Why do quests have to be so broken?

Kaiel

So I just spent something to the tune of 2 1/2 hours in Xion working on the quest there. I had three cells of the Sudoku puzzle between me and the honours line, and the quest decides now would be a good time to reset. And it's not like this is the only quest this kind of shit happens with, it's every fucking quest in the game. Just wondering why every single honours quest in the entire game has to have SOME KIND of horrible bug involved where one spends hours and hours working towards something, only to end up with a slap in the fucking face.

Everiine

Then there's two quests I wish would reset, because they use the same NPC's and same items, and every so often, halfway through one quest, the game decides that you actually wanted to be on the second one, and jumps the rail on you. Bye bye first quest.

Daganev

Kaiel said:

So I just spent something to the tune of 2 1/2 hours in Xion working on the quest there. I had three cells of the Sudoku puzzle between me and the honours line, and the quest decides now would be a good time to reset. And it's not like this is the only quest this kind of shit happens with, it's every fucking quest in the game. Just wondering why every single honours quest in the entire game has to have SOME KIND of horrible bug involved where one spends hours and hours working towards something, only to end up with a slap in the fucking face.

Everything in the game "resets".  (For good reasons).
Need to come up with a really easy to implement algorithm for when things should not reset.  (Its hard to do)

Dys

It's frustrating but time limit are part of most quests. Waystations are one of the exceptions in that it tracks individual progress towards the honours.

When I attempt an honours quest for the first time I expect to try it about three times before I know what to do fast enough to get the timings down.

Daganev

Dys said:

When I attempt an honours quest for the first time I expect to try it about three times before I know what to do fast enough to get the timings down.

That should be considered a bug, not a feature

Steingrim

Kaiel said:

So I just spent something to the tune of 2 1/2 hours in Xion working on the quest there. I had three cells of the Sudoku puzzle between me and the honours line, and the quest decides now would be a good time to reset. And it's not like this is the only quest this kind of shit happens with, it's every fucking quest in the game. Just wondering why every single honours quest in the entire game has to have SOME KIND of horrible bug involved where one spends hours and hours working towards something, only to end up with a slap in the fucking face.

I believe the Xion quest normally works that way. It seems a race to the finish where you have a limited time to do that part. If not, I'm sure someone will correct me.

I'm still confused why some quests appear to have been broken for more than a year.

Arcanis

Amen @ Thread title.


Only thing that bugs me is they dont get fixed and I dont understand why. The Grey Moors quest for question has been broken for years now...and i've filed bugs, mentioned it on forums, etc. Nada.

I wonder if it is because it is much more difficult to adjust quest codes and many avoid it like ebola.

Drocilla

As has been said many times, yes, it is very difficult and time-consuming to fix quest-related bugs. For one, where it regards older quests their creators may no longer be available and going into someone else's code is a nightmare. We have standards but even so each person has their distinct style in how they handle certain events, variables, etc. Secondly, each area does not exist within one file, depending on complexity and size, we're talking 20 to 70 files (Greymoors is 64 for example) and sometimes multiple quests within a given area. Even should you provide the exact line that has gone wrong (and that helps tremendously), once we narrow down the file, chances are it is part of a web that spreads across multiple files and interacts in some manner with other quests, too. Unless it's a typo change, typically you need to examine the whole and study the quest well to know what and how you should fix. We don't get a diagnostic tool that pops up the relevant data for us, it is manual work. 

Further, what may seem like a tiny bug may require an hour to fix or more because of the above. An hour is a long time when you consider how many bug reports are currently filed. It may seem like we have a big staff too but we don't - we all have jobs and other responsibilities. Often enough if I sit down to fix bugs, I'll do 2-4 of and my time will be up for the day and I won't do absolutely anything else - no interactions, no replies to e-mails/messages, no building/designing, no teaching of Ephs, no oversight of various departments (such as design queue, library, and such). 

As for bugs themselves, where timers/resets are concerned each quest should, unless deemed otherwise, have a timeframe so 1) people don't walk in on a quest already almost done, 2) in case something goes wrong it cleans the slate, 3) difficulty. Again, we have a few schools in how we handle that. Typically each stage you complete will refresh the timer. We test and we test, and we have others come help break things to test, and then we have Estarra come test (and boy does she find bugs and tests every single aspect of a puzzle, I once sat there for almost an hour waiting for her to be 100% sure that the puzzle is just of the right difficulty and bug-free) and yet still bugs will crop up. It's inevitable. 

To bring this back home, fixing quest bugs is a big priority for us non-Overhaul people who are good with coding but it will have to wait till after New Year for various reasons. It may seem like we're ignoring them, hell I thought the same as a player, but we're not. We're chipping away at that block one by one but we don't have priorities set up for quest bugs, they all go into the same category. That's why the important ones get lost and, on our part, I think we'll try to set up an extra high priority quest category so we can pin-point the big issues more easily. When that's done, expect a thread asking for the bigger problems so we can fish those bugs out of the pond and into the fishbowl.

 

Maligorn

Whoa. I think this is the first time we've gotten a giant, nice, explanatory post on quests and quest bugs from an administrator before. That's really impressive. +50 respect and +100 patience.

Arcanis

@Drocilla Thank you for clarrifying. This helps alot and I now understand why some quests have gone untouched. I can definitely see the problem with Grey moors, the story quest in there alone has so many aspects and variables to it, i'd not want to touch that even.

Thanks again.

Elanorwen

As to the original complaint.... Xion is not broken. It's just a matter of finishing it in time. Two and a half hours for it is too long. This most certainly isn't Frosticia (Which could definitely do with a look over considering how long THAT quest takes)

Enyalida

Yeah. Frosticia doesn't take all that long if you know what to do ahead of time, and work out the best order to do it all... but if you don't, it takes hours and hours just waiting for resets.

Elanorwen

Enyalida said:

Yeah. Frosticia doesn't take all that long if you know what to do ahead of time, and work out the best order to do it all... but if you don't, it takes hours and hours just waiting for resets.

Dunno. You need x amount of snoelorae and x amount of eissfaasia. There aren't enough up at the same time. And then there's the wine thing where you might end up in a situation that the critter holding the contract is dead, then there's the influencing bit where you need to do 2 rounds....

Arcanis

I loathe quests that require resets (unless specifically requiring a large amount of corpses as the focus of the task, that is another story). I feel like gnawing on something that I have to wait 30-60mins for reset just because I need 2 more corpses.

Rialorm

I'd strongly consider becoming a 'mortal coder' if that were an option. I realize though this would add work in the same time as delegating it, because the admin would need to teach the mortal coders and all that. Plus you'd need to keep an eye on mortal coders not using knowledge for personal advantage in the game. Still, for some credits, I'd be happy to do the job if it were one.

Another idea which I am blatantly stealing from another game is having volunteer bug hunters. They both find things that are broken, but also look into existing reports and do a first investigation. I know you all probably try and file good and useful bug reports but from my experience as a programmer you get a report that makes sense to the user but you immediately find out lots of critical info which the user couldn't know was critical is lacking. Or you need to go and test out different scenarios to see what under which conditions breaks. Which is frankly really boring if you'd rather be writing code :P I think this may possibly be a more realistic way to get volunteers to help with the game.

That said, thanks @Drocilla for the transparency. I actually think in addition to God blogs, it's be cool if we had something like dev blogs, even if those would be mini updates. We do kind of have this for the overhaul, but we only get to look ahead at what is in there. I know it can be risky to announce a roadmap because it may change for all kinds of reasons resulting in players being mad, but on the other hand I've found it can pacify a user base when they know what is coming even if it isn't what they really want. It's a fine line between what you say and don't say, and extra hard when you're in the know because it is so obvious to you, but I can assure you many of us do appreciate it. So yeah, thanks for those insights. And all the hard work too, of course!

Enyalida

A lot of times, Envoys do bug pinning duty, figuring out in exactly what situations a bug is cropping up, so that gods know where to search in the code (somewhat). This is how the aeromancer damage 'misfeature' was pinned down, for instance.

Kaiel

@Elanorwen It was mostly 2 1/2 hours because I had to sit there for an hour waiting for the aethertrash mobs to respawn. I'd also not done a mastermind puzzle in Lusternia before and took a bit of time figuring them out, which I suppose could have been partly responsible for the horrible timing at the end.

@Drocilla I really appreciate the detailed response! Having done my fair share of coding, when you put it like that I can certainly see why it takes serious time to work all the kinks out. Trying to go back over someone else's code and comprehend it can definitely be nothing short of nightmarish. In the future, I'll try to make my bug reports more detailed so things are perhaps a bit easier to track down.

Sorry about the angsty OP, I was more than a little upset with the unfortunate timing of the quest resetting as I was less than 10 commands away from being done. 

Rialorm

Enyalida said:

A lot of times, Envoys do bug pinning duty, figuring out in exactly what situations a bug is cropping up, so that gods know where to search in the code (somewhat). This is how the aeromancer damage 'misfeature' was pinned down, for instance.

News to me but good to know. I always thought envoys just were there because of their combat / guild knowledge.

Drocilla

I understand the frustation @Kaiel. Where Xion tableflipping is concerned - been there, done that!

As for everyone else's replies, in no specific order:

1) Quests, especially some, are supposed to be hard but not "smash the desk" hard. Of course, the line there is both thin and vague in that what might be too hard and frustrating to some, might in fact be quite acceptable to others. However, they are also supposed to be enjoyable, intriguing, engaging, shed light on lore, provide assistance and activities for players. 

Without looking over Xion in detail, I'd wager the reset timer there is reasonable. It is an aetherbubble quest, off in deep space, a lost laboratory with difficult puzzles. Sounds good. Now Frosticia, again without looking at it, from what you say something might be off there and it could be unintentional. Especially something like "you can't get a critical item when you are supposed to get it" sounds suspicious, assuming of course someone isn't interferring with the quest which would render it acceptable. One of the main things Estarra emphasises with us is that quest prompts from npcs should not require a phd to understand and the steps should be doable when you are expected to do them. The entire quest is sometimes so enormous though that something like "hey, if someone accidentally kills that one mob ahead of time, there's no other way for them to get the item and they're messed up for the next few hours" will slip by.

2) Mortal coders exist to my recollection but they do not handle quest bugs, rather skill-related bugs, hardcode typos etc. To handle quest bugs the person would need access to a lot of resources that aren't just code and need a lot of supervision. In fact, I'd personally rather continue chipping away at that iceberg than set this up. As for bug hunters, assuming all they had access to is quest bug reports, would people in fact bother to do this? Try to complete a quest just to see if the report has any truth to it? As @Rialorm mentioned, it would still be an imperfect evaluation as they wouldn't be able to see the whole picture. It might perhaps give us a hand with categorising those bugs though. We can file the idea for Estarra's evaluation later.

3) A dev blog has been discussed a couple of times actually, or something more akin to tweets at least. As a general rule, we do not reveal area/event/quest-related plans but we could perhaps post quest/typo/non-hardcode bug fixes we do. Would there be interest in seeing that? In the past I believe Iosai used the changelog to announce some quest fixes and then there's the Catacombs update which was major enough that it warranted an announce in the changelog too.

Portius

I would be interested in that, @Drocilla!

Synkarin

I would too!

Also, I applied to be a mortal coder, I'm still interested so if you guys decide to take those on, I'm totally game!

Kaiel

Xion is, for the most part, entirely reasonable. I don't think anyone would complain about the timer on the sudoku puzzle where you have to enter 200 lengthy commands being extended a bit, however. Maybe it's unnecessary, I don't think it'd be a bad thing though. I would also like to note real quick that Pilea's quest in the Tryko Forest has been locked on me for a real-world year and I have no idea how to go about unlocking it. I don't think anyone's ever finished it, so I'm assuming it's just horribly broken.

I for one would definitely be interested in seeing bug fixes and the like in a log somewhere, also!

Rialorm

I suspect bug hunters or even just bug archivists would do it for credit payment. Someone might not be creative enough to be a builder, or patient enough with newbies to guide, but find that bug archiving would suit them fine. In fact, we might even have some crazies who'd do it for free, but as all other volunteer stuff (save envoys, I think?) sees some credit compensation it seems only fair to do the same. Might in return also allow for some demand of quality.

Quest fixes should totally be in the changelog, in fact I thought that was already a thing. I'm not sure how we should find out otherwise unless through being told, and it would rather be a shame if you spent 3 hours fixing a quest and nobody does it for the next year because it is assumed to still be broken. Please put your fixes in there if given the go ahead so we know who to shower with love and forum hugs.

I agree spoiling areas or events would be bad, but maybe some general sharing of information like "right now our focus is to do such and such". Maybe in combination with focus thread like as mentioned one to get a quick idea of what all about quests is broken. Although I suppose if there is a focus thread we do know what is being worked on, because why else would it be there :P Regardless, I think those are great.

Drocilla

Wait, you don't just go test every few days in the hopes something is fixed?! 

Is that why nobody's been doing the Shanthmark quest which has been fixed a while ago after a copious amount of sweat, tears, and blood? 

Or perhaps there's Shanthmark bugs we're missing...

Shaddus

Drocilla said:

Wait, you don't just go test every few days in the hopes something is fixed?! 

Is that why nobody's been doing the Shanthmark quest which has been fixed a while ago after a copious amount of sweat, tears, and blood? 

Or perhaps there's Shanthmark bugs we're missing...

Probably because Shanthmark is boring and hard. Unlike Crumkindivia, which can be done in about ten minutes, more if you have to wait for a respawn.

Zagreus

He is an honourary Sous Chef at Chez Magnifique. <-- this quest was fixed very recently and was unable to be completed properly until such time. Thank you.

This topic brought me out of hibernation. Bugs are bugs and no one likes them, and reset timers generally help with questing in a variety of ways. Anyhow, from my understanding some bugs are not easily identified by even the most thorough of bug reports. Even if they can be pinned down and identified, fixing them creates an array of issues and often creates more or new bugs..

@Drocilla I would highly recommend admin to work with mortals who are intimately aware about a certain quest and its mechanics to assist with the process on a case by case basis. I've done this process many times and it seems the most effective way to get bugs fixed. Chipping away at the iceberg is not a realistic solution for the more pesky bugs/quests. It's frustrating for everyone and inefficient at best. Having admins who can change and implement code in real time is sorely needed for many bugs. Having an admin able to change and manually reset parts of a quest, with a mortal right there ready to dry run parts of a quest is remarkably valuable. We want to help. Let us help you.

I recall one quest where the designer had me dry run parts of it with them in real time for much of it. There were easily 50-100 bugs that I found. If it was done via bug reports or standard methods it would have easily taken RL months or more to get it working smoothly.

A changelog would be nice for major bug fixes on the order of "this quest can now be completed." After years of being broken, people stop trying certain quests. Only the bug reporter would notice when one gets fixed.

Thank you so much for all of your time and efforts.

Arcanis

I think bug hunters would be a nice idea. I'd personally be a bit worried of certain players gaining access to 'inner weavings' as mortal coders. No offense in the end, but players will be players and we are all just human in the end.


Alot of us players actually dedicate our time to going around doing all the quests lusty has to offer. I know that Ixion basically has the book on the subject. Could always ring us up for some questioning in a quest.

Elanorwen

Drocilla said:

Wait, you don't just go test every few days in the hopes something is fixed?! 

Is that why nobody's been doing the Shanthmark quest which has been fixed a while ago after a copious amount of sweat, tears, and blood? 

Or perhaps there's Shanthmark bugs we're missing...

Changelogs when a quest is considered fixed would be nice. They shouldn't take too long to write, and posting them would let interested parties know that they should go look at the quest and make sure it is working as intended, otherwise post new bugs discovered. The existence of the changelog entries has been a godsend (To me anyway, I enjoy catching up on stuff) but it seems it doesn't always get updates when a bug is fixed. My personal recommendation is... try and hit that, it will probably make the bug-fixing process much more streamlined.

EDIT: @Kaiel - Writing aliases to make the Sudoku-solving process faster do help. I have 9 aliases for every Sudoku-type quest I've run into, ones that take Letter X from the container, then put it into the tablet. After that, all you have to do is say where you want it going instead of going "Get <item number> from X, Put <item> in Y" every time. The objects that hold each letter have the same item ID every time.

Xenthos

"Without looking over Xion in detail, I'd wager the reset timer there is reasonable. It is an aetherbubble quest, off in deep space, a lost laboratory with difficult puzzles. Sounds good. "

The issue here is that it requires 3 more trash mobs than exist at any given time, which means that you must wait for one full reset.  That cuts into the time you have to complete it.  Simply addressing that would help a lot, and that should be a relatively simple fix.

Drocilla

That does not sound reasonable and is too small a number for it to be on purpose. We'll look into it.

Daganev

Drocilla said:

2) Mortal coders exist to my recollection but they do not handle quest bugs, rather skill-related bugs, hardcode typos etc. To handle quest bugs the person would need access to a lot of resources that aren't just code and need a lot of supervision. In fact, I'd personally rather continue chipping away at that iceberg than set this up. As for bug hunters, assuming all they had access to is quest bug reports, would people in fact bother to do this? Try to complete a quest just to see if the report has any truth to it? As @Rialorm mentioned, it would still be an imperfect evaluation as they wouldn't be able to see the whole picture. It might perhaps give us a hand with categorising those bugs though. We can file the idea for Estarra's evaluation later.

I applied to be an immortal in another game, for the sole purpose of hunting down bugs and verifying if they are true or not. I would LOVE to be able to do that and keep Daganev. (Being able to fix them is an added bonus)