Patch available Nov 23rd for PS3

[Sureboss]

Maybe my expectations were a little high from this patch, the things that annoyed me about the game are still there. Poor AI, cars still bouncing (not the game breaking bouncing that some had) and generally feeling poor to drive.

It's a different concept, which is why I enjoyed it for a couple of weeks. That has well and truly gone now.

 

[reaperman]

how is it with a feedback wheel?
any improvement to the feel at all?

is it worth the effort of putting the disc in and patching?

 

[jasonb1985]

It's up!

 

[Sureboss]

how is it with a feedback wheel?
any improvement to the feel at all?

is it worth the effort of putting the disc in and patching?

You'd have to judge for yourself. FFB still doesn't feel right imo.

 

[evilfoxhound]

Although the 234MB size is somewhat baffling... care to shed some light on why it's so huge, VB?

I have a feeling that it includes the December DLC. And it will be unlocked in December.

Burnout Paradise does the same. It was obvious that the latest patch included all the DLC content, as it was gigantic and when you buy the content they were just a few KBs in size. Basically just an unlock.

 

[MannyMoenjack]

Well, unlike Sureboss, even after only 30 minutes of playiing, I can already see a lot to like in the patched game. For instance...

The Porsche GT2 doesn't bounce like a beachball on bumpy tracks like Autopolis anymore. Yeah, the bumps are still there but, they don't upset the suspension.

The BMW e46 M3 is actually DRIVEABLE even when upgraded!!! I think it's actually going to be a pretty nice car once I tweak the tuning.

Some of the tuning adjustments that were stuck or not fully adjustable are now working.

More later as I come across it....

 

[MannyMoenjack]

One disappointment to report... a biggie...

In Career mode races with Tier 3+ cars, I always had major slowdowns and framerate issues on the London River track. Unfortunately the patch hasn't fixed this. It does feel improved from what it was, but it is still noticable.
London River I suppose because of all the buildings etc, was always the worst track for this problem, at least on my PS3...

 

[myke6699]

One disappointment to report... a biggie...

In Career mode races with Tier 3+ cars, I always had major slowdowns and framerate issues on the London River track. Unfortunately the patch hasn't fixed this. It does feel improved from what it was, but it is still noticable.
London River I suppose because of all the buildings etc, was always the worst track for this problem, at least on my PS3...

There's still frame rate issues although for once I'm able to run (Quick race) a 12 car grid at Road America- before it would go into slo-mo just after the Carousel, right into Kettle Bottoms.

16 cars are still pretty much impossible without the framerate crawling at RA and Laguna Seca. I do find that the game looks better- the other cars are more discernible from my cockpit view. It just looks sharper and brighter than before. There's still hiccups when it comes to replays although there are improvements.

The handling (with the G25) feels much tighter. The Audi R8LM (reward car) was pretty much impossible to drive pre-patch due to extreme oversteering. Now I can even drive the car at Nordschleife without much frustration. One area where the FFB improves (at least on my G25) is that the centre feels stronger than before. It's still no sim but that was never the intention.

I still want to be able to turn the music off during replays and unfortunately, it will continue to annoy me.

 

[jasonb1985]

You'd have to judge for yourself. FFB still doesn't feel right imo.

The game still feels very twitchy. It feels like I am drifting around every corner. It doesn't feel good at all.

The good news is, they fixed the bouncing issue and so far the frame rate has been consistent. So overall the game is playable now, but the physics and FFB still suck IMO.

 

[Silver-Sylph]

The game has it's improvements but i ran a 16 car race at RA and the frame rate didn't drop. But still at silver stone when i hit the curbs time sloooooowwwwwsssss doooowwwwnnnnn. Also online is better with 12 guys as i had a very nice race with a full lobby and no wreckers at the ring. Although people with crappy connection as a host seem to give me the slow mo. EA still isn't finished with this game by far.

 

[ShaneG]

EA still isn't finished with this game by far.

That may not be such a bad thing.

Who makes better QA testers than us?

As long as EA would be willing to make the upgrades & fixes that keep us playing, and add in new car & track packs, this title could stick around for a while.

Eventually, of course, advances in gaming will make shift obsolete on the fun scale, but they have a decent foundation to work with for now. Hopefully they'll try to build on it a little before trying to find the next big thing.

The patch fixed the only bug I had run into so far, which was the Z06 sitting dead at the start line. As soon as I had read of all the other bugs, and the coming patch, I stopped playing the game and waited. I'm glad I decided not to sell the game now.

Thanks EA! 👍

 

[WolfRacer543]

That may not be such a bad thing.

Who makes better QA testers than us?

As long as EA would be willing to make the upgrades & fixes that keep us playing, and add in new car & track packs, this title could stick around for a while.

Its a nice theory but I always fear a game that disappoints at launch is unlikely to hang around, regardless of additions added later.

 

[ShaneG]

Agreed. History is really against me on this one.

But it would be nice to see another game developer start to evolve a game concept to its fullest potential, instead of giving us a broken POS to fill their pockets with a quick buck. This gesture by EA is a decent step in that direction.

I sometimes miss the old days when that was more common.

The GT series, the first few NFS titles, the Medal of Honor series, the Mortal Kombat franchise, and so on...


Anymore, it feels like the old Atari 2600 market, make a game just for making a quick buck.

I just hope EA doesn't decide to do a remake of E.T. anytime soon.

 

[WolfRacer543]

Yeah, I hope EA proves me wrong this time and people come back to SHIFT forming a good lasting online experience, rather than a few hours before putting it back on the shelf to never be played again which happens with so many games I play these days.

 

[jhietter]

Whatever version update we are on right now in America, great job EA! I think my PS3 downloaded an update for the game today and wow. I must say that this game is MUCH better now. Car drivability is SIGNIFICANTLY better than before. This update turned SHIFT from a good intentioned but glitchy game that doesn't quite have handling down, to a VERY fun and enjoyable game with great handling. THanks EA!!!

 

[Silver-Sylph]

Its still has things that were not addressed.

 

[Sureboss]

Who makes better QA testers than us?

Alot of people.

As a customer, your data can be useful, but also a lot of the time I find customer bug reports to be ultimately useless in giving information on a reproduce-able problem.

It's a long way away from what I'd say a QA tester/engineer does. A very long way. You don't know what the QA's objectives are or any of the project.

Getting information from the public is useful in that you can get a lot of data, without actually doing much, people bite your hand off to do beta testing. But there's very little link between internal QA and the kind of information the general public is likely to give.

It's useful information, but it has to be reviewed and analysed and a lot of it is thrown away. Which is also relevant to the complexity of the game, Shift will be quite a complex bit (teehee) of code.

 

[ShaneG]

True, but what I'm getting at, is we play these games for hours & hours, so we'll know of every little hiccup and glitch a game has. Hence why we just got the mother of all gaming patches (size wise, it's one of the largest I've ever seen) Would we have got that patch if we hadn't played(tested) this product for hours, and then reported back what was wrong? We were essentially the final QA team. If that wasn't the case, there would have been no patch. They would have said, "Our QA said it's fine, it's your imaginations."

Anymore it just seems like their QA people pop a game in, play for 5 or 10 minutes, to make sure it doesn't crash and say there you go, get your buck.

I agree with the degree of madness & randomness that would come with a public style QA, but surely some kind of public beta could have provided a better product. Somewhere in that jumble of honest critisism and flaming poo, would be some valuable information that would help to better the game.

That, or my other theory being that, since the economy sucks so much now, they purposely add in all these glitches and bugs so they can stay employed to fix them.

I think they call that 'job security' .

I just bought my PS3 for the sole purpose of buying Shift, GTA4, and GT5. I got the first two when I bought the PS3, and was quite shocked at the bug & glitch content of each. My last gaming experience was a PS2 a few years back before moving on to PC gaming, and I just don't remember it ever being this bad quality wise.

 

[Sureboss]

Anymore it just seems like their QA people pop a game in, play for 5 or 10 minutes, to make sure it doesn't crash and say there you go, get your buck.

There is so much more to QA than playing a game. (or testing a product/service, for whatever the QA is for.)

Game development time frames are tight, it's not uncommon for games to be released knowing that they can patch them. It's not always easy to patch, it can be expensive on console "title updates", PC patches are a piece of piss in comparison. We're at a point in gaming, with next-gen consoles, where they can patch. It's somewhat easier to do that than to delay a release by a couple of months, because it's a lot harder to change a marketing campaign that may already be in effect. In gaming, I've always worked on the phrase, "You don't promise what you can't keep." If you announce an official release date, you release it then, (barring any major game breakers,) and then if you do need to patch after release then that's what you do.

I'd imagine that a fair few of the Shift problems were known to the dev team pre-release.

As said before, public data reports can indeed be very useful, but a lot of time I've throw them away, because they just don't give enough of the right information for us to be able to try and repro it through debug.

It's useful, but it's not internal QA.

 

[ItsHim]

In an ideal world, QA should ensure that all the processes are in place to be able to produce a quality product.

So QA should detect if an additional 250k is necessary for testing, 500k for additional coding resources and so on. It's not their job to do beta testing or having a look at the finished product, because at that stage it's way too late.

Trouble is that the most profit is generated within the first few weeks of the release, pre-orders take about 3 months of ahead planing, competition is stiff because it's still a very profitable business.

So if a game is only delayed by one or two weeks it could mean you miss out on 50-75% of revenues because you won't make it in the Top 10 charts.

Maybe we are in a stage of transition right now, and the direct download distribution could mean that publishers and developers are less tied to pre-scheduled and grown release rhythms.

I, too, bought my PS2 to get rid of all that patch nonsense, but it seems 5 years later I'm just again where it all started to get on my nerves.

GT5 will be the last game I purchase on its release date - all other games will be rented or bought at budget prices. Less cost - less bugs: seems to be the way to go. I was able to strike a very good deal on Shift, so I'm not really upset. Just irritated

 

[ShaneG]

So the real problem lies with the 'bean-counters' then.

Game development time frames are tight, it's not uncommon for games to be released knowing that they can patch them.

If all business worked this way, our world would be in a very sorry, incomplete state.

For example:

"We released this car to the market, even though it has problems with the brakes & airbags, it'll be easier for us to fix them after we sell them."

"I sold you this house, even though it has no plumbing or electric, we think it'll be easier for us to add that after you've lived in it for a few months."

Ok, so maybe these are a bit over exaggerated examples, but it does fall in with the same line of thought. And I'm glad they don't work like that. I just wish the gaming industry as whole would pay more attention to product as opposed to profit. In a nice ideal world, having a great product would lead to profit. But it seems most companies just can't afford to wait that long anymore.

Imagine where GT's status would be, if GT1 or GT2 had been as buggy as Shift. I'm willing to bet, there wouldn't have been many more sequels.
P.D. does it right. Release dates be damned. If it isn't up to par, they don't let it out to the public.


BTW: It's nice to have the perspective of someone who does QA as well, I'm learning a few things here I wasn't aware of. Thanks.

 

[Sureboss]

No problem. Similar line of thought? Yes. But not really comparable, especially as the car one could result in people being killed.

I'm not saying that devs want to release games like that, but it is possible. It isn't very good practice of course, but it does happen, such is the pressure of the heads to meet the deadlines.

I just wish the gaming industry as whole would pay more attention to product as opposed to profit. In a nice ideal world, having a great product would lead to profit. But it seems most companies just can't afford to wait that long anymore.

Don't get fooled in to the assumption that games make big profits. Some do, but I've known of big titles that haven't generated any profits. Heck, EA have announced losses in the pass of about a billion. Look at the recent closure of Transmission Games, biggest and longest running dev in Australia. It's a tough industry, it really isn't that glamorous. We do it because we love it.

I hope i've not given you the impression that all devs work in that manner, but I know of some that do, because it really is easier to do that than delay the release by 2 months and miss a lot of sales and potential targeted release dates (ie, Christmas, a particular event that the game might be based on, etc). I personally don't mind playing a game for a couple of months, knowing that it will be improved in a couple of months. It's risky and not something any body wants to do, but sometimes that's the hand you are dealt. In a business that already struggles with piracy and the pre-owned games markets, taking abit of damage limitation is necessary.

Imagine where GT's status would be, if GT1 or GT2 had been as buggy as Shift. I'm willing to bet, there wouldn't have been many more sequels.
P.D. does it right. Release dates be damned. If it isn't up to par, they don't let it out to the public.

But can you seem the damage that is being done by their "delay". I think most expected GT5 to release at some point in 2009, back in 2005/6. They've never officially announced a date, and with very good reason. Could you imagine having to tell millions of customers you aren't going to release within 6-12 months of the official release date? Particularly on huge projects like GT5, when you could spend so much time tweaking the game. This is why Kaz has been saying, "we can release any time we want to" for what feels like a couple of years. Many parts will be being tweaked, then asked "is it doing what we want it to?". Reviewing and analysing data and comparing it to your set objectives is an important part of QA. You can tweak for ever, setting values just right, finding the right combination's.

You might find this useful.

http://www.softwareqatest.com/