[2021] Have the devs abandoned us?

Still here! I've been updating the latest gather thread whenever there is news (though I'm also trying to ensure that the news is tangible enough for you to understand the behind the scenes). I'll likely roll out a fresh more encompassing thread soon.

Please do bear in mind that us not posting over the weekend does not mean anything has been abandoned.

Regarding the bug with the amour - the values are just a symptom of the issue. The root cause is a nasty little bug (whereby the correct values are not being pulled) that needed to be found and patched just like any other bug.

We were able to fix the armour values skyrocketing because of an incorrect value on the backend. Tweak that, run a maintenance to push players onto the same backend, issue resolved.

The damage mitigation issue is because the game is (under certain circumstances) not pulling a certain backend table, so it doesn't matter what the backend says, the game isn't reading it. There is no way to fix that via the backend.

That's why this second fix is taking a bit longer while the first one was easily resolved.

Good question! Here's a timeline to help explain things a bit :)

In this case, we identified what we believed was the root cause of the issue on the 7th (Friday), and I updated the community then. Bear that date in mind as you then work through the process below.

Once an issue fix has been identified, it needs to be software compiled into a build. So all game files need to be pulled into a proper build, not just loose files. That can take a few hours, perhaps half a day.

That build is then smoke-tested) on-site, which also takes time. Add half a day.

Once it's through the smoke test, the build needs to be uploaded and sent to our wider QA teams. That upload can take a while since the build is tens of GBs in size. Add on a few hours.

The wider QA teams that we have placed throughout the globe then download it, again taking a little bit of time due to its size. Add on a few hours.

Then the QA teams need to get to work testing as many aspects of the game as possible. It isn't always just a case of checking that the bug in particular has been regressed. The QA process also can (depending on the changes made) involve testers replaying the entire game, start to finish, either including only the main story line or checking all side quests and similar as well, across all different platforms and play-style variations. Add on a number of days.

Bear in mind that the Outriders team is comprised of people working in multiple timezones, so if one task in a certain timezone finishes late on a day, it can impact when the next team in the process gets to it (e.g. the next day).

Finally add on top of this submissions with first parties, which can (depending on a project status) differ between being able to be passed rapidly or may need to go through additional checks, which can by themselves also add on a few (up to four) days.

Then we need to consider the ideal release time - Either Tuesday or Thursday.

This all can of course only be kicked off once a particular issue has been identified and reproduced on our side and that adds time to the front of this process.

And it all assumes that all testing is passing flawlessly and that the testing identifies the problem as fixed + doesn't find other new issues.

Hopefully this helps make clear that code testing isn't something that can be turned around at the drop of a hat, mainly because of practical realities.

The threads I reply in should get a special little flair indicated my activity in them. (This thread has the flair: Question // Dev replied X)

I pin the threads with big news when I've posted the threads myself, but Reddit only allows 2 pins at a time, and given that I can often be active in multiple threads in a day, pinning them all isn't feasible.

Thanks for the write up and the detailed time-stamps! I'll pass this on to the team :)