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Please nip some pre-release shenanigans in the bud before they start.


passinglurker

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So 1.2 entered experimentals and soon it will enter a prerelease phase much like 1.1 did.

In order to encourage the pre-release's purpose as an opportunity to help bug test and balance the game I would like to propose a temporary ban on all posts that attempt to assemble a list of mods that are compatible with any pre-release build. the people who look to these threads treat the pre-release like a full release and not like the public bug test it really is and generate a lot of noise drowning out real bug reports and putting undue pressure on squad and mod authors alike to make a release.

If a mod author wants thier mod tested for compatibility against the pre-release they can do the initial test themselves and push specified pre-release compatible builds for public testing. The people who test mods without the mod authors blessing and assemble these lists are essentially rep hunting, and should be discouraged.

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I think that is a terrible idea.  Forum rules are for preventing undesirable social behavior, not creating a software testing environment.  There are better ways to handle this than telling people what they can and can't discuss outside the social norms.

Edited by Alshain
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8 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

The entire public testing is a terrible idea. testing should be done by people that actually KNOW what they are doing.

Public testing is fine if you do it right.  First, it can't replace in-house or professional testing, it can only add to it.  Second, you can't ignore major issues that the testing finds, even if that means delaying release.

These were the reasons the 1.1 testing failed.  It wasn't because of public testing, it was because they did public testing wrong.  The hope is that they have now learned from the mistakes they made.

Edited by Alshain
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28 minutes ago, Alshain said:

I think that is a terrible idea.  Forum rules are for preventing undesirable social behavior, not creating a software testing environment.  There are better ways to handle this than telling people what they can and can't discuss outside the social norms.

 

3 hours ago, passinglurker said:

So 1.2 entered experimentals and soon it will enter a prerelease phase much like 1.1 did.

In order to encourage the pre-release's purpose as an opportunity to help bug test and balance the game I would like to propose a temporary ban on all posts that attempt to assemble a list of mods that are compatible with any pre-release build. the people who look to these threads treat the pre-release like a full release and not like the public bug test it really is and generate a lot of noise drowning out real bug reports and putting undue pressure on squad and mod authors alike to make a release.

If a mod author wants thier mod tested for compatibility against the pre-release they can do the initial test themselves and push specified pre-release compatible builds for public testing. The people who test mods without the mod authors blessing and assemble these lists are essentially rep hunting, and should be discouraged.

Emphasis mine. Simply put there are times when preventing undesirable social behavior, and creating a software testing environment are not mutually exclusive.

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3 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

 

Emphasis mine. Simply put there are times when preventing undesirable social behavior, and creating a software testing environment are not mutually exclusive.

Generating a lot of threads is not an undesirable social behavior.  If it becomes a problem, you isolate those type of threads, you don't go heavy handed and ban them outright.  It's why we have two different technical support sub-forums.  We already have a rule prohibiting unnecessary request for mod updates, and as for Squad... that's just how the business goes.  What we have in place is sufficient.

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3 minutes ago, Alshain said:

Generating a lot of threads is not an undesirable social behavior.  If it becomes a problem, you isolate those type of threads, you don't go heavy handed and ban them outright.  It's why we have two different technical support sub-forums.  We already have a rule prohibiting unnecessary request for mod updates, and as for Squad... that's just how the business goes.  What we have in place is sufficient.

yeah tell that to any mod author that got a pre-release bug report, or any pre-release dev that got a mod bug report. The users these compatibility lists feed are ones that don't have the time and patience to do proper testing and troubleshooting and in thier impatience to play they will submit bad hasty reports hoping things will be fixed quickly which impede squad and mod authors work.

my suggestion isn't a panacea but I'd hope it would help mitigate the problem to a degree by discouraging going full ckan-mod-happy on the prerelease so that they either go back to a previous version or run a leaner mod list and as a result submit more useful bug reports.

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Ok, well restricting people's choice of discussion topics is simply the wrong way to go about it.  I don't care what the justification is.  It's wrong.  If it isn't permanently against the forum rules, then there is no business restricting discussion of it.  You can organize the discussion however you like but prohibiting it is wrong unless they plan to permanently ban mod discussion outright.

Edited by Alshain
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the moderators take temporary measures all the time when the circumstances justify it (temp-locking a controversial thread for cleaning, allowing reaction images in the hype thread etc).

mod compatibility lists are all well and good post release but during pre-release they have a bleed over effect that gets in the way of testing efforts it doesn't matter where you move them to, but if you have other actual ideas on how to mitigate the problems they cause besides "suck it up and let me treat pre-release like a full release" then I'd be very interested in hearing them

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6 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

if you have other actual ideas on how to mitigate the problems they cause besides "suck it up and let me treat pre-release like a full release" then I'd be very interested in hearing them

Simple. Require all bug reports to be submitted with a log. A log will list all installed mods at the top.

Besides which, don't know if you were part of pre-release testing last time... but only "confirmed" bugs actually get looked at (that is, those people were able to reproduce).

Also, bug reports do not get made on the forum. They get made on the bug tracker.

Edited by severedsolo
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No, it doesn't.  If you aren't playing the test the way you would play the release then you aren't doing what is necessary.  The whole point of pre-release testing is to add in various playstyles that Squad and Co. can not predict.  If you alter your play style because it's a pre-release, you are doing them a disservice and not being helpful at all.  If you are not treating pre-release as a release, you are in error.  If Squad is requesting you don't treat pre-release as a release then they are in error (they should be doing that testing internally).

Edited by Alshain
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