CCP readying new EVE bug reporting tool

by Jef Reahard on Oct 17th 2011 2:00PM

Sci-fi, EVE Online, MMO industry, News items, Dev Diaries, Sandbox

Bug reporting is rarely sexy, but it's one of those necessary evils that comes with the territory when we're talking about complex pieces of software like EVE Online. Bug reporting has also been something of a pain for CCP customers prior to this week, and hopefully that will change with tomorrow's update.

CCP Redundancy has the details via the latest EVE dev blog, and the long and short of it is that there's a new crash-reporting tool scheduled to go live on October 18th. The tool has been tested internally and is just now ready for prime time, and Redundancy hums a few bars relating to the whys, the hows, and the privacy concerns. You can read all about it at the official EVE website.

Source: EVE dev blog
More coverage: EVE website

Tags: bug-reporting, bug-reports, bug-squashing, bugs, ccp, ccp-games, ccp-redundancy, dev-blog, dev-diary, eve, eve-online, in-space-no-one-can-hear-you-report-bugs, internet-spaceships, new-eden, sandbox, sci-fi, scifi

Reader Comments (2)

Just for comparisons sake for those who do not know what it takes to do an EVE Online bug report before this here is what they used to want you to do for bug reports big and small:(I will put some comments of my own on the end of some of the statements in brackets)

1. How to recreate the bug (or they won't be able to look at it until a load of people report the same thing or they find it)
2.video/audio/screenshots/csv files of the errors if you have them
3.LogServer Logs (logserver.exe is a logging program that many players don't even know is on their computer, doesn't run automatically, has no instructions on stetting it up correctly to log and in previous versions of it players were told not to run "all the time because it can make the client unstable" on two different occasions. Also your bug report would be looked on as incomplete and given a lower priority, even if it had nothing to do with anything that is logged)
4.DxDiag
5.Account/ccharacter details involved in bug
6.Server/Solar System(s)/locations involved.
7.Steps you took to try and identify and figure out how to fix the problem.
8.Client version and the date you updated to it if it was recent.
9.Full specs on your computer, your operating system, and sometimes all the software you were running at the same time if it is a crash/freeze/won't log on issue.

You had to generate and compile this information as a report manually out of game and send it to them. I have played and taken part in many many beta tests (to the point that I was personally invited to join some by game developers because I actually took part in bug reporting and game testing discussions in ways they wanted for their tests) and I have not seen any other game where you have to do all this for even the slightest bug or misbehaving game mechanic. I have had them later request further info like this when it turns out to be something bigger or harder to pin down but not like this.

Mind you I haven't played all the big AAA games though.

@WolvenSpectre

Oh yes I also forgot the necessary step by step description of how you discovered it and I also forgot that they have a secondary crash recording feature that they may also want those logs too.

My main point being is that many of the other players I know who have been playing for years have lists of bugs they have come across as long as their forearms and they don't report them because of the work to make the report and the fact they don't know to get LogServer to work or don't run it every time they play. There is also my friend that like I, have a learning disorder that makes generating allot of this harder for him and when he has for other games he has been criticized by the CS people for how badly it reads. If this was largely automated, he would probably go through the work of the rest of the report, but as it is that he is all but generating a small essay on the problem by hand and attaching a bunch of files to it, he never reports anything.

I personally don't because of particularly bad treatment by their CS staff in the past. They have improved greatly but I think I have used up my good will for them so only report what I need to.

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