I've Gone Into Bug Reporting Over-Drive

@foambreaker said in I've Gone Into Bug Reporting Over-Drive:

I've been a software developer for over 30 years and what you are doing it awesome. Good Job!

I figure I might as well be proactive. The recent issue with PvE spawns probably indicates that Rare's QA are too focused on other aspects of the game to be able to really dedicate resources to the basic stuff.

If they are issues I can reproduce and point towards, I'll put in a ticket. There are, unfortunately, some one-off bugs I've had lately - such as one time planks becoming invisible when used to patch holes, resulting the holes looking like they're open but no water pouring in. Not really much point in submitting tickets for things like that unless they happen again.

@realstyli
I'm now doing the same because I'm annoyed by the bugs. One can only hope that the numerous bugs in the past were really only due to everyone being too lazy to report them.

@cptnlion said in I've Gone Into Bug Reporting Over-Drive:

@realstyli
I'm now doing the same because I'm annoyed by the bugs. One can only hope that the numerous bugs in the past were really only due to everyone being too lazy to report them.

Yeah, until last week I was probably in the same mindset as most players, that some bugs are so obvious that Rare must be tracking them. Clearly, that's not necessarily the case.

Wow, submitting tickets. Must be nice.

I stopped reporting bugs back when Arena was still around and nothing was ever fixed. I stopped reporting cheaters some months back when my tickets wouldn't send.

Hopefully they fix the fourth bell on the circus obstacle course, whatever that even is lol.

@foambreaker said in I've Gone Into Bug Reporting Over-Drive:

Ok bug trivia.

I reported "Square Peg, Round Hole" we have all seen it, what is it? :)

No idea, but going to guess something to do with clipping?

I still just want a season that will be entirely based on bug fixes. I know some people always claim that a season dedicated to bugs without content wont bring people in, but i have seen plenty of people express they dont intend to play the game until a lot of the issues have been resolved. And even if it doesnt bring in much traction, it would still just help with longevity!

The more new systems and content gets added without taking a step back from things to deal with old issues, the more tech debt will build up and lead to even more problems.

@wolfmanbush said in I've Gone Into Bug Reporting Over-Drive:

@goldsmen said in I've Gone Into Bug Reporting Over-Drive:

I still just want a season that will be entirely based on bug fixes. I know some people always claim that a season dedicated to bugs without content wont bring people in, but i have seen plenty of people express they dont intend to play the game until a lot of the issues have been resolved. And even if it doesnt bring in much traction, it would still just help with longevity!

The more new systems and content gets added without taking a step back from things to deal with old issues, the more tech debt will build up and lead to even more problems.

Impossible for them to truly win with this because the ones criticizing them as an overall group are not consistent with expectations or responses/reactions

and they are in a space where there are literally bugs and possibility of bugs every time they implement anything so it's a constant

In a situation where some are going to criticize lack of content, content not being good enough, and content/the game being too buggy there is no winning in that

Serving the majority that are largely satisfied with the casual adventure experience makes more sense from their point of view and just more sense in general.

The majority are the least critical and the most satisfied overall and getting rid of all of the bugs isn't really realistic anyway. Some yes, but they can do that while still creating content.

They will never please the more vocal part of the community, ever. Some individuals but never the overall narratives being pushed by influencers and others.

There will be people who complain no matter what, but a lack of content that can be made later is easier to deal with than building tech debt. Eventually tech debt becomes so problematic that you will struggle to fix it even if you do stop. Bugs will always come when adding new systems, but if you dont address tech debt, small bugs become big issues down the road.

You only need to look at hitreg. It was always a thing, but it has gotten worse over time, and now we have food, bucket, anchor, and even lunge reg. Which as far as i can tell are packet issues based on how they act, but only rare can know for sure what the problem is.

A bug fix season wont make everyone happy immediately, but it would at least to some extent deal with a lot of headache that a lot of players deal with, even if they arnt happy with the lack of playable content.

I've been in bug reporting overdrive before, used to send a bug report every single time I found one that annoyed me during gameplay.

I gave up though because almost none of the bugs I reported were getting looked into, not even posted in the known issues. (such as unnaturally blue water tint, character animation issues, delayed or missing gun sound effects, visual bugs on ship after exiting TT portal, missing ship banners and sell notifications, randomly appearing boss name-tags while sailing etc.)

@alienmagi

The known issues list lacks a lot of actually known issues. They probably don't have a system in place to actually keep it up to date and visible to the public, so just list a few of the most common ones (hit registration, performance). Would be nice to have somewhere where we could see them all with progress ratings, like some other studios do.

The "blue sea" (shader) bug is a funny one because it's not really a detriment and can make the water in the Ancient Isles and Shores of Plenty look better. I haven't had it in a long time but it's one of those that's been in the game for years and comes and goes.

There are a couple more bugs I haven't submitted yet because I am unsure if it's a game issue or an issue with my GPU. I mentioned stutter in another thread but there's a new one with the Imperial Crown sea fort, where it causes me a brief graphical flicker when I first get within render distance (4-5 squares) and I'm looking at it. This sea fort also remains at low level detail until I get much closer than I have to with other sea forts. I've only noticed this since the hotfix last week and I'm still running tests to confirm if it is the game specifically.

Edit - Re: this graphical flicker, it's actually a water rendering glitch and present in all regions, though seems to be most prevalent in the Shores of Plenty during the day. Still unable to determine if it's a bug with the game or a local graphics issue (either a failing GPU or an issue with the latest Nvidia drivers and Sea of Thieves - already did a clean driver reinstall). It's literally a "blink and you miss it" issue, so it's possible others have it but don't notice it.

I have two more open reports on the "Gold Seeker Title Awarded" notification that keeps popping up every session, and the water graphics glitching (mentioned above) - after talking with some folk on Twitch, this seems to be a fairly common issue and can even be seen on some streams.

The latter is not affecting everyone though, and maybe it's only affecting players on PC with Nvidia RTX cards. It seems the problem started with the update that added A Quest for Guybrush. Although it seems to be most present in the Shores of Plenty during the day, it's visible in all areas of the game, so could be a certain shader or other common resource causing it.

If you are having this issue (or any other reoccurring bug), please put in a bug report, so Rare support take it seriously as an issue with the game.

Another day, another bug report submitted. This time for being locked out of selling to Emerick because I had a Merchant cargo pickup quest for him (found in a bottle). This issue is normally solved by taking the cargo off him to clear the quest, but there was no option to do that this time.