what the TRIBBLE? I finally get some free time today to do some marathon gaming and its undermaintenance...........again. Guess i'll find something productive to do today.
To repeat what has been earlier, by others as well as myslef, it's NOT 'Server Stability Upgrades'. It's in the thread title - "Scheduled Maintenance and Infrastructure Upgrade "
And to again repeat what I said earlier, the definition of 'Infrastructure' is: An underlying base or foundation especially for an organization or system. In otherwords, a LOT more than server stability upgrades or routine maintainance.
Then please take PWE to task for a miscommunication not me. To quote exactly what is on the thread for the DT,
General:
Toreth the Epohh Researcher is back on New Romulus.
General server stability updates.
and that is from the page that is linked on the STO launcher. Nowhere in that tiny blurb does it mention infrastructure upgrades. Also as an aside, Eve runs a persistent universe, with no shards or "realms" where everyone is on the same server, and they made an infrastructure upgrade a few months ago, where they were replacing numerous pieces of hardware. When they did the company was very upfront about exactly what they were doing, they were proud to be making the hardware better and even bragged about the upgrades, AND they had it done in about 2 hours. Please don't flame on me for posting an OPINION, I thought that was what forums were for. Also as a last note, the bulk of my ire isn't the length, though that is annoying, but the fact that this happens the day after I sign up and start playing.
... and of cause you are ignoring the fact that maint. is usually done BEFORE the announced time.
A little background reshearch gets you really far.. It's something that software developers are used to doing.
I know you're not getting smug with me while in the same sentence implying that 6 hours of downtime for a two liner patch note for "SOFTWARE" development is acceptable in the industry, because it just is... not; nor does a software developer want to do MORE WORK when trying to relax by playing a GAME. You're now starting to show your intelligence or lack thereof.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
Yes Reyan01, THIS thread mentions the infrastructure upgrade, but the initial post, that the link leads to, which is also the post the link on the launcher goes to,
mentions nothing about infrastructure. This is a standard occurrence with game development companies. Not all of the information is available in one post or thread.
hehe well it not unusual that peoble not read the thread title, simply because if they was do that then alot of the excuses for complianing just for the complain would dissapear. and hat would be a dissater for alot of those peoble that love to complaining
[System] Link has been on active duty for 415 days, 23 hours, 9 minutes, 16 seconds.
[System] Zelda has been on active duty for 126 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes, 48 seconds.
Perhaps not, but the downtime isn't for that anyway.
Aye, that was pretty much my point for my thread that was merged here. This 6 hour downtime could have been more productive with a much larger list of BUG FIXES in the patch notes. It makes no sense to have your project deployment team twiddling thumbs for 5 hours, while your netadmin and sysadmins are busy upgrading servers and networks.
In a company that wants to profit and act like they "want" to keep their servers online for their clients, it only makes sense to squeeze every drop of productivity out of a downtime you can get.
The decisions PWE is making just doesn't add up. It is all logistics, obviously they don't have one-man-per-server on this "upgrade" else it would be done in an hour. Therefore, while other servers are racked, they can be pushing huge patches to them. This would have better timed with the roll-out of season 8.
But the guy I was replying to, he doesn't get this -- in fact, he's against any bug fixes it seems from previous posts and is completely servile to PWE somehow by either being employed by them or having a brown nose.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
[System] Link has been on active duty for 415 days, 23 hours, 9 minutes, 16 seconds.
[System] Zelda has been on active duty for 126 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes, 48 seconds.
well the last patch was supposed to put the epoh mission person back and it did not so maybe they need at least 6 hours to find her its a big universe and is most likely on vacation. :P
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
Aye, that was pretty much my point for my thread that was merged here. This 6 hour downtime could have been used a LOT more productively with a much larger list of BUG FIXES in the patch notes. It makes no sense to have your project deployment team twiddling thumbs for 5 hours, while your netadmin and sysadmins are busy upgrading servers and networks.
In a company that wants to profit and act like they "want" to keep their servers online for their clients, it only makes sense to squeeze every drop of productivity out of a downtime you can get.
But the guy I was replying to, he doesn't get this -- in fact, he's against any bug fixes it seems from previous posts and is completely servile to PWE somehow by either being employed by them or having a brown nose.
I would have to agree with you lordlalo. I wasn't trying to nitpick reyan01, but there is a clear disconnect in your head, suggesting you have no idea how computers and MMO's work if you think infrastructure upgrades don't affect gameplay. I was simply expressing a frustration, that I think is perfectly reasonable. I wasn't attempting to spew emotional garbage, but a reasoned complaint. I "could" complain about the fact that PWE choosing to hold the DT from 5 to 11 affects me for the entire day, as I am in the eastern time zone and the game is down from 8 am to 2pm for me, but I didn't spew childish emo rage about it. I simply stated that I "FEEL" the communication could be better and that the length of the DT seems long to me, having had better experiences with other MMO's.
The last patch was supposed to have the epoh mission person report back to her area, but it did not so I suggest you loo:)k on Risa for her she is most likely slacking off.:D
The last patch was supposed to have the epoh mission person report back to her area, but it did not so I suggest you loo:)k on Risa for her she is most likely slacking off.:D
Actually the last patch removed her... This one is bring her back.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
I would have to agree with you lordlalo. I wasn't trying to nitpick reyan01, but there is a clear disconnect in your head, suggesting you have no idea how computers and MMO's work if you think infrastructure upgrades don't affect gameplay. I was simply expressing a frustration, that I think is perfectly reasonable. I wasn't attempting to spew emotional garbage, but a reasoned complaint. I "could" complain about the fact that PWE choosing to hold the DT from 5 to 11 affects me for the entire day, as I am in the eastern time zone and the game is down from 8 am to 2pm for me, but I didn't spew childish emo rage about it. I simply stated that I "FEEL" the communication could be better and that the length of the DT seems long to me, having had better experiences with other MMO's.
Most developers and sysadmins know it is a different rodeo but the same routine. This will always be true and has been even through my very colorful history with software development and production starting in the US Army (which fueled that passion).
I have no disconnect; you were missing the point that many bug fixes would seem to a player to be very important and would require near-zero effort on their part, in fact, as I stated I could likely fix them with some study of the source code in just a few hours, by myself. The color swatch bug for instance isn't a hard one fix, in fact I could likely tell them exactly what is wrong: 9 out of 10 the server's defined list of "acceptable" colors was either deleted or corrupted (which would explain the behavior of resetting the color to a predefined default) 1 out 10, the opticode packet is not being sent or read correctly by the server. Again, it is not very hard to add these RGB values to this (likely simple) list of colors.
The thing is, I know how versioning works. I know how QA should stop a potentially buggy release. And from what I'm seeing PWE is fumbling the ball more than not.
Again, there is no disconnect, if anything it is an intimate relationship.
We could all complain about the downtime affecting our playtime -- however and as I stated, if they show they are being productive there is no room for complaints. They know this, PWE knows this, it doesn't take a psych-analyst marketing majoring PhD to figure this out -- customers like to see their money being "spent well". And here is the cookie, if you're not on board trying to impress this on PWE, you'll likely be an arbitrary cause of STO having the "switch" flipped. You cannot maintain a healthy community with upset customers. And when you're not encouraging the community owners (PWE) to do better by using your own pocketbook, you're simply allowing things to crumble, and in a few months or years, when that dreaded day comes, you'll have no one to blame but yourself.
I hate to sound all doom and gloom, but this servile nature does none of us here any good, most of all PWE.
Said NO to Arc. Gets punished by not being given a free outfit, free lobi, and free shuttle. Now forced to use Arc's site when trying to get to STO site. Still not rewards for beta testing the Arc website by force. Bravo Cryptic.
Well I've been waiting for like 2 years to get my slipsteam 100% cool down reduction fixed on my omega set..... guess i'm used to waiting for non-fixs. Once you except that then what is not fixed wont upset you.
tehy infact has exactly same, maintenance at Newerwinter same time scheduls same message about infrastructure and logistic, and that also a Cryptic part of PWE, so it can also be because of a internal company changes.
Toreth not being there has been a major impediment to getting Romulan Marks for quite a lot of people and I'm sure whatever mainainence is going on is very important, so thanks devs.
But I do have to ask....
Does this 6 hour downtime mean that the discrepancy between what the Rom Rep active power says it does and what it actually does is being fixed?
Will my ship stop becoming invisible (but only to me) on respawn under certain undefinable death conditions?
Are the uniform colour palettes and clipping issues being fixed?
Is the bug where I get team chat from a team that has been disbanded or that I have actively left being fixed?
Are all types of doffs (not just civilians) being enabled at the recruitment console on New Romulus?
Will the spawns now not bug out (stop spawning warbirds) on Azure Nebula and will they reliably spawn at least 1 scimitar and 2 Ha'paxes?
Other issues, etc...
I realize that there is a limited amount of time, but some bugs are really glaring and have been around in some cases since the thing they are associated with was put in the game. Stuff like the Rom active power... are there that many text errors in the game that there is a backlog and this one is just waiting its turn? Unless of course it's supposed to do what it says it does and the effect is at fault....
Bring back the engineering reports, that's what I say. At least it would be some kind of indication on what stuff is being looked into or what the 'to-do' list is outside of Tribble testing. Working around stuff gets annoying after a while.
"So my fun is wrong?"
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
Guys, is it really necessary to have an update every single week? It's especially aggravating for those of us with the "patch issue" where the patch update refuses to finish, we have to delete the "live" folder at which point we can get the patch but it comes in the form of a full 7GB download which takes hours. Every time you update I basically lose a full day of playing time....
I've played several MMO's over the years, Eve, WOW, ****, and several others. Figured I would give STO a chance, and lo and behold, the day after I sign up, there's a 6 hour DT. In my experience, as a gamer, too many of you companies are making a mistake trying to get us gamers to accept a 6 hour DT, especially when we are given such little info as one NPC being moved, and some "server stability upgrades". Personally I think weekly DT's are a mistake anyway. One of the big reasons I played Eve for almost 6 years was the fact that they had daily DT's, that most of the time are less than a half an hour, and when they release an expansion, they typically have the DT finished in under 2 hours. Yes, they have had DT's longer than 2 hours, but those were back in the bad old days. CCP, the company that released eve would even give skill points to compensate players for extended DT's. So, to put it simply, right now STO isn't looking that good to me. If I play when the servers come up, I do hope I find something that will keep me playing as I have long been a Trekkie, but a companies decision on how they handle the game can influence my decision a lot.
You might want to wait a few days then.
IMO, Star Trek Online is a good game, but there are occasional rocky periods for a few days. You can say Cryptic/PWE/etc. are horrible if you'd like (many do), but at this point in time, occasional hiccups are the way it is. While some might say I'm "accepting too little," fact of the matter is I either accept this or don't have STO. I choose the latter. Infrastructure upgrades are relatively rare.
For what it's worth, the vast majority of downtimes are on early Thursday morning in the US, somewhere around 7AM-9AM or 10AM, and last about 2 hours.
Also, it seems like there are a number of people in this thread who think this is all about the Epohh lady. While I have no idea what precisely they're doing, I'm pretty sure it has more to do with 'boxes J-223 through J-260 need to have an extra 2GB of RAM added to each and the network cards need to be upgraded on the central routers' or something along those lines. Mostly routine, relatively uninteresting stuff that has to be done sometime, and sometime is now.
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
Truth is, this is very POORLY run. The fact is, they should have stood up a tandem environment, checked stability and used a regular maintenance to "throw a switch" and come up on the new hardware / infrastructure in a lot less time... although, I'm sure like any other Cryptic deployment, it will be bug ridden and have more stability issues than the "old" environment.
Also, it seems like there are a number of people in this thread who think this is all about the Epohh lady. While I have no idea what precisely they're doing, I'm pretty sure it has more to do with 'boxes J-223 through J-260 need to have an extra 2GB of RAM added to each and the network cards need to be upgraded on the central routers' or something along those lines. Mostly routine, relatively uninteresting stuff that has to be done sometime, and sometime is now.
Well at least there are some people who get this... Thank you for restoring some faith in the Forum visitors.
Don't look silly... Don't call it the "Z-Store/Zen Store"...
Comments
I totally agree with you.
Then again, she could have been sick from eating to many epohhs. What? You seen anything else around New Romulus to eat besides the wabbits?
duh EVERY thursday is maintaince/ patch day.
Then please take PWE to task for a miscommunication not me. To quote exactly what is on the thread for the DT,
General:
Toreth the Epohh Researcher is back on New Romulus.
General server stability updates.
and that is from the page that is linked on the STO launcher. Nowhere in that tiny blurb does it mention infrastructure upgrades. Also as an aside, Eve runs a persistent universe, with no shards or "realms" where everyone is on the same server, and they made an infrastructure upgrade a few months ago, where they were replacing numerous pieces of hardware. When they did the company was very upfront about exactly what they were doing, they were proud to be making the hardware better and even bragged about the upgrades, AND they had it done in about 2 hours. Please don't flame on me for posting an OPINION, I thought that was what forums were for. Also as a last note, the bulk of my ire isn't the length, though that is annoying, but the fact that this happens the day after I sign up and start playing.
I know you're not getting smug with me while in the same sentence implying that 6 hours of downtime for a two liner patch note for "SOFTWARE" development is acceptable in the industry, because it just is... not; nor does a software developer want to do MORE WORK when trying to relax by playing a GAME. You're now starting to show your intelligence or lack thereof.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=884371
mentions nothing about infrastructure. This is a standard occurrence with game development companies. Not all of the information is available in one post or thread.
[System] Zelda has been on active duty for 126 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes, 48 seconds.
French Canadian
at least til it's up and we see if it's fixed.
Aye, that was pretty much my point for my thread that was merged here. This 6 hour downtime could have been more productive with a much larger list of BUG FIXES in the patch notes. It makes no sense to have your project deployment team twiddling thumbs for 5 hours, while your netadmin and sysadmins are busy upgrading servers and networks.
In a company that wants to profit and act like they "want" to keep their servers online for their clients, it only makes sense to squeeze every drop of productivity out of a downtime you can get.
The decisions PWE is making just doesn't add up. It is all logistics, obviously they don't have one-man-per-server on this "upgrade" else it would be done in an hour. Therefore, while other servers are racked, they can be pushing huge patches to them. This would have better timed with the roll-out of season 8.
But the guy I was replying to, he doesn't get this -- in fact, he's against any bug fixes it seems from previous posts and is completely servile to PWE somehow by either being employed by them or having a brown nose.
look patch note .. there is no fix ...
[System] Zelda has been on active duty for 126 days, 11 hours, 51 minutes, 48 seconds.
French Canadian
Geez..
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
Also... It's not just a patch.
I would have to agree with you lordlalo. I wasn't trying to nitpick reyan01, but there is a clear disconnect in your head, suggesting you have no idea how computers and MMO's work if you think infrastructure upgrades don't affect gameplay. I was simply expressing a frustration, that I think is perfectly reasonable. I wasn't attempting to spew emotional garbage, but a reasoned complaint. I "could" complain about the fact that PWE choosing to hold the DT from 5 to 11 affects me for the entire day, as I am in the eastern time zone and the game is down from 8 am to 2pm for me, but I didn't spew childish emo rage about it. I simply stated that I "FEEL" the communication could be better and that the length of the DT seems long to me, having had better experiences with other MMO's.
Actually the last patch removed her... This one is bring her back.
Most developers and sysadmins know it is a different rodeo but the same routine. This will always be true and has been even through my very colorful history with software development and production starting in the US Army (which fueled that passion).
I have no disconnect; you were missing the point that many bug fixes would seem to a player to be very important and would require near-zero effort on their part, in fact, as I stated I could likely fix them with some study of the source code in just a few hours, by myself. The color swatch bug for instance isn't a hard one fix, in fact I could likely tell them exactly what is wrong: 9 out of 10 the server's defined list of "acceptable" colors was either deleted or corrupted (which would explain the behavior of resetting the color to a predefined default) 1 out 10, the opticode packet is not being sent or read correctly by the server. Again, it is not very hard to add these RGB values to this (likely simple) list of colors.
The thing is, I know how versioning works. I know how QA should stop a potentially buggy release. And from what I'm seeing PWE is fumbling the ball more than not.
Again, there is no disconnect, if anything it is an intimate relationship.
We could all complain about the downtime affecting our playtime -- however and as I stated, if they show they are being productive there is no room for complaints. They know this, PWE knows this, it doesn't take a psych-analyst marketing majoring PhD to figure this out -- customers like to see their money being "spent well". And here is the cookie, if you're not on board trying to impress this on PWE, you'll likely be an arbitrary cause of STO having the "switch" flipped. You cannot maintain a healthy community with upset customers. And when you're not encouraging the community owners (PWE) to do better by using your own pocketbook, you're simply allowing things to crumble, and in a few months or years, when that dreaded day comes, you'll have no one to blame but yourself.
I hate to sound all doom and gloom, but this servile nature does none of us here any good, most of all PWE.
But I do have to ask....
Does this 6 hour downtime mean that the discrepancy between what the Rom Rep active power says it does and what it actually does is being fixed?
Will my ship stop becoming invisible (but only to me) on respawn under certain undefinable death conditions?
Are the uniform colour palettes and clipping issues being fixed?
Is the bug where I get team chat from a team that has been disbanded or that I have actively left being fixed?
Are all types of doffs (not just civilians) being enabled at the recruitment console on New Romulus?
Will the spawns now not bug out (stop spawning warbirds) on Azure Nebula and will they reliably spawn at least 1 scimitar and 2 Ha'paxes?
Other issues, etc...
I realize that there is a limited amount of time, but some bugs are really glaring and have been around in some cases since the thing they are associated with was put in the game. Stuff like the Rom active power... are there that many text errors in the game that there is a backlog and this one is just waiting its turn? Unless of course it's supposed to do what it says it does and the effect is at fault....
Bring back the engineering reports, that's what I say. At least it would be some kind of indication on what stuff is being looked into or what the 'to-do' list is outside of Tribble testing. Working around stuff gets annoying after a while.
No. Your fun makes everyone else's fun wrong by default.
MAKE IT GO!
And I am not just saying that because of your OP, but based on the fact that there have most likely been around 1000 Threads on this topic before...
I won't go as far as calling it "Beating the dead" horse... But it's at least a dead rabbit.
You might want to wait a few days then.
IMO, Star Trek Online is a good game, but there are occasional rocky periods for a few days. You can say Cryptic/PWE/etc. are horrible if you'd like (many do), but at this point in time, occasional hiccups are the way it is. While some might say I'm "accepting too little," fact of the matter is I either accept this or don't have STO. I choose the latter. Infrastructure upgrades are relatively rare.
For what it's worth, the vast majority of downtimes are on early Thursday morning in the US, somewhere around 7AM-9AM or 10AM, and last about 2 hours.
Also, it seems like there are a number of people in this thread who think this is all about the Epohh lady. While I have no idea what precisely they're doing, I'm pretty sure it has more to do with 'boxes J-223 through J-260 need to have an extra 2GB of RAM added to each and the network cards need to be upgraded on the central routers' or something along those lines. Mostly routine, relatively uninteresting stuff that has to be done sometime, and sometime is now.
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
Flame away kiddies.... but you know I'm right.
Well at least there are some people who get this... Thank you for restoring some faith in the Forum visitors.