LesPaulObsession
Wanted Pirate
I appreciate the comment! And I certainly didn't think that is how you took it. The individual I quoted in my post seemed agitated at my comment, so I wanted to clarify that my intentions were not bitter.
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Attention: The forums are in read-only mode
Thanks to TLOPO for not saving my stuff
- Thread starter TheLegendary
- Start date
ThunderStorms
Pirate Lord
Very True Mike ... seen Mickey do some long roll backs too many times !!!
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Mharr
Wanted Pirate
I have no particular disagreement with the general points being made by anyone, but this detail jumped out at me as being utterly untrue. There will be unreasonably angry people every time you change anything in a public online project, no matter how sensible the change and transparent the decision making process. This is why dedicated moderators have to exist, to buffer the creative souls from the kind of burnout Cadeus mentioned.
LesPaulObsession
Wanted Pirate
You can honestly say it won't cut back? How many people complained that they lost progress, pirates, loot, etc, completely by surprise? Sure, it won't eliminate complaints, but I'm certain that many of the people who were taken completely by surprise this time, would have reacted differently if they knew of situation ahead of time.
-Edit- I realize my original quote appeared as a solution for all complaints, that was not how I meant to use it, my mistake.
Mharr
Wanted Pirate
It would reduce the intensity of comments from reasonable fellows like yourself, but the sort of player that's going to fire off an angry rant on the forums or directly at the support staff will continue to do that. It makes the overreactions less visible to us, but the mods still get to deal with it all either way.
S
Shamus The Brute
@TheLegendary - Sorry to hear about items lost/gone away. In the grand scheme of things...
...it's really not so bad. (Your alive and your playing something a lot of us enjoy/enjoyed playing). It's all about your perspective and attitude but regardless, please don't worry nor fret. Things will get better.
...it's really not so bad. (Your alive and your playing something a lot of us enjoy/enjoyed playing). It's all about your perspective and attitude but regardless, please don't worry nor fret. Things will get better.
ThunderStorms
Pirate Lord
" Easy come ..... Easy go go go go .... oh no " !!!!
Layla Littlenymph
Pirate Apprentice
A beta product is that which is still under development. It will have bugs. It will have breakdowns. It will invariably have moments where rollbacks and wipes will be necessary. If you participate in a beta, you have to accept that these things are not simply a possibility, they are a given. While these things are always frustrating they are an unavoidable aspect of beta participation. If you find such things to be unacceptable, you should limit your gaming to products that have reached commercial release.
As for emergency rollbacks, they are not by nature something that can be scheduled. The time to perform a rollback is that moment when it becomes obvious a rollback is necessary in order to resolve an error. I have been involved in several test projects in which rollbacks and character wipes were scheduled as part of the process but a game that is developed in that manner is usually subject to a full wipe before the final release.
With these two things in mind, I do not have any huge issues with how the game is being developed thus far. The problems I have seen, to include rollbacks, are not unlike every other beta project I have participated in. The one issue that I DO have regarding the most recent rollback is the breakdown in communication. As frustrating as a rollback can be for a participating player, they are all the more frustrating when they are done with no explanation. The only notice we were given was an in-game message announcing that the game would go offline for an update. There was no indication that the "update" was to resolve any issues, nor was any post made, in a timely manner, to make players aware of what had happened. Much of the angst in this thread is not so much a matter of what happened. It is more a matter of being left in the dark as to the specifics. When you leave it to the player base to fill in the blanks, you should not be surprised to see what conclusions they will arrive at.
I agree that many of us players could be more understanding of the beta process, but I feel compelled to point out that the devs could greatly increase that understanding with more timely and informative communication. It's not that I feel the devs actually "owe" us anything, but I do not feel that it is an unreasonable expectation.
Loving the game, so far.
My best wishes for the success of this project.
As for emergency rollbacks, they are not by nature something that can be scheduled. The time to perform a rollback is that moment when it becomes obvious a rollback is necessary in order to resolve an error. I have been involved in several test projects in which rollbacks and character wipes were scheduled as part of the process but a game that is developed in that manner is usually subject to a full wipe before the final release.
With these two things in mind, I do not have any huge issues with how the game is being developed thus far. The problems I have seen, to include rollbacks, are not unlike every other beta project I have participated in. The one issue that I DO have regarding the most recent rollback is the breakdown in communication. As frustrating as a rollback can be for a participating player, they are all the more frustrating when they are done with no explanation. The only notice we were given was an in-game message announcing that the game would go offline for an update. There was no indication that the "update" was to resolve any issues, nor was any post made, in a timely manner, to make players aware of what had happened. Much of the angst in this thread is not so much a matter of what happened. It is more a matter of being left in the dark as to the specifics. When you leave it to the player base to fill in the blanks, you should not be surprised to see what conclusions they will arrive at.
I agree that many of us players could be more understanding of the beta process, but I feel compelled to point out that the devs could greatly increase that understanding with more timely and informative communication. It's not that I feel the devs actually "owe" us anything, but I do not feel that it is an unreasonable expectation.
Loving the game, so far.
My best wishes for the success of this project.
TheLegendary
Dockworker
Does that mean update is coming near and rollback?
So let me guess Monday to Thursday are safe to play? But I believe Friday to saturday probably may have update and rollback?
Cadeus
Pirate Apprentice
Not all updates require a rollback. They only rollback when there is an issue with the database that stores user information and game state. Depending on how critical the update is there have been many that have happened during the week. You can bet that major updated will occur on the weekend because the devs are off work or school and can spend more time watch the servers after the updates have been installed.
TheLegendary
Dockworker
Mharr
Wanted Pirate
Yeah, you kinda have to. If you just patch the holes and press on, you can never know for sure you caught all the dead links, duplications and overwrites created by the bugs while they were running on live servers. Not rolling back is almost guaranteed to do more damage over time.
Nothing's more fun to debug than a giant complex state machine that's got itself into an invalid state.
Nothing's more fun to debug than a giant complex state machine that's got itself into an invalid state.
It's been said numerous times, something like roll back isn't planned NOR wanted. If tlopo found a bad enough corruption on say Friday, and instead of rolling it back as immediate as possible to mitigate player stats and such, they went with, "oh, it's the weekend, lets just sit on this, let 4 or 5 days go by and get to this Monday or Tuesday when there's less traffic. Just imagine how much of your progress gets trashed then?
It's almost silly to argue this when reality is offered.
I want to be online and test and play, but seeing how many people are struggling, I'm just going to bide my time and give the dev's their time to work out solutions as we go along.
Because we're BETA pirates after all.
I haven't gotten the full experience of how this forum works or functions, but isn't there some thread or location - other than the 'server status' page that doesn't tell us much so far, that we can all agree on for up to the minute type information and have some forum person in the know be responsible for broadcasting it? If this is already within this forum, then maybe it needs advertised better.
Again, not everyone knows how to navigate this forum effectively perhaps to find such useful info.
Just a thought.
Davy Darkrage
Admin
Typically such information is broadcast via https://status.tlopo.com nowadays. Any broadcasts/announcements (of this nature or otherwise) are also to be posted to the TLOPO News section. Unfortunately in this case, no such announcement was published. The issue isn't so much that there aren't decent communication channels, it's that they went underutilized.
LesPaulObsession
Wanted Pirate
I have no intention to sound needy, or passive aggressive, but can we expect to hear about why there was a rollback? Mainly for the sake of the players who lost entire pirates, or several levels. I do acknowledge that the rollback happened several days ago, I've just been curious.
Davy Darkrage
Admin
Apologies for the delay. The overhaul of the quest system changed the way quest objects are stored in the database, and the team ran into a snag during the update when converting them from the old format. The rollback did not affect most accounts, and those that were affected were only rolled back a few hours (the smallest rollback period thus far), which is partially responsible for why communicating it was not considered a priority.
LesPaulObsession
Wanted Pirate
I understand you all are busy, no need to apologize. Thanks for passing the information on. While it may not be priority, it certainly makes me feel a bit better knowing why. Keep up the good work you all, fair winds!
StarfireRose77
Pirate Master
Ceplex I would like to give you an instance of why they can't plan a rollback. There was a bug where people could not access their accounts because a bug was telling them they were being disconnected to prevent a district reset and this was happening every time the people were trying to log on. This bug was getting bigger and happening to more people. You could say they nipped it in the bud by doing a rollback so all these people got their pirates back online. In the grand scheme of things I would rather lose a few hours of grinding/weapons/whatever compared to not even being able to play the game. If they hadn't fixed it when they did would you have liked to log on just to find out it knocked you right back out of the game?? This is why a rollback is done when needed. But I do agree with others that telling what it is for after it happens would help others to understand. Especially new players who have never been through a rollback before.