Test Server

Why is the test server only open for such a small period of time? How effectively can the game be tested in this time slot? More importantly, why are such buggy updates being deployed on live servers?

 

The first refactoring was tested for pretty much 24 hours but spread across 3 days.
Today's refactoring was tested for 8 hours and stopped because the developers have to go home. If they need more testing done then they will open it again, 8 hours in 1 day is quite a lot of testing time, especially since it would have been used by thousands of players.

As for why the updates are always buggy, anyone's guess, don't know if you really exacted an answer for that because you know it can't be answered by any of us.

 

Well I'm going to have to disagree with you on the fact that it's enough time for it to be open due to the fact that nearly all of the updates that have been deployed have been buggy. Seems more reasonable to deploy a test server for a more lengthy amount of time to get a wider user base range in and testing the server.

Either that or the bugs reported by users during the test servers go completely and utterly over the developers head with a "oh well we'll deal with it later" attitude.

 

On the test server they worked fine though.
The bugs that came with the refactoring e.g shield, pirate maps, placement of ship names and hp bars etc didn't exist on the test server. It's whatever they do between the final test and the update going live that messes them up.

 

Yes, but still some people come home from school/work, so i think they should atleast increase the testing time to 24 hours or even to 48 hours.

 

The test server primarily exist to help the developers though, they are not actually made for the players to use but for the developers to gain information from. So if people are at work of school it is not a concern for them, those people can use the update when it goes live.

 

You have a point, but there's a lot to test.The game is very large with different maps,npcs,gates etc. I just think that people need more time to test all of them.I don't want to go on a rant here about the time that people get to play on the Test Server, but just even if they would increase the time from 8 hours to like 10 or 12 hours would give many people a better chance to test everything.

 

For certain updates you are absolutely right, there is lots to test and in the past the server has been left open throughout weekends and such. However for today they were just interested in damage values being correct, which is a fairly easy thing to test, especially with 8 hours worth of data from thousands of players.

 

Also, today is Thursday and in Germany, many companies close early. The test server is always full when I log into it, missed it today though, so there should be more than plenty of information to be gathered from just a work days of hours or even less. Usually I find so many players in the test server I have to ask myself why I really bothered to log in. There is always a ton a same company popping everytime I am on it which makes me think that they should set the penalty at triple the cost each time. Maybe people would actually play the game the way it should be played. I would like to make it out of the the first 2 maps some day.

 

Yeah, i agree with that.They should increase the penalty for killing own company members.I don't like seeing newbies getting popped all of the time by veterans.

 

Thank you all for assisting and contributing to this thread.

Does the original poster have any further questions regarding this topic?

~Ddraig