September 19th Update - State of Play

Seeing the game in its current condition really saddens me.

As much as I appreciate a quick response, and I know some bugs may sneak their way in and y'all have no knowledge, and I know there's several departments at Rare, but please follow up on fixing stuff.

I've poured approaching 3.3-3.4k hours into this game since October 2021 and I've fallen head over heels with this game when I first started. There's not another game like this that I've found.

But I've now fallen out of love with the game because every update since Season 8/9 (whenever you introduced hourglass) has broken the game even more. Cheaters are more rampant, some fixes are still broken, and server stability is not

As optimistic as I've tried to be, but I'm losing hope for this game.

Much love, peace, and banana grease,

Honey

Thank you for providing open communication and quickly implementing a hot fix ahead of community weekend. Look forward to assisting with play testing the fixes next week. Truly appreciate the acknowledgement that this update wasn't of the quality the team expected. Appreciate the team's hard work.

@legion1te I never AFK in Insider. I find it odd that folks complain about bugs, then AFK the testing part.

@simpleyhoney
I'm the same to be honest, you can see it on steam charts, more and more players are leaving. Me and Two friends have played every weekend since 2020 and it's the first time we've started looking for another game to pick up.

The update does indeed have some bugs, but it is much appreciated that the main problem with the fishing rod has been solved as quickly as possible.

Thank you for always being attentive to the community

@it-sundae said in September 19th Update - State of Play:

No offense, but what is the point of Insiders?

The point of Insiders is providing Rare with free, one-way QA feedback on very limited topics, within very strict, very limited parameters, in a very limited timeframe, with no guarantee said feedback will even be taken into account in time given the über-tight deadlines Rare seems to be working under.

There's only so much Insiders can do under those conditions, and if something gets past Rare, past Rare's actual QA, past Partners and then past Insiders... well... adding another layer of testers to the pipeline won't change much. The entire system and release schedule needs to be reworked.

@it-sundae said in September 19th Update - State of Play:

No offense, but what is the point of Insiders? This is an every patch thing. Also this hotfix has become a Server Stability Issue instead and was found within 5 minutes.

Look, I'm really glad this was hotfixed. Thank you for removing a bug that would have been used to terrorise HG. If this bug rolled with CW, no one would have had fun. I can tell you that. However, it's really frustrating to watch this game have bugs that just harass the player in every single patch. More than a few nasty ones introduced in either s9 or s10 and they're still there, an annoying part of HG that the HG mains deal with.

• Captaincy scam was introduced in s9 and it still happens after being "fixed" 4 times.

• Merchant crate scam was introduced in s9 and while I haven't had the opportunity to test it yet, I am worried it will still happen. Also, this bug is a Server Stability Issue. I can prove this bug degrades server performance.

• "Mast bug" or "No interact prompt bug" was introduced in s10. The worst part, not being able to see if the boat has a mast or not, has been fixed. However, you can still board a boat and elements can be missing and you might not be able to interact with the ammo box. Probably a 1/25 chance of happening.

• "Jitter bug" or what you see completely desyncing from what's on the server on streaks, was introduced in s9. The bug was never been fixed or addressed properly outside of Chapman acknowledging it. There was another bug the HG mains used to fix this bug. That bug was fixed instead of the root bug. I've had "jitter bug" happen as low as a 5 streak recently and it commonly happens at 8 for me. I usually see it before my team mate. This can happen to adventure divers, too!

There's many other smaller bugs that are annoying but these are the bug ones HG mains fight every single setup and match. These are all bugs that were randomly patched in and are still in the game. We have some smaller bugs that were patched out, but some of them remained in the game for months. At this point it's clear Rare's current form of testing is broken and needs review.

There are lots of players out there who'd work for you, Rare, and are good at breaking things...

Just wanted to give you an update about merchant crate scam.
Yes, we are still being scammed. I lost count how many times they have fixed it.

Please consider hiring game-testers. You using Insiders as the only mean of bug fixing is absurd. A lot of people on Insiders will just find these glitches and gatekeep them. It clearly isn't working.

Please look into while you do this removing the tridant teleport cheat. This also widely will minimize the impact the cannon teleport if cheaters can instead now kill players from half way across the map :)

Was any changes done to EAC, as I played about 15 minutes before the quick update, and I just launched the game, only to be hit with a Blue Screen as Easy Anticheat caused my computer to fully crash, and I know it was EAC because the blue screen error was a kernel security check failure, and at the time of it happening, the only software with kernel level permissions was EAC, so please tell me it was a one off thing and that the EAC is not gone bad

Other than that, thanks for fixing the stuff you guys didn't fix yesterday, or something idk, seems like whenever you fix something, 10 more problems pop up, must be a pain.

@tesiccl said in September 19th Update - State of Play:

Speaking openly, this release isn't at a quality bar we strive for and that isn't good enough - we'll be assessing what process changes we can make here to get back in control of the game quality we are releasing each month.

We continue to hear this and nothing changes. Thank you however for addressing these issues quickly (they should have never made it to release). Please actually do better.

Exactly, well said

@kaoteek said in September 19th Update - State of Play:

@it-sundae said in September 19th Update - State of Play:

No offense, but what is the point of Insiders?

The point of Insiders is providing Rare with free, one-way QA feedback on very limited topics, within very strict, very limited parameters, in a very limited timeframe, with no guarantee said feedback will even be taken into account in time given the über-tight deadlines Rare seems to be working under.

There's only so much Insiders can do under those conditions, and if something gets past Rare, past Rare's actual QA, past Partners and then past Insiders... well... adding another layer of testers to the pipeline won't change much. The entire system and release schedule needs to be reworked.

Insiders also accepts bug reports. People report bugs that are outside of a "tight" timeframe and those bugs often make it in anyway. I agree that the pipeline needs reviewed. I want what's best for SOT and I'm tired of the glaringly obvious game-breaking bugs making it in.

I just feel bad for Drew being the messenger that often gets cut down.

Espero que arreglen un fallo que venimos teniendo los de PC desde esta temporada y es que cada vez que cambiamos de server, ya sea al sumergirnos en busca de misión o al usar el reloj de arena, nos expulsa de la partida y lo notifica como fallo de conexión.
Pero pasa incluso teniendo el PC conectado por cable

Fallos antiguos que deberían arreglar:

-No funciona el chat de voz entre jugadores de pc y xbox
-Muchas veces te saca del juego al cambiar de server

@sonicbob Drew, as a 5-year player and Insider, thank you and the Rare team for the honesty, transparency and commitment to continuous improvement. As a devops team leader, I can empathize with the fact that fixing things can break other things, and we can't fix everything for every platform we are supporting all at once. Communication is key and it is something Rare has never dropped the ball on.

Thanks again and looking forward to community weekend and further updates!

You keep saying you'll do better, but your actions tell a different story. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

@it-sundae

Right, but Insiders cannot clip and report Insider bugs which has deterred (at least myself) from reporting because of how burdensome the bug reporting systems it.

@gingideg1 said in September 19th Update - State of Play:

Quick question why do you always make updates and stuff at the end of the week and set events on saturday afternoon. I would prefere updates in the beginning of the week so every can donwload it and there is time to fix errors before events. And also I mostly have time to play on friday and saturday evening and not so much on sunnday and I think most people could enjoy event more if they start on a friday afternoon. Sorry but im a bit mad because I tried to go home a bit early to see that I will have to wait till the server are up again and maybe do an update and still not enjoy the extra fun from the community weekend because hows weekend starts on a saturday afternoon and goes on till monday morning.

Great points here. Feels like updates should come out Monday so you have an entire week to fix them before the weekend.

...and, why is it Friday night and community weekend doesn't start until tomorrow morning? Yes, I know EU timezone, but still...

I'm going to use Dead by Daylight here as an example.

They have a public test realm.
The announce the new updates, new killers, new map, new survivor, and more.
People then can see these changes and experience it themselves. Offer feedback. The fog whispers (streamers picked by DBD to represent DBD) can even stream the public test realm. DBD is able to collect a lot of data and tweak changes during the PTR before stuff even goes live. It's a pretty good system and game breaking bugs rarely go live. They've even combated cheating very well.

I'm not saying Rare should do everything they do but I feel like more of the problems that go live would be resolved before hand. I really don't understand the need for such secrecy of Insiders. It's like you want people to be surprised about new content but don't want proper testing and notes taken with the new content. Often times it's to difficult to test any combat related changes. Can't find people to fight and try it on Insiders. Players run away when you do find them. The best is just AFK people sitting at an outpost collecting their hour.
This game always has great potential. It's why so many of us have been here since the beginning and still playing. We love. We are vested into. That's why there are so many passionate responses.
Thank you for what you guys do. Please consider changes for the better. We aren't going anywhere

@ictus-xxi said in September 19th Update - State of Play:

Im saddened that one of the bugs that made it into live with this update is not being addressed here. Since the update when you try to "reverse ladderguard" and go: -let go of ladder-ads-shoot-switch weapon- regrab, you wont actually be able to regrab the ladder. This is an unintentional bug that made it into the live version and wasnt an issue prior to thursdays update.

This is not a bug, this is completely intended behavior. I'd recommend taking a closer look at the patch notes. Find more creative ways to board.

@xrandomality Are you intentionally gaslighting? Or did you missunderstand my post?

@personalc0ffee The only reasonable explanation I got is, that this is a sideeffect of some anticheat measure. If so, I would get why it is not being communicated. But I think many would agree that this is a rather frustrating experience for a player who thought found a bug and seemingly just gets ignored.

@ictus-xxi No, I am not gaslighting. Being pushed away from the ladder when attempting to ladder juke was an intended introduction with this blunder update. You're going to need to get more creative as a boarder than just blundering the guarder away.
Unless you are stating that this is happening with all weapons - that would be unintentional.

@xrandomality no, you missunderstand the release notes

Team, as mich as it is grateful that you openly acknowledge this, far too many time have you asked for community forgiveness, said you can do better, and overall have been really REALLY horrible with changing the game. I love this game and won't stop playing yet but several of my closest friend have stopped because of these repeated occurances. I beg you, perfect your QA testing and release control to ensure everyone working on updates are all verifying work they do doesn't impact other areas of the game. The last 2 years the stability of this game has drastically gone down hill. Don't say you need to do better, do it.