It’s been over a week since Star Citizen 3.18’s release, and things are still looking pretty bad.
I’ve been a backer of Star Citizen for years, and if there is any constant in the universe, it’s that x.x.0 releases always go rough.
Large amounts of players try to hop in and check out all the new features. Not enough people were able to test in the PTU and catch bugs. Patching the production servers and clients can result in quirks due to code branch differences.
3.18 has been worse, though; Most of the time waiting a week is all that’s needed before things stabilize and are playable, but even now the next hotfix due to be applied on the server-side (roll outs will happen within an hour of this post and continue to be deployed through tomorrow) CIG themselves don’t sound too confident.
I managed to spend a good chunk of time in the universe for 3.18 on Saturday; Despite the bugs, I had a blast and got a lot of laughs from the new PES features as well as the random fun bugs that always come about when you get the rest of the SC community in on the shenanigans that come up in a new major release.
Sunday and today, however, it has been next to impossible to play without extra workarounds.
Bounty target markers disappear. Bounties that are eliminated don’t end up counting as being completed. Stations aren’t accepting comm requests for docking. ASOP terminals all bugged out so I can’t leave the station without someone from the outside coming in and giving me a ride elsewhere.
It’s understandable that people are frustrated.. And I also feel for the developers. I’ve seen a lot of major releases, updates and go-lives go real bad in my career as a developer myself.
The unfortunate issue is the sheer amount of hate that comes with the gaming community. CIG already gets a lot of criticism for having a development timeline more akin to a Google product launch (remember how long Gmail was in “beta”?) and piling on the latest release launch problems must make the dev teams at CIG want to shrink into a tiny, tiny hole for a while.
I’ll plan on being patient for a little while longer, and hope that I’ll be able to enjoy some time hunting bounties again soon.