X Rebirth Message Board  

Everybody here has a point.

1. It's an undue amount of effort on CH's part to keep up with a, frankly, absurd patch-per-day schedule. I understand fully if they feel it's best to wait until they've got some of these launch bugs ironed out before continuing support.

2. Egosoft let a product this buggy out the door. It happens to a lot of studios and it ALWAYS SUCKS. Nobody likes it. The publisher doesn't like it, the developers don't like it, and the customers sure as heck don't like it. At least they're trying to fix it. I don't like the hand-to-mouth style of patching they're doing, but holiday sales are paramount and statistically games make the majority of their money within two to three weeks of launch, so no, it would be unwise of them to sit back and do nothing while massive word of mouth builds against their game. This isn't the kind of title that will make all of its money in Steam sales later.

3. Some folks are playing it right now and happen to be CH members, so there's inevitably going to be some desire for the trainer to be updated as these patches roll out the door. That puts CH in a tough spot, too - kinda stuck with the devs' schedule if they want to make the folks begging for an update happy. That can't be a fun place to be.

Never thought I would see the day when a community would recommend that the site owners and trainer creators skip creating trainers for a bugger patchfest of a game, however I have to say I am in agreement, but at the same time I believe this next week will see maybe 1 or 2 larger patches and then at the start of December we will likely get a patch once a week.

I think that Pwizard and Caliber should take a week or so off from making trainers for this game and then look at the patch frequency starting in December, see if we do only get a patch every week or so.

@punisher2005

the location of the codes get changed because of additional codes added in the new version.

unless it's a aob scan and there is no change to the instructions, they would have to update the trainer.

[Edited by lampuiho, 11/25/2013 12:48:59 AM]

I have officially takin a break from this game till they get it fixed. $50 for a game that has this many bugs is just sad. What ever happened to the Beta's where they found and fixed major issues before releasing a game I am one for coming out with an every other option or an every other, other, option till they get it fixed correctly ...

Also just an idea but PWIZ CAL you should have a pain the bar at the top of every game trainer page and when it reaches a ten should be retired

[Edited by CCFDMAN1, 11/26/2013 5:15:11 PM]

Thing is there was closed beta!

Thats the ways things are now. I got a buddy went to high school and college together he works for a major game company in QA department. Hes been there like 8 years now and he said the budget for QA is 5 times less than when he started. He said i quote "Every fiscal year the budget drops 15-20% in size and fund allocation." He told me whether they test it or not they still sell the same amount of games. Point being financially there no point in QA since the consumer still purchases the game tested or not. So from the distributor's point of view if the consumer doesnt care if it tested why should they. They still get the money. If we want it to change gotta stop preordering games and make the distributors work to test'em.

I'm sorry to say this but the QA investment drops because of the poor quality of testing. Makes no sense to invest in something inherently broken that yields little to no results over what the rest of the development team (non-QA) can notice and fix on their own.
80% of the time the QA department inputs bugs that the other teams are aware of. IN FACT when a QA department is present the development team uses the QA as a benchmark for bug ordering rather than bug finding: "they haven't noticed this one yet so we will fix it later" or "they don't consider this one vital so we will delay its fix". Oddly enough, more often than not they fail to observe obvious bugs that have been purposely placed in the game by the devs as quality tests for the tester team - these tests clearly prove they come to work to play the game, not to test the game (it's not just semantics).

Rather than being a division that strives to creatively find new bugs they're a sorting division that breaks the door at 5:59pm (you can set an atomic clock after them).

The whole system of QA needs to change that includes the testing policies and standards as well as the QA tester mentality.

The policies and standards need to be reworked and handled by a producer rather than a QA lead/ QA manager in the same way the developer team's tasks are handled. Right now in most companies the QA checklists are cropped together on the fly under time pressure as a byproduct/forced necessity rather than as part of a reserved production task (1-2 days to make a QA checklist? are you kidding me?). Also there are a few developers that are not too happy about having "that tester" point out flaws in the game (it's rare but happens) or having to rework a whole bunch of assets (be they code, art or design flaws) at the whim of QA.

The QA tester mentality needs to change entirely - they start in this line of work thinking they get to play games NOT test them - and thus they miss the whole point of their work along with a whole array of bugs. Just like a games Designer's job doesn't limit itself to just "imagining random crap to make into a game" or an Engineer's job isn't to "just code crap that works" neither should the Tester's job be only about "just playing alpha/beta crap for fun and bit** to developers". Sure there are free testing divisions or even test periods that allow testers to do whatever they please in that game, breaking away from the checklist. This however fails to provide solid returns concerning the amount of new bugs received - and here i mean NEW bugs not "bugs not yet entered in the database" (for all you QA Chuck Norrises out there that don't know the difference)

There is an incredibly large array of sub-specializations in the industry each with its well defined function and role that can't be fully replaced by someone else. QA and its sub-specializations being some of'em.

Game testing itself needs to change at its core both in how it's being perceived by people (devs and testers alike) and how it should be handled. Testing is a serious Quality Control issue that ultimately affects the end user/players of the project. There should be no such thing as "casual testing" as there is no such thing as "casual game development".

Right now the QA department is nothing more than a broken antivirus that gives out random alerts and fails to catch most viruses noticeable by anyone else. This is clearly noticeable in every game release that ever passed through testing and saying things like "but you won't see the amount of bugs that have been fixed because of us" doesn't compensate for the amount of the bugs the players encounter just like you'd never go "phew i'm glad my antivirus caught 7 out of 10 viruses - i'm glad it got most of them..." or "phew i'm glad 7 out of 10 soda bottles i bought weren't cracked, broken or with holes in them".

I've passed through almost all aspects of development throughout my career (including testing) and through quite a few "top of the line" companies so take this piece of information as you will.


[Edited by tehno_lord, 12/10/2013 2:42:05 AM]

Everyone knows the game is broke even now at patch (1.24 Hotfix,)but it's good to know there will be a trainer available for every update on Cheathappens. That's why we pay for CH they are on the ball and they are the best. As I patch the game as it goes along I know I can trust CH to bring a trainer out for it. Keep up the good work CH and many thanks for what you do.