Unacceptable

[Skywise]

I apologize in advance for this post, I truly do. But here it is, all the same.

It takes a lot to annoy me. And I've been pushed past being annoyed to being disgusted.

I submitted a ticket about the missing Radiant Wisps following Tuesday's maintenance on the Chaos shard. I got the response to my ticket from Amon, along with the ticket being closed:

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...d.php?p=285365

Which states, and I quote:

There is a known issue involving spawns that sometimes they stop working and will spawn nothing. The tech team is investigating, but at this time there is no ETA. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause.

In the meantime, if you discover a spawn doing this the easiest thing to do is to simply look elsewhere for the monsters or if there aren't any other locations to switch gears. These issues are typically resolved temporarily by a server restart.

Threads involving spawns that have stopped working will be moved and locked with a reference to this thread.




I find this to be downright INSULTING. This is a known issue, and it's being investigated? And no ETA to fix it to boot!

I beg your pardon, this issue is becoming an EPIDEMIC! With every restart of the server, some other spawn is broken.

And the advice is to switch gears if there aren't any other locations? What I hear with that statement is this: Sorry, you cannot work on what you want to, and we have no ETA on when the issue might be fixed.

I've played this game for over 8 years, and to have this type of response... I've found myself asking whether I really want to continue supporting this game that I love.

Seriously.

[Shian]

You must be new here. Welcome.

As stated, stuff breaks and they fix it later.

Would you rather have a response of "Oh, it's a known issue but we have no intention of fixing it."?

Hey, what's the ETA on your lair? Are you going to finish it this month or in two months? Can you give an exact date please?

Simple answer is, you don't know. It depends on how long it takes to work on it and what snags come up in the process. (Like RL getting in the way or something.) Do you really think it's fair to ask someone what the ETA on fixing a dynamic game bug? Much less getting upset when that is indeed your given answer.

In the years I've been playing, there's been missing mobs, broken quests and broken terrain. All of which hinder the growth of my dragon or my lair impeding my progress by several months. Never have I been permanently stopped for any reason. As stated in your ticket, go do something else if there are literally no radiant wisps in the game. It'll get fixed later.

[Skywise]

No, I'm not new to these forums, I just hardly ever post on them.

As I stated, this problem has becoome epidemic. There are new missing spawns with every restart of the server.

And I agree with you. I've noted missing spawns over the years I've played, and even on Blight. So this issue has been known for, well... YEARS. And they say they're working on it? It comes across as not a high priority. And a problem that affect so many players not being a priority? Plus the tone of the Sticky post? Yes, I'm annoyed, and even offended. And neither of those things is particularly easy to cause with me.

It has been pointed out to me that Amon's new Stickey post is mostly just impolite, and that it could have been stated in a nicer manner. That may be so, and well... It's up to me to decide.

Thanks for just moving my post, instead of deleting it. If it had been just deleted, it would have been one more point to do the same to my account.

[Raptress]

Having issues that impede your progress is frustrating, yes. I myself had an AROP delayed by months because the AROP could not be started if you were not already on it due to some wonkiness in the requirement check. It was fixed eventually, obviously. That will probably happen with this bug too.

I apologize if this is blunt or somehow offends you, but what do you want them to tell you exactly? How can they give an ETA if there is no metric by which to estimate the time of arrival of a fix? They may not yet know how to fix it. Maybe the fix is problematic. Maybe they are being safe and not giving an ETA because things can go wrong. Everytime they give an ETA that they don't meet, people rage even harder than if they hadn't given the ETA at all. This is why they don't give ETAs for downtime.

As for Amon's post, that comes off completely neutral to me. I don't see where Amon was impolite. He explains that they are aware of the issue and it is being looked at, not ignored. He apologizes for any inconvenience and tells players what they should do in the event that they find a broken spawn instead of posting about it, because at this point further posts on the issue are all going to receive the same answer and only take up dev time to respond to.

Nowhere does he say or imply that the issue is not a priority. I do not see anything in his post that could truly be construed as rude. The things that are getting you so worked up are things that you're interpreting, not things that Amon actually said.

Take a step back. Take a few breaths. This is not the first time a bug like this has cropped up. It will probably get fixed like all the other game-breakers were. It will just take some time, like things always do. The problem being big doesn't automatically mean it can be fixed quickly. Big problems usually mean the opposite.

[Steelclaw]

I'm sorry that we're taking so long to come up with a resolution to the missing spawns. I've been working on a different spawn issue for the last few weeks, and there's a good possibility that they're related.

I'll take some responsibility for the lack of an ETA, though this is by no means a straightforward situation. We're talking about a problems that can't be reproduced consistently, and a 10-20 minute wait in each iteration of manual debugging. To say the least, it's a maddening process.

I understand your frustration, as I don't like having to wait to get things done either. Unfortunately, the best I have to offer is my apologies for not having the spawn issue fixed yet, and a promise that we are working on trying to figure out what's going on -- the step before a resolution.

[Northwind]

I really appreciate your efforts Steelclaw, but I encountered the spawn issues when i was building my lair this year from January to May and those issues were most disturbing and frustrating. Needing TONS of Glowing Wisp Essence only to find some residue here and there... then Bright wisps gone missing too, then other resources...

You say you are working on it for the last few weeks, but for God sake - the problem is at least 8 months older (that's my experience) or several years older if I read Skywise opening post.
That means either no one was working on it till now or the previous dev, that was dealing with it before you, was really slacking. And I'm using a gentle term here, mind you.
It shows exactly what priority level this issue had, at least until you got delegated to resolve it.
Once again, I respect your efforts and your open mind here on forums and I'm not having a go at you, but at how this issue was handled until now by the higher Gods of Istaria.

Regarding Amon's post here on the forums. It actually IS impolite up to rude, depending on reader's implication in this matter, by saying: "deal with it, if you can't then switch gears"
What does "switch gears" mean? "My way or the highway"? "You don't like the situation then play something else"?
It sounds like you guys are really annoyed by our pitiful spawn issues, seriously.
Well - it's the players the ones that are actually annoyed and frustrated.

What kind of customer support is that?

[AmonGwareth]

I really appreciate your efforts Steelclaw, but I encountered the spawn issues when i was building my lair this year from January to May and those issues were most disturbing and frustrating. Needing TONS of Glowing Wisp Essence only to find some residue here and there... then Bright wisps gone missing too, then other resources...

You say you are working on it for the last few weeks, but for God sake - the problem is at least 8 months older (that's my experience) or several years older if I read Skywise opening post.
That means either no one was working on it till now or the previous dev, that was dealing with it before you, was really slacking. And I'm using a gentle term here, mind you.
It shows exactly what priority level this issue had, at least until you got delegated to resolve it.
Once again, I respect your efforts and your open mind here on forums and I'm not having a go at you, but at how this issue was handled until now by the higher Gods of Istaria.

Regarding Amon's post here on the forums. It actually IS impolite up to rude, depending on reader's implication in this matter, by saying: "deal with it, if you can't then switch gears"
What does "switch gears" mean? "My way or the highway"? "You don't like the situation then play something else"?
It sounds like you guys are really annoyed by our pitiful spawn issues, seriously.
Well - it's the players the ones that are actually annoyed and frustrated.

What kind of customer support is that?

The issue has been under investigation for many months and as Steelclaw said it is elusive. The team has tried several different approaches to try and even figure out where the issue is, but so far we've had no luck. The very fact that it isn't easily reproducible creates a lot of issues in addition to some other more technical hurdles the team has to contend with.

I am sorry you felt my response was rude. It was not meant that way. It was meant to assure you that we are working on it, that we don't have an ETA because we don't yet know what the source of the problem is, and that until such time as we do know all we can do for players is ask for your patience and understanding.

What does that mean? That your options when you do encounter this problem are to look for another spawn of the same monster somewhere else in the world or gather/craft/adventure in another location of the world temporarily until the spawns pick up again or there is a server restart.

In addition, the posting was meant to inform players that we are aware of the issues and that any future threads will be closed with a reference to the existing post.

[LOVWYRM]

Last week I filed a ticket, cause LS-trainer would not allow me to start LS-school with my dragon.
Cause I tried everything I could think of and asked around-I assumed that there is a bug.

Amons answer was a short one :
There is no known bug- try another trainer.
ok- a very short answer but
Amon was right
and he answered to my ticket within one day.
Can I expect more?

Pls consider: Here in the forum, or concerning the tickets: Its the devs who answer us.
Not people from a help desk with a special trainig, that should keep the customer satisfied or muzzle him/her, without answering any question or solve the prob at all.
Have you ever communicated with help desks? I did. And most of them made me angry-leaving me alone with my prob- feeling like a fool.
And no ETA-even not a word if or when the prob could be solved.
But a lot of nice words without commitment-a repetition of the same sentences..makes you feel like bs.

So I do not mind short answers, if they have that quality.
And that our probs are in progress-that is what I know.

but well,
a
"with love from Amon" (insert your favourite dev^^)
would look nice at he bottom of any answer
and would be appreciated

[velveeta]

no offense to anyone, but having lived thru the time of troubles, this is a very small matter to me.
may no one ever know the pain of having your shard shut down with little notice, no ticket/support team at all, no devs to work on the multitude of probs, and no one to care about your game at all.

the gods can speak to me as they will, and take all the time they need to make repairs, because i have been on the other side of that coin, and it is heartbreakingly worse.

call me a fanboi if you like, i accept the name proudly.

[Raptress]

Regarding Amon's post here on the forums. It actually IS impolite up to rude, depending on reader's implication in this matter, by saying: "deal with it, if you can't then switch gears"
What does "switch gears" mean? "My way or the highway"? "You don't like the situation then play something else"?

"Switch gears" means that if you want to work on radiant essence but no radiant wisps are spawning, try to find something else to do, like travertine, instead until the issue is either fixed or resolves itself temporarily next maintenance.

There really isn't anything else Amon could have suggested that players do here. There is no other option.

[Romirez]

*SNIP*
Seriously.

these things happen all the time. they get fixed....eventually.

[Racktor]

Such an old game is lucky to have a determined developement team working on it. We all have to accept and know that this game is dying. VI is doing everything they can to save it. Is that not enough?

Yes, Amon's replies can sound a bit cold. Same for Velea's and any other devs' replies. But they replied, did they not?

I have called the devs names, muttered about them, and whined about how things don't go my way. In the end, I deal with it. I do not like a few things here and there, but honestly I learn to accept it. I really do appreciate the dev team, no matter what I say. (Just like how kids my age complain about their parents, but yet still love them )

So how do I deal with the spawn bug? Simply deal with it. On my character Siria, I couldn't complete her New Trismus quests due to the fact that tiny grass beetles weren't spawning. I sent in a ticket with an explaination, got a reply as a "known issue that will be fixed next tuesday", and close. Simple, but alright.

I switched gears and went on to her Kion quests because she was level 12 at that point anyway. Now she's level 44 and still has a quest to go smack beetles with tail whip.

As long as I know something is brought to attention and is being worked on, I don't find it a huge problem.

(BTW Raptress, there wasn't an initiation problem with the ARoP - Tooth and Claw VII was bugged so that the kwellens (at the time) weren't counting and that was a needed quest.)

[Raptress]

(BTW Raptress, there wasn't an initiation problem with the ARoP - Tooth and Claw VII was bugged so that the kwellens (at the time) weren't counting and that was a needed quest.)

I'm talking about a different issue, from years ago. x)

The character I had that could not start AROP was not missing any quests. It was simply that Karane would not offer the AROP quest. If I remember right, it was because a few dragon quests had recently been overhauled and that caused some issues with Karane detecting a character's eligibility for AROP.

[Northwind]

Hehe, It is clear that none of you, those that take so easily the "switch gears" advice, didn't got this advice while being in the middle of building your only lair with the only dragon you can play with.

I couldn't care less about the current missing radiant wisps or whatever resource is missing now. Still I could easily empathize with OP when I remembered how I felt when I was trying to get done ASAP five T4 shops and a T4 hall and there was not a single glowing wisp in the entire world.

IT was frustrating and IT happened like 8 months ago. I submitted a ticket and got exactly the same answer: "we're investigating" (really?), "there is no ETA". I've seen that. I've also seen that there were NO Glowing wisps on the server most of January.

And Please, Do remember that Essence is part of 4 out of the 6 materials needed to build a lair. Also that my storage capacity was close to zero so I could not store tons of other materials while waiting till the next maintenance when MAYBE, maybe the wisps will spawn again.
For me there was hardly any gears to change when I payed for a Lair to be able to build it, but the process was hampered badly by the various spawn issues.

I repeat - the emphasis of this rant is not regarding the spawn issue itself, but about the way it was handled, the priority it got overtime and so on. If you assign someone to work on it for 1h every week, then a one day job, takes up 2 months, isn't?

@Raptress.
There is at least one solution to the issue which could sound like:
"If you really need radiant essence and you cannot get any due to our inability to make it spawn, then gather whatever resource you want from the same tier (travertine for example), then submit a ticket and we will exchange it into radiant essence."

While cumbersome, it is still faster then waiting a week till the next maintenance when it may or may not spawn anyway. Not to mention that at least it shows some consideration to the customer's issue and a real desire to help.

What did we get instead? A "Begone! Do something else and stop pestering us!"

[Raptress]

Hehe, It is clear that none of you, those that take so easily the "switch gears" advice, didn't got this advice while being in the middle of building your only lair with the only dragon you can play with.

Being stuck for months unable to start the AROP which was the only thing I had been working that character towards since creation was pretty frustrating too. I didn't craft with that character, so I was effectively stuck with little else to do until it was fixed. I think most long-time players have had issues that basically stopped them from progressing their character. You are not the only one who has ever had that happen.

I repeat - the emphasis of this rant is not regarding the spawn issue itself, but about the way it was handled, the priority it got overtime and so on. If you assign someone to work on it for 1h every week, then a one day job, takes up 2 months, isn't?

You can't truly know what the situation is unless you have inside access to Virtrium or something. Sometimes bugs are very hard to track down and find a fix for. I've seen first-hand in other games some very serious bugs that the devs had no idea what was causing them despite their whole focus being on bug-fixing at the time, and it took quite a while for them to be fixed regardless of their severity. And these are not indie games I'm talking about.

@Raptress.
There is at least one solution to the issue which could sound like:
"If you really need radiant essence and you cannot get any due to our inability to make it spawn, then gather whatever resource you want from the same tier (travertine for example), then submit a ticket and we will exchange it into radiant essence."

While it is true that there may be some opportunity for damage control here, I don't think there is a "solution." This sounds good on paper, but I can gather a full disk and inventory's worth in 15 minutes. That's four tickets an hour from just one player. If VI were to do anything, it would probably need to be something automated, like a temporary NPC that sells essence or something. And that means waiting for a new delta to be pushed to Blight and then to live, with the possibilities of bugs if it's rushed. There's no clear "win" situation here.

What did we get instead? A "Begone! Do something else and stop pestering us!"

That's not what I took from Amon's words. I saw: "We hear you and we're working on it. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do about it right now. At this point any further reports are unnecessary, so please don't make them."

[Mimir]

Ok ...Ok I'll post here maybe I can get it locked... Looks like a fight to me.

We all have had similar horror stories. We are all still here. And eventually they get it fixed. I'd like to see MLs give significantly more resources than rich, I would like to see the essence make sense.. weakened give slightly less that the normal and the big ones (forgot their name atm) give more still.

I repeat... We are all still here.

[Cooolios]

Has everyone forgotten that we can transmute? Longer yes but it's a work around...

[Racktor]

I forgot all about the transmutation formulas. However, they do still need tainted essence which you can only get from wisps... but a lower tier, which may be around.

[Andrakhyn]

I've just recently finished two T6 lair structures and I know would have been frustrated to find this particular resource missing.

But I don't think you can fault the dev response.

If they don't know what the cause of the problem is then there's absolutely no way they can give an ETA without just pulling it out of their butt. There'd also be a good chance they'd not meet that ETA and that would only add to your frustration.

And I don't think they could eg. produce another spawn of Radiant Wisps somewhere immediately without an unscheduled server restart?

If you're committed to working on radiant essence this week and the spawn doesn't reappear I don't mind helping you via the transmutation route. I've had to pause several things I was working on for a week anyway so have some time.

[Darkwing_Duck]

this is a common problem with many MMO`s. Which is why I have several characters in several classes. So if something prevents me from working on one, I can wake another, and work on them until the problem is resolved. It`s annoying, but the developers can only do so much. Istaria is a massive game, and there`s litteraly thousands of codes, and files to go through to fix a single issue. I can only imagine the time, and effort it must take to locate, and fix a single spawn file. O.o

Wish you luck Sky, and hopefully those shy wisps will be back soon