When is the Issue Tracker going to be looked at?

[Ozric]

@Ozric re: Thargoid structures. You sure that's a bug? Possibly changed on purpose?

There was never any mention of it in the patch notes. Frontier did release one patch where they said they thought they had fixed some of the structures (so acknowledging it is a bug), but every one I've visited it is still not working correctly.

They are because if the reason why these other issues fall off and dont get the votes they otherwise would have is because they're hard to find then the same would be true for anyone trying to artificially bloat numbers.

The idea that there are armies of youtube fans confirming pet bugs there at the detriment of others just doesn't make any sense. Their "followers" would have to jump thru all the same hoops to sign up and post a confirmation as anyone else with an issue and if they'd be willing to do all that because someone on youtube told them to, they'd do it for issues they themselves are having and have actually confirmed as a bug as well.

So in that sense, i dont see how the youtube following bug reporters are abusing anything. Unless your opinion is that the bug they're confirming doesn't exist and doesn't impact all those people who felt the urge to confirm it after watching the video.

If it didn't impact them...not sure why they would go thru the trouble of reporting confirmation of the bug.



if youtube does drive falsified reporting of confirmations or disproportionately represents the impact of bugs...then fine, it's something to be concerned with, but moving it to a forum wouldn't stop that. It would just raise the noise floor.

Plus, i dont think you've shown that this spamming actually results in corrected bugs. I thought we were all under the impression that Fdev doesn't care about reported bugs (confirmed or not) ...just how much bad publicity a bug is getting on social media (youtube included) to the point that it starts trending enough to get on their radar.

If an issue is already confirmed then all you need to do is go to the direct url and click vote. If you are confirming all you need to do is write 30 characters, click 'can reproduce', then submit.

The Pulse Wave Analyzer is one example, even though it was only half broken. There have been others

All in all I wouldn't look much into this issue tracker. Unless we start getting regular, proper bug updates worthy of a team of 100 peps working on the product. I cannot shake the feeling/hope that the current version of the game is abandonware at this point and they have newer, shiner engine prepared to accommodate Odyssey.

You're right that this isn't the same tools they use internally. The main reason I'm raising this again now, is because of the impending release of Odyssey. If they have something else in the pipeline then they could say something is coming to replace it, if they're not then something needs to be done.

 

[Darth Ender]

If an issue is already confirmed then all you need to do is go to the direct url and click vote. If you are confirming all you need to do is write 30 characters, click 'can reproduce', then submit.
The Pulse Wave Analyzer is one example, even though it was only half broken. There have been others

And how long did it take this abuse of the system pulse width analyzer bug to get fixed? over 3 months.

If you have to supposedly abuse the system to get something fixed in 3 months from identifying it (having it fully confirmed), is not the problem the rate of bug fixes ..rather than the organizational system of them?

 

[Decksmeck]

I don't know if this was already asked and answered but I have not gotten into a life of crime yet but I aspire to do some crime someday. It seems strange that either stolen or illegal goods would get marked down on the black market. I assumed that is where these things would sell for. But OK, if they mean to make a tidy profit themselves ok. I can see taking 25% of stolen goods but 25% of illegal goods, that is plain criminal. I might as well steal the stuff at that rate.

 

[Mrc_NorthEast]

The bug tracker blows more than some cheap ...... do in the red light zone.

Thanks for the laugh, I needed that.

It also says something when you can find a CQC match faster than you can open a new issue. The issue Tracker is hot smelly garbage, and imho was setup the way it was to discourage issues being submitted at all.

I bet most people could rank up a bit in CQC before they could enter a new issue and get it fixed.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Are there examples of the issue tracker working and bugs actually getting fixed in other Frontier games or is it mainly an Elite Dangerous issue?

 

[Alec Turner]

Re mission scan jobs: That may be by design. Those always jump, various distances. Depending on planet and entry approach. Planet size has impact on jump distance that happens. Been doing that since Horizon released. Or has it been confirmed on how those behave?

Search zones have always jumped around a bit, it's a clever bit of misdirection to make sure you're looking the other way when then buildings (or whatever it is) suddenly pop into existence. However, there was an unannounced change a while back where the first search zone movement is now dramatic (many hundreds of km) and happens just before you hit glide, meaning you typically glide to entirely the wrong location and have to go back into supercruise again to get to the right location. If it's not a bug then it's a truly terrible design change.

 

[Ozric]

And how long did it take this abuse of the system pulse width analyzer bug to get fixed? over 3 months.

If you have to supposedly abuse the system to get something fixed in 3 months from identifying it (having it fully confirmed), is not the problem the rate of bug fixes ..rather than the organizational system of them?

But it wasn't being pushed from day 1 and still the Pulse Wave Analyzer was in more of a working condition than a lot of the bugs in the game that have been in for a heck of a lot longer, and yet it got a priority fix ahead of aspects of the game that are completely broken (meagships, smuggling to name 2 that aren't exploration).

Of course the regularity of bug fix patches is part of the equation, but you're repeated assertion that just putting a better search function on the issue tracker would solve all of the issues with it is just plain wrong. Which can be attested by just how many other people agree with the raft of usability issues alone.

Pulse Wave Analyser Fix

Greetings Commanders, Firstly, we'd like to thank you for your continued patience and support with the Pulse Wave Analyser issue. The challenges of working from home while also developing the largest ever expansion for Elite Dangerous have resulted in a far slower turnaround on this than we'd...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Nothing since then, no comment on any of the other far more important issues raised in that thread.

I don't know if this was already asked and answered but I have not gotten into a life of crime yet but I aspire to do some crime someday. It seems strange that either stolen or illegal goods would get marked down on the black market. I assumed that is where these things would sell for. But OK, if they mean to make a tidy profit themselves ok. I can see taking 25% of stolen goods but 25% of illegal goods, that is plain criminal. I might as well steal the stuff at that rate.

Stolen goods should have the 25% markdown on them because you have to essentially fence them off. Illegal goods should not, but there is a bug that has been in the game for over a year.

webapp

issues.frontierstore.net

I raised it with the CMs to see if it could be fixed along with the balancing changes that have been going on, but " I can confirm that by virtue of being on the Issue Tracker it can be considered known and fitted into QA/Devs agenda for being investigated. "

Nothing since then (only investigated though, not actioned). Though the PWA was fixed a couple of weeks after this.

Are there examples of the issue tracker working and bugs actually getting fixed in other Frontier games or is it mainly an Elite Dangerous issue?

I don't know to be honest, I don't think so. A quick glance shows that it varies a lot by game. Planet Coaster has only had 330 total issues created, whereas Planet Zoo has had 6,187 of which 125 have been fixed and 5,650 have expired.

Obviously some bugs do get fixed for all the games though how much the tracker has to do with the ones chosen is debateable. The other games also require less confirmations (only 3) before an issue is marked as confirmed though.

 

[Pville_Piper]

SOON^TM

I can't believe it took 3 pages for this to show up... Ya'll are slackin!

 

[zimms]

SOON^TM

I can't believe it took 3 pages for this to show up... Ya'll are slackin!

If only you'd told me earlier. I've been following the usual channels.

 

[StevieG]

When they had the big BGS update 2 years ago and changed how conflict zones work they introduced an exploit that breaks BGS gameplay.

webapp

issues.frontierstore.net

In a Triple Elite(no longer fdev supported) meeting with Will Flanagan 1 week after they introduced the BGS breaking exploit we informed Will of this major issue to BGS groups. The intention was that this would be addressed without making it public. Will F made a note that they would look into it. Not long after Triple Elite was discontinued by FDEV along with Galnet and community goals.

We've had 3 BGS updates since the major BGS changes 2 years ago however the fighter exploit has not been addressed.
No feedback on if it will ever be fixed. No feedback to the BGS groups. No feedback to Triple Elite as.... it was no longer needed by fdev.
No motivation for me to buy ARXs when a major problem was highlighted 1 week after you fdev introduced it and 2 years later its still not been addressed.

What because its not a money exploit it goes to the back of the queue?
What because I've not done a video of it and posted it on every media outlet so it gets abused to the max, it goes to the back of the queue?

The financial situation of fdev and the huge amounts of money Elite brings into fdev does not warrant this level of service. If it was a dead game with no money income I could understand this complete lack of respect to the Elite Dangerous community.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I guess it gets "looked at" from time to time. The proper question would be when it's gonna be touched.

 

[znôrt]

We've had it for almost 2 years now

don't you know covid is all over cambridge, you insensitive clod?

and if we're going to make a decent attempt of reporting bugs

who is we?

frontier's attitude vs software quality has been pretty clear and consistent even since the honeymoon times in 2015.

the issue tracker was a obvious smokescreen, data has confirmed this consistently since.

they don't care about their own work, why should i? i simply laugh my asp off at their incompetence whenever i see a bug. it's not going to get fixed anyway, so no point in even bothering. the only real consequence this has for me is that besides elite being a rarity i cherish, i'm not going to even look at any other game and my "support" in the shop ceased abruptly early on and most likely forever. which doesn't solve anything because there's fools enough paying through their noses for nothing, but still, at least i won't feel bad about it.

but if you want to keep wasting effort and time and being made a fool of, be my guest. we never learn

and of course don't forget to buy some paintjobs on your way out, that will do!

 

[Morbad]

I'm not quite as cynical as znort, as bugs occasionally do get fixed. However, it's extremely discouraging to see bugs I've reported multiple times get ignored, or worse, become 'expired' or even listed as 'fixed', when they are clearly still present.

 

[Darth Ender]

But it wasn't being pushed from day 1 and still the Pulse Wave Analyzer was in more of a working condition than a lot of the bugs in the game that have been in for a heck of a lot longer, and yet it got a priority fix ahead of aspects of the game that are completely broken (meagships, smuggling to name 2 that aren't exploration).

Of course the regularity of bug fix patches is part of the equation, but you're repeated assertion that just putting a better search function on the issue tracker would solve all of the issues with it is just plain wrong. Which can be attested by just how many other people agree with the raft of usability issues alone.

Pulse Wave Analyser Fix

Greetings Commanders, Firstly, we'd like to thank you for your continued patience and support with the Pulse Wave Analyser issue. The challenges of working from home while also developing the largest ever expansion for Elite Dangerous have resulted in a far slower turnaround on this than we'd...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Nothing since then, no comment on any of the other far more important issues raised in that thread.

It didn't start at 3 months either. It started earlier and only got mentioned in the forum after and apparently a lot more people are impacted by it than by mega ship looting or whatever.

The point is, all you're talking about doing is shifting over who gets to say which of the 1-3 bugs this quarter get fixed (assuming fdev listens to anyone except what trends anyway). You want the ability to dictate those bugs to be in the hands of more like-minded players rather than to some other playerset's concerns by shifting where and how priorities are set.

You wont be solving the real problem which is that bugs aren't being fixed fast enough leading to this hunger-games style contest of getting bugs fixed.

 

[Ozric]

who is we?

frontier's attitude vs software quality has been pretty clear and consistent even since the honeymoon times in 2015.

the issue tracker was a obvious smokescreen, data has confirmed this consistently since.

they don't care about their own work, why should i? i simply laugh my asp off at their incompetence whenever i see a bug. it's not going to get fixed anyway, so no point in even bothering. the only real consequence this has for me is that besides elite being a rarity i cherish, i'm not going to even look at any other game and my "support" in the shop ceased abruptly early on and most likely forever. which doesn't solve anything because there's fools enough paying through their noses for nothing, but still, at least i won't feel bad about it.

but if you want to keep wasting effort and time and being made a fool of, be my guest. we never learn

and of course don't forget to buy some paintjobs on your way out, that will do!

We are those of us who have reported bugs since we started playing the game, still do, and do it for other games too. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment as it's my job, but I think of it like other things. If you don't take the time to raise something as an issue then you can't moan about it if it's not fixed

Oh and I've not spent money on a paintjob since they introduced ARX, because I refuse to use premium currencies.

The point is, all you're talking about doing is shifting over who gets to say which of the 1-3 bugs this quarter get fixed (assuming fdev listens to anyone except what trends anyway). You want the ability to dictate those bugs to be in the hands of more like-minded players rather than to some other playerset's concerns by shifting where and how priorities are set.

Sorry, but I haven't said anything of the sort. I haven't suggested what form changes should take, other than improved communication. So I'm not sure where you're getting that I want to dictate things to other people from.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Agreed.

The major problem to me with the issue tracker itself is the Confirmation requirement: requiring 10 confirmations all on the same bug report (as opposed to on a duplicate or near-duplicate) is virtually impossible except for:

- really obvious bugs, which when it comes down to it the yelling on the forums an hour after the release goes live probably gives away first anyway
- ones with an organised group pushing them (which doesn't guarantee it's really a bug - there's a BGS-related misunderstanding sitting in Confirmed at the moment)
- extreme luck that the 2nd to 11th people with the bug check for an existing one with the same keywords and language that you used

Worse, once the duplicates start dropping in, the Confirmations just get spread out further: I've compared it to Powerplay before, where well-meaning and apparently encouraged actions (e.g. reporting a bug) end up making things worse (e.g. spreading out confirmations so none of them get confirmed)

It's basically not worth my time reporting bugs unless they're both serious enough that I could organise ten confirmations and niche enough that the forum moderators haven't already had to ban six people for too-colourful insults about it.



The underlying issue of course is that Frontier's QA team monitoring the tracker is far too small for the number of bugs being reported. It needs proactive daily monitoring to merge unconfirmed reports, close things which aren't actually bugs with some sort of useful explanation [1], etc.

They seem to have tried to work around this by reducing the set of bugs to consider to just the rare Confirmed ones ... but that set is also growing faster than it can be dealt with.


[1] Which would just be helpful customer service. If someone reports "can't request docking permission" because their sensors are broken/off, which comes up quite a bit, or doesn't realise that you have to scan the beacon not just visit the location for a passenger mission, explaining the situation might help a lot ... as well as giving some hints to Frontier for where the interface needs improvement.

 

[Darth Ender]

Sorry, but I haven't said anything of the sort. I haven't suggested what form changes should take, other than improved communication. So I'm not sure where you're getting that I want to dictate things to other people from.

you've mentioned that the current setup is exploitable by social media influencers ...implying that they're inflating pet bugs over what you are implying are more important bugs

So why bring it up if your intention isn't to find a way to stop that. Which you then brought up how the forum setup that pre-existed the current one could be used to combat that kind of blind-bombing of impact metrics (though you did say the forum wasn't an idea you thought they'd go for again).

Half of the idea seems to be to control who gets to say what is impactful to players because you obviously think the ones that make it viral on youtube are not the ones that should be at the top. The other half is to improve player feedback and ability to find already existing bug reports for the same issues.

i dont see how doing anything about how bugs are voted on improves anything. Whether it's miners wanting their stupid pulse wave thing fixed because all they do is mine and that's a huge issue for their gameplay or some other players who want to loot megaships and that's not working etc.

I also dont see how the current system's concerns wouldn't be addressed by simply fixing the search so users can better find pre-existing issues and allowing anything auto-closed by age to be re-opened when a new vote is added. I dont think making the process of submitting easier will help because it's going to introduce a lot of poor quality reports that become undeniable noise. I dont think having fdev communicate feedback about which bugs they are going to fix will help either because it's going to be extremely limited ...and at least not knowing gives users hope.

Better communication would only improve things if you also improved the amount and speed at which bugs are being resolved. Otherwise all you'll do is give us evidence of a depressing situation rather than blissful ignorance. And that wont improve the morale of people who bug report, but could easily make it worse. Which i believe was the opposite of the objective.

 

[Ozric]

you've mentioned that the current setup is exploitable by social media influencers ...implying that they're inflating pet bugs over what you are implying are more important bugs

So why bring it up if your intention isn't to find a way to stop that. Which you then brought up how the forum setup that pre-existed the current one could be used to combat that kind of blind-bombing of impact metrics (though you did say the forum wasn't an idea you thought they'd go for again).

Half of the idea seems to be to control who gets to say what is impactful to players because you obviously think the ones that make it viral on youtube are not the ones that should be at the top. The other half is to improve player feedback and ability to find already existing bug reports for the same issues.

i dont see how doing anything about how bugs are voted on improves anything. Whether it's miners wanting their stupid pulse wave thing fixed because all they do is mine and that's a huge issue for their gameplay or some other players who want to loot megaships and that's not working etc.

You are making things out of my comments that simply aren't there. I never implied anything, I don't think one bug should be pushed over another by users. I merely commented that a partially broken issue should not be as high an importance as one that is completely broken.

I don't think the voting system should be there at all! It's meaningless unless you are going to follow the highest number of votes gets fixed first, in which case the system is at the whim of whoever can mobilise the most people to vote on an issue. The decision should be Frontier's, not a subsection of the community.

Ian's case about the misunderstood BGS issue being confirmed and upvoted is clear evidence of that.

 

[znôrt]

Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment as it's my job, but I think of it like other things. If you don't take the time to raise something as an issue then you can't moan about it if it's not fixed

no, that's actually a very good attitude ... just wasted in this specific scenario, and that's just my opinion.

 

[Darth Ender]

You are making things out of my comments that simply aren't there. I never implied anything, I don't think one bug should be pushed over another by users. I merely commented that a partially broken issue should not be as high an importance as one that is completely broken.

I don't think the voting system should be there at all! It's meaningless unless you are going to follow the highest number of votes gets fixed first, in which case the system is at the whim of whoever can mobilise the most people to vote on an issue. The decision should be Frontier's, not a subsection of the community.

Ian's case about the misunderstood BGS issue being confirmed and upvoted is clear evidence of that.

How else are you going to measure the impact to the userbase if not have them tell you that it's impacting them? If 2 bugs can be fixed this quarter, which way is the best way to determine which 2 bugs gets fixed. A thing that frustrates 1000 confirmed users or something that's technically more broken but only frustrates 30 confirmed users?

it easily makes more sense for Fdev to focus on bugs that more users are impacted by. Rather than on bugs that far fewer come across, regardless of the level of "bugginess"


edit: your idea of fdev deciding the priority is only helpful if they understand the impact to the playerbase. But it's incredibly obvious that Fdev internally doesn't play the game the way their users do. So the idea that they'd somehow have a more fair way of selecting which bugs get worked on just isn't something you can rely on. It might as well be the same as it is now because you have no way of telling what they think is more impactful when they're so disconnected from how most players play the game.