Console games need a certification process - the developer has to submit their patch, then the patch is certified. Sony is pretty fast on turnaround, but Microsoft takes a week or so usually.
Steam doesn’t require a certification process, so the developers could update Generation Zero whenever they like - it may just be they don’t feel like having one platform have instant hot fixes and another platform on a different version.
But keep in mind, even in a worst case scenario, if the console patch and the pc patch drop on the same day, it means the pc patch was actually ready about a week or more earlier - it just was not released to pc players.
I don’t know about PS4 but I read, that Xbox certification process can take up to one week. This is surely not good.
For the sake of the argument just say the GZ team would push patches as soon as their ready to the different platforms. Since there is no cross play this wouldn’t mean players from different platforms couldn’t play together. They can’t even if they had the same patches/updates.
So wouldn’t it make sense to release patches as soon as they’re ready and gain instant response from PC players (and PS4 if the certification process is faster there) which could lead to earlier additional bug fixes?
The whole 1-week-delay for every update sums up a lot if there is a 1 week gap between patch completion and release. The whole development > patch completion > patch release > development … cycle would be vastly improved without any delay in my opinion.
Hello developers!
I want to be a beta tester/bug-hunter, and i guess that there are others on the forum who also would like to contribute.
There are a number of reasons why this would be a good idea for you as a company, and from what i understand, there is already a mechanism for this in Steam.
I think it would also provide a better experience for the general gamers, since they would be spared most of the game-breaking bugs that sometimes slip thru your own quality control (probably because of limited time for testing).
If there were a beta-period before the updates go live, many of the obvious bugs would be found, giving the developers a chance to release a better, more stable and properly tested update/dlc, witch would in turn increase the game quality for the general public.
I have already paid for the game, have no intentions of recieving any freebees and im willing to sign a NDA, even tho it wouldnt be neccesary in my case(integrity is my blood and bones). Also, i speak swedish…
A private section on this forum could suffice as a feedback/bug-report channel, to keep beta content away from public eyes.
So outsource your bughunts to allow the developers to concentrate on the development.
And finally, if you dont want my help for free, i may be able to accept a per-found-bug-based fee of femti öre!
There is already a closed beta for testing upcoming content. Though I don’t know the number of actual active testers. It’s good of you to offer help with it though, my advice is to message @Avalanche_Pontus, the Community Manager about it, see what he has to say.
I always send in my reports in the hopes it does make a difference. I don’t ask for daily thank yous, but access to a super secret alpha or beta of machines to take a peek would be nice.
It’s like a curse though, because you’d be legally bound to not tell anyone about it. The devs put their trust in beta testers to keep future content up to snuff, but also secret and hush-hush
And for that reason alone, devs can’t put out public beta testing. Even when devs announce that they are looking for new beta testers, 90% of the people, or even more, would apply just to see new, yet to come content, rather than helping out with testing.
Even if you get selected as one of the beta testers, you’ll have to sign NDA and if you happen to leak upcoming content, they can and most likely sue you.
Of course, that isn’t all. Being a tester is tedious since you have to test one specific part over and over, without any enjoyment of the game. And create in-depth and detailed bug reports as well.
If you want to try your hand on being a tester, testbirds .com is one such crowdtesting site for additional income.
I, personally, wouldn’t mind being a tester for GZ, as long as i don’t get to see new content in the game. Since i, for one, don’t want to spoil my surprise. I can do current mechanic testing but i figure that upcoming content testing is the main part of the testers.
I wouldn’t mind getting involved with the beta testing. I created a few maps for Unreal Tournament III. Covering every einch of the map is…time consuming lol. Agreed on the spoilers, though. Playing what you tested/crafted can make you think more of its inner workings than the actual enjoyment of the game.
I consider bug-reporting ‘helping’ in a sense. I’m just under the impression that it takes an inordinate amount of time to get them fixed. I think I’d appreciate if some dev team members would occasionally chime in with a ‘yes we can’, ‘that’s odd’ or ‘wontfix’ - it’d at least set a baseline understanding of priorities.
I guess I’m an old fogey, or living for a decade with abysmal internet finally took its toll, but I’m not interested in Twitch, Discord etc. Not expecting a personal chat, but it’d help to know what the devs are actually caring about when reporting bugs. I’m not deep enough into the game to watch daily/weekly streams or visit social media to get my fix, but a monthly ‘we’re looking for this and that to fix’ would help immensely.
Yep -I’m not asking for general announcements, but for a dev to ‘visit’ once in a while, saying (as an example): ‘Right now, we’re fixing some terrain holes - have you found any’ or ‘We heard some of you have regular crashes - could you try these settings to help us determine what causes them?’ or, if they incorporated some fixes, ‘We’ve fixed the item placement issues as reported in post #33 already’.
Right now, I don’t know if any of the reports that were made in the past year were even viewed or acknowledged. And it would be a waste of anyone’s time to continue reporting perceived problems if they will never be fixed or if the way they are reported doesn’t contain the necessary details required to locate/reproduce them.
And no, I don’t expect the devs to waste their time trawling the forum, and neither do I expect a pat on the back for reporting issues. I’m simply bored right now, and I do have some time to spare to report what I’ve seen or experienced, so that’s what I do. I’ve (thoroughly) played a fair share of games until now, and I’ve reported bugs if I saw fit to do so. Some devs didn’t do anything (mostly the big ones), and some indie devs went out of their way to fix obscure issues because they cared. I’ve given up on taking to the Steam forums what no one’ll read ever because it’s buried under noise, so I’m hoping for constructive feedback - maybe post regular reminders to report issues, or otherwise get new forum users to join in.
And since I’m back at spamming bug reports, I had an idea:
If some of the devs have some time on their hands, how about some explain-like-I’m-five explanations about how some of these bugs came to be in the first place (not criticizing, honest interest about technicalities)? I’m no 3D expert, but I can’t wrap my head around the road issues specifically. Item placement, terrain elevation, plants etc. are things I understood and handled back 10 years ago on the Xbox 360 Farcry 2 map maker (which doesn’t hold a candle to the Apex toolkit, I’m sure) but these floating roads drive me crazy - the parallax effect is just strange visually.
Other forum lurkers - feel free to chime in. I don’t know if anyone else cares about stuff like that, and it’d be a waste of time if I’m the only one to listen.
