Hello everyone,
As you may have noticed in our changelog, the problems with canceled contracts have been corrected, thanks to a fix for Outback contracts and a better explanation of the contracts.
We'd like to take some time to share with you a behind-the-scenes look at this bug hunt. How we analyze them, how we find them, and what solutions we come up with to improve your gaming experience.
On our social networks and discord, many of you have told us: "Why are my contracts breaking, is it a bug?"
Most of the time, after chatting a little, the team realized that this was a normal breach of contract (broken commitments on the airport side, lack of punctuality, missing services, passenger dissatisfaction with your terminal's facilities...).
As soon as the airline passes a certain level of dissatisfaction, it considers that the commitments have not been met, and the contract is terminated.
If you have any questions about contracts, check out our fandom's tips for 100% contract fulfillment!
However, there remained a proportion of unexplained Contract Breakdowns that could be bugs.
We first need to reproduce it to determine the cause, i.e., to cause it ourselves with the phones we use to test the game regularly.
This is the task of Armand, Bekir, and Charlie, who you can meet on the discord.
But without further information, they were at a dead end.
An additional lead from Discord made the search easier: after a certain patch, we had noticed a surge in new reports concerning Outback contracts, without any increase in the other airlines. When we investigated, we realized that following an update, in some contracts, Outback PAXs were so demanding that contracts were impossible to fulfill.
We then corrected this satisfaction threshold and lowered PAX Outback's expectations.
But we knew that the reason we didn't immediately see the link between Outback and PAX was because it was drowned out by reports, most of due to a lack of understanding of the breach of contract and that this had been the case for a long time. It wasn't a bug, but it was a problem for our players.
The QA team passed this information on to the Game Design team at a meeting, who came up with a solution: We then decided to add details to make the contracts easier to understand.
From now on, when your contract is terminated due to a punctuality problem, you'll be informed directly and told precisely that the runway was occupied at the time the plane should have left.
I hope this example has given you a better understanding of the challenges we face in improving your gaming experience, by fixing bugs and better explaining the game's mechanics.
We continue to read your feedback and you can follow the progress of our investigations with this board, which we document in real-time to allow you to track our progress. The columns show the various stages in the resolution of a bug. Check it out!
As you may have noticed in our changelog, the problems with canceled contracts have been corrected, thanks to a fix for Outback contracts and a better explanation of the contracts.
We'd like to take some time to share with you a behind-the-scenes look at this bug hunt. How we analyze them, how we find them, and what solutions we come up with to improve your gaming experience.
-----------------------
On our social networks and discord, many of you have told us: "Why are my contracts breaking, is it a bug?"
Most of the time, after chatting a little, the team realized that this was a normal breach of contract (broken commitments on the airport side, lack of punctuality, missing services, passenger dissatisfaction with your terminal's facilities...).
As soon as the airline passes a certain level of dissatisfaction, it considers that the commitments have not been met, and the contract is terminated.
If you have any questions about contracts, check out our fandom's tips for 100% contract fulfillment!
However, there remained a proportion of unexplained Contract Breakdowns that could be bugs.
We first need to reproduce it to determine the cause, i.e., to cause it ourselves with the phones we use to test the game regularly.
This is the task of Armand, Bekir, and Charlie, who you can meet on the discord.
But without further information, they were at a dead end.
An additional lead from Discord made the search easier: after a certain patch, we had noticed a surge in new reports concerning Outback contracts, without any increase in the other airlines. When we investigated, we realized that following an update, in some contracts, Outback PAXs were so demanding that contracts were impossible to fulfill.
We then corrected this satisfaction threshold and lowered PAX Outback's expectations.
But we knew that the reason we didn't immediately see the link between Outback and PAX was because it was drowned out by reports, most of due to a lack of understanding of the breach of contract and that this had been the case for a long time. It wasn't a bug, but it was a problem for our players.
The QA team passed this information on to the Game Design team at a meeting, who came up with a solution: We then decided to add details to make the contracts easier to understand.
From now on, when your contract is terminated due to a punctuality problem, you'll be informed directly and told precisely that the runway was occupied at the time the plane should have left.
I hope this example has given you a better understanding of the challenges we face in improving your gaming experience, by fixing bugs and better explaining the game's mechanics.
We continue to read your feedback and you can follow the progress of our investigations with this board, which we document in real-time to allow you to track our progress. The columns show the various stages in the resolution of a bug. Check it out!