bring back option to revert to last version

Discussion in 'Suggestions' started by Pear78, Dec 22, 2020.

  1. Pear78

    Pear78 Captain

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    ` upload_2020-12-22_15-33-21.png

    in steam we can revert to a lot of old Alpha's (I dont understand why anybody would want to do that/why this option exists).. but I could not revert back to the last version of 1.2 that didnt have problems.

    If we could (as we were able to in the past!) do that, we could have left the servers on the last 1.2 version and ask our players to revert back to that version and everybody could have just played this last week.
    That is how it always went with the big updates; custom server settings needed to be implemented in the newest update, so we had to wait a few days for our MP to be on the same version. In this case we could have just kept playing the old version for a week till the public fix was released.
     
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  2. imlarry425

    imlarry425 Captain

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    In each of the major jumps during the alpha releases there were people who did just that (held on N-1) and in a few cases resulted in very shallow adoption.

    The team stopped archiving at one point (9>10 I think?) and the result was that people started to abandon the game. They relented by bringing back the N-1 and reworked the release but it was very fractious.

    There may a technical reason but my guess would be they are trying the approach again in the "after alpha" world in an attempt to avoid fragmentation of the player base. The new risk is that they are overly reliant on an increasingly homogenous and potentially smaller set of folks on the experimental branch to find problems and it is resulting in inadequate testing. Since we are post-alpha it's a reasonable expectation that we're customers instead of unpaid testers at this point.

    The industry-standard way of addressing both these issues is the elimination of major releases through the adoption of a scrum approach with a fixed sprint and continuous deployment. New work (stories) are rated on delivering customer values (no more "laying groundwork" until you actually need to build on it) and you focus on repair and embellishment by doing small things well as opposed to accomplishing big goals.

    It takes serious courage and letting go of ego to let the users own the system. Often users won't want to pull their weight in that process and a proxy or process will take the place of the "owner" who writes the stories but even then the focus on incremental improvement results in better outcomes.
     
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  3. Pear78

    Pear78 Captain

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    I just want to be able to revert back to the last working version we had before an update.
    there's 9 options, but we're missing the only one that really matters for MP servers

    The option was there before..
    it also worked well for another point; a lot of server owners are not able to update their server as soon as an update comes out. if players could play on the old version till he/she comes home to update the server.. happy players. if they need to wait till he comes back.. sad players.
    we had sad players for a week, during xmas holiday :(
     
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  4. ☢ Grumbledore ☢

    ☢ Grumbledore ☢ Ensign

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    I honestly dont understand why someone would decide to release an update before x-mas without the option for server ownser to rollback. This update royally screwed us.

    The Anvil Community server is after HWS one of the biggest and most stable server right now. Having 202 active players during the last week. I am part of the wonderful admin team and this update really fucked our holidays big time. If we would have been able to continue to run on 1.2 we would have done so, but no we were forced to update and i really would like to get an answer why this has to be like that.

    I understand that you guys werent able to make a rollback of the version because of potential compabillity issues, no big deal. but why the fuck are we forced to run poorly tested versions that screw us over and over again?

    I feel sorry for every other server admin on the different servers. wether they being big or small.

    On a bright side we get proper blast damage now. wuhu that was on my list of things i would actually like to see. right below a proper combat system without lagging and a fucking crouch mechanic. i cant understand why this game still has no crouch oO
     
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  5. Pear78

    Pear78 Captain

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    we were lucky with the last update.. the server owner was actually awake and server was only down for a bit.
    yes. that is sarcasm.
     
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  6. Pear78

    Pear78 Captain

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    what a surprise, our players couldnt play again for a few hours earlier today.
    there is a whole list old alpha's nobody wants, that we can revert to.
    but in that list we can not find the option to revert the last version..
    you guys pay to have those old alpha's hosted by steam.. but we cant have the one version we need on there.. because it costs money..
    every update day this means players cant play untill the server gets updated too. I just dont get it.
     
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  7. Pear78

    Pear78 Captain

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    just bumping this one again, since our players are waiting for the server owner to be able to update the server to the current version again.
    every update means multiplayers cant play for several hours.. and it's not necessary and easy to fix!
    (at least this update is in the middle of the work week, so if there are any major issues we wont be stuck with them over the weekend or even holidays :) )
     
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  8. Germanicus

    Germanicus Rear Admiral

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    We are in VERSION V1.x
    Able to go back to is Alpha 12
    When we reach Version 2.X Version 1.x is a step down the ladder.

    No need to bump this Thread though.
     
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  9. Pear78

    Pear78 Captain

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    yes, but the point is that we need to be able to revert to the version the server is running, which is one version behind always
    its about 1.5.0 (or w/e) to 1.4.x which was still running on the server. and people cant connect because server version doesnt match.
    going back to earlier versions than the last one doesnt help multiplayers :)

    btw thanks for the bump ;)
     
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  10. So then your title is kind of misleading, because you don't want them to "bring back" an option as much as you want something completely new.

    We've only ever been able to roll back once a major version comes out (like in your screenshot).
    We've never been able to roll back to all the .X versions, only the major version numbers.

    Nothing has been taken away and we never had that option.

    As has been stated once version 2 comes out you will be able to roll back to version 1.x, and this is how it has always worked.
     
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  11. Pear78

    Pear78 Captain

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    pretty sure Ive been playing on HWS and we didnt have this issue
    but it doesnt really matter now does it, if we did or not.
    it would be handy to have now in either case.
     
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  12. imlarry425

    imlarry425 Captain

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    I miss being able to opt-out of upgrades at the game level. I think this was a steam-wide change so no grief on the devs for that but that platform-wide change created the situation that makes being able to roll back to a specific subversion a reasonable one. It's not like there is anything special about a major vs. a minor release- any release is always an arbitrary build.
     
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  13. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    I suggest they make the upcoming v1.5 one of the "fixed" versions (along with previous ones) and not wait for v2.0.

    It's not just a question of version number : there's a delay before v2.0 becomes available, and we're already close to a year from v1.0, which is one of the longest delay (if not the longest) between major versions. So they could allow a few weeks or months of testing v1.5, but then make a snapshot of it to have an alternative to stick to while waiting for v2.0 which may not come by before 2022.
     
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  14. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    I can see why Steam forces updates. To see why there's a need to force updates, just look at all the problems people report from staying on the experimental branch when they shouldn't.
    A lot of people will opt out of updating, then go and report issues with the game that had already been fixed. They'll blame the game then instead of fixing the issue on their end.
    And it will encourage people to stay on the previous versions to keep playing on their server, which means they won't get any of the updated fixes.

    So yeah, from a "we want our game to be stable" standpoint, I can see why forcing updates would be the best solution to the problem of users messing up their game installs.

    As someone who has to dip his toes into the whole "fixing issues with a hotfix" situation myself, I can tell you that in my experience a lot of problems are caused by people NOT updating something, and that when you give people a choice when or if to update something, it will double the number of problems that get reported to you, and to make it even worse they won't even remember or know that they are still running an old version so you'll spend time retesting something that you had already fixed because you think maybe your fix didn't work, only to eventually find out the server was just running an old version of the scenario. :D

    Now I can imagine if the entire game had that problem how many more bug reports, complaints, and negative reviews that would generate.
     
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  15. Kassonnade

    Kassonnade Rear Admiral

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    That's not a problem : when players opt out of updates, they are stuck with a build number, and this guides the developers when addressing the problems. It's mostly a question of having better control structure on bugs response/ fixing than simply having an open bar for complaints.

    Steam had no business forcing auto-updates in the first place, but they tried to make a one-size-fit-all solution for indie developers, triple-A studios and "Early Access" all at the same time, which couldn't work without ensuring players would get real time updating to get the pressure out of Steam and onto the developers. Steam saw the enormous potential to attract new developers (and even existing big ones) with their "Greenlight" and "Early Access" trick, but they had to automate things for this. They also had plans for themselves, as we saw recently with Valve's "Alyx" title featuring new VR tech, and the requirements to also constantly update the Steam client. Forcing updates on everyone was met with tons of backlash, but they just forced their way with it, and with proper PR they even got parts of the crowd to side with them on this.

    But other platforms don't force updates, and their world did not crumble upon them. GOG even removes DRM and allows to download install kits so players don't have to rely on internet to be able to re-install their games. And this is a much broader topic, because it gets into politics and economy, because lots of people have limited internet with download caps, and forcing updates on them can have financial consequences if they bust their limits, but the whole industry doesn't care. Same for environmental concerns.

    We live in a time where we have both extremes : people don't care that hardware becomes obsolete after 13 months, despites this having an enormous environmental cost, yet at the same time the same people agree that our planet needs love right now. The forcing of updates, bitcoins frenzy, software bloat from lazy high-level code and bad practices forcing hardware upgrades, all things "modern computing" are really not trying to adapt to environmental and energetic concerns. Each little problem exists in its own little bubble, and people need constant reminders that when we put all these together the "compound" problem is one that has all governments concerned about our collective future.

    So of course Steam has other things to do than caring about countries with limited internet and the whole environmental problems stemming from modern computing market, ranging from raw materials collected by children in dangerous mines to the other end of the lifecycle of gadgets where (again) the poorest of the planet risk their health trying to recycle precious metals and components from 2 - 3 years old "garbage hardware".

    Steam is there to make money, and they do like most other corporations thinking the same way as they always did : money first, "environment" later. That's the whole point of the movie An Inconvenient Truth. It's really not a problem to change things, even something like updates requirements for computer games.

    And look at the irony of this : in Empyrion, the whole story stems from a catastrophic situation on Earth due to precisely what we are facing now. I'm quite thrilled to see this opportunity in a game to reference our actual biggest problem in some way, even if for now it's not "central" to the plot. The vast majority of games don't even care about this.
     
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  16. imlarry425

    imlarry425 Captain

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    I see what you mean, but can't you address all of the issues you raised by throwing up a dialog at launch that says "You are playing a vintage release of Empyrion Galactic Survival; by proceeding you acknowledge that only idiots report bugs without validating them against the latest releases [YES] [OF COURSE] [GOT IT]" sort of thing ... kind of like a EULA where you can only agree that disguises itself as a multiple-choice question.

    It's deep content (like yours :)) that makes mandatory updates a pain in the tush, otherwise doing a fresh planetfall and picking daisies for an hour or two to get to level 10 works fine for me too. A tree harvester with guns for killing critters can keep the Zirax off your back until you feel like dealing with them and get you there in half the time.
     
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  17. ravien_ff

    ravien_ff Rear Admiral

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    Yeah I like how Avorion has that popup when you are running experimental and I think Empyrion could use the same warning message. :D
     
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