How can not only 1, but 2 massive game breaking bugs slip past them just like that? (OP fire ships and OP hand cannons)
I usually defend them when people complain about bugs, saying they’ll patch them asap, but I feel like there’s zero testing before an update is released, It’s kinda ridiculous
5 Likes
Devs stopped testing their own games decades ago and that does for all devs, not just AoE devs.
5 Likes
Two? I heard about ten serious bugs in the last month.
4 Likes
Of course they don’t.
4 Likes
i think he talking specifically about the last patch
seeing what the devs have said theres some really insane bugs that can pop up, like you wouldnt believe how irrational some of them are, because the game engine is wired so weirdly
like there was a bug where if a deer walked over a felled tree in the upper corner of the map specifically it would desync the game, so who knows how many 100s of junk they actually clean out before it reaches us…
i agree the devs should give us beta patches to test , but i can also understand how such game breaking bugs can pop up when everything is so weirdly connected…
3 Likes
I understand how the engine is unstable and those bugs can easily appear, but that’s even a bigger reason why they should thoroughly test an update before releasing it…
6 Likes
How do you know how much testing they do or don’t do, though? Do you sit in on work meetings at the dev offices or their Zoom calls?
There are quadrillions of PC hardware configurations, and an octillion of possible things in the game that could break it. Pretty hard to test for them all, no matter how big your testing staff is or how long you test for
There are a bunch of configurations but there aren’t that many common configurations, most users with problems have windows machines using either Intel, AMD or Nvidia hardware new enough to have modern functionality, and the newest available version of Windows 10
It would be much more understandable if the people with issues were emulating windows with WINE in linux and using a Zotac GPU with a Motorola CPU, that isn’t the case, the people having issues are using common configurations and brands of hardware, there are only 2 main brands of CPU and 2 main brands of GPU, and one of each CPU/GPU is made by AMD, that is 4 combinations
Many of the in-game bugs (relic damage lithuanians, crashes with building foundations, placing gates on other player’s wall) were on mechanics that were directly changed in the patch notes preceding the problem, not some random issue with a completely unrelated mechanic (Patch notes for Lithuanians included a fix to prevent a bug where they would lose more relic damage than they should if they had 5+ relics in separate monasteries - this was corrected but obviously it was not checked if they would lose relic damage on ungarrison of a relic after the change to correct the damage loss bug - the bug itself occurred due to the +4 damage cap, if you had 5 relics, 4 in one monastery and 1 in another for example, and the monastery with 1 relic was destroyed you would drop to +3 damage even though you still had 4 relics)
I think they should open all patches for beta testing before release, no matter the reason they are unable to catch these problems, it might not be due to lack of testing, but it is still happening at an excessive rate compared to other games with much more complicated engines, physics simulations, AI, etc., I have purchased others with similar crash problems on release, they are generally fixed in less than a week and do not reoccur in later patches
5 Likes
I’m playing AoE2:HD (2013) right now and having significant lag problems. Literally, 10 FPS, trying to get through a game with an AI continually spamming units and such. DE hasn’t been this laggy for me since the old rubber-banding issue I witnessed a year ago. This game is taking 3 hours so far, and it should only take 1.5 hrs max. And HD was out for 7+ years. With this choppy framerate, it’s going to take at least another hour or two
I’m sure red (HD AI) continually spamming units isn’t helping:
AoE2:HD (2013) edits…
- EDIT #1: Human teammate and I resigned so we could reset our Internet routers/modems and restore the game. We’re both at solidly high Internet connections. Framerate didn’t improve; it actually got worse; eventually down to 2-3 FPS. Plus, lumberjacks kept stopping their gathering throughout the entire game. Had to keep re-tasking them to trees over and over again
- EDIT #2: Teammate left the game to run errands, and I restored by myself so I could try to win. Framerate was still bad, 2-5 FPS for a long time.
- EDIT #3: I slowly got a handle on the continuous annoying onslaught. Framerate improved more and more as red and blue had fewer armies and to work with. Even though FPS got pretty good, it never fully recovered… and was always less than framerates I get in DE.
So, moral of the story and slight counterpoint, I guess: AoE2:HD was out for 7+ years… and trailing off the original CD that launched 13 years prior. Yet this game was completely unbearable to play 80% of the time due to horrendous framerate and lumberjacks that kept going idle non-stop through the entire game. It took me more than 6 hours to finish! Not how I wanted to spend the majority of my Sunday 
Compared to HD, DE works much better for me.
Oh, I don’t doubt that DE is waaay better than HD, I’m questioning the recent patches here, I still appreciate DE a lot, I just wish they would test each update so the game isn’t broken, I had no desire to play after this month’s update released because of the Lithuanian bug, and now that this is fixed, there’s another bug that makes hand cannoneers equally broken, I don’t think it’s too much to ask for the devs to take a couple of hours of their time (or pay someone to do it) to test each update in the scenario editor or against the A.I. Before releasing it to literally everyone
2 Likes
I’m talking about the “global” bugs, like the Lithuanian relic bug, the Coustilliers doing double damage to archers, the bugged turtle ships, the hand cannoneer and fire ships with insane attack… those are not restricted to a specific system, those affect literally everyone playing the game equally and can be reproduced by just playing the game, things like crashes on specific hardware I can understand, but these are not system-specific
2 Likes
They do not. It is obvious.
I think they doubleclick the desktop item and make sure it launches
1 Like
It is rlly hard to test EVERYTHING. U are going to test something before lunch but u will always forget something. like rlly whan u test the game u dont think like hmm lets take a look at the byzantine fire ships.
U just thing that their are ok and thats it as u know what u changed during the pre lunch session and assume everything is ok. It is not the devs fault.
Ofc they dont have no testing team at all. We all paid to be part of the beta testing team. Rejoice and play the game!
1 Like
haha I know it was a typo but I can absolutely imagine that they finish with the dev and then give testing the deadline to complete “before lunch”