GhostRaptor_EU

I'm going to look back at this thread at the end of the year and have a good giggle.

*ahem*

I can vouch for what Ex Libris has said with regards the dev team having too tight a schedule to put in any new content for Spring Fling 2009.

Why are people arguing about charity?

If you're unfamiliar with the history behind this sketchbook, we partnered with Draw the World Together (who in turn chose EveryChild) a few years ago and we've had a very successful relationship, helping raise thousands for their chosen charity. This sketchbook is, in part, a celebration of that partnership.

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I just made a post about this. It got deleted real quick. Pitty COX are not so efficient when it comes to fixing game-brakeing bugs, as they are at censorship. (Running around looking like a child with a pretend gun is a game-breaker for me.)

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I work on forum moderation. I do not work on game bugs. Likewise, the team at NCNC who do work on fixing bugs do not do forum moderation.

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I started playing in December and I've never seen chat working properly. I don't think it's worth sticking around to see how long it takes for my toon to not look completely stupid.

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If you check the training room forum, you'll see patch notes for the next update. Chat is fixed.

Hi all,

The tech people believe they've found the source of the problem and corrected it.

If you are still having trouble connecting, please flush your DNS using "ipconfig/flushdns" at the command prompt (to get here type CMD in the search box on Vista or the run box for XP, both found in the start menu).

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Why when i used the tool ncsoft supply themselves, am i told to download another one to sort an error that only cropped up this afternoon?

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Because it will help us locate and resolve the problem. The tool I linked to is a first step that may identify an obvious problem. Pingplotter digs deeper should the first tool not show anything.

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"via the link in my sig"

what for an link ? :/ the support link only links to the news

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Just updated it, it should now link to the correct section on PlayNC.

Specifically, however, go to this page:

http://uk.support.plaync.com/cgi-bin...nduser/ask.php

Hi folks,

Those of you having trouble please contact the support team via the link in my sig.

Support may ask for further information, including possibly asking you to run a tool to help us trace this.

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Where's GR when you need him.

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Sending an internal email linking to this thread at the very moment you posted, actually

Edit to update: until this is resolved, please try opening and closing the launcher until you get a connection. You should be able to get a good connection within a few tries.

Righto ... not an easy decision!

So, here's the results, starting with the easy one:

December 2009: DrDestiny for his Christmas Character Portraits.

I will also issue a smaller runners-up reward to Darth Delicious and the artwork found here.

And now the harder choice, November: LeighB for The Wandering Year.

And this time, two runners-up! Happy Dan, for 50 amazing pieces of art and Lady Arete for a great Badge checklist tool.

I'll be in contact with all the winners early next week. Congratulations everyone!

Those who attended a show we visited last year may have run across the NCsoft / Draw the World Together City of Heroes sketchbook.

The sketchbook contains artists versions of characters from CoH and CoV, such as Andrew Wildman, Andie Tong, Neil Edwards, Mike Collins, David Nakayama and many others.

The sketchbook had a production run of 500, and was for 2008 only available at shows we visited. Priced at £5, all of the money raised went to the Draw the World Together supported charity EveryChild.

The sketchbook is now available on the PlayNC merchandise store, here, still priced at £5 (€7.50) and still with all money received going to charity.

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That would be GhostRaptor then.

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Yup, was great . We Aussies don't get to see this sort of thing very often.

Could've done without the sidewalks being left completely untended by the council, and becoming rather treacherous in places.

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.9T3 has no patch notes, as the only fix included is for a backend system that doesn't affect gameplay.

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It should be pretty easy to get translated patch notes that state "this patch is purely for backend systems and shouldn't affect gameplay" and can be quickly posted whenever one of these crops up...

Y'know stop us all wondering what's changed, what's broken...

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*cough* It's happening right now : English and German up already in teh launcher, and French to follow shortly. The decision to publish this update this morning wasn't made until after I'd left the office yesterday, and I don't have reliable home internet currently.

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Can I please request, very politely and gently, though, that the version number always be included in the Announcement Patch Notes? It's only a tiny thing, but the .8T3 patch notes don't include it, and it's quite handy for us nerds at times.

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Sure thing. The notes on the website will always include the version number, though, in case it gets lost from the forum version.

Witch Leather fix was in .8T3.

.9T3 has no patch notes, as the only fix included is for a backend system that doesn't affect gameplay.

Well, I *hope* that Visa will be aware of the problems that SecureCode has run into (specifically card-on-file and recurring billing) and will have solutions in place before they make any decisions to implement it as a mandatory feature.

We're still looking into alternative that we can supply through our own systems. Unfortunately there's nothing I can talk about yet.

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... being able to reliably reproduce the bug on demand ...

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...like playing the game for about an hour to experience the problem several times?

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The point you miss here is that what you experience is not what a QA team refers to as a reliable method of reproduction. Can you tell me, with confidence, that you know what specific set of circumstances causes the bug to manifest?

While the bug will generally manifest on multiple occasions during a prolonged play session, that alone is not useful to the QA team or the people who are assigned to fix the bug.

What we mean by reliable, on demand, reproduction of a bug is that a member of the QA team can sit down, do X, and see the bug immediately. And then be able to do it again. And again. And again. Immediately. Having it crop up at random over multiple hours of play is not a reliable, on demand, method of reproduction and doesn't help in terms of identifying the bug.

It is far, far more difficult (and actually quite unlikely) for a bug to be fixed without the team knowing under exactly what circumstances that bug occurs. Think of it as being like trying to find a needle (the buggy code) in a haystack (the entire code). If you don't know what specifically causes the bug, then it's like hunting for that needle using nothing but your hands and eyes. If you do know exactly what causes the bug, though, it's like having a metal detector: suddenly you know where to look in the code.

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It's even more frustrating that NC apparently put a lot of effort in aligning this and that powerset, changing this radius, changing that recharge rate instead of sitting down and dedicate the time on fixing a bunch of existing bugs first.

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The people who work with powers, powersets etc are not the same people who work with chat code. Telling Castle and his team to stop working on power balance and instead help the chat programmer fix a bug won't get that chat bug fixed any sooner, however will certainly cause delays in work involving powers.

Locking this thread until I can go through and clean out some posts.

It will most likely remain closed throughout the weekend, and I will decide on Monday whether to reopen it or not.

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Maybe we should al petition maestro or something as they seem to be the only lot that think this wonderful new lvl of security is necessary.

(a wonderful lvl of security that didn't stop 3 people i know getting there cards cloned at teh local shell i mite add)

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SecureCode's only meant to be an added layer of protection for online purchases. So while it won't stop the card being cloned if someone gets hold of it, it does mean that if they then try to use it online they can't (assuming the store is compliant with the SecureCode policy for Maestro).

Visa have a similar feature as well, however they have not (yet) made it compulsory.

I asked CS - the response you received was meant to have the portion relating to needing the character name removed. You can ignore it, the team have your character's name and will be restoring it.

The bug is being worked on, and a fix will be released as soon as one is available and we're confident that it resolves the problem without creating any new bugs.

Please be aware that in all cases of a bug being present, there are several stages involved in fixing the bug starting with identifying the bug, being able to reliably reproduce the bug on demand and therefore gaining an understanding of possible causes, through isolating the specific code causing the issue, verifying that any change to that code will fix the bug without creating a new bug, testing the fix internally and on the training room ... and more.

Some bugs are easily identified, reliably reproduced on demand and therefore quick and easy to fix. Others aren't, for a variety of possible reasons, and that can elongate how long it takes for the cause of the bug to be isolated and fixed in the code.

If you haven't already, contact support with a /petition or via the web Knowledge Base (linked in my signature).

For clarity: any characters already affected will remain so until support have been able to restore the character. If you're affected, you'll need to contact support.

When was the last time your brother's character was logged in?

There's an update here.

We were able to reproduce the issue with a character in our office, however have been unable to do so again since restoring that character and retesting. As we are no longer receiving fresh tickets to support we believe that the cause of this issue is no longer causing characters to lose their contacts and missions.

If anyone is affected again please contact our support team immediately.

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umm hold on a sec

so your sayin "this issue has resolved itself"

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Clarification: I meant resolved itself as in no further characters were being affected. Apologies for the confusion. Note that I said we hoped on the basis of no further tickets having been received, and that I wanted confirmation.

We're well aware that characters already affected are still affected, however the priority right now is finding out how widespread the issue is, whether or not it is still affecting characters, and if we can what is causing it to occur.

We need to concentrate on minimising impact right now, and once we have done so we will move to restoring those characters already affected.

When was this, in terms of time?

Our support team has had no further reports since 2:20pm so we're hoping the issue has resolved itself. We'd like to confirm this is indeed the case.

We still need as much information as possible to hopefully locate what caused this problem and prevent it recurring in future.