I was ready to rage at Cryptic but then... (A PEBCAC story ;) )

gulberat · October 2015

This is for those funny moments when you realize you've been doing something silly--otherwise known in the tech world as PEBCAC (Problem Exists Between Computer and Chair). Here's one from the depths of my own silliness...

I was ready to rage at Cryptic because no matter what I did, I could not log in and it was not taking my password. I knew my password, dagnabbit, I was watching my fingers on the keys and I was sure I was doing it right. But then...

I realized I'd left my keyboard in Russian mode!

Boy did I feel silly after that.

Cyrillic characters do not map to Latin characters (and the keys aren't even in the same places as their Latin soundalikes!), so what I thought was spotless typing was coming across to the launcher as garbage completely unrelated to my password.

Do you have any stories of your own "STOops" moments? Do you think others could learn from it? Let's hear it!

(Note: It should go without saying, but I am going to say it anyway. Please, please do not flame people, make fun of them, or tell them that they are stupid for whatever happened to them. We're human, we all goof from time to time, and we learn from it. Conversely, if you're going to share something, please make sure it's something you are comfortable sharing and not something you are upset about. Finally, please remember this is for user error, not Cryptic error.)

seaofsorrows · October 2015

At least you didn't start an angry thread calling all the developers stupid and incompetent.

It's ok to make a mistake like that, take pride in the fact that you didn't add acting like an a-hole to the list. Instead, we all get to have a good laugh over it.

nikephorus · October 2015

I have no such stories my rage is always justified.

coupaholic · October 2015

I've had situations where for some reason my damage is awful. It never used to be and all the same weapons, traits, Doffs and so on is all present and correct. I've run through complete STF's doing this, scanned every window trying to find the problem.

I'm about to give up, then I notice all my power is in engines and I forgot to change it back.

Unknown · October 2015

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rahmkota19 · October 2015

There was that one time I logged in on one of my characters to check out how my fleet was doing... and nothing. I TRIBBLE a brick, PM'ed my co-leader (who said he didn't change anything in that fleet and would check over in a few). So by that time, I really was afraid that one of my fleets got completely deleted by a server bug. So I completely panicked.

And then it dawned on me.

I had removed that char from said fleet (leaving another char in a leading position) to hide this char for a fleet event. Just to eliminate any way anybody could find me.

laferrari1 · October 2015

Once I couldn't even start the launcher, as it wouldn't load anything...

And I was heck right in complaining on the forums! Indeed they should change their ISP really.

bones1970 · October 2015

coupaholic wrote: »

I've had situations where for some reason my damage is awful. It never used to be and all the same weapons, traits, Doffs and so on is all present and correct. I've run through complete STF's doing this, scanned every window trying to find the problem.

I'm about to give up, then I notice all my power is in engines and I forgot to change it back.

Also had that error, fixed it by putting "genbuttonclick powerlevel_preset_0" in my key-binds..

timelord79 · October 2015

Just yesterday I tried to log in about ten times, wondering why it would not take my password, until I realized I had left the game running during the maintenance and then noticed the words" version mismatch" in the corner.

markhawkman · October 2015

deokkent wrote: »

I used to be VERY frustrated with Cryptic over PvP until I realized this is a just pixel game.

I still catch myself being annoyed PvP simply doesn't work in STO. I try to get over it but damn, it's hard to avoid that feeling.

I can't think of any game I've ever played where PvP wasn't frustrating...

gradii · October 2015

I WAS READY TO RAGE AT CRYPTIC...

Until I realized it's better to rage at their PWI bosses.

gulberat · October 2015

coupaholic wrote: »

I've had situations where for some reason my damage is awful. It never used to be and all the same weapons, traits, Doffs and so on is all present and correct. I've run through complete STF's doing this, scanned every window trying to find the problem.

I'm about to give up, then I notice all my power is in engines and I forgot to change it back.

Oops!

A kind of similar one I did before Cryptic removed the upgrade timegate is flying out of dock only to discover some critical function on my ship is completely dead. A moment of panic follows--then realizing I had an important piece of equipment sitting in Upgrade.

Thankfully that issue is a lot more difficult to have happen given that your upgrades finish instantaneously now.

timelord79 wrote: »

Just yesterday I tried to log in about ten times, wondering why it would not take my password, until I realized I had left the game running during the maintenance and then noticed the words" version mismatch" in the corner.

That's actually an interesting one...I had no idea that could happen and if it did, I bet that I would've wound up in the same boat as you if not for reading this.

I've only ever been on during emergency maintenance and it was usually so late at night that I just shut the game down for the night. I'll have to remember that one in case there's ever an earlier emergency patch.

markhawkman · October 2015

as a minor side note, I've usually seen it spelled PEBKaC. (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair)

gulberat · October 2015

markhawkman wrote: »

as a minor side note, I've usually seen it spelled PEBKaC. (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair)

I've seen that version too.

blitzy4 · October 2015

markhawkman wrote: »

as a minor side note, I've usually seen it spelled PEBKaC. (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair)

Our logging system calls it an ID-10t error, or idiot for short.

gulberat · October 2015

blitzy4 wrote: »

markhawkman wrote: »

as a minor side note, I've usually seen it spelled PEBKaC. (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair)

Our logging system calls it an ID-10t error, or idiot for short.

I've seen that one too, in the Death Star Help Desk video!

Unknown · October 2015

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markhawkman · October 2015

deokkent wrote: »

markhawkman wrote: »

deokkent wrote: »

I used to be VERY frustrated with Cryptic over PvP until I realized this is a just pixel game.

I still catch myself being annoyed PvP simply doesn't work in STO. I try to get over it but damn, it's hard to avoid that feeling.

I can't think of any game I've ever played where PvP wasn't frustrating...

I tend to believe you. But I think that maybe PvP in those other games can be frustrating for all sorts of different reasons, perhaps not the same issues I have seen in STO.

I have heard rumours that f2p games have unplayable PvP as well though.

Well I play Avengers Alliance and it has more than just a little does of pay-to-win in PvP. That game has things whose only purpose is to give the people who pay an advantage over those who don't.

shpoks · October 2015

seaofsorrows wrote: »

At least you didn't start an angry thread calling all the developers stupid and incompetent.

You know what would have been an epic LOL moment?
Him starting a thread about this and then proceeding to rant at Cryptic in cyrillic while the keyboard remained locked in Russian mode.

shadowfirefly00 · October 2015

gulberat wrote: »

I was ready to rage at Cryptic because no matter what I did, I could not log in and it was not taking my password. I knew my password, dagnabbit, I was watching my fingers on the keys and I was sure I was doing it right. But then...

I realized I'd left my keyboard in Russian mode!

Boy did I feel silly after that. Cyrillic characters do not map to Latin characters (and the keys aren't even in the same places as their Latin soundalikes!), so what I thought was spotless typing was coming across to the launcher as garbage completely unrelated to my password.

Don't feel bad, sir; it happens to the best of us sometimes. You have, though, reminded me that the induced form of this particular 'oops' is something which to my knowledge Hollywood hasn't made use of for whatever silly reason. It'd be a hugely amusing way to subvert the 'All Keyboards are QWERTY' assumption...

Picture this scenario: after much work, our hero(ine) has secured the command-level password for the network in a villainous organization's R&D facility. That work has also revealed that the OPFOR is savvy enough to have this network behind an air gap (that is, there is zero connectivity between it and the Internet, so it can only be accessed in situ... and, at that, only from the director's office terminal! Cue audacious infiltration which places our lead in said office, with the terminal booted up and waiting for the password. Because turning on the lights might alert security, it's necessary to type in the dark (bonus: the terminal is built into the desk in such a way that the monitor doesn't incidentally illuminate the keyboard (example). No problem - our hero(ine) can touch-type. And does.

But the password isn't accepted the first time around. Or the second. It's when the third go-round doesn't work, and the terminal locks down - that our hero(ine) lets their curiosity at how this could be overcome common sense and turns a penlight on the keyboard.

Which turns out to be either a non-standard (such as Dvorak) or non-English layout. Or, better yet, which of these is impossible to tell because the keyboard is completely unlabeled.

markhawkman · October 2015

Heh, I once used a public computer kiosk in Korea. Hehe, it makes thing a lot more interesting all right... Especially since I still have no idea what some of the stuff I typed out said.

orion0029 · October 2015

I suppose my biggest PEBCAC goof was some time ago when I tried to launch STO and the launcher would not log me in from ARC, I tried retyping my password again, and again, more carefully each time to no avail.

After getting a cup of coffee to kickstart the ole 'think melon' to diagnose the issue I saw that I had just minimized STO earlier instead of logging out.

It wouldn't log me in because I never logged out.

*Facepalm*

(Hehe, I laughed a bit, drank some coffee and shot some Borg.

)

admiralkogar · October 2015

A member of my Fleet was wanting to know what to do to advance in varous ways. I said 'click on a bunch of the Doff missions, they give rewards, and you can always use the trickle of dilithium'. Well they didi this with their Fed toon. When it cam time to do the Klingon toon, they didn't look to read that the Execute mission was KILLING the officer! He killed most of his doffs before he caught on. then he bought new doffs on the exhcnage but couldn't use them. Wrong faction! Anyway, all better now lol

gulberat · October 2015

Oh no!! They've gotten a bit better about labeling the faction DOFFs, so it's harder to buy the wrong ones these days (looking at the color of the top right corner of the frame will tell you), but I remember when that used to be REALLY confusing unless I really slowed down to read every single DOFF listing very carefully.

orion0029 wrote: »

I suppose my biggest PEBCAC goof was some time ago when I tried to launch STO and the launcher would not log me in from ARC, I tried retyping my password again, and again, more carefully each time to no avail.

After getting a cup of coffee to kickstart the ole 'think melon' to diagnose the issue I saw that I had just minimized STO earlier instead of logging out.

It wouldn't log me in because I never logged out.

*Facepalm*

(Hehe, I laughed a bit, drank some coffee and shot some Borg. )

I guess that's one that is unique to the stand-alone launcher. Steam freaks out when you try to open two instances and throws up an error message to tell you what the problem is. But I never saw that back when I used to have just the stand-alone.

divitus · October 2015

timelord79 wrote: »

Just yesterday I tried to log in about ten times, wondering why it would not take my password, until I realized I had left the game running during the maintenance and then noticed the words" version mismatch" in the corner.

You'd be surprised how many times I've encountered this issue with pretty much every MMO I've played. The remedy? Leave the game, close the launcher, and relaunch.

Of course, I encountered a problem when trying to play Cryptic games, where the games I boot up would crash the moment they started up, and I would have no idea why. I brought up the issue on their support page to figure out why I was crashing. The problem: none of Cryptic's games are compatible with the Windows 10 Drivers. SERIOUSLY! It's been out for a couple months now, you could have cooked up a compatible version by now!

I was ready to rage at Cryptic but then... (A PEBCAC story ;) )

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