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

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
When you do testing of a product you generally only test things you think might have actually, you know, changed and be affected. Full retesting of everything is massively time consuming.

FD have an amazing ability to break things that were not even changed as part of the patch, so no reason for QA to test it in the first place.

This is one reason i've been pretty meh about calls for FD to do beta testing with players. We've seen it before. Players test, report bugs. Some of those bugs get fixed (some don't), and then release arrives, and there are a bunch of new bugs that players didn't even encounter during testing!

I'm not sure if FD's QA are just understaffed or they are doing a good job based on what they are told is being changed. But there's definitely issues on the development side when things randomly break that alledgedly were not even touched.

Examples:

Pulse wave scanner firing backwards. How the hell did that happen?
Large frag cannons not deploying. How? And why only these? And why only on Horizons?
Keybinds going through the galaxy map to the ship controls when they didn't before. What magic of coding caused that to happen?

But none of this is new. Its been like this since the early days, and nothing has changed, so its safe to assume, no matter how many negative reviews, no matter how many posts expressing frustration, nothing will change anyway.

Either accept it and roll your eyes every time it happens or stop playing.
 

Dragsham

Dragsham
We are just retail. By that I mean paying customers, for a product.
I don't recall mcvities altering their chocolate digestives and releasing em consequently unpalatable, till the next batch cos of the backlash they got?
So why have WE the paying customer allowed this to happen?
Why don't we Just shelve it and walk away like you would a dodgy 2nd hand car u got saddled with?
Fact is gaming industry is different.
Not only are we paying customers, we're lab rats too.
And l don't mind ! hence it being OK for em to do so. If it means we can play and the game gets better then all is good in the elite world.
 

xzanfr

xzanfr
Dragsham said:
We are just retail. By that I mean paying customers, for a product.
I don't recall mcvities altering their chocolate digestives and releasing em consequently unpalatable, till the next batch cos of the backlash they got?
So why have WE the paying customer allowed this to happen?
Why don't we Just shelve it and walk away like you would a dodgy 2nd hand car u got saddled with?
Fact is gaming industry is different.
Not only are we paying customers, we're lab rats too.
And l don't mind ! hence it being OK for em to do so. If it means we can play and the game gets better then all is good in the elite world.
Click to expand...
Jacobs cream crackers have become increasingly paler in colour.
I reported this bug to Jacobs multiple times and they have both ignored and presumably blocked me without fixing the issue. I've had a similar experience with Colman's (French mustard availability) & Whitworths sunny rasins (box art issues).

At least FD fix bugs eventually and often respond.
 

EdzUp

EdzUp
To be fair when the company who writes the operating system that fdev needs to code for so we all can play the game intruduces bug with patches that has killed their own system on some hardware its no wonder coders have a hard time of it these days 😉

Even linux has its issues that crop up, nothing is perfect. Yes they could have caught it earlier but at least they hold their hand up and try to fix it and not sell it as a feature ;)
 

fennster

fennster
xzanfr said:
Jacobs cream crackers have become increasingly paler in colour.
I reported this bug to Jacobs multiple times and they have both ignored and presumably blocked me without fixing the issue. I've had a similar experience with Colman's (French mustard availability) & Whitworths sunny rasins (box art issues).

At least FD fix bugs eventually and often respond.
Click to expand...
I once sent a bag of KP peanuts back to the manufacturer, half jokingly, which tasted stale.

They sent me a box of various KP products, a £5 postal order, accompanied with a letter describing an investigation they made in which they discovered an issue in the production and packaging line.

So, yeah, you can bug report peanuts.
 

Chaparral

Chaparral
They have to fill out that patch update list somehow right?

AI

  • Non-combative humanoid AI are now more effective at removing themselves from combat during raid missions.
  • Following the conclusion of a raid, resident humanoid AI are less likely to become hostile with any player who aided them, unless they are provoked.
  • Fixed duplication of engineers who spawn inside ship hangars caused by the player repeatedly requesting and cancelling docking.
  • Prevented hostility between friendly ships when in the presence of a significant common enemy.
  • Fixed bug that would sometimes cause ship-launched fighters to be assigned two AI pilots.
  • Fixed a clothing arrangement that was causing clipping on certain NPCs in space stations.
  • NPCs in Fleet Carriers will no longer have conversations as if they were in starports.
Audio

  • Fixed missing UI sound when selling stock in the Fleet Carrier Management screen.
  • Fixed missing elements of the SRV turret's Audio when firing
  • Fixed the SRV's turret gun shots sounding muffled when ammo count was below 270.
  • Fixed Capital Ship and SRV Turret Weapon Fire audio playing on the wrong Audio Emitter Position
  • Fixed all ship weapon hardpoints sounding muffled when in normal space.
  • Fixed various instances of missing audio for damaged stations (fires, explosions and alarms).
  • Fixed missing fire and alarm sounds when logging in to a ship docked at a damaged station.
  • Fixed damaged station fire sounds turning on and off quickly and harshly
  • Fixed Cuttable panels sound rapidly retriggering when it hits the ground
  • Rebalanced NPC conversation frequency in concourses.
  • Fixed various issues with music when transitioning between Ship/SRV/On-foot.
  • Fixed missing attack swing sounds when performing melee hits with tools.
  • Improved audio behaviour of deploy and stow sounds for the Fleet Carrier Captains tablet.
  • Fixed the Fleet Carrier purchase movie's volume not following the game's volume sliders.
  • Fixed some abrupt audio transitions on fumaroles and geysers.
  • Rebalanced the audio mix for Skimmers whilst on foot and in SRV
  • Fixed ambiences being too loud when logging in to a ship docked at an engineer base.
  • Fixed missing In space Dogfight Combat music
  • Fixed Stopped various UI sounds which would continue looping after exiting the screen that triggered them.
Character

  • Fixed player torsos sometimes disappearing when looking down on uneven surfaces.
  • Hand motions of the ship's pilot should correctly match flight maneuvers when observed via multicrew following a hyperspace jump.
  • Fixed several clipping issues on the Vintage outfits.
  • Fixed hair appearing alongside hats on the Frontline Solutions vendors.
  • Fixed torso clipping with the camera when using an extremely high FOV and sitting on the bar stool.

Ships/SRV

  • Ship kits should now correctly block the vanity camera.
  • Fixed a Scarlet Krait error when destroying your own ship from a fighter.
  • Fixed a rare Scarlet Krait error when deploying an SRV.
  • The ambient temperature of the ship's location is now taken into consideration when a ship is running cold enough to have previously built up ice on the canopy.

Graphics

  • Fixed an issue where setting ambient occlusion to "low" would cause artefacts
  • Fixed an issue where volumetric effects such as fog could have silhouette artefacts depending on quality or resolution scales
  • Fixed an issue where Trespass zones appeared very dark/black on the radar
  • Fixed an issue where flickering of invalid pixel values occasionally being generated in ring fog
  • Fixed an issue where a triangular pattern would be present in planet normals on certain GPUs
  • Fixed an issue where night vision would be applied to thumbnail generation
  • Fixed an issue where a black box could appear on the main menu in certain scenarios when either in or switching to VR
  • Fixed an issue where the introduction during the on-foot tutorial would not be correctly displayed when in VR
 

buzzx

buzzx
I just wish someone would interview an ex developer/QA at Frontier and tell us once and for all why/how these major bugs that you can spot within 15 minutes of playing a new build always slip through.
 
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Reactions: Imo

Zador

Z
Agony_Aunt said:
When you do testing of a product you generally only test things you think might have actually, you know, changed and be affected. Full retesting of everything is massively time consuming.
Click to expand...
That's what a regression test suite is for - checking that you haven't broken the things you haven't changed - and any development project worth its salt has one and runs it before releasing any code. It appears it is something that's lacking or inadequate in the Elite development process.
 

Christopher Roberto

C
Old Duck said:
I can't believe I'm defending bugs in patches, but to be fair, there are so many ways to play Elite these days that even with a team of testers I don't think they could possibly catch every bug. I was just thinking yesterday, "When was the last time I was mining?" That's radically different gameplay than my normal "defend installations in a shieldless stealth Cobra" routine. This thought popped in my head while unloading my fleet carrier of some old, dusty cargo, using my T-9 and advanced docking computer for the first time in well over a year. If the advanced docking computer was bugged, I wouldn't even had known about it until yesterday. Oh, and it's probably been even longer since I've landed on a planet (designated docking pads notwithstanding). 🤷‍♂️
Click to expand...
Devs that are more aggressive about releasing a mostly bug-free product have a fixed set of tests for human testers to run through prior to opening up each patch to the world and some infrastructure to make it quick to jump to the point they need to do whatever action, like "mine 5 units of ore", "use autodock to land", etc.. Think warioware but as a job. Ideally covers the daily tasks a player would go through. Testers often work for free (morons) so the cost is really just the wrangling and support.

People argue that it doesn't matter as gamers have been conditioned to accept slop, but these well-tested games seem to do exceptionally well on Steam. But maybe the QA doesn't make a difference and it's just a sign of devs who care.
 

Imo

Imo
I remember from the time when bugs have been addressed in the forums directly the Frontier team was always kind and helpful on one hand but often looked definitely into the wrong things on the other hand telling everything was working as intended. I mean when I say it was a bug related to multicannon turrets and they look into gimballed weapons on my ship instead not noticeing that I had a mixed weapons leadout and then claiming all works fine I feel screwed up with my attempt to help them getting bugs sorted. :(
 

Ronzer

Ronzer
I think they do test it in-house to an extent, but I think over the years, it's come to pass that things will break on the mass release and they have to fix it further anyways. If you look at Odyssey promo stuff, they have it looking pretty sweet in-house. Then they did that beta. What they should have done, after seeing the beta, is maybe pushed back the release, but can you imagine what folks would have said if they said the push-back would be a full year? This isn't SC, where that'd be a laugh and everyone knows it'll be 20 years of pushback.
My point being, I think this is the best way for them to release and iron stuff out and I think a lot has to do with this being an MMO. It may seem like releasing globally should go as smooth as the in-house testing does, but go ask Bethesda if Starfield is even multiplayer, let alone expecting the bugs that'll arise from different setups/locations. Guess what they'd say? No f$%^&& way!
 

RooksBailey

RooksBailey
Frontier is the most frustrating game dev I have ever encountered...and I go all the way back to the Atari 2600 days! It's really bizarre. Frontier's handling of Elite has always reminded me of the way a developer would treat a failed game right before they pulled the plug and moved on. Of course, Elite is not a failed game; quite the contrary. And I think that is where the poor development problems originate. It's just a tinfoil hat theory, but I've come to believe that Elite became more popular than they ever expected. I have a hunch that Braben conceived of Elite Dangerous as a PR stunt to help him take Frontier public; that the game was never meant to persist for long after Horizons. However, they hit a snag: they designed the game better than they thought they did, and the community loved it more than they anticipated. Instead of fading away, Elite grew in popularity, requiring FDev to dedicate resources that they had already re-allocated to higher profile IPs, like Jurassic Park. This, to me, would explain why Elite development has always been so tortured: Elite has become an albatros they can't seem to get off from around their neck. So, they make the best of it: they assign new hires to work on it to get their feet wet, and more experienced developers when they have some free time from working on the projects FDev really wants to focus on...those higher profile, more mainstream appeal IPs. I do think Odyssey was meant as a sort of reset: that Frontier decided that if you can't beat 'em, you might as well join 'em. So, they put a lot of resources back into the game, but then the pandemic hit and the production schedule went to heck, and they went back to the old mentality of "it's just Elite, who cares," and published Odyssey knowing that it wasn't ready and maybe even secretly hoping it would tank the game once and for all and they could be rid of this project that had long overstayed its welcome.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Zador said:
That's what a regression test suite is for - checking that you haven't broken the things you haven't changed - and any development project worth its salt has one and runs it before releasing any code. It appears it is something that's lacking or inadequate in the Elite development process.
Click to expand...

Way to just take a tiny part of my post and take something that was somewhat humorous and end up making it serious. Spoilsport!

But ok, if we are being serious....

Of course that's what regression testing is for.

But look at what FD have to test. Its not like you can automate most of that. Its not a website. Its still manual testing, even if its regression testing.

Take for example the Anaconda landing issue. How do you write an automated test for that? You can't. Someone actually would have to decide to test landing on a planet in an Anaconda. And why would they test that if they didn't have any info from the devs to indicate that something had changed that might cause problems with the Anaconda landing on planets?

If you go down that road as a QA, testing everything, you'll never finish testing.
 
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