The Life of a Bug in PoxNora
Most people consider bugs a mild annoyance, whether it’s a trail of ants from your trashcan, or a scorpion living in the closet. In the life of PoxNora, bugs are an unintended mechanics arising from abilities, spells, maps, or anything else that takes place in the game. Today we are going to delve quickly into the development world of PoxNora and explain the process for bugs and how they are resolved. For all intents and purposes we’ll lovingly name our bug Gnark.
The first and most important process of bugs is identification and that is where you, the community comes in. Ideally we would catch every single possible bug during our testing phase. While most are, there are always a few slip through the cracks. Our first and most widely utilized bug catching tool is the PoxNora forums. Every work day I, or a member of our Quality Assurance team goes through the forums and enters each issue into our system. We also take bug reports from the support system found on the PoxNora.com website which gives players at least two ways to bring our attention to Gnark.
The bug’s life continues as it moves to our Quality Assurance team who spend a good portion of their time trying to break things. Sometimes they are a little too efficient at their job (asdf actually giggles), but it’s always good to know they are ready to get down to business. When a bug report is received they go in and try to recreate the situation to see exactly what happens.
Once a bug has been verified, it’s up to either our Programmers or Design team to decide how to fix it. If there is a question about if something is working as intended, someone braves a trip to see CorpsE or Kaervas in hopes of not being hit with a wooden sword. If it’s an ability that isn’t operating the way it’s described, a Programmer goes in and does their black magic to make that happen. Once the animals have been sacrificed and voodoo dolls are put away, it goes back to Quality Assurance for testing. In this instance, Gnark has been fixed and will be put back into the live game.
Once everything seems to be in working order, any necessary changes are put in the next patch. These are scheduled weekly to insure we provide an ample amount of downtime for you. If the change is a large one, we announce it in advance to see how the community feels. Otherwise, it’s slipped into patch notes and we move on to the next bug. At this point everyone is happy and there are balloons, elephants, and a great celebration. Gnark has been squashed.
How exactly do we decide which bugs are going to get fixed first? There are combinations of factors taken into consideration when prioritization changes. First of all, how much does bug impact gameplay? For instance, if Gnark is causing an even more annoyance than usual and teleporting across the map, he’ll be fixed pretty quickly. Next, how much goes into correcting this bug? Fixing a typo in a spell description can be done much quicker than correcting a complex ability on a champion. At that point, a list is made determining what can be done immediately, and what might be a little later.
We hope this gives you a rough idea about how bugs are caught and exterminated. While it’s not a step by step, this is an overview of exactly what happens every day in the SOE Studio. For now, keep submitting those bugs, because we want to keep fixing them.