Community driven Bug&Issue Tracker (CIT) for ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead and ARMA 2

[suma 8]

I have no leverage, other than my credit card. :) And Suma, you and I all know I'm going to snap up the next title voraciously, but nevertheless, I think the word 'unacceptable' is fairly well chosen.

From a business point of view, what you write is contradictory. If you still buy products from us, and are still decided to buy even more, you show us with your credit card then they are not "unacceptable" for you. "Bad", "shame", and other words could describe what you feel, but "unacceptable" does not seem to fit.

I understand we could do many things better than we do. However, let me present the same choice in other words. Let me, for the sake of argument, assume that we are unable to fix more bugs and polish the product more than we currently do. Would you prefer the scope of the product to be reduced in all areas (landscape size, number of vehicles, number of weapons, number of missions) to 30-50 % of what it is now? We are not only a bussiness, we are still to certain extent (even if it is now less than say in 2001) a kind of "partisan" company, a bunch of guys playing with their toys. We sometimes do some work just for the heck of it. Yes, I could perhaps fix some bugs instead of implementing butterflies, but the downside of it could be I would pretty soon leave the job because of frustration.

As for the leverage, I would say you have other leverage. You have leverage of voicing you oppinion, and you also have a leverage of the option to help us. I cannot repeat it often enough, for many bugs the most important thing to have them fixed is to have a high quality bug report with good repro steps in it (I intend to write a blog article about it soon, which should explain this in more detail).

I agree with DMarkwick that having 977 open issues by itself does not mean much. Almost each shipped product has a huge list of open issues. As long as the issues are "annoyances", and not "showstoppers", such situation seems acceptable to me.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

hai suma if a3 dosent has butterflys i wll not bye

[nettrucker 142]

One thing that is also a bit disappointing to me is, that a lot of bugs weren't there from the beginning they broke due to new patches. For example the "doTarget" command worked from release right out of the box. it has been broken later on by a patch, can't recall right now the version number and I opened also a ticket for it. In any case what I'm saying is that fixing bugs is a very delicate matter in question. I'm not aware about what is the keyfactor or what leads to the fact for breaking stuff that formerly worked fine. The openess and vastness of the game concept of ArmA definitely lead to more bugs, by that I don't want to give the impression to excuse that fact. I personally believe that a good quality control is a gain in every sense to a companies business and on a long term you can dedicate more of the company resources to take care of new projects you have running.

If I look at the situation strictly on business terms a good quality control is a must. If the product I'm selling isn't competitive or even faulty to some extend I'll be out of business on a long term run and whoever thinks that this might not apply to the gaming industry is wrong IMO.

Given the actual situation on the video game market where a lot of developers have no business ethics at all and are out for the quick buck BIS is standing out from that crowd. BIS has gained his position on the market. They just have to adjust slightly some internal issues. Give the quality control more importance. Second during all these years I've seen more and more developers taking out content rather than adding it to their games. This is a point that could be easily turned against them. BIS has always given a lot of content for my buck and that I do appreciate.

One other thing I've noticed is that after Resistence the importance of the SP campaign changed. The campaigns have become shorter and shorter. In my point of view the SP campaign is vital for the sales of a game. CWC and Resistance were so outstanding due to their lenght, the plot and the extraordinary fact that the player could easily identify himself to the character of the plot. It was so rich in mission content it was impossible to finish the campaign in 4-5 hours. I remember when playing myself the first time CWC. I was just wow. The more I played the more intrigued I got. The epicness of the OFP campaigns were also due to their lenght. A plot that was carried out throughout + 30 missions was so awesome. The more I played the more I wanted to play. Sorry if I got maybe a little bit off topic.

Final thought. I would give first priority to easy to fix bugs to reduce the quantity of open tickets, then dedicate my resources to the "icky" ones.

just my 2 cents:)

[.kju 3244]

Experience in (complex) software tells us for every bug you fix, you will add two new ones (for shipped/released software).

[nettrucker 142]

Experience in (complex) software tells us for every bug you fix, you will add two new ones (for shipped/released software).

The average customer doesn't care about that, they judge the final product. I can agree with SUMA that annoying bugs are acceptable to a certain degree show stopping bugs not. If you want to increase sales, the product can't have showstopping or gamebreaking bugs.

[.kju 3244]

I would argue that probably none of the listed bugs in the first post are

showstopping or gamebreaking bugs - not to the average gamer and

not even to almost everyone in here.

The showstopping or gamebreaking bugs were and are different ones.

The CIT and this topic are mainly about annoyances to different degrees.

The list was not created by the average customer, almost all of them no longer

play arma at this point, but very dedicated and to a large degree very capable people.

Your point is not what this thread is about - even though most people posted in here

didn't care about the goal of this thread and moderators don't feel like splitting

the new discussion to its own thread.

[nettrucker 142]

I would argue that probably none of the listed bugs in the first post are

showstopping or gamebreaking bugs - not to the average gamer and

not even to almost everyone in here.

The showstopping or gamebreaking bugs were and are different ones.

The CIT and this topic are mainly about annoyances to different degrees.

The list was not created by the average customer, almost all of them no longer

play arma at this point, but very dedicated and to a large degree very capable people.

Your point is not what this thread is about - even though most people posted in here

didn't care about the goal of this thread and moderators don't feel like splitting

the new discussion to its own thread.

Yeah I know . . . sorry didn't intent to derail this thread.

[nyles 11]

Your point is not what this thread is about - even though most people posted in here

didn't care about the goal of this thread and moderators don't feel like splitting

the new discussion to its own thread.

What are you complaining about? Your top issue of SetMimic was fixed!

Sorry. Couldn't resist.

[.kju 3244]

In case you read the first post (and the clarification) you should understand that these

are simply the highest voted engine bugs. Not mine.

[alef 0]

Maybe somekind of advanced tools could help to reduce testing certain things and features. But developing such tools takes away devtime on (next) game.

I've did a [thread=108745]testbench[/thread] to help my testing.

... most people posted in here didn't care about the goal of this thread and moderators don't feel like splitting the new discussion to its own thread.

CIT has its own [thread=102991]thread[/thread], which is now linked it from CIT homepage too.

[nyles 11]

In case you read the first post (and the clarification) you should understand that these

are simply the highest voted engine bugs. Not mine.

I was being provocative.

As you know, I am simply not convinced that this should be the exclusive order in choosing what to fix (see SetMimic example).

Not sure, but I actually like that this thread has turned into a much general constructive discussion with a lot of good feedback and interesting suggestions, including a repeated plea to continue fixing important content/config issues not just engine issues - especially also focusing on those issues that help gameplay.

edit: thread, not threat....d'uh

Edited July 29, 2011 by Nyles

[PeterBitt 10]

i think we can quite happy that arma2 is getting still patched after this long time scince release, cant think of many (non indie) developers with that suppport.

suma, you want good repro missions for the bugs? please look into these :p

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/18075

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/18118

dont got many votes with them, but it is annoying me every single time when i use my goggles or scopes with crosshair floating activated

[dontknowhow 33]

I understand we could do many things better than we do. However, let me present the same choice in other words. Let me, for the sake of argument, assume that we are unable to fix more bugs and polish the product more than we currently do. Would you prefer the scope of the product to be reduced in all areas (landscape size, number of vehicles, number of weapons, number of missions) to 30-50 % of what it is now? We are not only a bussiness, we are still to certain extent (even if it is now less than say in 2001) a kind of "partisan" company, a bunch of guys playing with their toys. We sometimes do some work just for the heck of it. Yes, I could perhaps fix some bugs instead of implementing butterflies, but the downside of it could be I would pretty soon leave the job because of frustration.

Far point. However, being someone who can afford to use the word "unacceptable" (I'll prove it when Arma 3 comes out), I would like to counter this argument with two objections.

1) to me part of the job of a software developer, something to be proud of, is to write something that actually works. It might be nice to implement the "cool" things, but what use does it have if what you implement is not usable? And besides the toys, how about properly managing the complexity that is one of the biggest challenge in software development? I'm not sure this is included in the definition of toy, but to me it should be

2) another point: customer satisfaction. And I don't mean it from a business point of view, but just from the point of view of someone who does, or is supposed to do, something for other people. Sure, many people are happy with the current situation and want to be loyal to the game; however, this thread proves that some are at least not so happy. And if people are not happy that's a big part of the motivation that goes, at least for me.

So okay, playing with toys can be nice, but maybe the job consists of other things too. And, again, there is no need to have a business point of view to look at it this way. I'm not exactly a businessman.

As a user, I would personally seriously consider the 30-50% option, but maybe we can settle for 60-70 :)

[CarlGustaffa 4]

...I think the word 'unacceptable' is fairly well chosen.

"If you still buy products from us, and are still decided to buy even more, you show us with your credit card then they are not "unacceptable" for you. Bad", "shame", and other words could describe what you feel, but "unacceptable" does not seem to fit.

The LOL factor was high on that one :D

One other thing I've noticed is that after Resistence the importance of the SP campaign changed. The campaigns have become shorter and shorter.

But inmission content and complexity has grown considerably. Manhattan mission alone would consist of pretty much one mission per objective back in OFP days. I don't think they compare very well.

In my point of view the SP campaign is vital for the sales of a game. CWC and Resistance were so outstanding due to their lenght, the plot and the extraordinary fact that the player could easily identify himself to the character of the plot.

Regarding identifying, I think Resistance was better than CWC, and resembles Arma2 pretty well. CWC was more like OA, and to less extent Arma1. Hell, I'll even say that Arma2 was a bit more realistic in terms of what we set out to do. CWC was the ultimate in it's time because it was so damned unique, combined with unheard of freedom. OA was fun I guess (but short, and lacked the Arma2 campaign/mission complexity), but multirole playing will never take me as far regarding identifying with those I portray as playing within the same unit.

It was so rich in mission content it was impossible to finish the campaign in 4-5 hours.

I think Razor Two (I only use HMMWV though), Manhattan, and Dogs of War take that time for me, each, even now when I pretty much know how to do them. You must be one hell of a player if you can do the whole campaign (at expert difficulty - OFP had only one user save - oh, and I hated it, lol) in 4-5 hours. Also that Bear mission (name eludes me) can take many many hours to complete if trying to do it careful.

I sincerely hope Arma3 will be dynamic enough to last as long as we want it to last. Like Oblivion - you can "complete it" in a matter of hours/days, or you can spend months/years in it if you want. And random and dynamic enough to allow awesome replayability. Possibly with some kind of character development to help us identify with whom we play.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

I intend to write a blog article about it soon, which should explain this in more detail

Yes, please do this ASAP. IMO if everyone who reported the bugs optimized their reports it would probably get a lot of the simple fixes fixed faster.

However it would also be nice to get some official word on content bugs too (like whehter they have any change of being fixed and how to best report them).

[Tankbuster 1746]

From a business point of view, what you write is contradictory. If you still buy products from us, and are still decided to buy even more, you show us with your credit card then they are not "unacceptable" for you. "Bad", "shame", and other words could describe what you feel, but "unacceptable" does not seem to fit.

I understand we could do many things better than we do. However, let me present the same choice in other words. Let me, for the sake of argument, assume that we are unable to fix more bugs and polish the product more than we currently do. Would you prefer the scope of the product to be reduced in all areas (landscape size, number of vehicles, number of weapons, number of missions) to 30-50 % of what it is now? We are not only a bussiness, we are still to certain extent (even if it is now less than say in 2001) a kind of "partisan" company, a bunch of guys playing with their toys. We sometimes do some work just for the heck of it. Yes, I could perhaps fix some bugs instead of implementing butterflies, but the downside of it could be I would pretty soon leave the job because of frustration.

As for the leverage, I would say you have other leverage. You have leverage of voicing you oppinion, and you also have a leverage of the option to help us. I cannot repeat it often enough, for many bugs the most important thing to have them fixed is to have a high quality bug report with good repro steps in it (I intend to write a blog article about it soon, which should explain this in more detail).

I agree with DMarkwick that having 977 open issues by itself does not mean much. Almost each shipped product has a huge list of open issues. As long as the issues are "annoyances", and not "showstoppers", such situation seems acceptable to me.

Let's not get bogged down in semantics, especially when we're using my first language and one I've been using for 40 years. :) Unacceptable or not, it's a pretty poor show.

You will see me on the CIT and I do run betas, though not now as often as I used to. I try to do my bit, but battling the bugs isn't fun for me, creating content and playing the game is the fun I paid for.

I accept that resources are finite. If your chaps are working flat out then perhaps, if I'm suggesting your priorities need looking at, yes, I'm saying I'd prefer a little less content and a little more polish. I don't need to say that the more content is released, the more bugs are made, do I?

I realise I'm leveraging right now. (What a horrific phrase! :) )And don't think that I and others don't appreciate you getting down and dirty with the users. It's worth more to us than you realise, I think.

I'm going to make a point again that I made earlier. There are apparently a number bugs in the CIT that could be fixed by the bashing of a couple of bytes. And stuff that used to work gets busted down the line. These things don't do you, us or the game justice.

[alef 0]

I cannot repeat it often enough, for many bugs the most important thing to have them fixed is to have a high quality bug report with good repro steps in it (I intend to write a blog article about it soon, which should explain this in more detail).

Yes, please do this ASAP. IMO if everyone who reported the bugs optimized their reports it would probably get a lot of the simple fixes fixed faster.

However it would also be nice to get some official word on content bugs too (like whehter they have any change of being fixed and how to best report them).

In the meantime, you may want to read his article "Killing Bugs".

The last sentence there reflect probably what's happening these days:"... sometimes there are short periods of time dedicated to bug fixing either by individuals, or by small teams.".

So, now that they seems to have such time, let us give them something to do, like PvPscene attempted to do with this thread.

[dmarkwick 261]

So what's the correct way to pimp issues for more votes?

I still see problems using the Merlin for example. Many scenarios I make get broken because of this.

*edit*

Meh, I guess this is a BAF-specific bug? Are the DLC's being worked on still or is that all done now?

Edited August 2, 2011 by DMarkwick

[OMAC 254]

You want "killing bugs"? Try this one.

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/18491

Please vote. That is my first and only filed bug, meaning that 1) no other bugs got me very pissed off, and 2) others are doing a great job filing all the bugs for me, allowing me to sit back and be a lazy bastard while playing A2 CO/RNF.

[nyles 11]

Hey Suma,

I think it is really unfortunate that there are so many remaining issues in CIT still that could be fixed by a dedicated designer in 2-3 days of work without any code or art support.

Many of those really shouldn't be hard to deal with, but could greatly enhance the gameplay and actually make certain game components usable again, which are broken or buggy for ages.

It would be really awesome, if you could go through the items below and perhaps talk to some of the designers about the impact of investigating them. I can assure you that there are gems on that list, a large part of mp community has been hoping would get fixed for a long time.

1. make weapons lose less power over distance (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/11479)
   
2. increase range for all manually guided missiles beyond 1500m (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/18656)
   
3. AT weapons in T90 and BTR90 not working (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/14436)
   
4. Reduce off-road speed for vehicles on Takistan to match experience on Chernarus (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/13834)
   
5. Reduce bouncyness of handgrenades (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/3513)
   
6. Tweak down countermeasures (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/12692)
   
7. Add important soldier classes to factions missing them, like engineer (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/16577)
   
8. Balance pass on AA-12 to tone down range (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/16538)
   
9. Set up backup ironsights for those weapons clearly featuring them on them models already (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/13857)
   
10. Fix Mi24 Falanga missiles almost always missing locked targets (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/11850)
    
11. Increase Little Bird airspeed (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/11767)
    
12. Don't allow carrying AS50 and AT weapons at same time (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/15969)
    
13. BAF medic cannot equip handguns (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/15666)
    
14. Fix double the amount of flares in 120rnd flare mag (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/13914)
    
15. Change standalone grenade launchers to be sidearms (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/13216)
    
16. Balance all TI-equiped weapons by treating them as machineguns in the inventory (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/15970)
    
17. AS50 damage not matching damage from M107 sniper (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/14888)
    
18. Add range-adjustments to grenade launchers (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/15184)
    

I am sure others could expand that list with a large number of other minor issues that should be easy to fix, but could have a very positive impact on playability, like for example stronger ballistic curve and reduced range on infantry AT weapons, allow using the FAL's nightsight during daylight, etc.

Also, it would be really sweet, if you guys would consider making some units available to other factions as well. For example, the PMC-introduced Ka-60 would be perfect as an EAST unit as well without the need to do any texture adjustments.

Thanks!

Can we please get an official word on content bugs and whether they are still being fixed or not?

If not, this saves us all a lot of trouble spending our free time to look for and report new content issues.

If yes, it would be nice to understand the criteria for content bugs being reviewed and worked on. It is understandable that no content bugs are included in beta patches, but it would be great to know, if any further patches will include config and asset fixes or only code changes.

Edited August 3, 2011 by Nyles

[Dwarden 1125]

some content bugs are and will be fixed some not ...

this all depends also on free manpower (which is atm. occupied by working on Gamescom builds for A3, ToH, CC:GM titles)

also some of the 'bugs' listed are often 'design' decision thus not bugs but features

[CarlGustaffa 4]

It would be nice to see devs comment on the stuff that are design decisions, and why they are what they are. Like the issues regarding the AS50. Us mission makers use equipment by their real world counterparts, we don't examine their config data for weird entries suggesting otherwise. If it has unique stuff going on, should it be visible or hinted at in the weapons library text?

[Dwarden 1125]

again, that's BAF content, which is now ARMA 3 team

it might be fixed for 1.60 content update as part of BAF 1.03 update ...

[-=seany=- 5]

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/17538 Is it safe to assume this will be a content fix for 1.60? I promise I wont ask for any more fixes, well maybe just one or two more :D

[nyles 11]

Hey Suma,

I think it is really unfortunate that there are so many remaining issues in CIT still that could be fixed by a dedicated designer in 2-3 days of work without any code or art support.

Many of those really shouldn't be hard to deal with, but could greatly enhance the gameplay and actually make certain game components usable again, which are broken or buggy for ages.

It would be really awesome, if you could go through the items below and perhaps talk to some of the designers about the impact of investigating them. I can assure you that there are gems on that list, a large part of mp community has been hoping would get fixed for a long time.

1. make weapons lose less power over distance (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/11479)
   
2. increase range for all manually guided missiles beyond 1500m (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/18656)
   
3. AT weapons in T90 and BTR90 not working (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/14436)
   
4. Reduce off-road speed for vehicles on Takistan to match experience on Chernarus (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/13834)
   
5. Reduce bouncyness of handgrenades (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/3513)
   
6. Tweak down countermeasures (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/12692)
   
7. Add important soldier classes to factions missing them, like engineer (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/16577)
   
8. Balance pass on AA-12 to tone down range (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/16538)
   
9. Set up backup ironsights for those weapons clearly featuring them on them models already (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/13857)
   
10. Fix Mi24 Falanga missiles almost always missing locked targets (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/11850)
    
11. Increase Little Bird airspeed (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/11767)
    
12. Don't allow carrying AS50 and AT weapons at same time (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/15969)
    
13. BAF medic cannot equip handguns (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/15666)
    
14. Fix double the amount of flares in 120rnd flare mag (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/13914)
    
15. Change standalone grenade launchers to be sidearms (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/13216)
    
16. Balance all TI-equiped weapons by treating them as machineguns in the inventory (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/15970)
    
17. AS50 damage not matching damage from M107 sniper (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/14888)
    
18. Add range-adjustments to grenade launchers (http://dev-heaven.net/issues/15184)
    

I am sure others could expand that list with a large number of other minor issues that should be easy to fix, but could have a very positive impact on playability, like for example stronger ballistic curve and reduced range on infantry AT weapons, allow using the FAL's nightsight during daylight, etc.

Also, it would be really sweet, if you guys would consider making some units available to other factions as well. For example, the PMC-introduced Ka-60 would be perfect as an EAST unit as well without the need to do any texture adjustments.

Thanks!

Just received a CIT update mail regarding issue #15969. Thanks for the fix and keep up the effort! :)