What was the financial cost of fixing all of those in-game bugs?

EJRose83 · May 2015

Fixing bugs and implementing quality-of-life improvements with limited resources has been an excuse used by the dev team in regards to why there is such a lack of new content this past year. Given how they had a large portion of their team working on this, what do you think the financial cost was of all those bugs? How many people worked on it, for how long, etc.?

It occurred to me that all of these mistakes and errors must have set the company back several million dollars.

EJRose83 · May 2015

Just so everyone knows, I'm not trying to be negative with this post, but I do think it would make for an interesting discussion.

RazzPitazz · May 2015

Well it depends on how big the QA teams are, chances are they are not big. I know there are multiple teams for different aspects of the game. Bugs are usually a coding issue OR a hardware/software issue. Determining which takes time, then figuring out how to fix it takes more time.
When it comes to coding issues it is actually best to have a smaller team to reduce redundancies during troubleshooting. A leavngthy troubleshooting process only hinders actual progress.
Hardware?/software issues either take money, creative solutions or both.
I water they have an unhealthy mix of all of the above.

Jaxsun · May 2015

They fixed bugs?

Dionysusjones · May 2015

A lot of the development resources were allocated to implementing the console versions and getting console, hopefully, more "ready" then the PC launch was. Also Im sure all hands were on deck to create the cash shop. Lets not forget that the justice system was implemented as well. So seems a lot of separate teams were working on several different projects.

Divad Zarn · May 2015

1 dollar.

RazzPitazz · May 2015

ESO Live had an interview with lead QA, who stated there were multiple teams for different bugs.

[Moderator Note: Removed moderated quote]

Dionysusjones · May 2015

This is just the nature of the beast of coding a large project and happens in ALOT of MMO games not just ESO. Not that this should be an excuse but its quite a typical side effect of patching an online game.

[Moderator Note: Removed moderated quote]

PBpsy · May 2015

Divad Zarn wrote: »

1 dollar.

Actually it was all the gold we payed for respecs to test what skills the last patch broke or fixed or nerfed.

pecheckler · May 2015

Since returning to the game 3 months ago there has only been one issue i've seen fixed that has been around for months, and that's the templar charge. Still bugged include shadow cloak, group finder, randomly kicked to logon screen, random loading screens then falling through the map, infinite loading screens, empower on dark/solar flare not working, chat window icon fade not working, ..... i could go on for an hour.

Devs have been ignoring the PC version in favor of console release. PC players are just testing the game for console version. Everybody knows that by the end of June the PC version of ESO will be a ghost town.

Davadin · May 2015

pecheckler wrote: »

PC players are just testing the game for console version. Everybody knows that by the end of June the PC version of ESO will be a ghost town.

welp. at least it ain't cost me anything to play.

RSram · May 2015

You nail it!

I been saying this since beta. A program is only as good as the foundation it is created on. As a former programmer (retired now), I spent 75% of my time or more designing the code to reduce future code maintenance, and 25% in writing and debugging it . I made sure the code was modular so modifying one feature didn't impact another. I programmed mostly in Motorola 68000 and x86 assembler with a little of C and C++ on the side.

I remember when a developer was asked why did fixing bugs break other unrelated features, the reply was "It's complicated."
I not belittling the accomplishment that ESO is, but the game is a year old and there are still many issues with this game.

Unless a developer replies to the OP, there is no monetary answer to this question.

The cost of fixing bugs are due to:

1) How complicated the bug is to fix.
2) How much the bug affects the program features - is it a minor or major feature that is affected.
3) The salaries of the developers fixing the bug.
4) The number of developers assigned to fix the bug.
5) The amount of time it takes to fix the bug.
6) The lost of revenue because of the bug.
7) Planning the deployment of the bug fix.
8) The cost of deploying the bug fix.

I'm sure there are more, but as you can see "It's complicated."

[Moderator Note: Removed moderated quote]

Heromofo · May 2015

pecheckler wrote: »

Since returning to the game 3 months ago there has only been one issue i've seen fixed that has been around for months, and that's the templar charge. Still bugged include shadow cloak, group finder, randomly kicked to logon screen, random loading screens then falling through the map, infinite loading screens, empower on dark/solar flare not working, chat window icon fade not working, ..... i could go on for an hour.

Devs have been ignoring the PC version in favor of console release. PC players are just testing the game for console version. Everybody knows that by the end of June the PC version of ESO will be a ghost town.

You could always join us on the console version because we did have to test the beta for the past year so it's only right we get to play the end product. I do hope they offer more xfers to the pc players soon because i dont think it was fair for only some of us to get the option.

kevlarto_ESO · May 2015

The salaries of the different teams, the last couple of mmo's I played had terrible testing and it comes back to bite them in the rear, they rely to much on in house testers and limited QA then the real issues crop up after it goes live, or the bugs are reported on pts and not fixed, priorities of the dev team not always that of the players it seems. It costs the min lost revenue as well as payroll.

Moonshadow66 · May 2015

Jaxsun wrote: »

They fixed bugs?

They did. One fixed and two new ones occured. But something was fixed^^

NewBlacksmurf · May 2015

Heromofo wrote: »

pecheckler wrote: »

Since returning to the game 3 months ago there has only been one issue i've seen fixed that has been around for months, and that's the templar charge. Still bugged include shadow cloak, group finder, randomly kicked to logon screen, random loading screens then falling through the map, infinite loading screens, empower on dark/solar flare not working, chat window icon fade not working, ..... i could go on for an hour.

Devs have been ignoring the PC version in favor of console release. PC players are just testing the game for console version. Everybody knows that by the end of June the PC version of ESO will be a ghost town.

You could always join us on the console version because we did have to test the beta for the past year so it's only right we get to play the end product. I do hope they offer more xfers to the pc players soon because i dont think it was fair for only some of us to get the option.

We might be complaining too...I hope not but, yeah