How do bugs make it to live ? ✔

Kahmel · September 2019

@starkerealm

I'm curious do you think it's realistically possible for a game as big as ESO that's constantly being updated with big patches to be 99% bug free? (excluding unforeseen bugs caused by server stress and whatnot) Assuming the company had this goal at the start of creating the game would it be realistic for them to keep it relatively bug free while routinely dropping major content patches?

I've had this question in my mind for a while now. lol

Delparis · September 2019

You can't put everything on the testing side as bugs are made by devs after all.

So bugs can be because of:

Devs lack of knowledge or motivation
No unitary tests made by devs
Working on an older/different branch than the other devs
A part of the testing is made by the Engine selling company (Hero Engine)
No anti regression tests made by testers because of lack of knowledge or lack of testing tools

DocDova · September 2019

I can't type single sentence without a typo, codes are much complex and as someone already mentioned, programers often move from one to other project. ESO is a complex game and complex games have more chances of having bugs.

Unless it seriously affect playability, we shouldn't be too critical as now I realize programars life is hectic as believe it or not, we gamers are most OCD prone group of people.

essi2 · September 2019

Kahmel wrote: »

@starkerealm

I'm curious do you think it's realistically possible for a game as big as ESO that's constantly being updated with big patches to be 99% bug free? (excluding unforeseen bugs caused by server stress and whatnot) Assuming the company had this goal at the start of creating the game would it be realistic for them to keep it relatively bug free while routinely dropping major content patches?

I've had this question in my mind for a while now. lol

Even if their only goal was bug fixing, it is probably unrealistic for a game with the size and complexity of an MMO to be even close to bug free.

Elsonso · September 2019

starkerealm wrote: »

So how do bugs go live?

Part of me laughed. Part of me nodded.

p_tsakirisb16_ESO · September 2019

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Shokasegambit1 wrote: »

How do bugs make it to live ?

You need to ask???

By strength of numbers, the bugstompers just cannot get them all!

How true, I say that 22 years working as a software developer but not listened either.

If you want them dead you need to be given the time to kill them, but everyone up above cries for speed.

starkerealm · September 2019

Kahmel wrote: »

@starkerealm

I'm curious do you think it's realistically possible for a game as big as ESO that's constantly being updated with big patches to be 99% bug free? (excluding unforeseen bugs caused by server stress and whatnot) Assuming the company had this goal at the start of creating the game would it be realistic for them to keep it relatively bug free while routinely dropping major content patches?

I've had this question in my mind for a while now. lol

The hard part here is, the game is already well above 99% bug free.

There's always going to be bugs, but they account for a tiny fraction of the code base. You'll rarely see something that is legitimately 1% buggy, because it would be virtually non-functional.

Now, could ESO do better? Maybe. If ZOS invested a metric **** ton into QA, and extended their schedules out a bit to give QA more lead time? You could reduce the number of bugs we see. But you wouldn't eliminate them entirely.

That's not even considering the content drops. Simply getting a major piece of software completely bug free is effectively impossible.

There's also a law of diminishing returns in effect. So, the more people you put in QA the more bugs you will catch, but, the value per person drops.

Hashtag_ · September 2019

starkerealm wrote: »

Kahmel wrote: »

@starkerealm

I'm curious do you think it's realistically possible for a game as big as ESO that's constantly being updated with big patches to be 99% bug free? (excluding unforeseen bugs caused by server stress and whatnot) Assuming the company had this goal at the start of creating the game would it be realistic for them to keep it relatively bug free while routinely dropping major content patches?

I've had this question in my mind for a while now. lol

The hard part here is, the game is already well above 99% bug free.

There's always going to be bugs, but they account for a tiny fraction of the code base. You'll rarely see something that is legitimately 1% buggy, because it would be virtually non-functional.

Now, could ESO do better? Maybe. If ZOS invested a metric **** ton into QA, and extended their schedules out a bit to give QA more lead time? You could reduce the number of bugs we see. But you wouldn't eliminate them entirely.

That's not even considering the content drops. Simply getting a major piece of software completely bug free is effectively impossible.

There's also a law of diminishing returns in effect. So, the more people you put in QA the more bugs you will catch, but, the value per person drops.

You do know the coding is the reason all these bugs exist and that the current devs aren’t the ones who wrote that coding and that it’s coding on top of coding on top of coding that hasn’t been refined at all. Not to mention the outsourcing of coding to be done that the current devs didn’t code themselves.

starkerealm · September 2019

Hashtag_ wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Kahmel wrote: »

@starkerealm

I'm curious do you think it's realistically possible for a game as big as ESO that's constantly being updated with big patches to be 99% bug free? (excluding unforeseen bugs caused by server stress and whatnot) Assuming the company had this goal at the start of creating the game would it be realistic for them to keep it relatively bug free while routinely dropping major content patches?

I've had this question in my mind for a while now. lol

The hard part here is, the game is already well above 99% bug free.

There's always going to be bugs, but they account for a tiny fraction of the code base. You'll rarely see something that is legitimately 1% buggy, because it would be virtually non-functional.

Now, could ESO do better? Maybe. If ZOS invested a metric **** ton into QA, and extended their schedules out a bit to give QA more lead time? You could reduce the number of bugs we see. But you wouldn't eliminate them entirely.

That's not even considering the content drops. Simply getting a major piece of software completely bug free is effectively impossible.

There's also a law of diminishing returns in effect. So, the more people you put in QA the more bugs you will catch, but, the value per person drops.

You do know the coding is the reason all these bugs exist and that the current devs aren’t the ones who wrote that coding and that it’s coding on top of coding on top of coding that hasn’t been refined at all. Not to mention the outsourcing of coding to be done that the current devs didn’t code themselves.

So, what I'm taking from this is you want to complain to the management about the spaghetti?

mikemacon · September 2019

starkerealm wrote: »

Shokasegambit1 wrote: »

...or am I wrong ?

A little.

Before we get started, I want you to look at this:

So, a couple things.

Large chunks of the code base are being rewritten. The stuff like memory management is going to require some pretty extensive rewrites of how those systems work. That's back end stuff. When you have legacy code you're replacing, that interfaces with more legacy code, you're going to get bugs. Someone wrote that code. It made sense to them. No one on the planet understands what the hell they were thinking.

When you're the only person writing code on a project, it's relatively easy. You understand your own logic, so your greatest enemy is typos (and off by one errors.)

When you're working with a large team, and you're all writing code, good luck. Good documentation, and coherent project design will help. But, stick enough programmers in the room, and inevitably one of them won't be strange enough. They'll implement something that makes sense to them, and no one else.

Come back six months later after they've moved on to a new project on the dark side of the moon, or Kansas, and good luck figuring out what they wrote. It looks like a coherent procedure call, but you're pretty sure it actually summons the Ghost of Christmas Past when you execute it in the wrong sub.

You wanted to know about the poisons. What could affect that? Dunno.

It should be a short list. The poisons should be connected to the item database, and that should be it. They're scaling, but that's an item database trait. They're not the only ones. It should apply a penalty to them, but that might have been removed. Other scaling items, like the Double Bloody Mara, have been altered. It's possible one of those changes affected the poisons.

But, if you ask the Ghost of Christmas Past, maybe they were given hard coded values, flagged for scaling, and now kinda do whatever they want. At that point, those values could be hooked into other things you wouldn't expect. So, when you change a value from an ability, it could turn out that the poisons are scaling off of that. They shouldn't be, but it's possible. I've seen some weird ass connections in games before. "This var returns the data I want, let's just call that and move on with our day."

So, how does that happen? ESO is a very big, very complicated, machine. No one person fully understands everything. Hundreds of people (if not more) have worked on the code base. How do bugs happen? Someone solved a problem without warning everyone else what they did.

Pfffft. Pshaw.

What do you know, Starke? You’re only a guy with years and years of coding experience. Your opinion is invalid.

::scoffs in ‘forum-poster’::

Obviously ZOS doesn’t really care and also at the same time it’s all a nefarious and Machiavellian plot to get us to simultaneously quit the game and buy more Crown Store items.

;:grabs popcorn, turns and stares into camera::

Hashtag_ · September 2019

starkerealm wrote: »

Hashtag_ wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Kahmel wrote: »

@starkerealm

I'm curious do you think it's realistically possible for a game as big as ESO that's constantly being updated with big patches to be 99% bug free? (excluding unforeseen bugs caused by server stress and whatnot) Assuming the company had this goal at the start of creating the game would it be realistic for them to keep it relatively bug free while routinely dropping major content patches?

I've had this question in my mind for a while now. lol

The hard part here is, the game is already well above 99% bug free.

There's always going to be bugs, but they account for a tiny fraction of the code base. You'll rarely see something that is legitimately 1% buggy, because it would be virtually non-functional.

Now, could ESO do better? Maybe. If ZOS invested a metric **** ton into QA, and extended their schedules out a bit to give QA more lead time? You could reduce the number of bugs we see. But you wouldn't eliminate them entirely.

That's not even considering the content drops. Simply getting a major piece of software completely bug free is effectively impossible.

There's also a law of diminishing returns in effect. So, the more people you put in QA the more bugs you will catch, but, the value per person drops.

You do know the coding is the reason all these bugs exist and that the current devs aren’t the ones who wrote that coding and that it’s coding on top of coding on top of coding that hasn’t been refined at all. Not to mention the outsourcing of coding to be done that the current devs didn’t code themselves.

So, what I'm taking from this is you want to complain to the management about the spaghetti?

When management is more concerned about crown store and money than the root of their game they should be complained to

mikemacon · September 2019

☝️

Case in point.

::munches popcorn::

ManwithBeard9 · September 2019

essi2 wrote: »

Kahmel wrote: »

@starkerealm

I'm curious do you think it's realistically possible for a game as big as ESO that's constantly being updated with big patches to be 99% bug free? (excluding unforeseen bugs caused by server stress and whatnot) Assuming the company had this goal at the start of creating the game would it be realistic for them to keep it relatively bug free while routinely dropping major content patches?

I've had this question in my mind for a while now. lol

Even if their only goal was bug fixing, it is probably unrealistic for a game with the size and complexity of an MMO to be even close to bug free.

Borderlands 3 recently released, not an MMO just multiplayer. AAA title from a AAA studio, recently a bug was revealed that can be triggered in numerous ways that will wipe out your entire bank.The simple nature of coding is not if you'll have bugs, but how many there will be and how bad they will be.

MizoreReyes · September 2019

Not enough players testing on the PTS anyways for a large scale community game because look at that size and you give feedback but no satisfying change. So what is the point.

starkerealm · September 2019

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

essi2 wrote: »

Kahmel wrote: »

@starkerealm

I'm curious do you think it's realistically possible for a game as big as ESO that's constantly being updated with big patches to be 99% bug free? (excluding unforeseen bugs caused by server stress and whatnot) Assuming the company had this goal at the start of creating the game would it be realistic for them to keep it relatively bug free while routinely dropping major content patches?

I've had this question in my mind for a while now. lol

Even if their only goal was bug fixing, it is probably unrealistic for a game with the size and complexity of an MMO to be even close to bug free.

Borderlands 3 recently released, not an MMO just multiplayer. AAA title from a AAA studio, recently a bug was revealed that can be triggered in numerous ways that will wipe out your entire bank.The simple nature of coding is not if you'll have bugs, but how many there will be and how bad they will be.

Much as I loathe Randy Pichford as a person, and derive a small degree of schadenfreude for anything associated wit BL3, the bank bug does seem to be an excellent example of a bug you can't see in a test environment.

Apparently, the issue occurs when uploading saves to EGS's cloud, and pulling them back down. Somehow the bank data gets culled. At that point, the cloud's empty bank will be accepted as, "the real bank," and then loaded back down onto the game, overwriting the correct bank data. This may have been related to an issue where a, "download from cloud," confirmation box wasn't appearing, for some reason.