We REALLY need a community list of known bugs

from Elemental Forums

The forums are inundated with posts reporting bugs, and much too often, one can see two or three threads dedicated to the same bug.  Worse yet, many people post dozens of bugs in the same post, mixed with their opinions on balance or suggestions for improvement.  And finally, some people report bugs in threads that on the surface appear to be about balance, design, or whatever...

I would think that this makes it very hard for the developers to keep track of new bugs, and I know it makes it damn hard for me to tell whether the bug I am seeing has already been reported. 

It would be wonderful if someone would make and keep updated a list of problems, categorized by type, severity, status, etc...

Am I volunteering? No.  I just got hired for a new project, and come Wednesday, I'll disappear for at least a week for my own Death March.  I would help in starting the list, of course.

I actually think that if no one from the community shoulders the responsibility, Startdock should task one of their people for it.  It seems to me that without something like that, the developers cannot fully benefit from the Beta testers' efforts.

10,824 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

For those that are confused, the RIGHT thing is to make one thread for each bug in the support forum. Anywhere else in any other way there is a big chance the devs will miss it.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

At the same time, you might want to keep a personal list of your posts and bump them after every update. Just to be sure...

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Some developer managed stickies would do wonders.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Personally, I'm content posting my bugs one at a time and assuming the devs are competent enough to have read them.  I'd rather they spend their time killing bugs than making nice little lists of them.  

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

we are monitoring the forums and when we see things we can reproduce they get put on our own internal lists/ticket systems. It would be nice if there were a more efficient way to manage this stuff but since it is a public forum it's tough. We do have internal systems for this stuff tho :)

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kantok, reply 5
Personally, I'm content posting my bugs one at a time and assuming the devs are competent enough to have read them.  I'd rather they spend their time killing bugs than making nice little lists of them.  

Back in EWOM there was discussion about a log and the devs were of the same opinion. I'm ok with it, they do read 'em. As Sean mentions, I happen to whine alot and bump my threads and it helps. B)

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I've made posts and asked in them to have single line of developer reply - 'read your post'

got no reply, but still I one or two of my bug reports got repaired when I got Frogboy/Derek attention.

then only way to have it fixed is to report them multiple times, and gather some support to bump the threads past few pages of replies.

 

the idea of public read only bugtracker has been proposed and dismissed by the devs at least once. read-write was tried and failed miserably due to miscategorised entries.

 

engineer approach is good (I'd use it), it's just that not everyone is comfortable using it...

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Edit: posted in wrong thread, nvm

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Heavenfall, reply 9
I would like to say that in general I agree with the OP. There's a HUGE amount of polish needed. If I play for 3 hours I should not run in to 30 things that need to be updated/changed/improved.

I don't think SD would disagree with this statement.  Beta 5 FTW!

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

Sadly I agree with your notion Tuidjy, A lot of bugs go ignored in my games ATM because I know I posted about them at least 1 time, and repeating all this would be a pain if it is on an internal bug list anyways, (So I stopped posting about most of these bugs cause I can't be bothered wasting hours on being "ignored")

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

 

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kongdej, reply 11
(So I stopped posting about most of these bugs cause I can't be bothered wasting hours on being "ignored")

It may seem that way, and they do try to tell us that it's on their ticker when they can. The problem is that they have high priority fixes and low priority fixes. I found a bugs I have reported (never got a reply) in beta 3 and they finally got fixed in beta 5. It takes time to get to all of these bugs. Unfortunately high priority bugs do not include the bugs that annoying and are low on the list to be fixed.

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting parrottmath, reply 12

Quoting Kongdej, reply 11(So I stopped posting about most of these bugs cause I can't be bothered wasting hours on being "ignored")

It may seem that way, and they do try to tell us that it's on their ticker when they can. The problem is that they have high priority fixes and low priority fixes. I found a bugs I have reported (never got a reply) in beta 3 and they finally got fixed in beta 5. It takes time to get to all of these bugs. Unfortunately high priority bugs do not include the bugs that annoying and are low on the list to be fixed.

I might give some a swing again at some point, its just an annoyed feeling, sorry for being too negative :(
I do post new bugs which I can't remember posting about before.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kongdej, reply 13
Quoting parrottmath, reply 12
Quoting Kongdej, reply 11(So I stopped posting about most of these bugs cause I can't be bothered wasting hours on being "ignored")

It may seem that way, and they do try to tell us that it's on their ticker when they can. The problem is that they have high priority fixes and low priority fixes. I found a bugs I have reported (never got a reply) in beta 3 and they finally got fixed in beta 5. It takes time to get to all of these bugs. Unfortunately high priority bugs do not include the bugs that annoying and are low on the list to be fixed.

I might give some a swing again at some point, its just an annoyed feeling, sorry for being too negative
I do post new bugs which I can't remember posting about before.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I know I see your posts. Just trying to keep things positive. I have been away from the forum for a day and BOOM there is a ton of things I need to reread for bugs being placed... hard to keep up sometimes.

Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

I think Kestrel is right, it is Stardock's problem to organise the bugs in their internal system. It would be nice if there was a way for us to see the bug list so we could check if something was already mentioned but given limited time I imagine it isn't a priority for Stardock (and there would be other issues in letting us see their internal systems too ;-) ).

I certainly agree that there are a lot of bugs though. Hopefully this message is reaching Stardock, FE is NOT ready for release and needs a lot of polish before it will be.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kestral2040, reply 6
we are monitoring the forums and when we see things we can reproduce they get put on our own internal lists/ticket systems. It would be nice if there were a more efficient way to manage this stuff but since it is a public forum it's tough. We do have internal systems for this stuff tho

Can you expose your ticket system to the public?