Patch notes

    I hear that every time I make a release for the project I am working on. My answer is always the same. You are working with humans, humans make mistakes. I made mistakes, my project leader made, even the customer made mistakes. There was a visual bug on the start page 7 people tested and nobody noticed, because it wasn't something they expected to change.


    This happened once. As long as it doesn't frequently happen it's fine. They dealt with it immediately. Exactly how it should be.


    Just so you know for that to discover what need to happen:

    1. This part of the content needs to be tested. However, why? There was no changed reported.
    2. There needs to be time to test this.
    3. The tester needs to know how it was before the patch. What if he or she is new?
    4. The tester needs to actually care. He or she might just look for game breaking bugs.

    And after all that the patch might still go live, because it isn't serve enough. However such thing really should be noted in the patch notes.


    The problem here is you are expecting the same quality something from a between two and four week release cycle as a half a year one. While this is understandable, reality has shown us it's simply not possible. In this short time span you have an error rate of 35%. The only real thing that works for this is completely change the way releases are made.


    I am getting off topic... It's not my intention to just "lecture" you, but you really set yourself up for disappointment. Software development just doesn't work that way, unless you speaking of some really big project with a lot of manpower. Like the big open source frameworks and programs.


    Long story short. Ninja patches will happen in the future. Most of them unintended. Some purposely not mentioned. The best thing to do would assemble some voluntary testers. Who better to ask if sometime went wrong, then the people playing the game frequently? We could at least reduce the surprises that way.

    Quote from Nitros

    The best thing to do would assemble some voluntary testers. Who better to ask if sometime went wrong, then the people playing the game frequently? We could at least reduce the surprises that way.


    I think you came up with a great idea right there. They should make a test server and allow volunteers to pre-test patches.


    Anyhow, I won´t deny that that's the reality in day to day game development, it's just that if we go back to the main topic of the thread; we have no proper patch notes. They are not developing our version of the game from scratch, they are applying changes that already exist. If they did care to produce patch notes maybe it would even help them think about the changes that they are implementing.

    Quote from Nitros

    There needs to be time to test this.
    The tester needs to know how it was before the patch. What if he or she is new?
    The tester needs to actually care. He or she might just look for game breaking bugs.

    What you're saying makes ineed sense, if not for a "very little detail". The CoMa said that they're playing the game (but I can't find that post, I probably need to look better) and people can confirm that, they also know beforehand what the patch is about and I don't want to imagine what kind of other benefits they're getting, this is something I don't approve of (a part of the staff playing the game, that is) but I can't do anything.

    Edit: they don't know what the patches contain, sorry for the mistake. They add things blindly

    Edit2:

    Quote from Nyoka

    Yes, I do (and many users know that)

    There you go, that was the reply to this comment below

    Quote from Haruna

    Do you even play the game?


    No you don't ,because you would know how dumb this decision is


    Now, do you think a greedy cheap company like theirs would hire someone to test things? Either they test themselves of they don't at all. Which one do you think it is? If it's the former then I really would like to see how they're playing/testing things, but if it's the latter, well, that's how much the company amounts to.


    As someone said they're not developing anything and the time you need to test something is lesser than the time you spend playing (I'm not referring to you).

    No wait, I'm wrong. The only thing they're developing is their pocket.


    I'd really like to read what you have to say about Nyoka  threea

    Edited 3 times, last by Giraffno ().

    Yes, they play the game. However, I'd honestly be surprised if they made it to 55 and through the Raids. Most CoMas say they got enough to do with the game at work so they won't play it a lot at home. As for benefits, they get none. It's not a GM-Account with special rights, it's just a private one. At least that's how it usually is. CoMas are not QA btw, that's not their job.


    As far as Bugs are concerned it's highly unlikely they'll find anything that isn't part of the actual content they patch. E.g. when they're gonna release Jin and GC, they'll test if GC works and if Jin works. They won't get anyone to run every instance of Steel Grave to confirm wether that patch changed anything since they don't expect a change there.

    Quote from Giraffno

    Now, do you think a greedy cheap company like theirs will hire someone to test things?

    They do. There's almost constantly a job-offer for QA at Gameforge. Ofc, the QA-Department has to test multiple games just like every CoMa has to manage multiple Communitys. The average seems to be about 3-4 Game-Communitys a CoMa has to manage, some go as high as 7. I'd expect the amount of Games a QA has to test to be about the same as that.