So that went well, huh?
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I've been considering backing this game for awhile and after approximately 24 hours of trying, managed to finally get into the stress test Saturday shortly before it got cancelled. Seeing the server spazz out, huge lag, frame drops, assets disappearing, from the whopping load of over 300(!) people, well you all certainly stressed it. You stressed that poor thing to death, perhaps literally.
So, now what? Was it this bad before the stress test? I assume not, but seeing this unmitigated disaster (or roaring success depending upon how you look at it) has dropped my interest in shelling out funds to near zero, and I doubt I'm the only one.
What's the plan going forward? I'm well aware "it's just an alpha" but something as major as "our servers can't handle our game" or vice versa is going to be a significant setback.
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It's why it's called stress test. You throw the thing in stressful conditions, see what didn't go efficiently, then improve on it.
There is like 2 years before game is released.Are you seriously saying that you want smooth, bug free product already, that much before release? ^^
Damn dude, you should read a bit about software development. xD
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@pistkitty Prometheus is going to write a post about it but in short, they're going to let the SpatialOS engineers look into it and after it's been fixed the devs will host another free weekend.
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I assume they learned a ton of things they couldn't plan for in a regular test setting.
Was interesting for sure.
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@Gothix said in So that went well, huh?:
It's why it's called stress test. You throw the thing in stressful conditions, see what didn't go efficiently, then improve on it.
There is like 2 years before game is released.Are you seriously saying that you want smooth, bug free product already, that much before release? ^^
Damn dude, you should read a bit about software development. xDI said none of that actually, nice straw man.
It's true, I'm not a programmer, but it would appear that being forced to cancel a test two days early because your game cannot handle more than a few hundred people might be the signs of a weak foundation, and this could be troubling to early founders moving forward. "The engine can't handle it" or "the servers are maxed well before we expected" are problems that could potentially halt or significantly delay production, one might imagine, were they not a software developer.
If someone who actually knows what they're talking about could muzzle the angry attack dog over here for a moment, I'll rephrase my original questions.
I'd like to invest in this project, but I have some concerns regarding this weekends stress test:
Was this scale of "not ready" about what you were expecting, or did it catch you by surprise?
Would you consider this a setback or just a minor inconvenience?
What did you learn from this, and how did these results help you moving forward?
Were I to purchase a "founder's pack" and jump right into the alpha this very moment, is the experience I had during the stress test typical of what I'd see on a daily basis?
Perhaps these are questions that cannot or will not be answered, and perhaps some overly rabid defenders see my inquiries as "attacks", but my stated intentions are my actual intentions: I'm a consumer, not a developer, and within the bounds of "what can be disclosed at the moment", I'd simply like some assurance that things are on track, I can toss my money in with confidence, and if the water isn't quite fine, at least the pool is shaping up as expected.
Edit, thanks mod, took me awhile to write that and you responded in the meanwhile. Looking forward to reading the aftermath study.
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@pistkitty Yeah, Prometheus is going to write a blog post and newsletter today to explain what happened. As for your last question:
Were I to purchase a "founder's pack" and jump right into the alpha this very moment, is the experience I had during the stress test typical of what I'd see on a daily basis?
These server issues weren't an issue during any of the alpha tests so no, you wouldn't experience this on a daily basis unless everyone all of a sudden started buying the alpha 2 pack. With that said, the server is down completely right now and I don't know when the devs are going to bring it back up again for the A2 testers.
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@pistkitty i don't call it disaster, because the test was exactly made for facing such problems.
The server never had before any of such problems.
Maybe a lagging chat, but nothing serious.Tell me a valid reason beside your feelings, why it is called a disaster.
They face such problems exact at the right time.
Core Elements got tested by Player the last 2 weeks very well.
At the end of a Testphase to perform a Stresstest makes sense in many ways.
They need these data and these errors to make the game ready for a Beta.
Imagine what people will say, if this will happen while Beta Open Access Weekends?
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from what it seems like, DS jumped some bullet points and decided to offer a stress test hoping to get more funding for the game. (guess here nothing with proof).
normally in an alpha you increase the number of participants so that your hardware and software can be looked at as you increase the concurrent connections.
I believe it would have been great to allow some foundation members access for a limited time to increase the 'stress' on the systems.i look forward to seeing what happened, how it's being looked into and how it'll be prevented in the future. GGG (path of exile) developers did the same thing with problems and it works great for the community. Chris has posted about problems within the code and Leagues where he says what went wrong, how it went wrong, how they plan to never have that happen again and the community loves it.
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@Jetah said in So that went well, huh?:
from what it seems like, DS jumped some bullet points and decided to offer a stress test hoping to get more funding for the game. (guess here nothing with proof).
normally in an alpha you increase the number of participants so that your hardware and software can be looked at as you increase the concurrent connections.
I believe it would have been great to allow some foundation members access for a limited time to increase the 'stress' on the systems.i look forward to seeing what happened, how it's being looked into and how it'll be prevented in the future. GGG (path of exile) developers did the same thing with problems and it works great for the community. Chris has posted about problems within the code and Leagues where he says what went wrong, how it went wrong, how they plan to never have that happen again and the community loves it.
Not being funny but 300 people is not a lot a server should easily handle that, the stress test was the right thing to do as it found a massive issue with the server structure.
The fact ithis bug was found sooner rather the later is a good thing as it could need some core features of the code changing or anything
Ds imo made the right decision for development, and opening up the server to the public was simply a stress test as advertised
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I dont believe the problem is "server not being able to handle 300 people"...
Its unity, and its used for other prodicts as well and it can certainly handle many users.
Problem was something else, some investigation is neededbut it will certainly be found and fixed.
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@Gothix said in So that went well, huh?:
I dont believe the problem is "server not being able to handle 300 people"...
Its unity, and its used for other prodicts as well and it can certainly handle many users.
Problem was something else, some investigation is neededbut it will certainly be found and fixed.
Yeah I agree It could be anything causing the crash packet backlog because of more people whatever it's not server strength so to speak
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@Xzoviac said in So that went well, huh?:
@Jetah said in So that went well, huh?:
from what it seems like, DS jumped some bullet points and decided to offer a stress test hoping to get more funding for the game. (guess here nothing with proof).
normally in an alpha you increase the number of participants so that your hardware and software can be looked at as you increase the concurrent connections.
I believe it would have been great to allow some foundation members access for a limited time to increase the 'stress' on the systems.i look forward to seeing what happened, how it's being looked into and how it'll be prevented in the future. GGG (path of exile) developers did the same thing with problems and it works great for the community. Chris has posted about problems within the code and Leagues where he says what went wrong, how it went wrong, how they plan to never have that happen again and the community loves it.
Not being funny but 300 people is not a lot a server should easily handle that, the stress test was the right thing to do as it found a massive issue with the server structure.
The fact ithis bug was found sooner rather the later is a good thing as it could need some core features of the code changing or anything
Ds imo made the right decision for development, and opening up the server to the public was simply a stress test as advertised
if you're a small indie development team, you want a little hardware for your development and testing. You offer a stress test and only figure x amount of hardware to see stats on how it handles. If the hardware can scale, that's great, but you have to pay for the extra hardware. they want the minimum hardware for the most amount of users. I used 300 but it could have been 30k.
