Important Your Development & Bug Concerns

Dynsalir

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#1
Hey Everyone!

This will be my first forum post in quite a while. I've taken more of a behind-the-scenes roll on the Network over the past two years and focused on managing the staff team. I guess its time to dust off my forum count.

Recently, there have been a few posts regarding development here on ManaCube, and I'd like to address some points and concerns raised by the community publicly.

I want to let you know that the Admins are always working to improve the Network. Please believe me when I tell you that we also wish for a bug-free Network just like you. The Admins can only fix so much by themselves. If something is a plugin configuration issue, we can generally resolve it ourselves, which is why certain smaller, less important things get fixed before larger issues.

Large issues require developers to change the plugin code to fix the bug, and then it requires a lot of testing. Smaller bugs are resolved much quicker by Admins who are only working on one Network.

With the other networks under ManaLabs, the development team have been stretched thin. At times bugs have been reported and then were either forgotten or overlooked by our developers. We've brought on Cullan and are hiring an additional developer to help alleviate these issues.

In addition to this, I've also recently brought in a new agile scrum development cycle whereby we Admins plan out all the bugs that need resolved that week and assign them to our developers. The issues/bugs will be moved across the board until completion to track progress easily. This will repeat in 'sprints' every week. As you're all aware, we have a large backlog of issues across the Network, so it will take some time to get through them all. We are actively working to make the bug fixing process more efficient and effective.

The hope is to get to a point where we can give each server a semi-dedicated week for fixes/improvements so that no single server gets favoured over another and all see their fair amount of love and support.

Lastly, over Christmas, we also started prioritising the QA Team and have selected the staff members who will be leading the team for each server. Members have been selected and will get notified/added in due course. We are currently setting up QA test servers so that the QA team can test new features and plugins before any new code gets implemented to the live servers. I will be making a separate post regarding the QA Team when everything is ready.

With the change made to our processes, additional development power and the new QA team things will get much smoother at a quick pace here on ManaCube.

Thanks for reading and your continued support,

Dylan
 

SSM_GOD

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#2
Thank you for returning. I hope you stay actively involved with the community.
Firstly, I'm excited to see you doing your agile scrum methods. I've been working with this recently and it just cool to see ManaCube use such a helpful system!

What I particularly don't like about current ManaCube is the transparency of what's going on. A lot of us active members do so much and feel like we're just left in the dust. Things like this below, are what I love to see! It's the connection of telling the community what ManaCube is doing to improve where it's struggling. But it's not just 'what' you're doing to improve, but how. How is this team going. How aligned with the goals is this team so far. How will the team constantly keep in touch with the community to say what's going on.
Lastly, over Christmas, we also started prioritising the QA Team and have selected the staff members who will be leading the team for each server. Members have been selected and will get notified/added in due course. We are currently setting up QA test servers so that the QA team can test new features and plugins before any new code gets implemented to the live servers. I will be making a separate post regarding the QA Team when everything is ready.
Now that you're back, and with the returning of the QA team, I'm excited to see how we as a community will improve.
Thank you for your work.
 

xcy

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#3
I've been waiting for a post like this. I really appreciate the work you do. There will always be people who are unsatisfied, but I'm happy to even be here in the first place. I have noticed changes, and I'm aware of the small dev team that is working around the clock. I'm sure everyone wishes their game mode has priority first, as I want to see the network grow and become the next best thing, but it all takes time. Appreciate you a lot, and a thank you for making an update for us.
 

IPenguinI

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#4
Although some people refuse to realise this, bugs and other issues are slowly being fixed across the network. IMO, it needs to be sped up a bit. I know there are plans for KitPvP S11 and Skyblock S10. I'm not sure if this is a place to list some bugs that should be fixed, but again, thanks for making this thread, and thanks for caring.
 

Tas

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#5
Everything is good news. I'm so happy to see an official statement about the changes behind-the-scenes to Manacube, and I look forward to everything you've listed here, Dylan. There's a lot of hope involved in plans for the future. I hope the new organization methods are more efficient and better for everyone. I hope Manacube's dev team grows to a sufficient size in the coming months.

I really appreciate you being aware of the appearance that fixing smaller bugs before big ones has on the community, which doesn't get to see the deliberations happening in private conversations. It has seemed like the dev team has been choosing to fix the minor bugs because they might be "easier to fix", and your explanation is very relieving. As one of many active, paying players who has essentially been driven off the server due to the backlog of bugs and technicalities, I hope your updated methods make things clearer and more playable.

Finally, I am so thrilled that progress is being made toward a functioning QA Team again. I have been advocating for its return for a long, long time, since I believe more than anything else clear communication would go so far in making the server run smoothly. I look forward to a more detailed explanation of how it will work, but for now I trust that the members will be chosen thoughtfully. As a fairly known member of the parkour community, I'd be happy to make some recommendations for who I think would fit the job well, if that's something the admin would be interested in.

Thanks for the long-awaited update Dylan, appreciate what you're doing.
 

Dutchy1372

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#7
Thank you for the transparency! I love the new way of thinking and I hope it all works out!

Good to have you back on forums!
 

JustSoDank

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#9
Before you read, even if you can't be asked to read this whole post, please answer the survey I linked in the last paragraph so the staff team has an idea of what the community wants. Thanks.

I appreciate the transparency, as I'm sure many others do, and I promise I'm not just here to shit on yall. And even though it's annoying, I'm going to tag you @Dynsalir as I believe this issue is pretty significant.

Can the topic of releasing servers prematurely be addressed? I have no expectation for server releases to be perfect or even close it to, and I'm sure a majority of players would say the same. However, there have been numerous server releases of various different servers where the start was extremely buggy, laggy, etc. and where it was very clear basic features weren't tested / fixed pre-release. I understand the QA team is going to be added, and I have no doubt this will help in uncovering many of the issues.

However, it seems that the main issue has nothing to do with uncovering bugs / exploits / glitches, but rather releasing servers anyway in spite of them. It feels like pretty often when you go to report bugs to staff members at the start of a season, there is a response along the lines of "we found out about it during beta and it's being fixed." And don't get me wrong, some things that are discovered wouldn't be a big deal if they aren't fixed prerelease (like cosmetics or something), but sometimes it seems pretty significant issues are just ignored.

And I realize that these issues aren't actually being ignored, and I'm aware a plethora of work is done to develop the server daily - but what KILLS me is watching new things be added as old things need fixes. Adding new plugins while old ones still need work is likely going to increase the number of bugs exponentially, as not only do you have to worry about any bugs the plugins may have individually, but about potential conflicts with other plugins added. And even though you may be working EXTREMELY hard to catch up on those bugs, you'll always be fighting a losing battle if you continue implementing new features at the current rate (at least without expanding the dev team, which is obviously easier said than done).

I would love to see the server take things more slowly, and rather than trying to release buggy new servers in order to meet deadlines, I would love to see smoother, more optimized releases, even if they take longer or don't have as many features.

That being said, I do not want to project the above opinion if it isn't how the majority of the server feels. As much as it bothers me as an individual, it's (obviously) best for the server to make decisions based on the majority opinion. As a result, I am attaching a link to another post here where you can vote on your opinion on server releases (whether you would rather have them more optimization or feature based). Even if you ignore the rest, please fill this out, as it gives the server a clear message of what the community wants.
Link: How should Manacube handle server releases? | ManaCube

Thanks for your time, if anyone has any questions my discord is JustSoDank#6020.
 

SSM_GOD

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#10
Hello,
It's been over a month, may we have an update?
Although myself and many others are pleased with the huge number of fixes that came to Olympus, there is still much more to be done.
I've noticed an awesome increase in uh, I don't know what's it called, productivity (?) and I appreciate it bigly. I just don't want to stop improving communication.
 

Heringen

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#11
Fun fact:
Actually reporting bugs yourself instead of just thinking "someone already reported it" helps a lot.
 
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