Do the Devs even test their code anymore?

This being the single biggest failing on a typical bug report and it doesn't just apply to spelling errors.

The process of fixing something like this

Receive bug report
Attempt to reproduce bug from typical inadequate report typically ~5-10 minutes
Contact user to clarify - probably multiple times as users don't tend to respond ~ 5 minutes to 1 hour
Reproduce bug and identify cause of problem 15 mins to 1 day

get bug for approved to be fixed ~1 hour - 1 week for decision

If not approved put aside and fix something else until its priority increases.

When approved refamiliarise yourself with the cause ~5 mins to 1 hour

Check out code - few seconds
load code and any necessary prerequisites into editor - ~1-10 minutes
fix code ~few seconds to few hours
Developer test fix ~5 mins to 1 hour - (do the changes work)
check code back in - ~1 minute
carry out QC procedures ~1 hour
send for testing ~1 hour-1 day - (do the changes break anything else)
release to beta test ~1 week
release to live


as you can see that 5 second fix can easily take over an day after approval before it goes to beta, and can easily be a week or more just to get it approved.

The biggest problem as I said is that the bug reports received almost always do not give sufficient information to reproduce the bug - far less reproduce it consistently and if it can't be reproduced it can't be fixed. If it can only be intermittently reproduced then expect the time to diagnose the problem to increase at least 100fold.
This problem is not limited to CoH or even games software - its all software. I see it all the time where I get a screenshot of an error dialog with no clue as to what the user was doing when they received it - and that is when the users are being paid.

lol

Lowered Expectations

I think this part is under-estimated. I'd say a few minutes, at the very least.

You missed:
- "Find hardware capable of reproducing the error and setting up said hardware with appropriate software." 1 day to 1 month
- "It's your week for tier 3 support" - 1 week
- "Can you inspect this bug/design/test" - 1 day

Also a lot of poorly written bugs will get resolved as "Unable to recreate".

Depends on the source control you are required to use. I'm stuck with TFS which is very quick to check it out because that only flags it as checked out and doesn't necessarily do a get which is workable as long as you are the only one working on the code and so have the latest already loaded. Checking it back in takes time however hence the difference in my timings


Working on Enterprise software at least limits the hardware and software you have to contend with.
Of course there is then the problem of senior management deciding on a policy change and having it implemented without telling the development team that its going to take all the spare machine resources.
And definitely don't forge the "We've decided to implement this new <insert name of random box ticking exercise> it'll only take half an hour"

You mean you get weeks off from support? Sounds like a dream job.

Hmm I also forgot the "User stuck on other side of Atlantic due to ash cloud" that I had a few months back. - that was about 6 weeks and the reason you can't get back to them is because they've left the company - at least after finding that bit out resolving the problem is easy.

The examples I recalled off the top of my head were:

A> A big bank buying up the portfolios of several little/rural banks and converting
those accounts (and products) to the big bank's equivalents (preferrably without
any torches, pitchforks, shotguns, or Federal fines).

B> Retailer that was developing its own internal inventory tracking, stock managing
system for it's (many) stores nationwide - not a new idea, but this one also built
in some predictive ordering based on sales, seasonal trends, and some other
proprietary metrics (which made the project that much more interesting, and
defect sensitive).

Yes, the nature of those did indeed warrant the costs of higher quality prioritization -
not too surprisingly.

Yes, those specific cases (and several others I've since remembered after my
post) were held to a higher standard than I would expect here, but what I'm
seeing here lately is distinctly lower than what I would expect even so.

This I understand completely by way of another example. My ex-wife was an
avid horse person, and would point out TV/Movie scenes whenever a character
would change horses from the prior scene (oftentimes with a horse that doesn't
remotely resemble the prior horse at all). Hint: It happens a LOT.

I'd never even noticed it before she started pointing it out.

For her, it was jarring enough that it would often ruin the show/movie for her.

These days, (15 years post divorce ) I find I still notice those changes (scary),
and this might be a good place to wrap up my commentary in this thread.

* I have a background that sensitizes me to noticing software defects, particularly
the simple "Duh" ones that should be caught in the most preliminary testing. While
not gamebreaking, they are jarring to me, and it does affect my opinion of the
game, and detract from my enjoyment of it.

* Recently, I have felt that those sorts of bugs are appearing more frequently
than in the past.

Consequently, I wrote this thread to:

A: Determine if I'm the only one that feels this way. From many of the responses
here, I see that several others feel that way too (hopefully, not a "vanishingly
small" number).

B: Raise the awareness of the general forum population that quality seems to be
degrading with recent releases (according to my standards and expectations).

C: Make a statement to the devs that as a paying customer, I'd like them to be
aware of mine, and other's perceptions, and possibly investigate and/or take
some steps to improve things a bit from a quality perspective.


If you (the reader) don't sense an adverse change in game release quality,
or feel the quality is sufficient, fine. Enjoy. Ignorance can be Bliss!

If I've raised the awareness a bit, perhaps people will begin to notice the metaphorical
horse switching between scenes, and begin to express sentiments similar to my own
regarding the product we're paying for.

I would hope that could lead to an improved product in the future.

Thanks for your time and responses.


Regards,
4

We deal more with science and research type systems. Every customer is a custom set up.

In theory we get weeks off from support. It is the same theory that gives us vacations and weekends.

I have to argue with customers that when you take a backup then delete a file you don't really want to go into the backup and delete the file there as well.

When they want it restored because they didn't want to delete it after all - just remind them of that request and put an empty file on their PC

I'm not as likely to comment in these threads as they seem worthless. The feedback seems to be, "Yeah stuff isn't right, but there's no other option as people will still keep giving their money to the game despite w/e issues, so the company doesn't give a hoot. and, oh yeah all other games have the same standards."
So eff it. I stopped filing bug reports earlier. I'm now less likely to participate in these threads.
From what I have read here and in other similar threads, unless they think the income from the game will drop from the impact of a bug or the sheer number of bugs, they're not willing to bother.

So be it. w/e

And not just Powers, but MACROS as well. FFS. It's worse than /cleartray.

Between that and that at least half my characters have thier map icons all reset as well, its like logon to play, spend all my time rearranging.

When it hit one of my MM's I just logged for the night and played other games. Setting all those macros up again is a *****.

People have been talking about the inside ball at Amazon and Google for years, just not in public. The noteworthy thing about that post was that it wasn't brought down soon afterward. But I remember talking to someone years ago that put it this way: Google attempts to monetize services (primarily through advertisement). Amazon has decided to attempt to monetize infrastructure through what the plus post calls platforming. And the work necessary to make that happen started a long time ago, when it wasn't remotely obvious to most people that was a good idea.

My contribution to the conversation was to remind him on the surface, Amazon is a bookseller and Google is a search engine. But that's incidental. Amazon is a clustered computing service provider that happens to primarily offer one computing service, and Google is the best internet advertising company in the world.

I will say this also: Yegge says Google "does everything right" but in my experience that's not true, nor do I think Yegge means that literally. What Google tends to do is treat their employees right, and one way they do that is to place trust and responsibility in them to invent solutions to problems. There is no singular "Google Way" of doing things per se: Google engineers can, within some limits create their own solutions to problems. That has good and bad aspects, but when you allow your employees to take responsibility for, and work out the solutions to problems, they tend to do so: if the solution fails, Google didn't fail, *they* failed, because they've taken the responsibility given seriously. Google did "the right thing" in letting them devise a solution, and they just let the company down by not delivering. So Google gets most of the credit for everything that goes right, and engineers tend to blame themselves when things go wrong.

From the outside, Google sometimes does the right thing and sometimes does the wrong thing. From the inside, Google always does the right thing. Because from the outside, Google is a black box that spits out internet services. But from the inside, "Google" is the rest of the company besides me. I don't always do the right thing, but "they" do.


On a related note, I have always found it somewhat amusing that there is this strange code involving inside dirt. I was talking to someone a few months ago who was dishing some really juicy dirt on a chief executive of a very large company. He was giving me the entire sordid details of a project that jumped the rails and the ludicrous story behind the acts of the players. And after telling me all this, I asked him a question about a specific aspect of that project's technical details, and he looked me right in the eye and said "I can't tell you that."

We've all been there.