War on Bugs
Best KARDS community,
Following our recent update and the bug fixing bonanza on October 29 with more than 60 resolved bugs, we noticed a keen interest to learn more about our War on Bugs. How did we prepare for this major assault?
We would like to provide some insight here, especially since a significant share of our success stems from community bug reports.
Let’s together inspect the troops and arsenal ready at our hands to continue the war on bugs and the various stages, which involve the gathering of intel on the enemy, secret operatives, our war machine, and of course, glory.
Let’s dig in!
[h3]Long Range Intel[/h3]
As in any war, the first step to success is gathering intel about the enemy and actually knowing what is going on. Therefore, we first must watch out for and collect bug reports.
We have several channels for reporting bugs, and we continuously monitor all of them. Think of internal reports within the team (we have recently expanded our QA team) and external channels such as Discord, QQ, Customer Support, Social Media, direct messages, etc.
Yet, missing in this arsenal is the ability to report bugs directly in the game client and some standardization. This is something we are looking into.
[h3]Secret Operatives[/h3]
Even though we at 1939 Games have our own descent QA capabilities, bug reports from you, the player community, are invaluable!
Over time, we have received thousands of reports and reviewed them all. The most popular reporting methods are via the KARDS Discord #bug-reports channel and our QQ group, both closely monitored by our QA team. The next most popular method is via customer support tickets.
Not all reports there, however, are pointing to actual bugs. Sometimes, good gameplay gets mistaken as a bug (e.g., Countermeasures not triggering due to a C6N Saiun on the battlefield). But even in cases when a report was not pointing to a bug, we still get valuable information as those reports point us to general improvements (e.g., making players better aware of what is going on).
Many thanks to all of you for your constant support and passion for helping improve KARDS by reporting bugs and perceived issues.
[h3]The War Machine[/h3]
Once we have received a report about an issue, the war machine kicks in!
In the first step, we examine the report and see if it actually points to a bug or, as mentioned above, is a misunderstood regular game mechanic.
Then, if the report describes a real issue, we categorize it and compare it with our internal list of unresolved bugs. If the bug hasn’t been reported before and is new, we prioritize it according to its potential severity and reach.
Investigating the bug (reproducing in a controlled environment such as a test server is a good step) and finding the root cause can be challenging. At other times, the investigation is straightforward. Each bug can be quite different and could lead down a rabbit hole (or not).
After a bug fix has been developed, it goes through several test cycles to ensure its correctness. All these individual bug fixes then get bundled together into a release to resolve all those issues.
[h3]For Glory[/h3]
We earlier mentioned that many bug reports originate from within the community; they were not idle words. We are truly grateful for all the reports and the various pointers we receive.
The ideal bug report includes:
- A screenshot of the issue (if possible)
- A short description of what the situation was at the moment of the bug manifestation
- The expected outcome, and
- The actually observed outcome
A bug report doesn’t need to be long or complicated; it can be very brief and to the point. But even if you don’t write an ideal report, we still encourage you to join our War on Bugs.
Keep the reports coming!
We hope this short overview gave you some exciting insight into our ongoing War on Bugs. Our recent breakthrough effort with more than 60 resolved game issues left us with only a few more known bugs to wrangle with.
Keep an eye open for more info!