Update Schedule

I wanted to ask all of you your thoughts on the subject of Vanguard's updates. Currently, we update every week on Thursdays at 8am PST. This has been the case since before I joined the team and has worked well enough for us to this point.

As we postponed last week's update to this week, we started looking into keeping our updates into being bi-weekly. The reasoning behind this is because typically we end up losing most of the day before the update prepping last minute things to make sure the update goes off without a hitch. Reducing the updates to be bi-weekly would alleviate having to prep four days a months to two essentially allowing more time to create more.

Thoughts?

Sounds like a good idea. if you do a simple server restart on the off week.

While this would not be a bad thing. it would seem a Server restart would still be helpful. things get all kinds of bugy after 2weeks of no restart.

If it helps the game im all for it, 2 extra days per month of dev time sounds great.

i lived in the weekly update world of software implementation for over a year before sanity prevailed and we went to biweekly. trust me, its a better way to go for the reasons you already know.

Actually, I'd like for us to try and address the issues that cause the problems instead of masking them behind restarts.

i'm sure you do, but sometimes letting chunks go unreset makes things a lot worse for players.

If this leaves more time to develop actual content, then I am 100% for it, if it is only for adding more items to the marketplace then I can't say I really care. Trying my best to stay with you guys but this rainbow goes on forever it seems. I'd like to find the leprechaun.

Still is the best way to find what causes an issue and perhaps the only one.

I would not have a problem with this.. IF.. and this is IF when something goes wrong or a bug that happened is reported.. the servers are brought down to fix it instead of waiting till the next update to add the fix.. Been a few to many times where there's a bug or something gets broke with the patch/update and we are forced to wait till the next week for it to get fixed, thats bad enough let alone if we were to have to wait 2 weeks.. uggg...

Sexual intercourse with leprechauns is banned in most states fyi.

I don't mind the fortnightly update cycle whatsoever, as long as you still have the flexibility to do an emergency patch whenever something is really needed.

I am not competent enough to weigh in on the weekly patch -4 days a month and the bi-weekly patch -2 days a month (or even a monthly patch -1 day a month).

However, from an "ignorant" player's perspective:
Having weekly patches not only feels like unwrapping a present when you read the patch notes (and who does not like receiving regularly!), but also serves as a constant positive reminder of SOE's commitment to the game. Make them bi-weekly, and if new players do not perceive those as containing double the effort you used to put in with weekly patches, they may start looking elsewhere.

That being said, I trust that you guys know what is best regarding this matter, and will be happy either way.

Bi-weekly sounds fine, as long as crucial fixes are adressed as needed. Really hoping we get the guild/friend lists fixed tomorrow it's been a few weeks now.

Considering how thin the patches are , you could easily just do one pre month.

Bi-weekly is fine but please, as others have stated, either a 30 min server restart each week or a hotfix/restart when things get nasty.

Going 2 weeks without a restart I have noticed a lot more lag in chunks that were previously ok, mobs bugging out or getting stuck in walls and so on either require a restart or a Dev/GM to fix, if this is left ignored for 2 weeks then still misses a patch and we wait another 2 weeks it turns ugly extremely fast.

I appreciate the work the Dev team are doing, it is very nice to see but waiting 2 weeks to see these patch notes was disheartening to say the least.

What happened to the lag fix and layer work being done?

The patch notes seemed rather thin for 2 weeks worth and no info at all on the new layer/tools to help reduce the lag and social server problems.

Patch notes do not reflect all the work done in the period, for all we know the dev team may have spent most their time working on Pankor Zhi or tweaking Lomshir revamp, on the other hand it could be that the team has been reduced again due to the game not meeting its intended growth rate, but I don't thing that this is the case as it is still too soon to judge how well went the changes to F2P. Most of the changes listed in today's patch are quick changes that do not take much time, that is what I would expect from patches if the team is working on new content, small changes on multiple patches until the content is finished and released.

I agree that one gets more done in two week periods of time rather than one week (as one needs to agree what is going to be developed/fixed and then plan how to accomplish those and then prepare the update), so to me switching to two week update schedules rather than one week sounds good - however its good to have once per week server reset due above listed reasons by other posters, and also due the fact that some ppl find it funny to kill exchange npcs (like one in khal bank) and thus one is unable to buy items from exchange from this npc and will need to move to other town instead..

....exactly my point.

For me it was less than 6 months before I told my people to have reality check and stop the nonsense - do it once and do it right.

Less updates = better, less buggy updates on the whole (and hopefully more content along the way) so yeppers go for it.