Would you like to see Aetolia have a coder specifically for bugs/typos/ideas?

Illikaal

So it has come to my attention that some of the other IRE Muds have one coder/admin that is specifically used for fixing bugs/ideas/typos.

We all know that Aetolia has several bugs and old issues that need addressing, and with our developers working very hard on releasing new content, not very much time is left for them to fix the old problems. Even still, releasing new content is likely going to produce even more problems, obviously without the intention to do so (such as the Sect Arena still not being usable atm.)

I'm going to drop a few options, but cast your votes!

Zun

Once again, Illdian, you miss the complete point of having a poll. Where are the options for: "I don't think any change is required" or "I don't care either way"? You're not going to show anything meaningful with statistics that are so blatantly bias.

Illikaal

If you care, vote. If you don't, don't vote. To say that the statistics are biased is silly. There's also never going to be a poll when someone says "What about an option for X or Y." because no poll is going to come up with 600 different available choices to cater to every single person. You can always feel free to express your opinion in a post if it doesn't match the any of the selections above. Else, quityerunicornsin.

Zun

Haha. 600 different choices? You've provided one. A bunch of different variations on the same fundamental answer. And because of this, there's no sample size. Your sample pool is 'people who agree with me.' Without knowing how many people bothered to read this poll, and answer (we're already getting non-response bias by this stage) in the negative, you're depriving yourself of meaningful data. Stop being thick.

Illikaal

If you don't have anything constructive to say, then don't post in this thread. If you're that concerned about it, then make your own poll. I'll be sure to come up with plenty of options that you'll likely fail to have left out, and proceed to troll your thread by telling you that your data is entirely unmeaningful because you didn't have an option that I wanted to choose from.

Luna

Every option is "focus more attention towards bugfixes than you currently do". If you didn't want people to point this out, you should probably have posted the poll somewhere you can ensure that only people who agree with you have access.

Illikaal

So, don't i feel stupid. I'd typed out a 4th option that said "No. Continue on with whatever content release outline they had plotted whether its new content first and bug fixes later, or if bug fixes weren't in it at all." It somehow got lost in translation. My bad.

Still, the option of "I don't care." wasn't existent, because if you don't care, then you shouldn't bother voting at all.

Villi

I completely agree with Illidan. Raz clearly needs to drop by the free volunteer coder store and grab another one off the rack. On a more serious note, one doesn't simply go out and pick up a person capable of writing scalable code for free, Illidan. As for hiring, do you really think that Aetolia has the kind of profit margins that they can just decide to drop 50-60K on a new coder just for bug fixes? This isn't a major company, it is a small business. Money is not unlimited and you have to be careful with how you spend it.

As for bug fixes, I think it would be hard for anyone to deny that the list of backlogged bugs has shrunken dramatically over time. Halting new content to make a shrinking list shrink a little faster is not a great idea. IRE is not just about servicing you in the form of eliminating every bug in the game RIGHT NOW. It is a business in competition with others muds for the limited pool of people that are actually interested in this medium. That means new, shiny stuff and regular releases of fresh content. They get to bugs at a fair clip and the system they have in place right now is absolutely fine.

Illikaal

For 1. Lusternia hired a coder that specifically focused on bug fixes/idea sorting/typo fixes. Though they are a different MUD, and their profits likely vary pretty drastically from Aetolia's, they still did it, and so it's not an unrealistic solution. 

2. Saying "Aetolia should drop everything just to fix bugs" is also an unrealistic solution, and was only put up there for the trullz. 

3. I'm not sure why Aetolia would drop 50-60k on on person to do maybe 2-4 months of work, if that, provided they worked diligently on what they were supposed to work on. I don't know the current volume of bugs, but good lord, 50-60k seems like an excessive and unrealistic amount of money they'd have to drop on one project. Then again, I don't know how much coders get paid on average. If it is indeed THAT much, well then, I know what I'm picking up next after I finish this set of courses. 

4. I know our administration are busy with upcoming new content releases for the game, etc. But it doesn't make sense to me to release more content when the new/old content that has already been released isn't/hasn't been working properly. If the content that we have has bugs in it, then why would you want to play with new and potentially bug filled content?

Orus

Do you seriously think it is possible to clear through several thousand bugs in 2-4 months?   Have you ever done an ounce of devwork in your life? 

Valenae

The thing is, it sounded like you wanted another fulltime, perma coder which isn't too much of a stretch considering that more content is likely to be released which means more and more bugs so the 'few months' comment is completely irrelevant. No offense but it sounds like you're trying to talk your way out of your own miscommunication. If you post a poll or thread you need to be specific enough so that people understand what you are trying to communicate and if they don't that's a problem with the way the information is being communicated. 

Arbre

I do think we need another FT admin/coder.  We had two for a little bit there with Galleus and Razmael.

Illikaal

Orus said:

Do you seriously think it is possible to clear through several thousand bugs in 2-4 months?   Have you ever done an ounce of devwork in your life? 

Well, as I said. I'd honestly be satisfied if they cleared through a significant chunk of the existing bugs, and not necessarily all of them. We also don't know if there are only a few hundred, or a few thousand. Still, if anything that'd be a trial period to see how effective it is/could be. They could obviously make adjustments as necessary. 

Valenae said:

The thing is, it sounded like you wanted another fulltime, perma coder which isn't too much of a stretch considering that more content is likely to be released which means more and more bugs so the 'few months' comment is completely irrelevant. No offense but it sounds like you're trying to talk your way out of your own miscommunication. If you post a poll or thread you need to be specific enough so that people understand what you are trying to communicate and if they don't that's a problem with the way the information is being communicated. 

Sorry, Valenae, but everyone doesn't have to 'talk their way' out of things, or somehow turn them into a debate about some sort of social injustice. If I miscommunicated, then that's nobody's fault but mine, and I I clearly need to clarify the point that I was trying to make. God help us all if anyone who was wrong, let alone tried to correct themselves for being unclear/wrong were trying to 'talk their way out of it'. 

Angwe

Bro, I you but @Zun has a point, and this seems to be a trend for your polls. Maybe add a few more options?

Aldric

Arbre said:

I do think we need another FT admin/coder.  We had two for a little bit there with Galleus and Razmael.

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't an announcement made prior to Razmael's promotion by Varian saying that the game would be hiring a new, full-time coder? 

Shortly after that announcement, Razmael became the head honcho, and I'm pretty sure it was said that there would still be a coder hired in addition. I'll have to look back and try to find the thread I remember this from.

Zun

Could be the person hired was Raz, as technically...they did hire him.

Edit: Just to clarify, I consider going from a volunteer position to a paid one as being 'hired.' It's not exactly a job until that point, as grueling and thankless as it may be.

Kiyotan

I voted for Morgan Freeman.

Seir

I voted for Didi.

Malok

This poll is pointless on many levels. First off, just because we know for a fact that they have a hired coder, doesn't mean he's the only coder. If you will notice in the changelog, there's many coders. The jobs up there for 99% of the people are completely volunteer, and it is up to them to decide if they think these 'bugs' are important enough to fix.

Furthermore, I have quite a bit of faith in Aetolia's staff and especially Razmael. It could be way worse. Take it from someone who played Imperian since it opened. This mud has come a long way, to say it needs an additional person that does just bugs/ideas/typos is absurd. They already have people who do that, and it really comes down to adequately managing those people.

Valenae

Valenae said:

The thing is, it sounded like you wanted another fulltime, perma coder which isn't too much of a stretch considering that more content is likely to be released which means more and more bugs so the 'few months' comment is completely irrelevant. No offense but it sounds like you're trying to talk your way out of your own miscommunication. If you post a poll or thread you need to be specific enough so that people understand what you are trying to communicate and if they don't that's a problem with the way the information is being communicated. 

Sorry, Valenae, but everyone doesn't have to 'talk their way' out of things, or somehow turn them into a debate about some sort of social injustice. If I miscommunicated, then that's nobody's fault but mine, and I I clearly need to clarify the point that I was trying to make. God help us all if anyone who was wrong, let alone tried to correct themselves for being unclear/wrong were trying to 'talk their way out of it'. 

I don't want to get into a text slap fight nor was I hoping this would turn into a full-fledged debate. The intention behind my post was to highlight a disconnect between the points communicated by Villi and the way you were applying them to information you posted. None of what you said was evident in your original post which is problematic for people wanting to engage your point. When you still use if statements like IF I miscommunicated, then it leaves things in the hypothetical. You haven't acknowledged the points made by anyone else as being valid without skirting the issue which means the conversation is going absolutely no where. I don't think this is necessarily an act of 'social injustice', I just think that unless you provide constructive replies to what Villi has posted this conversation isn't going to really go anywhere. 

On a personal note: Me taking part in a conversation where I highlight a difference of opinion that is devoid of hostility isn't me starting a debate its me taking part in the conversation you started through your poll so the demeaning sarcasm is ineffective and is largely coming off as a personal attack. 

Severn

We're certainly not in the several thousands, that's for sure. More like less than a thousand!

I probably dropped that number by 10% within the last 2 hours or so. While it certainly might be nice to have another person or two whose entire day job was to fix bugs, given the nature of how some of these bugs can be(the vast majority are super obscure bugs that often only happen when the planets align, thus we can't reliably track them.), someone could spend an entire day on just one or two bugs. Well, depending on their level of competency I suppose.

There are quite a few of us who make a concentrated effort to chop away at bugs, just often it takes awhile. Also, HOW you bug something can determine just how fast your bug gets fixed. Let me provide an example:

bug Dhurive slash don't work right

That's what we'd consider a bad bug. While yes, Dhurive slash may indeed be broken, you may indeed be having a problem with it, and we may indeed be able to fix it quite easily... however that gives us no detail at all as to what actually happened on your end. We have nothing to go by.

bug DHURIV - SLASH: When using SLASH in Dhuriv, I keep getting double the balance recovery and no damage is done on every attempt while bashing. This doesn't seem to be the case when in combat though.

In this scenario, we have a clearly defined problem as to just what is 'broken' on your end. We've been given a scenario to test to validate on our end and also a place to look for the problem right off the bat in the code.

In most cases, we try to kick back bugs like the former to get more information, but even some bugs that SEEM to be filed with good information, turn out giving us no result whatsoever in our own testing. 

This big long-winded derail aside, we're always happy to see people being concerned about the state of BUGS. We're certainly not all popping wheelies and playing LoL 24/7, just at times what you may think is a simple bug that can be fixed in 2 seconds, is actually a pretty complex issue given the lack of replication ability and no foundation to base an investigation on. Yes, new content will always take precedence and it'll always add more to our plate on the back end to fix. Whether or not a secondary paid coder would make things any faster is left to be seen. I'm not saying such a person wouldn't help, I'm just not quite positive we'd hit 0 bugs in their first week.

Alastair

Illidan said:

Still, the option of "I don't care." wasn't existent, because if you don't care, then you shouldn't bother voting at all.

This is patently false. The point of a poll is to gather opinions on a given subject. If your test group for the polling lacks an option to vote, you are purposefully omitting a rather important statistic in the polling equation.

Also, in addition to prefixing every bug ever like you should, as in @Severn's example, don't be skurred to drop in a pastebin link of a log with timestamps. Every extra amount of information you may think irrelevant CAN be direly important when trying to replicate a hard to recreate bug.

Iosyne

Severn said:

We're certainly not in the several thousands, that's for sure. More like less than a thousand!

All the bugs regarding Arbre's tendency to gender-bend could easily count for 50+ of those. Personally, I feel that what Arbre does in her werewolf form is frankly her business.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some wheelies to pop.

Arbre

Wait, am I the ONLY ONE WHO SHOWS UP AS MALE?!

Moirean, quick, pick up lycan class so I'm not alone.

Ezalor

The "fords their way in" messages are also gender confused regardless of Lycan or not.

Arbre

I would like to see a show of hands as to who has bugged the lycan gender-bender and specifically referenced -me-.

:<

Emelle

I've noticed the gender-bending quite often with many people who are not Arbre. In addition to it happening in lycan form and with fording, it also seems to happen under other circumstances that alter entrance/exit messages (followed by entities, etc.) iirc. [Edit: I bugged @Seir. ]

Rivas

Arbre said:

I would like to see a show of hands as to who has bugged the lycan gender-bender and specifically referenced -me-.

:<

  Hi.

No really.

Seir

Seir also shows as he/she when moving around in Lycanthrope.

Angwe

Songline seems to screw up gender, too. I think I annoyed Someone with the way I bugged it, though.

Severn

It's pretty much 90% Arbre and Seir. Either it's time for a name swap, or you both need a sexchange. That would be about 30 bugs gone in an instant.