How to send Feedback & Bug Reports
As a Community Manager, I receive a LOT of feedback every day.
But most of the time, players forget the most crucial part of “Feed-back”… Feed! Buy delicious dishes to your CM, so they can read your comments properly! … Wait, that’s not it.
Let’s talk about feedback, and how to report bugs to the development team.
Feed!
Ha, I’ve already spent the Feed joke. Let’s move on then.
What is Feedback? Why Feedback?
But we never ask How Feedback is going 🙁
Feedback is defined as a return of information. An example of feedback is a player giving constructive criticism after a game session… in the best of all worlds.
I’m not going to give a whole speech about Listening Culture, and how to implement your coworkers’ feedback into your projects.
► This article is aimed at Players; A quick guide to improve their comments to the development teams: Bug Reports posts on forums, suggestions on Discord, comments on Twitter, etc…
💡 Development Team ≠ “Programmers”!
The Development Team is the team working on the development of the game: Producers, Community Managers, Quality Assurance, Programmers, Designers, …
While the community’s opinion is instrumental in building a successful game, note that the Development Team has their own vision of the game, and how they want to build it.
They follow a red line with the features, the story, etc… and all the topics that have been discussed during their meetings.
Developers don’t have to listen, they only do it because they want to please the players. Of course in the end, this often results in increased sales if the feedback has been well implemented… but just as a reminder: We don’t have to listen to your opinion;Unless there is a Community Team hired to do so of course, or directly the very motivated programmers for smaller indies.
💡 An idea is always better when discussed by several people with different perspectives, and this is where players can bring THEIR own opinions about the game THEY play.
Imagine that your feedback is a slice of cheese: Throw it at the wall. If it sticks, it sticks, and it is now part of the house. If it falls, well, it falls. Don’t eat it eww, try with another slice of cheese and throw it from another angle maybe. Is it a good allegory? … I don’t know… What do you think? Give me your feedback! Or don’t, I know it’s a bad allegory. Why am I like this.
SO!
You are a passionate player, and you have played a game… but maybe there is something you haven’t enjoyed as much as you could have?
You have an opinion, you want to voice it, and you want to be heard by the development team.
It is difficult to be heard: There are so many other pieces of feedback, you don’t find a lot of comments from the dev team maybe they don’t care, and in the end: you think you will waste time.
Trust me, there are teams reading your comments, assessing it with other similar comments, and escalating it to Management. It is not possible to reply to every single comments, and players would expect their feedback to be implemented right away because the dev team has acknowledged it publicly.
But even if you have no direct answer straight away, it might have an impact on the development.
In the best of worlds, the feedback process is the following:
- You have built your feedback properly, it is read, quantified, and qualified by Community Managers.
- Producers will assess if there are resources to be spent, development time, on that particular feedback raised by the community.
- Is it doable with the current game engine, and other technology?
- Will this be used a lot by players? Is it a popular demand? Is it really such a big issue?
- If yes, let’s investigate that suggestion internally. Iterations start, testing, bug hunting, …
- [There are other steps that make a suggestion/feedback go Live as a proper feature or change]
You can’t expect the development to “JUST” change something, as I often read. It can take months for your suggestion to appear in-game after being picked up, it is a complex process.
To be noted as well, sometimes a vocal minority can make it look like it’s a big deal, but the game’s data says otherwise: “the vast majority of the community use the feature exactly as it should be”. That’s where developers might have to change the perception of something being broken among the community, and not the feature itself.
It doesn’t mean that players voicing their feedback isn’t something valuable. Players’ perception is very important, it could be that a feature isn’t clear enough.
Data & Players feedback are two different things that must be aggregated together to produce an even better piece of feedback.
How to propose Suggestions & Feedback
First thing first… Your comments are read by REAL humans! Shocker, I know.
Your post must always have the following basic characteristics:
- As short as possible, go to the point, add granularity if necessary but be concise
- Constructive, explain why
- Be kind, do not attack, be supportive
- One post = 1 feedback, do not vomit all your thoughts in a single comment.
If you follow these rules, you will increase your chances of being read tenfold.
Long Posts can be interesting, but you must structure it. Divide your text into 2-3 chapters, and illustrate your thoughts.
▲ I would suggest you to follow these guidelines when posting feedback:
- Where should I write about my opinion?
- 💡 Where the development team is active, whether it’s their Twitter, or Forums, or Discord, …
- 💡 Do NOT contact developers personally, use the common platforms.
- 💡 As I have explained, understand that feedback needs to be filtered & assessed by people who know how to do so: Community Managers.
- Write everything down: what you had in mind, what you wanted to comment about.
- Be kind and courteous, do not vent your frustration
- 💡 If you harass the development team, you comment will be rightly ignored.
- 💡 Yeah, but your opinion matters? You are frustrated? Leave that at the door!
- Re-read your post, improve the wording, and structure it.
- Re-read it, make it shorter.
- Re-read it, is it really constructive?
- 💡 Do not try to always find solutions. Focus on what you like & don’t like, your emotions, and let the devs find a solution.
- Does it need an illustration of your thoughts, to help convey your idea?
- Check that you are writing as “I”, and not “we” or “the community thinks that”. It is only your opinion, not a general view.
- Find an excellent title, short, and concise.
- 💡 I always review my title after I have written my post.
- The best of the best: Don’t post it now! Wait a few hours and do something else. Then proofread your post again, later.
- Is it still good? If yes, post it.
- If it doesn’t seem right, rework your comment so it is digestable & a good piece of feedback.
- Support the development team. Again: they’re human. Be kind, always.
▲ An example, with something very random.
Context is soft bread, I like it as it is but… could it be even better?!
[The Soft Bread Leaves Something To Be Desired… Could it be Grilled & Buttered?]
Hey everyone,
I ate your Soft Bread this morning, and realised how good it was!
However after a while it became a bit bland… Would it be possible to let the players choose the texture & flavour of the Soft Bread?Here are two suggestions that I think could improve its texture & flavour; But maybe there are other ways?
- Grilled: Placing the soft bread in a toaster for a minute makes it even better. The bread is now crispy!
- Buttered: If you apply a very thin layer of salted butter after that, the result is fantastic! The flavour contrasts well.
{Image of the soft bread, grilled, and slightly buttered}
What do you think? Drop a comment so we can enhance the Soft Bread together! 🙂
Cheers,
Notes:
- Visible & Appealing Title
- Be nice, greet everyone.
- Give devs a little pat on the shoulder.
- Your emotions matter. How does the Soft Bread make you feel?
- Do you have ideas? List them in a structured way.
- An image will help everyone better understand what you mean. Draw it, do a montage.
- Ask the others to comment. More Comments & Views will attract the developers’ eyes.
- Be polite & courteous.
How to Report Bugs
This is a different kind of feedback, aimed at Bugs. Players provide the development team with details & insights, praying for a fix to be found.
Provide the devs with A LOT of information, because these comments will be checked in-depth by the Quality Assurance Team, the Support Team, and also the Community team while escalating the top issues reported by the community.
If the developers can’t reproduce the reported bug… sadly it is most likely that it won’t be “fixed”.
Maybe the bug is very specific and caused by your machine? Its version? Another app conflicting with it? Your antivirus? Your character’s class? …
- What Issue did you experience? Put words on the problem
- What’s your platform? PC? MAC? PS5? XBox One X? Other?
- What were you doing when it happened?
- What day? hour? Minute?
- Did you push a specific bind when it occurred?
- Did you talk to a specific character?
- Can you reproduce it yourself?
- Does it happen 100% of the time?
- Do you have images or a video?
- Provide a MSINFO if it is a private ticket
- Provide a DXDiag if it is a private ticket
- As much details as you can, in a structured/readable way! There is no such thing as too many details in Bug Reports.
Tracking a bug requires a lot of work, so ease the employees’ lives by adding as much information as possible!
💡 It can literally take only minutes for a bug to be tracked & fixed on the developers builds if it is well documented… but then there are many other steps & blockers preventing a fix to be released to the public right away. I know it is frustrating, but be patient, venting won’t solve the problem. In fact it might even slow the process down.
💡Create a new thread if a developer hasn’t commented on the issue already, in an effort to raise awareness by the number of threads.
💡 Post in the same thread if a developer has commented on the matter already, in an effort to centralise information.
Hopefully this article will enhance your next Feedback pieces, and Bug Reports 🙂
Cheers!