In-Game Report System Change

[tylxrrr]

Current situation:

When you make a /report in-game, it just says that your report has been submitted.

What am I suggesting?

When you make a /report in-game, it should tell you how many people are ahead of you and an estimated wait time.

How?

I am assuming for the most part, reports are taken in a first-in, first-out(FIFO) fashion, so the following plan should work out nicely.

There is a category for questions, bugs, rule breakers, and urgent rule breakers.

Let me lay out a situation on how this can work:

Question Reports: 6 reports -> 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Bug Reports: 5 reports -> 0, 1, 2, 3, 4

Rule breaker Reports: 4 reports -> 0, 1, 2, 3

Urgent Rule breaker Reports: 3 reports -> 0, 1, 2

 

Jamal_Lau falls through a property floor and does the following:

"/report 2 I have fallen through a property floor."

 

Bug Reports: 5 reports -> 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 -> Bug Reports: 6 reports -> 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 

Jamal's report ID is 5 and there are 5 reports ahead of him.

 

Once he does his /report, the chat can display the following:

"There are currently 5 reports ahead of you" or it could show up at the top of the screen.

 

Let's say report ID 0 is resolved, then the chat can display the following:

"There are currently 4 reports ahead of you" or it could show up at the top of the screen.

This process of updating the amount of reports ahead of the reporter would continue until their report is accepted.

 

For the estimated wait time, the following can be done:

From when a report is put in till it is resolved can be timed.

This can be done for each report and these times can be averaged.

Once we have the average time for each report, it can be multiplied by the amount of reports ahead of a reporter.

For Jamal's situation, let's say the average time per report is 3 minutes. We know that there are 4 reports ahead of Jamal.

This means that Jamal's estimated wait time would be 12 minutes.

The chat can display the following:

"The estimated wait time is currently: 12 minutes" or it could show up at the top of the screen.

This average would continuously change as reports are resolved to give a more accurate time.

 

Putting these two ideas together, once someone uses /report, then the chat can display the following:

"There are currently 4 reports ahead of you and the estimated wait time is 12 minutes"

To be honest, I am not sure if this is the best/correct way to get an estimated wait time, but I think it could work.

Why?

It can be frustrating to not know when your report is being accepted or if there are even any staff available since /amembers was disabled. This would give people an idea on when their report would be accepted.

 

[Ash]

I don't think this is useful information at all to bother implementing.

For question reports, these very rarely stack up so it's not useful as there's usually a lot of support available.

For bugs and rule breaks, knowing how many people are before you or knowing the average completion time doesn't really change the fact you need help with a bug or a rule break. It's always announced that if your rule break report doesn't get taken in time then take it to the forum. Adding an estimated wait time just would add pressure to the staff with people complaining "my report took 15 minutes but it said it would be 12". 

And whilst you're kind of right it's a FIFO system, there's a lot of variables such as the urgency, or easiness of fixing the issue to take into account. If anything I think it could be dangerous as people might submit a rule break report and then see "the estimated response time is 20 minutes" and then think to themselves that it's not worth it.

[tylxrrr]

1 hour ago, DrPathetic said:

I don't think this is useful information at all to bother implementing.

For question reports, these very rarely stack up so it's not useful as there's usually a lot of support available.

For bugs and rule breaks, knowing how many people are before you or knowing the average completion time doesn't really change the fact you need help with a bug or a rule break. It's always announced that if your rule break report doesn't get taken in time then take it to the forum. Adding an estimated wait time just would add pressure to the staff with people complaining "my report took 15 minutes but it said it would be 12". 

And whilst you're kind of right it's a FIFO system, there's a lot of variables such as the urgency, or easiness of fixing the issue to take into account. If anything I think it could be dangerous as people might submit a rule break report and then see "the estimated response time is 20 minutes" and then think to themselves that it's not worth it.

This is a really good point. It is like a double-edged sword to be honest. Someone could be like, "It is only a 5 minute wait. I'll just wait." or "What?! A hour long wait?! I'll just take the L". 

[Xoza]

Some potential, it should at least say if you have a question that you can also use 'i-have-a-question' on Discord.