Guild Wars 2

Many traits for many professions are now bugged and do not give anything. We are not your QA testers. If we are then I think we should get compensation.

In a de facto way, we kind of are since we are the ones playing the game the most. We the players then are the best source of feed back because we put the most time in to the game and thus notice the little things. :] -Mura

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

Many traits for many professions are now bugged and do not give anything. We are not your QA testers. If we are then I think we should get compensation.

They have QA testers. we certainly are not them. Bugs happen anyway.

From experience, I can say that I see bugs in this game all the time.

-Floating mobs
-Falling sounds when I’m clearly not falling
-I jumped off the side of a tower in WvW and got hung mid air in a fall loop.
-lag now since Feature Patch
-Stuck in walls/etc.
-COE 15s crystal form
-etc.

I’ve reported bugs… even posted bugs to the forums… nothing ever happens.

but holy heck… if someone can’t figure out how to use their elite skill by level 30 then #%$ let’s nerf that real quick!

Bugs happen in every. single. Game. Every one. You cannot test for live environment. Some bugs are easy fixes, some are harder. Some bugs take top priority and some bugs (like faulty sound bites) have very low priority.

Name me a game that has no bugs and I will smack a kitten (gently, more like a pet).

ColinJohanson.2394:

- Over a years worth of testing

Paradox.1380:

Name me a game that has no bugs and I will smack a kitten (gently, more like a pet).

Freeze-tag.

Labjax.2465:

Paradox.1380:

Name me a game that has no bugs and I will smack a kitten (gently, more like a pet).

Freeze-tag.

Bug: when you freeze someone they laugh and fall over… every time man getting ridiculous.
If Freeze-tag was a computer game that required coding. It’d have bugs.

Paradox.1380:

Bugs happen in every. single. Game. Every one. You cannot test for live environment. Some bugs are easy fixes, some are harder. Some bugs take top priority and some bugs (like faulty sound bites) have very low priority.

Name me a game that has no bugs and I will smack a kitten (gently, more like a pet).

Pong.

Lodius.5392:

Paradox.1380:

Bugs happen in every. single. Game. Every one. You cannot test for live environment. Some bugs are easy fixes, some are harder. Some bugs take top priority and some bugs (like faulty sound bites) have very low priority.

Name me a game that has no bugs and I will smack a kitten (gently, more like a pet).

Pong.

I legit Googled this: http://forum.captaincaveman.nl/default.aspx?g=posts&t=5

LOL.

Paradox.1380:

Bug: when you freeze someone they laugh and fall over… every time man getting ridiculous.

Touche.

Swizzle.7982:

ColinJohanson.2394:

- Over a years worth of testing

You do realize that comment was referring to Usability Testing, don’t you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

He said they had players of different types evaluating the system and giving their feedback on it over a year. A heck of a lot was probably changed over the course of that year, because usability testing is usually one of the final phases of testing, after everything has already been tested for quality and functionality by in-house testing.

We don’t know what the system used to be, just what it is.

A PTS would go a long way.

Malchior.5042:

You do realize that comment was referring to Usability Testing, don’t you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

He said they had players of different types evaluating the system and giving their feedback on it over a year. A heck of a lot was probably changed over the course of that year, because usability testing is usually one of the final phases of testing, after everything has already been tested for quality and functionality by in-house testing.

We don’t know what the system used to be, just what it is.

Good catch.

For those who don’t know, usability testing is not the same as testing for bugs.

The purpose of the former is essentially to make a system as intuitively user-friendly as possible (e.g. so that a complete newbie to the system will understand it with as small a learning curve as possible). The purpose of the latter is to ensure that systems are functioning as intended on a technical level (e.g. checking to see if hitting Space makes your character jump as intended).

Perhaps the hardest part of tracking down bugs is that some of them are difficult to reproduce. This is one reason why you’ll see bugs that have been around for ages but never get fixed; if a tester cannot reproduce clear steps leading up to the bug occurring, it is nearly impossible for a programmer to pinpoint what the issue is in the code.

Some are higher priority as well and that doesn’t help. If a bug is largely trivial and is only being experienced by 5% of players, then it’s going to be difficult to justify putting a lot of hours into reproducing it and fixing the issue.

Edit: That said, I agree with Kamui. The beauty of a Public Test Server is that you get a lot of people with time on their hands who will happily try to reproduce bugs for you.

These kinds of threads’ purpose is pretty insulting to the development team. QA work is grueling and difficult, and no matter how many hours are put in or what great tools you have, bugs still exist. Consumers have no idea what truly goes in to effective testing (and each development house is totally different, of course …).

I don’t know what processes ANet uses. I assume they have unit testing, rigorous automated testing, functional testing, (system) integration testing, usability testing, and user acceptance testing. The last two are generally not technical endeavors (although they’re frequently done by technical people) as much as they are product ownership or UX tasks.

Inevitably, things will be missed during all of these processes, no matter how much money or man-hours you fling at code. With GW2, we have been very fortunate that very few game-breaking or data-damaging defects have made it into production. There’s another popular fantasy MMO that launched about a year ago that had to roll back nearly a week of its entire user base due to that kind of critical bug. We are lucky to have not seen the same kind of defects.

I see GW2 as being enormously successful on the QA front for the level of complexity of this application. And that QA staff in general receive so few plaudits for their work, I wanted to jump in to this thread not as a white knight, but as a product manager who has seen what poor QA work looks like in other software development houses. This is not one of those.

I would actually like to finish the sentence:

“, but we could be.”

I guess it was March 2013 when I happened to write a post on this forum, covering (among other issues) the very same “stop beta testing on us” request.

Well, guess what ? In a matter of minutes some “moderator” simply deleted my post.

I submitted a ticket and asked what was that all about. The answer made me decide to simply trash this forum away. Until now.

Oh, in case you wonder, the so-called moderator deleted the post because “i made demands” and such thing is against the EULA …

So, after more than a year, my question to ArenaNet still stands: Are you sure you (still) bet your company on this game ?

notebene.3190:

I would actually like to finish the sentence:

“, but we could be.”

Only if they will train me in the process so I don’t need to tug a game dev friend from another company over to explain proper tester protocol. And only if I can get paid for basically taking a shotgun to the head of my MTG time.

I mean, social life.

Malchior.5042:

Swizzle.7982:

ColinJohanson.2394:

- Over a years worth of testing

You do realize that comment was referring to Usability Testing, don’t you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability_testing

He said they had players of different types evaluating the system and giving their feedback on it over a year. A heck of a lot was probably changed over the course of that year, because usability testing is usually one of the final phases of testing, after everything has already been tested for quality and functionality by in-house testing.

We don’t know what the system used to be, just what it is.

problem with testing for usability, is you are asking questions you shouldnt necessarily be asking yet.
If i ask a newbie at basketball how easy it is to do a spinmove crossover, they will say its hard. Or a 3 pointer.
does this mean its a good idea to outlaw everyone from doing a spinmove the first day they play basketball? No 3 pointers allowed?
does this mean, overall basketball will be unappealing to a new player because it has things they cant do right now?

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

phys.7689:

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

That is actually the only method which worked for teaching my mother how to do general low-level maintenance (data and physical) and preventative measures to keep her computer from burning out every year.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

That is actually the only method which worked for teaching my mother how to do general low-level maintenance (data and physical) and preventative measures to keep her computer from burning out every year.

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

phys.7689:

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

But unfortunate if you want to be assured the players should have experienced X before planning for it to show up in a zone/event/story instance.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

But unfortunate if you want to be assured the players should have experienced X before planning for it to show up in a zone/event/story instance.

The game isnt designed that you must know X before you do anything. there are multiple solutions for enemy situations.

netting your mother isnt worth crippling all your current users.
its a bad solution.

phys.7689:

netting your mother isnt worth crippling all your current users.
its a bad solution.

From all I have read – that crippling wasn’t supposed to happen anyway. Not that it matters anymore.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

netting your mother isnt worth crippling all your current users.
its a bad solution.

From all I have read – that crippling wasn’t supposed to happen anyway. Not that it matters anymore.

actually based on a what was said, it likely was supposed to happen, however they now see it went too far. The implication is they will reduce the effect, but it will still be in place.

most likely they will lower the level requirements on utilities, elites, and possibly f1-f4 skills.
However, it would be better if all the skill based unlocks were back to what they used to be, for veterans at least. In fact, i might take this chance to complete remove unlocks, and let veterans get a much more free, you are only limited by what you choose to focus on method of play.

however, i doubt that will happen greatly

i still think it sucks for newbies, but ill throw them to the wolves for my own benefit.

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

netting your mother isnt worth crippling all your current users.
its a bad solution.

From all I have read – that crippling wasn’t supposed to happen anyway. Not that it matters anymore.

actually based on a what was said, it likely was supposed to happen, however they now see it went too far. The implication is they will reduce the effect, but it will still be in place.

The implication was, from what I read, it wasn’t supposed to hit people who had already “passed” that point. Which would be most current users.

And while it sucks for newbies . . . allegedly, since I haven’t tried it yet . . . it’s a lot less painful than having done EverQuest 1-15. Or as tedious as FF14 1-10 was.

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

That is actually the only method which worked for teaching my mother how to do general low-level maintenance (data and physical) and preventative measures to keep her computer from burning out every year.

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

But what pace are we really talking about here. As many people have said, an hour to get to level 15 where most of your stuff is unlocked. And as Colin said the overall time played to unlocking stuff like your elite is the same roughly in this system as the old system.

People see numbers like levels and they think, oh level 40 they rolled it back. But if level 40 takes the same time to get to, they really didn’t.

That’s if, of course. But I think it’s probably relatively true. The way I’m leveling now, if they gave me my elite at 30 I’d be getting it faster than I used to.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

netting your mother isnt worth crippling all your current users.
its a bad solution.

From all I have read – that crippling wasn’t supposed to happen anyway. Not that it matters anymore.

actually based on a what was said, it likely was supposed to happen, however they now see it went too far. The implication is they will reduce the effect, but it will still be in place.

The implication was, from what I read, it wasn’t supposed to hit people who had already “passed” that point. Which would be most current users.

And while it sucks for newbies . . . allegedly, since I haven’t tried it yet . . . it’s a lot less painful than having done EverQuest 1-15. Or as tedious as FF14 1-10 was.

the stuff that wasnt supposed to hit new users were some of the stuff like no salvage, poi, vistas, etc. The stuff that was supposed to was the skill unlocks. He implied with second post on it, that some was bugs, and somethings were reworks.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

That is actually the only method which worked for teaching my mother how to do general low-level maintenance (data and physical) and preventative measures to keep her computer from burning out every year.

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

But what pace are we really talking about here. As many people have said, an hour to get to level 15 where most of your stuff is unlocked. And as Colin said the overall time played to unlocking stuff like your elite is the same roughly in this system as the old system.

People see numbers like levels and they think, oh level 40 they rolled it back. But if level 40 takes the same time to get to, they really didn’t.

That’s if, of course. But I think it’s probably relatively true. The way I’m leveling now, if they gave me my elite at 30 I’d be getting it faster than I used to.

this doesnt make sense because 10 levels in the begining were never equal to 10 levels later in the game, although the curve is more drastic now, you always leveled faster in the first 10 levels.
therefore it is unlikely that 30 is the new 40
even more unlikely is that 35 is the new level 20 (last utility unlock)

as far as you leveling 1-15 much faster, that is specifically because the new system is essentially made for your particular playstyle.
people who did personal story as it was available, or before the reccomended levels, leveled much faster than you would have, waiting for level 10 to do all your PS.

we will have to see where they put the unlocks after the coming changes, but honestly i think you would still get your happyiness from shinies with just the gear, and they could make skills unlock from the start for vets.