Feedback regarding in-game bug reporting on the forums [Archive]

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Ethereal

10-03-2016, 06:13 AM

Bit of feedback regarding in-game bug reporting, here on the forums. I'm not a fan on just moving someone's bug report to "working as intended" section, with no explanation. If I'm still having a problem and it's supposedly "working as intended", then whats the intention?

So we patiently wait a week for the bug submission to move into "Accepted Bugs", then wait another week for it to just get moved to "working as intended", and that's it?

There's nobody to talk to about it either. GM's either don't respond or they just send you the generic help desk message back saying to post your problem here, in the bug report section.

The customer support is atrocious. Sad, being a paying customer for 14 years. It's as if they prefer being completely disconnected from their playerbase.

Very sorry for the rant :( , but it's just not cool and certainly wouldn't fly where I work.

In reference to "Error code FFXI - 3322 when creating character name instead of 3313".

Jiib

11-20-2016, 03:04 AM

I have had threads sitting in that forum without significant information for over a year.

Tatl

02-03-2017, 03:16 AM

Do you believe the chat support told me he wasn't aware of the XInput flag fo the controller utility? And the reason is "because he play for years with the PS2 controller".

I'm still not believing.

Top quality for the support. > Not really.

I think they want this game to go. But how can they want this game to go if it's a paid game. It makes no sense.

Sirmarki

02-03-2017, 04:41 AM

It certainly needs revising. Especially the template.
There is no need for the "Platform" section anymore for a start.

Domille

02-03-2017, 06:12 AM

It certainly needs revising. Especially the template.

The template is the stupidest thing I've ever seen on here, and theres some stupid things that go on.

I straight up refuse to submit bugs, I could care less if they fix them due to the annoyance of all the irrelevant information they want.

Nyarlko

04-03-2017, 10:58 AM

The template is the stupidest thing I've ever seen on here, and theres some stupid things that go on.

I straight up refuse to submit bugs, I could care less if they fix them due to the annoyance of all the irrelevant information they want.

Shortcut: Copy/Paste your own old bug reports > update relevant info...
Saves me a ton of time personally and greatly reduces any annoyance involved with submitting bug reports. ^^

Khiril

04-03-2017, 11:11 AM

update relevant info...

On their template, only one line is actually relevant. That's the problem.

When they stop asking for irrelevant info, and actually address "bugs" THEN people might care.

Nyarlko

04-03-2017, 05:41 PM

On their template, only one line is actually relevant. That's the problem.

When they stop asking for irrelevant info, and actually address "bugs" THEN people might care.

I'm pretty sure that the only line that is highly likely to be irrelevant in the majority of reports would be "Race". (And even that could be involved when it's an issue like armor models deforming/clipping oddly for one race.) Everything they ask for in the template could be considered to be a "likely cause" and should be ruled out ASAP in order to pinpoint where/why/what the reported error is occurring, and to confirm that it's a system error and not user-unique. The point of making a bug report using the template is to allow the devs to attempt to reproduce it using as close to identical conditions as possible.

So far, following the bug report template, I've had quite a few accepted and the only ones that weren't were admittedly questionable as to whether they could be classified as a bug, or withdrawn when I figured out what I was doing wrong. ^^;;

Honestly, I believe the biggest improvement we could get would be if the GMs in-game were required to instruct people to use the template when reporting bugs here... and possibly logging/reporting issues themselves once they confirm a player's problem/bug might be nice. <,<;;

edit: About "Race" XD There is one issue ingame that causes a somewhat significant difference in job performance. BST. Due to the JA range nerf a while back, BST is frequently rather close to their targets in order to pop Ready.. The funny thing is that due to player model size (taru>hume/elvaan/mithra>galka) there is a measurable difference in the positioning between the 3 races. It's only something like 0.1-0.2y IIRC, but that means that if a galka is just out of range of an AOE, then a taru on the same axis would most definitely get hit. -_-;; So yeah, occasionally, race can matter depending on the issue.

Songen

04-04-2017, 01:48 PM

this is a game, however the game is nothing but data, the reason is as nyariko stated. to troubleshoot a problem (Whether its data or even eletrical)you need to rule out specifics first. alot of people get bugs not from the game but from the system they are connected to (More relevent back when PS2 was used) . even if a error is on the server, sometimes its because your system sent the wrong responce to the server that caused the server to have the error (Its how programing works, what you do from that point is work around the coding to make the error not repeat itself).beaware the template seems stupid but its a necessary action. as a gamer we just don't give a crap the effort thats involved in maintaining something like this. it might even be irelivent for 80% of stuff but its the 20% that makes the difference.

as for GM's, they aren't all computer genius programers that gave up the $million job to answer your complaint about why your controller sucks. GM's(Game masters) are general people with certain level of understanding of the game and computer programing (Some without programing experience) that have a set of rules and standard of practice in regards to your game play. they regulate the ingame within the rules and aren't given authority to do anything except whats in their standard of practice.

As for the programmers that look at issues and aim to fix it. they have no obligation to fix your specific problem imediently except for if you can't log in,
If they aren't responding to you it could be one of many reasons
*Your computer sucks (No trolling intended)
*your controller sucks (A little trolling intended)
*Your internet connection sucks (No trolling intended)
*your countrys connection is limited due to the telco your with or your telco has taken a dump
*you failed to click a box when signing up,
*you failed to check your email about said box
*you failed to install a expansion pack
*You failed to install ff11
*you failed to make sure your computer was compatible in the first place.
*Your drivers aren't installed
*Your hardware isn't installed
*Your firewall is blocking ff11 (This is a thing and its happened to me)
*Your antivirus deleted a necessary file to run FF11
*Your antivirus deleted your driver for your controller (Trolling intended)
*you have CAPS LOCK KEY activated on a case sensitive subject
*you pressed 2 buttons at once
*Your keyboard button is stuck without you knowing (This happened to me too and it was the right shift key)(Don't ask me why the right shift key)
*Continues on for the next 1hr or so.

Now then, thats from your part, the system info you provide in the template might not seem like much, but if your complaining why your screen is constantly auto rotating or why you can't stop auto running or why your macros aren't working, there is a extremely high likely hood its coming from your side and your system data is needed to rule off possible server -> computer data corruption

As for ingame problems they simply add it to the list of things they have to do and get to it depending on the priority of the problem, if they deem it unworthy or not priority, its not gonna get done, or gonna end up on the bottom of the list and they're not gonna respond to you since its more than likely a japanese encoder whose working on the problem. not only that your 80% gonna complain to them if they don't fix it or don't fix it fast so why deal with you in the first place?

There are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of players playing atm, everyones got some problem, whether you have submitted the problem or the server's inbuilt detection system finds something (You vs the server, the server will win on priority)

Khiril

04-04-2017, 03:20 PM

Songen

04-04-2017, 08:00 PM

Platform: Irrelevant, no longer exists
ISP: Irrelevant. They cannot possibly use your ISP to verify your bug.
Type of Internet Connection: Irrelevant. No way shape or form can dsl vs cable make any distinguishable change.
Internet Connection Speed: Irrelevant. Game is designed for 56k speed won't change anything.
Date & Time: Matters for the Log.
Frequency: Matters if it's intermittent or not*
Character Name: (mostly irrelevant as your avatar is your character. but mules etc)
Race: Irrelevant. If you don't know that T means your mithra can't wear wonder clomps: Uninstall.
World: Again mostly irrelevant your avatar shows your server.
Main Job: What I'm on is Irrelevant.
Support Job: My sub job is 100% irrelevant.
Area and Coordinates: Important
Party or Solo: Irrelevant.
NPC Name: Important
Monster Name: See NPC name
Steps: Important
<*Add more steps if necessary.>

Platform: Windowers or linux or mac, quite possible one of these aren't responding correctly since the software made by microsoft is altered between them

ISP: Not all service providers provide the same quality of server, and some are banned or limited between connecting to certain countrys

Type of Internet Connection: dsl runs slower and adsl runs faster however with current content requiring so much information the lag can cause npcs (Happened to me), items (Happened to me), actually gear (Happened to me), zone (Happened to me) etc etc from loading, one will load faster and other will load slower, so if it lags your computer may think its retrieve all the information it needs however it could be incomplete

Internet Connection Speed: as above

Date & Time: is it during peak hour for US, EU, JP which means it could be during a time (Such as back in the day when beseiged caused hell for everyone or even now when mhaura is fulled to the brim with afk'ers or people trying to get into ambuscade.) when theres overly too much to load and your system can't keep up (Refer to internet type for more information)

Frequency: Odvious that if something is happening alot then there is a problem however the "Date & Time" also becomes relivent due to the fact you only play during peak hour or non peak hour.

Character Name: This is not odvious to the developers since you can have 16 charactors on one account however if you own more than one account and registered only one of the accounts for the forum then you need to be specific.

Race: as above with "character name" however also someone else might have your name on a different world.

World: as above with "character name" however this narrows down the search (Yes the race and a few things below give a hint however why should they do a million scans when you can say it.

Main Job: It is quite possible being on a certain job is one of the key factors in the error such as being on a certain AF quest causes the system to not register your current event (This is relivent, you just don't don't give a crap) people change jobs frequently so the team doesn't know what job you were on at the time

Support Job:same as "Main job"

Area and Coordinates: Important

Party or Solo: As stated in "Main job", you being in a party or solo makes a difference, such as when they made trusts a partyable thing, they found a error that when you first make a party then summon the trusts imediently it could cause a error, such a thing isn't limited to a one time only thing and they won't know if or if not you were in a party.

NPC Name: Important

Monster Name: See NPC name
------------------------------------------------------
Now then, if you didn't know, there are people who are stupid enough to delete their character since the complaint gets added to a list of maybe 100-1000 other things they are trying to fix, could take weeks if not months sometimes to get to the problem. since all the above information atleast tells them where to start looking.

For those of you who think its a easy thing to get all the information relating to everything above, think again, in regards to who you are, just being on this forum says nothing, the forum is linked to your account yes, but the problem could be on a different account, or a different server with same job/name, or different job /name, or a whole raft of things. you have to narrow it down or they will rubbish the complaint right from the start. why in the world should they go thru 16 different charators (trolling-OMG i only have 1 character, how can they get it wrong) doesn't matter how many charactors you have whether its 1 or 16 or 78 depending on how many accounts you have and mules you have, if you don't specify, its not won't be looked into.

WHY you ask they won't look into it?

Because they have another 100-10000 or more things to do and they don't need to go thru a trillion lines of packet data sent to them from your computer to them and find out when and where you were when it happened and which account you were on and which time etc etc,

If you want to see a extremely small glimps of what the data is like. unequip all your chat filters. stand in a major active party location with atleast 3-6 partys (Its hard to find but its possible) then let your entire screen fill to the maximum and let it run for 3 weeks (Which may be the actual time it takes to get to your complaint looked at) and somewhere in the middle look for when someone used a /emote and log it, however since for us the game doesn't save all the chat so you wouldn't beable to see it at all however if you can atleast picture the relivent example, its that type of data they have to plow thru, then have to pin point the time and place, which charater, which world, if being in a party did anything, did you have trusts or npcs out at the time, were you in town or in the field, etc etc etc, then have to see what your data sent to them was and what was the responce was that lead to the problem.

By the end of it, could be a computer problem on your side or you failed to flag a quest which happens to alot of people, i seen atleast 3 people in the past month that made the complaint then we answered it for them then they said that fixed the problem.

What you think is irrelivent isn't for a IT team, they don't have time to search thru a million things because you can't answer 16-20 questions

Dragoy

04-04-2017, 08:43 PM

Songen

04-04-2017, 09:41 PM

Songen,

As a Linux user, I feel like pointing out that Wine, which is used to play FFXI on Linux (and some probably do it on macOS as well) does not alter the software in any way. One of the main points of the Wine project is to not modify how the software is being run (nor is it an emulator, but a compatibility layer).

If something isn't running via Wine as it runs in a native Windows environment, it's a bug in Wine, and it would not belong here at all. :]

While I do not believe the template should be an issue in any way (though I know some people find it bothersome to say the least), I do agree that the 'platform' part isn't relevant any longer since the only supported platform is Windows. If any third-party software is being used while experiencing an issue, said software should be excluded from the test set-up before reporting anything here at all (or at least be mentioned in the report so other players can try to reproduce the issue).

To those who didn't get what he said or why he agree'd (I presume you agree'd)

Imagine the person trying to find out why someones FF11 isn't running on his linux PC (Without the wine program), imagine removing the system platform category, would that solve the question as to why he had no clue in the beginning that he needed wine attached since he didn't read the box/forums/other things etc?
Everyone see it that its the developers fault who should have known from the beginning that he was using linux in the first place and that shouldn't have assumed he was using a different platform from the beginning (There is sarcasm in there for those who didn't know, and this is one possible problem out of a larger scale).

Whether you agree with me or not on the topic at hand is what's truely irrelevent for everyone. what i should have wrote before is that everyone seems to think the IT/developers can read their minds, that the developers know your using a computer, laptop, or some modified computer/tablet. everyone thinks that the IT/developers know what programs your using or they know what hardware your using. this stuff makes all the difference,

how something that is encoded won't work for everything and can actually malfunction. its the reason why they added certain tweeks to the keyboard setup for those who use a laptop, however that doesn't mean it'll cover everyone.

The template is standard, not everything is relivent, however who am i (Since i'm not the one trying to fix the hundreds of problems that are currently available since they have system detected problems) to say what is or isn't relivent to fix the problem. they made the template, even if its old they maintain it as such so thats what we use.

Nyarlko

04-05-2017, 02:10 AM

"Platform" also includes Windows version. Do try to remember that this game still works great with WinXP after all. XD It most definitely matters if you are using: XP/Vista/8.x/10 and the devs have no way of ruling out certain causes (driver versions for example,) if they are not told by the bug reporter.

All the ISP related stuff is important as well. I know for a fact that certain ISPs routinely throttle traffic, and sometimes have issues dealing w/ international traffic (blocking based on country, breaking connections by shuffling your IP, etc.) As was mentioned, even dial-up ISPs are still permitted, plus several flavors of DSL, cable, FttH, etc. are all out there and are possibilities. The type of connection you use can influence/affect any game's performance.

I already gave an example where "Race" matters, so it is not something 100% irrelevant. There are issues that can be connected to character race other than not being able to cram your generous Galka posterior into your undersized Taru pants. XD

Everything on the list of the template has a place/reason it's there. There are probably millions of lines of code for this game, which means that there are millions of bugs that could possibly show up, and the template is asking for everything they can think of to narrow down potential causes of unwanted behavior. It's highly likely that the template also helps convey the proper information after translation as well.

You know, if you call a computer manufacturer for tech support because your computer won't work, one of the first questions you'll probably hear would be "Is it plugged in?" >.> Troubleshooting always starts by eliminating any of the obvious possibilities.

Dragoy

04-05-2017, 10:08 PM

To those who didn't get what he said or why he agree'd (I presume you agree'd)

Imagine the person trying to find out why someones FF11 isn't running on his linux PC (Without the wine program), imagine removing the system platform category, would that solve the question as to why he had no clue in the beginning that he needed wine attached since he didn't read the box/forums/other things etc?

To some degree, I guess I agreed. My main point was just the fact that using Wine does not alter the software that is being run.

As a side point I agreed to that the 'Platform' is irrelevant in the sense it was introduced in the form: “Specify which platform was in use to play the game.(“PlayStation2”, Windows, and/or Xbox 360)”.

It's not their bug if the product doesn't work on an unsupported operating system (unless they want to make it work). That said, it's a good idea to have at least a spot for something like “operating system version” to make sure the user is using a supported one.

"Platform" also includes Windows version. Do try to remember that this game still works great with WinXP after all. XD It most definitely matters if you are using: XP/Vista/8.x/10 and the devs have no way of ruling out certain causes (driver versions for example,) if they are not told by the bug reporter.

I do feel that 'platform' is describing a broad range of versions, more like the operating system or environment itself (see for example Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_platform)/Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/platform)). As such, I'd probably rename it to something like 'Windows Version', because indeed, the version used can make a big difference (though Windows XP is no longer supported (since March 26th, 2013 (http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/polnews/news21916.shtml)), so strictly speaking that would be a 'WONTFIX' or 'NOTABUG' :]).

Somewhat interestingly, they never really seemed to care for the version of Windows being used, just if it was Windows (according to the template).

To not just be completely about the template here (which really shouldn't be an issue), I do definitely agree with the first post in that there should be more feedback from those processing the reports. There was a time we actually got some feedback from their techies, but unfortunately, it does seem like the management simply doesn't want to pay people for doing that any longer (or maybe they did it in secret, for free, but can not do so any longer!).

As such, I don't have high hopes (or hopes at all) for this to change. :\

I can wish for it to happen, though!