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Post by zerza on May 7, 2006 8:47:41 GMT -5
This post probably was off topic in the other thread, so I'm going to open this thread so we can comment about how they are going about these bugs and offer constructive feedback on perhaps more viable alternatives or approaches.
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Post by zerza on May 7, 2006 8:47:58 GMT -5
Want to fix the connection bugs everyone is certain exists? This sounds like you personally doubt that problems exist. - Specific, 100% repeatable connection failures between two or more players that will happen every single time, without question This is a testers pipe dream. Very few bugs have 100%repeatable results. IMHO the bug is variables are getting corrupted values. Perhaps triggered by certain events - These errors MUST occur even despite: 1) Firewalls correctly configured, 2) Spyware NON-existent, 3) Game Restarted between attempts You cant expect everyone to be playing on virgin clean systems. Its up to the company to accomodate the consumers. Other games work fine, why expect different here? - You must be willing to sit down and document the holy living hoo-ba-doo out of the problem until it is fixed, which is neither fun nor rewarding to do.no comment. In short, if it's going to be fixed, we need a cold, hard, open-and-shut documentable, proven condition between two or more players. If you think it happens in a ten player game, then you need to have ten players who can prove it happens every single time. You just wont find this "smoking gun" of proof. These testing principles do explain why we are here now. As I said before: this thread IS getting read by who you want it to be read by. Don't waste time bitching and complaining - give hard data and proof. Bitching and complaining annoys you, them, and everyone else, along with wasting time - which is the bane of getting this fixed. Not complaining, just stating that these testing principles will fix few bugs and is a waste of time. Why aren't they releasing a real logger to document this themselves. Perhaps a standalone program that documents the P2P specifics and automaticly emails failed connections. Something along these lines. Players could choose to download it. Just a few thoughts, but you will likely never find this solid proof. This is a needle in a haystack approach. Also, do testers ever play with the public? This is a very common sensical approach. Im thinking no. Game seems to work fine in the Firaxis sandbox, so why are they still testing it there?
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Post by Elledge on May 7, 2006 9:58:16 GMT -5
This sounds like you personally doubt that problems exist. Given his earlier posts and his implication, I think it's safe to assume he doesn't think the problems are as severe as usually bemoaned. ...So what? Is that illegal? He's asking for the people testing and reproducing errors to have clean systems to minimize false positives - not users.
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Post by Canucksoldier on May 7, 2006 12:55:04 GMT -5
Zerza, you are preaching to the choir here, no one involved in MP disbelieves what is happening. But we have to offer reasonable proof that it is not: A/ Misconfigured firewalls/router/other NAT's, B/ Sub standard computers, or C/ other non-game related problems people have on there PC's. If we can show this then we'll encourage teh dev's to find a solution and point them to the weak area's that must be improved.
CS
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Post by zerza on May 8, 2006 8:45:23 GMT -5
Zerza, you are preaching to the choir here, no one involved in MP disbelieves what is happening. But we have to offer reasonable proof that it is not: A/ Misconfigured firewalls/router/other NAT's, B/ Sub standard computers, or C/ other non-game related problems people have on there PC's. If we can show this then we'll encourage teh dev's to find a solution and point them to the weak area's that must be improved. CS So your saying its up to the players to prove a need to fix the game? Frankly, I'm appalled. I have no idea what to say to this. Its frankly a startlement that a company would leave the burden of proof on the players to prove a need to fix a game. This is bad business. As to proving point A, B, and C. EVERY game faces those 3 obstacles. Difference is most of those other games work, and this one doesn't. This is a cop out. CIV4 could have done some great things to the CIV franchise, and could have gotten thousands of new devotees to the franchise. They really shot themselves in the foot by blowing off the multiplayer community. The bugs are driving off players in droves. Elledge: No, read closer. They are saying its up to the players to prove bugs even exist, before they will bother to fix them. As canuck said, If we can show this then we'll encourage teh dev's to find a solution and point them to the weak area's that must be improved.Am I dreaming this or actually reading it. Its just unreal. I've already burnt out on MP, the hour to get a game going is a waste of time. I do hope this crap is fixed soon.
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Post by tommynt on May 8, 2006 13:41:57 GMT -5
oh well i can assure that the 5 problems i listed in other thread exist - firaxis is free to charge me if they dont
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Post by Avogadro on May 9, 2006 14:02:18 GMT -5
Zerza. Point is they will not hire testers to fix this as the MP market is small. Bad business? Hell ya. But for us Ladders who simply want to play without the connection headaches then....looks like if we don't help ourselves no one will. Canuck is not saying this company cares about us because it clearly does not. Hell, the beta testers still havent received a promised free copy of the game. Take 2 is the moeny people they say. Big whoop tkae the money out of the pety cash drawer and buy games at walmart for the testers who were promised copies. Then they wonder why so few are involved with Warlords testing. Canuck is saying maybe we could make a difference by gathering enough info to hopefully resolve some of these issues.
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Post by zerza on May 9, 2006 21:33:44 GMT -5
Of course the MP community is small, IT DOESN'T WORK! I wont even play online, I got to frustrated. And I'm addicted. They are to stupid to cater to the most profitable aspect of computer gaming, ONLINE PLAY> "Well, the online community is small, even tho we've never managed to make a truly working model of Online CIV, in 2 versions of CIV now. But its small, so not worth it. " Firaxis, ever stop and think that its small cuz you suck at making online games? Gain a skill in that, and the MP community will blow up. Your hurting noone but your own bottom dollar. I must say, its a good thing you had a well known franchise to trash, otherwise you'd all be unemployed. Can I ask you to stop trashing civ tho? Trash some other well known game, Christ at least CIV2 worked online Give it back to Activision even, CallToPower worked better then this.
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Post by MMV on May 9, 2006 23:50:37 GMT -5
Point is they will not hire testers to fix this as the MP market is small........ Canuck is not saying this company cares about us because it clearly does not. Canuck is saying maybe we could make a difference by gathering enough info to hopefully resolve some of these issues. Odd, I thought they actually hired an MP player who got payed as a game consultant (not a software engineer, systems/network engineer, programmer, etc - a consultant). Maybe that's how they figure the "value" of MP play and it's players. Say someone got $37,000 for their consulting efforts - that would only be the equivilant of 740 games sold out of over 1million. Is that good or bad? It looks both to me - " it only cost us the price of 740 games out of +1million sold to reach out to the MP customer base" seems good; " the price of 740 games was EXTRAVAGANT and it's not worth the effot" would be the downside to look at it. Does it really matter? YES!!!!!!!! It was promoted and advertised HEAVILY and it's all over the game box. It's a responsibility. If they "abandon" it - they'll certainly (eventually) feel it. "Hire" programmers? Not this franchise - this game and civ3 were ADVERTISED AND PROMOTED as "player developed." CS is most correct, if the MP community wants this game fixed from whatever ills some people are having with it, they're going to have to do it themselves. Should Firaxis/Take2 continue with MP for the X-Pak? If they don't, they better NOT put "MP" in it's advertisements, promotional efforts, and the box it comes in. but - that's only ONE way of looking at it - there are many.
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Post by zerza on May 10, 2006 0:07:29 GMT -5
I just dont understand why their testers are so incompetent that they would rely on the players to find the bugs. I'm insulted, I went to work to earn the money to buy this game, now I must go to work to make the game work?
WTF are these people getting paid to do?
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Post by Avogadro on May 10, 2006 14:53:56 GMT -5
The testers aint paid Zerza. We were the testers and unfortunately often the tester all had their comps running perfectly do that many of the issues now present did not happen in between us when we played.
As for salary, we were promised Limited Editions of the game. Now after waiting over 6 months looks like we will get the Walmart versions...if they ever arrive that is.
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Post by Elledge on May 10, 2006 15:52:33 GMT -5
It seems to me that nutsty code combined with little or no professional testing is the order of the day at Firaxis, but I could have said that three months ago (and everyone pretty much was saying it three months ago, in fact) - so test if you care, don't test if you don't want to, but I don't think anything's going to change on their end no matter how hard you complain, so better learn to deal with it.
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Post by swissy on May 10, 2006 17:37:44 GMT -5
There is no such thing as professional testing. Any company that would enter the software QA game is doomed to fail as it could not come near to covering half the real world computer configurations that users would attempt to use the software on.
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Post by Elledge on May 10, 2006 20:19:42 GMT -5
There is no such thing as professional testing. Any company that would enter the software QA game is doomed to fail as it could not come near to covering half the real world computer configurations that users would attempt to use the software on. Network connectivity is not a complicated thing. Either computer A can connect to an address on computer B port foo, or they can't, or maybe sometimes they can and sometimes they can't. It's not like having some specific program or malware installed on your computer is going to do something unpredictable and change the environment. The only accomodations like that they need to be aware of are different flavors of Windows, and that's all really well documented and not hard. This is demonstrated by the fact that other games which take multiplayer seriously - even ones that have to run in realtime - all do it just fine, and when someone has network problems, they accomodate it in an intelligent and reliable way, be it dropping that guy or whatever. If crappy network conditions screw up their game as badly as they apparently do - we're not talking about "so and so is lagging out, wait a minute", we're talking about people freezing, dropping, some strange cache bugs that apparently a restart fixes - the bottom line is that their programmers didn't do software testing, and their code is full of bugs and unanticipated problems, race conditions, who knows? To really solve those kind of problems you need to set up test suites and run organized, automated tests to debug your code, and they apparently failed to do an effective job at that. That's what I mean by testing in this context, not sticking ten people in a room and trying to play a game. EDIT: Either that or it's gamespy! =)
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Post by zerza on May 11, 2006 10:34:56 GMT -5
There is no such thing as professional testing. Any company that would enter the software QA game is doomed to fail as it could not come near to covering half the real world computer configurations that users would attempt to use the software on. Swissy, your usually a pretty informed guy. But I gotta say you dont have a clue here I worked for EA Tiburon in Maitland Florida. Tiburon EA is responsible for EA's Madden, NCAA Football, and Nascar series. As well as C&C Generals, The Sims Online, and others. A professional tester is one that works inside the company itself. Has a rigid guideline of testing (if your just playing they fire you). A clear, decisive goal on how to get all the testing accomplished, so that every menu, feature, and thinkable situation is tried, tried, and tried again. Goal sheets are made, and its a VERY TEDIOUS, BORING JOB. For instance, I spent an entire night loading EVERY COLLEGE STADIUM in NCAA football, day, evening, and night modes, and all weather modes. I nearly lept out the window. The testing itself had goals, starting with milestones, moving to alpha 1 2 etc, and finally onto beta 1, 2 etc before it went gold. Every phase had particular decisive goals to focus on. Once those goals were met the next phase began. During Beta phase the game, if its a PC game, moves onto open beta testing. This is where the inside testers play games with the general public testers. The public testers are carefully chosen based on system schematics, as well as personality based on a test they issue. Doomed to fail Swissy? I would venture to say a professional QA system has been VERY successful for the worlds #1 video game maker. Even on console games, where there is no open beta, EA has one of the highest submission rates for both Sony and Microsoft. They will bounce a game for a misplaced copyright symbol, a level 3 crash or anything considered annoying. Yes, I would say a QA system has worked very well for EA. They cornered the very picky and finicky sports market, the RTS market , the FPS market. To get some quality I wish they would move into the TBS market They only paid 8 bucks an hour and wanted us there 80 hours a week but it was good memories I must say, any company that DOESN"T implement a solid QA system is doomed to fail.
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Post by Elledge on May 11, 2006 16:45:26 GMT -5
There is no such thing as professional testing. Any company that would enter the software QA game is doomed to fail as it could not come near to covering half the real world computer configurations that users would attempt to use the software on. Swissy, your usually a pretty informed guy. But I gotta say you dont have a clue here I worked for EA Tiburon in Maitland Florida. Tiburon EA is responsible for EA's Madden, NCAA Football, and Nascar series. As well as C&C Generals, The Sims Online, and others. A professional tester is one that works inside the company itself. Has a rigid guideline of testing (if your just playing they fire you). A clear, decisive goal on how to get all the testing accomplished, so that every menu, feature, and thinkable situation is tried, tried, and tried again. Goal sheets are made, and its a VERY TEDIOUS, BORING JOB. For instance, I spent an entire night loading EVERY COLLEGE STADIUM in NCAA football, day, evening, and night modes, and all weather modes. I nearly lept out the window. The testing itself had goals, starting with milestones, moving to alpha 1 2 etc, and finally onto beta 1, 2 etc before it went gold. Every phase had particular decisive goals to focus on. Once those goals were met the next phase began. During Beta phase the game, if its a PC game, moves onto open beta testing. This is where the inside testers play games with the general public testers. The public testers are carefully chosen based on system schematics, as well as personality based on a test they issue. Doomed to fail Swissy? I would venture to say a professional QA system has been VERY successful for the worlds #1 video game maker. Even on console games, where there is no open beta, EA has one of the highest submission rates for both Sony and Microsoft. They will bounce a game for a misplaced copyright symbol, a level 3 crash or anything considered annoying. Yes, I would say a QA system has worked very well for EA. They cornered the very picky and finicky sports market, the RTS market , the FPS market. To get some quality I wish they would move into the TBS market They only paid 8 bucks an hour and wanted us there 80 hours a week but it was good memories I must say, any company that DOESN"T implement a solid QA system is doomed to fail. QFT ;D I don't know as much about that part as the software end of things. Neat description.
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Post by WarningU2 on May 16, 2006 23:17:35 GMT -5
Hmmm I've been absent from the debates and CIV4 for some time. It's time to comment. Some background on me ... so you know from whence I come and why I feel I can comment.
1) My current job is working for a large financial institution in the QA area. I am responsible for ensuring a test environment is operational and performance/volume tests are being conducted and achieving their objectives.
2) My prior job (a short time ago) was working in QA and performing system, integration testing and pre production acceptance testing. I am intimately familiar with testing models, tools and processes. I also worked in the field testing software with customers. That is the real "real" test.
Ok I'll come back to this later.
What went right with CIV4 testing ?
Believe it or not the amount of effort extended during the beta phase for this game, which I played only a minor role, if any,was amazing. I realize you are not happy Zerza but the people you ceaselessly attack are not the enemies. CS, Friedrich, Nolan and many others worked around the clock to try to make CIV4 the best MP game ever. They had open communication with the developers that I think was very unusual and refreshing, and had real impact on how the game was developed. Although there are connection issues now which are unacceptable you would have seen much worse had it not been for the beta testers.
I am honestly not sure if there were any paid beta testers in Firaxis. I thought that odd myself and pretty damn amazing given the skill and dedication that the unpaid volunteers put into trying to better the game. We owe everyone a debt of thanks.
What went wrong ?
Very soon when playing the game during the beta I realized that the majority of people's computers would have issues playing the game, because of the reliance on high end graphics, higher memory requirements, and new peer to peer networking I realized that many people's PCs who play CIV3 would not be able to play CIV4.
This upgrade requirement is not only in games but everywhere due to new web enablement initiatives and software requirements to take advantage of the latest JAVA this or that. . You use the latest and greatest ... then the system requirements become more stringent and difficult to demanding. Hence any one person who has a computer without being properly configured would, or under configured would cause a glitch.
Here in lies the problem from my cheap seat. How do you know when there is a problem with the game and not the end user's configuration ? You can't unless there is the cooperation from all persons playing to document the issues. You want to make the game better ? Start a thread if there isn't one already and list each time there is a problem. Save the logs. Save the dumps. List your configuration. Communicate with CS and Friedrich, me and countless others who play this game that worked in the beta. They will take this to the developers. With your help it will get better. Without it ... well game over.
Now back to the field test comment above. I think what you are seeing is that the real test ... when it goes to the field out in public and the average Joe gets hold of the software. That is the test ... despite all the hours spent by the beta testers. Thats always the case. Hopefully prior efforts minimize the problems encountered but in this case, because its networking... and MP play relies on intercommunication ... it's worse.
To further complicate things ... because of doubts about people's PC's, and new initiatives for the game developers for expansion packs and a change in ownership or rather financing ... they (the developers) have to take a stance where they limit their fix work to where the game is playable by the majority. This unfortunately means that because of the minority (the odd player) and the nature of the game with it's reliance on high speed interconnectivity between peers ... we all become victim of the person with the bad connection or PC ... the lowest common denominator. You can only walk as fast as the slowest person in the line.
The challenge for us players and I no longer count myself as one as I have not played a MP game in weeks ... is to work through this difficult time and more importantly to work together to try to improve it.
Will it get better ... I sure as heck hope so but it won't currently with the attitude from some of you.
** please note the comments above are my own supposition - I have no knowledge of the workings of Firaxis or Take 2 ***
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Post by tommynt on May 17, 2006 1:39:34 GMT -5
Thats the 1 wrong idea many people got - sure if game is laggy and some new aussie player is in the game we can count 1 + 1 ..
but so many problems just happen like that with totally same people who play on totaly same pc with totaly same configuration as 1 hour before when everything worked fine.
another big problem is that the bugs are so numerous (is this a eng word?) and different - u really never know whats gonna happen when clicking on start button.
I m tired of making lists ... but there are really load and often totally new problems
For these 2 points there s just only the game to blame and there s imo nothing what we as a players community can do
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