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As another suggestion - shy of a bounty system, a bulletin board of needed save files might be another way to crowdsource save file gathering assistance. Suggestion:
With over 2,000 steady state tickets open at any given time, the need for something like this continues to increase. |
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I took a poll in the RA discord to see how players might be willing to assist with submitting saves if they were aware of a need before beginning a set. The results were overwhelmingly supportive with 62 of 65 respondents stating they would be willing. https://discord.com/channels/310192285306454017/511718348178849792/1285328768709169223
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Problem: Many of the outstanding tickets are likely easy solves, but the amount of time needed for a developer to play through a game long enough to be able to reproduce the issue is a massive barrier. Because of this, many tickets remain unresolved and the amount continues to accumulate throughout the year, typically peaking just prior to the start of Devember. Events do not attract enough sustained interest/awareness to result in an overall trend of decreasing open ticket quantities.
The biggest issues to this problem is the lack of save file availability. Understandably, many times players who create tickets don't have saves prior to when an achievement fails because they didn't anticipate a need for one. By the time they realize the achievement is broken, they can't easily create a save needed to quickly reproduce an issue.
I think we are missing a clear opportunity to incentivize player assistance in a meaningful way by not considering what motivates RA users.
Proposed Solution: Incentivize unrestricted player assistance by incorporating a save file/state bounty system within RAWeb that meets the following requirements:
Communicates the need for saves on set pages by some obvious mechanism such as a subsection on the set page or perhaps a clearly visible link to an expanded section of the ticket system where developers can specify the parameters of the save they'd like to be provided.
Has some sort of repository available for players to submit saves. Perhaps a new discord forum or direct upload link to RAWeb for small save files? There may need to be different options for difference systems based on file sizes.
Awards "Bounty points" on player pages similar to Dev "Achievements won by others" stats. At certain thresholds, tiered Site Award badges would be given to players who reach bounty point totals in a similar fashion to the Dev achievement and point unlock badges.
Create a leaderboard on site to rank players by their accumulated bounty points.
Bounty System Design Concept
The idea behind the Bounty System is to allow users to be recognized for their direct contributions to resolving tickets and ultimately the increased quality and player experience of RA itself. Once a save is submitted for a bounty, the ticket resolving developer must validate the submitted save was utilized in a meaningful way. I think the best implementation method is expanding the ticket system interface to allow developers to specify exactly what type of saves they are requesting (the bounty), to track which user submits a save file (the claim) and a way for the resolving developer to validate the claim and award the bounty points.
I envision a player checking out a set page for a game they intend to play, immediately recognizing a bounty and deliberately making and submitting the needed saves during their playthrough.
As someone who tries to reduce open ticket volume, I don't see it ever getting any better than it currently is and the trend will not be favorable. Over time the number of existing sets with inactive developers will inevitably increase. The sooner we have a system that removes the single biggest barrier to resolving tickets, the better RA will be able to support high quality and continued growth.
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