I have worked in software. That was my career for 30+ years. I never worked in a team of 30 people. Most projects we were just a handful of developers. We did wonders back then, but it was different times.
Why can we only Land on Barren Planets after almost 5 years?
- Thread starter Cosmo
- Start date
Sustain is the right word imho because I don't see much maintenance aka bugfixing being done in ED.
So ED is definitely not in maintenance mode.
Ditto.
On the other hand we couldn't get away with delivering bug ridden applications, gamedevs get away with almost anything imho.
The QA team is separate to Elite's 100+ devteam (working on 2020's New Era and the interim small updates); with the lack of bugfixes since April Update Patch 2 (14th May) I assume QA are bundling said bugfixes into the September Update. I would prefer more regular bugfix updates though.
Well stating the obvious is that bug fixes require people and schedule to do. They don't happen automatically for free, and require retesting to verify the fixes. Any time they spend on bug fixes, they dont spend developing new features or games.. so obviously they've made the call there's no money in quality, refinement or balance and are focusing elsewhere (EDIT: The games been in the same disrepair for years, theres enough evidence).
I remember back in 2.x they allowed more development time for fixes, just in the last few years basically zero, or if not that, they have absolutely increased the tolerance on what they consider okay to be in the live game than they have in the past. Lets see what bug fixes we get this year. My suspicion is we would have got them already if they were going to fix them at all..
If you can convince the steam / twitter / facebook people to start a campaign on it though, the game will probably be a+ in 3 months. Thats how frontier roll
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To do what you describe would require 2 instances of the game core, one to fix bugs on and the other add 'new era' code to.. Which would leave the new era code being developed on a buggy core!! Which in turn would lead to more bugs..
Another alternative would be to fix the bugs then add the 'new era' code. The preferred method.
Alternatively they could ignore the bugs and just continue with the 'new era' bugs, because, they will be bugs..
The fact the QA team If there is one, and past history shows there is not, is immaterial. Typically, code is developed, peer tested, game tested, user tested, then acceptance tested, and the quality assured.
Previous releases would indicate they go straight from dev to beta testing, ignore feedback and then release.
My bet is the QA team is smaller than the postal team. In fact they might be the same teams!
You can check the credits of FDev's games (which are recorded on MobyGames.com) for the QA team's names, and LinkedIn too.
So can someone explain why we have so many bugs after each release? The truth is after each and every single release, there have been blatent obvious bugs. Remember the missions paying trillions of credits? How about getting sent to jail for defending the Gnosis bugs? How about the grade 5 for grade 1 materials exploit bug? How about the missions message spam bug? How about the unkillable ships bugs?
Care to explain?
Just because someone posted a list of QA members does in any way infer they're actually QA'ing the game. And if they are... I could make a recommendation that would get me another ban
There are probably several reasons:So can someone explain why we have so many bugs after each release? The truth is after each and every single release, there have been blatent obvious bugs. Remember the missions paying trillions of credits? How about getting sent to jail for defending the Gnosis bugs? How about the grade 5 for grade 1 materials exploit bug? How about the missions message spam bug? How about the unkillable ships bugs?
Care to explain?
Just because someone posted a list of QA members does in any way infer they're actually QA'ing the game. And if they are... I could make a recommendation that would get me another ban
- some bugs only appear in the live build
- some stuff gets detected but it's not important enough to postpone the release
- some stuff doesn't get detected at all
- some stuff does get detected and fixed but breaks something else
- someone failed at something (communication, his job, etc.)
That's not me defending them by the way. It would be nice to have less bugs.
For anyone who hasnt worked in software, QA doesnt actually fix the bugs, the same developers who wrote the code traditionally do. Finding the bug initially is a small fraction of the work involved in getting to fixed.
Before a bug is fixed, there is certainly a meeting involved with leads and management to triage what issues are to be fixed by developers, thats all you need to know to work the rest of the story.
Especially given the player bug reporting thing, its incorrect to think frontier are just ignorant and would fix it all if they just knew about them. That would be a far worse outcome actually.
No QA do not fix the bugs, they are there to ensure the software being released (That's to the consumer) is up to a determined level of quality.
If issues are found by the QA team, they are returned for fixing by whomever the PM deems most qualified. That may or may not be the original code/developer, it would depend on current resource allocations, time, SME availability.
Bugs found after the release, are examined and weighted as to their detriment to the current release play-ability or allocated a slot to fix before next release. Obviously (to anyone with real knowledge of software development) bugs are fixed first so the new development can be build on a known good base, and not on the known buggy base. These can and a lot of times are, done at the same time, with everyone aware of the which bugs may affect or impact their current development. Not doing so, would lead to a dev creating new code assuming what they were adding to, was bug free.
There is one caveat to the above; That is company size. Frontier are a small outfit (tiny compared to where I work) so probably skip most of it.
To be fair though, Beyond was more broken for me than any Elite update I can recall. Those fixes were absolutely necessary.
True but HG keeps bringing out patches and not only for the gamebreaking bugs.
After each update Fdev releases one or two patches to fix the most prominents bugs but a lot of smaller ones just get ignored, Mamba landing gear, NPC crew voices missing, etc.