Roughly when can we expect an update/bugfix?

Archive NMS Next - Bugs & Issues
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I submitted many bug and issue reports that have yet to be resolved, including some crash and save file data loss issues.

I heard back from HG at the beginning of January on one of my Zendesk tickets, requesting a save file, which I then provided. This made me hopeful we might see a fix sooner rather than later.

But since then, HG has been strangely silent. After the launch of NEXT, HG seemed committed to regular events and maintaining good communication with the community via regular dev updates, telling us some things they were working on and highlighting cool screenshots by the community, etc.

I was really hoping that after the holidays, they’d at least resume the regular bugfix patches, since 1.77 left a number of critical issues still in the game.

Particularly, the main issues 1.77 has are:

  • flora/fauna/waypoint data no longer syncs down from the server when you step foot on a planet, or when joint-exploring a planet and yr buddy scans things in hosted multiplayer (this issue did not exist until 1.75)

  • crashes, particularly when you joined a multiplayer session and travel into a star system where there are lots of player bases and comm balls

  • bases not fully loading in, when you join someone’s game in multiplayer and then visit their base

  • biomes appearing incorrecty if you quit to the main menu and then load a different save slot that’s in a different galaxy than the save slot you were in before

  • exocraft race editing and racing itself terminates early with no warning if you exceed a certain distance from the start of the race—this was not an issue when racing was first reintroduced in 1.63, so if you made a very long race in 1.63 (and possibly also 1.70, 1.71), now in 1.77, such a long race can no longer be completed

  • undo feature of terrain manipulator is still broken

  • terrain edits at your bases can still get filled in and then you cannot make anymore either (red X where the terrain edit meter is)—I fixed the red X by making a ton of terrain manipulator edits at one of my bases (though the original edits at all my bases remained gone)—but I still don’t know the exact steps to trigger the terrain to fill in… it seemed to happen after I would use the terrain manipulator at someone else’s base, or do some base building while in someone else’s game session… is it still a problem for anyone?

  • custom names go missing (affects custom names
    of ships, multi-tool, star systems, planets, creatures, plants, and waypoints)—I have experienced all the custom names that I entered, painstakingly with the XBOX and PS4 controllers—get reset to the procedural names… this also affected other players’ discoveries that had synced down from the server

  • trees and other objects in the terrain look purple from a distance (graphics bug)

  • creatures disappear while you are trying to scan them (draw distance set too low it seems)

  • ship can get stuck in megaflora, requiring a save reload (adding the ability to fly backwards or making an “unstuck” option would fix this)

  • small head bug—this is an old issue in the game since 1.03 (day one patch) where the skeleton scaling applied based on creature age got reversed for some classes of skeletons, primarily causing the adults to have heads that appear shrunken and the young to have heads that appear enlarged—this bug sadly also affects the whole front/top half of the skeleton and the entire animation set, due to how 3D rigging works—the neck diameter will also be shrunken, also the front legs, causing creatures to look hunched down with the neck emerging at a wrong angle that is pointed more towards the ground—in diplos, this bug makes the neck protrude laterally from the shoulders then curve upwards, rather than coming straight up out of the body—the small preview images of the creatures in the discover tab do not have this bug—version 1.0 (PS4 Blu Ray) also does not have this bug

  • unable to claim a base beyond a portal after 1.57

etc.

——

Some of these issues may not be feasible to fix within the scope of a minor patch. I am guessing that the multiplayer crashes due to lots of bases and terrain fill-in could require a major code refactor to fix.

However I think the discovery syncing issues and claiming a base beyond a portal are issues that HG introduced to facilitate aspects of certain shared community missions, then they just left it that way even though the missions were over. It seems like they should be able to easily fix these issues without it causing any major problems.

As well, why should we have to wait months and months for resolution of the race bug, incorrect biomes bug, custom names loss bug, and creature head size bug? Why can’t HG be arsed to get the game to a stable point and then tell us “we’re gonna go dark for six months and work on a major patch” BEFORE they go dark for six months? I just don’t understand why that is too much to ask for.

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We have been asking a similar question. Most here are speculating perhaps we are waiting for a fairly big update. We are just sitting and waiting.
HG does drop in here once in a great while. Perhaps we will catch their attention and they will drop us a hint. :wink:

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Well. it’s nice to vent now and then.

The fact is, nobody knows what HG are up to. They’re not talking to anyone. We don’t even know if they are working on an update. We just assume that if they’d finished with the game, they would have told us.

And yes, it can be a little frustrating, not knowing what’s going on.

But consider - beyond the game that was released in August 2016, Hello Games have been under no obligation to provide you with anything.

All the major updates since then, including two major ARG sessions, have been provided completely free to existing players. Hello Games didn’t have to do this. They could have just taken the money, and walked away. There wouldn’t have been a damned thing anybody could have done about it.

But they didn’t. Instead, they have worked tirelessly for two years to take the game way beyond anything that was expected of the first release. And none of that has cost you so much as a bean.

In light of all the work they have done, suggesting that Hello Games “can’t be arsed”, or that the communication you want is “too much to ask for” seems a little unfair. It could make a person appear petulant and ungrateful.

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NMS has grown and morphed considerably since conception & the updates have largely been unexpected tweeks & alterations that improve it.
With NMS being pretty much unique in most respects & coming from the work of a relatively small team, their achievements & dedication are astounding & thus should be enbraced with respect & understanding.
Their return to silence is a bit annoying but the updates that do eventually arrive are so very worth the wait.
NMS is hands-down the game I’ve most played over the past few years (admittedly I’m not a hardcore gamer) & it is still good fun to me.
I still regularly play (PS4) & eagerly hope for yet another update.
As for the problems that arise during gameplay; I simply check them off as glitches in the SIM that is embraced in the storyline & then keep going.

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Actually, there is a reverse on the ships. I use an Xbox controller on PC so for me it is the brake (left bumper?) If I keep pressing it, I begin to back up.

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True, but only in space

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Hmmmm…I was sure it works planet-side as well…but perhaps not always. Will investigate.

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When near a planet surface, the reverse thrust only works as a 95% brake. I proved this the hard way when barn-storming big tunnels & accidentally scooting down a dead end: Confessions of a Traveller - #25 by Mad-Hatter
If I do manage to get hooked on an aerial or whatever, I simply point my nose skyward & hit boost and I always seem to break free.

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@VitaminArrr: I have changed the category to better match the content of your topic.

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Not being able to build a base after portaling is deliberate on their part

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Overkill? … I THINK NOT!

Be Thankful for what you got! :smile:

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In other words, we are never more than 1 grateful thought away from greater peace of mind.

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I’m no lawyer, and I did not say they were under any obligations.

I am only posting here about these issues because I love this game and I want to one day (hopefully soon) own a copy of it that is not impaired by quite so many unfortunate software problems.

If a software company never hears about the problems from its customers then it may not realize the problems exist. Sometimes companies need to get more than one letter about a problem before they will do something about it.

Until these issues are resolved I will continue to periodically make posts like this on various forums to bring attention to these issues for which I have already submitted Zendesk tickets last year. I encourage anyone who cares about this game to do the same, since maybe you know a step to reproduce the issue that I don’t. The more details about an issue the devs have, the more likely they are to be able to figure out the cause, and fix it.

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Yes, I know. They did it on purpose because the community mission planet got so full of bases that you could not go there without crashing.

But to me, now that there are no more community mission planets, I don’t see a reason to keep it like that. I mean, you can join another player’s game and make a base in a distant system that way, so what is the big deal about doing it beyond a portal?

If they are worried about certain hub systems and event planets (like Unification Day on PS4) getting over-clogged with bases to the point of crashing, well, I can tell you, that is already a significant problem regardess of whether or not making a base beyond a portal is enabled.

Now, let me emphasize something: making a base beyond a portal saves the player from staring at a loading screen for tens of hours and doing a repetitive, super boring grind hundreds of times that causes all of your existing discoveries to get erased and purged from your save, replaced by a bunch of systems you only hopped through on your way somewhere.

Most players are never going to put up with that, especially not in a game that lacks functional long-distance route-plotting and that lacks in-flight fuel-gathering.

Now, I realize some players have no problem stocking up hundreds of warp cells and using third party websites to find the angle from center to roughly proceed along in order to find some distant world. I realize that was the only way to travel long distances before portals were enabled in Atlas Rises.

But seriously, up until 1.57, making a base beyond a portal was a beloved feature by this community. And it made portals really useful. Now there is hardly a point to using a portal.

I do understand why HG wanted to take away such a beloved feature: because they were in a pinch, and they needed to get community missions working. Fine. But now that this type of community mission involving everyone taking a portal to the same system is behind us, they should re-enable the features they removed to facilitate those missions (i.e. making a base beyond a portal, and also, flora/fauna/waypoints auto-syncing from the server).

I really do not understand why any player would be opposed to that. If you don’t like making a base beyond a portal, don’t do it. But what harm is there to enabling it? Why do we need to have “portal interference” in the game? How does it improve the game in any way…?

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Make sure to let HG know directly. They may or may not respond. If they do not, it is likely the issue is already known and they are working on it.

Personally, I believe we were asked if we wanted another ARG because they knew there would be a significant wait period before the next update.

In the meantime, this is looking like a nice way to wait…

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I’m not really opposed to it, but right off the bat I can see that it would render warp cells almost meaningless for any sort of long travel after you had the glyphs. Reaching the center of the galaxy would require no time investment at all. I don’t mind one way or the other though, so good luck!

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I have a portal address for a system on the far reaches of the euclid galaxy rim where I once explored. (Legacy Save/Normal PS4).
After NEXT, I intended to return via portal & set up an outpost base but the option to relocate via a portal was nerfed for reasons I fully understand, so instead I’m warping there, bit by bit, using my waypoint guide. It’s only a game so I don’t let it bother me.

Perhaps a better way for HG to have handled this would have been to limit portal relocation to one player per planet: for example…
Once a planet is inhabited, no further ‘through the portal’ bases could be placed.
This would the mean that you would need to liase with the 1st resident to locate a nearby portal on a different planet for you to use as a jump system. You could then warp over to your intended planet & set up base as per usual. Add to that, a cap of four player bases, (as per multiplayer), per planet & the crowded crashing issue should be resolved.
Should someone try to circumvent this by going offline, simply set up a register so that any extra bases get deleted when they go back online. First 4 are retained but any others are deleted.
This might sound a bit nasty but to ensure the smooth running of the game for all involved, I think caps & restrictions are important.
However;
One issue that seems to be regularly popping up, is the games acknowledgment of the removal of things that reach limits. Things like the terrain edits & frigate fleets. Once a base is deleted, the terrain edits for that location should reset back to default. The same with frigates; If you dismiss some after reaching the maximum, then it should allow for you to purchase replacements.
This issue with resetting of items would need to be fully addressed before the above mentioned ‘through the portal’ cap idea could be safely implemented.
As a side issue, I would also like to see the option of selling starships outright introduced, to allow Command Ship traders to return. Currently, should you build you starship fleet up to 6 there is no return.
There is a whole other discussion point there but the issue always comes back to the ability to implement and reset caps.

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I believe that HG is only focus on what is ahead, never what is behind.
That means bugs, problem etc.

The problem with stuttering when lifting off a planet still exist.
It existed when the game came out and it exist still to day.

The new backpack jump is messed up.
The boot boosters I removed.

Then using the jump it is slow in response and then it rockets you forward when it catches up.

Will the “common” issues and bugs ever be fixed?
I say no.

Reason seems to be “they” don’t really want to hear about them unless they are major.
The game works and that is all that matters.

I realize that may not be the attitued of HG, but that is how the appearance of HG is.

That is why I would like them to release version 1.3 with bugs fixes and call it Atlas’s NMS.
Then we can worry about playing, fighting Emily in Beyond.
:beer:

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