Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 5380441" data-attributes="member: 726">While I have an instinctive sympathy toward WotC (and software developers in particular), I cannot get behind the OP.&nbsp; The biggest issue with the new CB is that it's unstable.&nbsp; I'm not going to comment on its feature set, or about the decision to stop work on the old CB.&nbsp; I'm just talking about crashes here.Look, I developed video games for almost 20 years, and I'm very familiar with the development process.&nbsp; I understand that decisions get made for mysterious and non-optimal reasons.&nbsp; I've shipped games with bugs.&nbsp; And I'm fully aware that bugs will show up under the weight of 100,000 or 1,000,000 users, that didn't show up when you had 50 testers doing QA.&nbsp; But the new Character Builder simply should not have been released when it was.&nbsp; Crash Bugs are &quot;Priority 1&quot;; in my places of employ, we would not have been allowed to ship a product with as many Priority 1 bugs as the CB has -- or even 1/10th as many.&nbsp; You just don't do that.&nbsp;&nbsp; I've worked hellish hours for weeks on end just to eliminate the last tiny handful of crashes, on projects significantly more complex than the Character Builder.The product I'm seeing personally, and reading about on-line, is still in early Beta.&nbsp; It's months away from shipping.The correct model could have been to release it explicitly as a public Beta.&nbsp; Tell folks:&nbsp; &quot;This is going to crash a whole lot.&nbsp; Help us find the bugs that will only manifest under the stress of thousands of users, so we can get you a polished and nearly-bug-free product faster!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; That would have gone a long way toward ameliorating the loss of good will we're seeing now.I feel badly for the folks writing the code.&nbsp; I can almost guarantee they knew this would happen, but it wasn't up to them when to ship.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Sagiro, post: 5380441, member: 726"] While I have an instinctive sympathy toward WotC (and software developers in particular), I cannot get behind the OP. The biggest issue with the new CB is that it's unstable. I'm not going to comment on its feature set, or about the decision to stop work on the old CB. I'm just talking about crashes here. Look, I developed video games for almost 20 years, and I'm very familiar with the development process. I understand that decisions get made for mysterious and non-optimal reasons. I've shipped games with bugs. And I'm fully aware that bugs will show up under the weight of 100,000 or 1,000,000 users, that didn't show up when you had 50 testers doing QA. But the new Character Builder simply should not have been released when it was. Crash Bugs are "Priority 1"; in my places of employ, we would not have been [i]allowed[/i] to ship a product with as many Priority 1 bugs as the CB has -- or even 1/10th as many. You just don't do that. I've worked hellish hours for weeks on end just to eliminate the last [i]tiny handful[/i] of crashes, on projects significantly more complex than the Character Builder. The product I'm seeing personally, and reading about on-line, is still in early Beta. It's months away from shipping. The correct model could have been to release it [i]explicitly[/i] as a public Beta. Tell folks: "This is going to crash a whole lot. Help us find the bugs that will only manifest under the stress of thousands of users, so we can get you a polished and nearly-bug-free product faster!" That would have gone a long way toward ameliorating the loss of good will we're seeing now. I feel badly for the folks writing the code. I can almost guarantee they knew this would happen, but it wasn't up to them when to ship. [/QUOTE]

Verification