SingStar

I rarely "ghost" TF's and SF's but I do wanna go the quickest way, because they still take a lot of time, especially when you're usually doing it with more or less "unknown" team members (Yeah, PuGs).

ITF is partially an example: I always ask someone to tp to the computer once the general is down because of the lag and in the first mission I concider it nice when the team don't aggro the EB so we don't have to fight through the nictus ambush. RSF is another example, the bugged hostage makes the first mission a nightmare unless you "ghost" a bit and once the big bot is down and we go in to the warehouse, it's nice to get through a 10 minute waste-of-time to get to the goodies. ...and yes, it's mostly because I've done'em so friggin many times because there's too little to do for a lvl 50 villain.

Clearing the maps is just totally pointless imho, it's usually not a part of the mission in any way even for role players and will take in some cases an insane amount of time. If there's a mob further in and the crystals are down, leave it, when last crystal is down, why bother with the last ambush?

If you do join a pick-up group for a task/strike force I think that's the general concencus, make it as fast as possible, because it might even fail and some will prefer even *really* ghosting it. I don't expect ghosting, but don't mind it, but I definitely expect people in general to desire to finish the task at hand speedily and efficiently.

Now: If you wanna clear all maps in ITF (or other) or you're hell bent on ghosting everything, better ask the potential team before joining and whining.

Also, as you said, ghosting doesn't really save that much time in most T/SFs. Ghosting to get out of the ambushes is usually a good way of ending up belly-up if you do it in PUGs and when you're playing your regular team it's usually so fast anyway and you don't care because you're "hanging out/in" with friends running on auto.

Now, we'll never ever agree on this, so... Enjoy the game, whatever way you play it and try not to get in any fights, kids!

Now, if anyone could write a gratz thread to Sing Star Reborn!
Been days since I dinged! Lazy smurfs...

I might not be here this evening, probably taking a beer or two with some friends, but don't let that stop the rest of you from going on another ITF or something.

Thinking about doing a video of us doing ITF. Would be very cool to do a full 8 man team fire/rad ITF for youtube to go along with the line dancing smurfs and ice mistral end-video I've already got there!

Cya all on friday. Probably doing an ITF with a villain tomorrow evening.

Well, we didn't do much, just a few radio's and a safeguard. Still 2 ppl not lvl 50!
On the bright side: Turbine generator in place! No energy problem left. Now: How to get more control?
I can't believe how much prestige we've made in a simple 8 man team. Never thought the base would be this functional already.

lol, confuse is nice. Sky raider force field generators pets!

I thought my post made it rather clear that I DO know it's not NCs fault (this time), but I guess you cared as much as the totally useless GMs?

Honestly, thanks for the info that NC could've put on their front page or even in the updater window to alleviate the amount of aggravation they'll recieve. I just don't understand why they avoid making their lives easier and seem to go out of their way to make the customers angry.

Once again, I don't give a (cencored) about the lag, dc's etc, what makes me annoyed is the way the so called customer support is working. It's a Stalinized relic from the early cold wars, a chinese democracy (yup, that was a crappy joka about a crappy album), plain and simple... a joke!

...but it's a joke that's costing "OUR" game valuable players. I've had so many in-game friends leave and even more friends trying the game out, asking me how the h.ll I can stand it since they typically hit major snags even during the installation procedure (the US/EU bug).

I think you're just t the hospital, which is a bit weird in the pvp zones. Just run around clicking doors til you get out. ...and look up!

If you're de-synced, a /sync will fix that.

Phew, where on ITF yday, you know lag-fest...
...sort of happy it's being resceduled so we can attend!

I think we'll get to that STF in time when all are on.
Being a redside player I know very little about STF, done it twice, but don't remember much of it, except it was much easier than RSF until Recluse himself.

I guess you all just hugged one of the pylon-thingies, healing madly while Recluse hit you and then moved on?

I'll be a bit wonky this evening, laundry day!
...gonna run off to the machine (one friggin block away) ever 30-40 minutes or so.

...still we should get the last two up to 50 one way or another!

Well, the truth to the problem lies in two places:
1. There's a problem BETWEEN the players and NC. Not much NC can do about it, but to locate it (through traceroutes etc, need our help for that) and make sure the pwoers-that-be are aware of the problem.
2. Five year old, unoptimized netcode in the game not capable of handling problems like #1. You can't really expect NC to make such a drastic code change to an old declining game.

BUT, you SHOULD be able to expect a descent, proper response, that they treat customers with at least a shred of respect. The fact they don't is part NC's fault, but since there obviously are GMs that give a (cencored) the people working at "customer support" (what a joke) can't just blame "current policies and routines/doctrines".

Yes, they probably have a book telling them what to do and they've been told to follow it (I truly hated that part, never used the book myself when I was in tech support) but they do have a brain, that's why there's PEOPLE working support, not just a bot sending out generic responses. They actually do have a responsibility to think for themselves too.

...and I'm still hoping NC will change their policy and start informing customers about problems instead of denying them until overwhealmingly, repeatedly humlilated by proof we supply the community with. (The Londoner US/EU customer difference incident being the big honkah honkah imho).

Ok, so it's a korean company(?), but it's not friggin' China. When there's a problem, I wanna know about it and then I accept it as "they're obviously working on it at least" and do something else for a while. Pretending it's not there... well, did it work with Chernobyl?

Don't blame the current economic crisis, NC, you're creating your own problems. Oh man, I so whish I wasn't still hooked on this (cencored) game.

edit: STILL trying to update the petition ticket. Guess the system is "overloaded" by the 10 petitions sent in from players the last 20 days or so...

Edit II: Ok, tried a whole friggin day to get on playNC and update my ticket, and it's impossible. Go (cencor) yourself folks! NC has already left Europe for the new world! Good night, was a good fight!

Ok, due to the lag, I sent a petition yesterday when eight of us where doing the ITF and everyone, EVERYONE got DCd at the same time over and over again. It IS getting totally unbearable, but I can take that if it's a problem outside of NCs domains. I know the game was coded badly for the internet infrastructure and it's not worth recoding that major part for a declining game.

It is the way we're treated that once again makes me sad and angry, mostly because once again people are leaving the game due to poor public relations.

The response I got was of course the generic send in info about your system, connection, run the net tool and attach the file etc. I've been told that sort of generic info is actually a private mail and I'm not allowed to post it on the forum, so you'll have to imagine the content. You all probably know the type A-formula response by now anyway.

Problem was, of course, that it's totally useless and I decided to respond to it. I've kept trying to respond for the last 20 hours because the cheap web system isn't working properly, I just can't get in. Becaue of that, I have decided to post my response.

As usual I'm using the big sledge hammer, so some of you might get offended due to the current situation at NC Europe. I have the utmost respect for the people getting fired, but can't help but wonder if the situation today could've been totally different with a professional customer oriented team. If you still feel like hating me, fine, I really don't give a you-know-what!

[ QUOTE ]
I was thinking long and hard before I decided to respond to the usual generic answer, especially since I am aware of the current situation for the employees and I have worked tech support myself once, but...

If you read my initial report there is one keyword there:
EVERYONE DCing at the same time. We where a multinational task force from all over Europa and EVERYONE DCd repeatedly at the very same time.

Where does that lead us? A few possible scenarios:
1. The game is bugged after last patch. Response: None, NC never tells us anything about stuff like that and I guess we have to live with it.
2. Something is wrong with the servers. Pretty much same response expected.
3. Something is wrong pretty close to the servers, but may very well be far beyong the company's responsibility (e.g. problem with the internet infrastructure in general, not too uncommon). NC cannot really do much about it.

In the case of 1 & 2, the response I got will only aggravate customers - A LOT - since it is insulting (at best). There is a reason a lot of people leave the game. Frankly, no response whatsoever is better.

In case we have a #2 or #3 situation, asking me to run the netinfotool (and supplying you with the info from ALL EIGHT players, yeah, that is MY job, right) might actually help the techs to find the problem, but it is only useful if I actually run the tool while the problem is ocurring. Leading us back to support again: Sending an email is totally pointless in this situation.

As far as I know, you people can actually contact us in-game. I guess that is way too much trouble? In that case, you might as well all get fired actually, because a robotic answer is equally useful. Good riddance! Of course you can very well blame the company and its policies, but the company is in the end made up by the people that work for it as well. It is the responsibility of both the employer and the employee to create a good atmosphere and treat each other and the customers with respect.

Now, a few good GMs actually do bother to contact people, to read the question/petition and not just send off that generic by-the-book response. Even if they cannot do anything about the situation, most customers will accept that because they have shown them some respect. Paying the bill next month will not feel like such a (cencored for your conveniece) then.

[/ QUOTE ]

This post was brought to you by Sing Star's olympic style moaning viking warrior syndicated writers guild: Give me the pills & rebuild me: better stronger, faster!

I am quite fine with problems occuring, problem is when you try to find out what's happening you get the generic stupid response to send in info, run the net tool etc in a friggin mail long after you stopped playing.

Noone ever tells us there IS a problem, WHAT the problem is etc, and they never ever contact us in-game anymore. What point is there to run the net tool when everything is back to normal (hopefully)?

This has made me so annoyed I'm gonna create another thread about it, because of some other things.

Gratz to Burns and Radiant. also 50 now!
Radiant wasn't even online!

Flames of Judgement, Hot Feets, Incendio and Radiant Smile dinged already. Just Aaliyah Elle and Sebastian Dracus left now!

Only 14 merits, but hey, was fun even with that FRIGGIN über lag!

Grats M. Proper way to ding too!

Just got another contact mission, lost again and bosses only again.
One the bright side, at least the game isn't as predictable as it used to be, but I'm still pretty sure it's unintentional.

And still my crushing impact recharge bonuses seem to make me spped through any ouroboros arc i choose!
Well, I'm probably just imagining it, never bother to actually check figures since the game is so rediculously easy anyway and my main can hardly get any sets due to the special nature of sonic/thermal corrs!

Well, running two accounts on two computers, I've lately had the interesting experience of not connecting with one, while the other works fine.

Restarting the client and/or rebooting is one tip, the other is to read the updater tip GR posted a while back to "bypass" the problem.

Ok, it's fair not to blame NC or their servers, but no matter where the problem occurs on the way to NC servers, when the brown stuff hits the fan, we're pretty much all affected and it doesn't matter if we're in the UK, spain, sweden, germany etc - and more so: no other application is affected.

Most of us have a "backup" game like lotro, wow etc we barely play, but those applications are just fine, skype's working fine etc.

So in the end we still come back to the five year old code that's part of the game we love but sure wasn't the best for a MMO game. Even more so, players that still have accounts on the US doesn't seem to be affected nearly as much by rubberbanding, connection issues, DCs, out-of-body experiences etc.

Fair or not, I choose to blame NC's european ISP/server handler!

Edit: lol... Can't get on to the server again!

Weird thing is, later that evening we did the valentine event stuff, and that poor villain got a sidekick, bumped the badge bars up quite a bit, so apparently it's working but is a bit wonky...
...anyone surprised?

They just need to feed the hampppppsters...
(Or restart the servers due to some weird memory leak, but not enough people working to actually do that)

Was on the worst ITF ever today. People could hardly get on-line, then some überlag hit us and stayed with us way before lag canyon. We still managed to pull it off in 1 hour 18 minutes!

VERY nice run today: ITF in 1 hour 18 minutes.
Told you we could shave about 20 minutes without a problem!

Also, the lvl 50 dings are now coming in. Yes, indeed folks, I DID ding the big one while on the loo. What a relief!

Noone's left behind, plenty of things to do, so see you all tomorrow!

Also, there's the rikti mothership raid this evening at 7, might be worth if to get the backpack, and tomorrow there's a dance photo op in atlas park.

And, hey, just realized I still have Fraps on my 2nd computer! Might do another youtube show!

Yup, Sure hope to see most of'ya this evening.
Not working this week, so I'm up for another ITF or some similar insane action.

I could whip out a villain on main account for us to do some valentine stuff as well, the temp power is rather awesome.

Been trying to finish off the last mentoring needed for the SG badge, but it seems to be broken.

I got the badge up to that a few days ago, but today nothing has happened despite several hours of mentoring, same alts, same mission etc. Not a single % done on the four hour badge after a total of 5 hours in-mission.