Also, there’s still an MMO Examiner!

Goe, wondering if you’re a grandmaster diaperchanger yet.

“But I don’t want to personally respond to the bugs I get through the tool, because personal response is simply not sustainable with a game that has any level of success.”

This is a pure guess but i’d have thought that the percentage of players who send in bug reports that are detailed, clear and precise descriptions of the bug would be quite rare in amongst vast piles of opaque craziness?

If so wouldn’t it be possible to identify those few and use the personal approach with them? Once identified and nurtured they could even be set proactive tasks to hunt down vague bugs reported by other players.

I agree with Andre that public recognition is a good reward for this.

I’m used to getting a robotic email acknowledgement that a bug report has been received, and that is just fine. They usually contain a disclaimer blah blah blah thanks, we may or may not do anything with this, blah blah blah. If I agree to test I agree to submit bug reports.

If the reporting mechanism is smart enough to already have my coordinates and allows me to fill in server, character information, etc, that is great. Don’t ask for step by step reports of what occurred and is it repeatable and verifiable blah blah blah because while I’m filling in this tome, my character is being attacked and killed and so much for my detailing.

Having said that, I like your piece. Simple acknowledgement of a bug report helps a lot, feedback to the reporter and customer base goes even further. An online database that allowed the bug reporter to track what was going on with his/her report would go a long way to satisfying gripes — as well as help software QA keep track of what they were working on and why.

“Oh wow, 9378 other people reported the same thing, great, maybe they’ll prioritize fixing it.”

“Hmm… I’m the only one to report that? With 10,000 people doing that quest daily? Maybe I did something wrong …”

“50 others reported the bug the same way I did but 4500 reported the opposite. That’s odd …”

For what it’s worth, I quit DAOC precisely because it seemed relatively obvious that the company wasn’t going to do anything about my carefully documented complaints (including detailed statistical analysis and logs). The devs seemed to be happy with the fundamental changes they had wrought, people who had little-to-no experience with the original mechanics were ambivalent or deliriously happy and the producers seemed to be ambivalent or deliriously happy that a large number of old-timers were quitting. Mythic never published any information on why they disagreed with the statistical analysis so many players produced or that they cared about anything other than pushing the patch as conceived on schedule regardless of what it did to the game. I tend to think there were probably valid reasons but it wasn’t evident to the player base from the externals — and THAT creates dissatisfaction.

City of Heroes / Villains offers the Bug Hunter badge to anyone who reports a critical bug along with steps to reproduce. To get it a lot of internal hoops have to be jumped though since the devs award it, but it is a highly sought-after badge.

Internally, I’d say that linking up your reporting database with your actual dev used database is huge. Using CoH/V as an example again, a developer recently said he hadn’t heard of a bug a lot of people had experienced and that people should not use the internal reporting tool if they wanted something handled quickly. He (and CMs) had to come back and do damage control – apparenly the QA team would work through people’s submissions from the in-game tool and would only escalate those bugs they found met necessary criteria. However, making it look like the devs don’t even see the player-submitted reports was a bad move.

Let me give an example: Suppose three players band together to complete a series of quests in an instance dungeon (not really applicable to a football game, but a familiar reference to many); they’ve been challenged and fought to the best of their abilities through a lengthy series of puzzles, traps, beasts, et cetera to reach the final encounter; this encounter is, by design, extremely challenging for three people (the limit to the number of players allowed in the instance), and upon killing the final boss the encounter bugs and the loot is unobtainable. The rational option at this point, when the players call for a game master (GM), is for the GM to read the logs and determine that the players encountered a bug that prevents them from obtaining their reward, and that they had successfully completed the task otherwise. The GM should then encourage the players to submit a bug report with the promise of giving them the reward when they do so (i.e., player submits report -> player gets reward loot).

As a player, the most disheartening advice ever heard from Customer Service is that they’re sorry the players encountered the bug, but there is nothing they can do for them about it. (see what I did there … “I’m sorry, but ..” … which refers to an earlier blog here at Eating Bees). Bugs can be game breakers, and if players are to continue feeling good about the game, they need to be assured that bugs will get fixed quickly (so that they will not encounter them again on a subsequent attempt), and that the players haven’t had their noses shoved in the fact that they’ve just wasted several hours and lost their chance to obtain their goal reward.

In the above example, one bug annoyed three players. Those three players then told ten friends (or more) each about their negative experience in the game. One of two scenarios follow: the negative news about the bug (and subsequent inaction by CS) hits the forums and the drama llama is brought out; or the players quietly cancel and leave the game. It is hard to imagine how the game company could benefit from either of these situations when if, up front, the CS was empowered to make the situation right (without giving away the bank) and the fallout was avoided.

/ramble off