Hell hath no fury like a playerbase scorned

[ThetaOrionis01]

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1360067

 

After the CSM minutes and a subsequent dev blog revealed just how few resources CCP are committing to fixing bugs and outright broken content, including the absolutely crippling fleet lag that renders the very content CCP use in their advertising trailers unplayable, CCP should have known what was in store for them when they naively asked players to vote for EVE Online: Tyrannis in a European games award.

 

28 pages of righteous fury (down to 26 thanks to forum moderators) unleashed so far, with players voting for any game instead of EVE instead, their replies often parodying GM petition responses or quoting the '18 months' timeframe mentioned in the CSM minutes. This was picked up by various games review websites.

 

CCP damage control swung into action claiming that fixing the lag was CCP's number 1 development priority... which was dismissed as a blatant lie by players pointing to the staff allocation set out in the previously mentioned dev blog.

 

Maybe this public outcry and PR debacle will result in CCP reviewing their development priorities and attending to the many issues raised by the CSM... well, we can dream, can't we.

 

Meanwhile I'd be happy for not getting traffic control on every single gate travelling with a gang of more than 20 people. For actually being able to see titans before they start doomsdaying our fleet. For being able to defend sovereignty without blackscreening and node crashes and having to cede control of a system because our fleet cannot enter the system. For being able to load the grid before getting blown up.

[TheTerminator2004]

It really irritates me how everyone's raging about this. If any of the people bitching in that thread had the slightest clue about what is involved with running a server cluster and system like Eve (which is definitely the most complicated game ever made, and probably gives people like Google and Facebook a run for their money in terms of networking complexity), they'd know that the 40-odd people CCP have allocated to trying to sort this problem out is the best that can reasonably be done. There would be absolutely no point allocating more people, and it would make little difference to how quickly things get sorted. It's difficult enough trying to debug software even on a small scale, let alone the monstrosity that is Eve. Add to that the fact that it's a live environment, with customers expecting as close to 100% uptime as possible, and it becomes an absolute nightmare. And theres only so much debugging that can be done without shutting the entire system down first - and there aren't enough CCP developers to test large scale fleet fights in a controlled test environment themselves anyway.

 

A lot of development resources have been assigned to setting up their 'fleet fight in a can', as they call it, which is a borderline-sentient AI that will allow them to test fleet fights in a controlled environment, on the massive scale needed, in a way that will enable them to debug the problem. Until that is set up and working, it is pretty much impossible for them to find out what is causing the lag issues. They've explained that several times already. Getting this system working will take time, theres nothing anyone can do about it, and whinging and whining won't change that.

 

Besides, it's no worse than it was before Apocrypha - in fact, it's a hell of a lot better. Now it's only large-scale fleet fights that cause lag, rather than a system simply being busy, like in the old days. I remember when Jita would be likely to crash if it went over 800 players - and there were over 1300 people on there the other day, with only a small amount of lag.

[Vindekarr]

Its very very far from the most complicated game ever made, but you have an excellent point.

 

Most of these people have absolutely no idea just how lucky they are. I bet most of them havent been playing since pre tyrannis. It was a LOT was a long time ago, and they put a lot more resources into bug fixing and community care than any two other mmos. These fools also have absolutely no idea how dificult it is to keep an online community happy.

 

In any online game, the foolish, arrogant, misguided minority who always hate everything and are completely ungrateful of any potential change are also the most vocal group in any given game. And remember this: trolls exist, there ARE sad, lonely weak little men who like nothing more than to rage at something. I honestly would call that anything but "righteous rage", but rather the immautre ramblings of children who have never experienced what a truly bad mmorpg is, and have nothing better to do than spill their bile on the forums.

 

I'll vote EVE, because its been a superb game for nearly a decade and it will be for a decade to come. And because I seem to be the only living man left in gaming who follows follows the ancient and forgotten virtue of "loyalty".

[samroski]

Yes there are forum trolls, but the vast majority of complaints are from loyal fans of Eve who have stuck with the game through thick and thin.

 

On this note, recently CCP advertised for a public relations position, and Term I have nominated your name for this, and referred to your post above as evidence of your abilities :)

 

Dealing with lag at Jita is easier than other places, I think. They know the numbers expected and allocate resources accordingly, like they allegedly do for fleet fights if you inform them in advance.

 

I understand the technical difficulties (large, complex, coded over time) in improving lag, but hey!! Did they not code it themselves? Is it not the right of end-users to expect that the code be relatively bug free when released? Is it not our right to expect the inevitable bugs to be ironed out in a reasonable amount of time?

 

Through the CSM, CCP have showed desire for feedback. The most interesting comment on the CSM minutes was by a CCP dev saying that the minutes did not reflect much of the discussion that took place, and that there were communication issues between CCP and CSM :)

 

When I read that blog about CCP resource allocation, I had no idea it would be source of such great amusement.

 

And may I say it again: I love(d) Apocrypha. W-space, T3 and small/medium rigs made my life much better. Since then it has gone downhill.

 

Edit: 2 smilies deleted

[TheTerminator2004]

I think Eve probably is one of, if not the most complicated games around, at least in programming terms. I certainly can't think of any that are more complicated.

 

And as for making sure it's bug free... it largely is. The main problem here is a bug which only manifests itself in large fleet fights. Which means they can only observe it during said fleet fights. But since Tranquility doesn't have any of the debugging tools running etc (if it did, it would be a thousand times laggier - as with all games, they'll have been compiled out), they can't monitor it there. And I doubt they have enough CCP employees available to test it on their internal debugging server. So the only option they really have to find the source of the problem is to set up some kind of automation which can run large scale fleet fights for them on the internal server, and then monitor it closely to find the rogue database lookup or whatever it is that's causing the problems.

[ThetaOrionis01]

Are you familiar with the term 'regression testing'?

 

'Lag is no worse than before Apocrypha' - have you logged in lately? You frequently lag out in systems with no more than 10 people in them.

 

CCP QA has never been outstanding - were you there for the boot.ini fiasco? But as CCP has become more and more marketing and release-date driven this has gone from bad to worse.

 

This has nothing to do with people not understanding the complexities of server architecture or how layer upon layer of poorly documented code is incredibly difficult to maintain - and it really annoys me when some fanbois claim that of course they understand this, but those who complain must be just ignorant whiners.

 

This list of features in EVE that need attention ranges from poor usability like the UI (the corp management interface is, to put it politely, an abomination that should be buried in an unmarked grave at the crossroads at midnight) to the incomplete (treaties that were supposed to formalise relations between alliances) to the outright broken. Perhaps you just haven't encountered enough of those 'features'.

 

And yes, it is righteous rage, and you either have to be very new to the game, or have your head firmly stuck in the sand, not to realise that the people venting their fury in this thread are loyal, long-term players who want CCP to go back to what they were - a company that listened to its playerbase - and to realise the enormous potential that is EVE rather than leave it behind as a twitching piece of roadkill while the corporate juggernaut chases the next market.

[Vindekarr]

Theta, define lag out?

 

I've been active in the last week, and no problems on my end, and Ive got anything but fast internet by american standards.

 

And if you and Terminator really DID put my name down for it, then I swear by whatever you view as holy I'll hunt you down and strangle you with your own freshly removed entrails. Hell may hath no fury like a playerbase scorned, but Im a lot more problematic than hell when made angry enough.

 

And although your point was clearly sarcasm, you have no idea just how bad a public relations person I really would be: Im just too honest and too unable to refrain from telling people what I think of them. CCP would probably sack me within a week for actualy telling the good people what's actualy going on. Probably not the "lets laugh at the angry scottish expat as he yells at the EVE players" fun you'd been expecting though, more that I simply dont have the abilities as a lyar required to be a successful PR man or politician.

[CarlMarsarlis]

For many of us Eve types, the issue is that CCP have a habit of releasing new features on a regular basis. That is the good part. The bad part is that they have a habit of then being attracted to some new bright and shiny feature, and pretty much drop their support for the features already introduced.

 

As mentioned, the Treaties feature (a major feature of the 'Dominion' expansion) not being released. Another issue is the 'EveGate' feature. It's looking like maybe being vapour-ware too. And the Planet Interaction feature is also in great need of being re-visited, but CCP is now saying that this probably won't be looked at for as long as 18 months. There is an endless list of features and game mechanics that are in severe need of attention/support/implementation/deletion, but CCP has started to farm out its people to areas that don't relate to fixing what is already broken.

 

Probably the biggest issue though is that many of the PC fanboys have their noses out of joint because CCP is putting a lot of their effort into a console game (The horror!) rather than into improving the Eve experience.

 

If there is one thing guaranteed to upset Eve players it's being placed second to a console game. :mad: :biggrin:

[ThetaOrionis01]

Only 2 nights ago many members of my alliance complained that they were unable to log into various systems in our home region (no, there were no large scale battles going on there at the time) and asked on our out of games comms whether the node had crashed.

A few weeks ago, our gang attempted to jump into an empty system in Curse. It took over 15 minutes for the jump to complete, and most people had to relog.

Planetary resources not loading for a good few minutes. Hangars or silos showing nothing until the server finally updates and shows the content a good minute or 2 after the hangar was opened. Modules taking 5 minutes to fit while in station. Undocking from a 0.0 station in an system with one other person in it taking longer than undocking in Jita.

 

And these aren't fleet fight instances... these are routine occurances.

 

As for fleet fights...

 

Sovereignty battles require fleet fights, those are the mechanics CCP introduced and you cannot blame the players for playing the game as designed. Structures with massive amounts of hitpoints that have to be shot on several different occasions require more than just 2 guys in ravens to take down.

 

And those battles are what CCP uses in their trailers. When was the last time CCP advertised EVE by showing a guy in a drake running a mission? The Dominion trailer featured an attack on a system, deployment of subcap, cap and supercap fleets and used this promise of large scale fleet warfare to attract players and draw them in.

This is a promise that CCP are absolutely unable to deliver at the moment.

 

Want some examples?

In Y-2, Pandemic Legion lost 5 titans one night, when they jumped in, grid did not load and the ships did not disappear from space after their clients crashed. During that same fight I was sitting on a titan waiting for the server to process my request to bridge through. It took over an hour between right-clicking the titan and clicking the jump request, and leaving the system. I never loaded the target system, and logged off a couple of hours later, still not showing anything other than the background nebula and unable to warp, move, activate modules etc

 

In Venal not long ago, 6 NC titans were killed after they had jumped out of system. Killmails were generated, the titan pilots found themselves podded into their clone stations - but the next day the unpiloted titans were found floating in space.

 

Earlier this week, we went to join our allies in the defence of their system. Half the fleet was unable to see the primaries called by the FC as it was purely random which enemy ships would load for individual pilots. When command ship and logistics pilots told the FC they had been doomsdayed, no one had actually seen the titans on grid.

 

A few weeks ago we transferred sovereignty of one of our systems to an ally. While their TCU was onlining it was attacked by opportunistic enemies. The TCU was protected and finished onlining - then the node crashed, and sovereignty reverted to unclaimed, despite the online TCU. It took 3 days for GMs to restore the sovereignty status to what it should have been.

 

Bugs in the sovereignty system are causing systems to be lost on a regular basis. Holding and protecting sovereignty is a huge investment of time and resources, and to lose it not to superior enemy numbers or tactics but to BUGS is unacceptable.

 

And the sad thing is - before Dominion those battles were possible. Laggy, yes, but possible and playable.

 

And you're telling me players have nothing to be angry about?

[Vindekarr]

Yes, they're angry, and anger is a powerful and useful emotion, in this case it seems miss directed.

 

Im not saying they should'nt be angry, Im saying they should shut their whining yaps and make sure their dial-up is actualy working BEFORE they call the waaaaaaahmbulance and swear up their devs in a grand display of immaturity and ingratitude. Ive been in those fleet fights Theta Orionis and I have had NO lag beyond normal levels on an entirely ordinary internet plan, and neither has anyone in my corporation, are you seriosuly telling me that I should then take it on face value that these fools are right and my pack wrong?

 

Im not going to pretend to know anything about or care what is wrong with sovereignty-my fleet has their own stations in deep space so planets are no more than windowdressing. If something is wrong, it will eventual be fixed or the game will die, that is how mmorpgs work, patience is a virtue.