Good going Square !

[Shibi]

How do you suggest they accomplish such a massive stress test with their available staff and equipment?

As well as just using math, capacity tests are usually automated to verify the calculations. You use a daemon that properly simulates a user doing it and you push that to the breaking point. Of course, that means that a 100% valid QA environment is available, something that the zero-bug showed doesn't exist.

[Akira_Kojima]

I really am glad this game has internal testers and that every patch is tested thoroughly.

Tried to DC travel from Chaos to Light, got error 505 at the end, which is fine, I restart the game, now I am unable to log on any character and any account on any datacenter, error 505 immediately and the game closes.

Well done.

Day one feature moment

[Jeeqbit]

Obviously it was tested, but SE doesn't have 15,000 testers every minute. It's unreasonable to expect that.

[Neoyoshi]

The EW trainwreck continues. Next stop, 6.2

Yeah but it's a really fun train ride; there's even an old lady that pushes a cart around with sweets on it.

Obviously it was tested, but SE doesn't have 15,000 testers every minute. It's unreasonable to expect that.

If only the internet understood nuance.

[Kolsykol]

Maybe when it's standard that things are this broken, it might, MIGHT, be an issue. This is like housing and the 0 bug, it's not acceptable in any way.

It's not, FFXIV is surprisingly bug free especially considering that we don't have beta tests.
The fact that content doesn't need a billion rebalance patches in the first couple of days too without beta is pretty incredible.

Server issues tho are a different matter and runs a higher risk of error, I am guessing it's kinda overloaded atm.
This is fairly normal for MMO's in particular.

[Amenara]

Perks of working on patch day is I don't have to worry about things like that.

I hope they can get back fast! It would be terrible if this was a one-month-long zero-bug-like affair.

I am hopping through those all the time now, work great

[Adamantini]

24 hours of maintenance to implement a single feature, and it doesn't work huahuahuahua Square Memex

[Soge01]

Thread in a nutshell:

[DynnDiablos]

6.1 honestly has been one of the worst patches they've ever released in my opinion (bolded as MY opinion for those thinking I am presenting this as fact). Also, the MSQ for it was dull as dishwater.

[Striker44]

I'm not an expert either but I feel like there should be a way to properly stress test these systems beforehand so issues like this can be limited.

The issue is probably less this and more the practicality of it. I mean, just speaking frankly, patch-day issues have been present in practically every patch of every MMO for the past 20 years. It shouldn't be a surprise when you dogpile something that a problem arises. This is, frankly, normal for MMO's.

As for practicality, things iron themselves out on their own rather quickly as the "new toy" feeling wears off and the mass rush ends. Look at the login queues that happen in games (most notably the EW release itself). After a few weeks, though, things were back to normal. It's cost-disastrous to purchase enough server capacity to handle that briefest of spikes. Someone made a great analogy of buying a ship that can hold 300,000 tons of cargo. You get a ship that cost a ton of money, and 98% of its existence is only being used to hold 3,000 tons of cargo. That's an unjustifiable waste of money. You buy the ship that carries maybe 4,000 tons of cargo to handle mini-spikes, and when the rare big one comes through, people just need to realize that's life and they might have to wait a bit.

(Do people demand that airlines buy more planes or hotels add more floors when tickets and rooms sell out during prime travel/vacation times? No, they recognize that's a simple reality.)