My personal Praise topic

[Guest]

Originally posted by KNac:

from your quotes I think only the last one is from Rune, which is the only one of the quoted people who is on BF roster. The betatesters can talk for theirshelves.

And the last quote does not seem as bad to me, cause some people started to say BF was stopping working on the game after 1.04 out of nowhere, so eys pretty much it was bull**** and unnecessary to spread the rumour, and some ignored when it was said that was false until actually rune did it the way he did.

I'm not defending BF posture, but I think that Steve is pretty much right when he says he will treat customers as they treat them, afterall we all are mature persons and should espect that.

Sorry, I should have ID'd them. The first is from Sixxkiller. The last three are from Rune, all from that one thread.

[Huntarr]

Originally posted by KNac:

how much betatesters there are? (roughly) and this more a personal question, do you guys buy the game for supporting issues or whatever (answer if you want lol)?

I was invited to join the team after CMSF's release. I purchased my Deluxe edition through BF. Even if I was given a copy as a beta, I would have bought one just to support the team.

[JohnO]

I was invited to join to start work on the Marine Module. I purchase my copy before I was invited. So I guess I purchased it to support BF because of the previous CMs.

[aka_tom_w]

I think this thread should be re-named:

"My Personal Attack Thread"

So where did all the praise go?

[Battlefront.com]

I think people should just drop the whole thing. Honestly, what's the point?

I said in another thread that if Charles insisted on a Public Beta Test I would quit Battlefront and go work at my local grocery store rather than be subjected to all seven levels of Hell at the same time. Think I'm being a little dramatic? Well, perhaps. OK, six out of seven levels of Hell

Managing testers is extremely time consuming. And that is with a good bunch of testers The problem is when you open it up to everybody the feedback becomes overwhelming and often it is extremely confused. But due to the volume it's extremly difficult and time consuming to sort through everything.

We have a great group of testers and they catch far more than you think they do. The bugs that aren't caught by them are usually due to the nature of focused testing (i.e. we ask them to concentrate on certain things) or because it's the sort of thing that pops up only occasionally. The latter benefit from prolonged testing using large groups of people. What looked good on the Friday before the release of v1.04 might not look good on Monday after it was released. In fact, the "final candidate" stage of v1.04 went on for more than a week because the testers kept catching things that weren't quite right with some of the major code changes Charles made. They did a great job and I have more experience with this than probably any of you here so I think I'm in a good position to judge things.

So things are going well. Very well, in fact. The changes between v1.01 and v1.04 happened within 2 months and I don't think many here will argue that the changes were just window dressing. You have our testers to thank for this, though of course feedback from the Forum here also plays a roll. It's a team effort and it works pretty darned well.

Steve

[M1A1TC]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

We have a great group of testers and they catch far more than you think they do.

Steve

Why is it that ajusting artillery and breaching were both broken untill 1.04? Why 2 so important things weren't cought by Beta testers?

Why werent' I invited to be a beta-tester? I have been in US Army for almost 9 years, been a tanker, an air-defence and military police. Been wargaming for years. Played all CM games. Am I not good enough to beta-test?

[Kieme(ITA)]

I've started this thread just to express an opinion and it turned out into a confrontation between other people for things that happened in other discussions.

I thank Steve for the last post that re-joined one of my first statements about the public beta testing.

While I see the problems related to open-public beta testing as Steve said I must still keep my position about the game fisrt released in 1.01 version some time ago.

I keep being unable to understand how some very big issues like m1a1tankcommander said (arty/breaching and so on) and also graphic optimization where there in 1.01 version.

It took just few days before such problems were found and told to be really big.

So I keep my suggestion, if not for a public beta then for more beta testers or more testing time.

I'm not attacking beta testers since I recognize that many bugs I didn't even saw were corrected before the release.

I like to support a game I enjoy and I'll do this again in the future, though I cannot feel right when spending the full price for a game that needs to be improved before I can play it as I should be able to. I'd do this if I was a beta tester -but I'm not- and I know that these guys in some cases do a lot of hard work in order to accomplish their mission.

So, please, to BFC try to understand also my position and generally the position of the costumer who had such great expectations (as a FAN) and then got some disappointment after 1.01 release.

[Melnibone]

Having being abducted by aliens 5 years ago I feel that I am a prime candidate for the Space Lobsters beta testing programme. Nanu nanu.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Originally posted by M1A1TankCommander:

Why is it that ajusting artillery and breaching were both broken untill 1.04? Why 2 so important things weren't cought by Beta testers?

Wrong on several counts. Unless I'm grossly mistaken adjust artillery was in 1.03. And you are assuming every bug surviving thus far has done so because it has gone unnoticed by the testers. Not so, more likely it just hasn't been fixed yet. Not that the forum hasn't spotted a few we missed, but we testers can more then equally trade those for stuff you guys haven't even noticed yet.

Arty adjust was a special case though, which I can't tell you more about, NDA and all. Some red cheeks all round, I assure you.

Why werent' I invited to be a beta-tester? I have been in US Army for almost 9 years, been a tanker, an air-defence and military police. Been wargaming for years. Played all CM games. Am I not good enough to beta-test?

When invited to become a tester I was unable to hide my surprise and asked what made them pick me. This question was diplomatically dodged by BFC. I hope it's because I balance my opinions and keep a cool head. Quite possibly they spotted that I was on the forum a lot so had lots of spare time for beta testing too. But there's only one thing I know for sure about beta tester qualifications: Asking for a beta seat is a sure way of never, ever getting one. Not kidding, if you want in they won't have you. And I'm beginning to see their point. Anyone who wants to do this isn't thinking clearly. And I wish I wasn't half serious about that.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by M1A1TankCommander:

Why werent' I invited to be a beta-tester? I have been in US Army for almost 9 years, been a tanker, an air-defence and military police. Been wargaming for years. Played all CM games. Am I not good enough to beta-test?

Nine years in three different trades? Aren't you any good at anything?

Seriously - since you have no problem stepping onto the forum and questioning the abilities of the beta testers, let me ask you - why would you remuster twice in nine years? And what is it you think your experience as an ack ack gunner or a meathead (as we lovingly call them in Canada) would have brought to the table?

More importantly, what is it you think beta testers do? It's mostly drudgery. You don't need military experience to set up a game and play it over and over, or be able to write a playtest report, and you don't even need to have been playing wargames for years.

You do have to have the ability to work with your peers - regardless of their own military and wargaming experience. And from the tone of your posts ever since you started posting here, you seem far more concerned with talking about yourself than in being a contributing member of the community.

Not to speak for BF.C - I have no idea why you weren't asked/selected to be a tester. Luck of the draw, I suspect. I wonder if you ever asked them? Or did you think your mediocre credentials would somehow have just presented themselves, or perhaps the Lady in the Lake would have thrust her arm through your monitor and presented you an NDA?

Me? I wrote in and asked to be on the scenario design team; I pointed out that some of my scens were included on the special edition discs of both CMAK and CMBB, and I was invited to contribute to the CMSF campaign. I think I ended up doing 15% or so of them. I also helped out testing where I could. I doubt that my twenty years in the Canadian reserves had much to do with their decision, but my design record probably did, also the fact that I was on the beta team for two other BFC projects at various points in time.

By continually hammering the beta testers here in public, and promoting yourself with the fervour of Don King, do you really think you're working your way towards a beta test slot in future? It just looks like sour grapes at this point. Demonstrate a track record in gaming - test for someone else, design some decent scenarios - and show an ability to work with others and be constructive in your criticisms and not simply annoying - and that would be your best shot at a test slot.

Good luck.

[Sixxkiller]

And 9 years in the Army would put you at the back of the pack. Some of us have been soldiering for more than twice that. Although, someone does need to run to the store and get Charles somemore CM juice.

[Huntarr]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

We have a great group of testers and they catch far more than you think they do.....

They did a great job ....

You have our testers to thank for this, though of course feedback from the Forum here also plays a roll. It's a team effort and it works pretty darned well.

Steve

Thanks Steve for the affection much appreciated....BUT BE ADVISED just because we're holding hands doesn't mean we're gonna take warm showers till the wee hours of the morning, ya hear me?

[dalem]

Software testing is never as much fun as it seems, once you do it. And dumping on the testers is silly. You (M1A1) don't know what their plans were like, what their schedules were like, what builds they were given, nor what they were asked/told to do with all of that.

And the dev team has their own issues. The simplest bug in the world may be connected in some weird and possibly unexpected fashion to something totally unexpected.

Say you are testing and you find on Day 1 that your soldier's eyes are not blinking. You dutifully report this. Seems easy enough to fix, and a simple thing - how hard can it be? Well, maybe the eyeblink routine was initially based on random results from the game clock a million versions ago and to fix it as it stands would completely break the game clock. Clearly the eyeblink is going to wait until someone has a little while to work on the game clock, which might not be a trivial thing.

Pretty silly example I know, but you see my point.

And sometimes things just get through. Heck - where I work we just had a new version of our stuff released. A pretty basic and major function within the software was broken as a result. We reported it, customers reported it, it ended up in the first new deploy. Heck, it was almost right at the top of the fix list. It was tested and retested and pronounced good to go.

And it's still broken after the new deploy. Somehow. We're pissed and our customers are pissed. Bantha Poodoo happens.

-dale

[Guest]

Our testing team just handed me a list of bugs that they've been reproducing for the last week. It's a critical application so they've been working overtime to get it tested.

Of course, these were all things that had been declared "fixed" over the course of the previous week, so there was much head-scratching, testing and retesting.

The problem: our QA deployment system was broken and they weren't getting my new builds.

Testing sucks. It's a hard, thankless job.