About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

[Vash2051]

Lets see here, bug testers are usually hired by a company to test things out and report problems. They don't actually fix them they just say what is wrong. Now we see here in the forums detailed lists of bugs categorized nicely and orderly. I believe EA has found all the bug testers they need. We in the community are their bugtesters. WE don't get paid yet we report on all the bugs in the patches, game, etc. EA doesnt have to hire bug testers. They're all right here.
Just my 2 cents flame away if ya want to.

[troybob]

Re: About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

public alphas made DC a success.

The public is the best way to get bug reports. But, as it is with console games, you can't patch some games so they need to be as close to gold as possible before they go gold.

[unununium]

Re: About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

I don't think it's the issue that EA doesn't know the bugs exist. I think the issue is that it's too hard to fix the bugs or that they don't have enough resources to dedicate to bug fixing.

[Zefram]

Re: About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

All I know is that the bug testers EA hires are terrible. I mean, some of the micro patches they released after their major patches were ridiculous. Within hours of release of the patches, our own forums members would complain about bugs... and this is after supposed weeks of being test.

I'm not sure they test out their patches or their testers are just idiots. I bet you the community here would be great at testing out bugs. A lot of us have tons of experience playing in public and clan matches. We have a variety of experience from nooblet to vets. People with varying systems levels...

Open it up to us dammit!

[unununium]

Re: About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

All I know is that the bug testers EA hires are terrible. I mean, some of the micro patches they released after their major patches were ridiculous. Within hours of release of the patches, our own forums members would complain about bugs... and this is after supposed weeks of being test.

I'm not sure they test out their patches or their testers are just idiots. I bet you the community here would be great at testing out bugs. A lot of us have tons of experience playing in public and clan matches. We have a variety of experience from nooblet to vets. People with varying systems levels...

Open it up to us dammit!

It's likely they know the bugs are there but the community is on their asses to release something so they release it anyway.

[DanneDA]

Re: About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

Think about this: A limited amount of people are less likely to find bugs than a larger group. If EA wants to find bugs they need to hire more beta-testers.

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57621

That is the bug list that is current as far as I can tell.

I was a beta for another company for several years. That company had the top person decide what went into the game and what was left out. Eventually a patch was released that destroyed that game's community for a period of time.

You can have beta tests here, coding there and fixes here as gamers find and report them all of that takes time, support and effort on ALL people's parts including you and me who bought the game and play it.

One million people on the BF2 screen where the rankings are kept are displayed. Im pretty sure someone in that large group of people WILL find SOMETHING to fix about the game at some time.

To find a bug, report it and to follow up on that flaw until it is confirmed to be fixed is the best way to support a game.

There will always be a core group on BF2 who love the game and want to see it reach it's maximum potential. When it does I hope to still be here enjoying the game instead of racing off to the next bug-ridden new release to hit the store shelf.

Look at it this way, we flock to pick up movies or music DVD's I dont see forums filling up with bug reports on those products. They either satisfy many people and make alot of profit or fail to work and get discarded. It's that simple.

An example? Soldner. I need say no more as that one was the worst game in the modern FPS warfare I have ever had the displeasure of actually paying cash for and installing on my machine.

All games are made by people. Some good, others bad. All have flaws that will be fixed. Those that dont get fixed will eventually die out period.

[rombaft]

Re: About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

the beta testers they use realy suck big time, very simple .

they release a patch, many thing they would have solved got wurse, so they need to hotfix, also two maps even beecome totaly unplayable because they crash after few min .

not only that, but some of those beta testers posted here on the forum saying they never seen the wrong tagging bug and saying it was our pc's while this was a server sided problem and everybody else had seen it .

[markan dorka]

Re: About the EA having bad patch testers or w/e

testing software isn't really that simple at all

Even if they knew about, say, red tag bug .. what they could've done about that ? You may spot a bug, but you just don't go and fix it. Software projects this big have millions of lines of code. It's been over nine months, and can anybody consistently reproduce that bug ? If you can't reproduce it consistently, good luck finding where exactly the bug is.

And if you just toy around with probable culprits, and it magically gets fixed, you're likely breaking something else in process, and need to test everything all over again.

In some sources, it's claimed that your average coder makes a mistake in every 10 lines of code. It's probably rather high number, but just 1 mistake in 100 lines would be really damn good code. You don't even realize those mistakes are mistakes in "ideal" conditions, but they're there, and there are always thousands of them. Hell, tens of thousands. Even more in a complicated modern first-person-shooter multiplayer game.

And testing is goddamned boring. It's not like you "get paid to play games". It's actually very repetitive and utterly boring mechanical work in most cases, going through lists of priorities, trying same thing over and over with different conditions. And it takes a lot of time, you rarely get to test everything. And that "everything" actually means "everything the guy who planned the testing thought of"

You just have to get used to that days of bugfree games are over (especially in PC market, where customers computer + software setup plays a big part in lots of issues - you really can't test with them all). Ask for refund if bugs make it unplayable, or do something constructive and start submitting bug reports with your computer + software specs, conditions where, when and how bug occurred, and hopefully a method of reproducing it to developers. I bet they're happy to recieve them, and goes long way into fixing them, what just bitching about bugs in some game forums won't do.