Bug Reporting the Right Way

Apparently, there's a few issues regarding players and their ability to report bugs. :D Well, it really should be no surprise. :p After all, it is OUR community after all. But in true AE fashion, someone who works with bugs all day came forth to help us in figuring out just what the AE bug report and resolution process is like from the DEV side:

GM Timaeus posted in Bug reporting:

This is a thread to give a kind of guideline on bug reporting. I've been receiving some annoying reports about the same bug from the same people, so i thought I'd make a thread explaining a few things.

1. Always report new bugs that you find.
2. Never tell your friends to report the same bug. that will NOT make the fix any faster.
3. Do NOT report the same bug more than once.
4. If you're not sure if something is a bug or not, feel free to post about it on the bugs forum or let me know.
5. Don't leave the body of the bug report empty. Even if the subject line explains the bug fully, write something in the body of the report. You can even copy/paste the subject line but leaving it blank can make searching for some bugs harder than it should be.
6. Try to make a subject line that is as descriptive as possible. Things like "construction in bugged" or "the TM is not working" are really vague.
7. Do not report multiple bugs in the same report. Different bugs get assigned to different DEVs and get different priorities. Reporting more than 1 bug in one report makes things harder and may result in the bug taking longer to be fixed. Of course, related bugs could, at times, be combined into one report. For example not being able to plant rose and cherry seeds don't require 2 reports but things like "I can't plant rose seeds. And btw, I crash when i try to heal" is no good.
8. Personal char/account problems should be reported to support via email.

This is just a small explanation on how bug fixing works. Hopefully it'll help some players when reporting bugs.

Player reports a bug. The bug goes into the database. A DEV gets assigned to this bug. Once fixed, the bug is marked as fixed and waits for the update to actually be fixed on the live servers (unless it's one that could be hotfixed).

I wanted to give this brief explanation due to the numerous "I reported this bug 3 times now!!!" reports. Most bugs only get fixed when the update is released. It doesn't matter if you reported the bug 2 or 3 times or if it's been 1 or 2 months (assuming there has been no updates in these 2 months). Please follow the following procedure when reporting a bug:

1- Send bug report
2- Wait for update
3- Check if the bug you reported is under the list of fixed bugs.
4- If it is in the fixed list and the bug is still not fixed, send in another report (preferably with the bug # that is shown in the fixed bugs list).
5- Wait for the next update.

Most importantly, do NOT send multiple reports about the bug during the waiting period before the update is released.

I'm making this topic sticky for a while so everyone can see it. I'm also leaving it open for discussion if anyone has any questions or concerns.

Staying on topic here, Siyone later posted a response in another thread regarding bug reports. In this one, Siyone's responding to Lara Orcsplitter's complaint about disappearing items:

GM Siyone posted in two things that sux:

quote:

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Originally posted by Lara Orcsplitter

1. YET AGAIN i move something from BP to crate in bank and it vanishes. This tiem it was 550 iron ingots. Whats the point of gathering resources when all your time and work is wiped out because of badly game written code. Sort this bug out once and for all ffs. ATM theres a not-to-insignificant chance that something vanishes when you move it, which is stupid stupid stupid (and yes i checked all the container in the bank, relogged etc etc etc)

*edit* 5 mins after posting , Black Dragon has a stack of pie vanish in the same way. You gonna DO something about this IWG, or just ignore it ?

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The problem with this report is that several times a day, many people move things from their backpack to a crate in the bank and the item does not vanish. Testing this just now showed me that I could move an item into and out of a bank crate from my backpack, backpack containers, and other bank crates. So as it stands from these details alone, I can't reproduce the bug. That's not to say that this doesn't happen. It just means that there are circumstances that you and your friend are having that I'm not.

When the devs get a bug like this where they only have a symptom and not the full diagnosis, there's only so much that they can do to "fix" the bug. Some people may remember that the April 5th patch helped a little. Several new checks were introduced to help keep the items from disappearing. But these were based on the same type of report we have here. And while these checks may not have completely eliminated the problem, they do help to prevent it in some cases.

What we need is a clearer understanding of what's going on when an item disappears. You need to include other details. Did you experience a pause in play while the transfer was occurring? Were you dragging an item on top of a container or directly into a slot in the container? Was the container open? What slot in your backpack were you dragging from? Did you have a separate stack of these items somewhere else in your bank? All of these may be factors in determining the cause of this bug.

Remember. The devil is in the details. And we need you to be as detailed as possible when reporting a bug.

So there we have it--two GMs on the same subject. That's rare in itself, don't ya think? But all in all, if we want the bugs to get fixed we need to do more than just complain about the issues. We need to go about reporting bugs the right way. If we do good reporting, then we've done our part. We can only wait for the DEVs to do their's. After all, they're the ones programming, not us.