What's the difference between severity and priority?

Severity is how bad a bug's impact is when it occurs (a progress-losing crash is high-severity; a cosmetic glitch is low-severity), an intrinsic property of the bug. Priority is how urgently you'll fix it, a decision that combines severity with other factors, especially reach (how many players are affected), plus cost and goals. Severity is how bad; priority is how soon, and they often diverge.

Can a high-severity bug be low priority?

Yes. Severity measures how bad a bug is for a player who hits it, but priority also weighs how many players are affected. A high-severity bug (say, a crash) that affects only three players in a rare condition might be lower priority than a medium-severity bug affecting thousands, because priority combines severity with reach. That's why severity and priority are distinct, a severe but rare bug can rank below a milder but widespread one.

How do I set bug priority?

Combine severity (how bad the bug is) with reach (how many players are affected), and weigh cost to fix and your goals. A bug high on both severity and reach is top priority; one low on both is bottom. Impact data, how many players each issue affects, is a major input alongside severity, so priority reflects the full picture rather than severity alone. This keeps you from fixing dramatic but rare bugs ahead of widespread ones.

Severity vs Priority: What's the Difference?

Quick answer: Severity is how bad a bug's impact is; priority is how urgently you'll fix it. They're related but distinct, a high-severity bug affecting few players might be lower priority than a medium one affecting many.

Severity and priority are often conflated in bug triage, but they measure different things, one is about how bad a bug is, the other about how soon you'll fix it. Keeping them separate sharpens your prioritization. Here's the difference.

What Severity Measures

Severity is how bad a bug's impact is when it occurs, the magnitude of harm. A crash that loses progress is high-severity; a cosmetic misalignment is low-severity. Severity is an intrinsic property of the bug: how damaging is it to a player who hits it, regardless of how many do.

Severity is one input to your decisions, but not the whole story. Bugnet distinguishes crashes (typically high-severity) from minor reports, so you can see severity, but severity alone doesn't tell you what to fix first, because it ignores how many players are affected.

What Priority Measures

Priority is how urgently you'll fix a bug, where it sits in your queue. Unlike severity, priority is a decision, not an intrinsic property: it combines severity with other factors, especially reach (how many players are affected), but also cost to fix and business goals, to determine order.

Priority is what actually drives your work, it's the answer to 'what do I fix next?'. Bugnet ranks issues by impact (how many players are affected), which is a major priority input, helping you set priority on more than severity alone.

Why They're Different and Both Matter

They diverge often: a high-severity bug affecting three players might be lower priority than a medium-severity bug affecting thousands, because priority weighs reach alongside severity. Conflating them leads to mistakes, like fixing a dramatic but rare bug ahead of a widespread annoyance.

Bugnet gives you both severity (crash vs minor) and reach (affected players), so you can set priority on the full picture. So keep them distinct: severity is how bad the bug is, priority is how soon you'll fix it, and good prioritization combines severity with reach rather than using either alone.

Severity is how bad a bug is; priority is how urgently you'll fix it. They diverge, a severe but rare bug can be lower priority than a milder but widespread one. Priority combines severity with reach.