Dev Diary: Bugs, Tracking and Visibility
KabamPinwheel
Community Community › Posts: 544
Greetings Summoners!
Friendly Neighborhood Pinwheel here and now it’s MY turn for a Dev Diary! Today, I’m following up on the Release Cadence and Bug Fixes Dev Diary shared by Kabam Dork (found here), laying out the basics of our release process, the difference between client and server side issues, and the different kinds of timelines that an issue can face depending on where the problem is located.
One consistent bit of feedback we got in response to that post was that many of you wanted more transparency with regards to the specifics of what was getting fixed and when, which is fair. While we’re not quite ready to cover the details of the process improvements that the game team is working on just yet, it will likely be the topic of a future Dev Diary. For now, let’s dive into what we’ve been doing to improve transparency on bug fixes and where we would like to go from there.
In Fall of 2024, we launched our new and updated Trello Bugs and Issues Board. As we’ve improved our process and worked with teams internally we have now (with a brief break over the holidays) provided weekly updates every Friday listing out some of the top reported issues in-game, breaking down their status and when summoners can expect to see a fix once the problem has been identified. The goal of this “2.0” version was to take lessons from the previous board that was maintained but updated irregularly, streamline its execution, and create both a more usable, consistent and reliable experience.
Now, to be clear the Trello Board is not an exhaustive bug list by any means, but let’s take a look at some of the reasons why an issue may not make it onto the board:
First, we started adding more reported issues to the Trello Board and are doing so more quickly due to our optimized process allowing us to better run through the previous week’s reported issues, determine the status of an issue, and then to write up the Trello cards to be clear and concise (there is a lot of jargon and shorthand that I end up needing to translate haha).
Now that we have this process established and running well, we also have the freedom to go outside of it. We have now started to add some priority issues to the Trello Board as they emerge outside of our normal end of week board update, meaning when a time sensitive bug or issue pops up it can go up on the board that day rather than needing to wait for the next Friday update. This will hopefully make the board a more consistently useful tool.
In addition to these much needed updates, starting next week we will begin posting a quick Trello Board change summary every Monday highlighting the changes made to the board the previous Friday (an example covering last week is included at the bottom of this Dev Diary). This new weekly post will provide a quick and concise status update, showing new issues added to the board and highlighting any that were either added to the board as fixed or had their status updated to fixed live. Please note that the specific status of existing issues or ETA of a fix won’t be listed in this post but all of this information is and will be available on the Trello Board. One further note, there is a bit of lag time between when issues are first logged with the team and when they get put up on the Trello Board, often a couple days to about a week as we run through the above processes. This can sometimes mean you don’t see an issue listed in a weekly update until a week or two after depending on where in the cadence we catch it.
To mitigate this aspect, we have added in an intake column for commonly reported issues that we’ve seen, reported, but that don’t yet have an assigned status to provide some extra visibility on what we’ve been able to “Take to the Team” :-)
That all said, we appreciate the feedback you’ve been giving us and hope you continue to enjoy this series of Dev Diaries. We will absolutely be open to ongoing feedback and improvements to the Trello Board and will keep working to make it as useful to players as possible.
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Diary coming soon! But until then, see this week’s Trello Board update list and visit the board itself to see the status of these and other issues!
Trello Board Weekly Update List
Covering the week of April 7th
Under Investigation/Fix in development/Fixed in Future Update
Fix is Live
Friendly Neighborhood Pinwheel here and now it’s MY turn for a Dev Diary! Today, I’m following up on the Release Cadence and Bug Fixes Dev Diary shared by Kabam Dork (found here), laying out the basics of our release process, the difference between client and server side issues, and the different kinds of timelines that an issue can face depending on where the problem is located.
One consistent bit of feedback we got in response to that post was that many of you wanted more transparency with regards to the specifics of what was getting fixed and when, which is fair. While we’re not quite ready to cover the details of the process improvements that the game team is working on just yet, it will likely be the topic of a future Dev Diary. For now, let’s dive into what we’ve been doing to improve transparency on bug fixes and where we would like to go from there.
In Fall of 2024, we launched our new and updated Trello Bugs and Issues Board. As we’ve improved our process and worked with teams internally we have now (with a brief break over the holidays) provided weekly updates every Friday listing out some of the top reported issues in-game, breaking down their status and when summoners can expect to see a fix once the problem has been identified. The goal of this “2.0” version was to take lessons from the previous board that was maintained but updated irregularly, streamline its execution, and create both a more usable, consistent and reliable experience.
Now, to be clear the Trello Board is not an exhaustive bug list by any means, but let’s take a look at some of the reasons why an issue may not make it onto the board:
- First and foremost, issues with low reproducibility or those affecting niche/very specific devices may not make it on the board. They could be added, depending on impact, but we generally try to keep the board focused on issues affecting the community at large.
- As an example, there has been an issue affecting SP3s on certain Samsung Galaxy devices that we have had difficulty reproducing on a variety of test devices. Because of the severity of this specific issue for those impacted we felt it warranted a place on the board.
- As an example, there has been an issue affecting SP3s on certain Samsung Galaxy devices that we have had difficulty reproducing on a variety of test devices. Because of the severity of this specific issue for those impacted we felt it warranted a place on the board.
- A second reason is that if an issue is potentially exploitable, or significantly affects competitive balance. To be clear, this does not mean that these kinds of issues are not a top priority, it's quite the opposite in fact, but hopefully for understandable reasons we don’t want to broadcast to bad actors how to take advantage of an issue.
- Finally, one of the main reasons is that it is fixed shortly after it is discovered/reported. While we certainly have our fair share of issues in the game at the moment (which the team is working hard to mitigate), there are a good number of issues that get spotted and fixed the same day, potentially even before most or any summoners notice. Again, we may still add these issues onto the board directly labelled as Fixed Live, but not always.
First, we started adding more reported issues to the Trello Board and are doing so more quickly due to our optimized process allowing us to better run through the previous week’s reported issues, determine the status of an issue, and then to write up the Trello cards to be clear and concise (there is a lot of jargon and shorthand that I end up needing to translate haha).
Now that we have this process established and running well, we also have the freedom to go outside of it. We have now started to add some priority issues to the Trello Board as they emerge outside of our normal end of week board update, meaning when a time sensitive bug or issue pops up it can go up on the board that day rather than needing to wait for the next Friday update. This will hopefully make the board a more consistently useful tool.
In addition to these much needed updates, starting next week we will begin posting a quick Trello Board change summary every Monday highlighting the changes made to the board the previous Friday (an example covering last week is included at the bottom of this Dev Diary). This new weekly post will provide a quick and concise status update, showing new issues added to the board and highlighting any that were either added to the board as fixed or had their status updated to fixed live. Please note that the specific status of existing issues or ETA of a fix won’t be listed in this post but all of this information is and will be available on the Trello Board. One further note, there is a bit of lag time between when issues are first logged with the team and when they get put up on the Trello Board, often a couple days to about a week as we run through the above processes. This can sometimes mean you don’t see an issue listed in a weekly update until a week or two after depending on where in the cadence we catch it.
To mitigate this aspect, we have added in an intake column for commonly reported issues that we’ve seen, reported, but that don’t yet have an assigned status to provide some extra visibility on what we’ve been able to “Take to the Team” :-)
That all said, we appreciate the feedback you’ve been giving us and hope you continue to enjoy this series of Dev Diaries. We will absolutely be open to ongoing feedback and improvements to the Trello Board and will keep working to make it as useful to players as possible.
Keep an eye out for our next Dev Diary coming soon! But until then, see this week’s Trello Board update list and visit the board itself to see the status of these and other issues!
Trello Board Weekly Update List
Covering the week of April 7th
Under Investigation/Fix in development/Fixed in Future Update
- Pulverizing Sentinel's Armor Up Buffs triggers his instant Power Gain
- Wiccan can fail to trigger his Flame Spell if he is creating a Plasma at the same moment
- Powerful - 2 - states that their Combat Power Rate can't be reduced, but actually it can't be lowered below 100%
- The Heavy Hands node is removing the falter passive early if the player completes a heavy animation while faltered
- Scared Stiff node mentions passives in the description but is a debuff in-game
- Personal Space - Regeneration is healing more than described
- Root or Rooted can be disabled for the rest of the fight
Fix is Live
- Spider-Woman's Ensnare is reducing AAR by the incorrect potency.
- Stryfe's 'Block Unblockable' does not reference that it needs his personal Concussion
- Lady Deathstrikes’ prevention of unstoppable and unblockable does not reference that it needs her personal heal block
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