[azxten]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It is a little silly to just count bug tickets and proclaim that is an indicator of a lack of desire to fix stuff. A lot of those tickets are either duplicates, or bugs unfixable due to the two issues I mentioned above.

That isn't what I'm claiming. I am saying the desire is probably there but the time and processes are not. It is a repeating theme on P99 that the staff and players say the staff has no time, that if people would help things might get fixed faster, they're doing this for free, etc. None of that explains why we can't improve processes around community contribution. None of it explains why Nilbog should be writing quest changes instead of responding to people on the bug forum.

Nilbog instead of spending his time on one fix could be working on 1,000 fixes by leveraging the 1,000 people who care about those fixes. Maybe he just doesn't want to, who knows, but none of it is explained by the typical answer about the staff has limited time or they're doling this for free. It's clear misallocation of resources and ignoring a huge body of resources here that mostly sits idle and becomes disgruntled with the process of contributing while the project manager fixes quests himself. Either things are being done wrong from a process perspective, Nilbog doesn't care that much to include contributors, or Nilbog does care about contributors but doesn't want to actually manage their work. Managing the work of a bunch of contributors along a timeline is quite literally the description of a project manager.

project manager: the person in overall charge of the planning and execution of a particular project.

Can you envision a situation where a project manager asks for contributions from the community and makes a clear statement this would help the project timeline, then makes no further statements or attempts to manage those contributions from a process perspective for 10 years beyond fixing individual bug reports in a seemingly arbitrary manner? Meanwhile people are bumping threads endlessly and well researched bugs fade away into obscurity along with all those mentioned duplicate or crap bug reports?

It's just hard to imagine such a thing from my perspective working in software companies. A project manager who touches project assets like code but leaves thousands of potential contributors to idle? Doesn't happen unless shit is real fucked up in my experience.

Let's look at another bug forum sticky...

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19

While a lot of you have been contributing a lot of bugs recently, which is awesome, we have a high standard of accuracy / evidence.

What is that standard and where is it defined?

While we don't need a congressional hearing about every bug fix, throwing us a link to something definitive from a waybacked site is the most helpful thing you can do

What is definitive? Does it have to be from an official EQ dev patch note or statement? Is a large collection of player posts indicating the same thing enough? is it enough in some cases like a quest but not enough in another like a core mechanic?

Nothing is defined but the PROBLEM is clearly there and staff mentions the PROBLEM often when they do seldomly talk about the bug report process.

Here we see Nilbog post...

I'm wasting a lot of time reading posts with no research or links.

Indicates a process need to have better filtering. Nilbog shouldn't be reading a bug until a trusted person like Dolalin or Daldaen reviews it first and tags it for his review as having met some standard of evidence or whatever like I just described. He certainly shouldn't be wasting time doing first tier bug review or even worse trying to write changes himself if the process is still broken. That means if he is working on a bug he found that seems worthwhile possible a dozen other bugs scrolled off the bug report forum unreviewed.

Even better once someone like Dolalin tags it as having good evidence the bug contributor can try to propose a fix maybe before Nilbog even sees it and then Nilbog can say, wow, I've got my short list here of reviewed bugs, they all seem to have good evidence, and some of them even have the whole proposed fix right in front of me! Wow this is great! Now all I have to do is respond to these, tell people I want them to try to do a fix, fix things I know we'll have to fix due to our custom code, use an existing proposed fix, or whatever else.

The process needs to be fixed first and then if he has time after reviewing the pre-reviewed bugs he can implement changes himself. Otherwise he should be adjusting process and leveraging community assets. Like I said, he's one guy but he has the near sole authority to leverage the efforts of hundreds or thousands of others. That is the typical role of the project manager. They don't write code they tell coders what to do. They DO review bugs but if people are submitting shitty bugs making it impossible to keep up with they change processes to fix that.

This is a scaling issue. What worked in the past 10 years ago doesn't work anymore and that is clearly stated in that post. More bug reports, which is great, but people aren't following a process which is loosely defined as "please have good research." Of course no one is going to follow that, it's an arbitrary statement in a sticky post with no hard logic to stop it. Also where is the bug forum to talk about bugs but not create a bug? You could also adjust the bug report template so that people can submit a bug like, "is this fucking broken?" and then there is a separate field they later fill in that is, "Wow, yeah, it is fucking broken and here is the proof." Then the staff don't end up looking at all the bullshit and players don't get shit on by trolls for asking questions about potential bugs.

Just more process options that probably didn't used to be necessarily but clearly are now and the proof is in that thread and the clear statements that there are more bugs, they're getting confusing which are important and well researched, and people (someone) need to do something better to avoid wasting staff time.

Also, you do need to consider how changes will affect the community (and their desire to play the game). Building up a concurrent player base of thousands of players over many years is an achievement in itself, and throwing it away will spell the doom of the server. This is especially true considering most companies would have shut P99 down years ago. it is possible there are some real life politics that must be considered when making changes to avoid provoking Daybreak or whomever currently owns the Everquest IPs.

That's fine but you don't have to ignore contributors. Let's take my channeling fix. If Nilbog responded and said, "Hey looks good but this will piss everyone off, sorry." That at least means I'll consider contributing again instead of feeling like I wasted my time and no one even looked at it. Is it some secret so that they can't admit some changes won't be made even if they are classic for whatever reason? No, it's not. They openly say so in many cases. Personally I'd only like to see that channeling code used on a new server launch and I'd have felt my effort was rewarded and I can enjoy the more classic experience but I bet that isn't the case in this situation that it's too upsetting to players.

The staff's time is partially devoted to monitoring the community and rules enforcement as well. This further dilutes their ability to make changes, as they are responsible for trying to keep the community from leaving. Are they always successful? No, but they are obviously doing a good enough job, considering the population count as of today.

That's another process issue. If developers or project managers are spending too much time enforcing rules then more rule enforcers need to be recruited and if rule enforcers can't be trusted or vetted then better processes need to exist to gate them. It would be like if Brad McQuaid was too busy being a GM so he couldn't tell his developers what code to change so instead they all play ping pong in the break room all day. Clearly that isn't a situation that should just be ignored as an answer to why no bugs are being fixed. It just introduces another layer of problematic process if true.

I understand you are really passionate about certain fixes, but I think you are a bit naïve on how the process of creating and maintain games really works. Especially something like P99. If you are looking for a project that can have big changes occur in a reasonable amount of time, with plenty of developers looking to contribute, P99 can never be that, simply because of all of the existing roadblocks that either cannot be undone, or would destroy P99 if they were removed.

I disagree. I think I understand the process of creating and maintaining software better than most people. Here is what probably happened...

1. P99 starts, it asks for contributions, small staff
2. No one really contributes, staff wears many hats and gets used to doing things outside their role. Nilbog is changing game data. Rogean is acting as a server GM. Developers / GMs are acting as Guides. They still get their main role done as well as these other roles.
3. Things scale up. People are cheating, griefing, some staff are cheating.
4. Now people aren't able to keep up with their main role. Nilbog is doing more implementing of fixes than bug review and project management. Rogean is mainly acting as a GM and doesn't have time to create core server systems required to make being a GM easier. The developers and GMs feel like things are going as well as they once did.
5. Things scale up even more. Velious beta. Green launch. Bug reports. The staff has finally gotten a handle on running a server. They're catching cheaters. They have tooling to make administration easier. They have better processes around who they recruit as staff.
6. The bug forum is a terrible fucking mess now and seen as a waste of time. Why bother reading stupid duplicated unresearched bugs when I already have a list of known bugs I want fixed but no time to fix them all? Bug forum becomes an indicator of serious bugs on patch day rather than a place to field community contribution.
7. The project gains some legitimacy with Daybreak. Less stress over future. Less stress over staff and server management.
8. Staff continues doing what they've been doing. After all, it worked, didn't it? Nilbog keeps implementing fixes and working on whatever he is working on. Green 3.0. The change management system. Whatever. Rogean does server stuff. GMs are GMing with better oversight. Devs are deving as directed. Etc.
9. Bug forum is still just a place to review if anything "important" seems broken. It functions as what is typically the support role in an organization rather than a bug tracking system. IE it allows problems the community has to filter back to the project manager. It's no longer a place to find classic bugs and implement them with community help. Mostly, did we miss anything? Obviously most of those bugs are known and tracked in some other way.

That is my opinion on how I've seen things progress over the last decade. Obviously I don't know the half of it but I imagine I'm somewhat close. P99 has no support function in the way it operates in modern software companies. The forum is insufficient because players don't necessarily post their feelings there especially given the small population. You just get the vocal minority who mostly complain about raiding and high level play because they're the no lifers who also forum post their no life complaints. The petition queue is insufficient because it only reveals player problems, like someone ninja looted my raid item, or my corpse disappeared, it doesn't expose average player sentiment. The staff focuses on feedback obtained via petitions and forum posts which misses the large body of players and instead is hyper focused on the complainers. No one is ever asked for their opinion on if P99 is fun or not. If it's moving in a good direction, what they're happy or upset about, etc.

People who aren't happy and want to do something about it probably end up in two places. On the forum general boards where they're trolled at worse or told the staff are busy volunteers at best. Maybe they're told their complaint, idea, etc "isn't classic" or "is classic" and ignored. Alternatively they make it to the bug report forum and try to prove something out if they think whatever is bothering them should be changed within the context of the project. Then they invest their time and go through the experience I outlined above and then they stop playing like I did.

I would still point to the Druid tracking bug as the best example of this. Players have a pain point, they had a skill, tracking, taken away because "classic" on Green launch and then when it was time to get it back it didn't happen. They complained on forums and got the "they're volunteers" or "lol druids" response. They made bug reports which got ignored probably because of "lol druid tracking" or because the bug forum is a steaming pile of shit and the staff just assume if someone made a post about Druid tracking it was another garbage unresearched crybaby post unworthy of even opening. It took a large vocal response of people complaining on patch days to get attention. Again, I assume, and it finally got attention because the staff only listens to the community via petitions or forum posts and their ears are a bit more attuned after a patch goes out because they don't want to have broken anything unintentionally and this is how finally they realized oh yeah Druid tracking I guess we should fix that it is a legitimate bug that we actually introduced by not rolling back our change on the appropriate timeline for Green.

Your response is appreciated and I feel exposes more that this is actually a potential problem that can be fixed and not just "mysterious staff" hand waving. That other sticky I link in this comment, in my opinion, kind of proves the bug forum is a problem in its current state and could be much better with some process changes as I suggested or in many other ways. Also that the staff does want the bug forum to be useful but it just isn't and maybe they've grown used to it not being useful and just given up on it.

But it could be useful and it could be a place to engage with contributors and leverage their efforts if the crap could be filtered out, the meat made more obvious to the staff, and the contributors who are providing the meat given more direct interaction regarding their efforts and how they can provide more help on a given issue or help in other needed ways.

Also I write a lot because I care about P99 and am trying to put in effort to expose what I see as a pretty big miss. I only wrote that channeling fix to serve as an example case for the larger miss of the difficulty of contributing here in any meaningful way. It's like there is a big chasm, on one side is the staff, and on the other are valuable contributors. In the middle is a big steaming pile of bad bug reports, questions about if something is a bug, bad faith efforts by trolls to avoid bugs being fixed, and mixed in with that is the bug reports that good contributors are trying to see reach the staff on the other side. There is a real disconnect there that if fixed via better processes could really accelerate the rate of improvement P99 is capable of towards its' classic goal.