Views on the stress test depend on if you were expecting a visual improvement over the previous BWE.

ArenaNet made it quite apparent that they were using the same build as the previous BWE, so any improvements would be limited to server updates and stability only, with maybe one or two buggy missions corrected.

We will likely have to wait for the next BWE before we see any real differences.

I could play this game as a releasable product right now.  But there are certainly a large number of things they could smooth out.  Various performance things, making UI more customizable, all sorts of stuff with the personal story, some stability things, I think the initial experience on some classes may have too much disparity in it ( I think turn out balanced but may not start that way), some mobs/spawns in the game are not balanced correctly.

 

But in the end most of this stuff is not much of a deal beaker.  They could spend another 8 months smoothing out the game, but will it be worth it?  I don't know I am leaning towards no though.  For most people the game is playable and not a "deal-breaker".  As you smooth things out you get less and less return from that activity.  At some point you need to put those things into the maintenance phase of things.

 

I mean if 1/20 skill challenge mobs is overly hard people are not gonna leave in droves.  If the performance is all whacky and patchy and varies greatly between people that could hurt the game.  They basically would have to address the later but I am gonna assume they push small balance issues into maintenance.  They changed UI stuff multiple times after release in GW1 and I doubt they see any reason it needs to be perfect on release. 

 

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Originally posted by Atlan99

After particpating in the stress test today, it occured to me that GW2 still needs alot of work before launch. I was hoping it was almost ready for launch. However today I noticed quite a few bugs and had quite a few issues.

First off Stuck in WvWvW. Arenanet still needs to come up with a fix for this. People are still being unable to login after logging out or disconnecting in WvWvW. I thought Arenanet would have fixed this issue since last BWE. This worries me a bit about the speed with which they can fix issues that will arise.

Second the Stuck at 95% loading. I personally lost 3 characters to this over the course of the stress test. At last count the thread was at 1207 replies and 3487 views. Fairly frustrating, if the stress test lasted any longer I probably would have ended up with all 5 characters stuck.

Third is just Polish. Some of the knockdown animations seem off. When you get knocked down sometimes you warp to a different postion.  In two cutscenes I encountered the NPC voice was muted. I also encountered an Elite mob that had broken AI. It just stood there and let me kill it.

There was also an area where the majority of the DE's were all the same. It was just a bunch of centaur attacks that had to be warded off. They just happened at different locations on the map. So you would defend point A from centaurs. After succeeding  a new event would spawn after a few minutes. It would be defend poin B from centaurs. etc.

Having said all that the game is still fun but far from ready from release. We might be waitng till fall. I would choose to wait till they fixed all the issues rather than launch early when it isn't ready.

You do realise that NONE of the ingame bugs from last BWE was fixed for the stress test? All changes were for server stability and login problems. Which was WAY better than on the 1st BWE. 

You cannot really say how fast they progress when they have not even done anything except fixing things server side. (Let me say implemented instead, since oubviously they are working real hard on polishing, but the demo for the BWE is the same as the one for the stress test.)

Next BWE we will all see how much progress they have made. If you bothered checking Twitter you would allready know there would not be any bug fixes apart from server fixes. 

Originally posted by Nevulus

Originally posted by Aelgrim

I have had account errors both times. I was able to play the first weekend, but, I had to create a character on a different server from my friends and finally transferred back on the last day.

Unfortuately, all my friends moved to a more lightly populated server and I got caught with the error 21 bug, which says they don't recognize your account.

I submitted a CS request, but, only received a chain letter. I have no idea if my account has been fixed. I probably should not have tried to transfer and just deleted and restarted.

This is the first game i can remember doing beta where so many people had account issues. It worries me that they may have problems or vulnerabilities with their sub database. They need to get this fixed, fast. There is no excuse for a company losing or destroying your personal info. The whole idea is to get you to make purchases, and how can you do that if you are worried about the reliability of their system.

It was fun when I was able to play last time. But, this time it was nothing but errors.

in my opinion, I think they purposely knew about all these errors, hence the sudden stress test. I'm sure they want to fix them, but the only way to be prepared is to unleash the masses on the servers and watch the errors as they happen in order to collect the data and make the proper preparations to address all the errors.

 

I would wager significant money that they have a branch of code currently in development that will be the changes people expect and that will be the main "obvious" changes in the next BWE.

Simultaneously they have another team working off the code from the previous BWE doing minor tweaks on infrastructure issues of performance and network things (authentication issues, lag issue etc).

The stress test was for this second team.  The collected various imformation from the BWE did some first pass analysis and decided having people beat on things would help.  Also they probably wanted to see what would have to things as they shifted from one state to another.  This team is not attemtping to make less bugs.  Thus this build had some extra ones in it.  They care about diagnosing/firming up issues seen the previous BWE.  Whacky little things happen in builds all the time.  This was not exactly the same build as BWE.  There was an update.

The other team cares about smoothing out the user experience (or at least some portion of it does).

 

These two code branchs will then be merged roughly a week before the next BWE.  And then HEAVILY internally tested as merging code generaly kind of sucks.

 

There are two different things going on simultaneously.  Its fine if the stress test breaks a few things that have no importance to the issues they are diagnosing.

Do not labor under the assumption all updates are equal.  Or that all code is one single timeline.  Its not.  Not even close.  There are multiple avenues of code going simultaneously all the time.

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Nevulus

Originally posted by Aelgrim

I have had account errors both times. I was able to play the first weekend, but, I had to create a character on a different server from my friends and finally transferred back on the last day.

Unfortuately, all my friends moved to a more lightly populated server and I got caught with the error 21 bug, which says they don't recognize your account.

I submitted a CS request, but, only received a chain letter. I have no idea if my account has been fixed. I probably should not have tried to transfer and just deleted and restarted.

This is the first game i can remember doing beta where so many people had account issues. It worries me that they may have problems or vulnerabilities with their sub database. They need to get this fixed, fast. There is no excuse for a company losing or destroying your personal info. The whole idea is to get you to make purchases, and how can you do that if you are worried about the reliability of their system.

It was fun when I was able to play last time. But, this time it was nothing but errors.

in my opinion, I think they purposely knew about all these errors, hence the sudden stress test. I'm sure they want to fix them, but the only way to be prepared is to unleash the masses on the servers and watch the errors as they happen in order to collect the data and make the proper preparations to address all the errors.

 

I would wager significant money that they have a branch of code currently in development that will be the changes people expect and that will be the main "obvious" changes in the next BWE.

Simultaneously they have another team working off the code from the previous BWE doing minor tweaks on infrastructure issues of performance and network things (authentication issues, lag issue etc).

The stress test was for this second team.  The collected various imformation from the BWE did some first pass analysis and decided having people beat on things would help.  Also they probably wanted to see what would have to things as they shifted from one state to another.  This team is not attemtping to make less bugs.  Thus this build had some extra ones in it.  They care about diagnosing/firming up issues seen the previous BWE.  Whacky little things happen in builds all the time.  This was not exactly the same build as BWE.  There was an update.

The other team cares about smoothing out the user experience (or at least some portion of it does).

 

These two code branchs will then be merged roughly a week before the next BWE.  And then HEAVILY internally tested as merging code generaly kind of sucks.

 

There are two different things going on simultaneously.  Its fine if the stress test breaks a few things that have no importance to the issues they are diagnosing.

Do not labor under the assumption all updates are equal.  Or that all code is one single timeline.  Its not.  Not even close.  There are multiple avenues of code going simultaneously all the time.

 Heheh I would be TERRIFIED to use the merge function in a program like TFS to merge two branches of a project as big as GW2.  I would probably rather just manually copy stuff over :).

Originally posted by andre369

 

You do realise that NONE of the ingame bugs from last BWE was fixed for the stress test? All changes were for server stability and login problems. Which was WAY better than on the 1st BWE. 

You cannot really say how fast they progress when they have not even done anything except fixing things server side. (Let me say implemented instead, since oubviously they are working real hard on polishing, but the demo for the BWE is the same as the one for the stress test.)

Next BWE we will all see how much progress they have made. If you bothered checking Twitter you would allready know there would not be any bug fixes apart from server fixes. 

So you are a proponent of the "Jesus Patch"?

TBH I had more issues this time around than last. Based purely on amount of posts on the Techinal Support forums, most people were in the same boat.

Time will defintely tell, but I don't think they are near ready for launch.

I was really happy by their "when it's finished" mentality that I sent them an email last year telling them how much I really appreciate them and the choices they are making in their development processes. I don't know if any of them actually read it, but hey, it counts for me. This stress test was fine for me. I have no problem waiting on load screens or a crash here or there. I had 1 when I first logged in but was fine after that. I dont understand why they chose a Monday though. I was working up until 1.5 hours before the end of test. Oh well. I can't wait for the next beta and I can wait for the release. I want to really enjoy playing this game. I would rather wait than have a buggy game. I have found a few grammatical errors, and for some reason those tend to be a put-off for me.

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by gestalt11

Originally posted by Nevulus

Originally posted by Aelgrim

I have had account errors both times. I was able to play the first weekend, but, I had to create a character on a different server from my friends and finally transferred back on the last day.

Unfortuately, all my friends moved to a more lightly populated server and I got caught with the error 21 bug, which says they don't recognize your account.

I submitted a CS request, but, only received a chain letter. I have no idea if my account has been fixed. I probably should not have tried to transfer and just deleted and restarted.

This is the first game i can remember doing beta where so many people had account issues. It worries me that they may have problems or vulnerabilities with their sub database. They need to get this fixed, fast. There is no excuse for a company losing or destroying your personal info. The whole idea is to get you to make purchases, and how can you do that if you are worried about the reliability of their system.

It was fun when I was able to play last time. But, this time it was nothing but errors.

in my opinion, I think they purposely knew about all these errors, hence the sudden stress test. I'm sure they want to fix them, but the only way to be prepared is to unleash the masses on the servers and watch the errors as they happen in order to collect the data and make the proper preparations to address all the errors.

 

I would wager significant money that they have a branch of code currently in development that will be the changes people expect and that will be the main "obvious" changes in the next BWE.

Simultaneously they have another team working off the code from the previous BWE doing minor tweaks on infrastructure issues of performance and network things (authentication issues, lag issue etc).

The stress test was for this second team.  The collected various imformation from the BWE did some first pass analysis and decided having people beat on things would help.  Also they probably wanted to see what would have to things as they shifted from one state to another.  This team is not attemtping to make less bugs.  Thus this build had some extra ones in it.  They care about diagnosing/firming up issues seen the previous BWE.  Whacky little things happen in builds all the time.  This was not exactly the same build as BWE.  There was an update.

The other team cares about smoothing out the user experience (or at least some portion of it does).

 

These two code branchs will then be merged roughly a week before the next BWE.  And then HEAVILY internally tested as merging code generaly kind of sucks.

 

There are two different things going on simultaneously.  Its fine if the stress test breaks a few things that have no importance to the issues they are diagnosing.

Do not labor under the assumption all updates are equal.  Or that all code is one single timeline.  Its not.  Not even close.  There are multiple avenues of code going simultaneously all the time.

 Heheh I would be TERRIFIED to use the merge function in a program like TFS to merge two branches of a project as big as GW2.  I would probably rather just manually copy stuff over :).

They almost certainly do not have two ENTIRE branches.  A project like GW2 or any MMO that is made by real professionals has to be significantly modularized.  They should be following a significantly model that institutes a high degree of Separation of Concerns AND organizing their stuff in logical layers/tiers.

 

Note: some MMOs have been hacked together by people who are not great coders or don't do good process but may be good at coding on their own.

 

They should have a very good idea about what is happening during that branch.  And in point of fact the diff between the two branches is probably quite minimal as the onther team is probably not touching that module at all.

 

The main trick will be at the interface level.  Like when someone finishes or accesses the personal story and it has to go out to the network to access their persistence model.  I beleive this is why I had trouble on one of  my character personal story.  Some fucked with that interface somehow.

Wow, I had not experienced any of this. But then, I played only one day so far.

Becouse you had problems don't mean its actually problem for everyone i don't know hwy you had this problem but when i had 95% problem i just rebooted and all was ok plus i did not have one character that was stuck.

For your other problems well its still BETA and they fix those rather quickly i think no need to wait so long for FALL unless they don't fix it but 270 people working on this should be np.

Originally posted by Classicstar

Becouse you had problems don't mean its actually problem for everyone i don't know hwy you had this problem but when i had 95% problem i just rebooted and all was ok plus i did not have one character that was stuck.

For your other problems well its still BETA and they fix those rather quickly i think no need to wait so long for FALL unless they don't fix it but 270 people working on this should be np.

I realize that not everyone had this problem.

However it was quite widespread. I managed to get the problem on three of my characters. As I said in my original post. The thread concerning the issue had over 1200+ replies the last time I checked it. I would say it was a bit on an issue to get that many replies in such a short time.

It's still in beta though and there should be plenty of time to fix bugs. I would rather they wait till fall and get it right though. Rushing release would be the worst thing Arenanet could do.