FDEV - How do you prioritize bug-fixes?

nanite2000

nanite2000
Because it's clearly not prioritized based on the issue tracker you keep asking us to use for logging bugs and issues.

For example, below is a selection of some of the bug-fixes that were applied in Update 11:
  • Fixed some incorrect text in a Sabotage mission.
  • Fixed corpses clipping through the floor.
  • Added and adjusted ammo crate positions to improve distribution.
  • Missing images when accessing some articles via the Insight Hub were replaced.
  • Fixed misaligned text on Fleet Carrier nameplates and decals.
  • Fixed scatter rock appearing black on planet surfaces from a distance.
  • Fixed the cockpit view rendering over the Galaxy Map.
  • Checkerboard rendering is now automatically applied to low, medium, and high quality graphics settings. This option will reduce the cost of the planet terrain shader when in close proximity to a landable planet.
  • Text colouring on the ship boarding panel was fixed.
  • The layout of the search results in the Galaxy Map when missions exist in bookmarked systems was fixed.
  • Text resizing to the item/emote wheel so letter wrap correctly was added.
  • Focusing behaviour for the staff list on terminals was fixed.
  • Filters at the Pioneer Supplies vendor when buying/selling a weapon on suit were fixed, preventing new items which don’t match the filters being shown.
  • An issue on the multicrew report popup that would cause multiple crew members to be selected at once was fixed.
  • Fixed cases of shadows flickering from directional lights.
  • Ensured planet-related systems do not perform unnecessary work when in space.
  • Miscellaneous optimisations to lighting and colour grading.
  • Fixed some incorrect text in a Theft mission.
  • Fixed an issue where a faction would sometimes target themselves for a Hacking mission.
  • Fixed an issue where some missions expire but not correctly fail.
  • Fixed Salvage missions failing to have the relevant item for the mission.
  • Fixed the spawning of mission givers for the hand-in of missions taken from a settlement.
Why were these given higher priority over the top 20 issues in the issue tracker? They seem pretty ineffectual compared to the top 20 items in the issue tracker, so why were they given higher priority?
 

Screemonster

Screemonster
nanite2000 said:
Why were these given higher priority over the top 20 issues in the issue tracker? They seem pretty ineffectual compared to the top 20 items in the issue tracker, so why were they given higher priority?
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Probably because they're easier to fix? Like, knocking out a typo fix is a one-line change, why would anyone not just do that just because there's a higher-voted bug that they haven't figured out how to solve yet?

Like, my windows are filthy and need cleaning. But it's 7am and drizzling so I can't really clean them right now.
I guess because the window cleaning is more serious I'm not allowed to put the dishwasher on or something? A lower-priority but fixable task?
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Screemonster said:
Probably because they're easier to fix? Like, knocking out a typo fix is a one-line change, why would anyone not just do that just because there's a higher-voted bug that they haven't figured out how to solve yet?
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The other thing is, some fixes have affinity with solving other issues; if a quick change which knocks over 1 bug can be extended slightly to cover 20 more bugs, that easily makes it a higher (development) priority than, say, "Planetary Tiling Issues" which is more likely an Epic than something that can come along with a routine bugfix, and would likely be the sole focus of a single update.
 

nanite2000

nanite2000
Jmanis said:
Short answer: Higher Priority != Fixed first.
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If FDev did none of the bugfixes I listed and instead focused on a couple of items in the Issue Tracker, I'm sure they could knock off a few from the list. For example:
(I would have included their title, but of course the Issue Tracker is not working right now... 😏 )

Jmanis said:
The other thing is, some fixes have affinity with solving other issues; if a quick change which knocks over 1 bug can be extended slightly to cover 20 more bugs, that easily makes it a higher (development) priority than, say, "Planetary Tiling Issues" which is more likely an Epic than something that can come along with a routine bugfix, and would likely be the sole focus of a single update.
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I am forced to wonder how much shorter the Update notes would look if they only included new features and fixes for reported issues.

Does anyone think those minor bug-fixes are just there to give the illusion of value in each update...?
 

Muzz UK

Muzz UK
Maybe some of the bugs can't be fixed in 2 minutes and need weeks or months of work due to the complexity of the game. At the end of the day developing games is super simple anyone could do it even a player posting on a forum. Bets the question why do problems even exist in games anymore?

I would say fixing 10 minor bugs might be more beneficial than fixing one unless its game breaking. Seems a lot of the dev work is probably going into improving Odyssey frame rates which is a huge task.
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
nanite2000 said:
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Network issue. Those are very hard to bed down, if anything at all can be done, since you have no control over the other end.
nanite2000 said:
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Minor issue, easily user-rectified. Doesn't seem a big deal to me (and yes, it happened to me too. I reset my firegroups in a few seconds).

Unsure what the "fix" is going to be though. If Update 9 wiped them... something got blatted in the upgrade. It's unlikely FD can restore that
nanite2000 said:
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I've had this happen too... hardly seems "game breaking" as some people put though. A quick page-through of targets shows who's hitting quickly enough (targets attacking you get their full details displayed, without scanning)
nanite2000 said:
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I could uselessly speculate as to the cause, but likely non-trivial to resolve given the nature of it.... and if we're going off reports... it affects 140 people of a however-many-million-copies game? Sure it's not great, but neither is broken Thargoid tissue sampling; that doesn't work for the whole player base, regardless of if your KBM, sub-32-button controller or over-32-button controller.
nanite2000 said:
I am forced to wonder how much shorter the Update notes would look if they only included new features and fixes for reported issues.
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Unreported issues are still issues, and in some cases may even underpin broader issues.

I get what you're saying, but again, player-established priority != actual priority... the #1 top voted issue is just a cosmetic issue as far as I'm concerned (though I'll bet saying so will get a bunch of people stirred up nonetheless) and probably a fundamentally difficult fix at that. The dev who fixed some of those "Incorrect text" bugs probably doesn't know where to start with some of the other issues... again... it's not just a consideration of player priority.... but I'm not going to go through a software dev 101 here, especially since I know nothing of FD's internal practices.

There's a host of issues I'd much rather see FD address well before some of those top 20... issues that genuinely break aspects of the game.
 

nanite2000

nanite2000
Jmanis said:
I get what you're saying, but again, player-established priority != actual priority... the #1 top voted issue is just a cosmetic issue as far as I'm concerned (though I'll bet saying so will get a bunch of people stirred up nonetheless) and probably a fundamentally difficult fix at that. The dev who fixed some of those "Incorrect text" bugs probably doesn't know where to start with some of the other issues... again... it's not just a consideration of player priority.... but I'm not going to go through a software dev 101 here, especially since I know nothing of FD's internal practices.
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I don't see why FDev would publish fixes for bugs that have never been identified by clients in the first place:
  1. Why publicise bugs identified as part of the standard development/testing process if it never impacted any end users? Who benefits from the bugfix?
  2. If the bug was never reported, maybe it's not worth prioritizing over other long-standing issues that have been repeatedly reported by numerous users?
  3. Clients and investors would (rightfully) be asking why they are spending development time and money to fix issues that were never even reported in the first place whilst ignoring those that have.
I mean, sure - if you see a bug, fix it. But then why publicise it unless a customer has explicitly called it out? Who are they trying to satisfy with this approach?

Or, to be a bit more philosophical about it: if a bug exists and no one ever notices it, is it still a bug?
 
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Jmanis

Jmanis
nanite2000 said:
  1. Why publicise bugs identified as part of the standard development/testing process if it never impacted any end users? Who benefits from the bugfix?
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There's a few assumptions there.
  • it wasn't "standard development/ testing" process if it made it to the live game.
  • no reports != no impact. There's so many typos and $myVariableHere issues, and they're also not worth my time reporting... doesn't mean it doesn't impact my play experience, or that of others.
  • issues may be transparent to users. This doesn't make them any less of an issue though.

and overall, players benefit from them being addressed, whether they realise it or not, and the most pertinent time for a company to advertise the work it's been doing is when it's not immediately noticable by players.... otherwise they think a whole bunch of nothing is happening.
nanite2000 said:
  1. If the bug was never reported, maybe it's not worth prioritizing over other long-standing issues that have been repeatedly reported by numerous users?
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Disagree completely. This is a long- standing issue i have with FD; they seem to prioritise the "next hot topic" instead of the overall stability of the game, largely, in mostly sight- unseen aspects.

Take the issue of Thargoid tissue sampling being busted. 99.999999% of the player base probably couldn't care about that... but failing to address that means you'll never see a CG to collect thargoid tissue samples.

Are you suggesting FDs approach should be to not fix that until they release a CG which cannot be completed due to this bug, and it's somehow invalid until that time? That's totally bizarre...
nanite2000 said:
  1. Clients and investors would (rightfully) be asking why they are spending development time and money to fix issues that were never even reported in the first place whilst ignoring those that have.
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Disagree again. None of these "top 20 player votes bugs" are going to get them money, which is all investors care about. They want the next big patch, which is Odyssey, FCs and such... all things players have demanded, and have made FD money and whose development had just made the game more and more unstable

Ignoring bugs just because people don't care about them or see them is a great way to make an unstable, error- prone piece of rubbish.

It's also a great way to waste time if a content release is going to change that up anyway.
nanite2000 said:
I mean, sure - if you see a bug, fix it. But then why publicise it unless a customer has explicitly called it out? Who are they trying to satisfy with this approach?

Or, to be a bit more philosophical about it: if a bug exists and no one ever triggers it, is it still a bug?
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Absolutely is still a bug, and it's the little, unnoticed things that catch you out in the biggest ways if unaddressed.

Take the change to mission payouts... it was almost always a bug that rewards over 50m credits were going to crash the client... just someone never thought it would go that high.... but when mission rewards changed and they could exceed that, bam. Crashes everywhere. So instead of fixing it, they hard- cap mission rewards at 50m.

Nowadays, you occasionally get a thread asking for higher mission payouts. I'm always they're to surprise them that the 50m cap is because of that bug.

So, it's a bug, nobody experiences it now, yet it controls the ongoing development of the game in undesirable ways. That's a big problem.

Edit: another great issue was when certain factions weren't detecting war states for the purposes of mission generation.

But players didn't report that. They reported "not being able to get wartime massacres"... so for all intents players weren't reporting that issue.

So did FDs fix to guarantee wartime missions would appear work? Of course not, because that's not what the bug was... but it was what players reported.
 
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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
nanite2000 said:
I don't see why FDev would publish fixes for bugs that have never been identified by clients in the first place
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With the bug tracker in the horrendous state it's in, it'd be really difficult to prove that a client didn't identify one of those bugs.

"Oh hey, I reported this bug and it expired with no confirmations but they fixed it anyway for unrelated reasons" probably happens quite a lot.
(There was one of mine that I reported years ago, expired years ago, got fixed in Update 9 or 10, and didn't even make the patch notes...)

The other thing is, from what they've said about how the development process works, the bug tracker we see isn't the one the devs actually use internally (which the devs are no doubt extremely grateful for!). So actually checking whether a bug fix had any player reports attached to is probably not worth their time to track that information through the whole process.
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Really, you need to angrily ask this question? I guess everyone goes through this one.

Its actually really to see via observation. Post release:

  • Its it a critical or major severity? Server or client crashes, or headline gameplay unable to progress? Guaranteed fix.
  • Is it an economic exploit? Considered and fixed optionally if triaged as required.
  • Is it anything else? Doesn't matter how overtly user facing or conceptually but not functionally broken it is? HARD NO, FRONTIER POLICY, THEY SLEEP EVERY NIGHT WITH THIS DECISION.
  • Is there spare development time between releases? Yes? Ignore all the known above bugs, instead for marketing purposes just work on the community voted bugs. Then praise themselves endlessly and take a resounding claim to listening to player feedback, making a point to mention it at every chance possible.

The ONLY way i've seen minor legacy bugs fixed is if the functionality gets completely replaced. It happened during beyond, and it happened with odyssey.

Sorry, if you like something, seeing the people who make it treat it with the most minimal regard easily triggers.
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
Do you really need to ask?

Because fixing this:
'Fixed some incorrect text in a Sabotage mission.'

Is easier than fixing this:
'Tiling Planetary Features.'

Everyone with a text editor can fix the former while it requiers a PhD to fix the latter. Should they stop fixing small bugs when it only takes a few minutes of work of an intern just because the other problems are more complicated?
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
Yeah, the issue tracker only lists most voted for bugs (some of them aren't even bugs). They never said that would dictate dev, it's just a way for them to understand what issues are important or prevalent in the playerbase.
 

Northpin

Northpin
nanite2000 said:
and instead focused on a couple of items in the Issue
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As cynical as it may sound, that's not how the KPI works.

Reporting by the end of the month that you fixed 0.5 bugs does much worse than reporting that you fixed 20 bugs

And one more thing, bugs come in only 2 variations:
  • Game breaking bugs - the ones that prevent the game to run, which usually gets fixed rather fast
  • the rest of them bugs.
 

Fost

Fost
Hoping the monthly issues list comes back. I felt like they were doing really well with commincation at that point but then it all got derailed by the console dev messaging delay.
 
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