Shade 1.0.8

I can say that I’m not one way or the other on the whole, It’s a massive amount of data to download again, I would have liked to have seem some “differential” downloads as opposed to what appears to be downloading 1/2 the game again. I imagine they made us re-download the all maps, (and some textures?), there must be ( or there should be,) some way to only download actual changes.

  • Fixing map issues is a core thing that needed to occur, getting stuck/falling off the map is not acceptable, so 100% behind this.

  • Frame rates, personally I’ve never had an issue here, (I would not expect to,) but fixing the game to run for lower specced machines is also a core issue, up to 10-15 FPS for lower rated machines is excellent. (Some people are having new issues, here’s hoping they are quickly and easily addressed, hardware/software incompatibilities are always going to be problematic for a developer)

  • Failing to direcly address Kruber’s machinegun handgun exploit. Which appears to be related to doubling up his ultimate, and nothing to do with headshots, as the patch notes suggested. (there’s a bug post 11 days ago about this) while tuning the Shade into oblivion. (Riff Raff)

  • What seems to be a major miscommunication inside FatShark about what is being worked on, along wih the release of the code, which seems to have been entirely untested, into production.

  • What appears to be a failure to communicate with both their live and beta communities.

I pre purchased this game on the strength of the first one, I did not bother reading anything beyond the title which is unusual for me, and on the whole I was and a I’m a happy customer, but this patch has burnt its share of good will, something they can earn back of course, but as other points out this indicates two perhaps three problems:

  1. Broken internal communication lines about what is broken and what is being fixed.
  2. Broken playtesting/change control of the product that’s going live.
  3. (perhaps) Failure to effectively engage with the community regarding concerns. Hell we still don’t know if the patch notes reflect which weapons were supposed to be fixed or if they were wrong. (Dual Swords/Daggers, or Sword and Dagger/Sword and shield I’m looking at you.)

This patch had to occur, and there is more to be done, there’s stuff in it that I really think is good, but on the whole it should have waited another week, Beta feedback should have had a public forum response, something like “Hey these are the major point you raised, we’re in the process of reviewing them, unfortunately we won’t be able to fix all of them, here are a couple we consider to be a priority though. We might not agree with you on all of the others but we’ll take them into consideration” It’s what I imagine community managers are supposed to be for after all.

People seem over-joyed with the 1.0.8.1 patch notification, personally I’m of the opinion if they had been doing this correctly we would not have needed it. On the whole I’m more. "I’m glad that your working to fix the issues, but please take a little more care with your internal processes as this was not fun. "

(On the whole I’d have to say I’m in the minority of players, I’d was actually playing the shade with dual swords and dual daggers the week prior to the patch, so the impact was immediately noticeable to me. 1.0.7 the shade felt balance to me when fighting though the map. I can’t comment on Glaive vs bosses as I never used the Glaive second swing from stealth. but nerfing it seems reasonable.)

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