Reimbursement for bug hunting

vocmcp · August 2015

So there will be an "Operational Supports Team" helping Cryptic to squash bugs (https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9503893). I'm glad to see the bug issue is being addressed more seriously. What I'm not glad about is the "volunteer" aspect of it. Legal labour law questions aside* you're essentially communicating the following:
- Your bug reports we receive are not enough OR
- Respectively we're not able to handle them
- Yet we are not willing to invest money in this
- So can you please help us out and do our job you're paying us for?
- For free? Pretty please?

But hey.... people are picking up on it..... I hope there's at least some well worth goodies in it for them. Oh but then....... labour laws again......no goodies I guess.........

Note: This is my first post since the new forums went up.... and gosh they're still awful.....

*what I mean is: reimbursement would require a contract and as such may cause legal issues. Hence volunteer work may be the only option.

jam3s1701 · August 2015

So I guess where your from no one volunteers to do anything then!. . . . cause of that pesky law your on about.

In the UK plenty of people volunteer doing various things from shop work to helping old people live and hey we even volunteer to help companies do things like they're asking here.

If your not interested in helping make the game better by helping hunt down bugs then ok cool no one is making you, just leave it to the people who want to help.

unless you have been living under a rock and have never seen star trek in any form you would know it's about helping to affect and benefit others with no reward in return which again is all they're asking us to do help ourselves by helping them hunting down bugs they can't always find themselves.

also I've have not read anywhere the voluntary part of this requires you to work 8hrs a day it's going to be and I'm guessing if your part of this bug hunt group help when you can etc etc.

seaofsorrows · August 2015

vocmcp wrote: »

Note: This is my first post since the new forums went up

And hopefully your last.

Seriously, you have taken petty whining to an entirely new level. Cryptic is taking volunteers for players that wish to help with bug reporting and you think this violates some type of labor law? Are you for real?

Believe it or not, there are people out there that like the game and would like to help make it better. No one is asking anyone to 'do their job for them' they're asking for help identifying bugs so that THEY CAN FIX THEM.

You probably fail to comprehend the overwhelming amount of possible bugs in a game this size as well as the almost unlimited number of different conditions and circumstances that can cause bugs to pop up. No Q&A Team can possibly find them all, it makes sense to enlist help of the players.

If you don't like it or think you deserve some type of reward you're not being offered, then simply don't enlist.

Seriously stupid thread.

vocmcp · August 2015

jam3s1701 wrote: »

So I guess where your from no one volunteers to do anything then!. . . . cause of that pesky law your on about.

In the UK plenty of people volunteer doing various things from shop work to helping old people live and hey we even volunteer to help companies do things like they're asking here.

If your not interested in helping make the game better by helping hunt down bugs then ok cool no one is making you, just leave it to the people who want to help.

unless you have been living under a rock and have never seen star trek in any form you would know it's about helping to affect and benefit others with no reward in return which again is all they're asking us to do help ourselves by helping them hunting down bugs they can't always find themselves.

also I've have not read anywhere the voluntary part of this requires you to work 8hrs a day it's going to be and I'm guessing if your part of this bug hunt group help when you can etc etc.

I'm not on about a law. Volunteer work does not violate laws. You didn't understand my post.
Second I've volunteered myself plenty of times but I did so for a cause. Not for a company running a for profit business with no greater cause behind it.

seaofsorrows wrote: »

vocmcp wrote: »

Note: This is my first post since the new forums went up

And hopefully your last.

Seriously, you have taken petty whining to an entirely new level. Cryptic is taking volunteers for players that wish to help with bug reporting and you think this violates some type of labor law? Are you for real?

Believe it or not, there are people out there that like the game and would like to help make it better. No one is asking anyone to 'do their job for them' they're asking for help identifying bugs so that THEY CAN FIX THEM.

You probably fail to comprehend the overwhelming amount of possible bugs in a game this size as well as the almost unlimited number of different conditions and circumstances that can cause bugs to pop up. No Q&A Team can possibly find them all, it makes sense to enlist help of the players.

If you don't like it or think you deserve some type of reward you're not being offered, then simply don't enlist.

Seriously stupid thread.

I'm not on about a law. Volunteer work does not violate laws. You didn't understand my post.

Apart from that Cryptic does not need help identifying bugs. There are plenty of reports. What they need is some actual manpower to crack down on them. So they're trying to outsource some of the time consuming work where they know that there is something but don't know yet how it happens.

deaftravis05 · August 2015

... they're outsourcing it to the people that knows how to find the bugs

if you weren't being an TRIBBLE about it, they would give you their thanks through some kind of reward.

bluedarky · August 2015

vocmcp wrote: »

Apart from that Cryptic does not need help identifying bugs. There are plenty of reports. What they need is some actual manpower to crack down on them. So they're trying to outsource some of the time consuming work where they know that there is something but don't know yet how it happens.

No, Cryptic is trying to get a guaranteed source of bug reports that are more that "X is broken, fix it."

Unknown · August 2015

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chiyoumiku · August 2015

Volunteer labor has nothing to do with labor laws. 6 hours a day I Volunteer taking care of shelter dogs, geee according to the OP I should get compensation for it, but wait I'm not doing that for a reward or pay. Think before you type. There are plenty of players willing to volunteer their time because they want to help the game not get a damned paycheck from it.

seaofsorrows · August 2015

vocmcp wrote: »

Apart from that Cryptic does not need help identifying bugs. There are plenty of reports. What they need is some actual manpower to crack down on them. So they're trying to outsource some of the time consuming work where they know that there is something but don't know yet how it happens.

Apparently, they do need help.. hence the reason they're implementing this program.

Of course they want to 'outsource' bug detection to the players.. why wouldn't they? The players are the ones that spend hours upon hours per day playing this game, who better to find these things?

You're just looking for a reason to be angry and frankly, you're making yourself look stupid in the process. You're going to have a hard time finding anyone that thinks this thread isn't completely ridiculous.

risian4 · August 2015

This thread isn't completely ridiculous, one good point has been made. While any initiative from Trendy or Cryptic in general to hunt the bugs in the game is appreciated, the OP does have a point, IMO. Hunting, identifying and reporting bugs should be done by the company and its employees who get paid for hunting those bugs.

We pay the company money, it's up to them to ensure their product is working properly. Relying on volunteers can be one way to do that, and therefore I do think it's in general an acceptable initiative, but it shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

Anyway, good luck to the volunteers and thank you for doing this.

lan451 · August 2015

People have been complaining about all the bugs and asking how they can help Cryptic get them fixed. Cryptic puts together a great volunteer initiative to do just that...and you're going to complain about it, OP?

Just go away.

questerius · August 2015

risian4 wrote: »

This thread isn't completely ridiculous, one good point has been made. While any initiative from Trendy or Cryptic in general to hunt the bugs in the game is appreciated, the OP does have a point, IMO. Hunting, identifying and reporting bugs should be done by the company and its employees who get paid for hunting those bugs.

We pay the company money, it's up to them to ensure their product is working properly. Relying on volunteers can be one way to do that, and therefore I do think it's in general an acceptable initiative, but it shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

Anyway, good luck to the volunteers and thank you for doing this.

Have you never send in a bug report after a computer crash? It's not that different from what is being set up here.

Just some of the main advantages are player participation (many feel the developing team largely ignored their input) and larger amount of testers which allows to duplicate bugs faster and nip some bugs which tend to occur in situations with more traffic in the butt.

Personally i prefer to do something constructive like helping out instead of sitting on my *** and complain.

vocmcp · August 2015

risian4 wrote: »

This thread isn't completely ridiculous, one good point has been made. While any initiative from Trendy or Cryptic in general to hunt the bugs in the game is appreciated, the OP does have a point, IMO. Hunting, identifying and reporting bugs should be done by the company and its employees who get paid for hunting those bugs.

We pay the company money, it's up to them to ensure their product is working properly. Relying on volunteers can be one way to do that, and therefore I do think it's in general an acceptable initiative, but it shouldn't be necessary in the first place.

Anyway, good luck to the volunteers and thank you for doing this.

You understood what I meant. Thanks for putting it in different words.

mustrumridcully0 · August 2015

If Cryptic would hire additional testers to do whatever the volunteer testers will do, where do you think the money will come from? If they gave the testers "compensation", where do you think would the money come from?

I tell you: It comes from you, or rather us all, the players.
If we don't spend more money on the game, then Cryptic will divert resources from content creation to the new bug tracking team. That means less content, but maybe also less bugs.

Personally, I think the amount of bug is mostly fine. There is no denying they exist, but i can play for hours without interruption and suffer no crashes, without being stuck or unable to progress, and so on. I would prefer to get more content delivered.

Cryptic seems to think that is their best course of action, too - but they are looking for volunteers to help their bug tracking and fixing efforts. If Bug fixes are seriously important to you, you just take them up on that offer. Or you don't.

rickdanko · August 2015

This operations team is only going to *report* bugs, not fix them, correct? Any player can already submit a bug report. I've submitted several myself. None with a satisfactory conclusion. Has Cryptic already fixed all the bugs that have been reported? Is that why they're looking to the players to report more?

I would also respectfully caution anyone thinking of signing up for this. On the surface, you might say "Oh, I don't need a reward/compensation. I'm doing this for the cause, the love of the game, to improve the lot of my fellow traveler". Whatever.

But beware, if you put too much time, effort, emotional energy into this, you're eventually going to be looking for something in return. Odds are you won't get it. To make matters worse, the goodies may go to someone much less deserving. Witness the free T6 ship to folks who've stopped playing, let alone doing QA.

I say this from experience. Be careful. If someone, I don't care who, CAN take advantage of you, they WILL take advantage of you.

kavase · August 2015

Interesting to see what comes of it. No issues with the volunteer part of things as while they don't get paid, this can be a major benefit to the said volunteer. On their resume in search for a job, this is a type of thing that can look great on a portfolio.

I can understand the "submitting and reviewing" portion of the job but not the "resolving bug reports" issue. I'm interested to know what that entails exactly, do they actual go and fix said bug? Cryptic uses their own in house game engine which as far as I'm aware, only they use. So it's not like they could get an external source who is familiar with the game engine from another game to look at the bug and fix it, unless they get an ex-employee from Cryptic some how.

Unknown · August 2015

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rickdanko · August 2015

"Tinfoil hat" refers to someone who believes in conspiracies. While I do believe in conspiracies, I didn't mean to imply that there was one here. Just a friendly "consider the potential outcome" message.

But hey, if you want to ignore a friendly warning from someone saying "don't make the same mistake I did", that's your right.

questerius · August 2015

rickdanko wrote: »

This operations team is only going to *report* bugs, not fix them, correct? Any player can already submit a bug report. I've submitted several myself. None with a satisfactory conclusion. Has Cryptic already fixed all the bugs that have been reported? Is that why they're looking to the players to report more?

Report, confirm and test if it occurs in various circumstances. Those are generally the things which gobble up time and resources.

Unknown · August 2015

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bobbydazlers · August 2015

legalities aside, I thought the identification and reporting of bugs was all done via the bug section of this forum.
if the devs cant check the postings there and fix the bugs that have been reported how do they expect to check the reports from these volunteers and fix the bugs they report.
though I am happy to say I have reported bugs and have seen them fixed there are many instances where I have seen others complain that bugs they have reported still remain.

lucho80 · August 2015

I don't think the company has enough resources to identify all the bugs in the game. Even before these God awful forums, maybe 1 or 2 would get picked up each day by Frost. As for the stuff in the bug reports section, unfortunately, 95%+ don't conform to the format of stating the problem and expected behavior in a clear way so getting a group of people that can make clear bug reports is a good step forward.

freakium · August 2015

The volunteer team still has its uses. For one they would be taught how to correctly report a bug. So many bug reports simply go like:

"This mission I'm on made my ship blow up! Fix it! You're a stupid horrible company if you don't! FIX IT NOW!"

I for one hope that this volunteer initiative is a success.

zobovor · August 2015

azrael605 wrote: »

rickdanko wrote: »

"Tinfoil hat" refers to someone who believes in conspiracies. While I do believe in conspiracies, I didn't mean to imply that there was one here. Just a friendly "consider the potential outcome" message.

But hey, if you want to ignore a friendly warning from someone saying "don't make the same mistake I did", that's your right.

Well first off the very (sad) fact you said you believe in conspiracies is enough for me to discount anything you say about any subject whatsoever.

Depending on how you define conspiracies, they are as real as anything out there . Don't be scared of a word .

- Price 'adjustment' by major retailers to avoid actual prices going down ? Conspiracy & reality at the same time .
- Governments not informing the public of actions taken " in their name" ? Again , both conspiracy & reality at the same time .
- Governments or conglomerates releasing certain info to influence public opinion ? Same as above .

A tinfoil hat is not always needed .

Aside from that I have decades of experience of my own and need no overblown paranoid "warnings" .

My take is that Cryptic will eventually award these testers with something .
But, just like awards for earlier seasonal Tribble testers (usually a special Tribble) -- these awards are now (just as then) are neither ready , and possibly not even decided upon , and will be created as an afterthought .

Thus the OP is wrong IMHO, as Tribble testers were awarded in the past, and at this point I doubt that what Cryptic have in mind is much deeper then what some fleets have done in the past in regards to bug hunting .
(recreating bugs, making videos, possibly having a common chart to categorize bugs from game breaking to less important)

Unknown · August 2015

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Reimbursement for bug hunting

Comments

When I think about everything we've been through together,

maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,

and if that journey takes a little longer,

so we can do something we all believe in,

I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.