An Experiment

For next patch, I'm going to do an experiment.

Before I explain it, I want to lay out the current SS2 bug handling pipeline so we're all on the same page. Also, this will act as a filter - as if you're not willing to read this wall of text, you're probably not going to want to be part of the experiment anyway!

This mod is incredibly complex, built on top of an already complex game, and so bugs are going to be something we're chasing forever. My hope is that we can get it down to where the only remaining bugs are mod conflicts (which could presumably be patched away), or things that are happening due to engine limitations that can be worked around by players being careful (for example, script lag is something we can't fix, but being aware of it you can play around it).

I've found reports come in several flavors for SS2, and I sort of file them away in my head in these categories:

----

Mod Conflicts: Something in SS2 breaks, and we know it's because another mod is doing something that conflicts with what we're doing - either because it edits some content we're expecting to be vanilla, or because it adds in some new variable that SS2 isn't prepared for. These end up being extremely low priority, as often the best solution would be in changing the other mod, which introduces patches - which can be a nightmare to maintain.

Quest Fragility Issues: This is different than a quest bug. By this I mean, that many of our quests are designed to be done in a particular way, and doing them out of sequence, or in ways we didn't anticipate can cause them to get stuck. These are something I would love to address, we are playing an open-ended RPG - you should be able to complete quests however you like and feel free to experiment. The reality is, with time available, these end up being pretty low priority, unless I'm shown ways this can easily happen by accident - for example, if we have an unclear quest objective, or things positioned in a way where lots of folks are intuitively doing things in the wrong order. My favorite source of the versions of these bugs that need action are Let's Plays, as I can see where the person went wrong, or hear them talk out their train of thought that lead to trying it that way.

When someone intentionally tries to break the quest, for example, murdering an NPC mid conversation - it's not likely those are going to be addressed anytime soon.

Quest Bugs: When a quest just isn't working correctly. We obviously have plenty of those as I just finished an entire patch around these! These could be objective markers not showing up, NPCs dialogue trees not doing what they are supposed to, stages not being set correctly. The difference between these and "Quest Fragility Issues", is that these occur no matter what you do.

System Bugs: These are bugs related to anything outside of quests, such as issues with plots, resources, city plans, HQ, etc. These bugs are extremely challenging to lock down for a number of reasons: 1. It's not always clear what's a bug, versus what's a mechanic for those that aren't deeply familiar with all the systems (and sometimes even those of us familiar get it wrong!). 2. Verifying these issues often requires a mostly vanilla save file, as trying to isolate what events happened from other mods is nearly impossible, and not many of you are playing small load orders. 3. Digging into some system code can take literal hours for one of us coders just to get reacquainted with how the code all works together before we can begin really experimenting to recreate an issue - and given that this is a hobby, finding blocks of multiple consecutive hours to do that is tough!

Quality of Life Issues: These are those little things that you wish you had to make things simpler or faster. These are some of my favorite things to add, because they make the mod more enjoyable moment to moment, inevitably lead to the mod being more intuitive and less prone to mechanics being mistaken for bugs. In fact, many of them are born from enough people being confused or irritated by the same thing.

----

Currently, there are more posts, DMs, comments, and other forms of bug reports that come to me every day than I can possibly manage. I could literally spend 8 hours a day responding to messages and trying to help folks with all the reports. This is not me trying to garner pity, or damn the situation - I love that we have such an active community - but it means I have to create some sort of filter in order to actually proceed with tackling bugs. Primarily, I'm interested in getting verified Quest and System bugs brought to me, as those tend to be universal - ie. fixing them will impact every single person's game. The "filter system" we have now is as follows:

----

Level 1. On the team, we have several dedicated beta testers (would love to have more of you - need folks with ample free-time and willingness to play a mostly vanilla game!), they tend to be my first filter. They have direct contact with me all the time on Discord, and since they have learned about how to troubleshoot in a way that eliminates as many variables as possible - they often send me bug reports directly and I either act on them immediately, or ask them to document them on our bug tracker.

Level 2. Folks on the development team obviously get some priority. If they can't play through the mod, it makes it very difficult for them to proceed with generating more content - so I generally prioritize their DMs pretty highly.

Level 3. Community Rockstars and other helpful folks that have proven to be thorough in their troubleshooting are the next source of bug reports for me. They have access to post directly to our bug tracker and often will cite forum posts and provide me save files so I have enough information to make some progress. Many of these folks are gracious enough to commit a lot of time going through the Help section to try and assist others, they often will even try and reproduce issues to get me details on the problem.

Level 4. Public Beta threads. When I post Public Beta threads, I tend to pay a ton of attention to the comments coming in, as I *absolutely hate* releasing a patch note, only to find out I didn't actually fix what I claimed.

Level 5. Let's Plays, including my own, end up being a fantastic source of bug fixes, as I can watch what happened step-by-step. I also find that generally the folks trying to keep the playthrough moving for their audience are happy to send me save files and do experiments so I can fix the issues quickly.

Level 6. Random comments in various channels that I happen to read. I don't like relying 100% on filters and periodically will dive into various comment sections. (I have to do this sparingly as reading the really nasty comments can put me in a bad place - and so it's like stepping into a minefield). This is the part where the experiment comes into play.

----

You'll notice I don't list the Help Section, Youtube Comments, Twitter, Nexus Comments, or any the other locations folks are likely posting issues as regular sources for me to get bug reports - that's because the first 5 levels keep my schedule absolutely full. There are still over 100 reports to address on our bug tracker!

Something I've always wanted to do, was start partnering up with random folks in the community and just have a chat with them and find out all the pain points in SS2, and work with them to see where we can improve SS2 in some of those other categories. While Quest Fragility, Mod Conflicts, and Quality of Life tend to be lower priority due to this filtering, it doesn't mean they aren't important! (They are just sort of a sacrifice to the fact that I only have so many hours per day to mod)

So here's the experiment I'm going to run for this patch (if it goes well, I may keep it up):

If you are interested in sitting down with me for an hour to talk about SS2, show me issues you're having in your save, talk about things you found confusing or unintuitive, and bring me your ideas for improving the mod in general - reply to this post and I'll start picking some of you over the next two weeks to meet up with.

Then I will start compiling all of those ideas into polls and posting them up for vote to see what I should tackle next.

This should help keep me focused on things that matter to the most people, and also hear some personal stories of playing the mod, as you guys have a much better perspective on what actually playing the mod feels like than I do.