Miscellaneous: P99 should provide an actual bug tracking interface

[azxten]

If players are expected to crowd source information and bug reports it would be a lot more help if the staff could create an actual bug tracking interface for our reports instead of a forum. I'm sure the devs have an internal bug tracker, it would help a lot if some of that was made public. It is a chore to sort through bugs here. Many bugs are in questionable states of "open."

Are certain bugs considered to not have enough evidence to fix? Are certain bugs facing technical limitations to fix? Are certain bugs not going to be fixed due to whatever reason? What is the status of druid tracking? Has enough evidence been provided? Are we unable to fix it? What is the deal? Same thing for a ton of other bugs. It would be nice if the staff could actually update us and centralize reports. Knowing the status of a bug is critical to drive the efforts of community volunteers.

Ideally we could have a list of the staff's most pressing bugs for how they think improvements could be driven. For example, maybe there is an important quest that needs more research or a combat mechanic that is difficult to code in eqemu and so on. The staff driving these bugs and actively engaging the community could get a lot more accomplished. Even further letting the community somehow vote on bugs/issues they want addressed by the staff would be great. Let someone create a bug report and then propose it in some kind of monthly vote for the staff to review and respond in terms of next steps. IE it's not a bug, it needs more research, etc.

It is painful to come here about an issue you care about, report a bug, provide evidence, and hear nothing in response for years yet by all accounts it's still a major bug. Did the staff never see it? Was it not enough evidence? What? You'll never know and you have no avenue to try to bring it up for prioritization other than arguing about it with other players who have no authority to make a call regarding what is sufficient evidence and who have no idea what the full picture is regarding the issue.

Also just FYI I've only done some limited bug investigation but I've already seen sources going offline and unarchived. Most of the evidence needed to support a true classic experience is disappearing for lack of anyone caring or knowing what should be researched. We have thousands of people who would volunteer research on these issues but it's mostly sitting idle as the job is becoming more difficult.

[azxten]

Bump

[loramin]

IIRC Rogean said something to the effect that the staff wove their "bug tracking system" into this specific version of the forum software. As a result, he basically declared that this version of the forum software isn't going anywhere ... and presumably the same is true of the bug tracker they wrote into it.

Now, maybe that bug tracking system is awesome for our devs, or maybe it's terrible and they'd be happier using a "real" bug tracker ... but either way don't you think they would know?

However, I will say that if you want a place where you can write up a full bug report AND include all the links to evidence ... or even all the copy/pasted (for archival) evidence you want ... and be able to provide all that easily to the staff in the form of a link ...

... there's always the wiki [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]