about the recent tempo of updates and fixes

[VerKer]

I would be interested what you guys think: Has the tempo of updates and fixes changed recently, or does anyone have data concerning how fast, or how often after the last few content updates PDX has released their followup Stellaris fixes and patches? Any timeline anywhere?

It may only be me, but it kinda feels as if they have lost some of their manpower (apart from Martin, obviously) and thus since the release of 2.2 things seem to have slowed down somehow. This is not the first week, not the first thursday when i drive home from work thinking that i must tune into the forums first, to find out which bugs or game breakers have been fixed already, only to find out that there is no new patch available at all.

While i still have hopes for friday, somehow i am not too keen on another weekend without a new Stellaris patch. And you?

 

[sillyrobot]

I am waiting for a synthetic ascension fix.

It's possible there were personnel changes at the same time as Wiz left. Even if there was turnover without reductions, you'd expect a drop in productivity as people got up to speed on the code/script base.

It's also possible the new lead is working to get up to speed and/or has a different deployment style.

We'll see over the next few weeks.

 

[Ter.Yeah]

It could simply be that they are focusing on the most prominent issues right now, - performance & ai. And those are not the easiest things to fix & test quickly.

 

[Badesumofu]

Excluding the holiday, I'd say this is similar to the post-release support after 2.0. Early on where there was a lot of low hanging fruit to fix, the beta patches come out roughly weekly. Now that they're left with the more challenging stuff it's more like bi-weekly. I'm hoping for one tomorrow, but I'd prefer to wait until Monday than have a broken beta over the weekend.

 

[Matoro_TBS]

This seems pretty normal pace. It just feels different because there was a holiday in between.

 

[Captain Conundrum]

Seems fine to me. I would caution against pushing for speedier development since that is arguably what caused the current problems in the first place. Right now what I want is for them to take as much time as they need to do this right without being worried about working fast enough. We already know that the team can work fast, now the challenge for them is to be thorough.

 

[Defiler99]

I feel like this is the normal pace, unfortunately. The poor management of bugfix vs. feature priority just means that it's rare for any particular release to be in a good state.
v1.9.1 was pretty good, as was v1.3, but almost everything else has been a bugfest.

 

[VerKer]

performance & ai. And those are not the easiest things to fix & test quickly

Lets hope they do. Given their past passion for AI though, even considering teamleader Wiz was AI team before, i would not hope too high.

but I'd prefer to wait until Monday than have a broken beta over the weekend

I am a fan of "test on sunday, release on monday" AFAIK they never released start of a week though, IIRC it always was thursdays / fridays (i still recall the fanbase riots on WoW forums many years ago, when blizzard had a friday release shedule. In the end they had to change it to tuesdays or wednesdays in order to be able to hotfix 1-2 days after, and i think they never changed it since)

This seems pretty normal pace. It just feels different because there was a holiday in between.

Strange, there was no holiday in my January, and its February meanwhile.

I would caution against pushing for speedier development since that is arguably what caused the current problems

In other words, they should release with less haste, but patch faster, i am perfectly sure that is what you meant

poor management of bugfix vs. feature priority just means that it's rare for any particular release to be in a good state

This - its so true, and it hurts this franchise so much, i d really wish for someone in their management to realize.

 

[ragehavoc]

unfortunately, this is standard, poor release, not a lot of communications, a few fixes, then more silence, lots of waiting for them to fix the game, which they should have QA'd in the first place. their order of operations for development seems to be the opposite of every single gaming company - develop > release > QA >< fixes, instead of develop > QA > fixes > release > minor bugs > hot Fix, like its supposed to.

the week longs of silence is the worst.

 

[AppleBeam]

The Christmas release plan for Megacorp would have worked much better if they just picked the next Christmas.

 

[Peter34]

This seems pretty normal pace. It just feels different because there was a holiday in between.

How very cruel of first Christmas and then the New year to come and ambush PDX like that, completely unexpectedly!

 

[VerKer]

Friday evening again, today also the holiday week for the school kids starts here, and no new beta branch or patch to find, sigh. It seems their main build still needs a few weeks more of bugfixing. Lets hope it turns out good at least, if it takes additional time inbetween patches.

 

[Maginor]

One thing to consider is that if they push the changes to steam more often, they have to spend a larger proportion of their time making official documented builds, and it will be more difficult to make systemic, wide improvements that often take a longer time. In the long run, you may get the fixes faster if you don't get them as often.

 

[AlphaAsh]

Seems fine to me. I would caution against pushing for speedier development since that is arguably what caused the current problems in the first place. Right now what I want is for them to take as much time as they need to do this right without being worried about working fast enough. We already know that the team can work fast, now the challenge for them is to be thorough.

Indeed. The fact we didn't get another update this week is either an indication that there's heads down, making the next one thorough, or a drop in productivity due to team changes, or re-allocation of person-hours away from fixes. I choose to be optimistic and trust that it is not that last one.

 

[VerKer]

I concur - and I have been trying to stay optimistic since 2 years now , because despite all flaws, Stellaris is by far my game with the most hours played - but hearthstone, but thats another story.

As a reminder, it was not the intention of the opening post to cry for speedier updates, but to draw a comparison between update frequency now (conerning a build where there is a LOT to be fixed) and then (with former content updates). There is a sharp difference between hurrying patches out, what noone sane would suggest, see pre christmas content release, and between information from devs towards the community, what and when we can expect next, in which timeframes or frequency. It seems to me that the latter wasnt given lately, so i tried to find out if that was also the case a year ago, or if my personal observation that patching takes longer at the moment was true.

If there is a patch timeline in some wiki or the like i havent found it yet, perhaps someone can point me to.