Re: EA wants your input re: open beta patch
That, to me is a good reason for open betas. Granted, this was probably a unicode vs UTF-8 issue, and if they fixed it for 1 unicode system, it should be fixed for all of the systems with wide character sets. Anyways, with 24 different builds of Windows XPP (in regards to languages), think of how many test cases there are in that alone.
When I have QA testing my stuff, I make sure that they do some basic tests every time, before they even test the functionality.
Using clean systems (EVERY TIME, NO EXCUSES): verify install, verify uninstall, verify upgrade, verify uninstall after upgrade.
Using typical consumer machine (OS with mfg installed software): verify install, uninstall, upgrade, uninstall after upgrade.
Install and run on every foreign OS that the software supports, to verify language files are correct.
Now, to test a game like BF2 with hundreds of thousands of players, all around the globe, using all different setups... realistically its impossible. Thats why beta testing is good. More of a test bed.
As i said before though, that doesnt mean the bug gets fixed. It might just get ignored. I would bet that your bug with unicode characters in the username was because the software was looking in the users folder, which had that char, and being non unicode, it treated it as garbage, so the path was wrong. Unfortunatly, the vast majority of users are not seeing that problem, and i would bet that this was infact brought up, and at some point a PM at some level said "this is a minor bug, and the people experiencing this bug are few and far between, so it can wait to be fixed".
As for the red tag bug, truthfully, that woudlnt be a critical to me. Its definity a high, and should be fixed, but would never stop a release. Its would have been listed as an anomily, and cant be reproduced every time, just hit or miss. It doesnt last forever, and while annoying, just not a show stopper. If there were no other critical bugs, it would get looked at, but it wouldnt take precidence over something like a server crash.
Bottom line is, if its beta tested, more critical issues may be found, and atleast have a chance to be fixed. Its only going to be good.
Now, someone else did bring up a valid point. There needs to be a channel setup for bug reports. Posting on a forum is okay, but, not gonna cut it. "When I am playing, sometimes i shoot at someone and it doesnt kill them , but not all the time" isnt going to be the most helpful bug report. There need to be a way to report bugs, and give as much detail as possible. A minidump if applicable, or some sort of tracelog would be the most helpful way for someone to submit an issue.
Originally posted by Kattspya
When I have QA testing my stuff, I make sure that they do some basic tests every time, before they even test the functionality.
Using clean systems (EVERY TIME, NO EXCUSES): verify install, verify uninstall, verify upgrade, verify uninstall after upgrade.
Using typical consumer machine (OS with mfg installed software): verify install, uninstall, upgrade, uninstall after upgrade.
Install and run on every foreign OS that the software supports, to verify language files are correct.
Now, to test a game like BF2 with hundreds of thousands of players, all around the globe, using all different setups... realistically its impossible. Thats why beta testing is good. More of a test bed.
As i said before though, that doesnt mean the bug gets fixed. It might just get ignored. I would bet that your bug with unicode characters in the username was because the software was looking in the users folder, which had that char, and being non unicode, it treated it as garbage, so the path was wrong. Unfortunatly, the vast majority of users are not seeing that problem, and i would bet that this was infact brought up, and at some point a PM at some level said "this is a minor bug, and the people experiencing this bug are few and far between, so it can wait to be fixed".
As for the red tag bug, truthfully, that woudlnt be a critical to me. Its definity a high, and should be fixed, but would never stop a release. Its would have been listed as an anomily, and cant be reproduced every time, just hit or miss. It doesnt last forever, and while annoying, just not a show stopper. If there were no other critical bugs, it would get looked at, but it wouldnt take precidence over something like a server crash.
Bottom line is, if its beta tested, more critical issues may be found, and atleast have a chance to be fixed. Its only going to be good.
Now, someone else did bring up a valid point. There needs to be a channel setup for bug reports. Posting on a forum is okay, but, not gonna cut it. "When I am playing, sometimes i shoot at someone and it doesnt kill them , but not all the time" isnt going to be the most helpful bug report. There need to be a way to report bugs, and give as much detail as possible. A minidump if applicable, or some sort of tracelog would be the most helpful way for someone to submit an issue.
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