Also have to consider, the biggest reason I purchased this game about a month ago was due to the fact that recent reviews stemming from start of year said a lot had progressed since release. I checked on forums and saw issues, but developers were active and talking with their consumer base which I greatly respect.
Did I know it was going to be hard or challenging? No. I just downloaded it and had no idea what I was doings,… (as shown in my early videos). Have I joined a game where some people were about to give up playing that just started? Yes. The game is unforgiving in some aspects but without knowing what to do or being patient and trying different things, I can see why it is frustrating for some.
Another possible aspect for a recent uptick and trends to player counts is that after the update, the game was free to play on PC for a bit. That always drives people to either try it or buy it. Will retain some and get some sales. Fluctuations of players are always drove by organic or targeted marketing. Targeted will always spike more players and possibly sales.
What the April update brought that is very annoying is the extreme speed and range of Harvesters and Tanks Missile Launchers and Mortar Launchers.
If you look for a video of gameplay older than April, or captured on PC you will see the difference.
After(or before) the update the enemies (were)are still a menace, but it´s balanced.
Now about the machines better aim and awareness, I really think it´s great, it´s a SHAME they nerfed that out.
@pennywise It´s been a month since the Xbox “FIX”, and they still didn´t find a solution so it does not seem likely they have time to fix the PS4 version.
Enjoy the game while you can, they keep repeating the same mistakes so the probability of the next PS4 update to have lots of bugs or gamebreaking issues is at least of 75%.
I won’t argue with that. Even so, I suspect that the DLC is the main culprit. The March release was the first time the game felt balanced, despite crashes and bugs.
What I don´t get it, is why adding an escort vehicle mission and changing a bit of the environment, brings so many crashes and problems.
The DLC brings almost nothing new!.
A few missions and NPCs, some ridiculous melee weapons and the South Coast and Farmlands regions have some new things.
It´s not an entire new island with new enemy types.
Must be the engine that does not support something.
We can speculate but that is the big mystery over here, what did they do wrong or what did the new code do to bring so many problems?
The big mystery…
Let the conversation flow
Petition posts are frowned upon. Please keep in mind that this is a discussion forum. If you have an issue with the game, please discuss it in a civil and informed fashion. There are other places on the Internet to form online petitions.
So, not a good start for the topic.
April '20 update isn’t exclusive only to PS4. It was released to all platforms, including PC and Xbox.
April '20 update didn’t “break” the game. You can still play the game, right? It’s not like where game constantly crashes to the desktop for it to be called “broken”.
What April '20 update did, was turning AI intelligence into overdrive, thus making the combat part much harder.
Now, to the main point of the topic, which is:
It’s easy to ask for a fix without considering that the issue isn’t about incompetence to fix the AI intelligence (which is relatively easy to fix), instead, it is about how PlayStation handles the multiplayer and that is why the update takes for so long.
The AI was fixed in 2 months, which includes additional bug fixes and DLC release as well. That is seen from PC platform, which got it’s update in the end of June '20.
If devs were to release PS4 update right now, you could get the fixed AI, with new content and new DLC as well but the multiplayer part would be completely broken. E.g you join another player’s game - game crashes. Someone leaves from your game - game crashes etc. If that would have happened, only then you could say that “update broke the game”.
For more explanation, you can watch what The Boss Man himself (Paul, The Product Owner of Generation Zero) said about it, in one of the latest dev streams. That part starts at 00:22:52,
link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/756453979?filter=archives&sort=time
What about rollback? To the state of post-March '20 update, before April '20 update?
While rollbacks can be done, those case plenty of issues. Most notably your newer version save game may not be compatible with the older game version, forcing every player to start fresh, from the beginning. I’m quite sure that this is the last thing devs would want to do.
Moreover, rollback also removes any fixes devs have made in the April '20 update. E.g "Fixed an issue where Machine corpses would sometimes despawn before players could loot them." April '20 update patch notes: https://generationzero.com/en/blog/april-update-patch-notes
Here’s the statistics talked about. From another topic:
I linked the dev stream above, where it is explained what went wrong.
I have much to say to you but this is not the place to do so as we cannot have a conversation on equal terms. I will however say that this subject is not a petition in any way, shape or form. Rather it is feedback to the devs and not directed at you in the slightest.
This is my last post on the subject until a dev chooses to respond.
I would say that it is a false positive. The game was free on steam during that time period of April-May transition and provides no true indication of player numbers, especially if the statistics are coming from steamstats. Not starting an argument, but just saying the information is not even close to accurate.
GZ has had “free weekends” on Steam before, and on several occasions in 2019. So, that fact doesn’t hold much weight when it comes to the player statistics.
It pretty much does: Steam Free Play Weekend Nov '19
=
November 2019 802.3 +638.7 +390.46% 6,312
Another player spike.
Pretty much every free steam week shows a spike on steamstats for that month. It seems to be holding very heavy weight,… it is not a bad thing. You just can not make assumptions off it is all I am saying. Data is data, and for every free week showing a spike that month, just shows people are hoping in during that time and hopefully Avalanche earns another customer.
Lots of passionate voices in here, my fellow moderator included.
Personally I don’t think it was aimed to be a petition, and even if it was, not a very prominent one. Since I’m moderating this thread, I’m jumping in to say live and let live, but let’s try and keep in mind what @pennywise hopefully had in mind when he created the topic.
I’ll even see if we can get a dev reply on the matter he brought up, as soon as the weekend is over.
If I’m not wrong I think the question is whether it’s worth it to have a separate update for all the fixes which do not cause issues with multiplayer. Those AI-fixes and perhaps the experimental kvm addition wouldn’t affect multiplayer, right? Just wait with the other content until that works properly.
I don’t see why that’s not a fair suggestion. I’m for it! As was mentioned, it clearly doesn’t seem that there is certainty about a fix in the near future. It might even take the pressure off of things.
Seems that you did understand what I meant with “realism”. Putting it in other words, each time when things don’t behave as expected whithin a given context, you are reminded that you’re not actually in the game world. It’s just out of wack.
