Vanilla Experiment Still Not Working
It should have started 5 min ago but I am still getting the error of EAC client could not be instantiated. Since this experiment is only 6 hours long I hope this can get fixed soon.
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This is their first experiment so I can give them some slack, but at this point they screwed up the Date, Time, and Build of the game so. I can only give so much slack till I think it is just complete ineptitude for them to try something like this.
Still hoping they can fix this so we can give them some good data, but they might just need to reschedule this whole thing.
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Someone dropped the ball. It happens, best to learn so it does not occur again.
500 PC testers is about 2.5% of their player base. In reality these 500 testers are probably the more active non-casual ones (myself included) which is likely closer to 5-10% of that player base.
Not too familiar with the video game industry model, but most industries you do not want to ask 5-10% of your market in one channel to trying something out and then fail to deliver (speculating that all 500 were unable to get in so far).
Improvements off the top of my head
- Did not seem like they had someone coming the forums to check for errors during the launch. If not, budget in the cost of active customer support throughout the launch so the moment the issue arises it's known.
- I am sure they did testing on it leading up to the event and even when it went live, but something in the testing missed this EAC error. Need to identify root cause why it was missed, especially as this error type has occurred as far back as 2016/2017 so it's not new.
- Communication. It's been 2.5 hours since it went live. It looks like it's an issue for many users. I am speculating it's most if not all. The code just got switched off from 9am PDT to 9:30am PDT. A quick email to the 500 users acknowledging the issue would be good. Something along the lines of "BHVR know players are experiencing an EAC client can not be Instantiated issue. We are actively looking into this and have deactivated the build in the meantime. We will follow up within 24 hours with details."
At this point I think they have abandoned the experiment. Next steps are likely
A. Redo the experiment with the 500 selected. Quick apology along the lines of "Sorry we wasted your time, but we appreciate the player base and thank you for your patience"
B. Be transparent and list out the reason why it did not work this time and why it will not happen next time.
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The biggest thing for me is communication.
The wrong dates, times, and EAC issue are a bit embarrassing but totally forgivable imo. What is unfortunate is that at this point clearly the build never worked for any participants, yet there was complete radio silence from the team for HOURS. As was pointed out, a quick e-mail acknowledging the issue would've sufficed. I spent the first hour of the scheduled test time researching EAC fixes and trying to force my way in because I reasonably assumed the problem was on my end.
I think all of us that were waiting are pretty big fans, I mean we'd have to be to provide them free labor, and it's unfortunate that our time is apparently so lowly regarded as to not even warrant an update until after we'd riddled out the full scope of the situation ourselves.
Hopefully it proves to be a learning experience.
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This is the email that they sent to everyone, keep in mind they also got the date of the experiment wrong and the time of the experiment wrong by saying the wrong EDT time but the right UTC time. I don't know what went wrong but they definitely need a lot of safety nets next time they try something like this.
Dear participant,
The issue causing the EAC cannot be instantiated error cannot be resolved today despite our best efforts. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and we will notify you of our new Experiment date shortly.
Unless you wish to retract, you will stay on our participant list for our next Vanilla Experiment. Note that our test version is now unavailable to the public.
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oofs
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