Unable to play since the maintenance on December 1st. (URGENT)

gipehtonhcet

Ever since that maintenance a vast majority of playable areas became unplayable, this short 1 minute unlisted vid shows exactly what happens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4dMhjIhNq8

I've been struggling with customer support with this for almost 2 weeks now, and we've reached the following conclusions:
- The server bug is purely on the game's side, not mine.
- Moving my characters to a specific zone makes them playable as long as they don't leave it.
- Nothing that the senior game designer tried doing worked in the long-term.
- Once a character tries to enter a zone where a scenario shown in the vid happens, they are completely unplayable until moved elsewhere by a support team.
- Unlocking new character slots/making alt accounts has no effect, those characters still become unplayable upon entering a bugged server.
- The bug has nothing to do with any system requirements, graphics, or likely any in-game-code bugs, it's just a problem with connecting to game's servers.
- The "safe zones" are sometimes changing, I used to be able to play exclusively on zone 1 of Millennium City, entering any other zone would lead to a crash. Then zone 2 became playable, and zone 1 caused crashes.

Now that the support seemingly exhausted their methods (or is just being lazy idk) they stopped responding to my ticket and keep trying to mark the issue as "solved", and refuse to give any sort of compensation for being unable to play during the current event.
I was patient with the support, but now they are straight off saying "try on a different PC, we can't do anything" while I said multiple times that I physically do not own a different PC WHILE THE EVENT IS GOING ON got me a bit ticked off, because there are things I want to get from it but I'm unable to.

The ticket ID on Arc Games I talked about is 829944.


Please, if the error can not be solved in time, at least give me some kind of compensation for what I was forced to miss out on during the event, so later I can buy/trade for it. I used to play daily for hours and now I could not play pretty much at all for 2 weeks! The amount of questionite/resources/exp/tokens I already missed out on is just too much, I can't afford to also miss out on the event content I wanted, this will literary make me quit.

spookyspectre

I'm assuming you completely uninstalled the program and reinstalled it? If you're using the Arc launcher, you can try opening the application directly from the Champions Online.exe.

gipehtonhcet

spookyspectre wrote: »

I'm assuming you completely uninstalled the program and reinstalled it? If you're using the Arc launcher, you can try opening the application directly from the Champions Online.exe.

Already tried that, and using Steam, it makes 0 difference, the bug is not on my side, it's a server-connection error.

spookyspectre

Others can weigh in, but if you're the only person having the issue, the issue is between your PC/local app and your connection to the server. If it's not your PC, then you can look at any local network equipment. If you're on wireless, try a wired connection, etc.. If the issue isn't there, it could be your ISP speed/connection. The Devs aren't going to be able to troubleshoot those areas, which are outside of the game server and application itself.

gipehtonhcet

spookyspectre wrote: »

Others can weigh in, but if you're the only person having the issue, the issue is between your PC/local app and your connection to the server. If it's not your PC, then you can look at any local network equipment. If you're on wireless, try a wired connection, etc.. If the issue isn't there, it could be your ISP speed/connection. The Devs aren't going to be able to troubleshoot those areas, which are outside of the game server and application itself.

I tried what ya suggested but none of it has any effect, and neither do follow-up maintenances, any ideas on how to help this? I've been unable to play for over 2 weeks, since December 1st specifically.

h4forums

It is most likely your PC even though you are adamant that it is not the case. After all, how can you be so certain when you point out that you do not own another PC? It should be tested anyways. Surely you know some people who will let you install the game on it and connect? You do not need to actually spend much time playing on their computer. Move around RC, zone a few times, and see if you can replicate the bug. Alternatively, you can give your account info to a trusted friend and see if they experience problems playing your account from their computer. If either of these cases show the problem persists, they would make a more convincing argument on your behalf.

gipehtonhcet

h4forums wrote: »

It is most likely your PC even though you are adamant that it is not the case. After all, how can you be so certain when you point out that you do not own another PC? It should be tested anyways. Surely you know some people who will let you install the game on it and connect? You do not need to actually spend much time playing on their computer. Move around RC, zone a few times, and see if you can replicate the bug. Alternatively, you can give your account info to a trusted friend and see if they experience problems playing your account from their computer. If either of these cases show the problem persists, they would make a more convincing argument on your behalf.

I am certain that it's not my PC because I played flawlessly until the maintenance on December 1st.
Then recently I even did a factory reset of my whole PC, re-installed windows, and on that fresh computer before importing back any data, installed CO and the bug was unchanged.
And no, I do not have another PC or anyone I can try this with, and even if it worked for a friend, so what? I want to be able to play on my own frekin PC that worked all the way until someone on their side screwed up.

spookyspectre

If you want to test another way, create a new CO account and see if the same issue happens under the new account. If the new account is unaffected, you can use that as evidence for the game admins to fix. If the issue happens with the new account as well, maybe see if your ISP Support can identify something on their end that may have happened about the same time as the CO patch.

gipehtonhcet

spookyspectre wrote: »

If you want to test another way, create a new CO account and see if the same issue happens under the new account. If the new account is unaffected, you can use that as evidence for the game admins to fix. If the issue happens with the new account as well, maybe see if your ISP Support can identify something on their end that may have happened about the same time as the CO patch.

Already tried that did nothing, the character got stuck after the tutorial while trying to enter the powerhouse.

spookyspectre

That should rule out the CO server and your account as the problem. Could be a hardware failure. Test with a hardwired connection vs wireless. If you're hardwired to your ISP device, try swapping out the network cable. If you have a home router or switch, plug your PC directly into your ISP device. Run a ping test to an Internet site with the -t switch and see if you're losing packets. Many ISPs will provide a speed test and others are available on the Internet. You can test your Internet speed to see if it's correct.

h4forums

This is so obviously a hardware problem, even though you are adamant it is not. The fact that no one else has your issue should be proof enough. Based on that 4:3 resolution of your video, chances are your computer is old and failing in a variety of ways. Computer parts do suffer degradation over time, often not immediately obvious to most users due to a number of error correcting mechanisms behind the scenes. In the past, I've been you on other games, convinced that some update broke the game and willfully ignored the red flag of no one else having the bug, because who really likes paying to replace something that seems to be working fine? After a while, I ended up finding the source of the problem was almost always the hardware (a leaky capacitor which caused random crashes, a dying video card which caused glitchy textures, a dying hard drive which caused really long load times, a dying power supply which caused also caused random crashes). I changed the problem part and suddenly everything worked again.

CO is notoriously poorly optimized. Despite the fact that it is an old game, it can demand a lot out of your computer, even on minimum settings.

gipehtonhcet

h4forums wrote: »

This is so obviously a hardware problem, even though you are adamant it is not. The fact that no one else has your issue should be proof enough. Based on that 4:3 resolution of your video, chances are your computer is old and failing in a variety of ways. Computer parts do suffer degradation over time, often not immediately obvious to most users due to a number of error correcting mechanisms behind the scenes. In the past, I've been you on other games, convinced that some update broke the game and willfully ignored the red flag of no one else having the bug, because who really likes paying to replace something that seems to be working fine? After a while, I ended up finding the source of the problem was almost always the hardware (a leaky capacitor which caused random crashes, a dying video card which caused glitchy textures, a dying hard drive which caused really long load times, a dying power supply which caused also caused random crashes). I changed the problem part and suddenly everything worked again.

CO is notoriously poorly optimized. Despite the fact that it is an old game, it can demand a lot out of your computer, even on minimum settings.

I have a shitty monitor, not computer. My build is a fairly midrange one, RTX 2060X and Ryzen 5 2600X. I had 0 problems with any other program anywhere including CO before that one specific maintenance on December 1st. A factory reset of my PC and local network did nothing, and it's clearly a connection error, not my PC glitching out due to graphics or something, if hardware was the case, then I would not be able to play at all, but I CAN play the game as long as I don't leave the few specific zones. Right now those are zones 1 and 3 of Millennium City, but joining zone 2 of MC causes the error visible on the vid.
When I am in the "safe zone" everything works fine, but very few zones are actually safe, and I can't play alerts or enter the powerhouse for example, or do cosmics in various zones.