Diablo III
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Tsarnis		How to Write a Good Bug Report(1)Category: PTR Bug ReportsOctober-19-2015 10:15 AM PDT (8 years ago) Go to Blizzard forum post
Greetings Heroes,

Welcome to Diablo III PTR Bug Report Forums! To get started on this forum, please read through this guide as it explains some Do's and Don't's for bug testing and reporting.

Ground Rules
  • Feedback is NOT a bug. Anything related to feedback, class balance, boss suggestions, etc. belongs in another forum.


  • My team and I read every single thread that is posted on this forum. However, I will not always respond to every thread. If you do not get a blue response, please DO NOT bump posts. I will ignore and possibly delete any post that simply says "Bump" or demands a response from a Blizzard poster.


  • When reporting a bug, please make a thread for each bug you find. Threads that contain multiple bugs are difficult to manage, especially if we are unable to reproduce any of them on our end.


  • Please use the Search feature to search the forum and see what bugs are post. If you have a duplicate thread, I will lock it and point you to the current thread where the bug is being discussed.


  • Please specify which character on your account experienced the issue you are reporting. If you are posting using a different game account (WoW/SC2/etc.) please include your battletag in your post.


  • Finally, please only discuss bugs within the threads. Avoid off topic discussions or other things not related to the bug in the thread. Don't use bug report threads as a platform for discussing game balance, design, or to provide feedback or other subjective opinions about the game.


Bug Writing
Ok, you found a bug, congratulations! But now what? This guide will explain how to accurately write a bug report.

When posting a bug, please begin with a one or two sentence Summary that attempts to accurately describe the bug. We should be able to understand at least 75% of the issue you are reporting simply by looking at your Summary. I understand that the size of the Summary has to be short, but please do your best.

  • Good summary: The tooltip for the Barbarian's Bash skill contains a typo.

  • Bad summary: Bug with smash

After your Summary, include a brief description of the bug you experienced. Include as much RELEVANT information as you can. Where you in multiplayer? Could you reproduce the issue? Specifics are preferred as we need to know as much as possible about the issue.

If you have steps and can reproduce them consistently, write them out. This will help Quality Assurance get a must faster turn around time reproducing the issue and reporting it to the Diablo III developers.

Finally, it always helps to attach a link to Imgur (or another picture hosting site) that displays a screenshot of the bug. If you need to include a video, link to a video as well.

Types of Bugs
Below are some different types of bugs you may encounter in Diablo III. I also have included the specific information I would like for each bug reported of this type.

Combat bugs - These are pretty simple. If there is a broken skill in the game, include the name of the skill and the class that uses the skill.

  • Example: The Barbarian's skill Bash does not knock enemies away.


Quest bugs - These can be complicated. For quest issues, we request that you include two things:

    1. Please include the name of the quest and quest step that you were on when you encountered the bug. The name of the quest is the name that displays at the top of your quest log, while the quest step is the specific instructions for you to complete in the quest.

    2. Please specify whether this occurred in multiplayer or solo play.

  • Example: During the quest "The Fire From The Sky : Slay a Wretched Mother", you cannot kill the Wretched Mother in multiplayer.


Environment bugs - Finally, Environment bugs round out the specific types of bugs I need more information about. For Environment bugs, please describe the issue you found and tell me what level area it is located in. The level area is simply the name of the sub-zone you are in and can be found above the minimap. Every location in the game has a level area, and it helps to know this before I start looking.

Screenshots are perfect for Environment bugs as well. They will accurately display the issue you are seeing. Screenshots can be taken by pressing Print Screen and can be found in the Screenshots folder in the Documents/Diablo III folder. Uploading a screenshot to an online photo site like Imgur and linking it back to your thread would help me a lot as well.

  • Example - In New Tristram, one of the houses is bright pink.


Crashes
Crashes are getting their own section because of their complexity. One major way you can help Blizzard out is by filling out the crash box that appears if you crash. Simply write a description of what happened when you crashed. Were you in multiplayer? Again, specifics are key and can really help us narrow down the cause of any bugs you encounter and get them fixed as quickly as possible.

Again, welcome to the PTR!!! Following these guidelines will allow all of us to work together as efficiently as possible. Thanks for reading and enjoy your look at what's coming for the game in the future!
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