that only a CoMa could give what here is needed, then in my opinion they should find one - for the wellness of the community and thus of the project.

But, as they say, 2 cents.

I'm a dev too and I really understand a lot of what is happening here.

 

About communication problems I agree.