Magnusheart Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 (edited) BioWare a member of the incredible family of EA studios, has created some of the world's best-selling titles including the award-winning Baldur's Gate, the Neverwinter Nights series, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Original BioWare-created IPs includes Jade Empire, the critically acclaimed Mass Effect and Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood for the Nintendo DS. BioWare is hard at work on the epic fantasy RPG Dragon Age; and Star Wars: The Old Republic, our massively multiplayer online game being developed at BioWare Austin. BioWare Austin is looking for a Contract QA Analyst for the Star Wars: The Old Republic team. Note: This is a temporary, on-site position; no relocation assistance will be provided. RESPONSIBILITIES Assists in day to day testing of the product Tracks service issues from beginning to end Finds and reports issues/bugs/inconsistencies Clarifies issues (providing detailed information if necessary) Verifies the resolution of issues through to the end of the testing process Assists in the generation and execution of test cases Generates status reports on current and completed tasks SKILLS/REQUIREMENTS 1+ year testing experience, preferably in the games industry Understands the software development life cycle Understands basic software testing concepts Solid problem identification skills Ability to work independently and with little direction Ability to write detailed, accurate test plans Ability to stay focused when handling repetitive and monotonous tasks Ability to manage multiple assigned tasks Familiarity with/ability to troubleshoot PC Hardware/Software Experience with the MS Office family of products and crazy gaming skills Experience with Windows XP/Vista Focus on continuous improvement Amazing, freakishly weird attention to detail Great verbal and written communication skills A quoted copy of the Bioware' Quality Assurance contract page requirements to be hired to be a Quality Assurance Tester. I am curious about a few things. For a large chunk of this games' development we avoided using the PTS. which is basically players doing this for free. There are a lot of bugs happening, from QA on Cartel Market goods which we buy for cosmetics and should be perfect in what it does but go down the pooper, to people cheating in Huttball with placed knockbacks to get the ball carrier into the out of bounds section outside the map to free run to the goal or hold it for a carry based win. I wanted to know how well connected you guys are to the Quality Assurance team. Been over a year for Ashara and the others to get a body, and other year long bugs like Kallig's Mask not working with a hood. I know 5 or so players on Jung ma alone who would be happy to freelance stuff who are good with the underlined bits.(and no, I'm not high horsing myself on this.) But just how often do you guys communicate to Home Base? Phone call away or a trip down the elevator? Edited July 15, 2013 by Magnusheart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
discbox Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 BioWare a member of the incredible family of EA studios Sheldon: "Sarcasm?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tatile Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 I think "connected to the QA team" is where this (and a lot of other places, actually) are going wrong. The veracity The Trenches might be up for debate, but given what I know of the service industry and the general public around IT, I would not be surprised to find out a lot of it is true. It's entirely possible that Bioware has a team finding a lot of the bugs you've already mentioned, but the bugs are not being fixed because either they are not deemed important by management (it always falls down to management) or they think players won't notice. It's possible that the management doesn't realise how often "freakish attention to detail" crops up in the general population. Or it could just be that their code is the most freakishly convoluted, Lovecraftian horror-inspired malfeasance to be conjured into existence and it really does take them over a year to find out what happened to Vector's skin. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnusheart Posted July 15, 2013 Author Share Posted July 15, 2013 You would think when they were designing the Diabolist set to notice on every body/sex your head sticks out of the hood on that hood model on every body animation setting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tatile Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 You would think when they were designing the Diabolist set to notice on every body/sex your head sticks out of the hood on that hood model on every body animation setting. Well, they didn't notice that in their Genteel Dress set images, the male version is missing a lot (read=all) of detail that the female version has. They tried to fix it, and then everyone said they broke it () They didn't notice that, in their own images of the skiff series of mounts, Male Body Type 3 gets the fruit plate stuck to their hands. They still haven't noticed that with some of the Dancer/Slave outfits, the crotch clips through the panties. So frankly I'm not surprised that no one paid attention to the head-clipping issue. Like I said before, they probably assumed we wouldn't notice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkerus Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 A quoted copy of the Bioware' Quality Assurance contract page requirements to be hired to be a Quality Assurance Tester. I am curious about a few things. For a large chunk of this games' development we avoided using the PTS. which is basically players doing this for free. There are a lot of bugs happening, from QA on Cartel Market goods which we buy for cosmetics and should be perfect in what it does but go down the pooper, to people cheating in Huttball with placed knockbacks to get the ball carrier into the out of bounds section outside the map to free run to the goal or hold it for a carry based win. I wanted to know how well connected you guys are to the Quality Assurance team. Been over a year for Ashara and the others to get a body, and other year long bugs like Kallig's Mask not working with a hood. I know 5 or so players on Jung ma alone who would be happy to freelance stuff who are good with the underlined bits.(and no, I'm not high horsing myself on this.) But just how often do you guys communicate to Home Base? Phone call away or a trip down the elevator? NO one is going to respond to you and explain their internal processes. Get real. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avicii Posted July 15, 2013 Share Posted July 15, 2013 (edited) I work as a Test Engineer for a software company even though my background in DB development. Sometimes you let bugs go live if they are not game breaking and the level of effort is high to fix them. You weigh the cost of resolving the issue. Sometimes it's a issue with a 3rd party toolbar or piece that is outside of your control and another company has to address first. Then you need to upgrade internal pieces before you can resolve the issue in your software which can be a cumbersome process. I am not saying this is the issue but it could be. For instance our product uses the 4.0 .NET Framework now there is a bug in this framework that effects the Isolated Storage folder in user machines. We reported this to MS and they acknowledged the bug but said the level of effort was to high to fix in 4.0 and when they release the new framework they will address it even though the bug was introduced in 4.0 by them. Just a little perspective on how it goes sometimes. To assume they missed obvious bugs is a reach they like noticed them but there are reasons they didn't address them is my guess. Edited July 15, 2013 by Avicii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnusheart Posted July 15, 2013 Author Share Posted July 15, 2013 (edited) A nice insight, disappointing. but nice. To focus on one subject though, Cartel Market goodies. the highest money making process for the game itself, and the fastest of new content being pushed through into the game. It is based on fluff and looks. And some of the most complaints in bug reports have been about all the bugs related to the fluff sets. (Calo Nord's, Diabolist's heavy clipping errors etc.) When free to play hit, they pre-added the entire first shipment of items, which could be seen on swtor-spy and torhead. All of the attachments to the gear were not saved. so they were blank body paint versions of everything. It caused a flame war half as large to the Star Wars vs Star Trek. You would think the bigwigs holding the lightsabers would of pub the hammer down on the Cartel Market team. Edited July 15, 2013 by Magnusheart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts