Al_Bundy, on 05 December 2023 - 08:30 AM, said:
but this has been taking quite a long time...starting with the EU server problems...
(...)
That's no longer a small thing, and even if I give everyone free time, with such a serious problem it is incomprehensible that this hotfix has taken so long to arrive (calculate the time since EU server problems).
It's a long time
from your perspective and based on
your assumptions regarding the effort and complexity involved.
Supporting enterprise software is
what I do for a living. And in light of what I've seen over the past decade of my career in the field, PGI's reaction and response speed were quite reasonable.
November 21st, the issue is observed after the patch, which prompts PGI to take down the seemingly affected servers and later bring them back up.
November 22nd, they update us on their progress and make it clear they're still investigating the problem.
November 25th, three days later, they have established the most likely cause and made it clear that aside from the original issue itself they are also working on is replicating this issue in their QA environment so that they can test the fix there. They also make it clear that the fix involves database changes.
Replicating the issue was itself a major pre-requisite for them to test any hypothetical fixes.
December 1st, six days later, they provide an update regarding the fix as well as an explanation why testing it is taking "so long":
Quote
The change is significant as it will affect many areas of the Database, not just the Item IDs. Player Inventory, Player Loadouts, Player Purchase Trail, and more all have to transition and align with the new Item IDs so the systems that rely on them can continue to function properly (Events rewards systems, Customer support tools, etc.). This requires testing those systems as well.
Now, it's clear that you have no idea that this means affecting not just present but also historic records in their system, going all the way back to when the bolt-on system was introduced. That's a shitload of changes they have to verify.
December 5th, four days later, they inform us the hotfix will be coming out on the next day.
We are all frustrated, but it helps to get some healthy perspective: Big name software companies frequently take
months to produce "urgent" fixes. I know for a fact that Microsoft has been informed of a certain issue with one of their APIs for better part of three years
and still hasn't even acknowledged it exists. At one point, years ago, I notified Steam about an issue in their payment method management
and got a response six months later that entirely missed the point of the bug report and didn't even acknowledge the issue existed in the first place.
PGI has acknowledged the issue immediately, managed to diagnose its cause and devise an action plan, in four days, then implement their fix and put it through QA in ten days (two of which fell on a weekend), a timeframe that's absurdly short in comparison.
Edited by Horseman, 05 December 2023 - 03:31 PM.