"There's a new patch available. Would you like to download it now?"
That message has been popping up at login with distressing regularity lately. Sometimes it seems like there's a new patch/fix every couple days.
The last expansion was really buggy when it was first released and it's been patched repeatedly since. That reminds me of another MMO publisher for another game I used to play.
So the question is did Blizzard buy Eve?
Or maybe CCP has adopted Blizzard's policy of hiring unqualified idiots based on in-game celebrity/noteriety and sycophantic relationships with senior developers rather than actual coding ability or game design experience. There certainly have been an awful lot of well known Eve players hired by CCP, but how many of them are actually any good at writing code or capable of unbiased objective design?
Whatever the real reasons may be buggy releases and constant patches are some of the first signs of serious development problems. I hope they get it straightened out soon.
I think you must be looking at just recent expansions and patches for comparison. It used to be worse about 2 or 3 years ago (and maybe longer). At least the more frequent patches are pretty much painless, before they were a lot more effort on the user's part (usually requiring a visit to EVE's website to download the patch file manually, IIRC). However, I do agree that this is not a positive trend.
ReplyDeleteI've been playing for about a year and a half now. When I first started expansions were pretty much seamless with few major bugs and infrequent patches.
DeleteThe last patch however was extremely buggy at release and has been patched many times since.
Do you think these "well known Eve players" are being hired to be programmers?
ReplyDeleteA "developer" who isn't a coder isn't much of a developer. Unless he's really just an artist, then it's ok, but he'd better be a damn good artist.
DeleteDevelopers make or are at least involved in design decisions which affect the code. In order to make good decisions they need to understand code, coders and the coding process.
Otherwise you don't have a developer you have an incompetant idiot working on things he doesn't understand.
Several of these recent 'patches' have been AT stuff being added in for the tournament.
ReplyDeleteOk, that makes sense. It explains why the patch frequency slowed down then picked up again recently.
DeleteWhile buggy releases and constant patches do concern me I hope readers realize this post (and my responses to comments) are also more than a bit "tongue in cheek".
Someone asked why there were no patch notes a few days ago on twitter. Fozzie said it was AT backend work. However, today's patch notes are also AT stuff but they made a note that it was AT back end work.
DeleteThe kill report tweaking I believe is also directly AT focused for the most part.
To continue to add comments on this: Many of the post Odyssey patches were also not 'bugs' but sadly responses to player feedback for missed issues or issues that needed to be tweaked in a more sensible manner.
DeleteEven with all of the test server feedback things like spew container speeds have changed half a dozen times since odyssey was released as they try to find the sweet spot between outrage and grudging acceptance.