Reporting bugs in Beta

[poulter]

It has been recently highlighted once again by the devs that many testers do not report bugs i.e. the major purpose of Alpha.

Various reasons have been advanced: little feedback from devs (no central repository available for review, though Citan has responded to this point previously), 'I thought someone else had reported it', 'I'm to busy playing', 'It's not my responsibility', etc. i.e. can't be bothered.

Sometimes, it might just require a 'reward' /carrot to change behaviours & it will be essential in Beta that bug reporting is prioritised by individuals.

To assist in this, would it be useful to introduce a title(s) that people can 'earn' /compete for e.g. raising more than x (unique) bug reports during Beta, raising the most quantity of unique reports during Beta, etc.

Titles such as:
Bug Finder General (Beta)
Most Valuable Bug-raiser (Beta)
etc.

Please add your thoughts and comments below.

[Silvonis]

While we understand where you are coming from, I would like to point out that the amount of interaction we have with the community is a point of pride and is far greater than most similarly situated studios. While it is true that we don’t have a public ‘central repository’ for known bugs, we’ve discussed the reason(s) why previously.

It is up to the individual person to report bugs and submit feedback. If you are participating in an Alpha and/or Beta and not doing so then you are doing a disservice to yourself, the community and the development team. I mean, that’s the entire point of participating in an in-development game.

We encourage people to submit bug reports and their feedback regularly. The problem with ‘rewarding’ players for submitting reports is that it will cause a situation where people will spam the system just to get the reward. To that end, we do have titles for those who participate in testing – some players have earned the title more than others. So, while we don’t have plans on introducing titles or other rewards to encourage reports, we will continue to encourage feedback regularly.

That said, we have rewarded individuals who have been outstanding members of the community (i.e. through reporting bugs, feedback and helping the community as a whole) with special rewards such as enshrining their character names forever with an in-game item. If you want that type of honor, we are always on the lookout for long-term, outstanding, members of the community.

[poulter]

Points taken and no argument from me on them - I even referenced most of them in my post.
(However, I didn't mention the potential workload of overseeing such an approach might require).

I am left with the thought of: If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.

I will consider the subject closed.

[Tagamogi]

If there's a need to get more players to report bugs, how about announcing something like "Report a Bug Month" and rewarding anyone who has submitted at least one bug report by the end of the month with a piece of cake?

Since all that needs to be done is create a single bug report, that would hopefully reduce random spam and maybe actually get people to report bugs they've been sitting on for a while. Cake can be a pretty powerful motivator. :)

Or, even easier, I think just running a popup message a couple months after Steam EA to please report bugs would get more reports. Sometimes people just feel uncertain if they really should report this thing that's been annoying them for a while and that they aren't quite sure is really a bug or worth mentioning.

[Sheawanna]

While we understand where you are coming from, I would like to point out that the amount of interaction we have with the community is a point of pride and is far greater than most similarly situated studios. While it is true that we don’t have a public ‘central repository’ for known bugs, we’ve discussed the reason(s) why previously.

It is up to the individual person to report bugs and submit feedback. If you are participating in an Alpha and/or Beta and not doing so then you are doing a disservice to yourself, the community and the development team. I mean, that’s the entire point of participating in an in-development game.

We encourage people to submit bug reports and their feedback regularly. The problem with ‘rewarding’ players for submitting reports is that it will cause a situation where people will spam the system just to get the reward. To that end, we do have titles for those who participate in testing – some players have earned the title more than others. So, while we don’t have plans on introducing titles or other rewards to encourage reports, we will continue to encourage feedback regularly.

That said, we have rewarded individuals who have been outstanding members of the community (i.e. through reporting bugs, feedback and helping the community as a whole) with special rewards such as enshrining their character names forever with an in-game item. If you want that type of honor, we are always on the lookout for long-term, outstanding, members of the community.

!00% agree with it all . Again 100% agree some don't report the bugs perhaps because it benefits them ????

I report em as I see em :) no Need for special badges or treatment . It is our job to find and report what it is we find ... Nothing more nothing less :)
By far out of any game prior or since the Developers and Team in this game , are the best not only in listening to their audience but pro Active within the game . KUDOS :)