No one at Frontier catches these bugs before an update is released?

Caydran

Caydran
Most all of the bugs I have seen in EDH/O could have been found, had someone in-house played this game after applying each update.

I'm an old software developer. In those days, we at least tested the update in-house to make sure it addressed the problem, without breaking anything.

Here we are, a DLC and 12.01 updates and it seems like each update just fixes what the previous update broke. Most all of the bugs being reported to this forum find their way immediately into updates, while bugs reported to Issue Tracker seem to be included if they appear here on the forum first.

We are Frontier's update testers folks. We have become so accustomed to accepting beta code here, I doubt FDev bothers to test anything in-house anymore. They just give us an update hot off the press, we test it, report bugs to this forum or issue tracker and the next update is released with those bug's "fixed?" for testing again.

WE, here on this forum, are the "FDev QA QC Team", Folks.....

EDIT: Correction, Per @Stealthie's post. Sorry, I mis-spoke.
 
Last edited:

Factabulous

Factabulous
I never spotted the shipyard issues or stuttering - so if I was on the internal QA you would still have had those bugs.

I have spotted a few issues no-one else seems to have - so if I was on the internal QA then they would be fixed - but no-one would know.

Sure it would be nice if there were no bugs ever, but not many games manage that - even the much-lauded-around-here NMS launched their last campaign in a broken state and it took days to fix 🤷‍♀️
 
Last edited:

Darth Ender

D
Do you not receive your paycheck every other week from fdev ? Mine got me thru the pandemic much more easily than many other people i know.

Why do you think so many people put up with the rules of this forum if not because it's where we work?
 

Stealthie

Stealthie
Paul Eddington said:
WE, here on this forum, are the "FDev QA Team", Folks.....
Click to expand...

Ack! No, not this again! :cry:

Quality Assurance and Quality Control are two (almost) completely separate things... even though a lot of companies do lump them in together.

Quality Assurance is responsible for ensuring that all the systems and procedures used in a business comply with legal and corporate standards.
Fundamentally, it has NOTHING to do with ensuring the quality of the end-product.
It's all about ensuring that everything used in every phase of the process complies with any applicable legislation and complies with regulations imposed by the business.

In terms of software development (an industry which I have no experience of) it will be responsible for stuff like ensuring that PCs and workstations are all build properly, that they have the correct versions of the correct software on them and that the people using them are adhering to corporate rules regarding how files are modified, saved and backed-up etc.
It is, basically, all about ensuring that all the employees have the correct tools, made to the correct standard, and that they're using them correctly.

Quality CONTROL, OTOH, is what's responsible for ensuring that the end-product isn't a steaming pile of poop.

Back in the late 1980s, QA became a big deal, with advocates claiming that sufficient QA would mean that you could, theoretically, employ chimps to do the work because the QA would ensure the quality of the end-product.
This was/is largely true in production-line work where, previously, skilled workers might be required to make the difference between producing, say, a car that was garbage and one that was acceptable.
These days, a production line doesn't need skilled workers because there'll be systems in place that mean, as long as the workers do what they're supposed to, the quality of the end-product is, erm, assured.

Thing is, though, that QA doesn't really help in creative industries.
In software development, for example, you can ensure that everybody's using the correct hardware and software and that they're following the correct procedures for file-handling but you can't really use QA to ensure that the code they create works in the intended way.
You can't use QA to ensure that a dev's brain is only capable of developing bug-free code.

I hate having to defend QA because, in my experience, it's one of the most irritating, meddling, parts of a business but it's NOT responsible for the bugs in ED.
You need to talk to the QC department about that.
 

Caydran

Caydran
Darth Ender said:
Do you not receive your paycheck every other week from fdev ? Mine got me thru the pandemic much more easily than many other people i know.

Why do you think so many people put up with the rules of this forum if not because it's where we work?
Click to expand...
You mean the ARX we get paid for testing new updates, right?

I also got an annual X-Mas bonus of 1000 ARX because I logged in each week.

If I end up being fired from FDev, I will file for unemployment compensation.
 

cmdr milesred

cmdr milesred
all is as expected.

We have always been the Q.C.

The sting was the advertisement for EDO., the wording was not correct and we all knew better.

The best from all this Q.C. is it took us so many years to get fdev to stop doing updates on Thursdays and Fridays and leaving us with dead space for the weekend which they have done more times than its worth counting.

So, today is a good example of Lessons Learned and. hopefully we get it right before Saturday.
hmmm...
 

cmdr milesred

cmdr milesred
as for fdev knowing all the bugs..

All I can say is get rid of the issue tracker.
Let us do as we once did, create threads about the bugs.
I stopped reporting details because of the pretzel method of feeding the blind, things they don't want to know.
Not to mention getting totally fail responses from fdev once is more than enough to stop trying to help.

To be Blunt, to tell a cmdr in a response to a bug report 'We are not responsible for the BGS'
ok, then who is???????
I get we were never supposed to turn it into a game, but we DID!!!
It IS a part of the game
And SOMEONE is responsible for it.
Was I supposed to think U.S. Gold maybe had a hand in a component of this game and I should write to them??
Very very crap response.
More of the example of, why is the neighbors kid answering the phone and telling people lies!?
Or, what daft pole is at the typewriter answering complaints this week, Jack?
Some, barfly, Bill. Why.
No-one cares, Jack.


Was simply something IMO that should never have been typed by anyone at frontier, ever!
And was enough to make me not want to talk to them any more or help them make things better.
How many cmdrs recvd stupid, this way?
1 is too many.



I love the game.
I am not fond of lies or crap attitude
Being treated as a tiny child instead of an adult that supports a game for years and years..
I don't have any habits that are bad enough to get me to fall for false care a second time.
aka, drink from the poisoned well, once is enough.
And IMO people that answer bug reports with lies should not get to keep their job.
As nothing can be done about it, best response for future, is NO information, no 2 sided conversation.
 

dubsdj

dubsdj
I guess with so many different systems and configurations out there, it makes sort of sense for the players to bug test the game. Obvious game breaking bugs should be identified by frontier though by them testing the game by playing it.
 

cmdr milesred

cmdr milesred
if you knew the history


often we have to go to great length to prove a bug even exits.
this is a fail on the current bug reporting method.

take a look for the 4 year long threads regarding the original issue with massacre missions.
4 years long.
a certain response roughly every year is someone at fdev refuting our evidence and telling us there is no bug.
4 years.

and that's only 1 bug, and a bug that created the second largest, still ongoing gold rush.

with the forum threads instead of the bug tracker it was discussed and more proof added daily.
so it eventually got made to work better. never actually fixed though. several band-aids that slip often.
the bug tracker, I can't even discuss. there are no words to talk about bad ideas that have existed since digital information became a thing.
I am a computer tech/programmer and I solve issues in Oil & Gas in Materials for a living.
I have replaced bad ideas and bad software at almost ever place I have ever worked.
They are as common as water and are made by everyone.
But some people see things differently and can/do make changes because they are capable of testing theories and gaining experience in testing, etc....
Smarter than the average bear is a saying for a reason.
Some people can't see the forest for the trees.
Some people can't ever find their pen or their glasses.
MacDonalds has a high turnover rate because, ...?

The Hacker skill was a skill long before computers existed.

It is another term for handyman, or very clever handyman.
A person that looks at everything and figures out how it works and improves it.
A person capable of learning fast and troubleshooting everything in the process.
This is all I really am.
And I have always done it with everything in my life.
Find out how it works, and make it work better, is what I do.

The people that hire me, their biggest problem is not knowing people like me or that we exist.
Any manager that is in the dark on how a job is done, has a hard time putting the RIGHT person in that position.
This is Materials in every company I have ever worked for.

Having also worked in/as IT/Tech/programmer, I know the hardest part for a manager is the same thing.
Finding, knowing the right people.

The truth being every basket of good apples actually has a bad apple too, and likely an avocado or two, too.
And sometimes blindness is a choice.
 

HRDiagram

HRDiagram
Stealthie said:
I hate having to defend QA because, in my experience, it's one of the most irritating, meddling, parts of a business but it's NOT responsible for the bugs in ED.
You need to talk to the QC department about that.
Click to expand...

I have always defined Quality the biggest con of the 20th century.
As the supply chain, from raw materials to end users became oversaturated over human history (including agents, distributors, and everyone who could get a cut) they could not fit anyone else in it to get a significant profit, so they added a new chain, that runs parallel with supply: a completely virgin territory to exploit, and thus QA was born!
It's actually genius.

I always joke with my QA colleagues about this. 😆
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom