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

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?

@jip An upvote system, for one. Might be more user-friendly for people who do not code, but you'd have to ask the community.

@sheikah Discord is a gaping all-consuming void in which issues are either buried in spam, or straight up disappear never to be seen again. I have a hard time finding my own older bug reports, even knowing what I am looking for and certain of their existence, which isn't helped much by the godawful search system. And may the gods have mercy on the soul of whoever needs any information mentioned in any channel besides tech-support-forums. Finding anything in general-chat is not unlike trying to find a lost skier buried under an avalanche. The term 'excavation' comes to mind.

Then you have a forum, a Github, and a Zulip. The latter of which players, apparently, need to stay up to date with as a requirement to be informed enough—see image. Cue strong flashback to a certain scene from The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy.

“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”

“Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display …”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.

I think that's all. Maybe. I am not certain, because I know there's a bounty hunting thing somewhere as well, Zulip had never crossed my horizon before two weeks ago, and my memory isn't good enough to be sure that I haven't forgotten another site or app or place.

Thank you for taking a screenshot of a message of a heated discussion, and then taking that out of context.

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

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.

It seems like it is similar to this thing we have. I don't know why it was abandoned and if we even have access to it. I think Downlord set it up years ago.

maybe we can get accses to it again ? and seems somthing that could be usefull to have and start using more

To comment on the process of bug reports: The fragmentation exists because there is no single platform that covers all our needs. The issue tracking happens on github, because there we have the tools to organize them and link them to the relevant code changes. The issue there is that 99% of FAF users don't have a github account.
The discord help/bug reporting section extists, because a lot of people are in discord and are asking for help in discord, so we set something up to help them right there.
The bug reporting on the forum exists because people might not have or want a discord account. You can use your FAF account on the forum, so everybody that potentially has issues, already has an account for a relevant place to get help.
Zulip exists as a chat for developers. It is not at all a requirement to be there to report a bug. I don't really know why it snuck up into this conversation, but I just want to make it clear that the existence of zulip is entirely irrelevant for the average FAF user.

It is also not true that you have to check in in all of these areas to get help. One is enough. The purpose of the forum and discord is to bring people in contact with developers so they can add issues to the tracker on github, if the users themselves can't do it, which is totally fine. Of course if you are already familiar with the environment you can skip all that and create an issue directly on github.

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

Thank you for taking a screenshot of a message of a heated discussion, and then taking that out of context.

I disagree this was taken out of context. The picture supports that A) Important Dev stuff is being communicated on another external platform and B) that it is something that was new to a lot of us. (And I added the meme to lighten up the conversation a tad)

Let me know how you feel I misconstrued your intent and I will correct my comment.

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

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

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.

It seems like it is similar to this thing we have. I don't know why it was abandoned and if we even have access to it. I think Downlord set it up years ago.

Welp, this was why I added

I think that's all. Maybe. I am not certain, because I know there's a bounty hunting thing somewhere as well, Zulip had never crossed my horizon before two weeks ago, and my memory isn't good enough to be sure that I haven't forgotten another site or app or place.

to my post.

The FAF feedback site is made with www.userreport.com - If we do not have access to the original FAF related account anymore, we can simply create a new one. This feedback site https://feedback.userreport.com/7a3715db-9cd2-49ec-bebd-b5cfd752647b/#ideas/popular and style looks promising and probably like a suitable solution.

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

I disagree this was taken out of context. The picture supports that A) Dev stuff is being communicated on another external platform and B) that it is something that was new to a lot of us. (And I added the meme to lighten up the conversation a tad)
Let me know how you feel I misconstrued your intent and I will correct my comment.

Do I really need to write this out?

That screenshot was taking in a long discussion on your clan server. Any snippet of a long discussion is automatically taken out of context, regardless of what you're trying to convey. But not only that, you're using it to try to convey some point that is literally not what the discussion at that moment was about.

At that point in the discussion some members in your clan server were being excessively rude on the status quo of the client, and in particular on the status of the connection between players. With thanks to this announcement we now all know why that is. But back then we had the policy to only share that information on a need to know basis. Effectively only the core contributors of FAF were aware of what has been announced. And they knew because the place the announced content was being discussed is on ... Zulip!

Back to the discussion. At that point I was trying to convey to some members of your clan server that there's more going on then what meets the eyes. But I couldn't just disclose what that was, as at the time it was on a need to know basis.

Meanwhile our development team got verbally shit on, multiple times. It was a great discussion /s. The next day or so I left your clan server because of it.

Back to the point you're trying to convey: Zulip is not fragmenting the information space. You don't need to be there to be informed about 95% of what happens on FAF. Almost everything we do is on Github, open for everyone to view. Any discussion on Zulip usually reflects work that end up in pull requests. It just is a place to have in-depth technical discussions in an environment that looks and feels like Slack. I also explained on your clan server

And I'll be honest: I'm not super hyped on the idea of this example tool of Satisfactory. To me it feels like it would actually fragment the public information space to solve a problem that, in all honesty, only your clan appears to perceive at this moment. There are three primary places where people can report issues:

• On the forums, as we have a section with the name Game issues in it
• On Github, using the bug issue template
• On Discord, using the (game)-bug-reporting channel (which is a Discord forums)

The former is also referenced in-game, where there is a 'report a bug' button in the changelog window:

Which brings you to this place:

• https://github.com/FAForever/fa/wiki/how-to:-report-a-bug

And that mentions at the bottom the same locations to report a bug. This has worked fine for me. And it would work fine for you too, if...

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

If Im talking directly to someone inside the FAF organisation, either on VC, or in game, or in DMs or on another discord or via morse code shouldnt really matter.

you'd actually use the proper channels to report your issues instead of whatever all these are

Thanks Jip.

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

That screenshot was taking in a long discussion on your clan server. Any snippet of a long discussion is automatically taken out of context, regardless of what you're trying to convey. But not only that, you're using it to try to convey some point that is literally not what the discussion at that moment was about.

I disagree with this premise, because you're essentially stating that you cannot look at separate facts mentioned in an conversation without discussing the whole conversation.

Example: imagine a discussion on how to farm tomatoes. If 90% of the discussion is about soil and water requirements, but at one point someone mentions "by the way, tomatoes, which are a member of the nightshade family like potatoes and eggplants, are technically a fruit. This is why soil requires blah blah...", it is not disingenuous to later say "Oh by the way, this person said that tomatoes are part of the nightshade family".

You do not need the full context of the conversation to refer to something that was mentioned, because specific facts can be true regardless of their context.

During the discussion, you mentioned that to be informed about the specific issue we would have to visit Zulip. In my comment above I refer to this as an example of how information is fragmented. I remain of the opinion that nothing about that misconstrues any of the points you raised in the discussion on our server.

Back to the point you're trying to convey: Zulip is not fragmenting the information space. You don't need to be there to be informed about 95% of what happens on FAF. Almost everything we do is on Github, open for everyone to view. Any discussion on Zulip usually reflects work that end up in pull requests. It just is a place to have in-depth technical discussions in an environment that looks and feels like Slack.

Fair enough, thank you for clearing that up.

I also explained on your clan server

Not to the point where it was clear to me, but discussing this in detail is best left for a PM in discord, I think.

in all honesty, only your clan appears to perceive at this moment.

First of all, I am writing these comments and expressing my opinion independently from Code. I don't much appreciate this attempt of grouping us together, as it comes across to me that this is meant to imply that the criticism is lesser in some way coming from one group or 'direction'. As if therefore it should be dismissed out of hand.

Secondly, the fact that 2-3 members of my clan are currently vocally expressing their frustration with the problem doesn't meant the problem is limited to only our group. If you were to ask a representative sample of the community, I believe you'll find the sentiment is commonly shared. Just reading this thread should convince you that it is patently unclear for many people which bugs are reported and acknowledged, which are being work on, and what the status of that process is.

Lastly, the report bug button is neat, but I wouldn't be able to find you the button if you forced me to with a gun to my head.

I want to reiterate that I am grateful for the work that is put into this project; the fact that FAF is going strong after the base game has basically died is a great achievement. I am not here to antagonize the volunteer devs, but to highlight what I think is an important issue and offer solutions to the problems as I see them.

@IndexLibrorum I don't want to spent further energy on this nonsense. I was hoping for an apology but instead I got a story where you confuse a fact with an interpretation.

If you were to ask a representative sample of the community, I believe you'll find the sentiment is commonly shared

You're not the first who tries to talk as if he or she knows what the community wants. You won't be the last. But everyone who tries it without doing the actual research is usually just wrong. And you're no exception

The screenshot is out of context because it doesn't tell us what you would be informed about on zulip. Without this context the screenshot only tells us that people get informed on zulip. Without any further context this is a useless statement. Everybody that reads it assumes that it is relevant to the discussion, so they infer that things relevant to them get discussed on zulip and then we arrive at a misleading conclusion because the context was missing.

Looking at this it seems that you also got this impression, maybe this is why you think it had enough context, because you made the same mistake assuming that zulip was relevant for normal players.

Then you have a forum, a Github, and a Zulip. The latter of which players, apparently, need to stay up to date with as a requirement to be informed enough—see image.

Anyway this seems to stray off-topic even further, I am open to discuss this further in PMs but this is not the place.

I mostly skipped parts of the posts by now because my time window is very close. What I'd like to say especially to @TheCodemander is the following:

You can not necessarily point new bugs to newer client versions, because the ecosystem all around has changed a lot.

• Tighter OneDrive integration casues lots of issues today, that weren't a problem in Windows XP days
• UCP access stuff has changed
• Antivirus and firewalls got much more aggressive and restrictive on the end-user site as well as intermediary network operators who do shitty IPv4 support

Then there are setups like yours where the system behaves completely different from similar others. I for example do run everything on arch and cannot see a 3GB usage of RAM. But I also have seen my arch profile just break the file system with analysis of multiple weeks (expected hardware issues and everything) and as it turns just the user profile is broke and a new one works like a charm. This just happened 4 weeks ago. So any kind of development for end user deployment is a PITA and will always be.

Also there are issues we have no way to influence it. E.g. the Install4J updater permanently breaking installations on update...
Or the email system breaking because our bank blocks us out for no reason and we fail to pay it.

Furthermore FAF overall has accumulated a lot of technical complexity and technical debt. I know so many issues that I don't even know where to start or which to pick. Just assuming we could afford a part-time developer for 1 day per week, he'd have to focus on one thing leaving out all the rest.

For reference: The involved systems (not even tangling the underlying infrastructure) https://forum.faforever.com/topic/2944/is-it-a-badly-drawn-pentagram-to-summon-the-devil-no-it-s-a-faf-architecture-diagram
And my thoughts on impact of a paid developer here

Let's assume anybody brings in a paid developer for 1 day per week for a budget of like 200€ a month (thats would be a realistic limit at the current finances), all fine we can try it out. But I don't expect this to happen and I'd assume people overestimate the impact.

Jeebus this is still going on. @Jip what the fuck man, reading your responses to pro was rough. Chill out dude. How in the hell is there now a partisan position on "this process is pain".

Have you considered that the reason few people might raise issues is because of how frustrating and painful talking about anything that doesnt fall into the existing, neat boxes for issues that are currently established?

At this point I regret even speaking out on this and I'm actually willing to accept that sanctuary will cost me money, but when the client breaks in a truly permanent way, I'll have to give them money Id have rather given to FAF.

What the hell man, you managed to sell me sanctuary this has been such a pleasant experience the past 2 years or so.

@BlackYps

Looking at this it seems that you also got this impression, maybe this is why you think it had enough context, because you made the same mistake assuming that zulip was relevant for normal players.

The impressions people get from the current faf communication and processes is basically the problem here. Im glad to see you bring it up because I have been trying so hard to get that across.

@Brutus5000

You can not necessarily point new bugs to newer client versions, because the ecosystem all around has changed a lot.

Tighter OneDrive integration casues lots of issues today, that weren't a problem in Windows XP days
UCP access stuff has changed
Antivirus and firewalls got much more aggressive and restrictive on the end-user site as well as intermediary network operators who do shitty IPv4 support

On linux I doubt my issues are caused by those things I dont have. Im not asking for support on my platform. What I'd like is a reference platform that people use which is well supported. If the majority platform has these issues, and my unsupported one has more that really doesnt bode well for me being able to use the thing issue free.

On the linux side we at least dont have install4j either so thats a plus.

My position on paid people is that there was a crippling memory leak issue for a time and I saw a random platform post thing somewhere where someone got a bounty and shortly after it was resolved, hence why Im optimistic it could be made to work.

Im not here to roast devs or their work. I would like the work of all the hard working people here to be the kind of work the community can be proud of and which we can bring new people into the community and say "look, this thing is awesome" and we're almost there. But at the moment, the first thing a new person needs to know is "yeah thats not frozen, its normal", "yeah that means you need to restart the client because reasons" etc etc.

Honestly I have very little to add, I was just kind of shocked to see how pro of all people gets treated by association with someone voicing an issues. Like what the hell, way to prove the worst part of my point

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

My position on paid people is that there was a crippling memory leak issue for a time and I saw a random platform post thing somewhere where someone got a bounty and shortly after it was resolved, hence why Im optimistic it could be made to work.

Just to clarify. I fixed the memory leak. I was not even aware when I fixed it that there was a bounty on it. Nor have I even accepted the money for it to this day. It made no impact on my decision to fix that bug. I just had time to sort it out when I fixed it.

I've been curious on if these issues are wide spread so i asked a few people because for me personally I havn't experienced these issues and either have atleast 4 other people I asked, i feel like if it was widespread atleast 1 of 5 would have said something. I think its hardware or something. I understand frustration but if its a personal hardware problem or something and you are on a different OS it just makes the situation and communication so much harder.

At this point I regret even speaking out on this and I'm actually willing to accept that sanctuary will cost me money, but when the client breaks in a truly permanent way, I'll have to give them money Id have rather given to FAF.

If it breaks permanently for you and you still cant give us anything then theres not much we can do for you. Again, i mean idk what to tell you. I'm not trying to be toxic or trolling you. I can see care and you want your issues to be fixed but how are client devs supposed to fix them when theres no logs or any information to go off of?

Apart from that, how pro gets or got treated by association members, can be questioned but i don't have the context and I think that image is certainly taken out of context especially since it's from Jip. I also think T3 has earned a bad rep within the development side of FAF that is for sure what i can tell you before anything else. You have engaged in a toxic and unfriendly manner and blatantly have disrespected members who again are not getting paid to take your toxicity.

It is never the point to especially start openly roasting and attacking members in a harassing way even if you feel like no one is listening.

@kazuya

Man I really tried not to call you out but since you seem to be asking for it by arguing in bad faith and skewing things to suit what increasingly looks like a "hurdurr this guy agrees with code from T3 lets ignore the point and pile on the shit" narrative here we go.

I've been curious on if these issues are wide spread so i asked a few people because for me personally I havn't experienced these issues and either have atleast 4 other people I asked, i feel like if it was widespread atleast 1 of 5 would have said something. I think its hardware or something. I understand frustration but if its a personal hardware problem or something and you are on a different OS it just makes the situation and communication so much harder.

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 think its hardware or something.

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.

If it breaks permanently for you and you still cant give us anything then theres not much we can do for you

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

I can see care and you want your issues to be fixed but how are client devs supposed to fix them when theres no logs or any information to go off of?

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.

I also think T3 has earned a bad rep within the development side of FAF that is for sure

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.

You have engaged in a toxic and unfriendly manner and blatantly have disrespected members who again are not getting paid to take your toxicity.

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.

It is never the point to especially start openly roasting and attacking members in a harassing way even if you feel like no one is listening.

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.

I will note that most of the things I have aimed at the FAF team in general over the years has been positive and I still routinely give out praise to a number of great changes and people in VC. I have also noticed a pattern that if I'm saying good things about what is happening in FAF then no one gives a shit. The moment I make some noise about something I've noticed getting worse, then more often than not thats what gets passed around.

If people on the FAF team want to hyperfocus on my criticism of certain aspects and changes thats fine. If some people feel hurt by in kind responses and/or language that escalates from frustrations at things that are being ignored or otherwise poorly handled then thats unfortunate. The fact is a lot of us really like FAF, have done so a while, and arent devoid of empathy, standards or understanding of whats going on on multiple levels.

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 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.