quickfire
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Isn't there some type of large weapon either in the game or planned? I thought I had read somewhere that some giant rifle was getting added or had been added.Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
You can have all that just as soon as I get my epic railgun set. Or SOME big gun that is nearly as big as the character is. -
They went a bit overboard with the restrictions. However, I think that might be a situation where they didn't have a choice. I'm not sure if the code is in place that would allow someone to only answer a direct tell.
I personally think a better solution would have been to use a menu option that would have disabled f2p chat by default (tells) but you could choose to turn it on if you wanted. That way new players that want to RMT spam would be blocked, but you could turn it on if you wanted to talk to new players, say for setting up a group.
One thing to keep in mind...this change is a financial one. The desire, I would expect, is to draw in new players and get them paying for content.
Yes, it takes a small purchase to get chat function, but how many new players really know that?
I just think a disable option would have been better. -
As a counterpoint to a few comments, I tend to think that having some items for sale for VIP members is a good idea, especially those that can be earned. If you don't want to bother with the earnings quests for certain items you can simply purchase them, and they give 400 points each months by default.
I'm not sure how I feel about items that can only be purchased (not earned in game) but I'm ok with those items that are offered in the market that can be earned in the game. I think it's a good idea. Certainly saves a bit of frustration. -
My only real problems with the market currently is that it's a bit TOO confusing overall...needs some streamlining and simplification, and the fact that armor and emote pics are not displayed.
Costume sets especially need pics to show what they have.
Overall, I think it's a pretty good setup and think it was LONG overdue. They should have done this 200k+ subscribers ago. -
Quote:Actually regression testing can't be done effectively with load testing tools. Thats testing the GUI performance...usually browser initiated. Also load testing tools can't record like RT tools. Load testing focuses on analyzing the stack.Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
Those are nothing special. They won't help you in detecting where your hot-spots will exist, because you won't know what usage patterns there will be (you'd need an amazing understanding of not only your server, but the client, and the user to predict that with any amount of accuracy). Even in Beta, people don't play the game the same way they do on Live (again, look at my Boresight example- even if it was just a virtual item, it illustrates well enough that results from test and results from live can be totally different), so any data gathered will be presenting a false (that doesn't mean useless) picture.
Those sorts of software are really better for regression testing than finding new and unusual issues... but, if you've limited resources, they can cause you to waste money on 'problems' that wouldn't have been a problem in practice anyways. It's almost more of an art than a science, at this point.
That doesn't in any way diminish your point which again is a good one. -
Quote:IBM RPT in 2005, 6.1 if I remember right. Lets see...best modern tool? It's speculative, but I'd say my money is on SilkPerformer.Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
2004? What magical new ways to prepare for load are you talking about that are that new, that everyone hasn't been using for a long time? Stress testing is fine and dandy, but stress testing only really works the best if you know very accurately how the servers will be hit. Every time things get changed, that usage model will change, and predicting how it will change is extremely hard (I'm always reminded of when the Invention system was first added... on Test, 'Boresight' was what everyone thought was going to be a very hot item... on live? people were deleting them).
Neither available in 2004. There have been dozens of innovations since 2004.
But you do make a good point. Prediction is still not as good as application. -
Quote:Again, fair. You have no insight on what they might be using for database software? I didn't recognize any markers myself...Oracle always has a tell. SQL has a few markers as well.Originally Posted by Lothic
The current realities of this game are always going to be complicated by its relative age. Not only are they reworking the overall game for the F2P changes but they are doing it to a system that probably has some elements to it that are approaching being 10+ years old (depending on just how far back before April 2004 they were laying the groundwork for the game). Having to work in changes to the account databases and the new Paragon Market transaction servers into the existing rat's nest of code must be a semi-nightmare for them no matter how disciplined they've been.
I honestly couldn't tell you much more about their hardware setup beyond what they've told us. We do know that as recently as a week or two ago they were "physically moving server hardware to a new location" so it's likely that quite a bit more is going on than how they are handling their high level server instance applications.
Once again I can totally sympathize that any downtime is bad for a game like this. But given everything they are trying to accomplish I almost think it's amazing they've managed to do what they've done with so -little- overall downtime.
The non-stacks (inventory) are curious to me. I wonder if that is a marker. But I can't find any indicators anywhere.
At any rate, I'm guessing you feel increasing the sharding will not help.
And look here...we are now debating (or debunking if you want to call it that) my idea. This is a better way to discuss it methinks. -
Quote:Best post all day.Originally Posted by Clouded
In other words, you are a big doody head and I'm taking my ball and going home.
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Well, I can't deny that problems occur. Nor can I deny that this certainly could have been something that couldn't be avoided.
All I can say to that, however, is that this isn't 2004. There are way to prepare for traffic that work pretty well...not perfect mind you, but certainly more effective than you might think.
But yes, even I have to concede this might be something that couldn't be avoided. Time will tell if it hurts the games rep.
I still feel right now it is a critical time for the game. Make or break sort of thing. -
Quote:And you make a fair point on both counts. Sorry if I inferred you made that contention about taking it off line...that was meant for another, kind of a "take care of in one shot" sort of thing.Originally Posted by Lothic
I'm certainly open to the idea that they could do more to stress test things. But then again there's never been a team of people working on a software application that couldn't stand to spend more time stress testing things. Like I implied before that's one of those things you can never do enough of.
The Devs do their best to encourage people to go try things out during the closed and open betas. They even generate "live stress tests" as best they can - basically every time they do things like the Praetorian Invasion that's a stress test or sorts.
But as SolarSentai said there's always things that crop up in a live environment that'll never show up during a beta no matter how much testing you do beforehand. Are there things they might be able to do to further reduce the downtimes we're seeing now? Sure there's always room for improvement. But my guess, for what it's worth, is that they are doing the best they can given the limitations of time, staff, budgets, etc. No situation is going to be perfect - it's how they balance juggle all the factors at once that matters most.
And for the record I never ONCE thought you ever said the current build needed to be completely unloaded from the live servers. Why you thought I jumped to that assumption is anyone's guess. *shrugs*
Telling the Devs to do this is like telling them they need to breath to stay alive. You're not saying ANYTHING they aren't already doing. My guess is that they are always "aggressively" trying to fix the problems ASAP.
Yes, I would have to say that even the best stress test can't beat live. People will simply not load the server like live does. Even with scaling. A load test can only provide information on the OSI protocol stack, and certainly isn't dynamic enough to cover regression.
But I still think Sharding is viable. Naturally, again, it depends on setup. I can say they are using LIMITED sharding right now, as I have seen evidence of this, but I think they need to expand it. My problem is that I'm unaware of what they are using to shard...my guess is Codefutures...maybe dbShards? If its active record (ORM) than it's probably likely to be Octopus, part of Ruby if I remember right.
Actually I'm not sure if Ruby is outdated. You would know better than I.
The point is Sharding could reduce load while the upgrades are made. It's hard to believe that a consistent load of say...10000 players...and that's probably high end...could be served by limited sharding during an active hardware upgrade.
Now, if it's a database upgrade that's obviously a different story. They have made SOME database changes obviously. But I'm not sure if that translates to a code change. -
Quote:If you don't think about it too much the answer will come to you...Originally Posted by SwellGuy
I honestly have no idea what you are saying.
We all know it is down but the blind defenders are responding to the self entitled blind whiners.
The game is a success so that is puzzling comment.
So who do you have doing this uphill iceskating? The successful game defenders or the complainers? -
Quote:Sensible or not, understandable or not, it does not change the point that it is probably bad timing since players that left the game are returning.Originally Posted by Kitsune Knight
Or, C: The Devs are staying ahead of stability issues that comes with a massive overhaul of their infrastructure. Software development is absurdly hard, and it's flat out impossible to catch all issues in limited trial runs (simply because scale matters).
Quite frankly, this issue has had far less issues for me than any others I can think about (and I've been around for the vast majority of them). We've not had the global channels explode constantly for a month. We've not had multiple server crashes a day. We've not had rollbacks. We've not had a constantly lag-fest.
We also used to have regular maintenance every single week day morning (and then Freedom/Virtue crashing occasionally Sunday night), so the servers being down in the mornings is nothing new- except this time we know it's just temporary.
This style of thread springs up every issue... except, normally, it's demanding the Devs take the servers down and fix them, rather than stop trying to fix stuff.
This was not the time to be having these problems. I do not expect players to be as understanding as you are. -
Quote:If you understood the point you would not have followed with exaggeration and false information, just like you did again in this post.Originally Posted by Lothic
You know I've actually understood the point quickfire's been making all along.
It's just that the idea that the Devs would NOT be working on bug fixes on other Test/Beta servers while the build on the live servers is left up and running so completely counter to every reasonable engineering practice that I've almost dismissed it out of hand on purpose.
The problem is my post is above yours. What it says is plain to see. You have made it what you wanted it to say for the sake of argument.
Look, I accepted your premise and called it fair. I think that should be enough. Trying to sell the sun being blue is never going to be right, no matter how much of a discount you offer.
I don't usually do this, but I will make it easy for you.
I never stated, inferred or assumed that testing is not ongoing, nor did I state or infer that the current build needs to be shut down. I stated clearly that the current problems need AGGRESSIVE testing and fixes on a separate build while the CURRENT BUILD remains running with normal down time. The fixes they are implementing are not game breaking, and hardware upgrades can be softened by sharding, depending on the database they are currently using and how it is structured.
There. You got me to repeat myself based on a post I made just one page ago. It's an age old tactic, get someone to restate the same things over and over, try to get them off balance, trip them up...so on and so forth. Forum PVP. You can't POSSIBLY have read my suggestion and came to the conclusions you did, you HAVE to have had other intentions.
The problem is that you do not lend credence to your argument by using such combative dishonest tactics. If you have the experience you say you do, and my idea is truly trash (it certainly could be) than that truth will be borne by sensible discussion, not theatrics and positioning.
And certainly not by putting a slant on it. -
Quote:It's a fair point, but there are ways to create a stress test. It's not a perfect solution, but it can reveal the hardware problems they may be having.Originally Posted by SolarSentai
I think part of the problem with your suggestion is that many of the bugs and issues we're experiencing didn't actually happen on Beta and in fact weren't seen until the Issue went to the Live environment.
This isn't that uncommon that a Beta will go relatively smooth and then when it hits Live there's tons of unforeseen issues.
An example would be the scroll bar on the Server Select menu. They couldn't fix that in Beta because it wasn't an issue in Beta.
It's not like there are -that- many Beta testers in relation to the live population. I'm grateful to the Beta testers that take the time to actually test for bugs so we can all benefit but there's only so much that they can do to find bugs.
And one other thing to consider: fixing one thing can potentially break something else.
With all the years of coding that's gone into this game it must be a nightmare for them to track stuff down.
Anyway, just another opinion on the subject. As Loth said, the game will always be a work in progress and nothing will change that. An MMO is "finished' when the servers go offline :P -
Quote:Fair enough.Originally Posted by Lothic
Cherrypicking? hardly...
I think the reason your suggestion seems strange to me is that what you're suggesting is what the Devs are ALREADY doing and what they've ALWAYS done.
The Devs are always working on the latest builds on both the public Test and Beta servers as well as their private internal servers. They always do their best to minimise the required time they need to install new builds on the live servers. Do you think they are just whimsically bringing the live servers down whenever they want to test a single new line of code? Be rest assured that they only bring the servers down when they are VERY SURE they have something worth publishing which includes anything they announce in the patch notes as well as the dozens/hundreds of other things they never tell us able.
So your semi-strange suggestion that the Devs should do MORE to reduce the downtimes is just that, very strange to me given that I'm quite sure the Devs ALREADY do everything they can to minimize that. -
The pool powers could use a revamp. I half expected to see "sleeping" in there.
Does anyone choose anything other than flying?
I don't expect a third line of primary powers. I do expect a pool set I could choose actually having some appeal to it.
I think they could find other pool powers to offer that are more appealing but not game breaking. -
Quote:Nope, we don't. Instead we need folks that defend a game blindly to tell us what we know and don't know. After all, who knows us better than a forum cheerleader, eh?Originally Posted by Mr. DJ
yep, cause we definitely need more people who think they understand how a game works
You guys have done SUCH a great job over the last 7 years guiding this game to it's resounding success.
Always someone trying to iceskate uphill.
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Quote:Ah ha!Originally Posted by MrDead
You know he's repeatedly said leave it in it's current state...
Someone is paying attention.
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Quote:Ok, I'm going to put your experience into question, with your permission (I would rather this does not deevolve into a shooting match), but first I would ask that you actually read my suggestion again so you can correct your misjudgments and incorrect assumptions/assessments.Originally Posted by Lothic
My experience does not "justify" what you call a bad opinion. It only makes me understand that given the situation at hand what the Devs appear to be doing to handle it seems much more realistic from an engineering and business point of view than the relatively extreme and unjustifiable suggestions you're offering.
I understand downtime of any kind is bad and annoying. But suggesting they should essentially stop doing anything other than to "overwork" the current build and re-release CoH:Freedom at a later date when it's finally "finished" is both practically and effectively impossible. No software application of this size is ever technically "done" nor is it ever held back until ALL the bugs are fixed. If Devs tried to do that then nothing would ever be released.
I really don't think I need to point out the inaccuracies and exaggerations in your post. Just take time to read the suggestion again, correct your viewpoint to properly reflect what I am asking for, and THEN we can have a debate on the merits or pitfalls of that suggestion.
To be fair...my suggestion could be complete garbage. But we can't have that discussion unless you know what I am asking for and properly state it for the sake of the argument. -
Quote:And plenty of denial and cheerleading to boot.Originally Posted by Ironblade
There are multiples. Comparatively speaking, though, this one is sorely lacking in nerdrage.
At least we have sufficient exaggeration. -
I don't think having a system in place that suspends your rating privs if you give too many 1 stars within a certain span of time is a bad idea. If its a tight span and a large number of 1 stars it would obviously be someone downrating on purpose.
That said, any judgment system is open to the whims of those that are able to participate in judgment. The only solution is to remove rankings and instead go by amount played. -
Quote:Ok. My guess is that most players of the game won't have 20 years of Software Engineer experience. That's the only response I could give to that.Originally Posted by Lothic
Yes I agree yours is an opinion. It just doesn't mesh well with the realities of this software application/maintenance situation. And I'm only saying that as a Software Engineer with nearly 20 years of professional experience... for whatever that's worth.
Funny how people feel experience in a certain field of work justifies a bad opinion. Also funny how they feel they exist in a vacuum. -
...I think if anyone had sense they would stop sticking their heads in the sand and realize this is bad for business.
...and I love how any suggestion that it's not a good thing is thoroughly trounced, constructive or not.
...my how I missed the forums.
At any rate, if the devs were aware it was a bad deal THEY WOULDN'T be allowing it to happen in the first place.
So, by evidence it appears that either...
A. They have no choice. Means poor planning.
B. They think it's a non-issue...like many here. The same guys that said the game is healthy as is, doesn't need F2P, didn't lose almost half it's playerbase....yep. Fans are the best people to take critical advice from.
This game deserves better than lip service from the fanbase. It deserves a kick in the rear. -
Well, you have your opinions, I have mine. I find it pretty silly that fixing it as you go and bringing the game down as much as it is going down is considered a wise move.
I just can't see any way it can be considered so.
And yes, playing with the bugs IS a better alternative. Players are FAR more accepting of bugs (especially some of the ones listed as known issues) compared to constant down time.
They need to do it, period. Pull the current build as a MIRROR to the beta server, aggressively work on it, keep the current game up more often, then drop a large fix on the servers.
Like it or not it's the wisest choice.
As for the hardware issue, they need to shard. The problem is they stopped instancing before they were ready. Sharding is a good temp solution until the hardware catches up.
Remember...just my opinion. For whatever it's worth. -
I think that returning players are more likely than not going to make their own judgments, and considering they left the game at some point, I would guess it is likely it will not be with a fair judgment.
So all "hyperbole" aside, understandable or not it doesn't bode well for the games rep with returning players. You guys had better start understanding that. Defending this excessive down time will not help keep those returning players.
Pushing the devs to find a solution for the sake of the game is probably a better way to go. The concern has merit.