| Champions Online: Ditching a Patch & a Free Expansion
The Champions Online team has decided to ditch the so-called "kitchen sink" patch due to numerous concerns from the community. Additionally, Cryptic Studios has announced that an expansion, a FREE expansion, will be released in March. Read more!
 - State of the Game-Ditching the Patch: Scrubbing the Kitchen Sink
As we all know, the Kitchen Sink patch had numerous issues that made it onto Live. The reasons for this boil down to two key areas:
Things That Used to Work Stopped Working:
Basically, there were changes to the core code that automatically merged with our older code and we didn't see all of the effects of these before they went Live. Token changes, for example, caused a lot of things to stop working properly in Champions. We use tokens for a lot of things in Champions and when the token system was recently optimized, it caused any token-based missions to stop working properly - namely UNITY and Patrol missions. There was also the AI fixes which were made which affected the attack rates of every enemy in the game that slipped past us all.
Lack of Comprehensive Testing
There were only a few players on during the time the Kitchen Sink Patch was on the Public Test Shard, and we simply didn't allocate enough QA testers. There were so many issues we were anxious to address, that our desire to get fixes out to the players as soon as possible completely backfired. There are truly an astonishing amount of changes in this patch, and we simply should have spent more time testing them before pushing the build Live. - Revelation Expansion Coming in March:
- Vibora Bay Becomes Revelation
The expansion formerly known as Vibora Bay has a new, more descriptive name: Champions Online - Revelation! We'll be talking quite a bit more about it in the coming weeks. - It's Free!
We heard our community and we acted. Champions Online - Revelation will now be available to everyone at no extra charge. That is a free expansion pack for all Champions Online players. - A True Expansion
Champions Online - Revelation is a full-fledged expansion. It's a brand new way for you and your friends to enjoy the game together.
Permalink |
Champions Online: Ditching a Patch & a Free Expansion
The Champions Online team has decided to ditch the so-called "kitchen sink" patch due to numerous concerns from the community. Additionally, Cryptic Studios has announced that an expansion, a FREE expansion, will be released in March. Read more!
As we all know, the Kitchen Sink patch had numerous issues that made it onto Live. The reasons for this boil down to two key areas:
Things That Used to Work Stopped Working:
Basically, there were changes to the core code that automatically merged with our older code and we didn't see all of the effects of these before they went Live. Token changes, for example, caused a lot of things to stop working properly in Champions. We use tokens for a lot of things in Champions and when the token system was recently optimized, it caused any token-based missions to stop working properly - namely UNITY and Patrol missions. There was also the AI fixes which were made which affected the attack rates of every enemy in the game that slipped past us all.
Lack of Comprehensive Testing
There were only a few players on during the time the Kitchen Sink Patch was on the Public Test Shard, and we simply didn't allocate enough QA testers. There were so many issues we were anxious to address, that our desire to get fixes out to the players as soon as possible completely backfired. There are truly an astonishing amount of changes in this patch, and we simply should have spent more time testing them before pushing the build Live.
The expansion formerly known as Vibora Bay has a new, more descriptive name: Champions Online - Revelation! We'll be talking quite a bit more about it in the coming weeks.
We heard our community and we acted. Champions Online - Revelation will now be available to everyone at no extra charge. That is a free expansion pack for all Champions Online players.
Champions Online - Revelation is a full-fledged expansion. It's a brand new way for you and your friends to enjoy the game together.
Permalink