Coherent and thoughtful issue transparency

[khermann]

hey guys, when you release software I'm pretty sure you know it's going to have some bugs and some of those bugs may be pretty serious.

 

Some of those bugs are not going to be easily repro'd, at least not right away, and the typical developer reaction to these is the 'it works on my box' phenomena, meaning,  "I hope that this is an isolated issue that is environment related and not an issue with code, and since i hope that, I'm going to go ahead and de-prioritize it because I can't repro it right now, so it's not really an issue until someone in QA or elsewhere gives me a repro scenario"

 

 

and development managers/leads make decisions based on this logic, some of it is conspicuous logic, some of it is learned habits from years of punishment in development. makes sense, since you can't see the issue, how can you work on it?

 

here's the thing, it may actually be an issue and if the symptom is severe, such as stats changing or missing inventory, it's worth telling the community about it even if you don't have an answer or even know if it's a "real" (happens on 'my box') issue.

 

Do provide a conspicuous place for KNOWN issues, as well as SUSPECTED/REPORTED issues that have a severe symptom. right now you guys are failing at this. The community is being left to crawl around in forum threads to piece together their symptoms and workarounds, and the QA known-issues list ... wait, I'm sorry, the list of "things we are working on now" - which is even worse - doesn't mention a single word about some of the serious issues the community is reporting, namely those issues with stats and inventory.

 

Please consider that it is in everyone's best interest to provide a coherent, conspicuous, and visible location to notify your community of not only known, but suspect issues that have serious symptoms. 

thanks

[J.Burke]

Didn't they report that they had a fix incoming for the major stats and inventory issue already? To be honest, they are being a lot more transparent than most companies are regarding patching a released game. The developers are actually on the message board responding to people. 

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72923-psa-game-breaking-bug-affecting-everyone-including-you-temporary-fix-for-party-members-only-currently/page-3?do=findComment&comment=1607951

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I took khermann's post as perhaps post a list of bugs you'll be fixing in the next patch and display it on the forums so everyone knows what to expect to be fixed in the next patch. For example, Blizzard always posts what they'll be fixing, tweaking or even adding in their next patch. It'd be good to see something like this on these forums too. At the moment, the players are all in the dark on what's being fixed and what are the known issues to be worked on with a couple of exceptions when dev's post.