Reporting things, is it needed or acknowledged by SD?

(Ceres) #1

Serious question here. Do you guys (SD) take our bug, error, technical issue, exploit reports seriously? I mean, is it really worth the time recording bugs and then reporting them here, will you actually focus on fixing them?

People have reported so many disturbing bugs that make maps unplayable and then a patch comes out and none of those bugs are fixed. Trainyard ghost train, people getting stuck in MGs, now constant crashes, the bug with last defense respawn on London Bridge (it might have been fixed, haven’t played it since the bug), random glitches through walls, stairs, trees, etc that people constantly report.

I am asking because if you really do care about these issues then I will really sit down and make long posts with bugs/glitches/issues with all maps but otherwise I’d be better off arguing who needed the new scoreboard. :smiley:

I mean simple posts such as “we are fixing the issue atm” or “it’s the next thing on our list” or ANY response at all after people make their reports would be greatly appreciated. It will actually seem like you guys care that we are trying to help you out.

(Scarhand) #2

I’m sure they know about the bugs.

If you’ve done any programming yourself, you should know that the vast majority of it is bug fixing.

(PixelTwitch) #3

Their build is ahead of the one we are playing so a lot of what we report is supposed to be fixed or changed in the version they are running in the studio.

I can’t believe that stuff like the clipping issues on the maps are a major priority because I would expect on a final pass is where they will custom collision everything including the static meshes. When it comes to animations, scoreboards and stuff while they have been in a long time its still a new version that is likely to have bugs and stuff that they want to know about. Honestly, the number of bugs is really quite low (even if the bugs we have are quite big) the rest of what people give feedback on is personal preference kind of stuff. The issue with this is that we are a very small test group compared to the general expected player base. It saddens me personally to see so much elitist feedback on these forums. Already the game is having a “skill gap” much larger than almost any other first person shooter I can think of and the small community on these forums are always trying to make that skill gap bigger.

Right now I think the focus should be on increasing the skill ceiling while reducing the skill gap. Basically giving great players options and stuff they can pull off that the average player cannot. However, it should not be to the point where the average player feels useless. I also feel when it comes to weapon feedback we need to be careful due to the fact that we are having multiple weapons per merc in future and with attachments. Right now I feel feedback on abilities, bugs + how/where they where found and general feel are more important then what we see a lot of.

Think about it like this…
the bug tracker is now likely full of thousands of bugs both big and small. Trying to fix each bug could mean going though dozens of systems to both trace and fix. Each bug fix has the risk of spawning multiple more bugs. The ghost train bug was supposed to be fixed 3 patches ago and they still seem surprised that its not fixed, so obviously could do with more feedback on when / why its happeneing. Same with the MG stuff.

HOWEVER, It would be cool if SD would give us access to the bug Tracker or post the full bug tracker list after each big patch so we both can check to see if a bug we have seen has been reported and what info is there with it. It may both help us add information that is important to the bug AND maybe avoid what is happeneing to trigger it.

(KoP) #4

Ceres, absolutely.
Bugs here get picked up, verified, and then entered into our database where prioritisation then happens. Sometimes though, like… right now actually, a developer might be waiting for their code to build and look through the forum themselves, investigating things where time allows on the spot; happened several times personally. I’d keep your reports as concise as possible though and no need to go overboard, we have people paid to go overboard.

PixelTwitch, some of that might be better in the feedback forum I don’t know if designers go through here. I did have a talk not too long ago about a public bug tracker with someone else here. I like the idea and agree it would be very good thing to have, but I don’t believe there is any movement on it right now. I’ll prod people again. :wink:

(DB Genome editor) #5

A public bug list would be great and help us focus our feedback, especially if there are items in there that you’re having a hard time reproducing so we can pay special attention to them.

(Mustang) #6

I bet their bug list is a couple orders of magnitude larger than ours. :penguin:

(Seanza) #7

I saw some of the bug tracker stuff when I spent the weekend with some of the lads back in November. They definitely read both forums, they definitely take note, and they definitely track them. I had moments where I felt the same as you, Ceres. I’m entirely comfortable that isn’t the case after seeing it with my own eyes, though.