EVE General Discussion

Taking a sample, all of mine were closed without comment. I received a few e-mails but those looked like form letters generated by a bot.

Player-visible comments are the exception, not the rule.

The most common reason for a bug report being closed is if it's not possible to reproduce the issue and the submitted client logs do not provide any additional information that sheds any light on the problem. In these cases, QA and the bug hunters still keep an eye on the volume of reported bugs to try to identify ones that might benefit from concerted, long-term effort to reproduce.

On the topic of bug reports, here's some info that might help.

When to report a bug instead of opening a support ticket

Open a support ticket first on this page if your gameplay has been affected in such a way that you need personal assistance. If you need reimbursement, your character is stuck somewhere and unable to move, or you cannot log in and play the game, a support ticket is the only way to get the help you need. Support tickets go to our customer service group, who are the only group with access to your account information or your character in-game.

If you believe that something you experience is a result of a software defect, a bug report is a separate step that you can take that will directly report problems to Eve's development team. Bug reports can get the software defect corrected, but will not usually result in personal assistance.

Our support team will attempt to report software defects they become aware of in their interactions with players, but as a rule, if you think you have encountered a bug, you want personal assistance, and you also want to help get the software defect corrected, I recommend opening BOTH a support ticket AND a bug report.

Reporting a bug from in-game

When you experience an issue in-game, the BEST way to report a bug is to press F12 and click the "Report Bug" button in the Help window that appears. This will open a page that asks you to provide a title, description, and reproduction steps. It will also allow you to take one or more screenshots, which can be very helpful in communicating the problem. Using this page, we'll receive a package of information from your computer including recent client logs, your hardware and software configuration, and the information you provide, plus some details like which character submitted the report and where you were in space at the time.

Describing the bug

Regarding a description, please try to be as complete as possible about the nature of the problem. "My capacitor doesn't show up," for example, is a description that's ambiguous about whether you're talking about a graphic element being missing or all the expected UI elements being present and reading the wrong number. It also doesn't specify whether you're talking about the in-space HUD (though that might be our assumption) or, say, something like the fitting window, or maybe even a capacitor-related module on your ship.

A better description of a hypothetical problem would be something like: "Occasionally, after jumping through a gate, I notice that for a period of three to five seconds, my in-space capacitor readout indicates that I have 0% capacitor. Despite this, I am able to activate modules, and mousing over the readout indicates 100% capacitor on the tooltip." This description indicates what you were doing when the issue occurred, that it's a UI readout indication, that other UI readouts disagree, that the displayed value is obviously incorrect (since you can activate modules) and how long the problem lasts.

Reproduction steps

Reproduction steps can be problematic if you are encountering something intermittent, but please be specific, and, if possible, complete. "Fit and sit in a ship, undock, and fly around for 3-5 hours watching the capacitor display carefully to see your status after each gate jump" might be one way to put it. If it only happens in a certain ship or always happens right before (say) downtime, mention that in your reproduction steps. A person who follows your steps should be as likely as you are to experience the problem, if possible. (And yes, I realize that some things happen intermittently. It can help to be specific in the reproduction steps about how often they happen, so that a tester knows what they're in for and doesn't simply try a gate jump or two and say "cannot reproduce.")

If you cannot get into the game or wish to report a bug out of game

You can report a bug by going to the Bug Reports page.

How to find the bug report number, see status, or see requests for further information for a bug you've already submitted

You can see your bug reports (both open and closed reports) by visiting the My Bug Reports page. Their bug report numbers will be listed here, and if you should speak directly to a developer to ask about a bug, that number will be very helpful in following up.

Also, note that developers may often ask for further information on the record of notes for the bug itself. You will only see these requests by visiting the My Bug Reports page, and if you do not respond in a reasonable time, the bug may be closed, if the original submission was not enough to fully describe the problem.

Finally

All of us on the team recognize that your reporting bugs through this system requires care, effort, and time. We deeply appreciate your contribution whenever you submit a bug, and you should be aware that your submissions go straight to the relevant development team.

One issue I have though is figuring out how to categorize freezes of the game or things like laggy content in the system. These issues really don't seem to have a place. What would you suggest for issues of not being able to log in? What about laggy performance?

Freezes or laggy performance definitely qualify for a bug report. The best thing you can do is submit an in-game bug while the issue is happening, with a screenshot. You can type ctrl-F to bring up the FPS monitor, which you can use to include a plot of your frame rate in your screenshot.

If you are not able to log in, please submit a support ticket first. If you think you are experiencing a software problem that's causing the issue, you can submit a bug report also, but the purpose of the support ticket is to get help that will allow you to log in. The bug report simply lets the development team know of a potential software issue.

When I submitted my ticket for failure to not log in, I used this:

Category
Game Play > Interfaces, Controls & Menus

Your question belongs in the comment thread for the dirty ship dev blog, but I'll try to answer.



A ship starts clean the first time it appears onscreen, whether you sit in it in a hangar or enter it in space. From there, wall-clock time determines how dirty it is, unless you use the Clean Ship feature. The ship will get more dirty regardless of whether you are docked or in space, occupying the ship or flying something else.

Dirt will accumulate fastest in the first month, and by the end of the first year the ship will look very dirty. Ten years later, the ship will be noticeably more dirty, but it will be pretty close to that one-year-old look.

Interestingly enough, the actual most common use case for closure is support tickets that are misfiled as bug reports! This has been the case for most of this year so far. We are working on raising awareness of the differences between the two so that these mistakes lessen.