Update 2.2: Hire a QA DEPARTMENT

[Brett C]

QA part of the job is actually playing the game. In fact the majority of it should be that. This "waiting for tickets" part is REACTIVE when there should be playtesters being PROACTIVE. That means playing the game 8 hours a day. Why do you think you have so many posts every single week saying "Do you even play your own game?"

Its summertime - you could literally hire some teenagers to play the game weekly for minimum wage. If I were a teen I'd be in line for weeks for that job.

I assume you didn't include that into the ",this list goes on and on. " portion? Guess i'll need to be more verbose with my debug output. [wacky]

For QA to replicate bugs, they'd have to play the game regardless.

 

[tafkabb]

I'll do QA. I love Elite and I can spell. What's the money like?

 

[Cybermykl]

Hi,

If you would like, check out our Cambridge Vacancies page here: https://www.frontier.co.uk/jobs/cambridge_vacancies/ - Feel free to apply for the QA / Testing positions, regardless of it being on the site or not. We'd love to have you join the Quality Assurance team that is quite active and responsive to issues that arise.

QA not only checks the forums, but they also are monitoring for bugs raised by Support, bugs raised by the community team relayed from you guys (social media), internal bug reporting, validation, testing, regression testing, this list goes on and on.



I only see one thread made by you in the bug reports forum - QA has it tagged as investigating. To what i assume is that they're waiting for debug and log files.

You go, Brett! They handled my complaint and request quite efficiently. If you could do a better job, apply and go to work.

 

[babelfisch]

I'll do QA. I love Elite and I can spell. What's the money like?

Some tea and one T of unobtainium.

 

[Faybs]

Hi,

If you would like, check out our Cambridge Vacancies page here: https://www.frontier.co.uk/jobs/cambridge_vacancies/ - Feel free to apply for the QA / Testing positions, regardless of it being on the site or not. We'd love to have you join the Quality Assurance team that is quite active and responsive to issues that arise.

QA not only checks the forums, but they also are monitoring for bugs raised by Support, bugs raised by the community team relayed from you guys (social media), internal bug reporting, validation, testing, regression testing, this list goes on and on.

I only see one thread made by you in the bug reports forum - QA has it tagged as investigating. To what i assume is that they're waiting for debug and log files.

Epic burn

 

[mojonaut]

I'll do QA. I love Elite and I can spell. What's the money like?

Their only looking for people that carnt spel and have know sence of grammer

 

[Long Star]

That is a little unfair. Don't forget the size and scale of this game is immense and it is difficult to cover every base.

Having said that what I find unforgivable is spelling mistakes or poor grammar within NPC interactions.

The size and scale. Ok sure, the majority of that size is segregated on servers their rent, the scope, procedurally generated and already known before the player gets there or while they are in transit. The characteristics of each system less only a few hundred kb of data to be sure for the client to display x,y,z coordinates of and load the assets of each geographic.

I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about BUGS BUGS BUGS!

This is code that prevents players from seeing each other's wingman when they are in the same instance and can see each other. That is entirely under their own control. If this isn't a QA fail who bears responsibility for that?
I'm talking about how wings don't always pay out, and are broken where data isn't properly shared, or when you rejoin one after the game ejects you for connection issues, it fakes a reconnection requiring the wing to be re-formed by everybody.
I'm talking about limpets blowing up whenever anybody leaves an instance.
I'm talking about the phantom cargo bug where you eject cargo but it breaks your cargohold door and you can't open or shut it and you still retail the cargo, so very soon after when you think you have space you dont have space and you then have to drop to menu, destroying everybody's limpets, and then when you come back in you bring more AI NPCs with you EVERYTIME. I'm talking about that kinda crap. Completely catchable by QA.
I'm talking about the design decisions in the 2.1 update which led to multiple "tweaks" and changes "rollbacks" of the design. Proper QA prevents poor product from "going out the door" being released in the first place.

Please forward all the "its a huge game" "its a big project" etc comments right into the local black hole -not interested.

I am of the mindset that every problem created by software has a software solution as well. If you have these type of bugs which are immersion showstoppers you don't boot the updates out the door you fix that stuff first. All I'm saying is make some changes (Improvements) to the QA system so that 2.2 comes without being a buggy mess driving players away, creating huge waves of I quit posts, and negative feedback, and also doesn't require a bunch of roll backs and tweaks.

I think the game is great, lots of fun, immersive for the most part. It is on a variety of platforms and has broad based appeal to both casuals and hardcore players but needs more quality and depth. You can't really get deep with the game when there are so many core gameplay issues unresolved.

 

[AveMe]

They need to... They menaged to bug even unknown probe.

 

[MarkAusten]

Actually, to be fair we can't heap the blame on FD for this. Beta testers in this game tend to be more of the "I want to play with new toys" variety than actual testers, so in a sense FD was just giving us what we apparently wanted.

There's also the issue that while you are being a beta tester, your real game account sits idle. I found that I was getting very impatient towards the end of the beta test as I wanted to get back to the real game. This does not make for a very good testing session. So, some of the blame should rest with the testers.

Some of them, however, play beta for hours but even so, cannot cover everything.

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That is a little unfair. Don't forget the size and scale of this game is immense and it is difficult to cover every base.

Having said that what I find unforgivable is spelling mistakes or poor grammar within NPC interactions.

Except that those sort of bugs are classified as very minor and little of no effort is given to fixing that level of bug. There are a whole heap of more important bugs to clear first.

 

[Privata]

When you build a game as massive as ED bugs are going to happen.

 

[MarkAusten]

Fascinated that QA is seen as a Department. I would hope it was built into FD's 'software process'. Maybe that is part of the problem. There seems to have been obvious issues with the 2.1 release, including not actually properly testing during beta what was released – using fish to pay for a spin of the engineer's roulette wheel etc. (One poster suggested the QA was better than ps2. Never thought I would defend them, but when I experienced 2.1, it made me think I had been unfair on Daybreak.).

Not really. The QA department has to be separate from the rest of the development in much the same way as developers should never test their own code. To a certain extent there has to be a certain amount of rivalry between the two (Development and QA) in that the QA people have to want to "get one up" on the Devs and vice versa, but in a friendly sort of way. But QA should never be an integral part of the development, it just doesn't work very well.

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I'll do QA. I love Elite and I can spell. What's the money like?

Probably in line with market values but the feedback from the users is blo**y awful!

 

[StevieG]

I think the game is great

Thats what we like to see, positive mental attitude, seeing the bigger picture, taking the blinkers off....

 

[Boff'in]

what rocks the boats internally may get raised eyebrows extermally.

QA test the intended design, not revamp or destroy the design, their job is to make sure the design is the best it can be.

With regards to missions, David Braben went on record "we got it wrong".

It's a question of intended design and whether that intention measures to public desire and expectaion -> the road map may be want we want in the future, but of course as customers, we want that now Some of us are a little more patient.

 

[Privata]

I worked at QA once (not for elite , another game)
And it was very focused.

You get a list of things that are broken or might be broken and you try them over and over and over again.

Sometimes something can be broken on 1 PC but not on 29 others. in that case its often the case that its considered playable.

 

[MarkAusten]

I worked at QA once (not for elite , another game)
And it was very focused.

You get a list of things that are broken or might be broken and you try them over and over and over again.

Sometimes something can be broken on 1 PC but not on 29 others. in that case its often the case that its considered playable.

Yep, significance is the key.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Preemptive QA is very hard and very expensive. For complex software like ED requirements are incredibly high. If I was managing that code, I would try to do as much unit testing as possible. However due of code crunches I suspect that's not really solution for FD (they would need to devote one guy who knows code to full extent just to do testing. Doubtful they can afford that).

Do you know why AAA publishers love simple games? Interactive single person FPS shooters with very cinematic views yet very simple button press interactions? Because it decreases QA required by huge margin. Games like Civ V, Europa Universalis, heck, even team focused FPS with different roles are getting bug fixed and tweaked FOR YEARS. Software is THAT complex.

And please don't compare to games when they were simpler. They were simpler. That's whole point.

 

[Faybs]

There's a statistic that 90% of all new companies fail in the first year. Reading this thread gives one plenty of insight as to why.

 

[MarkAusten]

When you build a game as massive as ED bugs are going to happen.

I once read a Microsoft report that stated that the version of Office in production (version 6???) had 100,000 or more open bugs. To be fair, most of these were so obscure that they were never going to get fixed.

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Their only looking for people that carnt spel and have know sence of grammer

What's you grandma got to do with QA?

 

[jasonbarron]

I only see one thread made by you in the bug reports forum - QA has it tagged as investigating. To what i assume is that they're waiting for debug and log files.

Awesome takedown. The blade went in so deep and so fast the OP probably didn't even feel it..or did he?

 

[Quineloe]

Hi,

If you would like, check out our Cambridge Vacancies page here: https://www.frontier.co.uk/jobs/cambridge_vacancies/ - Feel free to apply for the QA / Testing positions, regardless of it being on the site or not. We'd love to have you join the Quality Assurance team that is quite active and responsive to issues that arise.

QA not only checks the forums, but they also are monitoring for bugs raised by Support, bugs raised by the community team relayed from you guys (social media), internal bug reporting, validation, testing, regression testing, this list goes on and on.

I only see one thread made by you in the bug reports forum - QA has it tagged as investigating. To what i assume is that they're waiting for debug and log files.

You might want to cut this part from your job descriptions now:

"Preference will be given to EU citizens."