Request: Help us write better bugs

[Nahath]

In a different thread, I read one of the developers say that the biggest thing slowing down the progress was a lack of bug reports, which was a good reminder to me that I need to be better about being useful to the project.

That said, I felt like there were a couple things missing from the bug reporting instructions, so I have a few questions/suggestions about how we as players can be more useful to you.

1. What details can we give to help you chase down non-reproducable crashes/hangs? In my experience, a bug that says "I crashed once when playing Insane God" just isn't very useful, and I don't know which details I could add that would be most likely to be useful--especially if I've already played the map several times without a crash. For example, if we gave you specific information about the game (such as the time of the crash or the other users in it), would you be able to look it up in your server logs to get better information? Is it useful to know things like what units we were using? Basically, the most common bug I hit is a random crash, and I'd like to be able to give you actionable information.

2. Let us know occasionally about high-risk areas. For example, if I saw a discord post that said "We recently made some major changes to abilities that block ranged attacks, so look for bugs there", I would be inclined to play a deck with timeshifter spirits and really maximize their use. I know you did that once when ranked PvP first came online, but I don't remember any other times.

Of course, if this kind of thing wouldn't be useful to you, just let us know. I've just been thinking that I would like to be more useful to the team, so I thought I'd bring these up.

You guys are awesome.

Edited March 29, 2019 by Nahath

[anonyme0273]

Not sure what sections of the Forum are available to the public, but there is an example bug report in Beta rules. Here it is pasted directly from there. This format should be helpful and clear while easy to follow.

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EXAMPLE BUG REPORT

Topic title: 1 - Disconnect once loaded into Forge

NAME: Disconnect once loaded into Forge
SEVERITY: 1
LOCATION: (End of) Loading Screen, Forge
REPRODUCIBILITY: ALWAYS
DESCRIPTION: Every time I log in, the game starts loading. When the loading bar on the loading screen is filled, it takes a few moments (~10-20 Seconds) before I get a disconnect notice. Once I get this notice, I can see the chat, users and my account image alongside the disconnect notice. Please see the attachment below.
SCREENSHOT: http://oi59.tinypic.com/9qw9qe.jpg
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Might have to do with my account being outdated, would suggest an account reset.

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[Kubik]

If you send time of start of the match (and maybe your timezone) it should be enough to find the match.

"We recently made some major changes to abilities that block ranged attacks, so look for bugs there" we did not make any changes to abilities as far as I know, we know only less than 1% about how the game works  

When I finally make ranked PvP working, I made an announcement for players to test it, and 1v1 need only few fixes, but 2v2 is still totally broken (thanks EA), and I can not do anything about it, the game just do not tell the server that player in the team chose not to play when he seen oponent  so other 3 players wait...

To be hones I do not even respond to report "I crashed once" if there would be time I would compare it to server times, and I think one would be very close. I might be wrong about that thou, but I would have enough info to say if it was caused by server crash.

Servers crashed about daily and that should be main priority for us right now, unfortunately we can not find the problem.

I do not want to suggest not to report problems, but maybe you can ask at Discord first and if everyone crash, then there is high probability it was server crash and for these you probably have no useful info  

Bug template is here: 

 

[Nahath]

Thanks, Kubik. Your first sentence in particular was the kind of thing I was looking for.