That’s when most of the issues began for many of us. SU 9 just made it even worse, and swept up a whole new batch of users into the previously SU 8 problems. It was SU 8 that brought severe freezing, for over a full minute at times, and broke several aspects of the menu interface itself.
People keep getting all wrapped up in the performance fluctuations, for good reason becaue they’re horrendous, but those can have many causes and it doesn’t surprise me that some have terrible performance now while others say it’s fine. It’s harder to figure out what is happening there.
That’s why I keep trying to focus users’ attention on the suddenly missing interface elements. While this issue doesn’t affect all users either, it is affecting a large number of us and it is something that CANNOT be blamed on differences in user configuration, different hardware, etc. Those affected by this suddenly lost their rolling cache menu, about half of the rest of the Data settings menu, and the delete function in Content Manager for any first-party modules. This problem affects both PC and XBOX users (so none of the “XBOX can’t handle it” nonsense applies), and every user experiencing it is missing exactly the same menu settings and options.
THAT is a situation that CANNOT continue to stand. When two groups of users don’t even see the same interface nor the same options, that’s the very definition of “broken”, and the sim cannot go one more inch forward until it is fixed. You can’t have a product that is essentially two different products now for two different groups of users.
Since SU 8, I can’t even uninstall everything and just reinstall the core sim, without upgrades and world updates. IT WON’T LET ME. The only action it allows now is to uninstall or reinstall EVERYTHING, except for third party ads-ons. It’s like they’re all welded together into one giant file. That makes incremental reinstallation to troubleshoot impossible. This behavior indicates to me that there’s a Digital Rights Management (DRM) problem that is somehow confusing what ownership rights you have and how they apply to the various modules. I’ve wondered all along if the very hastily-applied patch that was issued to fix the SU 8-related screwup that exposed all Marketplace content for free didn’t hose the whole DRM system for some users.
I’ve given up, barring a miracle, as well. When this sim was announced it looked so spectacular that it seemed to be too good to be true. Well, you know what they say about that…
I also have to blow off just a little more steam: The users who always jump in to chirp about how “the sim’s never been better for them”, and who seem to imply that we losers who have problems just need to suck it up somehow, add NOTHING to the conversation.
I’m not talking about those who have just been trying to give us information to help with assessing the situation. I’m only referring to the few who seem to always want to mention their good fortune almost as a way to dismiss our problems and our suggested remedies.
If half the people who bought BMWs suddenly had all four wheels fall off a couple of years after purchase, it would be entirely unhelpful for owners who didn’t experience this to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, everything’s fine on my car!” In fact, when a large number of people are experiencing exactly the same set of problems with a product, the fact that some other people are not experiencing them is pretty much irrelevant. In all likelihood, it’s just that they haven’t experienced the problem YET.
If I saw half (don’t jump on that number; I’m only using it as an example) those who owned the same car that I do all start experiencing unexpected wheel loss at the same time, my reaction would not be, “Well, sucks to be them” and keep whistling a happy tune as I drove on down the road. I’d be very concerned about what was fundamentally wrong with that car, because I’d want the manufacturer to fix it immediately before it happened to me.
Rolling back to SU8 is impossible due to this being a cross-platform live service based game. However, it’s sadly true that SU9 has completely ruined the Xbox experience and Asobo doesn’t even acknowledge this anymore. According to them, the hotfix fixed the issues, while in reality it hasn’t.
OK, then implement another “update”, let’s call it Sim Update 10, and design “Sim Update 10” so that it has exactly the same code as SU 8 (really, SU 7 would be far better).
And yet again, this is not just an XBOX problem. There are long threads on these very forums, as well as on Reddit, on which PC users are complaining about exactly the same problems XBOX users have had since SU 8 (SU 9 for some others).
So if a “rollback” or “roll forward” or whatever we wanted to call it occurred, it would have to happen for PC users as well as XBOX users anyway.
Fully agree, but another reminder: Those problems are occurring on PC just as much as they are on XBOX. A false narrative has taken hold around here that these are XBOX issues. That is NOT the case at all. The Reddit thread about missing menus and missing delete function was started by a PC USER, and there is a thread on that very issue here as well. I believe that one also may have been started by a PC user, or at least it certainly contains complaints about it from many PC users in addition to XBOX users.
All of the current issues are CROSS-PLATFORM issues, not XBOX problems only.
The practical limitations of implementing a rollback mostly deal with undoing changes in the data structures and values that were introduced in the new release. Those changes don’t have an equivalent position in the release that you want to rollback to. So in order to implement a clean rollback you may have to spend a very large number of development resources that you rather spend on developing the fixes that you need on the current release.
I’d rather they leave it as is, determine where the new regressions are, or the earlier problems which have become more illuminated with SU9, then fix them. It’ll benefit everyone in the end.
I’m all for that, but I’ve just about lost the last shred of faith that they are capable of fixing this mess. Since I saw people referring to a patch, I fired up the sim earlier to see if it fixed anything. With the possible exception that if I try really hard to look for improvement there might be a minuscule reduction in freezing, I saw no difference at all. Interface still missing all kinds of settings, still no antialiasing, horrible pop-in, shimmering all over the landscape (due to no antialiasing), very long stutters, and noticeable overall reduction in frame rate (not frame rate dips, but general drop at all times). Final approach was agonizing to get through. Calling it a slideshow would be kind - one frame - that’s right, a single frame - every 4 or 5 seconds. Still essentially non-functional.
Other than that, it’s great. Way to go Asobo! I guess you can get back to keeping the marketing department happy now. You’ve already got our money, so obviously we’re no longer important.
This is another key thing for me that strongly suggests it is not a hardware problem/limitation. I’m personally 90% sure it’s related to servers/Internet. Some of it of course will be software related, with reproducible bugs. But the rest… no, I don’t think so. The intermittent nature of CTD’S, freezing, stuttering etc. I’m absolutely convinced it’s server related.
You may very well be on to something. In my case, the non performance-related problems are consistent and never fluctuate, while the performance problems seem to fluctuate only with respect to the complexity of the terrain and objects that I’m flying over. However, I’ve seen a number of other users reporting that sometimes the sim is completely unusable and other times they have few problems at all. This second group’s observations point toward possible server-related issues, as you say.
Then we have the wide variation in experience between users with similar (PC) or identical (XBOX) hardware. XBOX is the best test case here because there is just so little that can possibly vary from one box to another.
If Microsoft/Asobo would only open up and admit to what they’re seeing and/or what they’ve changed that might have caused these issues, it would help reassure people that at least they’re aware and care about doing something, and it might give users enough info to make some educated suggestions.
Rollback, what is that going to achieve?, for one it’s likely impossible, it’s just more faffing about when the time spent would be better served fixing everything for future updates.
But it’s the client software that’s experiencing the CTD and all that. No matter what the state of the server is the client software should not fail like that. The client needs to be fixed or finished because it’s obvious that it has many loose ends and was released before its time. If the network or the server has issues the client should be able to handle it gracefully.
