What would you ask Bolfrim - the lead tester at CipSoft?

Question

Hello everyone

TibiaQA.com will be interviewing Bolfrim - the lead tester at CipSoft. Here's your opportunity to suggest questions that we will be submitting to him early January. Please note, that it's better if questions are related to the scope of Bolfrim's work - testing. He may not have any updates on the upcoming features or the work of other departments.

Authors of the best questions, that are forwarded to Bolfrim, will be rewarded with 20 bonus points on TibiaQA and 10 bonus points on Meta.

The interview will be published after we receive answers from Bolfrim. Hopefully this will be by the end of January, but no promises can be made, as all depends on when Bolfrim finds the time to send the answers.

There's no limit to the number of questions one user can suggest.

We are looking forward to your interview question suggestions!
The TibiaQA.com team

Comments

Just curiosity the questions were already sent?

Answer 1

Awesome idea, Ellotris! That will be fun!

Here are the questions that I want to suggest:

1) What was the weirdest bug that you have found on Tibia when testing it?

2) What memorable story do you have related to Tibia's testing?

3) Why did you killed so many people some years ago in Edron? You seemed a little bit angry... :P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbgQa8tWqCE

4) Did you like the boss that you had on Tibia during the 15th Anniversary festivities?

5) What is the coolest part of being the lead tester? And what is the worst part of it?

6) Do you participate or perform some "special tests" during the private and/or public Test Server with regular players before each big update (Summer/Winter) sometimes? I'm asking that because I had the opportunity to test a quest with the Knightmare in person (Well, actually I've met the char "Knightmare on Antica" after a request that he made on the chat :P) this last Test Server of the Winter Update of 2018!

7) What was the most interesting challenge that you have faced on Cipsoft as the lead tester? What kind of ability someone should develop in order to be a successful lead tester?

8) Can you indicate to us if testing a MMORPG like Tibia is different someway in comparison to testing other styles of games (i. e.: FPS, RTS, MOBA, etc)? If there is a difference, which disadvantages or advantages can you tell us about the testing procedures of Tibia?

Comments

OMG!!! thats a lot of good questions!!!! You did a research or something? that looks like a profissional interview questions xD

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haha, thank you :)

Answer 2

mmmm... Hello, Ellotris.

What about ask him the way he uses to test? "Is there a "closed Tibia" only for testers? Which kind of test he does? Creatures damages? Itens defense? How it works? Leaving a character receiving damage or what?".

Maybe a few questions about him, like: "do you have a normal account inside official Tibia just for play casually?".

Answer 3

How many tests are needed to something be implemented into the game ?

Why there is so many bugs or failures even after test server or bug fixes ?

Answer 4

Some suggested questions from the topic on Reddit:

1. Is anyone on staff who has organically played a character from level 1-500+? If not, what measures do you take to properly balance endgame content beyond receiving feedback from test server testers? The reason I want this question asked is because the test server has not yielded balanced content on many of the most recent updates, and often changes are made that an organic (not bought) endgame player can easily identify as frankly, absurd.

2. What is the future of the experimental game servers? (Zuna & Zunera)
3. Do you frequent other social platforms to find feedback/bugs? Like posts on reddit, clips on YouTube/ Twitch, etc.
4. From the point of view of engineering, how does testing works with the tibia product? Are there any automated framework for unit tests? How different combinations of situations are tested? Can you talk about size the of the test cases pool?
5. What was the most harming hack/exploit ever exposed/found that could be easily fixed? What I mean is: surely there must have been a situation which had a strong impact and was a trivial thing to fix.
6. What does bug tracking look like? Have you commercial or your own tool/frameworks?
7. How many testers are working in your team? Have you manual and automation testers, what's their roles?
8. Another question I have is to what degree do you test boss or hunting content. Do you get four primary testers to hunt a spawn and get an idea if it is possible or balanced? And for large team bosses do you test it with full teams of different levels? What kind of testing would you say is done most, quest testing balance testing boss testing?
9. Have you ever tested power abusing guilds and the black market behind Tibia?
10. What do you think about implementing a permanent test server (maybe 3 shards for USA, EU, and SA? ) with the main purpose of balancing items, skills, and monsters? This would be like the PBE server on League of Legends. Don't you think that receiving constant feedback and testing balancing with players is the way to go for Tibia?
11. How the testing team feels the class balance as of now at low, high and endgame content?
12. What does the test team feel as the most needed Quality of life improvements we are lacking?
13. How is the test conducted to balance exp and gold per hours on new places? Do you have an algorithm to emulate different teams hunting there? The reason for this question. I think that as a software company they should use some sort of IA to generate enough data to compare if the place is good or bad. But I don't really think they do it. I don't think they even run one character on hand to test it.

Comments

amazing questions! I really want to know the answer about Zuna and Zunera plans. By the way, having a permanent Test Server would be the way to go for Tibia. I want to know his thoughts about it as well.