FD QA hang your heads in shame

[Castodas]

The shields don't take THAT long to restart; geeze, max out your power distributor to systems and let yourself take a quick breather from combat while you reconsider how you can handle a situation differently. This isn't supposed to be twitch gameplay. It is a slow-paced game with single ship to ship combat (when they are on fairly equal grounds) that takes minutes for a victory to occur; so it makes sense that shields would need longer than seconds to recharge. Otherwise, your enemy ships would be recharged in an instant and you'd be sighing and rolling your eyes and reconsidering continuing because those shields won't stay down long enough to get anything done (I would probably quit playing at that point, lol).
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Now that that is done.... I will neither agree nor disagree with whether or not the game should be updated completely bug free. Frankly, I'm extremely happy to see active development happening.
On the other hand, I wish someone more professional would respond to the bug reports in the bug reports thread. Every one that has responded to a bug I posted gave me some half-cooked work-around for the issue without giving any sign that the devs know about it or even care to know.
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Usually I post bugs quite light-heartedly (for lack of better words) with the intent of getting the report out there so other players may contribute (Or I myself may contribute) if they also see that issue happening. Every response that I have received turned my gracious mood into shear annoyance and I irritably (and as politely as possible) attempt to re-explain what happened again because they clearly didn't read through the whole description of the issue.
(to be fair though, in one instance it was me that was having a bad time understanding that the issue was simply just me being a noob)

 

[Excalibrates]

Part of the problem, IMHO, is that there's no medium-plan for what known-good would look like. So, there's bugs which are simple coding bugs, yes. But there's also issues which are bugs and logic errors, but as FD refuse to explain anything in detail about the mechanics of the game, the player base has to second-guess. This, again IMHO, is because FD simply doesn't know where they want to go.
Res site spawning algo- is it a bugged, working as intended, somewhere in the middle? Noone knows as FD won't explain. No I don't mean the obvious bug that spawns only mostly harmless ships. I mean in general.
Repair costs- are they fixed? Not fixed? Rebugged? Noone knows, for sure, as FD don't explain what they should be like. We base the 'fixed/not fixed' on assumptions the player base has gathered rather than on comparing should-be with as-is.
The list goes on.

Without a clear target state there's no long term QA. Combine that with the terrible secrecy around game mechanics (background simulator, anyone? Trade dynamics? etc pp) and you've the recipe for the current state: Bugs, repeat bugs, game mechanic breakdowns and un-announced 'fixes' the player base has to find out about and differentiate bugs from intended, but not communicated, changes.

It's worth checking the video that's posted here where DB's presenting form is criticized. Not because of his performance, that's totally besides the point. But for the presenters before, and after, ED. The games may not be your bag, and not your style, but wow, it's evident that some game shops have a vision, engage with their community and build great games. Yes, with Kickstarter backing, too. It can be done. The current state of ED is not the result of Kickstarter. It's the result of something else entirely.

+1 rep because this nails the issue. When the developers don't seem to know - or certainly won't say - if something is working as intended, or bugged, then what chance do the players have?

 

[Ving]

I agree. I also work in QA / testing and FD's approach to release management is quite amateurish at times, and is clearly driven by marketing rather than by product quality. I'd be embarrassed if I were on their QA team.

They need to get out the alpha/beta mindset and start treating this like a commercial product.

 

[Han Brannigan]

So you've prevented shields from recharging when you exist an instance. Why have you also prevented them recharging when I'm docked at a station? I dock, enter hangar, leave the game, come back a day later and my shields are still the same level. Congratutlations, now you force players who take shield damage to actually sit in space waiting for the recharge.

Just one of the things you got wrong. Shields do recharged in docks. They do not recharge when logged off. You also seem top have no idea how software developement works - yet you ask other to hang their heads in shame ....
OP hang your head in shame.

 

[LeetNoob]

This entire thread is complete and utter nonsense.

Except it's true.

 

[robbyp]

The pro's and con's of the current model of software development, testing and release, where its easy to patch a bug over the internet, means that we get our new features much quicker than if we had to wait for a physical disk (like we did in the old days where they had to test forever before release), but it means they can't test it so well to get the edge cases out.

I think we just have to accept this is the model everyone uses and that we user are going to be beta testing this game and finding bugs which the QA do not have the time and resources to find.

Remember we outnumber their testers 10000-1 (conservative) probably.

 

[Luponator]

Just one of the things you got wrong. Shields do recharged in docks. They do not recharge when logged off. You also seem top have no idea how software developement works - yet you ask other to hang their heads in shame ....
OP hang your head in shame.

Care to explain about software development and how it works?

 

[Han Brannigan]

If Software releases were tied exclusively to meeting set QA standards and -authorization for release... We'd literally live in an entirely different Software world

Yep one with stable programs of 10 years ago. EDs predicted development cycle is 10 years. I can understand that ppl don't want to waste time on an unfinished product. My tip to these ppl is: come back in 5 years.

 

[FuzzySpider]

Cut FDev a little slack. It's a pretty small and tight-knit group of developers who, as much as I might complain sometimes, are doing their best with a difficult job. They aren't a triple-A company with masses of resources to throw around like Ubisoft or EA, so show some patience.

Of course, one could wonder why they are now going to try to take on those companies, but that's another topic for another thread.

 

[JeffRyan]

I think the OP should read this.

 

[JeffVimes]

In this Thread: people discovering that with a fixed deadline it's always QA time that is compressed, and that the testing team is never happy about it, raise their concerns, but this is a management decision. And Guess what, most of the time the project manager is not happy about it either. I know, it's my job to see the test exit report with "test completed: 65%, No sev1 3 sev2 1 billion sev 3 and 4" and still decided to take the risk to off customers because there have been pressure from high up to deliver on a specific date.

don't blame the QA team for this. You know nothing (Jon Snow) about software development if you do.

 

[Han Brannigan]

Care to explain about software development and how it works?

To you or OP - why should I there are books on the market if you want to educate yourself. I am doing this since 20 years and OPs vision of how QA in Software works ( and especially how big the QAs say on wether to release or not ) is not very realistic.

 

[nosscar]

I thought beta/alpha players were the QA department.

 

[Han Brannigan]

In this Thread: people discovering that with a fixed deadline it's always QA time that is compressed, and that the testing team is never happy about it, raise their concerns, but this is a management decision. And Guess what, most of the time the project manager is not happy about it either. I know, it's my job to see the test exit report with "test completed: 65%, No sev1 3 sev2 1 billion sev 3 and 4" and still decided to take the risk to off customers because there have been pressure from high up to deliver on a specific date.

don't blame the QA team for this. You know nothing (Jon Snow) about software development if you do.

This. And its like that in 95% of all Software companies ...

 

[Cmdr NXS Tripp]

I think the OP should read this.

That article is pretty far off base from the discussion and the headline is disingenuous at best.

Having beta tested many games and mods looking for tiny cracks in the walls is indeed what beta testing should be. The OP is talking about huge and obvious problems. (Alpha testing)

Finding those little cracks in the walls will not stop release but to say they will never get fixed is just a headline grabber.

That said I do agree with the article.

 

[JeffRyan]

That article is pretty far off base from the discussion and the headline is disingenuous at best.

Having beta tested many games and mods looking for tiny cracks in the walls is indeed what beta testing should be. The OP is talking about huge and obvious problems. (Alpha testing)

Finding those little cracks in the walls will not stop release but to say they will never get fixed is just a headline grabber.

That said I do agree with the article.

Well considering he's attacking the QA I think the article is particularly relevant. QA /know/ what's wrong. It wasn't their decision to release.

 

[CMDR Brock Samson]

David, David
David you've gone too far
David you've gone too far and you should hang your head in shame
For these wounds I cannot stay, you've gone too far
You've broke my heart, you've gone too far

[video=youtube;u5BomZ31LrY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5BomZ31LrY[/video]

 

[Derath]

almost every major bug i've seen so far in ED was reported by the beta testers anyway, the QA is there the willingness to do anything about it isn't - they seem to just release and think we'll fudge in on the fly, thats what you've gotta have beef with.

 

[Cmdr NXS Tripp]

Well considering he's attacking the QA I think the article is particularly relevant. QA /know/ what's wrong. It wasn't their decision to release.

Point taken. Could be better examples out there.

QA getting brushed aside for clipping issues is very different.

 

[Excalibrates]

Just one of the things you got wrong. Shields do recharged in docks. They do not recharge when logged off. You also seem top have no idea how software developement works - yet you ask other to hang their heads in shame ....
OP hang your head in shame.

Learn to read before posting. I specifically said I logged off. Why wouldn't shields recharge in that situation if they recharge while they sit there.

Given that I own a software development company, I think I've got a pretty good idea of how it works, although maybe I made the mistake of assuming FD would aspire to similar levels of quality to that which we work to. However, if you think that constantly breaking the same feature and requiring multiple patches to fix it each time is "how software development works" then I can only assume you aren't involved in producing anything that needs to work in the real world...