Paradox... please ...

[Apollyonna]

So Paradox, another major patch, another time dealing with not minor bugs but major ones, game breaking ones.

I do not want to sound disrespectful and try not to be in this email. If I do, please know that it is unintended.

Releasing a 'major' update with major bugs, only to be followed up with a hotfix with major bugs again is getting silly. All the while you get your customers complaining to pay for a 'non working product' (may be a bit harsh but it is definitely not working properly at the time of release, including the hotfix).

I read the post on why bugs exist and what a great job your QA team is doing, and I do not doubt it. I cannot even start to understand the magnitude of code that you guys have to go through to implement new features and figure out how new features may end up causing havoc with older ones

I am wondering though, how is it possible that the major bugs (crashes, no achievements after forming nations - GB, Russia, Mughals, Prussia and Italy were formed in the multi player game, yet nobody noticed it on your end - ZOC issues, major UI glitches, etc are not discovered before pushing out a new DLC ?

I know you all work hard to push out the major releases as quickly as possible and this may be one of the problems. High expectations for number of features, not enough time to implement them before launch.

Maybe, just maybe, you want to consider the following:

Release the major patches one month later than usual, fix more bugs internally before asking people to pay for the glory to be guinea pigs, bug hunters, etc for you.

Also, for the future, please consider releasing BETA versions of the game (without DLC) so that more bugs can be found before the final release and asking us to pay for the DLC.

I am now impatiently waiting for hotfix number 2 to deal with the random crashing...

 

[Wizzington]

I wrote a dev diary on the topic of launch bugs when CS released. It's just as true today.

 

[Tiax]

It would be nice to get a known [major] bug list with the patch notes so we know what to expect, and can identify confusing behavior caused by those bugs.

 

[Nikolaj-11]

Unexpected bugs are unexpected

 

[kviiri]

Internal beta testing is bloody expensive business and will never find as many bugs as a huge crowd-sourced army of gamers with a reasonable investment. Beta releases are a far more viable alternative, but the last time Paradox did it with 1.13, there were people complaining about the bugs... in a beta version. Some people just don't get it.

 

[Wizzington]

Open betas get you very little bang for the buck, unfortunately, and absolutely don't mean a bug-free release since bugs are often introduced when fixing other bugs.

 

[Apollyonna]

Open betas get you very little bang for the buck, unfortunately, and absolutely don't mean a bug-free release since bugs are often introduced when fixing other bugs.

Thanks for replying. I am sure you guys have your hands full and would prefer to spend less time on the forum at the moment.

Just a quick reply though, I do not think anyone is expecting a bug free release as it is utopian. But I hesitate a guess that the major bugs present today could potentially have been caught before final release

 

[londoner247]

Open betas get you very little bang for the buck, unfortunately, and absolutely don't mean a bug-free release since bugs are often introduced when fixing other bugs.

Have you considered offering major updates a fortnight before their official release date for a ten percent discount? You would probably get large enough take up to highlight the bugs and people might be less likely to complain since they knew it wasn't quite ready when they bought it?

 

[Wizzington]

Thanks for replying. I am sure you guys have your hands full and would prefer to spend less time on the forum at the moment.

Just a quick reply though, I do not think anyone is expecting a bug free release as it is utopian. But I hesitate a guess that the major bugs present today could potentially have been caught before final release

Some of them, perhaps. Things like the monarch crashes, however, we have simply not been able to reproduce ourselves, and like I said, sometimes you introduce bugs when fixing bugs. If you introduce a bug 1 week before release that takes 100 QA hours to realistically uncover, it'll probably slip past. If just piling in enough QA resources meant that you wouldn't have bugs in releases, all major AAA games would launch bug-free.

 

[Rabid_Bunnies]

I am not overly concerned with the bugs as I know you will fixing them in due course.

Effects of piety for muslim nations seems to be capped at 75%. Not sure if it is a graphical bug or not but at -100 piety I seem to get -7.5% tech reduction instead of -10%. Free QA. Give me cuddles.

Good luck fixing ironman saves. I am almost done with a Kazan WC and I was hoping to get one faith buu.

Love and kisses,

RB

 

[slime1]

Open betas get you very little bang for the buck, unfortunately, and absolutely don't mean a bug-free release since bugs are often introduced when fixing other bugs.

Seriousely? When you released 1.13 beta it was as bugged as all freshly released Paradox patches, but when it left beta status it was in great shape. And we don't want "bug-free", just getting rid of the most obvious bugs, i.e. those that are uncovered by the community in the very first days after release.

 

[bizkit]

I'm totally ok waiting for 3-4 days for hot-fix patch. If they shared much bigger budget for QA&Testing team, we wouldn't be able to buy the game for such small price.

 

[Dalos]

Do you have any kind of automated tests? Just asking, they're must in sw developement.

 

[Tacticus101]

Seriousely? When you released 1.13 beta it was as bugged as all freshly released Paradox patches, but when it left beta status it was in great shape. And we don't want "bug-free", just getting rid of the most obvious bugs, i.e. those that are uncovered by the community in the very first days after release.

So don't download the new patch, wait a week for the bugs to be fixed and then pretend it was a beta?

 

[delpiero1234]

So, if PDX tests all its features prior to release then how come that all these interface issues exist in patch 1.14 and 1.14.1? It appears to me that these were not tested because quite frankly, it is easy to notice that they are not working as designed.

 

[zamieo]

Seriousely? When you released 1.13 beta it was as bugged as all freshly released Paradox patches, but when it left beta status it was in great shape. And we don't want "bug-free", just getting rid of the most obvious bugs, i.e. those that are uncovered by the community in the very first days after release.

1.13 didn't come with an expansion. You can't compare 1.13 to 1.14 + Cossacks.

 

[Apollyonna]

So don't download the new patch, wait a week for the bugs to be fixed and then pretend it was a beta?

Really ?

1.14 came along with the Cossacks DLC which some of us actually bought and the free features are too good to not try out
1.13 came after Common Sense so it was a stand alone patch and the beta release was great.

The Cossacks DLC could have been released 2 weeks after a 1.14 beta (free features) release and so major bugs could have been fixed by the time Cossacks went live (yes, that could have meant a 2 week delay for Cossacks but why not?)

 

[slime1]

1.13 didn't come with an expansion. You can't compare 1.13 to 1.14 + Cossacks.

Why not? Yeah, an expansion is bigger and maybe more stuff would slip through testing. Still, 1.13 after beta testing was the most polished (bug-free) eu4 patch on release since... well, ever. Why not use a procedure where we have good evidence that it might work instead of one that we know doesn't?

 

[zamieo]

Why not? Yeah, an expansion is bigger and maybe more stuff would slip through testing. Still, 1.13 after beta testing was the most polished (bug-free) eu4 patch on release since... well, ever. Why not use a procedure where we have good evidence that it might work instead of one that we know doesn't?

You answered the question in your first sentence. But if I elaborate - first of all, you don't know how efficient the beta testing was, only Paradox knows. Second, you can't prove that it's the most polished EU4 patch on release either, because your experience can differ from someone elses (also - recency and confirmation bias) and there's no mathematical or scientific way to measure how polished a patch is except to count bugs (which wouldn't really cover how "game-breaking" a bug is, just the number of bugs), and obviously a major update will have more room for error than a minor one.

 

[OldmansHQ]

Some of them, perhaps. Things like the monarch crashes, however, we have simply not been able to reproduce ourselves, and like I said, sometimes you introduce bugs when fixing bugs. If you introduce a bug 1 week before release that takes 100 QA hours to realistically uncover, it'll probably slip past. If just piling in enough QA resources meant that you wouldn't have bugs in releases, all major AAA games would launch bug-free.

That sounds reasonable... until you realise that half the bugs are very obvious to anyone who just starts a game.