Speculate about QA test Before launch

[ButcheredBack]

I'm really sad about this catastrophic launch of the game, and as a developer myself, I'm convicted that this is not the fault of the Dev team but more likely Top level management or Publisher only interested in cash flow and disrespectful for employees who made the game...

But can we agree that given the colossal number of bugs, no QA tests were carried out before the game was launched, or even during the various production stages ?
And I'm not talking about the performance problem, only bugs related to gameplay...

I'm really interested in your thoughts regarding this subject and also any feedback from the team directly maybe ?


Non-native English speaker, sorry for mistakes.

 

[neroden]

I've done some QA. The launch here wasn't bad enough for it to look like no QA at *all* was done. For that, see Victoria 3, where core systems including import-export and warfare didn't work on launch. But it's clear there wasn't enough QA. The bugs in C:S II are mostly showing up around the "edges" -- specific buildings, export of goods with trains and ships, construction on terraformed water, particular pathfinding and data visualization issues, etc. -- this means the game is beta quality, these are things you're supposed to catch in beta testing.

 

[ButcheredBack]

I've done some QA. The launch here wasn't bad enough for it to look like no QA at *all* was done. For that, see Victoria 3, where core systems including import-export and warfare didn't work on launch. But it's clear there wasn't enough QA. The bugs in C:S II are mostly showing up around the "edges" -- specific buildings, export of goods with trains and ships, construction on terraformed water, particular pathfinding and data visualization issues, etc. -- this means the game is beta quality, these are things you're supposed to catch in beta testing.

Liking your point of view but for me it's more likely that "unit test" was done for the most part of it, but when I see all bugs related to interaction between multiple parts and various building of the game. For sure, some testers create cities and properly test the game but they didn't had the time to look in details if buildings were correctly interacting with the city. I'm not going to list all the bugs that I think shouldn't have been there but how can you explain that some of the road don't behave as intended, problems with electricity, water, goods production, citizens don't sleep in the houses etc....

But I see what you mean and I partially agree with you !

Let me be crystal clear : I'm only referring to things I see on the forum as my game won't even launch, so I cannot try it myself for the moment....

 

[Duke49th]

Considering how many content creators played it for months already, I am surprised that a few "game breaking" bugs are still in.
(they are game breaking if you try to play it as intended - but for me only showed up when my city was already a bit bigger...mine is now 60+k citizen)

The import/export issue, the financial issue (unlike others, I can't lose money...not sure where it is coming from, it shows I have a clear deficit but I make millions) and the mail issue, which gives you a -15 on unreliable mail and is a huge penalty.

And what bothers me the most is that there are no mods yet. I am not complaining them moving mods from Steam workshop to their own platform. But...they haven't even done that. They had enough time for that.

For me personally the game stands and falls with mods. No mods = dead game! Especially considering the traffic issues and lack of certain tools/functions in the base game.

And people complain about performance - which oddly enough is better for me than in CS1 lol. (due to the mods I used there and the outdated engine and code of CS1)

 

[Skippy4201705]

Problem is getting youtubers to do you alpha testing for them.

 

[Palerius]

I don't know OPs background and I don't want to be disrespectful but it sounds pretty uneducated to make an assumption about the amount of their QA or even assume there was no QA. Personally I have years of experience in development and I have worked as a Quality Assurance Specialist for some years and can tell you that the amount of bugs and issues in the release does not give you an indicator on the amount of QA done. We don't know how many bugs where found and fixed, how many where found but not fixed yet and how many where deemed "acceptable for now".
You have to understand that this is not what CO wants for their game. They surely dedicated what they could to QA things and (having done QA for an mobile/browser app) I can only imagine the amount of scenarios that need to cover with the complexity of features in the game.

I think we all agree that this was not the release we would have wished for and hopefully CO learns a lesson out of this situation. C:S2 clearly shows the potential to be an absolute banger of a game but for that they need to address the issues that now have come to light and closely listen to the community to balance, adjust, and add elements of the game.

The bottom line is: Behind CO are people, and people make mistakes. If it would be EA, I would be angry and concerned about this but CO/PDX has such a good track record of supporting, fixing and listening, that while I am a bit sad about the situation, I am confident that C:S2 will become the vision that was communicated by CO. And I honestly don't think it will take that long to reach that state.