Troubleshooting

From RPSWiki

The following are several tips to help admins when a player contacts them regarding a feature of RPS that does not seem to be functioning as intended.

Steps to Take with Player

1 - First ensure that you understand a basic and technical explanation of what occurred. Players often add extraneous information into a report and all of that must be stripped out in order to find out what has happened. An example would be:

Player: "Well, my friend and I decided to go shopping for shoes and left our RPS Meters on when we did. My friend went ahead and logged off after we were done shopping, but I decided to come back to the environment to role play a little. When I got back, everything was fine until I walked from the main city into the forest which is when my overhead meter suddenly went from Notable to Resident and EVERYTHING is totally messed up!!!"

Admin: "So the issue is that your meter changed from Notable to Resident while walking across the environment?" (Note that all the shoe shopping is irrelevant, as is teleporting into the environment as the player themselves said it was fine. Also, we don't immediately assume EVERYTHING is messed up ... we ask simple and direct questions)

2 - Avoid getting involved in the player's emotional reaction and stay technical. Your goal is to solve a technical issue, so you need technical information:

Player: "Yes, and now EVERYTHING is all wrong!!! I hate you, I hate the world, and I hate life!!!" (Sure, I'm paraphrasing what the player is saying ... but we've all seen it happen. Something has gone wrong, therefore all is wrong with the world and the apocalypse is on the horizon. Stay calm and focused and don't get caught up in it.)

Admin: "O.k. Are any of the stats or skills on your HUD wrong now and if so, what was the right score and what is the score now?" (Ask a direct question attempting to find out what "everything" wrong means. Find out specifically what "everything" is and what has gone wrong with it. If nothing else, this information will help you to make a good bug report later.)

Player: "No, none of that is wrong. But my meter says Resident now!" (Believe it or not, I am paraphrasing this conversation from an actual one I've had with players multiple times. At this point we know that it's not that everything is wrong with the world, but that there is a relatively minor issue and that the solution is easy.)

3 - Confirm with the Player what exactly is wrong so that you can be sure that nothing on the technical end was missed. Confirm it not by asking whether there's anything else, but by repeating back the issue they've reported and asking for confirmation.

Admin: "O.k., so the only thing that is messed up is that your meter now says Resident instead of Notable?" (Confirm the issue and make sure you understand it completely. Acknowledge only technical portions of the issue - not emotional or social portions of the issue. Those are separate from the RPS system and another headache all together :-) )

Player: "Yes."

Admin: "Did you cross a region boundary when walking from the main city to the forest?" (As you gain experience with admining, you will learn key questions to ask of players. Note that the player never mentioned a region crossing in their first report of the issue but the fact that things were fine until the player moved from one location to another infers an event like region crossing or teleportation that would require the RPS HUD to update/change.)

Player: "Well, I went from SimA to SimB 'cause I needed to talk to my friend Sue, but then I went back to SimA."

4 - Once you know the situation, you can offer a solution if you know of one:

Admin: "Great. You can solve the issue by removing the overhead meter portion of RPS and putting it back on. Your overhead text will turn back to Notable when you do." (Offer the least troublesome solution available. You could also tell the player to go get a new copy of RPS ... but that would be overkill. Obviously, you won't know the solution to all issues, but as you gain experience you will find general solutions that are very good and work most of the time. Luckily, there are not many times RPS malfunctions and when it does the solution is usually very simple).

5 - If you do not know of a solution, either visit the Feedback section of http://www.bnjrps.com yourself and relay the technical information of the situation to RPS for resolution or instruct your player to do so themselves.

Helpful Things to Know

• It is impossible for RPS to "randomly mess up". It is also impossible for RPS to perform an action perfectly 10 times, then randomly bug out on the 11th attempt of the action. However, players will often report both things as having happened. Each situation is a perfect opportunity to dig for more information. These reports show that --something-- in the equation changed before the issue occurred, but the player does not recognize it as having taken place. It is therefore important to ask things that you know spur changes with RPS, such as "Did you cross a region boundary?" or "Did your teleport?". Other options are "Did someone engage you in combat?", "Did you use the Save option?", "Did you use a Myth Reset?", "Did you level up or level down?", or "Did you change the Mode on your HUD?".

• Reinforcing the above point, RPS --must-- receive communication from some event in-world or through the web that spurs any change caused to RPS. The primary task you have is to find out what communication event has taken place that might have resulted in the issue. If more than one communication event is possible (a succession of events happening all at once ... such as crossing a region border while being hit with a projectile in combat), it is important to take note of all possible events.

• It is extremely, extremely unlikely that more than one event caused the issue. You do not need to find out what a player did thirty minutes prior to an issue occurring. It is, however, important to get a report on the previous five minutes to the issue, as often a player won't know what is or is not important in the report and might miss something if you do not get a report on those previous five minutes.

• Please note that when filing a bug report, only technical information is of use to me. In addition, the more detail you can provide in the technical information the more quickly I can get to the bottom of an issue. Detail does not mean a long list of repeated attack reports. It means an isolation of the occurrence and explanation of it in as much detail as possible. A report of "When I attack with an off-hand weapon, it appears to not be picking up my Offhand skill as my damages are always low." is a lot more helpful than the posting of 30 attacks, all showing low damage. In the first instance, you summarize the issue for me and offer a possible reason ... in the second, you repeat the issue for me 30 times and aren't clear about what it is.

Some Advice

• If you run into a technical issue, mention it to other admins as well as posting it on Feedback (especially if you can share a solution with the other admins). That way, through inter-admin communication, all of your environment can remain well informed and able to assist players.

• If you don't report an issue on Feedback, it is likely that I will never learn about it. Please, please, please, please, please report issues that you encounter and confirm as legitimate. I would love to support RPS and help it to run as smoothly as possible, but I'm not in the trenches as much as you are and might not know of an issue you are experiencing unless you report it.

• Try simple solutions first. Don't skip right to apocalyptic assumptions and massive corrections. In other words ... try having a player re-attach their HUD or un-equip and re-equip their weapon. Take a look at the character on your website admin panel and see if anything looks fishy from the web-end. If at any time you are forced to tell a player to get a totally new copy of their RPS HUD and wear it, that is a serious bug that needs to be reported --immediately--. Players should never have to completely replace their HUD (though, yes, sometimes they may have to remove and re-equip it).