Testing Incentives Program Reinstated (as a Lottery)

I understand that old players have advantages over new players that can be frustrating. Pledge items (that actually were paid in USD) and more important XP and skill gains before systems were adjusted.

As frustrating as these things are I believe it is similar to how I felt when they disbanded the incentives. I started testing without even knowing about the program only late in the process. My motivation was & is to get a better game for everybody. However, getting some extra pixel candy was nice. What makes me sad though is to see that the system didn't work. Either because of mischief or because the infrastructure was missing. It was hinted by the devs that people were abusing the system by reporting bugs several times and not following good process. As a result the program was stopped. If you spend lots of time wouldn't you feel sorry then as well?

 

You're right, that is a good point. I don't think the program will change in anyway.

 

I'm not the one that is frustrated. You are.

 

Just curious but did anyone ever get the corpion chair?

 

My biggest concern isn't that it's a lottery per se, but that I feel we're going to see fewer players delivering bug reports to an extreme that might be harmful to the overall QA efforts. If they can still get sufficient bug reports without offering a blanket reward, I'm all for it. I agree that too many bug reports were being duplicated, so I understand the move. That said, we don't want it to go back to the semi-barren server it was prior to the incentives program. It's too early to really know the impact now and I suspect this will be tweaked as time passes, as is everything.

@Barugon I've seen a couple in game, so I know they've been achieved.

 

I do have to confess I'm a bit sad that my suggestions of improving the fairness and the quality didn't make the cut.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...m-reinstated-as-a-lottery.100043/#post-878551

I did about the same amount of bug reporting before-during-after-in between- that I've always done so for myself I'd be more motivated by responses than rewards, where Lexie and Attenwood has done a great impact for my perception of the progress of my bug reports which has made more for my want of participation than ever any reward has.

While I still reserve the right to suggest improvements to any and all systems that they implement for as long as they say that they want our feedback and that they say they listen, and I still reserve the right to be disappointed when easy pickings and valid improvements doesn't make it in.

 

Grats on winning a set of paintings. Hopefully you'll continue bug hunting and realize that a lottery is better than no rewards at all. Cheers!

 

I fail to see how a lottery system is better.

Let's see....I'll test a game for 4 hours, find a bug, comb the forum, report the bug if it's new, hope that less than 20 people do the same thing so I receive 1 incentive. Now that sounds like something I want to help with! That the same reason I love grinding levels in a game.


All kidding aside, that sounds like more of a disincentive than anything else. I'm sure some people love the idea of getting to throw hours into testing for a chance at an "incentive". But whatever....this new incentive program is not for a casual like me. Everyone has a limit to what they'll do for free stuff and this hits that threshold for me. My free time is limited and I use it where it is valued as such.

I would love to see actual numbers of quality but reports from 1 year ago (when QA access was limited to dev+ and had guaranteed incentives) vs today (all player QA access and no guaranteed incentives). I'd put money on which one had higher quality/quantity reports.

 

It is what it is.
Personally, I did bug reports way before the incentives....
The incentives were/are nice, but I'd be letting them know about what's not right anyway...
But I hear ya...

 

Koldar, I can see where you're coming from to a point - specifically about how you want to spend your time. We all have the same choices.

As for loving "the idea of getting to throw hours into testing for a chance at an "incentive"", I can only speak for myself when I say I bug hunt because it is one of the ways I can contribute to developing the game in a concrete way. I don't love the chance at a thank you reward, it is not the motivation and I'll wager it isn't a motivation for most dedicated bug hunters. I love the game. And I feel a sense of satisfaction every time a bug I reported gets fixed.

A lottery system is better than no system at all. Just ask the winners how they feel about receiving their prizes.

And I'll reiterate, this is not something Portalarium ever had to do and not something they need to continue doing. It wasn't a Kickstarter promise, it wasn't a part of a pledge or a bundle or a telethon - they obviously DO value people who are doing the testing else would never have reinstated the rewards.

 

That's true for me but I have to admit that I really like the stuff, especially the Royal Pest Controller title.

 

I don't really understand why we need the 4 hour logged into the test server requirement personally. I think they'd have MUCH better luck with people hopping in quickly just to see what they can find vs "I don't have 4 hours, guess I'll just wait and report it while I play on live."

I just don't see the added value to the program having people stay in the PTS for 4 hours.

 

It's 4 hours total over the week that QA is available.

 

I understand it's a cumulative value. I just think it's a disincentive to anyone that might otherwise log in for a few minutes to see if they find anything because they know for sure there's no reward so they'll just wait and report when it goes live. It effectively removes the whole incentive is my point because even if you find a bug, you're still not eligible. It could just help make it easier for them to manually do the lottery since I doubt it's automated, though. That might just be the necessary evil since they're not a massive operation.

 

Having people in the game doing things helps Portalarium collect general data. I believe, for example, that scene performance data is collected and recorded, at least when things drop to a certain level. Chris could use that data and analyze it before and after a patch to see the effects. Logging in and "going about your business" still ends up being a sort of test.

 

Maybe the top X bug testers can be announced in the next telethon as an additional incentive. A little recognition goes a long way.

 

Unfortunately we haven't solved the problem of reporting duplicate bugs. This is the reason (so I understand) for the end of the program. Now it's back and there is a lottery. Ok, well, not ideal however we still haven't solved the original problem of duplicates.

I've found several bugs and reported them after checking the forums. Only to find they were known duplicates. Nothing in the forums that I found to help indicate this. Some way to effectively search for known bugs would go a long way here.

 

I'm of the mind that duplicate bugs wasn't the real problem, because you are right. None of these changes solved that problem, unless you expect that fewer people will feel the incentive to participate, which seems like a step backwards and EXTREMELY counter to Port's purpose of making the game better. The only direct problem that was solved is that with the lottery there are WAY FEWER rewards to hand out, and that means less time required for whoever is doing that manually.

 

Fair enough. However that was how I read the announcement. It's possible I'm reading more into it than was intended.

He said...

"As we announced recently, we had to temporarily suspend the Testing Incentives Program due to the amount of internal bandwidth it was consuming. This was due to the high volume of bugs the program generated as players were incentivized to create quantity over quality to gain rewards."

High volume of bugs generated is how I came to the conclusion. Plus, I've personally run into this problems myself at times. When I asked how to avoid submitting dupes, I was told to search the forums.

Yeah. That's not the best way IMO. I've searched and still had dupes unfortunately.

 

Part of the problem with duplicated bug reports are the ones that get reported and 3 releases later still aren't fixed. It may be possible to search the *whole* forums for previously reported bugs, but that's a bit hit-or-miss.

What I find a shame on the community is where a bug has been reported and it's actually the one submitted right before yours! Or a simple scan of the current page shows that the bug was reported three times already by three people. Why start a fourth bug report? Why not just add your comments to someone else's bug report?