$ 9,110,730 | Forums

[rlmergeuser]

And on a side note:

TurtleIsSlow

How did I not catch this? Are we being duped?

[rlmergeuser]

And on a side note:

TurtleIsSlow

How did I not catch this? Are we being duped?

Also note his avatar. Is it not a perfect analogy of his approach to forum posting?

-Arrive with a highly flammable argument.
-Light it with the match of misinformation and insufferable pompasity.
-Burn to the ground while maintaining an aura of self-righteous indignation.

[rlmergeuser]

And on a side note:

TurtleIsSlow

How did I not catch this? Are we being duped?

Also note his avatar. Is it not a perfect analogy of his approach to forum posting?

-Arrive with a highly flammable argument.
-Light it with the match of misinformation and insufferable pompasity.
-Burn to the ground while maintaining an aura of self-righteous indignation.

Also very true.

[xB00MEx]

Skyrim, Somewhat buggy the first day, Patched "the first day", 11 days later All major game breakers were fixed, the game was fully playable, yes the quests were tangled for a while: dragons would fly backwards, sometimes, but if you just simply restart that quest it was unlikely to happen again. but all you had to do was find new quests, come back to those when you finished others. In the end there ways ways around though problems.

Perhaps next time you suggest games that had major issues to make your arguement make sure they didn't fix most of them in the first week of the release. Just a thought.....

Perhaps next time you suggest a game fixed it's bugs within the first week you might want to do a little more research on that game, especially if it's made by Bethesda. Fallout and Skyrim are probably in the top 10 buggiest games ever released.

First off, Skyrim didn't have all the game breaking glitches fixed within the first week, or month for that matter. I had a daedric quest that was bugged and that didn't get fixed until 2 months ago (btw simple math makes that 5 months after the game released). Also, don't forget the first big patch Bethesda released caused MORE bugs than it fixed. I guess you convienently forgot about that too, huh?

The reason why people keep pointing out your flaws in your reasoning is because you keep pretending to think you know more than the actual people who have experience in the matter. When that happens you get these results.

Now back on topic:

For the record I'm a dog person.

[sebastianaalton]

Skyrim, Somewhat buggy the first day, Patched "the first day", 11 days later All major game breakers were fixed, the game was fully playable, yes the quests were tangled for a while: dragons would fly backwards, sometimes, but if you just simply restart that quest it was unlikely to happen again. but all you had to do was find new quests, come back to those when you finished others. In the end there ways ways around though problems.

You must be talking about the PC version. The first console patch wasn't even out 11 days after the patch. It took a full week more. The next console patch that had much more critical fixes was out 2 months later. Console patches take more time, as they have to go though the certification process (= a lot of testing that the patch actually works and doesn't break new things). Certification testing is a very good thing. The dragons flying backwards was actually a new bug introduced in the first (rushed out) PC patch. I am sure the next patch took 2 months because they wanted to be sure not to break anything again.

OK, I am going to describe how it works. This is just an example, not exactly how we did it. The game developer has tested everything extensively, and everything seems to be working. Game passes certification test, game gets launched. During first day evening we get some odd reports that do not describe what is wrong, just that console freezes (not even the game mode is told). Day 2 we get to work, I immediately create new threads to support forum and proper instructions for people how to report bugs, so that we can reproduce them. During that day we get first reports to that thread, but not much yet, as players are still mostly focused on the single player campaign. During day 3 we get some proper multiplayer bug reports and we can internally track the issue. Now the fixing can actually start. Multiplayer issues are tough to identify/track, so it might take for example 5 days to implement the required fixes, and another 5 days to extensively test the fixes (you need lots of testers with different firewalls configurations and connection speeds to test multiplayer issues). So that's 13 days, or 2 weeks (if you are working at weekends also). Add a week of certification testing, and you will see that even theoretically getting the patch out sooner than 3 weeks after game release is very very difficult (even if you work all weekends). Of course you might choose to ignore the testing completely, and get it out week or two earlier, but then you get backwards flying dragons, and that's not good

Sometimes of course you encounter so bad issues at launch that you are willing to skip lot of testing. Backwards flying dragons are a slight annoyance after all if players wouldn't be able to play the game at all otherwise. I am sure Bethesda made the right call with the patch, and six patches shows real commitment towards their community as well. I just wanted to show an example that even the highest rated developers (Skyrim metascore is 94) make bugs, and have to release (six) patches to make their game work.

Just tell your customers if it will next year, next week, tomorrow.

ANBA has already announced it. Check the interview at #1 spot of RedLynx main page (http://www.redlynx.com/). Quote: "Right now we’re focused on the first title update. We’re keeping our fingers crossed, with any luck it should be coming out next week."

I absolutely love this game series but hands down you guys have a serious need on customers relations and communication. I am not the only one that feels this way, but I am one of the only one's that is willing to post about it.

We developers read the forums every day, respond your questions every day, read your feedback (and take them into account when designing next iteration of the game). We created the support forum right away when we noticed there was problems, and we a helped countless of players getting the track central for example to work (wrong Xbox privacy settings) and helped players to get around bugs (more than 22 checkpoints in user tracks). We have been manually repairing scores (removing gliched scores) to single individuals in the leaderboards based on forum messages and private messages. We get lot of private messages every day. Maybe you do not notice this, but we spend a lot of time and effort towards the community. There's a single question that you didn't get personally answered (patch release date), but that doesn't mean our customer relations suck. And as you must have noticed, I am answering your questions at weekend as well (am I at home, not at office).

I could handle it if I had a specific estimate on the patch I would simply wait for it, just like I did on the severely late release of the game.

This is exactly why we do not tell the exact date before we know it for sure. If we told an estimate, and it wouldn't stand, you would be making angry posts in the forums about how our patch is late, and how we broke our promise.

And are you sure "severely late release" (a few months) qualifies in a thread that has already mentioned Rage, Skyrim and Diablo 3?

Duke Nukem Forever (just had to add this line if I need it in my following posts)

[rlmergeuser]

Seb, you double-posted. But maybe he needs to read it twice.


Edit from the future: He fixed it now.

[rlmergeuser]

Maybe you do not notice this, but we spend a lot of time and effort towards the community.

I don't think anything turtleslow has brought to the table has been based on actual things noticed.

sebbbi, you guys run a dev shop that's the envy of the industry. I bet everyone here could list a couple dozen ways we'd like to see improvements off the top of our heads, and I think that just proves the depth of engagement your work inspires. There aren't enough back pats in the world to properly congratulate you guys, well done.

[Happyflow]

@ sebbbi Concerning the patch you could have really informed us earlier when it comes out. At least you could have said that it will take a month or two.

I would have also preferred the Trials Evolution release date earlier or at least a prediction. You said 2011 and afterwards did not even tell us that the game won't be released in that time frame although you should have already known by November. So everyone was waiting excited as hell and after there was no release in 2011 there was not even a statement or anything. Back then the lack of info made people flame the forums not that the game was pushed back.

In general I would prefer to know when a new game or dlc comes out earlier. Even if it is estimated.
Example : We are estimating to release a Dlc in November or December 2012. Due to our high standards of quality we will not release the Dlc by then if it does not meet our expectations. Further info by the end of September/ early October.

[sebastianaalton]

We are sorry that our original estimate didn't hold.

Trials Evolution was announced at E3 2011. At that time we didn't have any concrete knowledge of a release date, but we gave the press an rough estimate of "Year 2011". That rough estimation didn't hold. As soon as we knew the potential launch window we gave you a "Spring 2012" estimate, and that was correct. The exact launch date wasn't announced by us, because the game was part of Arcade NEXT campaign. Microsoft announced all release dates of games in the campaign, including Trials Evolution, Bloodforge, Fable Heroes and Minecraft.

[rlmergeuser]

Sebbbi.. Sebbbi.. Sebbbi.. Sebbbi...