QA Team

pklemming · June 10

Serious question. Does ZoS have a dedicated QA team?

Some obvious stuff missed recently, especially regarding the main quest line in Gold Road and the inclusion of past rewards. It seems that this should have been tested to death. I can understand side quests having potential issues, but the main scribing and quest line of Gold Road.

Not just this time. It is a regular thing where major bugs go live. It is just this time it is far more apparent. Were tests done regarding different achievement combinations from Necrom for the Gold Road chapters, because it is looking like they testest with only the same character in the prologues and Necrom? The point of AwA was that achievement became account-based. We no longer needed to get stuff on a single character, and achievements rewarded for other characters would be counted towards the whole.

The advice currently being given is to have done all of Necrom, and both prologues be done on THE SAME character. The fact it was not, is what seems to be causing the lockout of the last nested quests in the main Gold Road questline.

Telling us to go back now and redo the questlines on a single character defeats the whole point of AwA/

xylena_lazarow · June 10

pklemming wrote: »

Serious question. Does ZoS have a dedicated QA team?

Yeah. It's us. Just like the rest of the AAA gaming industry.

Photosniper89 · June 10

pklemming wrote: »

Serious question. Does ZoS have a dedicated QA team?

Some obvious stuff missed recently, especially regarding the main quest line in Gold Road and the inclusion of past rewards. It seems that this should have been tested to death. I can understand side quests having potential issues, but the main scribing and quest line of Gold Road.

Not just this time. It is a regular thing where major bugs go live. It is just this time it is far more apparent. Were tests done regarding different achievement combinations from Necrom for the Gold Road chapters, because it is looking like they testest with only the same character in the prologues and Necrom? The point of AwA was that achievement became account-based. We no longer needed to get stuff on a single character, and achievements rewarded for other characters would be counted towards the whole.

The advice currently being given is to have done all of Necrom, and both prologues be done on THE SAME character. The fact it was not, is what seems to be causing the lockout of the last nested quests in the main Gold Road questline.

Telling us to go back now and redo the questlines on a single character defeats the whole point of AwA/

Yes, ZOS has a QA team (or one that is contracted).

However, with any software development having 5,10,20 people run through testing situations vs having tens thousands of people running through them are night and day different. There is always going to be something that is missed during QA... some one in 1,000 situation that never gets detected and damn near impossible to replicate by devs. Software development isn't easy. Devs don't intentionally write buggy code - we don't like seeing a buggy product launch... trust me.

valenwood_vegan · June 10

Just sayin, I can quickly think of several chapter or DLC launches that went *a lot* worse than Gold Road.

Hopefully the bugs that did slip through (which... is going to happen... this is a ten year old game with raw spaghetti code on top of cooked spaghetti code on top of old stale spaghetti code, pushing the limits of the engine) will be fixed quickly.

The whole gaming industry is like this though, not just ZoS. I mean even a certain recent single player RPG with a massive team and budget, which was considered a masterpiece by many, required hundreds or possibly even thousands of bug fixes following its release.

I think they did a pretty good job with limiting the bugs in Gold Road, and I hope they continue to improve in this regard.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · June 10

Photosniper89 wrote: »

pklemming wrote: »

Serious question. Does ZoS have a dedicated QA team?

Some obvious stuff missed recently, especially regarding the main quest line in Gold Road and the inclusion of past rewards. It seems that this should have been tested to death. I can understand side quests having potential issues, but the main scribing and quest line of Gold Road.

Not just this time. It is a regular thing where major bugs go live. It is just this time it is far more apparent. Were tests done regarding different achievement combinations from Necrom for the Gold Road chapters, because it is looking like they testest with only the same character in the prologues and Necrom? The point of AwA was that achievement became account-based. We no longer needed to get stuff on a single character, and achievements rewarded for other characters would be counted towards the whole.

The advice currently being given is to have done all of Necrom, and both prologues be done on THE SAME character. The fact it was not, is what seems to be causing the lockout of the last nested quests in the main Gold Road questline.

Telling us to go back now and redo the questlines on a single character defeats the whole point of AwA/

Yes, ZOS has a QA team (or one that is contracted).

However, with any software development having 5,10,20 people run through testing situations vs having tens thousands of people running through them are night and day different. There is always going to be something that is missed during QA... some one in 1,000 situation that never gets detected and damn near impossible to replicate by devs. Software development isn't easy. Devs don't intentionally write buggy code - we don't like seeing a buggy product launch... trust me.

Just to mention on defence for QA teams across the globe. Just because there is a bug in a game/product doesn't mean that that bug wasn't found during QA. QA aren't responsible for fixing the issues found, often the decision to release products on a schedule will ignore/accept a bug (even when it is flagged by QA) being there depending on the severity.

Elsonso · June 10

pklemming wrote: »

Serious question. Does ZoS have a dedicated QA team?

Yes.

Gold Road is buggy. It definitely could have used a little while longer in the oven before they pulled it out and served it to us. I don't blame QA for this.

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

The whole gaming industry is like this though, not just ZoS.

This extends to the software industry, to be honest. The fact that companies can drop a Day One Patch has resulted in decisions to defer fixes in favor of maintaining the integrity of the release schedule. Once a company gets into the habit of deferring fixes until a patch, it becomes easier to justify letting the backlog grow.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Just to mention on defence for QA teams across the globe. Just because there is a bug in a game/product doesn't mean that that bug wasn't found during QA. QA aren't responsible for fixing the issues found, often the decision to release products on a schedule will ignore/accept a bug (even when it is flagged by QA) being there depending on the severity.

This.

Quality problems are always a management issue.

pklemming · June 10

Not the whole game industry. There are notable very popular titles that this never happens with, Ludeon Studios standing out in this department. They have a very active dev and QA team, that interacts with the playerbase. They encourage the testing of code on the unstable branch and address issues with a remarkable alacrity.

They are a jot to work with, and the level of commitment shows in the game itself, with Rimworld getting overwhelmingly positive reviews.

Additionally, while QA are not responsible for fixing code, they are responsible for the testing and reporting of issues, unless you are suggesting they are are just ignored.

I do appreciate the response, though. I am just a bit annoyed that the main quest/scribing line is so bad. I would have expected more obtuse issues, but not the main content of the expansion.

LaintalAy · June 10

"Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

"snip

Just to mention on defence for QA teams across the globe. Just because there is a bug in a game/product doesn't mean that that bug wasn't found during QA. QA aren't responsible for fixing the issues found, often the decision to release products on a schedule will ignore/accept a bug (even when it is flagged by QA) being there depending on the severity.

The release date will never be moved.

RomanRex · June 10

I noticed a huge difference (for the worse) around the time the staff unionized at ZoS. This union definitely covers the quality control team as they highlight them often on social media.

This is their X account.
https://x.com/ZeniMaxWorkers