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#1
12-05-2021, 05:53 PM
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An Appeal to Improve Contributed Research & Development: A User Story
The current research and development contribution stickies in this forum are 10 years old now. Much of the information is completely irrelevant now or doesn't conform to how things are really working. I've played on P99 for 10 years and basically did zero bug investigation or contributory work. This wasn't due to a lack of desire but rather an observed lack of a serious process for community contribution. After getting bored I decided to start investigating things that bothered me about the game in an effort to get closer to the classic EQ experience that I enjoy. I figured I would brave this known arbitrary black hole bug forum to try to figure out why things are the way they are and how they might be improved. In the process I also became part of the problem and will detail that below.
To date I have contributed 1 change that made it onto P99 which was reverse engineering the spells file to change spell effects which was built on by Telin to recreate classic effects and then included on P99. This was what initially motivated me to think that maybe I could make contributions that would be valued. Below is what in software development is called a user story and below that is a few suggestions I have on how we could improve the experience described in this user story. This post is intended for Nilbog primarily but the other staff as well. It's not intended for the random forum trolls or anyone else. It is lengthy because it describes years of playing here and months of intermittent research and code contribution effort. It, combined with my channeling bug fix, represents my last chance to try to affect change on P99 in a classic direction that would interest me in being part of this community again. These are the stages I went through from the idea of contributing to making what I consider a valid bug report: 1. It's no secret I think Enchanter is OP. I've never played Enchanter so it was difficult for me to nail down exactly why this is. In an effort to figure this out I made an Enchanter and I made posts about things I didn't remember being classic about Enchanter. Some of these posts were wrong and mechanics I thought weren't classic actually were. Some of the posts exposed mechanics which probably aren't classic but there isn't sufficient evidence to prove it. Some of the posts exposed mechanics which aren't classic and provably so with what I consider strong evidence. 2. This was basically a shotgun style approach. I threw stuff at the board and found out what stuck. I ended up with some stuff not sticking, some stuff half sticking and rolling down the wall, and other things clearly sticking. However, that process meant clutter in the bug forum. It meant people taking their time to point out that this discussion had already happened in the past. Sometimes pointing out that a mechanic was correct, other times pointing out they'd already reported that issue long ago and it has gotten no response, and mostly a lot of arguing amongst P99 players. 3. Now I could reassess the things that stuck but this raised another problem. What I think is good evidence isn't necessarily considered good evidence to others. At this point, if I want to "fully contribute" to making P99 more classic, I'm going to have to either wait for the staff to say something on a bug report which more often than not seems to only be "fixed pending update" or I'm going to have to assume that the evidence is sufficient and I can contribute more by proposing a code change. In my case I decided to focus on fixing the channeling code because it has extremely strong evidence but I still had to contend with other people on the forum introducing misinformation in an attempt to avoid the change being made and with no confirmation or denial from the staff. There are other things I would propose changes for but I don't think they would get a response or may have insufficient evidence so I'll wait. 4. If I wait for the staff in the vast majority of cases I will be waiting forever. There seems to be no reasoning or logic behind which bug reports will get a staff response, which will get staff effort to fix, etc. Some bugs which seem to have overwhelming evidence languish forever. Other bugs which seem to have almost no evidence get a response "fixed pending update." It doesn't seem to relate to impact on game play, controversy, etc. Druid Tracking is probably the best example I saw of this. A clear bug, well supported by evidence, which is not controversial was bumped for months with no response through multiple patches until it seemed to become a louder and louder cry as each patch went by with the bug report being ignored and finally it got attention. This indicates that if you want a bug report response the best method is to get as many players to complain about it in other areas of the forum as you can. It wasn't a matter of needing evidence, code, or some kind of community consensus. Also it was presumably custom P99 code because I believe Druid tracking was working properly and was nerfed to fit classic without a corresponding rule to revert the change according to timeline meaning code contribution probably wasn't possible. 5. If I decide to try to fix the issue myself and contribute a code change I'm completely in the dark fighting with EQEmulators notoriously difficult build process. For me personally this involved setting up a Ubuntu 20 docker instance, using Dolalin's docker compose, trying Ubuntu 16 VM source compile, and then finally trying Ubuntu 18 VM source compile. The code was written in about an hour but the process to compile it into the server and test it took several hours for want of either a simple existing Docker image that has the code compiled with instructions to edit files in the X directory and then run the make command again and test or even more straightforward the simple advice that Ubuntu 18 seems the be the version that works with the "simple install" instructions on the EQEmu Wiki which mentions nothing about build environment and jumps right into running a script ignoring that you will likely have issues if you aren't using this unmentioned build environment. In addition to that I had to learn how to set things up if my server isn't running on the same system as my client which is the most common development environment anyone would setup today. I had to learn how to make myself a GM and how to enable logging in order to debug my code while in game. Also the guidance offered is to make two quotes, "Existing code" and "Changed code" but this is somewhat impossible if you're changing spells.cpp for example which has 6000+ lines and the changes occur throughout the file. Instead I opted to create a patch file which shows a clear diff between code versions and can also be applied via command to source. All of this is unnecessary duplicated effort by contributors and acts as a road block. Do we want contributions or people to prove they can build EQEmu server code and figure out the server setup and commands to do basic debugging? 6. Now I have a desire and ability to contribute, I've found an issue with strong evidentiary support, and I've made the necessary code changes including testing them in game and including considerations for edge cases and performance impact. However, ultimately, I'm still back at step 4 waiting for the staff to respond which is fine by itself but this may also involve having to bump threads for months, gaining community support that will complain over those months, etc. I'm left in the dark wondering. Is my bumping this thread doing anything? Are the complaints necessary? Maybe this has already been seen, maybe it hasn't been seen and I do have to bump it endlessly until a dev happens to look, maybe it's not going to be fixed for whatever reason, maybe it's being tested and no one said anything, who knows? 7. The end state is months of research from multiple people, arguments and misinformation from players derailing the report including claims about fictitious staff statements, a lingering possibility that the evidence isn't strong enough, hours spent setting up a dev environment that can compile the source due to lack of some simple information or a pre-built contribution image/instructions, the time spent actually making the code changes, and now the possibility of having to manually follow up on my report regularly with a high likelihood of no response for several more months as happened with Druid Tracking. When Nilbog made the research contribution post 10 years ago he said that if people would spend time researching and presumably also creating code changes he could spend more time fixing or implementing things. This at least indicates that at some point in the past this kind of contribution was encouraged and valued. However, given this and other examples, are the contributors being valued? Does this demonstrate that we, meaning the staff and community collective, do want to improve P99 and leverage community contribution? My experience with actually trying to research and contribute has been a struggle. One where you're basically left arguing with trolls who admittedly have no interest in recreating classic code or experience. You're left recompiling previously submitted bug information that other people gave up on due to a lack of staff response. You're left wondering if the amount of evidence obtained is sufficient to meet an unknown or arbitrary bar leaving you questioning what you should do next. Should I keep searching for evidence? Should I try to propose a code change? This is compounded further by situations where you find bugs that are ignored and have comments that essentially amount to "the staff knows but has decided not to do this for some reason." Is that true? Is it someone trolling because they don't want the change? Does that apply to this other bug and I'm wasting my time on something that even if I prove it and provide a code change will never be implemented? Also you're left with a nightmare EQEmu build process with no guidance that may or may not even be necessary but in my case I wanted to ensure my code compiled and ran appropriately. What if I don't even know how to code but I want to make database changes I proved would be classic and test them in game? Quests? Mob spawns? Etc. That is locking out a lot of potential contributors who if given a helping hand could otherwise get past the scary code and build stuff and just focus on their particular bug they want to fix which may not even involve code. So, reflecting on all that, I would like to respectfully propose the following: 1. The research and code contribution stickies should be rewritten. If the staff has no time or desire to do this they should indicate a desire to have this updated so the community can rewrite it. It is very telling that these posts haven't been updated in 10 years. My suggestion is that if we really want things to progress and P99 to get better engaging volunteers is critical and shouldn't be an afterthought with the staff mostly being a black box where you have to fight for a contribution to be acknowledged. Nilbog as project manager shouldn't researching or fixing he should be managing researching and fixing by giving out "good job but needs more evidence" or "this seems broken but we don't have time to make a fix please write a code suggestion" or "this is provably unclassic but we won't implement this mechanic because it's too unbalancing" kind of posts to build up volunteers rather than leaving them to be attacked by trolls or endlessly bumping their threads until they give up. Nilbog seems to acknowledge this himself in the research thread that he has a desire to not be doing that work but the framework to foster others doing it is absent probably because he is doing that work instead. There are people here, we'll do the stuff, this community is much larger now as well and maybe 10 years ago there weren't any contributors to rely on which should be revisited today. 2. The staff should try to rely more on the community. Coming back to Nilbog's statement. Right now as a contributor I'm left wondering if I put in the effort will it amount to anything? Coming back to the contribution stickies as an example, if I rewrote them would they be updated? Would I just end up in the same situation bumping my thread endlessly waiting for a response and having already invested my own time with no assurance it is desired? Nilbog posted on the research thread acknowledging it is outdated now and should be rewritten but why not then follow up asking for someone to rewrite it? This is what I mean by rely more on the community. Get those things out there that the staff knows should be done and actively ask someone to do it rather than the passive model we have now or holding all the issues in a log somewhere until the staff feels they have time. 3. Start acknowledging and building processes around what seems like 4 stages of a bug here. The first stage is things that are already known but there is no way to know it is known. This means bug reports that are already known to be classic mechanics. Bug reports that seem like legitimate bugs but someone else already submitted it sometimes multiple times. This is all the clutter created by well meaning people who are just starting to consider contributing and are asking about something only to be met with an inability to find out what is already known about that thing in order to avoid duplicating discussions. Most likely, as I've suggested before, this means using a bug tracking system rather than a forum. Discussions happen in a bug report but using a forum means bug reports are always falling out of visibility. Bug tracking systems lets the staff maintain a list of actual bugs that contributors can see as well. What if I just want to fix some bugs? I have no way of knowing right now what bugs I should work on or if the staff could use help either researching them or providing a code change. Just an endless list of forum posts to look through with ambiguous states of research, fix, won't be fixed, etc that we're left guessing about. The second stage is defining or acknowledging once a bug has enough evidence to be considered something we want to fix. Currently players generally just argue amongst themselves about if evidence is good enough or not. There is no rules about this we can apply ourselves and there is very rarely a staff response indicating something seems broken. Without this bugs are almost always left to die in this state where the contributor or anyone else viewing has no idea if the staff would consider a proposed fix and so people just talk endlessly trying to find more evidence and bumping the thread. Often part of the evidence is just proving it is broken on P99. Take the INT/WIS 200 cap or Enchanter pet HP bug reports. Do I have an Enchanter high enough to test this with the research data? Do I have the ability to go over 200 INT/WIS and test my mana pool? Contributors are blocked in some cases by having access to P99 in game situations to confirm a bug especially old bugs they may want to fix or bring up again. Many bugs are likely already provably in need of a fix but just languish being bumped and researched more often, as I've seen, with previously existing evidence being lost as links 404. This stage describes the state of most bugs on the forum excluding people mistaking classic mechanics for a bug. The evidence varies from weak to strong but without a bar to meet no one can know just how weak or strong the existing evidence is but often there is evidence of some kind. Having some kind of guidance about what is strong enough evidence or a process for staff to acknowledge the evidence is strong enough to implement a change would be very helpful. The third stage, which almost never happens for contributors, is a bug being acknowledged as valid and worth fixing. Instead staff typically would only respond if they are already working on fixing it or have fixed it already. The channeling bug I would say entered this state only due to the strength of classic evidence but without any acknowledgement from staff. There is no point at which a code contributor is encouraged to try contributing code and this creates a big disconnect between researchers and coders. Again, as someone who can write code, what bugs should I work on? There is probably not a single bug in this entire forum even if I read every single post where I would be able to say, yes, this is a bug that the staff agrees should be fixed and my code contribution is worthwhile AND they're not already working on it or it doesn't involve some custom code i can't access. Being able to see a list of bugs the staff actually wants fixed and that could be fixed by a contributor would be very helpful. This comes back to the bug tracker idea. The fourth stage is a bug has strong evidence, proposed changes to fix it, and is now awaiting staff response but will likely disappear down the forum pages if not actively bumped and discussed on the forums. After going through the effort of researching, discussing, coding, etc it would be nice if contributors could trust that they will get some kind of response without having to continue owning their bug report indefinitely and bumping it possibly without ever getting a response. In conclusion, there are currently ~7,000 bug reports in this forum and ~50,000 posts that aren't in the resolved section. This likely represents hundreds or thousands of contributors efforts towards finding out if something is a bug, trying to research proving a bug and/or how it should work, and making recommended changes to fix bugs. I don't think the staff doesn't respond to these because they don't want to or they don't care but rather because it's an impossible volume of work for the size of the staff who holds all or most of the necessary authority to move bugs between the stages listed above. If that is true and the staff still wants people to contribute and feel valued and get these things fixed for P99 then maybe, coming back to my first suggestion, more staff effort should exist around leveraging contributors to help respond and filter that work. There are clearly some contributors here who are well known and possibly they would volunteer if approached to take on more responsibility. For example, Daldaen and Dolalin and similar well known researchers could act as a filter for stages 1 & 2 above. They typically know if a bug is actually a bug or an intended mechanic or if it has already been submitted. That simple function and enabling them to delete, merge, etc threads in the bug forums might go a long way by itself. They are also likely somewhat trustworthy sources on if a bug probably has sufficient evidence or not that it would be considered worth proceeding with trying to fix it and could add some official weight by giving their approval that a bug has met the necessary evidentiary bar. This would get us to stage 3 because we could see which bugs they have approved for trying to fix and it could also allow the staff to get a short list of pre-reviewed bugs that they themselves might want to respond on either to confirm/refute that initial review or to at least respond after a code change is recommended so that the researchers and coders don't have to endlessly bump and complain about the bug to try to get a response. Presumably if the staff just had a list of bugs that were pre-reviewed for valid research and/or definitely included a suggested code change it would be a lot easier for them to respond and implement those fixes. I'm not saying Daldaen or Dolalin or anyone else would take on this role but some kind of process like this would be pretty nice to get things progressing on fixes and allowing contributors to feel like they're not wasting their time and unappreciated. I have played P99 for a decade, I've made donations, I've contributed changes that went live, I've researched, and I've made what I consider to be a full complete bug report with strong evidence and suggesting code changes. The process of contributing has been extremely annoying for all the reasons listed above and I'm left with the impression that the staff doesn't care about contributors here but rather has their own list of bugs they care about and this forum purely exists for the staff to review if anything pops up they happen to care about like Velious custom helms breaking but they can ignore Druid tracking as less important from their perspective. I have no idea what the true state of things is that is just the impression I'm left with. I would not contribute anymore here until something changes and especially not until that channeling fix gets a response without me having to bump it for several months like in the other thread on that topic. My current feeling is that while I enjoy P99 and would like to play here again if some mechanics could be adjusted to make things more classic trying to get those changes done by contributing in this forum is a painful process with no definite value to P99. Thanks to the staff for P99, it has been great, but for now this marks the end for me. The server has become too stale and formulaic due to what I think is a lack of progress on making things more classic. It's too easy, there are too many abused classes and mechanics, and there seems to be little effort towards improvement that doesn't originate from the black box of staff devs with seemingly no consideration for gameplay or consistency. Too many classic mechanics are nerfed and too many non-classic mechanics are ignored which seem to have strong evidence for how they should change with relatively minor code changes. A lot of contributors here take a "staff will decide maybe someday if they care" approach and simply acknowledge their bug reports get no response and they seem okay with that. I'm making this post because I enjoy P99 and want to see it continue to grow and improve. I don't think ignoring the situation outlined above is helpful and while maybe some people think I "have no right" to complain, and that may be true, I'm still going to "speak truth to power" because sometimes that actually gets something to change in a positive way. I've been banned on P99 forums and in game, I've been unbanned, banned, unbanned, sideways banned, and I've even insulted Rogean and Nilbog in the past and they still unbanned me after it which I have huge respect to them for. I try to walk this line between ultimate respect and being an asshole because I believe that sometimes people are too passive and problems aren't just ignored because of it but rather aren't even seen in the first place until someone dares to risk their accounts to speak out and get yelled at by all the trolls and fall out of favor with the staff or community. Maybe the staff is fine with things the way they are now but if their past statements about desiring community input are true then they should consider what is stopping some people from wanting to contribute and how we could fix that. | ||
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Last edited by azxten; 12-05-2021 at 06:04 PM..
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#2
12-05-2021, 07:00 PM
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The thing about something like P99 is a LOT of bugs simply cannot be fixed. Why? Because we do not have the source code to the client, and we have no ability to truly know how the server code worked in all aspects.
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. 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. 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. Finally, P99's source code is closed. The reason for this is once it becomes open source, people will make P99 clones which will dilute or destroy the player base. This means many code contributions will not work, even if they are based on the EQEMU code, because you have no idea how drastically different the P99 code is. 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.
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Shamwowi Wipesalot (60 SHM) | Bazgek Bonebreaker (60 SK) | Sznake Pliszken (52 MNK) | Laanfear (30 ENC)
Do you have questions about Shaman races? Read my guide: https://wiki.project1999.com/Shamwow...man_Race_Guide Want to see Shaman videos? Check out my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFU...zEFJVBIH3-jUog | ||
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Last edited by DeathsSilkyMist; 12-05-2021 at 07:04 PM..
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#3
12-05-2021, 08:12 PM
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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. Quote:
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 Quote:
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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... Quote:
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. Quote:
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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. | ||||||||||
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#4
12-05-2021, 08:39 PM
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It's difficult to create a piece of crap when everyone shits on you for it even though there is no process for asking if something is a piece of crap or not. You just have to clutter up the bug process with your turd and carry on because often you don't know if it's a turd or not until afterwards. You might think you could ask if something is a bug on the server forum instead but that will result in about 10x more getting shit on, being told you shouldn't be complaining, redirected to the bug forum, etc. It's difficult to try to create a piece of meat or not create a piece of crap when you get forum trolls, people trying to defend mechanics because they like playing cheesy semi-classic EQ, told by others that "yeah that's probably fucked up but no one cares, I made a post on it 5 years ago, here's a link to 10 different bug report threads discussing that issue, good luck", and you're trying to build up a body of evidence while having randos posting, "Stop posting! That isn't good enough evidence! It's not enough!" no matter how good the evidence is and with not even the slightest guidance as to what is good enough evidence in any given context. There must be some context like I mentioned before, does a moss snake kick? I mean no one is going to lose their shit over the outcome of that bug and maybe finding 10 in era archived player posts with the same answer is enough. Did Charm break more often in live? Now suddenly we're going to need Brad McQuaid himself providing an autographed archived post stating that P99's charm is garbage and here is the C++ code for how it actually worked in live. Yet none of this is spelled out, the staff merely offers, "HEY RETARD, STOP MAKING SHITTY POSTS, YOU NEED GOOD EVIDENCE!" So you push on through that. it's difficult actually creating the piece of meat. Apparently no one, none of the devs, no one has bothered to provide you with an easy way to compile EQemulator source and test your change. Good luck! You know it's fucking hard as shit to compile and if you don't already know that then lol you are totally fucked! Thanks for your contribution though! LOL No one is going to tell you to use Ubuntu 18, not 20, not 16, just 18. You didn't know Perl changed in Ubuntu 20? Retard. You didn't know cmake doesn't reach version 3.7 in Ubuntu 16? Why are you even trying to help P99? Go away. Oh you don't know how the retarded mostly undocumented EQEmulator logging system works so that you can actually see the output of all those Log() function calls in the source code that are in the function you're working on? Too bad, I guess you're just not good enough. How to make yourself a GM? How to fly? How to run speed buff yourself? All the other common bullshit you need to know to not waste your time when trying to test your code? Well sucks for you, I guess you're just not good enough to be a P99 contributor. It's difficult to provide the piece of meat. Oh you actually went through all of that? You're still here? What? You actually have a well researched bug report with the code changes clearly outlined to fix the bug? This isn't supposed to be possible, how did you get here? The staff will get back to you next year, just keep bumping. I mean this is the reality of the process. Meanwhile, after you've gone through this gauntlet, you see a new patch come out. They added wine berries to Neriak! You see posts on Rants and Flames talking about the absurdity of adding wine berries when there are "so many other problems." Will anyone respond to my post about channeling which is full of evidence? Probably not but they did get those wine berries in to the great excitement of the server population. Nilbog and other staff, I love you, I love what you've done on P99, but man this process is FUCKED UP from the contributor perspective in terms of how you are treated by the community and the staff as you progress along that path from hopeful contributor to providing a solid bug and being ignored. | |||
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#5
12-05-2021, 09:22 PM
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The P99 client side is black boxed, and will never be backwards engineered to a point where we can fix most of the client side bugs. It really is that simple. I understand your frustration and your feeling you could make this more efficient, but honestly you NEVER develop software like this in the first place (taking someone else's black boxed client and re-engineering the server from packet sniffing). It is an unsustainable model to begin with, so you need to give a bit more credit where credit is due. To me it sounds like you just need to put your energy into something that isn't an unsustainable model. You will never get P99 to operate like an open source project. It cannot operate that way without destroying itself.
__________________
Shamwowi Wipesalot (60 SHM) | Bazgek Bonebreaker (60 SK) | Sznake Pliszken (52 MNK) | Laanfear (30 ENC)
Do you have questions about Shaman races? Read my guide: https://wiki.project1999.com/Shamwow...man_Race_Guide Want to see Shaman videos? Check out my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFU...zEFJVBIH3-jUog | |||
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Last edited by DeathsSilkyMist; 12-05-2021 at 09:38 PM..
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#6
12-05-2021, 10:45 PM
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Most of the bug reports in this forum are fixable with EQEmu source changes. It's true. Just like the P99 sticky in this forum states. P99 is mainly database changes and those changes don't really impact other data in the database. However, that is part of the problem I've been describing. Let's break my 1,000 volunteer leverage example down into something easier. Let's say it's 10 people. I'll use actual bugs on the forum. 1. Immolate not decrementing HP - P99 code 2. Channeling Fix - Researched and code propose done, needs staff response/testing/implementation 3. Persistent instaclick item use - Player complaint about existing functionality, needs staff response if they care 4. Smaller Vessel Drozlin Window - Researched, simple to fix, needs staff response/implementation 5. Cast sight stacking - Possibly P99 code, possibly EQEmu or database fix, unclear 6. Guk pit pathing - Possibly P99 code, could be tested in EQEmu to confirm 7. Make Quillmane classic - P99 code 8. PVP arena bugs - Probably EQEmu code, could be researched and code created 9. INT/WIS over 200 - Out of control, old bug, some research, some claims not enough research, no one seems to know if it still happens or not 10. All guards immune to charm - Researched but unclear on scope, relatively simple change needs staff response Volunteers: 6. Test if Guk pit pathing is EQEmu code or not. Someone needs to login to EQEmu based server and drag a mob over the pit and report back. If confirmed, someone needs to fix the code or research. Can we assume mobs didn't run away like this in classic or that we don't desire that in any case? If so needs proposed code change. 5. If cast sight wasn't already confirmed fix, someone needs to test in EQEmu to see if the issue is in that data/source 8. Research the PvP arena bugs mentioned, create code if confirmed 9. Someone needs to confirm if this is actually a bug on P99 or not. If so, someone needs to research to prove over 200 in classic didn't give the same value. If so, someone needs to confirm it occurs in EQEmu. If so, someone needs to fix it and provide the fix. 10. Needs more research to define scope of which guards might not be immune That is 5 volunteers right there you could assign to get to next steps on those bugs. Several of those items have additional steps defined which could involve the other 5 volunteers depending on skill set. I guarantee you there are enough open bugs in those forums which need research, testing, etc in a similar manner to tie up hundreds of volunteers. Staff: 1. Fixed Immolate bug but it's "pending update", now Druids have to wait likely a long time for a core spell to work again. 2. Needs to respond. 3. Needs to clarify their approach to nerfing items to address raiding abuse, consider community feedback, engage with community. 4. Needs to respond. This is in the "endless trolling / research" phase where the bug has good evidence and there shouldn't be any "code change" required because it's a simple spawn timer update. Wasting people's time currently due to long time without response. May 2018 and still no response? Endless bumping and trolling in thread. 5. Fixed. 6. Needs to respond. Is this intentional? Should it be fixed? Does it need research on how it was in classic? Does it need dev time in EQEmu code? Does it need dev time in P99 code? 7. Fixed but essentially noted "we already planned to fix this." No insight for players spending time researching and bug reporting that they're wasting their time. It's a known issue. 8. Clutter / wasted staff time because bug has no supporting research. Staff shouldn't see this. 9. Needs to respond. Either clarify it's not still happening or just say, "Someone test this and tell us if it's still happening." People wasting their time arguing, bumping, etc for long time. March 2016 and no response? 10. Needs to respond. Do they want more specific research on what guards shouldn't be immune? Has enough evidence been provided now? Is there a suggested code / data change needed? In theory the evidence supports almost every guard was immune, shouldn't we err towards some guards which weren't immune are immune rather than all guards aren't immune because we can't find out which few guards weren't immune? These are just the top 10 bug reports right now. They're not top in terms of gameplay impact. They're not top in terms of what players want fixed. They're just the top 10 bugs someone has replied to recently. Maybe the top 10 bugs people have been bumping lately and bumping is known to be considered necessary if no response has been provided. Out of those 10 we have: 3 Fixed with 1 being a "already known" issue several pages long 2 3+ year old bugs involving core mechanics and player satisfaction / epic quest with no response 1 Community dissatisfaction with non-classic changes with no response 3 Needs staff response on next steps or implementation 1 Clutter staff shouldn't have wasted time looking at That is 6 out of 10 things where a staff member probably should respond to acknowledge the efforts of contributors or address player concerns. Leaving 1 bug the staff shouldn't even see, 1 bug that players spent time reporting and discussing but was already acknowledged as needing to be fixed in the staffs private tracking list, and 2 bugs which got a response and were fixed. What should the staff do next? They should be encouraging volunteers and providing a process framework to allow those 5 items that can be addressed by volunteers to be addressed. This means things like defining how much evidence is enough evidence, better instructions on how to setup EQEmu for testing and how to use common GM commands, and providing a process framework to allow moving the bug through each stage towards eventually needing and actually getting a staff response. If a post from a staff member including a lowly forum volunteer that just says, "needs more research" or "try recreating this in eqemu and tell me if it happens there" moves these bugs forward with volunteer effort that is the kind of thing being left on the table today for no reason. No one is going to do those things because they don't know if needs more research, it's too hard to recreate in EQEmu with no guidance, and so on. Just a bit of simple suggestion on next steps drives a larger magnitude of volunteer effort. They should respond to those bug reports people put effort into which are now in a ready state needing staff response probably including the INT/WIS thread which even though volunteers could check themselves there shouldn't be a thread from 2016 still being bumped to the front page due to no response. How many people have to check and confirm it's still a bug while waiting for a response before it's just disrespectful to volunteers? Also in this case it is trivial for a GM to validate this bug but actually requires a player to be able to get over 200 INT/WIS and be able to calculate their mana pool through casting spells and determine their exact full mana simply through casting. This can't be validated in EQEmu because it would leave the question if the bug exists on P99 or not regardless of EQEmu. A GM can set their INT to 200, look at their mana pool, set it to 220, look at their mana pool, and then respond if it's still a bug or confirm it's an EQEmu bug and someone can try fixing that code. They could also just say, yeah, this isn't a bug on P99, we're closing this 5 year old bug report that has been bumped endlessly cluttering up the forums and wasting volunteer cycles considering it. They should respond to the community dissatisfaction around non-classic item nerfs and clarify their policy on intentionally introduced non-classic nerfs and why they're trying to address nerfing raiding in such a piece meal fashion while also damaging other item utility outside of raiding. Consider the suggestions of players and the impact their changes are having on the game rather than being hyper focused, as is typical, on raiding and raiders. They should have processes in place so they don't look at the clutter bug report until it was already vetted by someone trustworthy which they don't seem to have today. What is actually happening? A major spell bug is being fixed but not in any immediate sense despite introduced impact from the last patch. A minor spell bug is being fixed. Volunteers are arguing with each other and bumping several year old threads waiting for a staff response still. Bugs are sliding down the pages into obscurity if no one bothers to bump them for years in some cases. Items which have a clear next step for volunteers aren't being outlined anywhere for volunteers. If I'm a coder how do I know which bugs are ready for code changes? If I'm a researcher how do I know which ones need more research? If I submitted the bug how do I know if this is valid or if my research is enough? Volunteers with "complete" bug reports are left with no response to just keep bumping their threads if they care to do so. Including the epic spawn window change 3 year old bug with no response. Someone put effort into researching that and making a thread but they get no response for 3 years and people just endlessly bump. Staff is wasting time looking at clutter bug reports with basic problems like lack of any supporting research/evidence. Players are being ignored when expressing concern around non-classic mechanics which are being nerfed to address raid abuse while those changes did nothing to stop abuse of the actual mechanic which was being abused and now items are becoming useless in solo and group situations. You're never going to convince me that P99 can't make effective use of volunteer time. This simple example proves there is plenty volunteers could be called on to do. There is plenty they have already done but it's being ignored even when the implementation of a change is simple like a spawn window. Volunteers can filter bug reports so they don't waste staff time as the staff complains about. Volunteers can provide feedback and ideas to improve issues like non-classic item nerfing for raid reasons and this can even extend to them making proposed code changes, like I suggested in that thread flagging raid mobs as such and having central code to change item clicks only on raid mobs, staff just says "Sounds better than nerfing items one at a time, propose a code change that can do that and let us see it." | |||
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Last edited by azxten; 12-05-2021 at 10:47 PM..
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#7
12-05-2021, 10:53 PM
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__________________
Shamwowi Wipesalot (60 SHM) | Bazgek Bonebreaker (60 SK) | Sznake Pliszken (52 MNK) | Laanfear (30 ENC)
Do you have questions about Shaman races? Read my guide: https://wiki.project1999.com/Shamwow...man_Race_Guide Want to see Shaman videos? Check out my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFU...zEFJVBIH3-jUog | |||
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#8
12-05-2021, 10:59 PM
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Plan of action to unfuck the Bug Reports forum for contributors and staff:
1. Rewrite or have a volunteer rewrite the contribution guidelines to better support players being able to research, determine some kind of bar of evidence required on their own for a given issue, and test things in EQEmu without being a developer. 2. Add a new staff role, Loremaster, as someone who basically curates the bug forum. Their permissions could be limited to nothing more than being able to edit post titles. 3. Create a system of tagging for the Loremaster. They edit post titles with a set of predefined tags like staff, volunteer code, volunteer research, and garbage. They mark submissions as garbage if they have no research and tell the person to make an effort. This allows people to talk in a garbage bug report until enough research exists to change the tag to volunteer code or volunteer research depending on what is needed, and finally they tag it as staff when they think something has enough research, contributions, etc to warrant the staff reviewing it. That would get us 90% of the way there. Obviously a bug forum is still crap for tracking bugs but at least this allows a work around for most of the problems here. The staff no longer has to look at garbage posts, they can choose to ignore unresearched posts which may be onto something, they can choose to fix posts which need code changes, and finally they can respond to bugs which the community fully researched and proposed a change for in order to approve and implement them. The loremaster role which presumably is an established bug researcher/contributor has more control over getting items reviewed by staff so they don't feel like their efforts are wasted and ignored. The contributor can actually get guidance on if their bug report has enough evidence and get a response from the staff without having to follow up endlessly on their bug report always wondering if it has enough evidence, if it has been seen by anyone, etc. | ||
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#9
12-05-2021, 11:05 PM
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I think you are making the assumption "most" means like 95% of the code is still base EQEMU. Of course they are using EQEMU as the base hehe. That doesn't mean they haven't modified quite a bit of the code. if 40% of the EQEMU server code has been changed by the P99 staff, that is still within the word "most".
__________________
Shamwowi Wipesalot (60 SHM) | Bazgek Bonebreaker (60 SK) | Sznake Pliszken (52 MNK) | Laanfear (30 ENC)
Do you have questions about Shaman races? Read my guide: https://wiki.project1999.com/Shamwow...man_Race_Guide Want to see Shaman videos? Check out my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFU...zEFJVBIH3-jUog | ||
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#10
12-05-2021, 11:13 PM
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Your main assertion is that I'm wasting my time because P99 code is too custom to be worth trying to contribute changes. Yet according to the staff that isn't true and most of the code is not custom. So do I keep arguing with you and filling up this thread because the staff won't respond? This is the fate of most bug reports. Absence an authoritative voice to guide investigation of bugs things devolve into opinions. Opinions about if evidence is good enough, if a mechanic should or shouldn't work in some way based on the evidence, opinions about all kinds of shit that doesn't matter and just ensures contributors are stuck talking with nobody who has the ability to find an answer. I just gave you an example in the channeling code. The code was EQEmu. The client was decompiled. The evidence is strong. Yet your response is just more of the same that you're right and community efforts can't be leveraged and the staff is correct to ignore everyone. Three year old epic mob window evidence? Mob pathing over voids? PVP arena bugs? I give you even more examples of things which likely have nothing to do with P99's custom code or if they do the value is in the research of how that code should change but you're still adamant that you are correct. Contributions just can't be valuable, things are too custom, the staff shouldn't bother improving things. This is how bug reports die here. Then the staff probably comes and looks at a thread after 7 months or whatever. Hmmm they say, where in the 10 pages of people arguing over nonsense can I just see the evidence that was compiled here? What is the actual state of this bug? Well, the initial post didn't have the evidence and I don't have time to look through 10 pages of this bullshit, fuck it, I'm not responding to this or wasting my time reading it. Quote:
At this point you're just derailing the thread. I proved you were wrong, the code in many cases is EQEmu, it can be changed, as stated by the staff encouraging suggesting code changes. If it can't be changed the research has value. There are many places where volunteers efforts could be leveraged better and much of that effort is ignored. There are several simple changes that could be made here to improve the bug report forum which I just outlined. However, thank you for replying, because again it just shows part of the problem here. I consider this the Google Support experience. Google doesn't want to actually provide support so instead they give you a support forum and have no actual staff that responds there. You're welcome to go there and argue with other people who have no authority or connection to Google other than being users. We're happy to ignore your feedback or problems. The difference is Google never claims to actually want your feedback or help fixing problems. P99 staff does. | |||||
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