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

@blackyps

You went on an awful lot of tangents about how the python client was better etc. if the actual point was how to discuss bugs better. So how should we improve communication about unsolvable bugs?

Because I am aware of how the python client is viewed, and its one of the only reference points to ground the argument. Saying trajectory bad isn't as useful as trajectory bad, heres the points its crossing and why we should care.

I would like to address the process of janky issues which are hard to repro. I havent gotten that far because so far every attempt to talk about them has been "its not on git" "this person hasnt been told" "I havent seen it" "why dont you bring it up on the forum" and now "it needs to be on these channels in official faf" along with some other platforms.

I have the strong impression that you are mistaking the opinions of more or less random dudes that try to steer you in a direction to get help for your problems with official communication by actual developers. And we can't solve that.

If there are client blaming issues there should be a (read: one) process communicated and publicly available which says who to talk to, that handles issues that cant be preprod easily etc.

Additionally from your comments to MazorNoob you say you are running in Arch Linux. Now it is known that the client has plenty of bugs both known and unknown on linux platforms due to the graphics library interactions.

Agree 100%. This is why Im cagey about me being the source of bug reports that I can repro. It isnt relevant to faf or worthy of your time to fix my i3 jank. I will fix that. Issues where I have the issue and other people on supported platforms also confirm they are running into them but also cant repro or arent sure, those are I think valid issues we need to tackle.

Likely in your case I would imagine there is some odd graphics driver interaction or environment constraints since it sounds like you have a technical background and likely have a more customized setup.

I have said to people what is infuriating is that I wouldve liked to test on older client versions which I never remember running into these problems but I cant because often client updates are a mandatory version check.

I'll probably piss you off, but

arch

I find this pretty funny tbh. I am aware and this is why I'm not keen on "I have this specific bug". Where Im annoyed is that Im having bugs that I cant repro that other people are having too and at the moment there is no way to even start talking about these, let alone addressing them because the discourse on the topic is cursed.

I have however found consensus in the notion that once its on the forum, visibly, then a big current excuse goes away. It is now here, on the forum. The relevant people (I hope) have seen it, so we should now be past that step.

At the very least you should have the awareness that you're running an uncommon setup

If you read my previous replies you would be aware that I already acknowledged this and I have already stated that I dont care about my specific bugs.

The process of "this is jank for a good number of people, and there is no way to raise this because the process is dysfunctional with regards to this type of problem", I have tried raising this and the barrier is pretty much "it isnt on the forum, and even if it was no one has seen it".

I set out to post about that specific issue (again, not bugs, my bugs, specific bugs or whatever) so that we can get past this step.

If I have to deal with i3 and linux specific bugs thats fine, I dont care (as much). Where I care is that there are actual client and game breaking issues out there right now that impact a good number of games and hours of lobbysim/queusim which are currently unreportable, undiscussable even. I want that to change and a first step is to raise it here (which it now has been) and to fix the process around that (which I am hopeful for with the new community manager)

@sheikah Not to be petty but it is technically not the first time. I dont know if you were memeing last time but you said something to that effect.

I would search replays where we had a small back and forth and you came off being pretty dismissive but all the search functions of the client are completely borked right now.

Edit: Found it by clicking through every replay like an animal. I believe you said and I quote "you are welcome to maintain or create your own client"

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

If there are client blaming issues there should be a (read: one) process communicated and publicly available which says who to talk to, that handles issues that cant be preprod easily etc.

This is where the breakdown is because unfortunately there is no one process that can handle non-reproducible issues. In the big corporation ideal this would entail having a support engineer sit with the user and walk through their actions taking detailed notes or even having remote logging on their machine to take constant diagnostic to try and hopefully catch the cause.

The reality in FAF is that I just do not have the time to sit with every user who has a very niche problem that only sometimes happen. It would result in days of wasted time. Especially when the end user is not technical minded.

So that is really where the requirement of reproducible bugs and clean reports come from. Because otherwise it is truly impossible to fix without some miracle divine intervention.

@sheikah

I agree on the need for reproable bugs. This is literally 90% of the source of the frustration. If we know there are bugs, then you going around the place saying "I have seen no reports indicating so" is absolutely nuts.

Im not suggesting we hire people or go all out on fixing these issues. But in the meantime they continue to multiply and instead of fixes we seem to be getting a lot of new things that dont even come close to addressing them. And when we bring them up, being told to go write our own client is really not going to lead to anything productive.

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

Edit: Found it by clicking through every replay like an animal. I believe you said and I quote "you are welcome to maintain or create your own client"

Sure because that was after requesting that you make a proper bug report and then just complained about how I was only making the client worse with any updates. That is not a response I can do much about. And since your attitude seemed to be you could do better I was just stating anyone was welcome to do so.

Additionally it wasn't exactly the time for a formal conversation since I was just trying to play a game which is why I first suggested making an actual report where we could address the issues rather than having a conversation mid game.

@sheikah

I agree and Im willing to give plenty of rope. I actually really tried to jump around singling that interaction and you out when jip asked before. I dont have an issue with anyone here or the work they do. I take exception with what the process has ended up being.

Unfortunately that interaction has been typical of almost every interaction on the topic every time I've tried to raise it in the past year, and this thread really exemplifies things.

I don't know if the client needs to become unusable before the core functionality is fixed? The degradation of functionality over the past 18 months has been noticeable, and pointing it out used to result in apathy. It now results in really unpleasant interactions and yet it persists.

Maybe we need less features and less pretty? idk, and idc. Point being when it comes up again when things are worse if things continue as is, Im not going to take it well when someone comes up to me and says something along the lines of <shouldve posted about it publicly at the time instead of moaning to us>.

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

@sheikah

I agree on the need for reproable bugs. This is literally 90% of the source of the frustration. If we know there are bugs, then you going around the place saying "I have seen no reports indicating so" is absolutely nuts.

I literally go by the bug reports that come into github to determine what major issues there are with the client. As I previously mentioned I have to try and sus out what is specific to a certain user vs what is actually an issue with the application code itself. And most of the time the issues you are claiming people talk about are just people saying "lol this client is shit" or "Why is my client so slow". This is not an actionable statement as there is no context. So it isn't even a bug in my mind nor is it something I can even act upon. So that is what I mean when I say no reports have been made.

Even in the replay you mentioned your "bug" reports were that the UI/UX is bad and that the python client is unmaintained. It was in response to your comment that the python client is unmaintained that I brought up the fact that you could maintain it if you want, but that is outside the scope of reports on the current client.

@sheikah

Im not trying to single you or your work out. I have no issues with your work on the client. There are issues with it, issues that I dont blame you for since at the moment they are major but really not easy to isolate or reproduce.

I was going to go into specifics about that but its besides the point. I dont know how many more times I need to say this: I posted here in the hopes that the next time someone wants to hide behind the "its not posted visibly somewhere like the forum" I can point them here and we can actually have a conversation.

I do believe the process for handling weird issues at the moment is deficient and I really really hope the new community person can do something to officialise/streamline/improve it because at the moment getting this point across still seems impossible despite me spelling it out multiple times here and everyone being drawn to specific bugs like moths to a lamp.

I am still confused when you you talk about the process being bad. We have almost exclusively requested that people make bug reports on the proper channels when issues are raised. Additionally I personally get frustrated because there are times when I have hunted down complaining users to try and figure out what is going on in their systems. And my experience trying to engage people and help them get actual reports I can act on is normally that they don't have time or it isn't worth trying and normally ends with them insulting me in some fashion as well. Even as I am just trying to understand what their expectations are.

So it is a high barrier even for me as a developer to try and find the cause for all these niche issues. And yes sometimes I just don't have time and will try to indicate so but will try and circle back. But when all of this happens in a single chat channel that has poor search and history things just get lost which is why we ask to file a proper bug report. So that they can actually be tracked.

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

I do believe the process for handling weird issues at the moment is deficient and I really really hope the new community person can do something to officialise/streamline/improve it because at the moment getting this point across still seems impossible despite me spelling it out multiple times here and everyone being drawn to specific bugs like moths to a lamp.

What do you suggest the process be? Because I have tried many different things but it really does come down to being able to reproduce the issues people are having. But when the end users are uncooperative in that regard there is little me or any other developer can even hope to do.

What do you suggest the process be?

As a start having a page findable somewhere with what is and isnt a known issue might be a start. There have been instances when people in the FAF team have outright told me in VC to stfu because <x> isnt true only for a week later to find out "yeah nah m8, that was totally a big thing and we're fixing it" which is like wtf. Doubly so when those people double down or really start getting heated about things. Like Im seeing this happen, im asking other people who are also seeing it and all I want to know really is two things:

1. Are the FAF team already aware of this thing
2. Is there anything out there that might help me fix/work around/repro/report the issue.

At the moment, the communication on those two points does not exist and is actively counter productive.

If there was a single point of "these are things we know happen, these are things we need more input on, these are things we've heard about is it just these 3 people or is it more widespread?" I think we'd be 90% of the way to a better place.

I will say that is literally what the github issues page is for at https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/issues. Which is where I always direct people who have issues. Additionally we have the client-bug-reporting channel in the discord. Normally when people post a bug in the client-bug-reporting discord I normally respond with if it is known, fixed, or planned yet.

The issue is when people give vague bug reports like the client is slow. I cannot answer if we know about that because it is simply too broad, that statement can mean a million things to a million different people.

On top of that the technical help forum in discord is pretty active as well and most people get directed there where other users or some contributors with experience help them with their workarounds or fixing common issues.

And if you bring it up to me only when I am in a game yeah I am not going to give a full response but for specific bugs we have that tracking and communication already.

So what is it that you are looking for on top of these things?

I will say that is literally what the github issues page is for at https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/issues

Searching through all the github issues for something vague, that cant be reprod is not the easiest or most efficient thing.

The issue is when people give vague bug reports like the client is slow.
I mean, it is. It really is. I can load into a FAF game faster than the client appears, let along waiting for most of the pages to become usable. Specific bug though, besides the point I was making.

On top of that the technical help forum in discord is pretty active

Seems like a waste of peoples time if everyone has to ask over and over every time they run into weird issues.

I guess the difference with having a centralised page would be to inform people what new issues people are seeing and what is actually being worked on. Might be nice to have a way to discuss proposed changes too when someone suggest changing things that change how the client works.

It was unfair for me to use that interaction as an example, as I had prefaced: it was a bit petty of a technicality. It was however pretty typical of the responses I have had on the broader issue.

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

Searching through all the github issues for something vague, that cant be reprod is not the easiest or most efficient thing.

Well I as a developer run into the exact same issue. Which is often why things are handled one by one until it is clear they are the same.

I guess the difference with having a centralised page would be to inform people what new issues people are seeing and what is actually being worked on. Might be nice to have a way to discuss proposed changes too when someone suggest changing things that change how the client works.

I agree that this would be great to have. Unfortunately it would also be a monumental undertaking and require quite a bit of manpower to be done properly. This ultimately means it would be a choice between at least me working on the client and fixing things vs aggregating issues and posting them. I think actually fixing things is the preferred use of my time.

It would be great if someone else came along and took up that task but even then that is the kind of thing opensource projects and companies have full teams for, not to mention being a pretty thankless task.

Additionally that doesn't really stop the problem where people would still have to search that list. Even on the most advanced issues list you see people reposting the same issues again and again all being directed back to the main page. Which is similar to what we do here with the issues and technical help forum.

Now that we seem to have returned to a constructive conversation;

Satisfactory (the game) has similar issues with bug reports and communications. They've set up this website, which mirrors Github in how bugs can be reported and labelled, but also has a voting system and some other tweaks that make it easier for people to keep track of common issues.

Does something like this solve some or most of the issues you raised, code?

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

Now that we seem to have returned to a constructive conversation;

Satisfactory (the game) has similar issues with bug reports and communications. They've set up this website, which mirrors Github in how bugs can be reported and labelled, but also has a voting system and some other tweaks that make it easier for people to keep track of common issues.

Does something like this solve some or most of the issues you raised, code?

I did not know about this and this is pretty nice

@thecodemander If you have some time, perhaps you and whoever else is interested in this topic can take a look at what this website does well, and which features are missing.

From what I followed from the conversation above, one issue was that there are several locations where bugs are discussed and reported, and that this fragmentation leads to issues with communication. Does a structure like this solve these and other mentioned issues, and can we centralize communication around this one location?

I haven't got the foggiest idea of how much effort it is to set something like this up, whether this needs to be created from scratch, or if some kind of open-source solution to this exists. I'd be surprised if the dev team has the manpower and time available to set something like this up easily, but maybe I'm wrong.

From what I followed from the conversation above, one issue was that there are several locations where bugs are discussed and reported, and that this fragmentation leads to issues with communication. Does a structure like this solve these and other mentioned issues, and can we centralize communication around this one location?

The fragmentation exists because Discord is accessible, but isn't as easy to properly track (large) bugs or features in. And Github is good for tracking issues, but people usually find it too much a burden to take the time to make a bug report on it.

There is no further fragmentation than that.

Well there is also the argument that there is the technical help on this forum which kind of got replaced by discord unfortunately. But yes I would agree that the fragmentation is rather low. With individual/user issues on the discord and more systematic issues on the github issues.

The forums has the same problem as Discord in my opinion though: difficult to properly track (large) bugs or features in.

@IndexLibrorum Looking at your suggestion. How is this different from using Github to track the issues?