On Server Management

[Aspect of Sorrow]

The community is more than capable of vetoing a DM's continued tenure, communicating through the HDMs if there is an issue to be addressed on that front.

I used to be in the QC transparency camp until I read a number of those threads, with long standing issues that hadn't been addressed, even keeping it locked from response won't stop someone from opening another thread on the subject elsewhere on the board. If they can't voice their opinion there, it'll spill into the server even more than it is now, etc, etc. There's not much, to be honest, that needs to be viewed, because the moment it hits the devel desk for clarification and pre implement / bug fix, people could be reading between the lines for additional exploits just before the patch comes.

We're not in the business of spinning damage control left and right, there's enough on our plate without it.

[7threalm]

you really don't wanna see qc side, its alot of arguing and pointing out issues and glaring balanced side of things.

Everyone there will voice their opinion and points to/for the whatever trying to be implemented.

but the major of the qc members understand this and are don't "get hurt Feeling, because it was shot down." as oppose to the regular forum, I dont think I ever seen a qc topic locked


Because it was from what I remember a very mature enviroment, and rarely resulted to personal insults, or immature behavior.

I dont even wanna guess how many pages the dispel fix was lol...

[chad878262]

My biggest issue with making qc read access for everyone is when I'm in game. I already get (when I actually can be in game) multiple tells asking for explanations of some decision, requests for us to focus on some bit of content and unfortunately they occasional grief from some player that hates something that got implemented or is mad something they requested didn't get in... The last thing I want to deal with is tells informing me how big of a moron I am for my post about some discussion in qc any time someone disagrees. At least other qc'ers (in my experience) keep disagreements internal...open it to the public and I question if any one in qc would ever actually get to rp.

[metaquad4]

If players are harassing you, you tell them you will report them. If they don't shut up, you report them. There is even a bit in the rules about that.

Part of the problem is the lack of transparency has (aside from aiding in creating an "us and them" and lack of trust on both sides) created almost a mythic quality to the information withheld by the developers and staff from the community. Its perceived as more valuable than it is, so, people will pester others about it.

That said, it is valuable information. Its value is just inflated by keeping it in the hands of a few. QC information will give the community some idea of the direction the server is going, and it will also allow the community to know how exactly the bureaucracy that governs them operates. Its both a trust-building/community building exercise and it lets the general population know what the server philosophy is when it comes to mechanical growth.

I wonder, why is it that BG is the only server that feels the need to operate in this manner. All the other servers I've been on in nwn1 and nwn2 haven't hidden their inner workings from their community.

What was the reason that this information was hidden? Or is that just the way the system has always been, and its perpetuated to this day. I haven't been on BG since the dawn of its creation, so, I wouldn't know that. No other server staff appear to have the difficulties of people badgering you folks and such, that you describe, so I'm really not certain. Is the BG community just that "special"? From all the people I've spoken to in it, I doubt it is. There are a few crummy elements more than other servers, but that is the nature of trying to draw every last person in (catering to everyone). It shouldn't be enough to cause this level of secrecy to be necessary.

Is it that BG staff just doesn't trust its community? Or is there a deeper reason behind this?

[Rhifox]

I wonder, why is it that BG is the only server that feels the need to operate in this manner. All the other servers I've been on in nwn1 and nwn2 haven't hidden their inner workings from their community.

Not sure what servers you've been on, but all of the ones I've seen of have kept their development forums restricted to development staff only.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

Sign up for QC? The team has shared it's knowledge with other PW developers, as well as receiving assistance from them.

[metaquad4]

I wonder, why is it that BG is the only server that feels the need to operate in this manner. All the other servers I've been on in nwn1 and nwn2 haven't hidden their inner workings from their community.

Not sure what servers you've been on, but all of the ones I've seen of have kept their development forums restricted to development staff only.

Really? If so, I retract my case. I'll ask around. Maybe its just not as noticeable there than it is here, that is certainly possible.

Sign up for QC? The team has shared it's knowledge with other PW developers, as well as receiving assistance from them.

I would, save for the fact that I honestly believe I wouldn't get along with the majority of QC. I did consider signing up at one point, but, not any more. Even wrote up an application for it, though that got deleted with my old computer.

[Maecius]

Just a reminder, I'm looking for feedback (and, especially, ideas) here, not arguments. I'll lock this thread if it becomes too argumentative in my opinion.

In fact, I do try to limit these open discussions as a matter of course. Not so much out of censorship (my faith in BG is pretty unshakable, and I like stirring up hornet's nests -- obviously), but because they do have the unfortunate tendency to, eventually, draw sharks to the pool like blood in the water -- and it can be bad for staff morale and for general player morale for me to let them go on for too long. But I won't close this one down just yet.

I'll just remind everyone that what I'm looking for is legitimate ideas on how to improve the server. (And the way it's run.)

I don't want this thread to devolve into a staff-bashing thread, because I honestly don't think the staff deserves that. And because I want to keep my staff on staff. Why would anyone want to work for people who are bashing them on a public forum?

So please keep it on topic so that I can get as much guidance and insight out of this as possible. If you really must vent or complain about any given staff group or staff decision, save those complaints for a PM to me. Calling people out in public's not going to do anything but generate hurt feelings and push the envelope on our forum rules.

Likewise, please avoid arguing with each other or getting into a debate, because that'll also distract from the point of this thread.

Let's keep this respectful and fruitful for as long as we can, until it runs its course or we run out of ideas. I won't promise to take every idea to heart, or to make every idea happen. Because I won't. But I do value them all and want to get a general feel for what people would like to see out of BG. Thank you!

Edit: No wonder it was so quiet. I accidentally locked this after saying I wasn't going to do that yet. Unlocked.

[AlwaysSummer Day]

List all projects, their current progress, and what needs to be done next for implementation. Requests for help could be placed as well. I.E.

Staff communication: Currently seeking solutions. Ideas to be posted in this thread.

Dynamic weather mod: Currently bugged due to sq43-_7 file crash *more nonsensical programming jargon*. We need a volunteer programmer to investigate and fix. Please PM staff to volunteer.

Weapon special effects mod: currently undergoing testing as of 3/4/2009. Delayed indefinitely as mod files were lost.

Etc.

[Maecius]

^ Great ideas for sure, AlwaysSummer. We did try to put together a development pipeline (here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=53623), but it's difficult to keep these sorts of things up to date -- on top of reporting all the work staff side, and then updating the changelog, the custom content threads, the wiki.

I think it just kind of fell by the wayside. My fault more than anyone else's, though. I certainly never updated it after I posted my original post there.

Sometimes it feels like there's not enough hours in the day, my friends. Not enough hours in the day.

I'll try to revisit the idea at some point, though, because I do really like it. Even if it's something like a monthly update or quarterly update. It might not be in the very near future though, as the next couple of months are going to be crazy for me for "real life reasons."

Thanks for reminding me of this though. It's a good idea to have a pipeline of projects "in development."

[Nemni]

If I would ask for anything to improve from development, it would be documentation. The server updates thread is great, but it seems to be updated far less often than the actual server. Also there are many spells/feats that work differently than documented. (Just one random example is the druidic tree stride that apprently has a cooldown, but I can't find information about how long that cooldown is.) This sometimes makes it hard to play for anyone without inside knowledge.

Having said that though I know that documentation is rarely considered fun, so it's understandable that it laggs behind. From what I can tell pretty much everything on the server works better now than it did when I played here years ago, so I think many people must be doing a great job

[Zanniej]

I think an issue we have here is not so much a lack of transparency, but an abundance of transparency, compared to other servers . . . Not to say that it's a bad thing, or that we're completely transparent here, but since we've got a pretty open and well branched staff team, everybody knows who's doing what, and what person from staff is on what part of the server maintenance / management. ( this is meant as an observation. I won't go into what amount of transparency is good or not )

I don't know how this goes with other servers, but I'm pretty sure they've got restricted development channels. I just think theirs is better hidden than ours, not raising questions in the first place.

I think the suggestions for better documentation of what's going on are good ones. Perhaps we can look into a way to streamline update documentation, so that everybody knows what's happening with updates, why some things are done the way they are, or where something is hanging.

[DM Pun Pun]

If I would ask for anything to improve from development, it would be documentation. The server updates thread is great, but it seems to be updated far less often than the actual server. Also there are many spells/feats that work differently than documented. (Just one random example is the druidic tree stride that apprently has a cooldown, but I can't find information about how long that cooldown is.) This sometimes makes it hard to play for anyone without inside knowledge.

Some updates are usually minor fixes or additions and might not be documented. However, if you do encounter a spell/feat that works differently than its documentation, make it known in the appropriate forum because it may just be a bug or a documentation oversight.

[mrm3ntalist]

Using unpaid volunteer to excuse something that would constitute a poor work ethic, an inefficient system, etc is unacceptable in my eyes. If you've ever volunteered at any respectable organization, you'd know it is a terrible mindset to have. Regardless of if you aren't being paid or are doing something in your free time, when you volunteer you commit yourself to what you are volunteering to. Not delivering the best quality labor you can reflects poorly on your character.

I dont know if you have volunteered for something, or even have worked with volunteers. My experience after working for more than 2 years with volunteers coming all over the world, is like this.

- Those who volunteer have passion and what they do is admirable.
- You need to assign at least double the ammount of volunteers in a task that normally would take one person. The reason? Volunteers will get laid and/or get drunk the night before, oversleep, not give a damn, get burned and quit etc. For our server volunteers can stop working on a project for reasons like family issues, too much work IRL, taking a break from the server etc. In general, you can not relly heavilly on volunteers and it is a miracle and a huge sign of dedication and love for this game that the nwn2 community is still developing. We should only feel appreaciation for people like Rasael, tfunke, Duster, Maecius, Endelyon, Valefort etc who are here for the long run. Not criticise them when they take a break or if they dont deliver fast enough.
- Finally but as important, never in the world you can just go and volunteer for something. You cant go and volunteer to be a surgeon, or help immigrants or help to save the environment. You apply somewhere and then are assigned to a task.

Since the last posts in this thread have been about QC here is my take.

Full QC transparency. All the topics and archives should be viewable and readable by all forum members. Posting is another story. Leaving these locked creates means of abusing the systems for one's personal gain. Not going to point any fingers, but I believe that any topic in development should be able to be seen by the community. Bugs and exploits should be dev team only. We should be able to vote on major projects.. everyone would vote crafting.

I dont think comments like the one above are well thought of. For example, do you think it is a good idea for the whole server to know that after the big update you were able to actually pickpocket items from another player? Do you think it is a good idea for everyone to know how to abuse a script that isnt working as intented? I agree that some desicions can be revealed to the community even before implementation, but that is as far as it should get.

Another issue is the desicion making. On some hot topics it is difficult to reach a desicion. Some times there can be arguing back and forth until a desicion can be reached. An example is the pricing of the Avernus where i was asking for higher prices but after many pages of posts between Karond and I, he convinced me that lower pricing is what is more beneficial. Do you really think that access to the discussion for ten times more people, will make any desicion making easier? Nope!

The other issue is personal feelings. Even now it is difficult sometimes to criticise something without someone taking offence. Even people that know how much you value them. This is very counterproductive. Having to deal with not only a problem, but how the other person will take it, then deal with the other person if he took offence, is time consuming. A waste of everyone else's time. Imagine for example if i was to say that paladins/rangers should have their CL halved like pnp. Good luck of having any kind of discussion. On the contrary, with like minded people, who understand what the critisism is about, things flow normally. Using the same Avernus example, Karond and I argued a lot. So much that Maecius had to step in. Not only we didnt take it personally, but we were able to reach a desicion and help each other during testing on S2 the next day.

Finally, the last post i want to comment about

I wonder, why is it that BG is the only server that feels the need to operate in this manner. All the other servers I've been on in nwn1 and nwn2 haven't hidden their inner workings from their community.

BG is what it is. It is the longer running and most populated server in nwn2. I think many will call that being succesful. Even now, with many bugs still remaining to be fixed and the server not stable enough, it still maxes out. Obviously something good is getting done here. Even though we do keep an eye on how things are done on other servers ( personally i have forum accounts on every other server and played/playing on most of them ) i will say this risking to be called "abrassive" again. If anything, it is the other servers that need to see how BG gets things done...

I would end here but i could not leave this answered:

Sigh....

SVN is not Git, and has inferior branching support.

The repository is not visible, there are no mentions of it anywhere online, and no guidelines to gaining access, no submission guidelines, nothing. I did find my own thread where I asked to put the code under version control.

My opinion is based on past attempts to interact with dev side of things, which were mostly a negative experience. If you don't like the opinion, do something about the process.

First of all, I never would have thought that i would have a GIT vs SVN discussion on BG forums

Yes, git is supposed to be superior by many, it has a local repository, it does provide built-in support of branches... Like many nerd "VS" topics ( windows vs linus, iOS vs Android etc) the answer should be "So what". We are not trying to find which one is better but which ones suits the person doing the work. In this case, if the admins think that SVN is the tool they need and does the work for them, why waste more time. This is another reason why its better for less people to make a desicion. Its easier for two-three people to decide which tool they are going to use, since they are the ones that will actually be using it, than having 103 people.

[Zanniej]

First of all, I never would have thought that i would have a GIT vs SVN discussion on BG forums

Yes, git is supposed to be superior by many, it has a local repository, it does provide built-in support of branches... Like many nerd "VS" topics ( windows vs linus, iOS vs Android etc) the answer should be "So what". We are not trying to find which one is better but which ones suits the person doing the work. In this case, if the admins think that SVN is the tool they need and does the work for them, why waste more time. This is another reason why its better for less people to make a desicion. Its easier for two-three people to decide which tool they are going to use, since they are the ones that will actually be using it, than having 103 people.

As an avid "nerd-'VS'-topic"-reader, I couldn't agree more to this
It's not so much "what works better" as it is "what works best for you". There are loads of tools for everything you can imagine. But in the end it's all about what works best for the people using it.

And indeed, having to reach a decision about such stuff is easier done when it's just a couple of people discussing it, instead of hundreds.