Your just looking for an excuse to have a go at people. I have worked for a few popular gaming companies in the past (Early 90's) as a programmer, and I can tell you now, if we would have pushed software out with game crashing bugs on day one, we'd be looking for a new job, it's as simple as that. I really dont understand why people seem to think it's ok to release games nowdays with bugs they will patch at a later date. What do you think people did years ago when the internet didnt exist and updating games wasnt possible? do you think these developers sat there and said 'oh it's ok, it dosnt matter that the game isnt playable, we'll get them to wait 10 years until the internet is invented and we'll patch it then'? The people trying to justify this shoddy development are the people creating the problem, not the people complaining about it, your the ones making the developers think they can get away with it.
While you do have a point you need to realize things are a lot different these days. Back in the 90's we didn't have this large of volume of games, different hardware configurations on the consoles, or online playability. Sh!t happens and its highly unlikely the cert team just half-assed their way through testing this update. Nothing is ever released completely bug free, even after testing. Report it and it gets patched, that's just how it is.
From what I've seen people are having the most problems on their existing worlds. Is there a possibility that the cert team cannot possibly test for bugs in every different scenario?
OP: I think you're being somewhat harsh on people this early on as well. I don't think it's such a bad thing for people to report the bugs they are experiencing... or even just what they think might be bugs. Files crashing and XBoxes freezing (which has been reported so far by several people) is a serious concern; and I'm now planning not to open any of my old worlds for the time being thanks to those who have reported that issue. I'm still planning to go home and download the update tonight and to play and enjoy the game, but only in a newly created world for now. I appreciate the heads up this forum has offered me so that I can perhaps at least avoid completely corrupting my old main building world.
Perhaps a more productive way to report these bugs, however, is to "complain" less about them and provide as much information about the individual file saves as possible (such as it's overall file size and in what version is was first created) and on what was being done in the game as the crashes are occurring. The more solid information 4J has to go on, the quicker they'll likely be able to develop a fix. The quicker they are able to develop a fix, the quicker that fix will get released.
OP: I think you're being somewhat harsh on people this early on as well. I don't think it's such a bad thing for people to report the bugs they are experiencing... or even just what they think might be bugs. Files crashing and XBoxes freezing (which has been reported so far by several people) is a serious concern; and I'm now planning not to open any of my old worlds for the time being thanks to those who have reported that issue. I'm still planning to go home and download the update tonight and to play and enjoy the game, but only in a newly created world for now. I appreciate the heads up this forum has offered me so that I can perhaps at least avoid completely corrupting my old main building world.
Perhaps a more productive way to report these bugs, however, is to "complain" less about them and provide as much information about the individual file saves as possible (such as it's overall file size and in what version is was first created) and on what was being done in the game as the crashes are occurring. The more solid information 4J has to go on, the quicker they'll likely be able to develop a fix. The quicker they are able to develop a fix, the quicker that fix will get released.
We are thankful to the community, we want to see this game working as intended.
Due to the nature of the game thoroughly testing every possible outcome (Especially in a live environment) is next to impossible.
This is one of the reasons we have reached out into the communities on the internet and tried to get feedback on the updates (Hence the bug report thread).
The quicker we can gather information the quicker we can find the source of a problem and remedy it.
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Twitter - @4JSteve
Currently Playing - League of Legends (EUW), Tales of Vesperia (PS4) and Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS4)
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And again, I've lost count... THE CRASHES WERE NO HAPPENING WHEN THEY TESTED IT. How can they help that a bug that never happened during testing got through? What do you think Microsoft Cert Testing is for? If Microsoft would have came across the crashes they wouldn't have certified it to go live. So again, how do you assume that 4J knowingly put the bugs through
It seems likely that they didn't note any crashes happening because there is a scenario that's causing the crash that slipped through the process untested. Perhaps they didn't start up an adequate number of worlds that were created before the update or worlds that had been built on and had sufficient grown in file size to trigger crashing. Perhaps it's only occurring in the world's where the weather is now radically different than the old biome's.
That is not to say that they intentionally released it with bugs. I can perfectly understand with the complexity of today's games that such things can slip through unknowingly. The earlier games that were released so relatively free of bugs had many advantages, including the fact that they were significantly less complex.
I've posted in two threads, this one and the one for 4J to see. I'm not spamming threads i'm putting my point across, you cant just shove everyone into the same corner. I just dont understand why so many development studios just get away with half assed playtesting nowdays, if 4J didnt encounter these bugs then maybe they need to look at their playtesting team and figure out who isnt doing their job properly. Dont get me wrong it isnt just 4J that a guilty of this, Mojang are probably more guilty of using there customer base as playtesters as anybody but this problem is only going to get worse if people dont start making a point of pointing out these issues.
As mentioned some of these bugs just don't happen 100%.
We attempted to recreate the black chest bug on both Retail and Devkits today and have still yet to see it happen on either.
The sheer amount of possibilities in Minecraft makes testing every single thing almost impossible, The bugs the fans have encountered in the update so far we are currently looking into reproducing (and finding solutions for) are just not occuring.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Twitter - @4JSteve
Currently Playing - League of Legends (EUW), Tales of Vesperia (PS4) and Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS4)
Feel free to add me on Steam, PSN and XboxLive, Make sure and leave a message saying you are from the forums
I've posted in two threads, this one and the one for 4J to see. I'm not spamming threads i'm putting my point across, you cant just shove everyone into the same corner. I just dont understand why so many development studios just get away with half assed playtesting nowdays, if 4J didnt encounter these bugs then maybe they need to look at their playtesting team and figure out who isnt doing their job properly. Dont get me wrong it isnt just 4J that a guilty of this, Mojang are probably more guilty of using there customer base as playtesters as anybody but this problem is only going to get worse if people dont start making a point of pointing out these issues.
I never said you were...I wasn't even talking about you when I originally posted. You just seemed to have taken offense (which I don't understand if you don't spam your crashes that everyone is already aware of...)
OK, first off. As Steve said it would be impossible to test every possible situation that could cause an issue. If they did it would take a year to get the millions of millions of possibilities tested. Now, they didn't come across the bug in their testing, so they released it. Now, people had situations that weren't tested and it caused crashes. OK, They're aware of it and they'll fix it ASAP. But attacking them and accusing them of half-assing their testing is a load of crap.
And why bring up Mojang in relation to the Xbox MC? They have nothing to do with it. All Mojang has done is provide 4J with the PC Code. 4J has to convert that code from the PC format to a format that is supported on the Xbox. Now, I assume you understand how hard that would be? Since you claim to be all knowing because you have worked at a game company 10-20 years ago.
In the past the technology wasn't available to provide the constant update services you get nowadays, Games had to be almost 100% perfect (You can still find bugs for most games in the old days).
Games nowadays are also becoming far more complex and as such are more prone to coding issues being missed by testers until the game hits a wider audience (Live).
I understand your job is difficult, i'm not so much having a personal gripe against your company, it's more of a statement of the way game development is going nowdays. I'm seeing more and more games released that simply arnt finished, or require 'zero day' patches. This whole idea that the first month after release is used as 'on the field playtesting' just isnt right across the entire spectrum.
While I agree with you that it's not necessarily the way forward it is the current way to do things it seems. We certainly don't mean to use the user base as a "Playtest" we only release an update to Cert testing when we feel it's ready, Minecraft however is just far more complex than it appears to be at first glance (as I've explained to people who ask about the game I work on).
I guess this is just one of the changes new technology brings. Development has evolved from the stories I have heard about past developments both within this company and others.
Twitter - @4JSteve
Currently Playing - League of Legends (EUW), Tales of Vesperia (PS4) and Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS4)
Feel free to add me on Steam, PSN and XboxLive, Make sure and leave a message saying you are from the forums
I understand your job is difficult, i'm not so much having a personal gripe against your company, it's more of a statement of the way game development is going nowdays. I'm seeing more and more games released that simply arnt finished, or require 'zero day' patches. This whole idea that the first month after release is used as 'on the field playtesting' just isnt right across the entire spectrum.
With all the different combinations of general hardware and software possible and then internet hardware and software possible (even on a more dedicated device, such as the XBox), I'm actually surprised that there aren't even more issues with bugs appearing after release than there are. If companies even tried to test out every possible scenario, nothing would get released... ever.
Come to think of it, I'm old enough to still be pretty amazed that any of it works at all.
You clearly havnt read any of my posts, I mentioned mojang because they are probably the worst for getting there community to playtest there software for them, it was an example not a comparison.
If you care to read my posts again you'd see this wasnt a personal attack against 4J, i'm trying to get the point across to people that just because they can patch games, dosnt mean releasing games with zero day bugs is ok.
To a certain extent yes. But a lot of games that do that like Call of Duty for example would lose a fortune if they had to delay their game a week because of a bug found that could just be simply fix'd with a quick patch on release. Not to mention, most games again like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Gears of War are in it's final product for weeks/months before they're released. If an issue comes up then...imagine how expensive and how much of a loss they'd take if they had to recall all those games that get sent out to stores like GameStop. Games back in the day weren't as big of an industry as today. They didn't have to get copies out across North American and Europe in time for their midnight launch. I mean, I would love to play a game that was perfect before it was released but with how games are developed in today's age it is just impossible.
I love it how everyone was rushing them into pushing out the update, and now that it's not 100% perfect everyone is complaining. That's the consequence of rushing an update out.
I love it that everyone ed and moaned about how long the update is taking then they and moan because the update comes out and there are bugs and glitches. Maybe if 4J wasn't so rushed by all the complainers they would have taken more time and given us a cleaner update because they could of taken more time for more testing. They probably just said screw it and lets release this update to shut everyone up and let those complainers see what happens when you get rushed by constant whiners.
I think for the next update everyone should just relax and let 4J do their work and stop with the daily "when is the update coming out, why is it taking so long" questions.
I understand what your saying, there is now a lot more pressure on developers to get games out on a specific date and missing deadlines means losing money. But don't be blinded by this 'It's just the way things are nowdays' business though. I mean look at the PS2, how many patches were needed for games on that system? and that really wasnt all that long ago, game development hasnt changed that much in the past 4-5 years to all of a sudden warrent this kind of approach from developers.
Oh, but it has... for example, before 2006, game developers weren't having to contend with receiving tweets every 5 minutes demanding to know exactly when the update would be released... and fraudulent tweeters deleting their original questions to make it appear as though they were replying to a different question. Whose specific deadline was even missed here?
MrSpam if you were gods gift to game programming you would still be employed doing such instead of trolling forums looking like a bitter person who couldn't cut it in the field.
I understand what your saying, there is now a lot more pressure on developers to get games out on a specific date and missing deadlines means losing money. But don't be blinded by this 'It's just the way things are nowdays' business though. I mean look at the PS2, how many patches were needed for games on that system? and that really wasnt all that long ago, game development hasnt changed that much in the past 4-5 years to all of a sudden warrent this kind of approach from developers.
But it has. The exact point. 4-5 years ago we weren't able to do updates. Back when the PS2 was out the Call of Duty franchise wasn't priced at over $3 Billion. That's the sweet and truly amazing thing about technology. It gets so much better in a short amount of time. And with titles being that huge it comes to a point that the publishers of the game either want to send out a 100% flawless game. Or a game that has some issues that can be tweaked after launch with updates. Which can also (And mostly always the way companies like Activision and EA look at it) earning money vs. losing money.
While you do have a point you need to realize things are a lot different these days. Back in the 90's we didn't have this large of volume of games, different hardware configurations on the consoles, or online playability. Sh!t happens and its highly unlikely the cert team just half-assed their way through testing this update. Nothing is ever released completely bug free, even after testing. Report it and it gets patched, that's just how it is.
From what I've seen people are having the most problems on their existing worlds. Is there a possibility that the cert team cannot possibly test for bugs in every different scenario?
Perhaps a more productive way to report these bugs, however, is to "complain" less about them and provide as much information about the individual file saves as possible (such as it's overall file size and in what version is was first created) and on what was being done in the game as the crashes are occurring. The more solid information 4J has to go on, the quicker they'll likely be able to develop a fix. The quicker they are able to develop a fix, the quicker that fix will get released.
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4J StudiosWe are thankful to the community, we want to see this game working as intended.
Due to the nature of the game thoroughly testing every possible outcome (Especially in a live environment) is next to impossible.
This is one of the reasons we have reached out into the communities on the internet and tried to get feedback on the updates (Hence the bug report thread).
The quicker we can gather information the quicker we can find the source of a problem and remedy it.
Twitter - @4JSteve
Currently Playing - League of Legends (EUW), Tales of Vesperia (PS4) and Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS4)
Feel free to add me on Steam, PSN and XboxLive, Make sure and leave a message saying you are from the forums
It seems likely that they didn't note any crashes happening because there is a scenario that's causing the crash that slipped through the process untested. Perhaps they didn't start up an adequate number of worlds that were created before the update or worlds that had been built on and had sufficient grown in file size to trigger crashing. Perhaps it's only occurring in the world's where the weather is now radically different than the old biome's.
That is not to say that they intentionally released it with bugs. I can perfectly understand with the complexity of today's games that such things can slip through unknowingly. The earlier games that were released so relatively free of bugs had many advantages, including the fact that they were significantly less complex.
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4J StudiosAs mentioned some of these bugs just don't happen 100%.
We attempted to recreate the black chest bug on both Retail and Devkits today and have still yet to see it happen on either.
The sheer amount of possibilities in Minecraft makes testing every single thing almost impossible, The bugs the fans have encountered in the update so far we are currently looking into reproducing (and finding solutions for) are just not occuring.
Twitter - @4JSteve
Currently Playing - League of Legends (EUW), Tales of Vesperia (PS4) and Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS4)
Feel free to add me on Steam, PSN and XboxLive, Make sure and leave a message saying you are from the forums
I never said you were...I wasn't even talking about you when I originally posted. You just seemed to have taken offense (which I don't understand if you don't spam your crashes that everyone is already aware of...)
OK, first off. As Steve said it would be impossible to test every possible situation that could cause an issue. If they did it would take a year to get the millions of millions of possibilities tested. Now, they didn't come across the bug in their testing, so they released it. Now, people had situations that weren't tested and it caused crashes. OK, They're aware of it and they'll fix it ASAP. But attacking them and accusing them of half-assing their testing is a load of crap.
And why bring up Mojang in relation to the Xbox MC? They have nothing to do with it. All Mojang has done is provide 4J with the PC Code. 4J has to convert that code from the PC format to a format that is supported on the Xbox. Now, I assume you understand how hard that would be? Since you claim to be all knowing because you have worked at a game company 10-20 years ago.
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4J StudiosWhile I agree with you that it's not necessarily the way forward it is the current way to do things it seems. We certainly don't mean to use the user base as a "Playtest" we only release an update to Cert testing when we feel it's ready, Minecraft however is just far more complex than it appears to be at first glance (as I've explained to people who ask about the game I work on).
I guess this is just one of the changes new technology brings. Development has evolved from the stories I have heard about past developments both within this company and others.
Twitter - @4JSteve
Currently Playing - League of Legends (EUW), Tales of Vesperia (PS4) and Kingdom Hearts 2 (PS4)
Feel free to add me on Steam, PSN and XboxLive, Make sure and leave a message saying you are from the forums
With all the different combinations of general hardware and software possible and then internet hardware and software possible (even on a more dedicated device, such as the XBox), I'm actually surprised that there aren't even more issues with bugs appearing after release than there are. If companies even tried to test out every possible scenario, nothing would get released... ever.
Come to think of it, I'm old enough to still be pretty amazed that any of it works at all.
To a certain extent yes. But a lot of games that do that like Call of Duty for example would lose a fortune if they had to delay their game a week because of a bug found that could just be simply fix'd with a quick patch on release. Not to mention, most games again like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Gears of War are in it's final product for weeks/months before they're released. If an issue comes up then...imagine how expensive and how much of a loss they'd take if they had to recall all those games that get sent out to stores like GameStop. Games back in the day weren't as big of an industry as today. They didn't have to get copies out across North American and Europe in time for their midnight launch. I mean, I would love to play a game that was perfect before it was released but with how games are developed in today's age it is just impossible.
I have no knowledge of this what so ever but that makes sense in my head.
I think for the next update everyone should just relax and let 4J do their work and stop with the daily "when is the update coming out, why is it taking so long" questions.
Oh, but it has... for example, before 2006, game developers weren't having to contend with receiving tweets every 5 minutes demanding to know exactly when the update would be released... and fraudulent tweeters deleting their original questions to make it appear as though they were replying to a different question. Whose specific deadline was even missed here?
Even worse when you put all your effort into that world since May 2012.
But it has. The exact point. 4-5 years ago we weren't able to do updates. Back when the PS2 was out the Call of Duty franchise wasn't priced at over $3 Billion. That's the sweet and truly amazing thing about technology. It gets so much better in a short amount of time. And with titles being that huge it comes to a point that the publishers of the game either want to send out a 100% flawless game. Or a game that has some issues that can be tweaked after launch with updates. Which can also (And mostly always the way companies like Activision and EA look at it) earning money vs. losing money.