What is the biggest issue that plagues FAF in your opinion?

@thecodemander

So you've spoken to 5 people who havent had any freezes, random times the client has gone all laggy, failed to launch games, randomly disconnected or other lobby jank that has needed a refaf? I have my doubts.

I did it's one of the reasons Sheikah is so confused because he personally doesn't have these issues and neither do I nor Fichom. I can ever ask more outside of that.
Please it was a massive issue then Sheikah would be seeing a lot more reports. You and I both know that. All 3 of us leave our clients on all day

I guess everyone in the clan has faulty PCs then because refaffing is a thing. I guess a lot of people in aoleous too given the number of times I have seen the word refaf in there. Please stop clowning.

I am not I'm sharing my personal experience, I leave my client out and don't refaf all day so it's one of those hard to find issues where it's like "Well it works on my computer lol", which i know is frustrating. It'd be nice if you could maybe potentially live stream your issues and stuff like that visuals might help for example. If client devs ever got time that could help them identify those especially if it is most of T3 Clan experiencing these issues.

Evidently if/when it breaks unusably it will be definition be reproducible. Stop the bad faith clowning please.

Again it doesn't seem to be a large scale issue so that makes it even harder for Devs, I never said it wasnt reproducible all I'm saying is with no communication via logs or anything it's extremely hard if not down right impossible to determine the issues especially if devs themselves aint having these issues. I'm not ignoring your issues and I'm bad faithing you at all.

My issue I'm bringing up here, as I have now written at least dozen times, is not technical. It is with the process and the communication which is lacking which when combined with the trajectory of the issues we're seeing becoming more prevalent, is not a great sign for the future.

From my own pov the client is improving with every update, i havnt personally had bad experiences with it for a few years now, but that isn't saying others aint. Whether or not you are feeling said issues or the trajectory is going up. It's really hard to determine because I don't think Devs are experienced these issues themselves. If they have they would have said so.

The process like jip said doesn't really need to communicated if you are super interested for backend in depth join the Zulip otherwise you won't get a FULL backend explanation upfront that's a lot of information 99% of people don't care to read.

Has it? I think T3 has had a lot of interaction with various FAF teams and is pretty active which means that theres going to be more communication in total which is likely to mean more negative communication as well as positive communication by volume. It also means that even with more contact if people in T3 are getting frustrated with the extra access, I shudder to think what it would be like for people who have less access. I guess they see how this is going and just shut up but thats speculation.

From who i've talked to yes it has, I think you are gaining the "Clown" title because of how you approach things and which a lot of people in the past have approaching things the same way you are and they don't get to far. You are lucky to be getting this kind of feedback and response because 6-7 years ago you would have gotten completely clowned out of the FAF Community and basically shit on to be frank with you. Nobody has done that to you and that's a really good thing. This once again is what im talking FAF is improving and FAF is the best it's ever been in terms of all realms physical and "Toxicity wise" etc.

We are listening I promise you mate

Thats a bit rich considering its coming from the person who came up with the term clown to describe me when trying to calmly and politely raise the issue with me. If you have problems with people using the same language you do on others, then maybe you should get your own ducks in a row first.

It also turned out that being inflammatory was the single most important factor in getting eyes on the issue. While some people may have been offended (for which I did apologise), it has also gotten more attention on the issue in about 72h than I was able to over months/years previously. I do not apologise for its effectiveness and that it was necessary is precisely the issue I am raising here.

That isn't a good thing and I also did call you a "Clown" because of how inflammatory you were talking to me in the first place. Your attitude is very inflammatory even on discord even when people are being nice to from any side of the development community of FAF. I do quote and remember you calling FAF Balance Team a bunch of idiots, Jip has had his experiences with you calling Client & Game Developers idiots as well as a bunch of inflammatory words which is just baiting responses for devs who are in T3 Discord which is why I also left the discord.

While you may find it unfair that I dished back out what I was getting from you in the T3 discord, I personally am not going to be told I'm being a clown and that everything is fine when 75% of my time is spent enjoying a plethora of issues meaning we can't play the game.

Then stop with the inflammatory words & entire paragraphs. It's not helping you.

If we really didnt care or wanted to do harm, spending hours engaging with you here, trying to raise issues, and still making an effort to try and play the game despite the bugs, still making maps, still making mods and still bringing new people to the community is not what we would be doing.

I understand this but please just chill out with the inflammatory stuff, just bring your issues to the Forums or just directly to the right channels on the FAF Discord.
File Issues & Bug reports go through the right channels, The Devs are listening they are there to help to you.

I am still very hopeful that with you as community manager we can see positive change, and I hope that the first week of calling people names in a clan discord will not be representative of your tenure of the role going forward because there is frankly a lot of potential for you to really address a lot of the issues we were trying to discuss while getting abuse in return.

Y'all are one of the reasons, that i made sure the post on server issues got out as fast as It did so you are appreciated for making it a concern and making sure that people should know whats going on.

I’ve always had those problems with the client. Click too often, it locks up and doesn’t respond so you need to force close it. Move between two many tabs loading and it locks up. Look at it funny and it locks up. Currently you got the bug of lobbies not existing if you refaf and use tile mode but they do exist if you go to list mode. Client also really doesn’t like it if you move between other programs and it, starts to lag quite insane sometimes when you go back to it from an alt+tab.

I’ve also historically had near zero connection problems on my end but it seems like in the last few months, even with no actual change in my setup beyond upgrading my own processor and ram, I get a connection/disconnect problem every day I try to play a game. Literally yesterday I lost connection to somebody randomly and then during the rehost it’s totally fine.

Ofc I don’t give logs but I find it kinda insane to say there’s some small minority experiencing bugs. You know what I said during that rehost I talked about when I was asked if I would lose connection? Just said I’ve got no idea, FAF’s connections have been too fucked to be able to make any reliable projection over the last months. And nobody was confused about what I meant.

Last week I was watching a Yudi stream while in voice with Farm and looking at people lose connection in each game at the same exact second and reconnect at the same times too.

What I'm getting is that the client/connection tends to be the biggest issue that plagues FAF, however it seems to vary extremely from one user to the other.

@kazuya For me, the client always has felt very 'heavy'. Booting up the client takes a good minute, lots of things seem to load slowly or respond slowly. The unit database in particular takes a good while, but so do map/replay searches etc.

"If someone disagreeing with you is toxic then theres not much I can do to help you."
"Its not up to me how people respond to feedback. If people want to take it that way then fine, I cant stop people from feeling however they want to make themselves feel when they read things."

His feedback:
-client stability is trash
-when it works its a laggy mess
-communication from dev team is inexistent
-Theres also a culture of denial
-Balance team seem to be on a diet of shrooms

massive moment

@Kazuya

I am not I'm sharing my personal experience, I leave my client out and don't refaf all day so it's one of those hard to find issues where it's like "Well it works on my computer lol", which i know is frustrating. It'd be nice if you could maybe potentially live stream your issues and stuff like that visuals might help for example. If client devs ever got time that could help them identify those especially if it is most of T3 Clan experiencing these issues.

As am I. Why dont you live stream me your faf client to prove it has no issues at all whatsoever for you? Why is there a double standard where when you share your experience of it being perfect then it must be true for everyone but as soon as I say the opposite it devolves into this mind numbing exchange we have here now?

I dont know how many times I have now said this my specific issues arent the fucking problem here. Do you even read wtf dude, Ive written this in like every one of my last 5 replies. Please stop dancing around my original point.

From my own pov the client is improving with every update

And mine is the opposite and I think your pov is currently over-represented in the higher FAF circles which is exactly why I am going to extreme pain to try and get attention drawn to the fact that the process is not currently well equipped for randos to raise issues that dont neatly fit into a github issue currently. @magge linked an old page that would actually make a really good barometer.

I really dont see whats so bad about consolidating the current communication on random issues and having a way of judging the health of the client. Are we worried about the outcome not supporting the view that the client is S tier right now when for a lot of people isnt? The aversion to hearing a statement from a single perspective here is extreme to the point that its devolved multiple times into "my platform", "my specific bugs" all the way down to who and what clan it originates from.

Looking at the other two replies, I think I'm not unjustified when I get extremely annoyed when I have to listen to assertions like the one you made that I'm apparently a loon for having run into issues with other people. I have had issues on stream also, others have them while streaming too. Its really not a secret.

It is also extremely sad to see things like

We are listening I promise you mate

When it takes this long and this many posts and you still dont get the point I was making in the first place.

I do quote and remember you calling FAF Balance Team a bunch of idiots, Jip has had his experiences with you calling Client & Game Developers idiots as well as a bunch of inflammatory words which is just baiting responses for devs who are in T3 Discord which is why I also left the discord.

From memory there are a few instances of specific things being done which with the information communicated at the time were absolutely moronic. There is also a difference (which I guess is too subtle) between something technical being idiotic in the context available and calling that person an idiot. Smart people can do things which appear idiotic when communicated poorly. I have no doubt that you'll find me saying that a dev team was stupid in doing something specific or someone in particular as a conditional to a take which with the context available at the time is an accurate descriptor. If people that personally then wtf am I supposed to do? Its a bit dumb to do something that looks idiotic if removed from supporting information and then do it anyway while also making that information unavailable.

@FemtoZetta just chimed in with exactly this while I was typing as well as showing that he has absolutely no understanding of the wider point, hasnt read any posts here where and is really contributing hard to the wider point by further proving my original point that there is an extreme aversion to what I was saying because its much more fun to put a head in the sand and focus on the language that was necessary to get the issue any form of attention.

To be clear, we have had people from the FAF team see that, drop by and explain that actually I or whoever were the one dumb for saying some things were stupid because there's hours of context and a larger picture it fits into that is not being communicated at all. This is a ball dropped hard because it wastes their time.

If you think people shouldn't have opinions or shouldn't be allowed to voice them, then thats fine and more power to you. I'm sure there are places where that is the MO. On that basis I can see why you might find the T3 discord toxic when it lets people express how they feel about certain things and openly discuss literally whatever topic.

I'm frankly extremely uninterested with who is smart or dumb. I care about the end result in the context it is presented in. If you don't want people to make ignorant statements, then how about making the information available so they aren't ignorant instead of calling them clowns and going reeree in a corner?

Then stop with the inflammatory words & entire paragraphs. It's not helping you.

File Issues & Bug reports go through the right channels, The Devs are listening they are there to help to you.

Can you drop the crusade and read the thread? This has been beaten to death and the evidence suggests that we've gotten somewhere much faster now as a result of it than politeness has achieved for many months previously.

Why is this thread still going on

@thecodemander

There is literally a wiki page on reporting technical issues, a wiki page on connection issues and solutions, a forums section on support for client and account issues, and a tech support Discord forum.

I think each of those resources can get lead users to the help they need in most reasonably solvable cases. If you think they should be improved in some way, you're welcome to volunteer and try to help out.

Bringing something to light on the forums can get high exposure and prompt change, but it doesn't have to be inflammatory to do so. Many changes have been made as a result of non-toxic forum discussions.

Acting caustically to FAF's contributors because other people triggered you is not helpful or fair. Personally, I think I've observed significantly more mentions of connection and client issues in recent months compared to a year or two ago. However, if the affected people won't make actual bug reports with logs, it makes trying to solve the problems harder, slower, and less likely to happen. So, if you really want to get the problems fixed faster, I suggest you get more of the affected users to submit bug reports with logs, and you could volunteer to help out as well if you want.

@snagglefox said in What is the biggest issue that plagues FAF in your opinion?:

Why is this thread still going on

I would love to know. Its such pain at this point.

@@Anachronism_

There is literally a wiki page on reporting technical issues, a wiki page on connection issues and solutions, a forums section on support for client and account issues, and a tech support Discord forum.

So now theres also a wiki page too. Do you understand what is meant by the term fragmentation?

If I have a vague issue there are literally so many places I have to search before I can even confirm that it has been talked about in any capacity. If we are expecting people to go through every one of those resources (aeolus, the discord channels, the github page, the zuelip, the forum, the wiki, the other page someone linked...) before they can be sure that its a new issue etc, then IMO a lot of people are frankly going to put up and shut up about it because it is long and frustrating. Especially if youre not sure how to describe what youre looking for because its happening kind of randomly and inconsistently.

Bringing something to light on the forums can get high exposure and prompt change, but it doesn't have to be inflammatory to do so. Many changes have been made as a result of non-toxic forum discussions.

I swear to god people are not reading my point. The fragmentation and the process to get attention to random issues is the issue. At the moment vague issues are being tolerated (and we can disagree if these are increasing or decreasing in number) but a lot are being tolerated because they are not in a state where we can collate all the information that might help us figure out what the common ground is because there is no central, easy to use, visible way where all this information can exist with less barriers.

Acting caustically to FAF's contributors because other people triggered you is not helpful or fair.

As I have also said many times now, I have been trying to get visibility on this issue for a really long time. Acting caustically has worked apparently a little too well looking at this thread, I could've saved a lot of time by doing this in the first place. This is also part of the problem: why is it necessary that it must be done in a negative and inflammatory way to get a decent level of engagement?

However, if the affected people won't make actual bug reports with logs

Are you memeing or did you not read any of what I have written multiple times now? The individual bugs that could be reported as a bug are NOT AT ALL what I'm talking about. At the moment this is the process that exists, but these are issues that aren't yet in a position to make it that far because of their nature. My view is we should do more to help get current jank issues to that stage because then we can make things better.

So, if you really want to get the problems fixed faster, I suggest you get more of the affected users to submit bug reports with logs, and you could volunteer to help out as well if you want.

Please, PLEASE, PLEASE read and understand what I'm talking about before rehashing the same besides the point reply that exists many times in this thread. This here is the reason this thread is going on and its getting really tiresome. If this ends with caustic language aimed at people who keep not reading the thread from me, this time it will be intentional and aimed at people being actually stupid and not for the purpose of getting attention to the issue.

@thecodemander

So now theres also a wiki page too. Do you understand what is meant by the term fragmentation?

I do understand.

If I have a vague issue there are literally so many places I have to search before I can even confirm that it has been talked about in any capacity. If we are expecting people to go through every one of those resources

You don't have to search each of those places or go through each of those resources. You can use any one of them without knowing about or searching through the others.

I swear to god people are not reading my point. The fragmentation and the process to get attention to random issues is the issue. At the moment vague issues are being tolerated (and we can disagree if these are increasing or decreasing in number) but a lot are being tolerated because they are not in a state where we can collate all the information that might help us figure out what the common ground is because there is no central, easy to use, visible way where all this information can exist with less barriers.

You don't seem to realize that some people are getting your point but disagree with some of your conclusions. It would be great if there was some centralized resource issue tracker with all the bells and whistles we could want, but we don't have that atm. Making/getting something like that might be worthwhile, but that would have to be investigated, and it might not even be worth the opportunity cost in the end.

As I have also said many times now, I have been trying to get visibility on this issue for a really long time. Acting caustically has worked apparently a little too well looking at this thread, I could've saved a lot of time by doing this in the first place. This is also part of the problem: why is it necessary that it must be done in a negative and inflammatory way to get a decent level of engagement?

It's not necessary to be inflammatory or negative. You say you have been trying to get visibility for a while, but what detailed non-toxic forum posts did you previously make for this issue? I don't recall seeing any...

Are you memeing or did you not read any of what I have written multiple times now? The individual bugs that could be reported as a bug are NOT AT ALL what I'm talking about. At the moment this is the process that exists, but these are issues that aren't yet in a position to make it that far because of their nature. My view is we should do more to help get current jank issues to that stage because then we can make things better.

People can still describe the issue and give logs. Even if it is vague and they think it doesn't show up in the logs, descriptions can help and reporting it and including logs might still be helpful. Alternatively or additionally, more people can make forum posts for issues they think should be given more attention. I'm not saying the current situation is optimal or great or efficient, but it's what we've got, and unless someone shares or creates a superior/realistic/worthwhile alternative, it's what we'll presumably keep doing for now. If you have a superior solution that can be enacted quickly with little cost or dev time, you are welcome to share it.

@anachronism_ said in What is the biggest issue that plagues FAF in your opinion?:

It's not necessary to be inflammatory or negative. You say you have been trying to get visibility for a while, but what detailed non-toxic forum posts did you previously make for this issue? I don't recall seeing any...

As I also previously said, multiple times, in this thread I am putting it on the forum now. You wouldn't be asking this if youd read the thread.

Alternatively or additionally, more people can make forum posts for issues they think should be given more attention.

Which reinforces my point that what we end up with is lots and lots and lots of potentially related issues that are vague which someone has to sift through and sort later. The page that was posted by magge that FAF has might be a good and cheap way to do most of what I'm suggesting and it already exists.

I dont think I'm going to keep replying to people who are asking things that the answer has been written to mutiple times and just feel like arguing for the sake of going round the roundabout one more time for funzies.

Java

@anachronism_ said in What is the biggest issue that plagues FAF in your opinion?:

@thecodemander

There is literally a wiki page on reporting technical issues, a wiki page on connection issues and solutions, a forums section on support for client and account issues, and a tech support Discord forum.

@Sheikah So about that 'fragmentation is rather low' thing?

@indexlibrorum said in What is the biggest issue that plagues FAF in your opinion?:

@anachronism_ said in What is the biggest issue that plagues FAF in your opinion?:

@thecodemander

There is literally a wiki page on reporting technical issues, a wiki page on connection issues and solutions, a forums section on support for client and account issues, and a tech support Discord forum.

@Sheikah So about that 'fragmentation is rather low' thing?

I respectfully disagree with your post.

I just want to clarify a few things.

For those reading along the main summary of this thread is that bugs which are not easily reproduced or only happen on specific systems/environments are hard to report and hard to fix. Ultimately we as developers cannot fix these bugs without both notification from users and some degree of reproducibility or cause. It is just unreasonable to expect anything else. Without a report we have no way of knowing what the actual cause is so can't even make any statements on the issue.

It would be nice if it would be easier for users to report these ephemeral issues but the reality like most things is FAF is that it is limited due to manpower. We can't go and bother every person for bug reports or possible issues they have because otherwise nothing would get fixed. So we need buy in from users to help us fix things. And this does not mean making inflammatory posts and insulting developers. More often than not this will simply get you ignored because it is rare anyone has the patience to deal with that.

the evidence suggests that we've gotten somewhere much faster now as a result of it than politeness has achieved for many months previously

Your posts have not gotten a response because they are inflammatory. They have gotten a response because they are posted in a place where we ask for feedback. And is one of the places where we direct bug reports so they can be tracked. It is not appropriate to expect developers and others to respond to your requests when you message them in game or randomly ping them because that is not how we track issues. Those conversations will be forgotten and nothing will get done.

In regard to the multitude of places that help information is posted. Each of these was created by a different set of users or contributors because it was most convenient for their use case. The ultimate problem is that everyone will look in different places. But largely they are all duplicates of each other. Given this I do not understand how the idea that adding another source of information will bring more clarity. xkcd even has a wonderful comic illustrating the well known problem https://xkcd.com/927/.

Ultimately the best solution is for user bugs to be reported in the technical help locations that are widely advertised like the forum or the discord. More well understood issues should be posted to the respective git repository for better tracking. This will ensure that the issues have visibility to the technical help and developers. Any other reports are not guaranteed to be seen and if users are unable or unwilling to help us find root cause then there is very little we can do to resolve their issues.

All that being said, I believe everything that could be gained from this specific topic has already been said and it would be best if this thread is left open for others to discuss other ideas or opinions they may have.

As you did not address your comment to any specific poster, I will respond to the sections I believe relate to my comments.

@sheikah said in What is the biggest issue that plagues FAF in your opinion?:

In regard to the multitude of places that help information is posted. Each of these was created by a different set of users or contributors because it was most convenient for their use case. The ultimate problem is that everyone will look in different places. But largely they are all duplicates of each other. Given this I do not understand how the idea that adding another source of information will bring more clarity. xkcd even has a wonderful comic illustrating the well known problem https://xkcd.com/927/.

I was initially going to include that comic. Now I feel silly for not doing so

My argument was that there needed to be a centralised location. Any 'new standard' would have to replace the relevant sections on the forum and discord would have to be removed. Ideally, github would have to be merged or synchronised with that centralised place.

All that being said, I believe everything that could be gained from this specific topic has already been said and it would be best if this thread is left open for others to discuss other ideas or opinions they may have.

Then, for my last comment on this topic, my condensed answer to the original question of OP as spread out over the previous comments, and final suggestion:

I believe it is unclear, to non-dev players, which (non-individual) issues have been identified or reported, acknowledged, diagnosed, worked on, or fixed (issue tracking).

In my view, this problem is because:

1. The information on these issues is fragmented over several platforms;
2. Some of the platforms used for tracking these issues are not fit for that purpose.

Several Devs have expressed their opinion on whether or not having four (five? Six?) platforms for issue tracking is a problem. Few non-devs have participated in this discussion. XKCD's 'Average familiarity' comes to mind.

@Kazuya
To avoid getting hit over the head by Jip once more for implying I might have an insight of what goes on in the FAF community, I would like to suggest that you poll FAF players on their views, taking into account that only a select and specific subset of the community actively participates in the forums and discord.

Custom games are dead unless you wanna spend 1h doing nothing. 4v4 died for even worse game mode.

@kazuya I think the MOST important problem right now is player disconnects that, in my opinion, are caused by the server. In almost EVERY game for the past month, at least one player experienced a disconnect. The game I played last night was the worst EVER. it was a 6 V 6 on dual gap. One by one, five players experienced disconnects until we were down to 3 vs 4. I had completed my yolo and was reining nukes down on the other team. My second nuke killed two more players on the other team, so now it was 3 VS 2. Right after my fourth nuke, I disconnected. We would have won and both teams were calling me the MVP of the game. But when I logged on today, my rank had decreased indicating that my team had lost the game. This is INFURIATING. Several players are ready to stop playing in disgust. PLEASE fix this server problem or FAF will lose a lot of players.

@popsniper said in What is the biggest issue that plagues FAF in your opinion?:

@kazuya I think the MOST important problem right now is player disconnects that, in my opinion, are caused by the server. In almost EVERY game for the past month, at least one player experienced a disconnect. The game I played last night was the worst EVER. it was a 6 V 6 on dual gap. One by one, five players experienced disconnects until we were down to 3 vs 4. I had completed my yolo and was reining nukes down on the other team. My second nuke killed two more players on the other team, so now it was 3 VS 2. Right after my fourth nuke, I disconnected. We would have won and both teams were calling me the MVP of the game. But when I logged on today, my rank had decreased indicating that my team had lost the game. This is INFURIATING. Several players are ready to stop playing in disgust. PLEASE fix this server problem or FAF will lose a lot of players.

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/6182/addressing-severe-connectivity-issues-what-has-happened
Long story short, we are experiencing DDOS on our coturn servers making the connection of players relying on them quite iffy.

I am not a programming Geek! What the hell is DDOS on our coturn servers????