Today, we are rolling out a new method for you to report bugs with Unreal Engine 4 to the Engine Support team, the Unreal Engine Bug Submission Form.
In the past, we used AnswerHub’s Bug Reports section as a landing page for these reports; however, starting today, we ask that you instead fill out the Bug Submission Form. This form will act as a template for you to provide the information that is needed in order to investigate the bug. You will notice that several of the fields are required, so please fill these out to the best of your ability for any reports. The more information that you include, the more efficiently and accurately we can diagnose the issue, so don’t hesitate to add a test project, screenshots, or additional information in the ‘Additional Notes’ section.
It is important to note that you should not expect direct correspondence from a staff member as a result of your report. If the issue is able to be reproduced and logged, you will be able to find it on our Public Bug Tracker, using a title as similar as possible to the title of your report (so make sure to use something descriptive!). Please check the Public Bug Tracker before submitting a report, as your issue may have already been logged there.
I like that things are changing. Change is good. I would love to see this radical change though:
Something like Crash Reporter, but manually enabled from within the Editor or Epic Launcher. It collects the appropriate data and also you can take screenshots (sort of like gyazo) and auto attaches to the report. Then when there’s a status update on it, you click on the bug report icon and see if it requires attention or has been filed to issues.On top of all that, you can search for it. But as another user you cannot just post like you can in AH, but you can ping whoever is working on that ticket with additional findings, and if relevant it will be attached to that report as well.
Oh don’t forget about my idea on UDN-Lite version of direct 1:1 paid support.
We can no longer *talk *to Epic about bugs? Why did you do this change? The answerhub was a pretty perfect place for bug reports.
With this method, there is no way to see what bugs other people reported. Many bug reports on the answerhub need comments from many different people that help each other finding the cause of some bug, often without too much intervention from epic. You want to kill all of that collaboration and make people fill out some form and wait? And cause 10 people to fill out the form with the exact same data, because they can’t know about anyone else who already submitted the same thing? That’s a huge waste of time for many people now. And what will that lead to? No one will report bugs any more. Very bad!
I have reported hundreds of bugs on the answerhub in the last 3 years. I very much liked all the discussion I had with many people that had the same issues I had. I often googled for bugs and found bug reports on the answerhub. Often also before anyone from Epic commented on there and could have entered them into the issue tracker. You really want to prevent all of that from happening?
Thats a really, really bad thing. For collaboration in the community, and in the end for UE4 as a whole
How are we supposed to give back-and-forth feedback now if there is a misunderstanding about the bug? Is it not possible to just add some of the same fields to answerhub, and make some of them mandatory if it is categorized as a bug report?
And do you expect us to manually search issue database every day or every few days to check if our issue is there? And what if title of issue needs to be changed/refined? This sounds really bad.
There’s no space to discuss issue… seriously? Very often you need to discuss issue a bit before assigning it to someone…
And what happens next? Any plans for improving AH or we will be informed after implementing changes (good or bad)?
I’m thinking about ignoring this new terrible thingie and keep reporting on Answer Hub…
I’m sorry for providing only negative feedback, but I don’t see any improvement here.
I never agreed with people that disliked the AH. I love UE4, and I always loved the AH and how bug reporting there worked.
The answerhub was really a very nice place for bug reports. As I said, I reported probably more than 100 bugs on the answerhub. I got a response from Epic on every single one of those. Epic always said they will respond to your bug report on the answerhub within a few days, and if they don’t, you should bump it until you get a response. They always delivered on that promise (at least for me). That made the AH a place where it felt good to report bugs.
I would not have reported most bugs if I would not have been sure that I get a response from Epic about those relatively soon. Filling out a form without knowing if you will get any response is a very bad feeling. For bug reports, its important that you are guaranteed to get an answer on it. Very important.
I can see where this is comming from. Epic Staff from Answerhub is annoyed by asking people for more details and with this new system you make sure that Epic Staff only have to confirm the bug and cut all the back and forth to get more information from the user. However, who had the brilliant idea to cut the communication with other users that in a lot of cases lead to the solution in Answerhub?! This should just be integrated in Answerhub, why make a new website for that?! You seriously need a proper webteam that implements that in Answerhub (and btw make this forum look less ugly).
I don’t like this either. Just make some more mandatory fields for bug reports in answerhub. That would achieve the same thing and I also think there will be more duplicates if you are supposed to search for a bug yourself.
Why did we do this?
There were a significant number of bug reports coming in with insufficient information, so this form was created to increase the likelihood that we’ll be able to reproduce bugs that have been submitted and increase the rate at which bugs are processed.
What about visibility and collaboration?
Bugs will be visible on the Public Bug Tracker after we’re able to reproduce them and it is determined not to be a design request. You can always create a public thread on AnswerHub discussing the issue and reference the ID of the bug, once it becomes available. You’ll still be able to collaborate, discuss issues, and work on solutions together.
What if Epic needs more info?
If an email address is provided in the form and the team needs clarification around the bug, then they’ll reach out to do so.
Any plans for improving AH?
Yes, however I do not have any details regarding our plan that I am able to share at this time.
Epic build supreme game engines… But this… Is Epic just another cheap outsourcer saving 2 cents now?
Seriously Epic have no internal webteam for this type of thing? Why not push a few PUBG dollars this way…
It just feels like a lazy hack tbh. In the same way as when ‘Google Docs’ was used for marketplace voting.
What’s worse now though, there’s no link between the ‘Bug Submitter’, and the Forums / Answer-Hub etc.
As others have said, there’s no cross-communication, WTF? That doesn’t make any sense at all: Example…
It doesn’t make sense either, as ‘Optional EMAIL’ means no default handle to the Submitter… Why do that?
Plus, what’s the Privacy Policy of the 3rd party website… Who wants to ship their email address off there?
Forum users watch-out, as Screenshots / Video-Footage can easily contain ‘personal info’ in the background.
If this is the new direction or the total sum of the candid feedback provided here. Then forget it, never using it!
Yep. That. Besides answers from support team, you might have someone random, who is aware of the issue discussed, chiming in.
I’m willing to bet that form alone would not affect the amount/quality of information, coming with bug report, in any way. Nothing stops You from flooding relevant fields with unrelated garbage. And if one did not put efforts into reporting bug on AH properly, nothing would force him to do better, using the form.
Speaking of the form itself, if I did not know what it was, it would have looked quite shady to me.
Lastly, this form looks like an invitation for bots. There are many of them bots out there in the wilds. It would be shame, if them bots decided to report a few kilothousands of not-so-relevant bugs.
Im not the biggest fan of AnswerHub but I do agree with everyone that the collaboration is an important part of resolving issues. With that said why not have a stream on how to report bugs and give people who arnt at Epic the required vocabulary to communicate more effectively. That seems to be the biggest hurdle is Epic seems reluctant to trust the community and some Q/A staff are less experienced with the engine than community leaders, it could even be a chance to employ some of these experienced UE4 users from the community who already have a rapport with us.
I appreciate the move to try and refine the process and make it more cost effective for everyone, overall though Epic need to show people that correctly reporting a bug is worthwhile by not treating the community like minions, Ive seen some pretty poor attitudes towards people who are taking their own time out to try to help Epic. On the flip side Ive seen some really poor attitude from the community but those people are weeded out quickly and not taken seriously by the community or Epic so I dont see this as problematic.
My solution would be making badges worth something and trusting some community members (as they are with forum moderation) to do official bug reports, to act as technical community leaders who can be a go to for people wanting to make serious requests and/or bug reports. Even if these people were Epic employees but on a whole I dont see much socialising and team building from Epic in the community and thats what it takes to build trust, its entirely possible that Epic employees are incognito but that doesnt really help. I would just like to see less barriers and more sharing of not just knowledge but intellect
I believe thats the best way to bolster not only bug reports but the community and UE longer term.
Lots of times I’ll find a bug, go to report it, and find someone else already reported it. Then when I find a workaround, I post it on their Answerhub thread so that everyone can benefit. The same thing happens on my bug reports. I feel like this change is going to kill off a lot of discoverability, communication, searchability and community problem solving.
And it is going to make following up on your own bug reports difficult if you find out more information. There will be nowhere to post the additional information until things have gone through several steps.
I don’t really mind if it is through Answerhub or not in the end, but it would be nice to be able to comment on the bug reports and easily keep track of them. Otherwise this is almost just like the crash reporter.
I would think a simple solution would be to make this form auto-post to AnswerHub. That way all bug reports get posted to AnswerHub and everyone would have access to new and existing bug reports via AH, but Epic would still get reports sent directly to them with this new system, and it would have the added benefit of standardizing initial information AnswerHub bug reports. Just a thought.
I’d guess Epic is using Jira(like a lot of other companies) for BugTracking. Is there any consideration of making a mirrored public Jira?
Embarcadero does this for their products, for example. So you can report a Bug in Jira, it gets a mirrored entry to their internal Tracker. And once done, they mirror the result back to the public one.
This allows proper discussion in a detailed Ticket.
I use Unreal only for sparetimeprojects but work at a NonGaming-Softwarecompany. We use Jira, and the options for organization and filtering are great.
Why did we do this?
There were a significant number of bug reports coming in with insufficient information, so this form was created to increase the likelihood that we’ll be able to reproduce bugs that have been submitted and increase the rate at which bugs are processed.
In many cases, I’ve seen where a number of people will have the same issue, but Epic can’t reproduce it because they don’t have access to the sort of complex project where the problem occurs. The old standby, “reproduce it in a clean project” is meaningless in most contexts.
What about visibility and collaboration?
Bugs will be visible on the Public Bug Tracker after we’re able to reproduce them and it is determined not to be a design request. You can always create a public thread on AnswerHub discussing the issue and reference the ID of the bug, once it becomes available. You’ll still be able to collaborate, discuss issues, and work on solutions together.
Again, Epic can’t reproduce them so this presumes that the issues don’t exist. Sorry, that’s completely bogus.
What if Epic needs more info?
If an email address is provided in the form and the team needs clarification around the bug, then they’ll reach out to do so.
Meaning, Epic plans to stop communicating directly with bug submitters.
