“What we commit to, at least we want to commit to, is every month we have an update that is big, substance-ive*, like a world update, sim update, PDLC, whatever…and there’s gonna be in between that is just critical bugs.”
So…we’ve been putting up with CTDs every time anyone presses V by accident (and I can hardly believe you issued a patch with that as a known issue)…and the smart camera going haywire and then crashing to desktop since the 29th. Are these not critical bugs?
Is there some reason one, specific, game breaking bug can’t be patched immediately? You said in a previous Q&A that you’re using scrum agile as your method. Scrum agile is supposed to be able to react to things like this quickly, that’s the main selling point of using scrum agile in the first place.
P.S. * The word you’re looking for is ‘substantial’ but kudoes for answering a public Q&A in a foreign language.
Patches (which fix issues) need to be separated from content updates (which add features). Patches need to be smaller, more focused on particular issues, and happen more frequently. Updates that add content or new functionality need to be on longer cycles.
You can bet the reason why the last “patch” was rushed out the door in such a broken state is because they had huge media hubub around the Japan update, and they needed it out on the advertised date at any cost. The content may have been ready to go, but the underlying code certainly wasn’t, so much that they released it with a known bug listed in the patch notes.
You’re cherry picking from the interview. He also said they have a cadence they’re working from, which is a monthly big update and every 2 weeks updates for bug fixes and smaller improvements. He said this when asked about issuing hotfixes for issues.
Basically, they did a bunch of talking to say that they’re going to continue doing things by the exact same schedule. Which means we have to wait 2 weeks in between updates, regardless how sorry of a state the last patch left the game.
Frequency of patches that fix bugs needs to increase. Like at least weekly. Have a patch every week until the big issues are sorted out. Quoting scrum agile is a nice talking point to people who don’t know what it is. It’s meant exactly to be in a situation where you need to break things down into small, bite-sized tasks and deploy them quickly (the “agile” part of it). Seems to me that they’re doing quite the contrary.
We’ll see. If there’s a surprise patch this week, then I’ll rejoice. We really need it badly.
What I expect though is that we’ll see the next patch next week as it was originally planned, and then an update 2 weeks from that, and so forth ad nauseum.
Call me a pessimist, but I see talk as just that - talk. Unless I see tangible action, I don’t jump on the cheerleading wagon. I’m far too old and jaded to believe the words of PR folks at face value.
Some of my suspicion’s are the things complained about are so vague they cannot be duplicated. Now, I wrote a long suggestion to MS through the Zendesk, outlining how we should document and identify bugs. I was project lead on the rollout of my company when 2000 users were testing Windows 2000 Workstation years ago. We had a specific format for bugs/improvements/issues to be documented in. My reading of hundreds of complaints is, nothing is mentioned about where/when/how/why/what. If you want a bug fixed, then outline what you think the bug is. So, included time of day, starting location, scheduled landing point, what plane by type, i.e. Daher TBM-930 for instance. What was going on, was ATC talking to you, were you gawking at scenery, did you just input changes to AP settings, outline/describe your actions. This will help them to figure out what is going on, because they will have to duplicate what you were doing to figure out what if anything is broken. Now, I get that hundreds of people cannot download the simulator, the patch, for a number of reasons. I specifically asked them to put the patch/updates on a dedicated server, so we as users can go out, download the whole thing, then install it locally. That would solve lots of issues we are experiencing now on that issue. They are using the stored (USA) because of pirate. the game or the patch, I get that, but having thousands of folks who paid money, and cannot get the product is stupid. That I have not experienced the same bugs/problems you are having, just means I am flying from a different location, using a different plane, or my hardware is stronger and higher end possibly than of others, this is not bragging. I also think some duplicate lines of code are still in the sim, causing things to loop, or to introduce an issue when maybe it’s not. I want others to test out arriving into KBNA, about 7-10 miles out from landing on ILS 31, I see an airport below me the spitting image of the one in the AP which is still working fine. I think another bug, it don’t know where it is, but, it’s not really that I think duplicate lines of scenery code. Please verify, I have flown this twice and both times I see the AP, which looks exactly like the one I am still flying too.
