uisle345
New member
Hi Deadlock Forum!
Out in the real world I am a long time QA Lead. I love bugs and people who write them. I've written thousands of bugs and overseen the training of hundreds of QA Testers over 7 years in the industry. Anyone coming here to report a bug probably wants to see it fixed. There are a lot of well written bugs in this forum and I'm proud of you all. That said, I see a lot of one sentence with one screenshot reports. I'm hoping that my tips here can help you improve your bug writing with more organized and reproducible bugs help the dev team catch and solve the serious ones. This should honestly apply to any game you want to report bugs for, is by no means a comprehensive guide, and there are a lot of nuances to this stuff, so take this as a skeleton made of grains of sand. Fill the muscle out yourself!
A few notes before we begin and before you write your bug.
- A bug's a bug's a bug's a bug's a bug. All bugs are worthy of being reported. From a full game crash all the way to an LOD pop. I write low art bugs here just to stay sharp with writing. Spots like this are great practice if you're new to the craft.
- With the above in mind. bug reports are fantastic, but reproducible bug reports are the best. Please do your best to add the in-game steps that make the bug happen.
- Please use the search feature to see if a similar issue has been reported! Duplicate issues unfortunately waste everyone's time. This forum is great that all the bugs reported are open and able to be commented on. throw your info in a comment on a previously reported issue! Use this feature if you want to help!
- If you take anything away from this, please let it be adding Steps to Reproduce in your bug reports!
Summary
[Category] - [Location] - [Brief Description]
Example: Art - Environment - Bank Exterior - Misaligned Geo on Bank exterior, behind Fire Escape.
Bug Type Categories: [Art / Gameplay / Code / UI / Audio / Performance / Other] – [Subcategory]
The Title, or Summary, of your bug should be concise and point directly to the bug being reported. You really want to keep this one sentence and as short as possible to help with searchability and fast triage. These are the names of the posts that the team sees as they scroll. They will more likely click into a well written summary than a big old story. Fluff and stories can go in the description!
Description
Provide a summary of the issue, including location and context.
- Example: In Deadlock, there is a new location along the yellow lane called City Mother Bank, near the walker tower. On the exterior wall in the alleyway, a fire escape is mounted above a gutter-like ledge. This ledge is slightly misaligned from the wall, allowing players to see through the geo.
If you have stories or anecdotes they can go in this section. It's better to be one or two sentences, but if you need more details to get the bug across, go ahead and do that here. Stuff like the example above is better than saying something like, "I was in a match and all the sudden got stuck in the wall." Where did you get stuck? Were there characters nearby who could be culprits? Context, context, context! buuuuut, If it's too long, no one is going to read it, and they will skip to steps to repro.
Steps to Reproduce:
Notes
Severity: [Low / Medium / High / Critical]
Type: [Art / Gameplay / UI / Audio / Performance / Other] – [Subcategory]
Repro Rate: [e.g., 5/5, 3/5, Intermittent]
Build #: [e.g., 5,853]
Match #: 40064748
These notes are an important addition for QA. Specifically, the match #, build #, and repro rate. If an issue is reported as low repro, it can be properly triaged, and an appropriate amount of time can be spent attempting to repro before moving on. Build Numbers are helpful so Testers can check a future build to make sure the fix is in. The other sections are helpful if entering bugs into a database like Jira, since they have all these fields to fill out anyway. A lot of folks will put PC specs here, but you really only should if it's a hardware specific bug, which tbh is pretty rare. If you do want to add those, instead of typing them out, just attach your DxDiag. That'll have much better info than just what type of stuff you have.
Keywords
Example: walls, outside, walker, yellow, alley, gutter, fire escape, geo, face, portalling, culling
Comma-separated tags to aid search and categorization. Can be helpful since people will spell things wrong and use different terms a lot! These help avoiding those duplicate issues I mentioned earlier being written.
Attachments (Optional)
Include screenshots, videos, or logs if appropriate.
Attachments are the first, and usually the only thing anyone will click on inside of a bug report if the media is good enough. Videos are best, and please remove audio unless it's an audio specific bug. Straight gameplay footage is easiest and generally acceptable. If it is something you are reproducing, the video media should be clean and smooth with no jerky camera movements. Imagine you are filming a fancy commercial for your bug. If video isn't available, an establishing screenshot and a close up are perfect. Logs will help for any code related issues, but not a lot because Ship logs are generally filled with nothing helpful. Focus on repro steps will help most there.
I love bugs. Bugs are great. Fun to find and fun to write. They don't need a ton of detail to be effective. I like to try to make mine as short as possible. Hopefully you've found some of this generally useful. Feel free to shoot questions over. So that's that stuff! Go off and write!
Happy Bug Hunting and Writing!!!
Out in the real world I am a long time QA Lead. I love bugs and people who write them. I've written thousands of bugs and overseen the training of hundreds of QA Testers over 7 years in the industry. Anyone coming here to report a bug probably wants to see it fixed. There are a lot of well written bugs in this forum and I'm proud of you all. That said, I see a lot of one sentence with one screenshot reports. I'm hoping that my tips here can help you improve your bug writing with more organized and reproducible bugs help the dev team catch and solve the serious ones. This should honestly apply to any game you want to report bugs for, is by no means a comprehensive guide, and there are a lot of nuances to this stuff, so take this as a skeleton made of grains of sand. Fill the muscle out yourself!
A few notes before we begin and before you write your bug.
- A bug's a bug's a bug's a bug's a bug. All bugs are worthy of being reported. From a full game crash all the way to an LOD pop. I write low art bugs here just to stay sharp with writing. Spots like this are great practice if you're new to the craft.
- With the above in mind. bug reports are fantastic, but reproducible bug reports are the best. Please do your best to add the in-game steps that make the bug happen.
- Please use the search feature to see if a similar issue has been reported! Duplicate issues unfortunately waste everyone's time. This forum is great that all the bugs reported are open and able to be commented on. throw your info in a comment on a previously reported issue! Use this feature if you want to help!
- If you take anything away from this, please let it be adding Steps to Reproduce in your bug reports!
Summary
[Category] - [Location] - [Brief Description]
Example: Art - Environment - Bank Exterior - Misaligned Geo on Bank exterior, behind Fire Escape.
Bug Type Categories: [Art / Gameplay / Code / UI / Audio / Performance / Other] – [Subcategory]
The Title, or Summary, of your bug should be concise and point directly to the bug being reported. You really want to keep this one sentence and as short as possible to help with searchability and fast triage. These are the names of the posts that the team sees as they scroll. They will more likely click into a well written summary than a big old story. Fluff and stories can go in the description!
Description
Provide a summary of the issue, including location and context.
- Example: In Deadlock, there is a new location along the yellow lane called City Mother Bank, near the walker tower. On the exterior wall in the alleyway, a fire escape is mounted above a gutter-like ledge. This ledge is slightly misaligned from the wall, allowing players to see through the geo.
If you have stories or anecdotes they can go in this section. It's better to be one or two sentences, but if you need more details to get the bug across, go ahead and do that here. Stuff like the example above is better than saying something like, "I was in a match and all the sudden got stuck in the wall." Where did you get stuck? Were there characters nearby who could be culprits? Context, context, context! buuuuut, If it's too long, no one is going to read it, and they will skip to steps to repro.
Steps to Reproduce:
- Load into the New York map
- Navigate to the alley near the Bank along the yellow lane
- Locate the ledge beneath the exterior fire escape wall
- Observe the misalignment and visible missing geometry
Notes
Severity: [Low / Medium / High / Critical]
Type: [Art / Gameplay / UI / Audio / Performance / Other] – [Subcategory]
Repro Rate: [e.g., 5/5, 3/5, Intermittent]
Build #: [e.g., 5,853]
Match #: 40064748
These notes are an important addition for QA. Specifically, the match #, build #, and repro rate. If an issue is reported as low repro, it can be properly triaged, and an appropriate amount of time can be spent attempting to repro before moving on. Build Numbers are helpful so Testers can check a future build to make sure the fix is in. The other sections are helpful if entering bugs into a database like Jira, since they have all these fields to fill out anyway. A lot of folks will put PC specs here, but you really only should if it's a hardware specific bug, which tbh is pretty rare. If you do want to add those, instead of typing them out, just attach your DxDiag. That'll have much better info than just what type of stuff you have.
Keywords
Example: walls, outside, walker, yellow, alley, gutter, fire escape, geo, face, portalling, culling
Comma-separated tags to aid search and categorization. Can be helpful since people will spell things wrong and use different terms a lot! These help avoiding those duplicate issues I mentioned earlier being written.
Attachments (Optional)
Include screenshots, videos, or logs if appropriate.
Attachments are the first, and usually the only thing anyone will click on inside of a bug report if the media is good enough. Videos are best, and please remove audio unless it's an audio specific bug. Straight gameplay footage is easiest and generally acceptable. If it is something you are reproducing, the video media should be clean and smooth with no jerky camera movements. Imagine you are filming a fancy commercial for your bug. If video isn't available, an establishing screenshot and a close up are perfect. Logs will help for any code related issues, but not a lot because Ship logs are generally filled with nothing helpful. Focus on repro steps will help most there.
I love bugs. Bugs are great. Fun to find and fun to write. They don't need a ton of detail to be effective. I like to try to make mine as short as possible. Hopefully you've found some of this generally useful. Feel free to shoot questions over. So that's that stuff! Go off and write!
Happy Bug Hunting and Writing!!!
