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Testing Incentives Program: Updated with more Rare Rewards!

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Dec 4, 2018.

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  1. Mishikal

    Mishikal Avatar

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    The issue with numerous people filing the same bug report is exactly what killed the original testing incentives program, as people were trying to score "points" by filing as many bugs as they could, and couldn't care less whether or not there was already an issue filed. Additionally, the same bugs often got filed every release, because there was no easy way for players to know if the bug had been filed in a previous release (short of combing through the history of all past release bug reports).
     
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  2. Katu

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    JIRA allows all of this and IMHO its awesome tool. I have been using JIRA (and other Attlassian tools) for 5+ years.
    You can allow anonymous access to JIRA and you can show only partial sections of it, to public. It's merely a configuration/administration stuff.
    It does require license for users, but there is an option to allow anonymous submit tickets. However, public ticket systems, where anyone can enter issues, are going to be abused to death.
     
  3. Xasopx

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    @Barugon Where can this stand-alone installer for QA be found? Thanks! :)
     
  4. Barugon

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    When they make the QA server available, they'll make a post in the R68 QA forum (which doesn't exist yet) where there will be a link to the client installer.
     
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  5. Xasopx

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  6. Feldon Grimshaw

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    I spent 8 or 10 hours testing on the QA server last release. I reported several bugs. And i never got any testing rewards. How is that supposed to work?
     
  7. Rinaldi

    Rinaldi Bug Hunter

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    @Feldon Grimshaw

    The wording in Darkstarr's post is not very clear.
    Basically, if you play on a QA release for at least 4 hours and report at least one bug, then you are entered into a lottery in which you have a chance to win one of the QA testing rewards (i.e. you do not always get a reward). There is one lottery per QA release cycle (which is roughly once a month), and you are entered only into the lottery for the release in which you test.
    Unfortunately, a lot of people have decided that QA testing is a waste of time because they do not get a reward and because it takes time away from improving their character in the public release.
    In my opinion, the lottery is a slap in the face to those who spend a lot of time in QA and report a lot of bugs, and it leaves out those who report a lot of bugs in the public release.
    And to make things worse, the lottery is supposed to be held at the end of each QA cycle, but it is often delayed for months.
    They also do not announce the winners, so if you got nothing, you have no idea if you lost the lottery, if portalarium delayed the lottery again, or if they forgot about you.
    And to top it all off, the bugs that are reported often seem to be ignored (although recently Potalarium has gotten much better at processing the bugs).

    Despite my disappointment on how Portalarium deals with bugs and QA testing rewards, I still do some QA testing - not for any prizes, but only because I want the game to improve and succeed.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
  8. liz_the_wiz

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    Lotteries always are a slap in the face which is why they stopped showing things like the results of the housing lotto we had (do we still have that?) where each month if you didnt have a plot you were auto entered and could also buy tickets but some people seemed to have endless money and bought tons of tickets and got multiple deeds... and then I think it was 1 per person but you'd seem to see the same names each month. so that stopped being shown..

    I got all my bug things the hard way, I worked hard and it used to be you reported a given number, got a given reward and they added up over time.. same was true with live, there were 2 lots of bug rewards as I recall, I think i got everything bar the last one I worked hard for that, but it also meant someone manually counting them all and port just dont have staff floating around to do that any more..

    Part of me misses the old days of the old qa team, as it was a team, and many of us helped in various ways, now I think its one person and some devs who look in.
     
  9. oplek

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    Dumb question - are the QA rewards still even happening?
     
  10. liz_the_wiz

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    Well, as they arent announced, I dunno its hard to be sure :p
     
  11. Vladamir Begemot

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    Missed for months in a row with no way of knowing who was testing at the time, is actually what happened. So unfortunately no one was rewarded for those months.

    At this point I just look at it as a service to the game. If there's something that I can get in and test quickly and is important or easy to get to at my level (NUE stuff is high on that list) I jump in and test it over the course of several builds. If not, then not.

    There is one good reason to test on QA that's kind of Meta. The bug reports get read in that forum. In the main bug forum I don't think half the bugs even get looked at anymore, the certainly don't get acknowledged in most cases.
     
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  12. Feldon Grimshaw

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    thanks for all the replies. i'll just chalk it up to "whatever", and i might test on qa, not for a reward, but to help the game along.
     
  13. liz_the_wiz

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    The best reason to try QA is a) try maybe something you dont want to commit to such as ditching some trees fo knowledge for something else.. or mastery of some skill to see if its working but also to help try make the release as bug free as possible. One thing which is important for all to note is most of the code is locked not long after qa goes up, even though, often on release new things are differently wrong etc on release.. but the more we squash on qa the better..

    tbh i suck at playing games, but bugs love to find me, and I actually enjoy trying to play and finding bugs.. Ive said it many times, if qa was on perminantly like EQs test, Id live there.. Only difference here is once a month my toon would get reset back to where it started that would be a bit depressing
     
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  14. Mishikal

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    Well, a major issue was that when they did it by "bug count" per person, multiple people would file individual bugs for the same issue so as to increase their count. All the duplication substantially increased the amount of time QA had to spend sifting through the reports. I liked the old system as well, but I understand that it was subject to such unfortunate abuse.
     
  15. liz_the_wiz

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    Indeed, plus being a manually counted process there was scope for a lot of things. And of course then theres the whole multiple bug thing and it has to have been a nightmare to look through.. However, its a shame that like all things people cant be trusted to play nice, and then something as simple as a username in the jra, report of jra counts by user.. tada..
     
  16. Vladamir Begemot

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    //This bug is a duplicate, filed over an hour after the first one. The first is clearly named and the same bug. One bug credit has been deducted from your record.

    I am guilty of duplicating sometimes, but not to get into the drawing. Only needing one bug is such a small barrier to entry. Normally it's because the pile of bugs I'm finding is so large I forget to check, and sure enough the time I do that one is already there.
     
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  17. oplek

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    There's so much about the QA/Bugging that seemed explicitly crude. They could have gotten some 3rd party open source bug-tracking software. Like volunteer forum moderators, they could have had someone pre-process and collate bugs so, to handle duplicates.

    Nope. A forum. We got forum software for that.
     
  18. Sentinel2

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    I agree.

    I'm not in it for the incentives. Though they are nice. I'm on the QA server to help figure out what's broken. And since i run linux nearly 100% of the time, I figure the QA server doesn't see many testers on that platform. Hoping SOTA becomes one of the better Linux games around. So there is my motivation.

    Searching the forums doesn't always yield duplicates. When I hear it's a known issue, I'm disappointed. So much of my very limited time spent digging into a known issue. I'm happy enough to help where I can. But throw me a bone or something here. I'm fluent in google so I figure searching the forums shouldn't be this difficult to find entries. And yet I've fallen into that same hole.

    I think we can do better with bug reporting than a forum post :)
     
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  19. oplek

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    Something I was never clear on... when they marked it as "known", I don't think it always meant that it was already known... but more they were tagging the post title for other people to say "this is now known". It was a little confusing. But that was just my inference. Otherwise, I had a 0% success rate at finding new bugs, despite earnest searches before submitting them.
     
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  20. Sentinel2

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    Oh.

    I had taken the tag of KNOWN meaning it was a duplicate. I was astonished how many times it was known despite no previous posts in the forums (that I could find at least).

    I hadn't thought of it that way. Guess I missed a livestream or three where they explained it ;-)
     
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