Testing Incentives Program

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DarkStarr, Sep 8, 2016.

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  1. Caree Death

    Caree Death Avatar

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    Same here.. =/
     
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  2. Lord Stein

    Lord Stein Avatar

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    It must have ended. I havent gotten any last two releases, and have logged way over 5 hrs. each time, as well as finding a few "stuck spots". Wish they would have told us it ended.
     
  3. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    Yup. Same here. .Oh well.
     
  4. Solazur

    Solazur Avatar

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    Gee I'm inspired to test...

    /s
     
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  5. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    or.... they don't sit down and calculate it every month depending on how busy they are.
     
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  6. Lained

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    I've received some crowns the past couple of releases though I've not been on the QA server, I assumed it was from reporting bugs on the forum.
     
  7. Net

    Net Avatar

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    It used to lag one release.
     
  8. Matt Harris

    Matt Harris Avatar

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    I didn't bother for Release 41, but I am sure I did for the couple of releases prior to that; didn't get anything.
     
  9. Spoon

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    The daily gold give out that you got on QA included a handful of Cotos as well.
    You had to access a bank to get them though.

    EDIT:
    I think I misunderstood the question, I thought you meant the Cotos while testing, sorry.
     
  10. liz_the_wiz

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    I think Im most surprised to hear someone say they got cotos without having done QA.

    As far as I know the process is not a simple "select * where playtime > x from userdb" on the qa server, I think theres a lot more work in it than that, and that it is a semi manual process. I dont think the cotos have gone out yet, for R40.. It has been previously said that In R41 release, you're getting the R40 testing cotos, not the R41, so its not for testing the last week or so, its a month+last week or so ago.. which of course your memory of exactly when you played has dimmed a little.

    For those of us who didnt get any, I think we need to have done 5 hours or so, it sounds easy but its not always.

    While it can be disheartening, dont take it that way, all the bugs we find in QA, all the bugs we find in live, make our game better.. In most games, this is reward enough.. the fact we are offered potentially more here we should be grateful for it.
     
  11. Attenwood

    Attenwood Portalarian Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    To clear up a few points:
    1. Players reporting that they've received COTOs while many others havents: In most cases where this has been observed, it's because COTOs were late delivered for previous work done, and only recently collected via Claim Rewards. There were some kinks in our logging that occurred with our records for last release's reporting, so, as we've indicated in other announcements and channels of communication, if you believe you should have gotten COTO rewards and didn't for any of your accounts, please report to support@portalarium.com and we'll both verify and resolve the issue for you.

    2. COTO for the most recent release have not been delivered yet. We expect to have these go out to players this week. We will work to be more transparent in our announcements when this occurs so that there's less player confusion about when/if rewards have been delivered to participating accounts.

    Thank you all again for continued support and bug reporting. While there may be delays in incentive delivery, great value is still added by reports reaching devs which can then be transformed into higher-quality content for all players.
     
  12. Vladamir Begemot

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    I test because

    1. I enjoy finding and reporting bugs
    2. I want the game to succeed
    If you aren't into the first, you are probably into the second.

    Considering how much most of us have invested, quitting testing because you didn't get a few COTOS (yet) is like quitting the family farm because you didn't get a payout from last year's harvest.

    Or more like last week's take from the farmers market, not the whole year.
     
  13. 2112Starman

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    I have tested for some time on and off but real heavy over the past 3 releases on QA. I enjoy doing it but I also do it for the rewards.


    What does it take to get the rewards? I have sent PM's to the main devs who run it without response. I know they are busy but I like to think I have gone out of my way recording videos on bugs and posting them to help.
     
  14. Vladamir Begemot

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    Mail support.
     
  15. Barugon

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    I don't recall seeing any post saying that they weren't going to test on QA anymore because they didn't get COTOs.
     
  16. Vladamir Begemot

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    Well there were some sarcastic remarks that indicate rewards are the only reason. I am just floating the idea that having the game not fail carries a lot of rewards as well, such as keeping all our stuff!
     
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  17. 2112Starman

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    Lets not toss aside the rewards as not being important, they really are. In truth, they are using us to beta test the system and find bugs, something that AAA games have teams of people to do. They need to be serious about the rewards to keep people interested in it. Testing is a balance for me, my time is precious and very limited in game and it takes me away from empire building in production.

    The best thing about the testing is that I have seen my changes go into the game and makes me feel like I have an imprint on the final product.
     
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  18. liz_the_wiz

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    The other thing is that for example, I know I submitted a truck load of bugs in QA, however, if not all of them got logged, or some got fixed before they got read, or, past releases that they got put forward for review but never got commented on by a dev, chances are they didnt get counted - so, its hard when you can sit there maybe do a search on your bugs and go "but I logged x" .. you wrote x in the forum, but not all those necessary made it to the bug counter.. as it could be a dup, you just posted in a different area .. or it had been found internally first.

    So you cant just go "count" your bugs..

    However, when you find yourself seeing bugs you raised in the change logs, it is nice to sit there and go "HA I found that" .. that gives me serious warm fuzzies
     
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  19. Wintermute of CoF

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    I did a lot of testing and bug reporting before there were rewards, but now that there are rewards I expect them to be delivered fairly and in a regular fashion.

    I do think it would cut out a lot of confusion if there was some way for us to see the time we have spent on each QA release that counts towards the rewards. Pretty sure I've always spent more than 4.5h on each release but as I often spend a lot of time stationary (because when you find an issue it takes some time to search to see if it's already reported, type it up properly and then I often get sidetracked by forum alerts on past submissions) which doesn't count towards 'QA time spent'. Emailing support each month to check seems excessively time consuming for both parties.
     
  20. Net

    Net Avatar

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    I would really like easy way to see how many bugs I have submitted and how far I am from the next rewards... or rather how many of my threads were counted. Something in my account tab:

    New bugs discovered: 37 (next title at 50)
    New QA bugs discoverd: 14 (next rewards at 25)
    Active time spent on R41 QA: 2h 55m (5 golden COTOs reward at 4h 00m)


    Or something along those lines. I think one of the biggest issues of the testing incentivee program is how not transparent it is for us. I have no idea how many bug submissions were counteed towards the rewards I do not even know how many I have submitted. And I have no idea whether I should report missing rewards or not:) I have no idea when they are being delivered but it seemed to me it may be few patches into neew release sometimes. I feel bit in the dark.

    I am pretty sure these things must be tracked internally otherwise how do we get those rewards? So I would like to be able to peek into that and see how things are going.

    On a side note I think that some bug reports are really well done and deserve more than one "point". Like the one someone made with map of all places on Overland wwhere colissions do not match graphics. And then when someone makes dozen of bug reports reporting basically the same thing on multiple locations should not be worth 12 points really imho, otherwwise people will spam forums and it will be even harder to find if something was reported otr not.
     
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