I would appreciate knowing why there are not balance patches being done on a monthly or at least bi-monthly basis? Age of Empires IV is aiming to be the next professional RTS and it certainly has the potential behind it. There is so much that is great about this game. However, between the bugs and imbalances, it makes it very hard to play or want to play.
I’m not saying a patch should be issued after every bug fix, but monthly or at least bimonthly patches are pretty standard for games these days, especially ones that are trying to be an E-sport.
I would much rather have smaller monthly patches than huge updates 3 or 4 times a year. Then we can try new things, and see the changes. We can watch the game develop with you and continue to provide feedback and data. If you patch frequently, it is ok if you make a mistake and over correct something the wrong way (Delhi Imperial research time for example) because it can be addressed again in next month’s patch.
With long gaps between patches, things get very frustrating. When things are frustrating, they are not fun. When things are not fun, people start walking away.
Relic has to approve each updated by Microsoft. So if they want to get a patch live, it first needs to get approved of Microsoft, which can take to up to 30 days. Eventually, Microsoft will allow them to publish patches without this, but only if they made so many patches successfully. Meaning, go and complain to Microsoft if u want that to change faster.
Microsoft certification takes up to 48 hours, but there are certain certification windows. So if the window is Thursday and you miss it, you may have to push your patch back to the next Tuesday.
Also if your certification fails then of course that’s going to delay things.
The reason for the delays: Holidays. No one launches patches over the Christmas break, whether they’re a bank, game company, or Microsoft themselves.
1week before and 1 week after(probably), while these 2 week people work and get ready patches.
Now it’s 17.01, as far as i know Christmas ended a lot earlier. And i’m not saying that “balance” is just config file, so just update it without release.
May be we just agree that their approach is bad?
Waiting for other !excuses.
From my experience financial company can work with CI CD pipeline(release whenever it’s ready), although not know about “game” industry, but have not heard any arguments why (at least config) files can not be updated more often.
It’s bad to be narrow minded and believe that same approach should be the best for all sub-companies.
As you said, once a week they can do certification. Patch every week, nice. If there CEO can not
negotiate for other aproach, at least once a week would be great.
There’s a discussion thread here, where it confirms a patch for January independently of the larger Spring content update. I’m not sure about February and March, but it seems they’re aiming for smaller monthly patches inbetween the content updates.
You’re using a financial company as an example? Companies that still use fricken mainframes, and have massive change freezes, and extremely strict rules over what and where they can deploy? Same companies that run hideously outdated software and hardly ever upgrade?
I just saw the patch notes for this month’s patch and everything looks great. Lots more to do, as you have noted, but I’m very happy to see what was in it. You also mentioned February’s will have a patch, which is awesome. Keep up the good work!