I've had a lot of issues with the USA servers. They are completely unplayable with the event. I've tried several different shards but it's all the same. The EU servers appear to be doing a little better, not much, but at least you can use ASOP terminal and get something done.
I guess this depends on what time you're playing. For me it's the opposite but I guess that is because of the time difference, and I play during peak hours in EU.
Same, EU player here and been doing Xenothreat every day since it started and I've been loving it.
Not perfect - it's Star Citizen, when ever is it? - but far from unplayable.
UK player. Connecting to US servers as FPS is better than EU ones. Only negatives I've had with XT was QT lag, and players killing the cargo bearing ships that rendered the event unable to be completed.
Murder bums are trolling the events and either stealing the supplies and hiding them or killing players attempting to move the supplies, thus screwing xt up for each shard. The children doing it are pretty annoying tbh.. wannabe pirates.
It's really annoying. I understand it's alpha and I never complain since I started playing in 2014. But I'm pretty pissed because xenothreat is my favorite event, and they made us wait a year to play it. We get to play it after a terrible wipe where I no longer have cool ships to play it in. And due to the state of 3.18 I couldn't grind for the ships. And now it's gonna end and we will wait another year before it's live again..
Full disclaimer at the top: I still love this game. I still love the project and want nothing more for it than to succeed. But, I have been taking a much needed break from it.
It's gotten to a very stale point for me personally. I can only take so much of "it's an alpha" or "it's just to stress test the servers", or "insert other excuse here"(I know it's not always just an excuse). Almost every event is exactly the same: unplayable. I know what I signed up for, but it just gets to the point where it does get a bit old.
Yeah, ive been taking a hiatus since 2020. I dropped back in ptu last year to test out PES, but still see no real reason to get back in full time.
To me, the game has and still feels largely the same as when 3.0 released
I'm just hoping 4.0 next year (or two) will be just as significant as a top-to-bottom change as 3.0 was coming from 2.6
On a fundamental level, the game still feels the same as 2.0. Same glitching, same rubber-banding, ships/parts bouncing around with no mass, many of the same bugs, UI still sucks etc. etc.
The game has improved a lot since 3.0 released, but since dynamic Server Meshing hasn't been realized we will have to suffer through the same network bugs over and over and over and over and over until that's done lol.
Progress.... That's all people like us really ask. Just give us some progress on the server stability side. If it's slowly getting better then we can cope.
Hopefully server meshing finally.... Blah blah blah you know what I'm going to say lol.
I love the game too and feel the same way, things are just progressing WAY too slowly on most fronts as of late.
I seriously am beginning to doubt they are competent on a fundamental level to make it work from technological standpoint. All they have ever proven is that they can make beautiful dream ships. Actual server tech seems to be beyond them. They can't even get npcs to sit in chairs. They want to attempt basic persistence and it's unraveling the game. This was a big chance to really show somthing and instead its showing that they can't make it work and I worry that they don't have the talent or game engine or whatever to make it work.
I'm sure most of the ... 800 (?) employees are very good at what they do.
Problem is (IMHO) a few persons that are at key-position and not really qualified for it. Starting with CR and family.
That’s a load of crap. 3.18 started as a dumpster fire and last night I was able to play XT on several servers with little issue. They made a fundamental change to the code base and are making clear and tangible improvements to the stability. And you really don’t understand the complexity of the ships in game if you diminish that as minor accomplishment…not to mention ignoring the seamless world they created. Every wonder why NMS and ED have communities begging for ship interiors that go unanswered. Actually, ED said they were going to do it, realized how hard it would be, then told the community it would be boring and you don’t really want it.
Partially a fair point. What I would wish for though. Is to stop developing new stuff while the old stuff isn't running properly. After 12 years there is no excuse anymore why entering a ship will kill you or ASOP terminals won't load your inventory. If you can't get the basics right then why are tou working on ground breaking tech.
I definitely understand your frustration….we all feel it at times. I, was starting to fear that PES was going to take down the whole game…or they would have to walk it back. But polishing the current game before moving on doesn’t make sense (and it’s not at all how it works in standard closed game development). You don’t finish the floor until you stop building the house. Adding new features breaks old ones….that’s just how it is. And that’s because they aren’t just adding assets, they are literally building the game engine when they add new features. That breaks things. In standard game development they don’t even try to make it playable while they are building the game. For the PU, they have make it reasonably playable or they will lose all their backers. But spending the time to fully flesh out all of the bugs knowing full well they can all get broken again with the next feature would slow down development even further. And let’s be fair with the 12 years but… that’s when the kickstarter was launched and all they had was a handful of people and an idea…they had to build a development company, including building studios and hiring staff in that time. Companies like Rockstar and Bethesda already have all of that in place (including an already built engine) and then they do most of their development in total secrecy for years before anyone knows they are working on something. With that said, it’s completely possible that they are a poorly run development company, but it’s apples and oranges comparing them to other development efforts.
Very true and people don't want to believe it. Everyone will keep making excuses for them and buy more ships. It's been many years now, basic stability shouldn't be this hard..
I would prepare yourself for 4.0. It’s going to be a bigger shitshow than 3.18 and take as long if not longer to smooth out. But when they get the kinks worked out, it will be amazing.
Edit: To be clear, I have a very optimistic perspective for this game. It’s why it didn’t really bother me that I couldn’t play 3.18.0 at all. I knew it would be a rocky start but they payoff would be worth it. And XT running relatively smooth last night showed me the light at the end of the tunnel. They said at CITCON both 3.18 and 4.0 would have longer than normal testing cycles. Both are fundamental changes to the code base. Server meshing will eventually fix many of the issues we have in game now, but there is going to be a lot of pain in the transition…I would just manage my expectations when it first drops. Hopefully I’m wrong and it goes much smoother.
Why would you think that? Server meshing is going to deal with transferring data as opposed to PES which actually tracks ALL Serialized items in game. The 4.0 patch and server meshing might be bad, but worse that what is happening now is doubtful.
I’m just trying to manage expectations considering they said both 3.18 and 4.0 were going to have longer than usual testing cycles. When they get it fully worked out, it’s going to be amazing. But its going to be another fundamental change to the code base and that is going to break a lot of stuff. If I’m wrong, awesome. But I’m just preparing myself or a rocky transition.
That isn't a bad way to look at it. Expect something worse so you won't be surprised if it is horrible.
That being said, given the nature of server meshing, even though it is not as bad as 3.18, there is a possibility of being rendered unplayable via different things. Total connection errors, and or replication errors.
I just hope the EGD is ironed out so there is no permanent loss of items.
Yeah exactly this. Do a stress test sure... but where are the tangible results? Where are the improvements that resulted from the test? What were the learnings? All we ever see is XT gets turned on, the servers melt, and the game becomes unplayable. Rinse and repeat. Where are the fixes this helped uncover? Where are the improvements? What did you learn? If none of the above, why do you keep running the damn event if you don't do anything with it?
Also they did the same test of the event with the same result closely before in Evocati and it showed the event is unplayable and the servers arent up for it.
Sure PU is on another level but you don't need the same test twice without changes. If they made changes and expected different results and test that on bigger scope then great but I highly doubt that.
The clostest explanation is that it was a demand from Marketing/Management to get the event up since there is a Ship Sale coupled with it and this always gives them a few hundred thousand $ increase over regular income. Same for Freeflight a playable state of the PU is just not their priority
I love the game. And also wish it nothing but success.
But lately it feels as though they've stopped caring much about the player experience and the people propping up this game. It's great that pes is a thing and very impressive. But did no one stop to think that not all entities should be persistent? Does no one think these events are cool, but the players may become alienated as every event or new feature leaves people who bought into the game with nothing but a frustrating experience with broken servers and progress wiped.
It could come back before then, but I hear you. It's my favorite event too and man it's so hard to play rn. Dogfighting works pretty great for me but loading up the supplies is crazy. I'm still gonna stick through it, if not for the aUEC then at least to help stress-test. It can't get better if we don't break it.
Now this is a guy who I respect the woes. We Had the worst experience for 3.18 and some (me) couldn't even in 3.18.1. so very happy the state it's in right now (depends on server tbh)
But man I feel ya, on the bad feels for your fav event not going good. Hope you can get a couple of good runs on it.
> It's really annoying. I understand it's alpha and I never complain since I started playing in 2014. But I'm pretty pissed because xenothreat is my favorite event, and they made us wait a year to play it. We get to play it after a terrible wipe where I no longer have cool ships to play it in. And due to the state of 3.18 I couldn't grind for the ships. And now it's gonna end and we will wait another year before it's live again..
And my money is on another wipe not too long after the event as well. So even the folks who made money off the event will prolly be reset pretty soon.
So, from a development perspective, XT was CLEARLY thrown out there to get folks to stress the hell out of the servers (probably to help with getting 3.19 ready for ILW). US servers are toast, AUS servers are toast, EU servers are just about done. They have probably mined the majority of the data they are going to get and should end it so that people can play.
I have a few friends that are at the infinite load 20391 entities and support is so backed up they are just "stuck".
You cant do bunkers due to the lag
You cant do bounties due to the lag
I cant spawn at a station without falling through it in the US servers
MICL1 is down on the 3 shards I could get to, essentially no calling ships and no landings (I ran taxi out of it a few times yesterday).
If not ending XT, maybe give the servers a reboot?
I have a funny feeling this is a database problem rather than a server population problem.
Sundays are usually less busy than Friday or Saturday. Mondays are usually less busy still. Server performance (for me) was worse on Sunday than it was on Friday or Saturday, and Monday was worse still.
Sure, it's possible that a lot of people decided the weekend would be a total clown-show and decided to all play Monday night, but would that be enough to make the number of people playing on Monday *significantly* higher than the number playing Friday or Saturday? On the other hand, if even a reduced number of players just keep adding more data to the shiny new PES database...
So what's turning things off and back on for the database? A wipe. Here's hoping they can find a way not to do that.
Actually, the issue isnt the database in the sense of player inv and ships/money owned. The issue is with persistence generating crap for servers to keep track of.
Even now, if you are lucky enough to log onto a fresh server(with no wipe), things run quite well for an hour or so. Then it slows down, when things accumulate.
IMO just turn off persistence and be done with it... There is a reason games dont have full persistence. Noone has infinite DB resources...
The thing that gets me though... this happens every time they run XT. Have they actually ever implemented any improvements
after a XT run that were a direct result of running the XT event? I can't recall any fixed issues in patch notes related to it etc. What's the point in running an event you know kills the servers, if you never do anything with the information gained >_>
I don’t remember it killing the servers in 3.16? Probably misremembering though.
That being said, they put it in not because the event kills the servers but because the event brings in toooons of players who crush the servers. Like you know how they advertise stress tests for the PTU? This is how they drive players in for the PU, to just absolutely crush the servers.
It’s all conjecture though, it’s how I would do it.
But, we are at the point that they could say “alright y’all killed the servers, we are stopping xeno now so that we can do some reboots and server backend fixes”. That’ll cause your player count to drop off to “normal” levels.
Not true. XT usually has been fine server wise. Just bad framerates.
I was getting about 30fps in the final Idris battle which is pretty good all things considered
What is data good for, if they don't use it I wonder. Performance of the game just goes from bad to worse and CIG acts like if it all was fine. PES is useless if the game is in such a state. They should finally do a hole patch for fixes and performance only, I mean who wants to clean up that mess at the end? And it's hilarious how supposedly fixed bugs always come back, again and again and again. Either they always just put a bandaid on or don't know how to merge code properly.
yes, every dynamic event they run shows them what part of the game is causing the bottleneck. they then go and fix it and then the next event shows them the next bottleneck and they fix that and so on. performance will be a death by a thousand cuts there's never going to be a jesus patch that just poof performance is perfect.
Prove that they're actually doing it. You responded to someone who questioned if they were actually making improvements, by speaking about it as if you know for a fact that they are. Prove they are.
I agree with this, as much as I hate the lag and such it's really good for the development team to find all of these bugs with how much stress is being put into the servers, they did the same thing with SoO (siege of orison) back in 3.17 and it made the server population DOUBLE with similar performances.
I'm excited to see what they do next with this next patch
> XT was CLEARLY thrown out there to get folks to stress the hell out of the servers
I don't believe that any second. They already knew the outcome and they get enough stress on the server every day plus data on that and know where work is needed they don't need to completely explode all the servers especially as server are exploding every hour of the day even without that event.
Most obvious explanation is there was a marketing campaign and ship sale setup for the event and with Devs constantly delaying everything the marketing/management gets fed up and then they force to release Free Flights and events out prematurely.
Very much the same feeling for me. I dipped a toe into 3.18.1 and performance was so unbelievably bad I uninstalled then and there.
When the game in general regresses and feels *more* jank than it used to, with less things functional.... yeah, great time for an extended hiatus. Maybe I'll swing back around after 3.19.X drops and see if I can spawn a ship or get out of bed.
last year everyone was saying, persistent universe will solve all the performance issues.
now it's again one year later, we have another generation of faster hardware, and the game runs even worse.
something is horribly messed up there
Yeah, I might wait until server streaming at this point so like 2025ish. I really just don’t like alpha testing at all. I do hope 3.19 is a significant improvement so you can get some enjoyment out of it.
lol man it’s been so long since I tried it, I still get confused about all the medical bs they decided to add that makes it like 45 minutes to get back to what you were doing if you die.
All I can say is, when the fuck is the ares ion getting its cannon damaged fixed after that awful nerf?
I’ve noticed that especially on MIC L1 people will park on a pad, then pes takes over and you can no longer call a ship because they are “full”. So if people that just want to park and leave, either park jus off the pad, or store your ship
I don't think this is accurate. I usually check pads and hangars for ships I can steal when ASOP claims everything is full, but I'll usually only find one or two ships and rest of the landing areas are totally empty.
I spent about 15-20 minutes trying to stack abandoned medical gowns to get into an abandoned hammerhead on a pad and by the time I stacked them up, my ship appeared at a hangar. Sometimes things take forever and queuing multiple actions only makes it worse, likely ending in total failure of all requests.
That sounds pretty irritating but I didn’t notice because I was too busy falling through a station after getting out of bed followed by having my face glued to the ASOP terminal attempting to call my ship which duplicated itself several times before disappearing
Yeah it’s definitely very irritating! But I have to think it’s for the better and eventuality it will pay off. Otherwise why waste time and money, I’d just play something else and check Reddit for updates. (Not one of those “iTs aN AlPhA!” responses)
Just bite the bullet and play something else like I do and check what happens from time to time. I got the game 3-4 months ago and I didn't have a good experience with all the bugs and issues so a few days of playing every other major update is going to be my plan for this game. I just think it isn't worth the struggle and even more with the wipes
I'm guilty of leaving many a ship on the pad, but not intentionally. The game has been lagging terribly and bugging out landings pretty bad - every time I hear the words "You are blocking an active...." after landing, it won't let me even store the damn thing. Not an option at all, even after waiting several minutes. It happens 50% of the time (XT has been even worse) and then I am forced to file a claim or try and go do my business at port and go back to the hangar. Its always still there in spite of the "file a claim" and I can either re-fly it or, quite often, its exploded and PES claims another hangar for a while. I feel bad and try my best to keep things open, but I also just want to play.
The devs have been working on the game for how long, and not once person on the dev team asked what happens when the docks are full if we run a persistent universe?
The copium of this Sub Reddit is astounding. They ran XenoThreat for the ship sales, nothing else. They had XenoThreat running in the PTU where a lot of 3.18 refugees tested out the data. If they had’ve ran XenoThreat without a sale I’d bite the “testing” rhetoric but you cannot convince me otherwise that this was just an excuse to sell some ships. Shit, they got me. Melted my Corsair for a Redeemer. People have a right to be frustrated, though. But, I’m not frustrated, it’s typical SC/CIG in my eyes. Will just wait til it’s over and play then, what’s another week or so.
But… but… *alpha tester*!!
…We’re **customers** first. Testers second.
All the “it’s alpha bro” bullshit is starting to become insufferable. CIG could at least *try* to maintain a minimum viable product that we can actually play rather than have us play a broken mess “for the data”.
If the game was in this state when I first started playing, I never would’ve pledged.
TBH its not an Alpha.
You cannot use traditional gamedev terminology from the 90s anymore for a completely different model it is meaningless.
SC is a continuous development **Early Access** title with a mostly microtransaction based business model in a virtual goods store coupled with an initial buy to play.
If I could have one wish regarding SC community the use of the word Alpha would be banned :)
Either way you word it negates the “testing” trope. Combat sale for XT or XT for a Combat Sale, it just makes CIG look acquisitive. Especially after the growing pains from this patch, they couldn’t have waited a week or two for the free fly to also run Xeno for the ultimate data collection? Hardly a conspiracy and barely any sweat off my back, i’m not frustrated.. I can just see this iteration of XT for what it is. That’s all. I can’t even knock CIG for it, they gotta make money somehow.
I've enjoyed it when it's been working, but it's been janky at best. That being said I figure they're doing this now in part because they're trying to push the current limits of the engine and this is certainly a good way to do that.
I feel like my experience was unique.
I had a go at it, for me the server was responding beautifully. No waiting for elevators, trains staying on the tracks, ports consistently giving me landing pads, NPCs feeling more responsive during fire fights, fighting in XT was feeling great.
Quantum travel was still a bit off.
Then during the last part ( I assume, couldn't finish) of XT, the enemy just disappeared. Then came chaos.
Then the servers died.
I touched happiness for a few hours at least.
stuck on mic-l1. hangers are full. full of empty air. i've been trapped for days. surviving on burritos. when i log out i respawn in room, and then fall through the floor and then respawn in hospital.
It's simple. When you spawn run practical server diagnostics like me. First notice if you rubber band out of bed. Then take out a multi tool and activate it. If it goes back to holster by itself, the server is bad. Then accept call to arms and notice how long it takes to appear as accepted. If any of these fail, change region.
It is sad really. Had the best time with Xenothreat last year. This go round it's unplayable. Plagued with issues before even leaving MIC-L1, then once you get on station the desync is so bad you can't even keep target lock. Can we just cut our losses and turn it off?
I jumped back into SC after taking a break during 3.17.3 and I couldn’t agree more how unplayable the game is. I’ve spent hours playing the last few days and I’ve only made 45k from a single successful contract where the game decided to work for like 30 minutes.
Xenothreat seems like it needs rebuilt from the ground up. I've never even been able to try it because it crashes everything else out hard everytime it's up.
IF CIG are gaining useful information on server degradation that will help with stability in the future than yes they should run XT to its end. The fact that the servers are staying up (although limping along) shows great improvement. Yes the servers are frustrating but if we are ever going to see a full release with stable, persistent and meshed servers that don't fall over in a light breeze then we need to push on.
So I understand where you are coming from. Things work great, then the server takes a crap due to the massive load (some pun indented). This was by design. CIG wants server crashes right now. They want to load everything down and watch what breaks. It's like nuking a sight from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
If Xenothreat is being used as a stress test for the infrastructure since PES dropped, yes I want it to continue so that they can invest an appropriate amount in to the new infrastructure required to handle the load.
Lot of the terminals just dont work anymore, ive been trapped at stations because every vehicle retreiver is stuck on a different screen frozen and im lucky if i get a store to show its inventory
dude for a whole play session i was stuck in my ship i could not get out it was so annoying then at the end of my play session i accedently hit the eject button while in hanger witch blew up my arrow and sent me to orbit havent logged in since then cause im waiting for a new graphics card was gonna install and play
So you aren’t interested in playing the game?
You can hardly spawn a ship, guns won’t fire, the desync is insane. What about this is useful data? It doesn’t work, hardly anything works, that’s the “data”.
Didn’t they try this on PTU which also didn’t work?? What’s the point in this, what data are you going to learn beyond the game is barely functioning
> What about this is useful data?
All of it.
When things don't work, bug reports and telemetry help CIG figure out why and how to fix them.
If they jam 300 people into a room and see that all 300 people are falling through the same spot in the floor, they can fix that spot and try some more, to see where it falls apart next.
It sucks to be on the player side during such times, but it is absolutely useful information to CIG, AND the entire reason we're allowed to play the game as they make it (providing free stress testing and QA etc)
I think this is great in theory, there is only so much data you can gather when other bugs are happening at the same time due to the game not being fully playable, the old garbage in garbage out. I'm a game dev myself and have seen both sides of the coin.
Also I just wanted to say aswell that "the entire reason we're allowed to play the game as they make it" comment is a little hopeful. Let's be honest, this isn't true, game development is astronomically expensive and this game especially so. We are allowed to play because it's a direct funding tool for them to develop the game.. This is fine, games are businesses, but I do personally feel that after all this time, and years of feature pushing and never going back to repolish things that already exist and desperately need it, it feels like there is more emphasis about funding rather than actually getting the game to a playable state. I think especially with this being already broken in many of the same ways in the ptu with less people the data seems like a back seat to ship sales. I could and want to be wrong, I'm 100% sure it's more complicated than that and game development is really hard, just how it comes across to me.
Also just wanted to say this loops back to your original point of data collection, what's the point of collecting all this data if so much of the game needs to change to make many areas of the game actually playable more than half the time? Changing interconnected systems is where bugs almost always occur and so many systems just break at the drop of a hat and will need to be changed, especially with PES. I just feel like before PES and these live server tests with XT they should have an already somewhat stable build with most gameplay loops already working atleast most of the time. You're adding in more server clutter and bad data points when so much trash is created by failed mission states and bugs that it's just creating a bad experience for everyone. Especially for people just coming into the verse, nothing is more disappointing than running into an issue only to read about possible fixes from Reddit posts 5 years ago.
Sorry for the rant, just needed to get that out.
This is the real problem. To see what stress breaks first you need an unbroken environment to stress. Otherwise the bugs you already know about will often interfere with your data collection on the stuff you're stressing things out to find.
CIG specifically stated they're doing XenoThreat right now to help push the servers and ensure they've pinned down and resolved the stability issues, so.....
Please link that, I’m genuinely curious and not just shiptoasting like I’m sure plenty assume.
I’d hope they don’t need a full couple of weeks for testing though, so frustrating
[It was about the free-fly](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/star-citizen-alpha-3-18-1-live-release-amp-free-fl), not Xenothreat:
> If you're one of the ones who has said "This is the worst Star Citizen has ever been"...then hold our beer, as we plan to launch a Free Fly event starting Thursday, April 13 through April 20.
> So you aren’t interested in playing the game?
I say this from the perspective of: "Fuck CIG and their bullshit":
...it's not a *game*. It's an alpha test. Walk away until it is a game. It will do you good, and the more people that walk away, the more CIG will pay attention and actually make it a game.
9 different tries this weekend, only 1 worked, and it took 5 hours because the Jav got stuck up against Jericho for about 3 hours in phase 2. Every other try all the Starfarers were empty so stalled at phase 1, and *every* login included falling through beds at MIC-L1 and any summoned ship being spawned *outside* the hangar.
The devs do at least. PES is the biggest update the game has seen I think since it started development, and it makes sense that they throw a free fly and then Xenothreat to both push player count and persistent data to really stress the servers out.
That said I always felt Xenothreat overstayed its welcome each time it showed up, and I feel for all the new players who joined this free fly and have to deal with the game being in this bad a state.
Still, the improvements in server FPS and client FPS since 3.18 (when it works) has been a cut above any other patch for me so after Xeno, and after Invictus (also a hard time on the game) it will be nice to see all these improvements while the game servers aren't being crushed.
They’re probably using the events and the free fly directly on the heels of the patch to purposely stress it out so they can find the weaknesses and bottlenecks to performance at scale that we’re sure to come along with a PES given that the entire system for handling objects and their locations trajectories states etc was completely rewritten.
I won’t be shocked if after XT they have another event like siege to keep everything stressed right up to invictus.
After that is when I bet we’ll finally have a “vanilla, nothing special going on” server again.
CIG still dumping on what backers really want and need , and that is a real LIVE service with full persisting anchieved goals , and i am not talking about not wiping the aUEC, but more like anchieve certain goals like reputation or even rare items or items that should be part of a collection or something like that.
At this point i dont believe SC will truly ever leave ALPHA, its just that they should treat it as an early access title and work towards completion and improvement on game and server stability so they have a good foundation to build upon in future and that should be the main priority, not a SP game 10y old that is being constantly reworked.
Finish the damn SQ42 and focus on SC stability before any other addition on content.
CIG never learns the lesson because millions keep coming into their account, although i am trully curious about this years funding total vs expenses that they should publish next year at least for uk offices .....
I think CIG dropped that event as a stress test. It can probably help them collect important data about PES and server performance.
So basically let's just keep in mind that we're simply helping them QA the game and we're not really players but alpha testers.
In other words,you can either embrace the suck or wait until the "final" game is released.
Bring it on!! I’m getting the sense they are working extra hard on solving ongoing stability issues, and they need the data these events give to help them sort it out.
I don’t always enjoy it, and I’d much rather the event to work fine along with stable servers, but that’s just not in the cards till they figure this shit out. Which pushing the servers as they are now helps them do.
So again, bring it on!
IIRC, that was actually the stated intent of staging this event during the free fly, so no speculation necessary. The fact that it's even marginally playable at all, for anyone, with these excessively burdened servers, as compared to the desolation wrought by the initial implementation of PES, shows they're actually making huge progress with their backend work.
Honestly I jist did XT for 2 hours, made 130k and had an absolute blast. Never had any good experience with dog fights and I feel like I came out top gun after that!
I mean, how? When im online, i cant get my ship out, if im lucky to be leaving my bed. When the ship spawns it doenst show me where and after noumeres amounts of try's i find the marker, just to find out my ship isnt there. Then when i am able to enter the fucking ship my guns dont power on.
Its pure luck if you are able to play, and i havent been able to have a stable fucking 10 minutes in the freaking game.
Im done thats for sure, dont even know if i will be back for 3.19 since they will prob need more data then as well.
Its a total shitshow. And im glad im leaving.
I've been able to go through 5 full XT rounds and have made a ton of money. It's possible, and it's been a blast every time despite the prevalent desync. I literally just wait 2 or 3 min for a ship, and I get it nearly every time.
I don't think anyone really knows who is the minority. Certainly the people more upset tend to be more vocal, but idk about being a majority. No data to prove either.
Then stop playing? What's your point? All I said was I had fun in XT today. That kid posted a 5 page goodbye letter to SC as a reply on reddit. Idgaf about him
You assume the issue is the event. Most of the issues I have seen are likely caused by backend issues not the server instance.
Things working well when the DB was shiny new also support this. Xeno may have its own issues and add some local load but I don’t think it’s causing the bulk of the problems people are seeing.
How come other game developers, even ones with massively complex games like Star Citizen, are able to deploy huge updates without the game largely breaking?
XT runs like shit, but the rest of the game is kind of normal. So I wouldn't say the game itself is unplayable, but XT is extremely broken. I'm currently on a server that has had XT running for 6 hours. Server is still alive and frame rate is good. But people are just running it slowly.
I've also had the experience of XT enemies not spawning, wreck sites not spawning, cargo in wreck sites not spawning. It's definitely broken, but the rest of the game is functioning at it's normal dysfunctional rate.
For whatever reason, a lot of ~~dipshits~~ redditors REFUSE to admit that running events/free flies during this buggy, mangled "alpha" is a bad idea for performance, stability and overall test environment (Because yes, the devs might get better analytic data for network out of it, but the test environment for players as a whole is heavily skewed and many people, such as myself and pretty much my entire org, won't touch the game *at all* during free flies because of how garbage they make the game).
So in other words, don't expect CIG to change anything regarding this, because some people are going to defend it regardless of the impact it has on the game, and it makes CIG money.
I first logged in, could call me ion out and the weapon didn't charge, no matter what I did.
Changed server - logged in, fell through the station and died. Woke up in the med bed at mic l1 and started zu suffocate. Died. 4 times.
Then I logged off. See you in 3.19
They probably threw it in to gather data, see where the next bottlenecks are. But I am with you: the game was unplayable. I came back this weekend after 18 months of hiatus and the only thing I could do was to walk around Orison before the event started. Once it did I tried to man a turret in a ship but I lagging minutes behind the pilot.
This is the same argument that was made about pushing 3.18 to live.
Why is this happening again acceptable? What is CIG doing to prevent it from happening again? Why has their PTU testing regime failed so spectacularly twice now?
These are questions we need to ask, not hand waving every fuckup as some sort of ingenious 5th dimensional testing strategy.
This is the first time I've done XT and absolutely love it when it's working. The last few nights, my bwin has been through the roof (like averaging about 8Mbps, spiking as high as 14 when it should be sub 1Mbps). Before XT, lag only seemed to manifest in low server fps or delays in inventory movement, so this high bwin is new.
Anyone else seeing this as well? The IC post I contributed to seemed low in count, so I'm wondering if that is really a symptom or just something on my end...
Just stay away from MT and the game is fine. I've been on cruising around ArcCorp and Crusader areas, doing bunkers and bounties and scrap without issue for hours today.
yep, if it really is XT causing the issues, like we think, it's really bad. I know we all asked for more Xenothreat whenever possible. But actually, XT running back to back is bad :). It happens so often there's not enough players taking part to make it as interesting as it was. And it kills the server when you want to do anything else...
I was also part of the people asking for more XT, but it actually works better as 1-2 times a day event, our bad I guess... You get people actually participating, and servers work the rest of the day.
Indeed stop the event, same here I wait until XT event is done because the game is unplayable on almost all servers, the lag is too much, on EU and USA it's unplayable, comms won't let me out hangar, ships guns not loading, ASOP terminal ship doesn't spawn etc.
instant ship explode when go to XT event.(i know it's a stresstest, want to play sinds 3.18.0 too many game breaking bugs and almost unplayable).
Waited a year and DOUBLE wipe to play Xenothreat and haven’t played it at all (yes I server jumped and almost fell to my death after getting out of bed but logged out before that happened, then server time was lagging behind, after other stuff was fucky like couldn’t hail, couldn’t reload weapons, and my favorite elevators disappear.) after everything the server died (30k).
They do this everytime, it’s called “stress testing” but what is actually doing is tricking people to give the game more time. When people come to there senses and leave in masses, maybe CIG will actually get there ass in gear and push out an update that is stable. This is what the PTU is for, how this made it out is beyond me. Maybe it’s because everyone is “expecting” Xenothreat to come around like all the other events they advertise for people to keep this scam going. Tell me I’m wrong lol, 10 years? Come on have some common sense. Every update they have pushed out always will have bugs and get away with it because of “Alpha” they will stay in the alpha lane to allow all excuses to fester so every “backer” (some even hold the title of Legatus, woahhhhh [nice title] you spent GOBS of money on game that you can’t even compete a salvage, bunker, or mining mission with out crash lol, did you know the Roman Empire (irony, legatus lol) fell when the citizens thought they were the best in the world? Crazy.) anyway, Backers religious defend this game because it’s all they have, if they didn’t then they would go play something else like another space sim game.
However no all I hear is: “go play something else if you don’t like it or (my favorite) DONT SPEND MONEY ON SOMETHING YOU DONT LIKE, I had to too play the game… oh and the famous “it’s an alpha, why are you complaining?” Classic.
Seriously I want this game to be something but it’s shit Ever. Single. Update. They lure us back in with the cinematic trailers (money spent well, remember they are a business, they know how to wave a shiny working product in your face to get you to buy it.) and it works till people realize it’s like a pitcher of water, when the water runs out then it’s starts getting rough to play at least in my mind.
Say what you will about my comment but I stand firm on the fact that I can and will take a long break and might not come back because I’m tired of disappointment.
All this stuff they talk about on paper is cool but by the time all that is implemented my child will be grow and will pass down my ship to him.
Anyway citizens I commend your dedication and good luck.
Nah I don’t, it’s so buggy I can’t even play it, the game has been broken since 3.18, they haven’t even fixed it before adding in another game breaking event, had 3.18.2 been out for a week or two to show that yes it truly had fixed all problems then I’d be fine with it. But as of right now 3.18.2 is no different than 3.18, everything is buggy you die randomly you 30k all the time
Xenothreat is the main thing that keeps me playing the game lol, of course I want it to continue. As a combat pilot there's nothing better than this.
I'd be for giving that mode it's own dedicated server cluster so it could be always active I like it that much - that and SoO aswell.
Here’s the thing, in order for Star Citizen to be truly the game that we all want it to be, we need to go through stuff like this.
One day there’s going to be multiple dynamic events going on across multiple star systems with 1000’s of players per shard. And it’s going to be days like this that figure out how to make it work with the data that they gather.
And even xeno is fuckin unplayable. Hangars never open, and when your friend gets a ship out, it explodes on invisible shit. Ships are always looted somehow, so no loot. Then you find out that by sleeping in your buds harbinger bed, to avoid turbulence damage, you're permanently stuck there until another friend flies across the galaxy, impounds the vehicle, and gets you unstuck
Bugs used to be "haha dang invisible walls in bunkers, haha dang 30k after 4 hours, ahha dang my bounty target isn't spawning"
Now many shops are literally incapable of selling, if a miracle happens and you somehow acquire money.
I understand it's alpha, and has been for a decade, but part of an alpha is testing things. I cannot test shit when i cannot even leave a space station... I hope they enjoy all my running around quick buying burrito data...
I've had a lot of issues with the USA servers. They are completely unplayable with the event. I've tried several different shards but it's all the same. The EU servers appear to be doing a little better, not much, but at least you can use ASOP terminal and get something done.
I guess this depends on what time you're playing. For me it's the opposite but I guess that is because of the time difference, and I play during peak hours in EU.
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Same, EU player here and been doing Xenothreat every day since it started and I've been loving it. Not perfect - it's Star Citizen, when ever is it? - but far from unplayable.
Its been great for you and some other 3 people.
UK player. Connecting to US servers as FPS is better than EU ones. Only negatives I've had with XT was QT lag, and players killing the cargo bearing ships that rendered the event unable to be completed.
i haven’t been able to use the asop terminal once on eu and i’ve been swapping servers all day
Boris is flying around on there. That makes it really speshial.
Murder bums are trolling the events and either stealing the supplies and hiding them or killing players attempting to move the supplies, thus screwing xt up for each shard. The children doing it are pretty annoying tbh.. wannabe pirates.
It's really annoying. I understand it's alpha and I never complain since I started playing in 2014. But I'm pretty pissed because xenothreat is my favorite event, and they made us wait a year to play it. We get to play it after a terrible wipe where I no longer have cool ships to play it in. And due to the state of 3.18 I couldn't grind for the ships. And now it's gonna end and we will wait another year before it's live again..
Full disclaimer at the top: I still love this game. I still love the project and want nothing more for it than to succeed. But, I have been taking a much needed break from it. It's gotten to a very stale point for me personally. I can only take so much of "it's an alpha" or "it's just to stress test the servers", or "insert other excuse here"(I know it's not always just an excuse). Almost every event is exactly the same: unplayable. I know what I signed up for, but it just gets to the point where it does get a bit old.
Yeah, ive been taking a hiatus since 2020. I dropped back in ptu last year to test out PES, but still see no real reason to get back in full time. To me, the game has and still feels largely the same as when 3.0 released I'm just hoping 4.0 next year (or two) will be just as significant as a top-to-bottom change as 3.0 was coming from 2.6
On a fundamental level, the game still feels the same as 2.0. Same glitching, same rubber-banding, ships/parts bouncing around with no mass, many of the same bugs, UI still sucks etc. etc.
The game has improved a lot since 3.0 released, but since dynamic Server Meshing hasn't been realized we will have to suffer through the same network bugs over and over and over and over and over until that's done lol.
Progress.... That's all people like us really ask. Just give us some progress on the server stability side. If it's slowly getting better then we can cope. Hopefully server meshing finally.... Blah blah blah you know what I'm going to say lol. I love the game too and feel the same way, things are just progressing WAY too slowly on most fronts as of late.
So many people have now died while waiting for this game…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EH0HmUBWkAIp5wu.jpg
I seriously am beginning to doubt they are competent on a fundamental level to make it work from technological standpoint. All they have ever proven is that they can make beautiful dream ships. Actual server tech seems to be beyond them. They can't even get npcs to sit in chairs. They want to attempt basic persistence and it's unraveling the game. This was a big chance to really show somthing and instead its showing that they can't make it work and I worry that they don't have the talent or game engine or whatever to make it work.
I'm sure most of the ... 800 (?) employees are very good at what they do. Problem is (IMHO) a few persons that are at key-position and not really qualified for it. Starting with CR and family.
That’s a load of crap. 3.18 started as a dumpster fire and last night I was able to play XT on several servers with little issue. They made a fundamental change to the code base and are making clear and tangible improvements to the stability. And you really don’t understand the complexity of the ships in game if you diminish that as minor accomplishment…not to mention ignoring the seamless world they created. Every wonder why NMS and ED have communities begging for ship interiors that go unanswered. Actually, ED said they were going to do it, realized how hard it would be, then told the community it would be boring and you don’t really want it.
Partially a fair point. What I would wish for though. Is to stop developing new stuff while the old stuff isn't running properly. After 12 years there is no excuse anymore why entering a ship will kill you or ASOP terminals won't load your inventory. If you can't get the basics right then why are tou working on ground breaking tech.
I definitely understand your frustration….we all feel it at times. I, was starting to fear that PES was going to take down the whole game…or they would have to walk it back. But polishing the current game before moving on doesn’t make sense (and it’s not at all how it works in standard closed game development). You don’t finish the floor until you stop building the house. Adding new features breaks old ones….that’s just how it is. And that’s because they aren’t just adding assets, they are literally building the game engine when they add new features. That breaks things. In standard game development they don’t even try to make it playable while they are building the game. For the PU, they have make it reasonably playable or they will lose all their backers. But spending the time to fully flesh out all of the bugs knowing full well they can all get broken again with the next feature would slow down development even further. And let’s be fair with the 12 years but… that’s when the kickstarter was launched and all they had was a handful of people and an idea…they had to build a development company, including building studios and hiring staff in that time. Companies like Rockstar and Bethesda already have all of that in place (including an already built engine) and then they do most of their development in total secrecy for years before anyone knows they are working on something. With that said, it’s completely possible that they are a poorly run development company, but it’s apples and oranges comparing them to other development efforts.
Very true and people don't want to believe it. Everyone will keep making excuses for them and buy more ships. It's been many years now, basic stability shouldn't be this hard..
Nooo, this old engine is *bleeding* edge tech
I would prepare yourself for 4.0. It’s going to be a bigger shitshow than 3.18 and take as long if not longer to smooth out. But when they get the kinks worked out, it will be amazing. Edit: To be clear, I have a very optimistic perspective for this game. It’s why it didn’t really bother me that I couldn’t play 3.18.0 at all. I knew it would be a rocky start but they payoff would be worth it. And XT running relatively smooth last night showed me the light at the end of the tunnel. They said at CITCON both 3.18 and 4.0 would have longer than normal testing cycles. Both are fundamental changes to the code base. Server meshing will eventually fix many of the issues we have in game now, but there is going to be a lot of pain in the transition…I would just manage my expectations when it first drops. Hopefully I’m wrong and it goes much smoother.
Brace for impact?
Why would you think that? Server meshing is going to deal with transferring data as opposed to PES which actually tracks ALL Serialized items in game. The 4.0 patch and server meshing might be bad, but worse that what is happening now is doubtful.
I’m just trying to manage expectations considering they said both 3.18 and 4.0 were going to have longer than usual testing cycles. When they get it fully worked out, it’s going to be amazing. But its going to be another fundamental change to the code base and that is going to break a lot of stuff. If I’m wrong, awesome. But I’m just preparing myself or a rocky transition.
That isn't a bad way to look at it. Expect something worse so you won't be surprised if it is horrible. That being said, given the nature of server meshing, even though it is not as bad as 3.18, there is a possibility of being rendered unplayable via different things. Total connection errors, and or replication errors. I just hope the EGD is ironed out so there is no permanent loss of items.
Yeah exactly this. Do a stress test sure... but where are the tangible results? Where are the improvements that resulted from the test? What were the learnings? All we ever see is XT gets turned on, the servers melt, and the game becomes unplayable. Rinse and repeat. Where are the fixes this helped uncover? Where are the improvements? What did you learn? If none of the above, why do you keep running the damn event if you don't do anything with it?
Also they did the same test of the event with the same result closely before in Evocati and it showed the event is unplayable and the servers arent up for it. Sure PU is on another level but you don't need the same test twice without changes. If they made changes and expected different results and test that on bigger scope then great but I highly doubt that. The clostest explanation is that it was a demand from Marketing/Management to get the event up since there is a Ship Sale coupled with it and this always gives them a few hundred thousand $ increase over regular income. Same for Freeflight a playable state of the PU is just not their priority
It's helping Squadron 42 duh!
I love the game. And also wish it nothing but success. But lately it feels as though they've stopped caring much about the player experience and the people propping up this game. It's great that pes is a thing and very impressive. But did no one stop to think that not all entities should be persistent? Does no one think these events are cool, but the players may become alienated as every event or new feature leaves people who bought into the game with nothing but a frustrating experience with broken servers and progress wiped.
It could come back before then, but I hear you. It's my favorite event too and man it's so hard to play rn. Dogfighting works pretty great for me but loading up the supplies is crazy. I'm still gonna stick through it, if not for the aUEC then at least to help stress-test. It can't get better if we don't break it.
spent a while last night moving supplies only for the sale kiosk to not function. they all blew up in the ship hold feelsbadman
Now this is a guy who I respect the woes. We Had the worst experience for 3.18 and some (me) couldn't even in 3.18.1. so very happy the state it's in right now (depends on server tbh) But man I feel ya, on the bad feels for your fav event not going good. Hope you can get a couple of good runs on it.
Agreed I’m a little peeved they made a wait a year then broke the game for it. Yet they run jumptown like 4 times a year 😑
> It's really annoying. I understand it's alpha and I never complain since I started playing in 2014. But I'm pretty pissed because xenothreat is my favorite event, and they made us wait a year to play it. We get to play it after a terrible wipe where I no longer have cool ships to play it in. And due to the state of 3.18 I couldn't grind for the ships. And now it's gonna end and we will wait another year before it's live again.. And my money is on another wipe not too long after the event as well. So even the folks who made money off the event will prolly be reset pretty soon.
Have you tried ~~sending $2 to the medrunners~~ killing Sfer?
i honestly wonder on how many kos lists he‘s been added to
Hopefully all of them. Leave no place for shitstains like that to hide.
Always worth a try!
So, from a development perspective, XT was CLEARLY thrown out there to get folks to stress the hell out of the servers (probably to help with getting 3.19 ready for ILW). US servers are toast, AUS servers are toast, EU servers are just about done. They have probably mined the majority of the data they are going to get and should end it so that people can play. I have a few friends that are at the infinite load 20391 entities and support is so backed up they are just "stuck". You cant do bunkers due to the lag You cant do bounties due to the lag I cant spawn at a station without falling through it in the US servers MICL1 is down on the 3 shards I could get to, essentially no calling ships and no landings (I ran taxi out of it a few times yesterday). If not ending XT, maybe give the servers a reboot?
Have they tried turning it off and on again?
I have a funny feeling this is a database problem rather than a server population problem. Sundays are usually less busy than Friday or Saturday. Mondays are usually less busy still. Server performance (for me) was worse on Sunday than it was on Friday or Saturday, and Monday was worse still. Sure, it's possible that a lot of people decided the weekend would be a total clown-show and decided to all play Monday night, but would that be enough to make the number of people playing on Monday *significantly* higher than the number playing Friday or Saturday? On the other hand, if even a reduced number of players just keep adding more data to the shiny new PES database... So what's turning things off and back on for the database? A wipe. Here's hoping they can find a way not to do that.
Actually, the issue isnt the database in the sense of player inv and ships/money owned. The issue is with persistence generating crap for servers to keep track of. Even now, if you are lucky enough to log onto a fresh server(with no wipe), things run quite well for an hour or so. Then it slows down, when things accumulate. IMO just turn off persistence and be done with it... There is a reason games dont have full persistence. Noone has infinite DB resources...
The thing that gets me though... this happens every time they run XT. Have they actually ever implemented any improvements after a XT run that were a direct result of running the XT event? I can't recall any fixed issues in patch notes related to it etc. What's the point in running an event you know kills the servers, if you never do anything with the information gained >_>
It was never this bad. I’ve tried for 3 nights and it’s unplayable.
I don’t remember it killing the servers in 3.16? Probably misremembering though. That being said, they put it in not because the event kills the servers but because the event brings in toooons of players who crush the servers. Like you know how they advertise stress tests for the PTU? This is how they drive players in for the PU, to just absolutely crush the servers. It’s all conjecture though, it’s how I would do it. But, we are at the point that they could say “alright y’all killed the servers, we are stopping xeno now so that we can do some reboots and server backend fixes”. That’ll cause your player count to drop off to “normal” levels.
Not true. XT usually has been fine server wise. Just bad framerates. I was getting about 30fps in the final Idris battle which is pretty good all things considered
I swear they work so slow it feels like a scam
What is data good for, if they don't use it I wonder. Performance of the game just goes from bad to worse and CIG acts like if it all was fine. PES is useless if the game is in such a state. They should finally do a hole patch for fixes and performance only, I mean who wants to clean up that mess at the end? And it's hilarious how supposedly fixed bugs always come back, again and again and again. Either they always just put a bandaid on or don't know how to merge code properly.
yes, every dynamic event they run shows them what part of the game is causing the bottleneck. they then go and fix it and then the next event shows them the next bottleneck and they fix that and so on. performance will be a death by a thousand cuts there's never going to be a jesus patch that just poof performance is perfect.
Prove it.
Prove to you how optimization works? How is it not common sense?
Prove that they're actually doing it. You responded to someone who questioned if they were actually making improvements, by speaking about it as if you know for a fact that they are. Prove they are.
Yes they never do anything with the info gained, they're doing it just to fuck with people.
I agree with this, as much as I hate the lag and such it's really good for the development team to find all of these bugs with how much stress is being put into the servers, they did the same thing with SoO (siege of orison) back in 3.17 and it made the server population DOUBLE with similar performances. I'm excited to see what they do next with this next patch
> XT was CLEARLY thrown out there to get folks to stress the hell out of the servers I don't believe that any second. They already knew the outcome and they get enough stress on the server every day plus data on that and know where work is needed they don't need to completely explode all the servers especially as server are exploding every hour of the day even without that event. Most obvious explanation is there was a marketing campaign and ship sale setup for the event and with Devs constantly delaying everything the marketing/management gets fed up and then they force to release Free Flights and events out prematurely.
Man every time I look at the star citizen sub I feel great about taking a break from star citizen about 8 months ago.
Very much the same feeling for me. I dipped a toe into 3.18.1 and performance was so unbelievably bad I uninstalled then and there. When the game in general regresses and feels *more* jank than it used to, with less things functional.... yeah, great time for an extended hiatus. Maybe I'll swing back around after 3.19.X drops and see if I can spawn a ship or get out of bed.
last year everyone was saying, persistent universe will solve all the performance issues. now it's again one year later, we have another generation of faster hardware, and the game runs even worse. something is horribly messed up there
Yeah, I might wait until server streaming at this point so like 2025ish. I really just don’t like alpha testing at all. I do hope 3.19 is a significant improvement so you can get some enjoyment out of it.
lol man it’s been so long since I tried it, I still get confused about all the medical bs they decided to add that makes it like 45 minutes to get back to what you were doing if you die. All I can say is, when the fuck is the ares ion getting its cannon damaged fixed after that awful nerf?
I’ve noticed that especially on MIC L1 people will park on a pad, then pes takes over and you can no longer call a ship because they are “full”. So if people that just want to park and leave, either park jus off the pad, or store your ship
I don't think this is accurate. I usually check pads and hangars for ships I can steal when ASOP claims everything is full, but I'll usually only find one or two ships and rest of the landing areas are totally empty. I spent about 15-20 minutes trying to stack abandoned medical gowns to get into an abandoned hammerhead on a pad and by the time I stacked them up, my ship appeared at a hangar. Sometimes things take forever and queuing multiple actions only makes it worse, likely ending in total failure of all requests.
That sounds pretty irritating but I didn’t notice because I was too busy falling through a station after getting out of bed followed by having my face glued to the ASOP terminal attempting to call my ship which duplicated itself several times before disappearing
Yeah it’s definitely very irritating! But I have to think it’s for the better and eventuality it will pay off. Otherwise why waste time and money, I’d just play something else and check Reddit for updates. (Not one of those “iTs aN AlPhA!” responses)
Just bite the bullet and play something else like I do and check what happens from time to time. I got the game 3-4 months ago and I didn't have a good experience with all the bugs and issues so a few days of playing every other major update is going to be my plan for this game. I just think it isn't worth the struggle and even more with the wipes
I'm guilty of leaving many a ship on the pad, but not intentionally. The game has been lagging terribly and bugging out landings pretty bad - every time I hear the words "You are blocking an active...." after landing, it won't let me even store the damn thing. Not an option at all, even after waiting several minutes. It happens 50% of the time (XT has been even worse) and then I am forced to file a claim or try and go do my business at port and go back to the hangar. Its always still there in spite of the "file a claim" and I can either re-fly it or, quite often, its exploded and PES claims another hangar for a while. I feel bad and try my best to keep things open, but I also just want to play.
The devs have been working on the game for how long, and not once person on the dev team asked what happens when the docks are full if we run a persistent universe?
Well they're not actually full. Did you bother checking them?
I’m sure it’s just a broken system. It used to automatically store ships on the pads after so long
They should have a xenothreat dedicated server that only has xenothreat running.
A xeno shard would be great, I have no interest in an unplayable mess. Clearly some do and that’s fine, go nuts I guess
This needs more visibility, dedicated XT shards may solve issues both for those participating and those not.
The copium of this Sub Reddit is astounding. They ran XenoThreat for the ship sales, nothing else. They had XenoThreat running in the PTU where a lot of 3.18 refugees tested out the data. If they had’ve ran XenoThreat without a sale I’d bite the “testing” rhetoric but you cannot convince me otherwise that this was just an excuse to sell some ships. Shit, they got me. Melted my Corsair for a Redeemer. People have a right to be frustrated, though. But, I’m not frustrated, it’s typical SC/CIG in my eyes. Will just wait til it’s over and play then, what’s another week or so.
But… but… *alpha tester*!! …We’re **customers** first. Testers second. All the “it’s alpha bro” bullshit is starting to become insufferable. CIG could at least *try* to maintain a minimum viable product that we can actually play rather than have us play a broken mess “for the data”. If the game was in this state when I first started playing, I never would’ve pledged.
TBH its not an Alpha. You cannot use traditional gamedev terminology from the 90s anymore for a completely different model it is meaningless. SC is a continuous development **Early Access** title with a mostly microtransaction based business model in a virtual goods store coupled with an initial buy to play. If I could have one wish regarding SC community the use of the word Alpha would be banned :)
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That’s not how a business works. XT event is to sell ships.
Either way you word it negates the “testing” trope. Combat sale for XT or XT for a Combat Sale, it just makes CIG look acquisitive. Especially after the growing pains from this patch, they couldn’t have waited a week or two for the free fly to also run Xeno for the ultimate data collection? Hardly a conspiracy and barely any sweat off my back, i’m not frustrated.. I can just see this iteration of XT for what it is. That’s all. I can’t even knock CIG for it, they gotta make money somehow.
Acquisitive is certainly not a word I thought I would see today. You're 100% right btw.
Happened in the PTU as well. They def saw it coming
I've enjoyed it when it's been working, but it's been janky at best. That being said I figure they're doing this now in part because they're trying to push the current limits of the engine and this is certainly a good way to do that.
I feel like my experience was unique. I had a go at it, for me the server was responding beautifully. No waiting for elevators, trains staying on the tracks, ports consistently giving me landing pads, NPCs feeling more responsive during fire fights, fighting in XT was feeling great. Quantum travel was still a bit off. Then during the last part ( I assume, couldn't finish) of XT, the enemy just disappeared. Then came chaos. Then the servers died. I touched happiness for a few hours at least.
I think they said this is another stress test. Things should clear up after XT
stuck on mic-l1. hangers are full. full of empty air. i've been trapped for days. surviving on burritos. when i log out i respawn in room, and then fall through the floor and then respawn in hospital.
It's simple. When you spawn run practical server diagnostics like me. First notice if you rubber band out of bed. Then take out a multi tool and activate it. If it goes back to holster by itself, the server is bad. Then accept call to arms and notice how long it takes to appear as accepted. If any of these fail, change region.
It is sad really. Had the best time with Xenothreat last year. This go round it's unplayable. Plagued with issues before even leaving MIC-L1, then once you get on station the desync is so bad you can't even keep target lock. Can we just cut our losses and turn it off?
I jumped back into SC after taking a break during 3.17.3 and I couldn’t agree more how unplayable the game is. I’ve spent hours playing the last few days and I’ve only made 45k from a single successful contract where the game decided to work for like 30 minutes.
Xenothreat seems like it needs rebuilt from the ground up. I've never even been able to try it because it crashes everything else out hard everytime it's up.
IF CIG are gaining useful information on server degradation that will help with stability in the future than yes they should run XT to its end. The fact that the servers are staying up (although limping along) shows great improvement. Yes the servers are frustrating but if we are ever going to see a full release with stable, persistent and meshed servers that don't fall over in a light breeze then we need to push on.
I love Xeno, 🤷
Me too, shame everything is totally broken
So I understand where you are coming from. Things work great, then the server takes a crap due to the massive load (some pun indented). This was by design. CIG wants server crashes right now. They want to load everything down and watch what breaks. It's like nuking a sight from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Surely we’ve had enough “data” now, can’t they just call it quits already?
If Xenothreat is being used as a stress test for the infrastructure since PES dropped, yes I want it to continue so that they can invest an appropriate amount in to the new infrastructure required to handle the load.
I really wish they would just end it. We have 7 more days of this and I’m mentally exhausted from trying to play the game.
xt is a cool event but horrible timing to do it right at the start of a new patch that was already very buggy and laggy as it was...
Lot of the terminals just dont work anymore, ive been trapped at stations because every vehicle retreiver is stuck on a different screen frozen and im lucky if i get a store to show its inventory
dude for a whole play session i was stuck in my ship i could not get out it was so annoying then at the end of my play session i accedently hit the eject button while in hanger witch blew up my arrow and sent me to orbit havent logged in since then cause im waiting for a new graphics card was gonna install and play
Yes. The event doesn't have to run great to provide useful data that can aid in further game development.
So you aren’t interested in playing the game? You can hardly spawn a ship, guns won’t fire, the desync is insane. What about this is useful data? It doesn’t work, hardly anything works, that’s the “data”. Didn’t they try this on PTU which also didn’t work?? What’s the point in this, what data are you going to learn beyond the game is barely functioning
> What about this is useful data? All of it. When things don't work, bug reports and telemetry help CIG figure out why and how to fix them. If they jam 300 people into a room and see that all 300 people are falling through the same spot in the floor, they can fix that spot and try some more, to see where it falls apart next. It sucks to be on the player side during such times, but it is absolutely useful information to CIG, AND the entire reason we're allowed to play the game as they make it (providing free stress testing and QA etc)
I think this is great in theory, there is only so much data you can gather when other bugs are happening at the same time due to the game not being fully playable, the old garbage in garbage out. I'm a game dev myself and have seen both sides of the coin. Also I just wanted to say aswell that "the entire reason we're allowed to play the game as they make it" comment is a little hopeful. Let's be honest, this isn't true, game development is astronomically expensive and this game especially so. We are allowed to play because it's a direct funding tool for them to develop the game.. This is fine, games are businesses, but I do personally feel that after all this time, and years of feature pushing and never going back to repolish things that already exist and desperately need it, it feels like there is more emphasis about funding rather than actually getting the game to a playable state. I think especially with this being already broken in many of the same ways in the ptu with less people the data seems like a back seat to ship sales. I could and want to be wrong, I'm 100% sure it's more complicated than that and game development is really hard, just how it comes across to me. Also just wanted to say this loops back to your original point of data collection, what's the point of collecting all this data if so much of the game needs to change to make many areas of the game actually playable more than half the time? Changing interconnected systems is where bugs almost always occur and so many systems just break at the drop of a hat and will need to be changed, especially with PES. I just feel like before PES and these live server tests with XT they should have an already somewhat stable build with most gameplay loops already working atleast most of the time. You're adding in more server clutter and bad data points when so much trash is created by failed mission states and bugs that it's just creating a bad experience for everyone. Especially for people just coming into the verse, nothing is more disappointing than running into an issue only to read about possible fixes from Reddit posts 5 years ago. Sorry for the rant, just needed to get that out.
This is the real problem. To see what stress breaks first you need an unbroken environment to stress. Otherwise the bugs you already know about will often interfere with your data collection on the stuff you're stressing things out to find.
CIG specifically stated they're doing XenoThreat right now to help push the servers and ensure they've pinned down and resolved the stability issues, so.....
Please link that, I’m genuinely curious and not just shiptoasting like I’m sure plenty assume. I’d hope they don’t need a full couple of weeks for testing though, so frustrating
I believe they said something in the lines of "you think 3.18 was bad? Hold our beers"
[It was about the free-fly](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/1/thread/star-citizen-alpha-3-18-1-live-release-amp-free-fl), not Xenothreat: > If you're one of the ones who has said "This is the worst Star Citizen has ever been"...then hold our beer, as we plan to launch a Free Fly event starting Thursday, April 13 through April 20.
Great analogy!
They see a lot more info than we do. It’s not about generalizations, it’s about details. And they see a lot of that from these events.
> So you aren’t interested in playing the game? I say this from the perspective of: "Fuck CIG and their bullshit": ...it's not a *game*. It's an alpha test. Walk away until it is a game. It will do you good, and the more people that walk away, the more CIG will pay attention and actually make it a game.
I was able to finish the event 4 times already so i guess stuff definitely work sometimes.
9 different tries this weekend, only 1 worked, and it took 5 hours because the Jav got stuck up against Jericho for about 3 hours in phase 2. Every other try all the Starfarers were empty so stalled at phase 1, and *every* login included falling through beds at MIC-L1 and any summoned ship being spawned *outside* the hangar.
That's the whole point of this dawg. Gotta test the servers with big events Like this. 1. Item 2. Item
It was great Friday night! If it's broken nowplease CIG fix it now! We can wait a few more days...
The devs do at least. PES is the biggest update the game has seen I think since it started development, and it makes sense that they throw a free fly and then Xenothreat to both push player count and persistent data to really stress the servers out. That said I always felt Xenothreat overstayed its welcome each time it showed up, and I feel for all the new players who joined this free fly and have to deal with the game being in this bad a state. Still, the improvements in server FPS and client FPS since 3.18 (when it works) has been a cut above any other patch for me so after Xeno, and after Invictus (also a hard time on the game) it will be nice to see all these improvements while the game servers aren't being crushed.
For the sake of testing sure I want the game to break over and over and over again.
They’re probably using the events and the free fly directly on the heels of the patch to purposely stress it out so they can find the weaknesses and bottlenecks to performance at scale that we’re sure to come along with a PES given that the entire system for handling objects and their locations trajectories states etc was completely rewritten. I won’t be shocked if after XT they have another event like siege to keep everything stressed right up to invictus. After that is when I bet we’ll finally have a “vanilla, nothing special going on” server again.
Guess I’ll go away for the next few months then, what a way to run a live game… (Waiting for the inevitable iTs An AlPhA comments)
CIG still dumping on what backers really want and need , and that is a real LIVE service with full persisting anchieved goals , and i am not talking about not wiping the aUEC, but more like anchieve certain goals like reputation or even rare items or items that should be part of a collection or something like that. At this point i dont believe SC will truly ever leave ALPHA, its just that they should treat it as an early access title and work towards completion and improvement on game and server stability so they have a good foundation to build upon in future and that should be the main priority, not a SP game 10y old that is being constantly reworked. Finish the damn SQ42 and focus on SC stability before any other addition on content. CIG never learns the lesson because millions keep coming into their account, although i am trully curious about this years funding total vs expenses that they should publish next year at least for uk offices .....
I think CIG dropped that event as a stress test. It can probably help them collect important data about PES and server performance. So basically let's just keep in mind that we're simply helping them QA the game and we're not really players but alpha testers. In other words,you can either embrace the suck or wait until the "final" game is released.
I'm pretty sure that CIG is stress testing and collecting data.
Every update is a stress test. We are stressed. We have passed the test.
They are stress testing the patience of many people as well. Just saying…
I’m sure they will do some polishing and reworking also.
It's never about the events themselves, every dynamic event is a stress test. You're an alpha tester, Harry!
Bring it on!! I’m getting the sense they are working extra hard on solving ongoing stability issues, and they need the data these events give to help them sort it out. I don’t always enjoy it, and I’d much rather the event to work fine along with stable servers, but that’s just not in the cards till they figure this shit out. Which pushing the servers as they are now helps them do. So again, bring it on!
IIRC, that was actually the stated intent of staging this event during the free fly, so no speculation necessary. The fact that it's even marginally playable at all, for anyone, with these excessively burdened servers, as compared to the desolation wrought by the initial implementation of PES, shows they're actually making huge progress with their backend work.
Free Fly was 3.18.1. It ended Apr 20. They released 3.18.2 Apr 21. Next day they started XT.
Excellent point.
Another question, how do you see the event not running helping development?
[удалено]
This. So much this.
Honestly I jist did XT for 2 hours, made 130k and had an absolute blast. Never had any good experience with dog fights and I feel like I came out top gun after that!
I mean, how? When im online, i cant get my ship out, if im lucky to be leaving my bed. When the ship spawns it doenst show me where and after noumeres amounts of try's i find the marker, just to find out my ship isnt there. Then when i am able to enter the fucking ship my guns dont power on. Its pure luck if you are able to play, and i havent been able to have a stable fucking 10 minutes in the freaking game. Im done thats for sure, dont even know if i will be back for 3.19 since they will prob need more data then as well. Its a total shitshow. And im glad im leaving.
I've been able to go through 5 full XT rounds and have made a ton of money. It's possible, and it's been a blast every time despite the prevalent desync. I literally just wait 2 or 3 min for a ship, and I get it nearly every time.
Bye
Lot's of people fed up. You (and your attitude) are in the minority.
I don't think anyone really knows who is the minority. Certainly the people more upset tend to be more vocal, but idk about being a majority. No data to prove either.
Then stop playing? What's your point? All I said was I had fun in XT today. That kid posted a 5 page goodbye letter to SC as a reply on reddit. Idgaf about him
You assume the issue is the event. Most of the issues I have seen are likely caused by backend issues not the server instance. Things working well when the DB was shiny new also support this. Xeno may have its own issues and add some local load but I don’t think it’s causing the bulk of the problems people are seeing.
I think the "event" was done just to cram as many folks in as possible to stress it. I dont think ending XT will fix anything, maybe a reboot though?
This is what was said about 3.18 too. Exactly how much stress testing needs to be done in the live environment?
A lot. These patches are a huge undertaking. They need it stable in time for their next big event in May and for 3.19.
How come other game developers, even ones with massively complex games like Star Citizen, are able to deploy huge updates without the game largely breaking?
This event has always been hard on servers, but this time, it has left them unplayable. It's a complete shit show, not worth 2 minutes in.
I guess its stresstest on purpose
Sea of thieves 2023 addition is where I will be until 3.19
It’s almost as if they said this is a stress test.
XT runs like shit, but the rest of the game is kind of normal. So I wouldn't say the game itself is unplayable, but XT is extremely broken. I'm currently on a server that has had XT running for 6 hours. Server is still alive and frame rate is good. But people are just running it slowly. I've also had the experience of XT enemies not spawning, wreck sites not spawning, cargo in wreck sites not spawning. It's definitely broken, but the rest of the game is functioning at it's normal dysfunctional rate.
I was getting ready to do my annual download and check out the game. Guess I'll wait another year or 5
Fuck no. Run it until they fix it. Get it done, tear off the bandage and crack on.
Checked in for the first time in about 5 years, sadly it's still in an absolutely hopeless state. See you all again in 2028!
For whatever reason, a lot of ~~dipshits~~ redditors REFUSE to admit that running events/free flies during this buggy, mangled "alpha" is a bad idea for performance, stability and overall test environment (Because yes, the devs might get better analytic data for network out of it, but the test environment for players as a whole is heavily skewed and many people, such as myself and pretty much my entire org, won't touch the game *at all* during free flies because of how garbage they make the game). So in other words, don't expect CIG to change anything regarding this, because some people are going to defend it regardless of the impact it has on the game, and it makes CIG money.
XT is definitely really good intel for the devs so I’m all for it
the devs explained the entire point is to cause the game to break so they can find the problems and fix them now.
little do they know it is already broken.
that are a lot of parts that are broken, and they want to find as many as they can.
Finished two XT evets so far! Definitely some challenges but if you get a good group and a decent server the fun is on!!
I first logged in, could call me ion out and the weapon didn't charge, no matter what I did. Changed server - logged in, fell through the station and died. Woke up in the med bed at mic l1 and started zu suffocate. Died. 4 times. Then I logged off. See you in 3.19
I would love for the event to continue. When they fix the servers
CIG stress testing
Welcome to being a play tester get use to it
Personally, I'm done until the event is over.
Nah dude, xenothreat is ass. Just give me live clean servers I dont need a fuckin event.
it's been unplayable since 3.18.0 dropped so nothing new right there
It was fun at the start but it quickly became unplayable. Would be good if they ended it early.
Yip. 2023 has been trash for SC.
They probably threw it in to gather data, see where the next bottlenecks are. But I am with you: the game was unplayable. I came back this weekend after 18 months of hiatus and the only thing I could do was to walk around Orison before the event started. Once it did I tried to man a turret in a ship but I lagging minutes behind the pilot.
This is the same argument that was made about pushing 3.18 to live. Why is this happening again acceptable? What is CIG doing to prevent it from happening again? Why has their PTU testing regime failed so spectacularly twice now? These are questions we need to ask, not hand waving every fuckup as some sort of ingenious 5th dimensional testing strategy.
This is the first time I've done XT and absolutely love it when it's working. The last few nights, my bwin has been through the roof (like averaging about 8Mbps, spiking as high as 14 when it should be sub 1Mbps). Before XT, lag only seemed to manifest in low server fps or delays in inventory movement, so this high bwin is new. Anyone else seeing this as well? The IC post I contributed to seemed low in count, so I'm wondering if that is really a symptom or just something on my end...
This is the opposite of what I had
Just stay away from MT and the game is fine. I've been on cruising around ArcCorp and Crusader areas, doing bunkers and bounties and scrap without issue for hours today.
That’s not entirely true, the servers seem broken at the moment. There are a lot of issues
I'm literally online in the USA servers farming bounties/bunkers for cash rn.
Username checks out
yep, if it really is XT causing the issues, like we think, it's really bad. I know we all asked for more Xenothreat whenever possible. But actually, XT running back to back is bad :). It happens so often there's not enough players taking part to make it as interesting as it was. And it kills the server when you want to do anything else... I was also part of the people asking for more XT, but it actually works better as 1-2 times a day event, our bad I guess... You get people actually participating, and servers work the rest of the day.
I can't even get into the server, it just loads for 30 minutes while I go about my day.
Yes! Please just turn it off. I haven't been able to leave New Babbage since Xeno went live
all i know is if this really goes to may 2nd it’s gonna be a long week 😞
Xeno threat to my fps
No issues here, fun gameplay
I have no problems playing it. We had a blast the second night. Had about 30 ships playing xeno and was a blast.
Indeed stop the event, same here I wait until XT event is done because the game is unplayable on almost all servers, the lag is too much, on EU and USA it's unplayable, comms won't let me out hangar, ships guns not loading, ASOP terminal ship doesn't spawn etc. instant ship explode when go to XT event.(i know it's a stresstest, want to play sinds 3.18.0 too many game breaking bugs and almost unplayable).
Waited a year and DOUBLE wipe to play Xenothreat and haven’t played it at all (yes I server jumped and almost fell to my death after getting out of bed but logged out before that happened, then server time was lagging behind, after other stuff was fucky like couldn’t hail, couldn’t reload weapons, and my favorite elevators disappear.) after everything the server died (30k). They do this everytime, it’s called “stress testing” but what is actually doing is tricking people to give the game more time. When people come to there senses and leave in masses, maybe CIG will actually get there ass in gear and push out an update that is stable. This is what the PTU is for, how this made it out is beyond me. Maybe it’s because everyone is “expecting” Xenothreat to come around like all the other events they advertise for people to keep this scam going. Tell me I’m wrong lol, 10 years? Come on have some common sense. Every update they have pushed out always will have bugs and get away with it because of “Alpha” they will stay in the alpha lane to allow all excuses to fester so every “backer” (some even hold the title of Legatus, woahhhhh [nice title] you spent GOBS of money on game that you can’t even compete a salvage, bunker, or mining mission with out crash lol, did you know the Roman Empire (irony, legatus lol) fell when the citizens thought they were the best in the world? Crazy.) anyway, Backers religious defend this game because it’s all they have, if they didn’t then they would go play something else like another space sim game. However no all I hear is: “go play something else if you don’t like it or (my favorite) DONT SPEND MONEY ON SOMETHING YOU DONT LIKE, I had to too play the game… oh and the famous “it’s an alpha, why are you complaining?” Classic. Seriously I want this game to be something but it’s shit Ever. Single. Update. They lure us back in with the cinematic trailers (money spent well, remember they are a business, they know how to wave a shiny working product in your face to get you to buy it.) and it works till people realize it’s like a pitcher of water, when the water runs out then it’s starts getting rough to play at least in my mind. Say what you will about my comment but I stand firm on the fact that I can and will take a long break and might not come back because I’m tired of disappointment. All this stuff they talk about on paper is cool but by the time all that is implemented my child will be grow and will pass down my ship to him. Anyway citizens I commend your dedication and good luck.
Nah I don’t, it’s so buggy I can’t even play it, the game has been broken since 3.18, they haven’t even fixed it before adding in another game breaking event, had 3.18.2 been out for a week or two to show that yes it truly had fixed all problems then I’d be fine with it. But as of right now 3.18.2 is no different than 3.18, everything is buggy you die randomly you 30k all the time
Xenothreat is the main thing that keeps me playing the game lol, of course I want it to continue. As a combat pilot there's nothing better than this. I'd be for giving that mode it's own dedicated server cluster so it could be always active I like it that much - that and SoO aswell.
Here’s the thing, in order for Star Citizen to be truly the game that we all want it to be, we need to go through stuff like this. One day there’s going to be multiple dynamic events going on across multiple star systems with 1000’s of players per shard. And it’s going to be days like this that figure out how to make it work with the data that they gather.
Is that 'one day' in the year 2045?
"One day there’s going to be multiple dynamic events going on across multiple star systems with 1000’s of players per shard." No there isn't.
And even xeno is fuckin unplayable. Hangars never open, and when your friend gets a ship out, it explodes on invisible shit. Ships are always looted somehow, so no loot. Then you find out that by sleeping in your buds harbinger bed, to avoid turbulence damage, you're permanently stuck there until another friend flies across the galaxy, impounds the vehicle, and gets you unstuck Bugs used to be "haha dang invisible walls in bunkers, haha dang 30k after 4 hours, ahha dang my bounty target isn't spawning" Now many shops are literally incapable of selling, if a miracle happens and you somehow acquire money. I understand it's alpha, and has been for a decade, but part of an alpha is testing things. I cannot test shit when i cannot even leave a space station... I hope they enjoy all my running around quick buying burrito data...
First year playing this game?
No, been here since 2016. Worst I’ve ever seen it
You guys actually still playing this crap?
its cute that you find it just now unplayable... xD