Buggiest update ever

[Old Duck]

One of the things that worries me is that if Frontier keeps adding new buggy code on top of old buggy code, layer by layer, they will soon have (if they don't already) an unmaintainable monolithic mess that will be hopeless broken and irredeemable. That's what these "misguided" fanboys don't understand when they trump adding new features over fixing old bugs - even a fancy house, when built on a rotten foundation, will not stand.

 

[Deadlock-3000]

One of the things that worries me is that if Frontier keeps adding new buggy code on top of old buggy code, layer by layer, they will soon have (if they don't already) an unmaintainable monolithic mess that will be hopeless broken and irredeemable. That's what these "misguided" fanboys don't understand when they trump adding new features over fixing old bugs - even a fancy house, when built on a rotten foundation, will not stand.

That's already the case IMHO, or perhaps a slightly less strongly worded version thereof. I think Elite's greatest value is as a case study for how to make some other game.

 

[Brett C]

Like I said, I reported about 10 bugs in the first few days, and re-reported some of them after .01 dropped. They ranged from serious performance issues, to being able to shoot through your own ship, to frivolous exploits like pick-your-own rank missions. They were all pushed down to the third or fourth page within hours. Then I found out that only those bug reports lucky enough to be cherrypicked by the QA people actually make it to a developer's sight.

Hi, I've reviewed the majority of your posted threads (search link) to the PC Bug Reports forum with the [ED64 - 3.3 Horizons] (13 reports) and [ED64 - 3.3.01 Horizons] (7 Reports).

I can confirm various folks from our Quality Assurance team has read your various bug reports. Some of the bug reports do have multiple QA employees viewing it. Do note that the newest made bug reports likely won't have an added response for developer/QA-view of it until the new year. Many folks at the company are taking their annual leave.


So in conclusion, I wouldn't say the report are being cherry picked, they're being very much so read and added to our internal bug tracker. A lot of the time, when a reply is made to bug reports, it's either to ask for more information or to confirm the issue.

 

[Deadlock-3000]

Hi, I've reviewed the majority of your posted threads (search link) to the PC Bug Reports forum with the [ED64 - 3.3 Horizons] (13 reports) and [ED64 - 3.3.01 Horizons] (7 Reports).

I can confirm various folks from our Quality Assurance team has read your various bug reports. Some of the bug reports do have multiple QA employees viewing it. Do note that the newest made bug reports likely won't have an added response for developer/QA-view of it until the new year. Many folks at the company are taking their annual leave.

So in conclusion, I wouldn't say the report are being cherry picked, they're being very much so read and added to our internal bug tracker. A lot of the time, when a reply is made to bug reports, it's either to ask for more information or to confirm the issue.

You can understand how I must have thought, that, though? When you see other people's reports having a QA person clearly say "Hi, thanks, I've shown this to a developer" and I get absolutely nothing on any of them.

So they are clearly being cherry picked, at least for acknowledgement purposes. If you're saying that all of them have been filed for a developer to look at, regardless of whether there was a response or not, that's well and good.

Now go on holiday.

 

[Old Duck]

When you see other people's reports having a QA person clearly say "Hi, thanks, I've shown this to a developer" and I get absolutely nothing on any of them.

My top-priority bugs, some reported over a year ago, all have the boilerplate "Thanks for the reports of this issue. I have passed this along for internal investigation." message. Heck, one bug actually has two separate patch notes saying it was fixed. And yet, NONE MOST OF THEM HAVE NOT BEEN FIXED, they have only gotten worse over time. Empty words...

[video=youtube;Fdjf4lMmiiI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdjf4lMmiiI[/video]

Well, they did fix the Minecraft texture bug, by replacing it with an even worse bug...

 

[CMDR Carbo]

I had some really weird issue because the game now allows you to assign the same key for multiple functions. For everybody that has strange behavior, it's worth checking your keybinds.

Like in the DSS, I somehow managed to have exit DSS and fire probe on the same key.
Or I was able to assign the key for mode switching to the same key that deploys the turret in my SRV, without the game saying anything, so everytime I deployed the turret in the SRV it switch modes from Combat to analysis.
Lots of stuff like that.
Just a heads-up.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Hi, I've reviewed the majority of your posted threads (search link) to the PC Bug Reports forum with the [ED64 - 3.3 Horizons] (13 reports) and [ED64 - 3.3.01 Horizons] (7 Reports).

I can confirm various folks from our Quality Assurance team has read your various bug reports. Some of the bug reports do have multiple QA employees viewing it. Do note that the newest made bug reports likely won't have an added response for developer/QA-view of it until the new year. Many folks at the company are taking their annual leave.


So in conclusion, I wouldn't say the report are being cherry picked, they're being very much so read and added to our internal bug tracker. A lot of the time, when a reply is made to bug reports, it's either to ask for more information or to confirm the issue.

This is all good and stuff but why does it take months, if not, years to fix some bugs? I do understand that some bugs are incredibly hard to fix but I highly doubt that this is the common case. For example, the alliance ship family had their interdiction reticle misplaced, which made it annoying to use it for interdictions. The confirmation is trivial, just interdict anything using an alliance ship, 100% frequency. Yet, this bug persisted months and multiple small patches. After recieving no in depth information when I asked certain developers privately, I doubt that the QA team is large enough to cover all issues. Maybe expanding the QA department would be a good start because, let's be real here, Elite gets more buggy and buggy with each major update and only a part (that isn't too big) of it gets fixed over time.
Sure, the major, game breaking bugs do get attention but that's about it. The whole experience gets slowly but steady more annoying.

 

[PiLhEaD]

I think a little reflection is needed here and an acceptance that some bugs will never be fixed, no matter how passionate any individual is. That's the way these things go. Bugs are rated by frequency, impact, percentage of user-base effected, how easy they are to work around, repeatability, and many other factors.

So, picking up on the interdiction reticle - 100% frequency at a very low impact* and only Alliance ships puts it low on the list straight away. Newer defects with a higher 'rating' will leap-frog that defect straight away.

Reviewing defect reports and maintaining a prioritised list is a large undertaking, not to be underestimated, and defects will be rated in the same manner, no matter who reports them, QA or players.

You can understand how I must have thought, that, though? ... Now go on holiday.

Ill considered and puerile replies are at best unhelpful, and do not paint a flattering picture when a member of FDev has taken the time to reach out and update you.

Before you all pile in and tell me how wrong I am, have a think about why my words upset you.

* It may be annoying, but it doesn't crash the game, break a mission, glitch the graphics, and so on.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Now go on holiday.

I'd take some of your own advice.

 

[Sterling MH]

I think a little reflection is needed here and an acceptance that some bugs will never be fixed,

And some bugs can't be found. If you can't find the fix, you have to wait until a report comes in that gives an example that DOES uncover the actual problem code.

 

[Faybs]

Hi, I've reviewed the majority of your posted threads (search link) to the PC Bug Reports forum with the [ED64 - 3.3 Horizons] (13 reports) and [ED64 - 3.3.01 Horizons] (7 Reports).

I can confirm various folks from our Quality Assurance team has read your various bug reports. Some of the bug reports do have multiple QA employees viewing it. Do note that the newest made bug reports likely won't have an added response for developer/QA-view of it until the new year. Many folks at the company are taking their annual leave.


So in conclusion, I wouldn't say the report are being cherry picked, they're being very much so read and added to our internal bug tracker. A lot of the time, when a reply is made to bug reports, it's either to ask for more information or to confirm the issue.

One thing that would allay these kinds of threads, and also help your dev team prioritize bugs, is to have a semi-open bug tracker. Bugs would only be created by the Frontier QA team, since (in my experience) non-professionals are terrible at creating bug reports, and put on a public website where we the users can vote on them. That way we can see what bugs are being worked on, and have some say on which ones we think are important. On the other side, you can use your resources only on bugfixes that your user base cares about, and not not waste any on fixes that no-one really asked for.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

It's a shame, but unfortunately not unique. I've seen more than one good idea buried by rushed implementation and the deadline being lord and master of the process in my line of work.

Given that we're moving to paid updates, please could some leeway be given to deadlines. I'm sure most of us would agree that we'd rather see a delay to an update we are paying for rather than the bugs we've seen recently.

Don't get me wrong, the devs have done a fantastic job with this game and any annoyed posts I've made about the game have been made from a position that people don't get annoyed by things they don't care about. The game is much improved than the one I started playing at the start of the year and I'm sure more good ideas are going to follow.

 

[Sterling MH]

It's a shame, but unfortunately not unique. I've seen more than one good idea buried by rushed implementation and the deadline being lord and master of the process in my line of work.

The best strategy never survives the first contact with the enemy. Same holds true with programs.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

The best strategy never survives the first contact with the enemy. Same holds true with programs.

Or anywhere else where you're developing a new product. Wish more people acknowledged this.

 

[Hank]

I went over to the bug forum and it looks like a mess.

I'll have to say after today; and the first time since I started playing; the game today was unplayable. Its too risky to play due to the repeated freeze ups. In my situation if I jump out to the desktop and back its working but I had it happen in some critical moments. I don't feel confident jumping a bunch of systems to get home since I may freeze up on exit from a jump and burn up before I get it sorted out again.

Sorry but I have other games I can play for now until this gets fixed and I hope its fixed in a day or two before the hard core holidays begin.

 

[Brett C]

One thing that would allay these kinds of threads, and also help your dev team prioritize bugs, is to have a semi-open bug tracker. Bugs would only be created by the Frontier QA team, since (in my experience) non-professionals are terrible at creating bug reports, and put on a public website where we the users can vote on them. That way we can see what bugs are being worked on, and have some say on which ones we think are important. On the other side, you can use your resources only on bugfixes that your user base cares about, and not not waste any on fixes that no-one really asked for.

While it would be nice to have a public facing bug tracker direct from internal, it isn't something that is planned nor on the plate to ever be made public.

I do know we have something in the pipeline to veer away from a forums bug reporting system to a more built-in bug reporting web site. As much as I enjoy bug reporting being on our forums, forums aren't an ideal location for bug reports in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

I think things would improve if there would be proper user feedback/bug tool like GitLab has, which is very simplistic yet allows good organization and tracking of bugs. But until there's someone with spare free time at FD, I guess forums will have to do.

 

[Sterling MH]

Would having the proper time at which the bug occurred be helpful AND easy to get now that we have a transaction log in-game? If there's a rash of people getting disconnects all at the same time, then searching the common factor AND the server log times would help narrow down where the problem is, if it is on the FD BGS/negotiation server side.

Full core dump/tracestack might not be much use, but if the client could notice a disconnect, for example, and timestamp it so it ca be sent back in a bug report, that would do some of the errors reported. For hangups, it would require that a child process be set up to dogwatch and keep an eye on the main client for hanging or connecting to an NMI (like Ctlr-Alt-Del signals) to then drop what it knows about the client's state when the user killed it.

Also, since CLogging is such a bad thing to do, how can I get the FD servers banned for combat logging on me today? What happens if FD gets their account banned for the game?

 

[Runnybabbit]

Have to say that I've also experienced freeze-ups and as I have been on two occasions going full tilt towards a planet or star, I've had to chop the game in task manager for safety, rather than end up with the rebuy screen. Never before in the years of playing ED have I had this problem, not with my current pc which can run VR without trouble, nor with my old machine with a relatively ancient graphics card..

Hope this can be solved by the programmers soon...

 

[MottiKhan]

Also, since CLogging is such a bad thing to do, how can I get the FD servers banned for combat logging on me today? What happens if FD gets their account banned for the game?

Nobody ever gets banned for clogging. The FD servers might go into a shadowban for a few days, but that's about it. But before that happens, they'll get several warnings and maybe a stern email.