Paradox, Please test your updates before releasing them - PLEASE.

[Zartan88]

So I'm a huge fan of Surviving Mars, I recently purchased the full game and all expansions on Epic store before Christmas - and I've thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.

I did however think the game was finished and feature complete and not like a lot of your other titles that constantly get regular expensive 'Packs'.

So I noticed that a new content pack was released with a little concern, however, I thought it does have some useful additions so I went and purchased it. I did not think for one moment that the patch that came with it would bust so much - and in some cases, stop the game from working altogether.

There is simply no excuse for not testing your products to a even basic level. Please, please - test your products before release.

Many thanks.

 

[1SpyKillsU]

A must!

 

[KevinTMC]

Just because one wants an update to be ready for the Paradox Insider 2021 event doesn't mean it is going to be ready.

Which this one clearly wasn't. Not just yet.

Though it was probably pretty close! It took ChoGGi less than a day to get a mod out to fix the suicide problem, after all.

(I vote for the next CCP to be a package of quality-of-life improvements and colonist/drone behavior refinements, drawn from mod collections like ChoGGi's and SkiRich's.)

A little more time testing and fixing...and maybe a bit of time to add some animations to the new buildings from Silva...and we'd all be in a much better place wouldn't we?

 

[Flork42]

Do you really think they haven't tested the game? They probably spend more time testing everything than developing. Some bugs are extremely hard to catch, even though massive amounts of people suffer from it. A company simply can't have the millions of testers that are the number of game owners, so we must be patient. Shit happens.

 

[KevinTMC]

Do you really think they haven't tested the game? They probably spend more time testing everything than developing. Some bugs are extremely hard to catch, even though massive amounts of people suffer from it. A company simply can't have the millions of testers that are the number of game owners, so we must be patient. Shit happens.

Did they test the game after the update? Sure. I'm sure they did.

Did they test it enough? Of course not.

Some bugs are indeed extremely hard to catch. And it's certainly understandable if they didn't dredge up a Windows 7 machine to run the update through its paces there...though surely they've done that now.

But the problems with continuing previous save files are too widespread, too show-stopping, and emerge too quickly for that to have possibly been tested anywhere near adequately.

(And while there are cases where it's perfectly reasonable for an update to break previous saves...this is emphatically not one of them, for several reasons.)

 

[Cikala]

While I can't imagine ANY developer not testing their update before releasing it, I also can't imagine them testing it without catching the aging issue, which is honestly a game breaking bug and very obvious. Now, maybe they caught it, but decided to release it anyway. It's a horrible thought, but we don't really know what's going on in their minds.

All I know is I'm starting to feel bamboozled here, after buying all the DLC just a day before the game became basically unplayable. I've upgraded to Win10, which I swore I'd never do, just to play this. I've had to install a mod to fix game breaking bugs. And there are still other bugs that just take the enjoyment out of it, like trying to assign a workplace or residence only to get the error that there are no shuttles available even though there are and all my shuttle tower loads are low, and having the UI claim there are unfilled jobs which I can't find anywhere.

Things simply aren't working right, and if they HAD tested it, they should have known all this before releasing the update. Which leads me to believe they either didn't test it, or knew and released it anyway, and both possibilities leave me with a very bad taste in my mouth.

 

[KevinTMC]

Would sure be nice if one could at least revert to the previous version while the dust settles.

(There are some games where you can get around the forced updates...but in general this isn't possible on Steam, which is the only major complaint I have with the service.)

 

[Troyen]

Would sure be nice if one could at least revert to the previous version while the dust settles.

(There are some games where you can get around the forced updates...but in general this isn't possible on Steam, which is the only major complaint I have with the service.)

Most Paradox games let you opt into the old versions via the betas tab on steam, though this one doesn't. I guess because it wasn't planned as a long-term ongoing dlc project like their other games? But I can, for example, roll back to any of the old CK3 releases if the new update today happens to break something.

I haven't played Surviving Mars since the DLC came out, but does disabling the DLC help as a workaround?

 

[shadow25012]

Most Paradox games let you opt into the old versions via the betas tab on steam, though this one doesn't. I guess because it wasn't planned as a long-term ongoing dlc project like their other games? But I can, for example, roll back to any of the old CK3 releases if the new update today happens to break something.

I haven't played Surviving Mars since the DLC came out, but does disabling the DLC help as a workaround?

for me it did not.

 

[KevinTMC]

Yes, the breakage seems to be resulting from the free "Tito" tourist update pushed to everyone, rather than the paid content pack.

(Though there's also been a report or two of buildings in that DLC not working quite right, such as the TV station.)

 

[ChoGGi_2]

Though it was probably pretty close! It took ChoGGi less than a day to get a mod out to fix the suicide problem, after all.

id they test the game after the update? Sure. I'm sure they did.

Did they test it enough? Of course not.

Some bugs are indeed extremely hard to catch.

I mean the error happened as soon as a colonist had their update (every in-game hour). I've got my game setup to show me info about errors when they happen, so I noticed it right away.
I figured the devs knew about the error and that it wasn't an issue, so I didn't bother fixing it till Ski asked about getting rid of the log spam. I don't play the game, so some error msg isn't something I care about.
I noticed where it was coming from, and the code that won't fire afterwards if there's an error, and yeah it was pretty obvious. At least to someone that isn't lacking sleep on a tight time frame

 

[Flork42]

Did anyone try disabling the Tourist DLC? I'm going to try that as soon as I get off work

 

[ChoGGi_2]

Been fixed: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/tourism-update-hotfix-patch-notes.1462378/

 

[Mauer]

Am I the only one who always starts a new game when a game is updated?

Prevents a lot of headaches no matter what game or developer.

 

[ChoGGi_2]

New games wouldn't have helped for most of the bugs with this update.

 

[th3freakie]

Fairly quick rate of hotfixes, I'll recognize that.

 

[Neroon]

I blame Steam rather than Paradox for this. They are the ones who refuse to give us the choice to disable automatic updating of everything the way GOG does. Even if a patch works 100% perfectly it can still break an ongoing game if using mods. Issue not just for PDX games, but also Total War, the XCOM games, etc.

 

[1SpyKillsU]

you can disable auto update in Steam I did for all of my games right chick on the game and select properties then updates

 

[ChoGGi_2]

I blame Steam rather than Paradox for this.

Hard to see how it's steam fault for paradox releasing a buggy update. You could always pause the update, then disable auto updates like 1SpyKillsU mentioned.
I personally like my games automatically updating, it was very annoying back in the day having to dig around different websites till you find the one that had updates for your game.

 

[KevinTMC]

I personally like my games automatically updating, it was very annoying back in the day having to dig around different websites till you find the one that had updates for your game.

Heck, I remember making a long-distance phone call to the MicroProse BBS in Maryland to download a patch for the original Railroad Tycoon.

(Which only fixed a fraction of the small bugs and oversights in the Mac port. I had an extensive punch list.)