156 réponses à ce sujet

[Massadonious1]

As a former game tester, I can attest to the fact that bugs do tend to slip through the cracks at times.



There were 30 of us working on a PSP title, of all things. 12 hour days, for about 4 months. We were finding bugs with the final product they sent us a couple of weeks before they were set to release. We could of spent another 2-3 months working on it, and I'm pretty sure we still wouldn't of found everything.

[Stanley Woo]

Sloth Of Doom wrote...
But (and you knew there was a but, right?) the thing that really gets me (and many others) is when relatively major bugs make it to release. I don't really care if someone uses an incorrect gender pronoun in one line, or if things clip strangely and other such bugs. It is the things like the DA:O dex bug that confuse the heck out of me. That is something I think people have a right to point to and ask "Hey, what the hell happened here?" without looking like an idiot. We as gamers can only ASSUME that someone at Bioware had some sort of console output to look at instead of just assuming the game was magically working. A rather large and obvious bug like that making it to retail is a definite eyebrow raiser.

There are lots of ways of testing combat in a game which has a complex rules system--everything fro outputting all the numbers onto the screen to individual system testing to just testing things in game. This was siomply something that was missed because we didn't have hundreds of thousands of hardcore RPG rules lawyers stepping up to the plate to try and break the game. I don't know why it was missed, but I'm pretty sure it was during the frantic months before finalling when combat was being gutted and made more fun and exciting.

I'm not attacking Bioware or anything, in fact I think they are solidly in the middle of the pack when it comes to releasing buggy games and when it comes to fixing said bugs. I just wanted to point out that saying "Hell, it has to ship sometime" is as a generic and uninformitive a response as someone saying "Boware iz suk cuz dere am bugz and I am boycoting dem!"

But "it has to ship some time" is a valid reason why some bugs make it into the game. The dex bug you mention, for example, is easy to miss if you're not really paying attention to numbers, and it doesn't really break anything (except some class builds, but that's hardly game breaking). I once discovered a bug in Infinite Dungeons (one of the NWN Premium Modules) that had been in the game since the original NWN release (4 years or so). A very specific set of circumstances caused  certain inventory items to disappear or become unequippable.

No one noticed.

The bug was found by accident. Other bugs are found and filed, but they are deemd not important enough to fix during the frequent bug triages. When you get down to the wire, you have to gauge what's more important to the project: fixing X bug or making Y system better. Do you tell QA to keep sending bugs on A, or do you make them concentrate on B? That's what project managers do: decide how to finish the project and, partly, determine which bugs we can live with so we can concentrate on fixing more important stuff. And, of course, they are also fallible, mortal humans.

[Jonp382]

I'm not really sure what the dexterity bug is and haven't encountered it(or at least haven't noticed). And I've poured 200+ hours into the game so far, playing my fourth character.



Also great timing on that patch, LOL.

[Fexelea]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Fexelea wrote...

Stanley Woo wrote...
Also, we just did another "favour" for all y'all. And remember to tip your waitress.

How about broken Dragon Age on PS3? No tips for you.

<_<

Will this do?

Unfortunately no, since my problem is not related to firmware. It was caused by the Awakening in-disc patch

[Fexelea]

Mercuron wrote...

Someone tries to counter the ME2 patch remark with how busted Dragon Age on PS3 is, then gets countered with a patch for that game on that system within several hours of posting it?
Nitpicks won't diminish that master stroke.

A patch that doesn't fix the issue I am referring to and that precedes the firmware issue by a month.

So no, the only pie I will be having is the no-Dragon-Age one.

I don't see any master stroke anywhere.

[Mercuron]

I wasn't going to mention it because on top of that immaculate timing, not fixing your actual problem just makes it kind of hilarious at the same time. And the stroke ... all the more masterful.

My condolences on your continued inconvenience.

[Fexelea]

I can see how it is amusing at first glance but to me it's just sad.



Still no tips for Woo. Hope his salary covers his expenses.

[Rubbish Hero]

Bioware should aspire to be more like Valve.
Those guys are are so cool.

Modifié par Rubbish Hero, 18 mai 2010 - 11:00 .

[Branji]

Stanley Woo: Have you heard of the company ArenaNet? The ones who made Guild Wars, the second largest MMO in gaming history? The largest free-to-play MMO. Their philosophy is MMOs should be free to play (meaning no monthly fee): box sales pays for everything. They proved it could be done. They made 3 stand-alone products and an expansion. Now they are working on Guild Wars 2, and it will be free-to-play. The company made a lot of money.



Bioware/EA didn't barely break even with their games. They made a lot of money, and of course money is your friend. Bioware/EA can (unless there was huge mismanagement) easily afford to spend a little money on making patches. As an example: let's say that Bioware/EA has a team of 10 working on patches after release. and money is set aside to pay them. Make it $75,000 each for one year. Okay, that's $750,000. That equals 15,000 boxes sold. Make it 20 workers and $1,500,000. That's 30,000 boxes. Dragons Age sold in excess of 3 million copies.



You can't convince me that Bioware/EA can't afford to make patches. Bioware /EA has lost some fans due to the very slow patching (yet the DLC zips through approvals). If just 50,000 fans were lost, patching properly could get them back to buy more games. That's over $2,500,000 gained. Those fans should be able to bring in more than enough to pay for patching.

[Dsurian]

Blackbaron15 wrote...
Its a little known secret that if you thank developers they'll actually give us DLC worth buying...

apparently we havent thanked Bioware enough.

Best quote ever!  If only i could 'sig' it...

...and now that Ju-On's presence and ardent passion has faltered, this thread has slowed.  So, just throwing this out there: as my games are seemingly patched fairly well, my only concern now is the lack of BSN compatability/patched-ness.  I mean, with DA:O, the character uploader is still slow, and I still fail to see any actual relative point to it; theoretically, it would allow one to show off there time consumption so that there e-peen could grow, but there's no particular reason to check out someone else's characters; no leaderboard, no comparison between characters of a single user - or comparison between friends, akward layout and story presentation....I've even booted up and played around with my Awakening character a few times just to try and see if it will upload an update correctly to my profile...and it still hasn't.  Not to mention the complete lack of compatability with ME2 - i mean, these arn't just any forums, this is a brand-spankin-new "Social Network"...and the 2nd game to be introduced here is completley incompatible - my point: ME2 might as well be on the old forums, right?  That's the newest game and these are the newest forums, but it's presence as a registered game here only makes sense in that regard.  And yeah, i realize this is kinda off-topic of the OP as 'devs' certainly relates to the developers of games and not the designers of websites/forums, but still...

P.S.@Woo An asian-canadian sayin y'all (southern american-english slang) is freakin hilarious.  You, sir, need to spend less time at the Colorado(B'store) and Texas divisions before your car starts lookin nicer than your home...

Branji wrote...
Bioware/EA can (unless there was huge mismanagement) easily afford to spend a little money on making patches.

I dunno man...charging $2 for in-game items or even 'appearances' and $5+ for weak content makes me think Bioware is somewhat desperate...but then, given how many have bought into it, yeah - you would think they had the money.

Modifié par Dsurian, 18 mai 2010 - 12:02 .

[Stanley Woo]

Branji wrote...

Bioware/EA didn't barely break even with their games. They made a lot of money, and of course money is your friend. Bioware/EA can (unless there was huge mismanagement) easily afford to spend a little money on making patches. As an example: let's say that Bioware/EA has a team of 10 working on patches after release. and money is set aside to pay them. Make it $75,000 each for one year. Okay, that's $750,000. That equals 15,000 boxes sold. Make it 20 workers and $1,500,000. That's 30,000 boxes. Dragons Age sold in excess of 3 million copies.

Let's play with your numbers, since they're good, round numbers. So you're saying that=, because we sold 3 million copies, we can afford to develop something which would "cost" 30,000 copies. You'd be right, except that that money doesn't go to us directly. The retailer does not ever send us a cheque.

You can't convince me that Bioware/EA can't afford to make patches. Bioware /EA has lost some fans due to the very slow patching (yet the DLC zips through approvals). If just 50,000 fans were lost, patching properly could get them back to buy more games. That's over $2,500,000 gained. Those fans should be able to bring in more than enough to pay for patching.

Define "patching properly." And can you guarantee that doing so would get back at least 50,000 fans (using your numbers again). And how would you guarantee that, considering we get lots of people saying they'll buy a copy if we do this or that but there's never a contract or any way to enforce it? Simply making up numbers to get a company to commit real dollars for made up gain doesn't usually work, I'm afraid. Besides that, I think that when numbers get high and complex enough, our understanding of how they interact becomes muddied.

[Branji]

What my numbers show is that it simply doesn't take a lot of money to have a team make patches. Costing money to make patches is just an excuse by EA to do little patching.

[Stanley Woo]

I'm just saying there's probably more to the process than laziness, greed, or spite.

[HedStr8EyesTite]

lol, stan woo says "commitment to quality."



has anybody at bioware played DA:O on the 360?

[HedStr8EyesTite]

... i know, im late to this thread, but i stopped coming by here daily a couple months.

[Obtusifolius]

HedStr8EyesTite wrote...

... i know, im late to this thread, but i stopped coming by here daily a couple months.

Same, it's just depressing these days

[darkrose]

Stanley Woo wrote...

Okay, then, I'll ask. how much more testing needs to be done? Keep in mind that the longer you're testing and fixing, the longer it will be before the game can be sent for certification. In the meantime, you're burning money on operating costs and getting really darned close to advertised release dates. if you miss those dates, that's millions of advertising dollars wasted. You also have other projects which need people being freed up on time, ot their schedule will get messed up.

So please, enlighten me. how much more testing is needed? An extra month? Until al the bugs are located and fixed? Or some other arbitrary length of time which doesn't eliminate your problem at all? Because I'll tell you, it's great to spend all that money to find the blockers and game-breakers, but eventually you have to release. And millions of gamers on millions of different machines will always, always find new problems that dozens of people on dozens of machines simply couldn't find or couldn't reliably reproduce.

Mr. Woo,,

As someone who primarily does application support for a living, I understand the software life cycle, and the problems with the process. I know that no matter how much QA you do, some user is going to find a way to break your code in a way that you never dreamed was possible.

That said, there are enough game-breaking bugs in Awakening that as a player, it's incredibly frustrating. I can't speak for anyone else, but your posts here come across as defensive, and not acknowledging the legitimate frustration players are feeling after four months.

It's annoying that I have a 50% chance of crashing any time I open my inventory, but I've learned to quick save roughly ever five minutes. It's much more annoying that I had to start a playthrough of Awakening over 12 hours in because I discovered that by completing a quest at the time I received it, I would never be able to do one of my companion quests--which I needed to do, since the approval system is badly broken. Random crashing is incredibly difficult to pin down. Problems with quest order breaking gameplay should be pretty obvious, and would show in reasonably thorough testing.

While it's probably not entirely fair to compare your process to another game company, I've been playing City of Heroes/Villains for six years now, and it's hard not to notice that Paragon Studios just came out with Issue 17, a major content upgrade that included substantial improvements to the graphics engine, fixes to some of the core quest lines in both CoH and CoV, and a chunk of new content. At the same time, they're working on a major expansion pack.

Paragon/NCSoft usually does 2-3 issues a year. Each issue has around two weeks of closed beta and a week of open beta. And that never catches everything--a major, game-breaking bug in I17 apparently didn't get caught in the beta. And as I said, it's not exactly a fair comparison, since NCSoft only has to deal with Mac and PC versions, not consoles as well, and they control the actual game environment, since it's an MMO. But the thing I do want to point out is the player perception: players still gripe about bugs, but I feel that with CoX, my feedback is valued, and I'm not getting that sense from Bioware. As a Bioware fan from the Baldur's Gate days, it's very disappointing to feel that you guys are more concerned with rushing out new content--sometimes before it's ready--than with ensuring that each release is solid before it gets to the players, or with fixing it when it's not.

[Onyx Jaguar]

HedStr8EyesTite wrote...

lol, stan woo says "commitment to quality."

has anybody at bioware played DA:O on the 360?

Yes I have, ever play KOTOR on the Xbox?

[Rubbish Hero]

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

HedStr8EyesTite wrote...

lol, stan woo says "commitment to quality."

has anybody at bioware played DA:O on the 360?

Yes I have, ever play KOTOR on the Xbox?

The game (Dragon Age) was only on consoles for extra profit. Bioware
were probably pushed into it, even reviewers have stated it shouldn't have
been on consoles.

Again, I think they should learn from Valve, EA done a inferior port of the Orange Box, Valve wasn't happy, it wasn't up the superior pc version, so they decided the Playstatation 3 was a turd in a box not giving people the quality they want, so they ignored it with Left4dead and Left4dead 2, instead of banging out an inferior port for the sake of maximizing sales.

Modifié par Rubbish Hero, 18 mai 2010 - 08:32 .

[Onyx Jaguar]

Do you try to turn every discussion into a PC vs Console debate?

[Vincent Rosevalliant]

Onyx Jaguar wrote...

HedStr8EyesTite wrote...

lol, stan woo says "commitment to quality."

has anybody at bioware played DA:O on the 360?

Yes I have, ever play KOTOR on the Xbox?

You were at Bioware playing with their Xbox360? That's great!
What was wrong with KOTOR on XBOX?

[Tazzmission]

purplesunset wrote...

I wasn't sure where to put this thread, so I'll put it in Off Topic. After patch 1.03, I see a lot of people saying things like "Thanks Bioware!" after quoting a part of the patch notes.

Seriously:

1) Aren't they already getting paid ?

2) Aren't patches supposed to fix things that weren't suppsoed to be broken in the first place ?

3) Do they actually care if they get thanked or not? see ---> number  1)


By expressing gratitude you're fostering this attitude that  doing things like  patching their own game  is a favor or something. Ummm, no, it's not.  Let's nip this in the bud, please.

do people like you honestly ever quit complaining? seriously if ppl wanna thank bioware hey its there choice but dont be a ****** about it

[Sloth Of Doom]

Stanley Woo wrote...

I'm just saying there's probably more to the process than laziness, greed, or spite.

I thought Laziness, Greed and Spite as the name of Bioware's law firm?

You know, the ones tha ambush people in front of the offices at the last minute all of the time.