Missing visible feedback for game installation and performance

[Elendil211]

Currently there is no indication whether a game is working or not. This strips Lutris of one of the most essential features, and basically sets back Linux gaming in general, as one of the most valuable tools is gone. Sure, winehq exists, but it's not telling you whether the Lutris script is good.

I don't understand why it got removed in the first place, but it should be put back.

[strycore]

The previous rating system was garbage, it will be replaced by something more similar to the Steam Deck Verified rating.
The installer issues are going to be moved to the user profile and focus between the communication between the user and the script maintainer. Those issues were never intended to be public "comments" and only serve to bring confusion.

[Elendil211]

Why do you think that this would be better than, for example, the system on protondb?

Having a system of either "perfect" or "not perfect" strips a lot of shades that might be relevant for some users. Maybe I can live with missing cut scenes when the game is otherwise running well? Or maybe I don't need the online multiplayer because I only want to play the campaign? These are valuable information.

The same applies to the comments. I like it to be able to see what problems other users have with the game, to have a general idea what I can expect when I install the game.

Why not do both, like protondb is doing it?

[acidRain-burns]

I think a certain level of granularity would be appreciated (not sure what Lutris's website has planned of course, beyond the comments here). The ProtonDB system is quite a nice balance between simplicity and useful details. It is nice for end users, who have little experience with this (just there to install/play a game) to appreciate the state of the game and just want to see a rating, while people more technically inclined can dig into stuff. I think individual issues and/or comments are still an important part of these listings. Just my 2 cents though.

[strycore]

Basically anything that we can come up with will be better than the previous rating system and the one used in ProtonDB and WineHQ.

I never said the new system would be a perfect / non perfect system. I said it would be similar to what the Steam Deck uses. The Steam Deck ratings give information about broken features not just a playable / non playable indicator. So while games will have a True/False field for the rating, it will also have a list of known issues.

The comments don't contain useful information. As I said before, they are not comments, they are installer issues. They are posted by people who are confused. And other people who are confused should not be using that information. Also, there is no resolution for those issues. No notification system. Sometime issues get closed but that's pretty rare.
Making the issues private and allowing a better communication with the moderation team will allow those issues to be resolved eventually.

Lutris is supposed to make games playable, the information that is making games playable should be in the form of code, not user issues. (Again, they are not comments, the Lutris website will never have comments)

[Elendil211]

I see what you want to do there, but I have doubts:

• Some scripts are old and barely functional. There must be some indication whether or not the script is actually good.
• Sometimes the comments contain useful information, for example about working wine versions, or about flags that will yield certain results. Maybe it would be possible to hide the comments by default, but have the option to show them if you want to see them? Personally I think that the comments are one of the most useful features.

[strycore]

The thing is we shouldn't have non working scripts, they should either be fixed or deleted.
The current system isn't a good way to get the script fixed as it doesn't create any kind of notification for the moderators.
Same thing with working wine versions and other adjustments, those should really be in the scripts. The goal is to have something that works out of the box, without making the user read through possibly unrelated comments.

My hope is to get at a point where the moderators can easily separate script issues from issues related to the user's system.

The new rating system should be a source of truth, we're adding a maintainer role on scripts so they can verify the information published. It will also replace possibly valuable comments and the 'known issues' section by listing the possible issues with a game.
Let's take an example with Street Fighter X Tekken. The game doesn't have a script yet but I can still tell what the rating would be:

✔️ Street Fighter X Tekken

• Cutscenes do not play
• Game sometimes crashes after a match

There are other things needed to make the game playable, like installing a community patch to remove GFWL but that belongs in the install script.

[strycore]

Once that rating system has been implemented, I'd like to extend it to integrate it even more to the scripting system.
We can consider a system where items are added to the list of installer issues that don't get shown to the user but are used in the script instead. We could add stuff like no_esync or no_dxvk. It could also be components needed by the game like dotnet471 or vcrun2019.

By moving some information from the script to the rating metadata would permit to easily update the state a game has to run with regardless if it's already been installed or not. It's like in Steam where the install process only downloads the game and the components like Visual C++ Runtime or DirectX are installed when the game first runs.

We have to take into account that we are relying on automated installers for services like GOG, Origin, EGS, etc... GOG and Humble scripts can be overridden but for Origin, EGS and Uplay the installers on the website are completely separate from the Lutris integration. We need a way to delete those installers while keeping the runtime information that is present in them.

[Elendil211]

But some settings only work on some systems. I like the comments to get ideas. For example, if many people report that dxvk_async does magic together with wine-ge, or that I should use a specific wine version, or enable fsync, I might want to try it. Maybe someone mentions a workaround for a specific problem, like that you should disable streaming and gpu accelleration in battlenet. All of this would not be included in the script.

And even if they could be included, they would still require the maintainer to actually care about those issues. From my experience, the maintainer often does not care. I've seen many scripts that were broken, but trival to fix. And I can understand it. I might be willing to put the time into creating a script, but I don't want the responsibility to maintain it.

[strycore]

Script maintainers are not a thing (yet, but this will change). It is up to the whole Lutris community to keep the scripts updated and functioning.

This actually comforts me in the idea of removing installer issues from the game page. Good information contained in them is actually pretty rare and if something is useful, it should be made official in the scripts (whether in the script itself or its description).

[Elendil211]

Should is the correct term. But I seriously doubt that this is going to happen. It might be a good idea in a better world, where people actually care. But until that's the case, this is just making Linux gaming worse for no proper reason.

Why not have the option to see the comments? Maybe hide it, or whatever, or make a system like on reddit where it's possible to up/downvote useful comments. But don't just remove a useful feature, where people actually rely on. Currently we have to look at winedb to see whether it's at least a shot to try the Lutris script. This is doing real harm to Linux gaming, especially considering the launch of the Steam Deck.

[acidRain-burns]

@strycore I can totally see your approach here, and while I would still suggest comments, I can appreciate your decision and goal here. With that said, I'm not sure how I feel with the issue being closed when there is nothing to fill this website need currently? Whether Lutris uses a new rating system or not, the removal of any ratings or comments leaves a bit of a feature-gap in my opinion. And if it must be closed, can we at least see a project related to this in GitHub that we can follow and potentially contribute to?

Thank you for describing your solution here; however, it sounds like it is not a finished feature and closing issues like this will most likely cause more of these to pop up, without your responses being seen as well.

@Elendil211 Maybe a more constructive title? While I agree with you on user-visible comments, I think a better title would be that there is missing visible feedback on game installation and performance.

[strycore]

I'll reopen this ticket for now since we don't have another one to keep track of the new rating system