Updates during event

[John Jones]

Hi Trusty and Co.,
Apologies if this has been raised before but I couldn't find it on a topic search.
Just a quick question as to the logic of pushing an update during an event. There seem to be a lot of new backers around at the moment, a number of which are posting either on this forum or the Steam forum to say they are experiencing empty servers. I for one have made a few replies to the effect that Fridays to Mondays are peak times with Saturdays and Sundays being well populated and hopefully some may have made an effort to join in. Anyone who has been involved for a while knows that these are the busiest periods. Most also appreciate its Alpha and we should have read the Health Warning to the effect that we sometimes get a bumpy ride but was there a particular reason that we got an update pushed out during tonight's EU event with the resulting disruption and potential issues post-update (and perhaps providing an un-favourable experience for new backers?). The event was in full swing and there was a certain amount of ......disappointment at the unfortunate timing of the update, at least on the CSA side. I'm sure Union would have felt the same.

Very respectfully,
Sgt Jones

[Redleader]

We do appreciate the updates and the continued support for the game.

However the timing for this 'update' wasn't excatly ideal considering it was during an event where we already had to cycle some maps (people and their line battles … ) and had probs with people crashing … and so on :)
Between the EU & NA event would be better if it was a urgent one, alas some people have bad internet connection (you know like dialing in with an 36,6kb modem or using a telegraph line)

See and then people go …. I crashed #Metoo (but that's something else)

[Bravescot]

You guys seem a little overly but hurt over something so small dont you think?

[TrustyJam]

Hello,

As we in general only see proper server loads in the weekend we naturally want to push for getting a planned patch out before then - as this is mostly our only “heavy load” test time of the week. Sometimes things will cause delay and thus an event may be disrupted. This is of course not ideal but we will still push out the patch and do so in order to get feedback than to wait and risk not getting it until the next weekend.

- Trusty

[Redleader]

You guys seem a little overly but hurt over something so small dont you think?

Just voicing what the general feeling was, we get it's alpha and it's part of the development … but maybe a message (like serving shutting down for an update) could be nice.
Thing is half don't know what's going on, then you need to tell there's an update … some need to restart steam.

[Redleader]

Hello,

As we in general only see proper server loads in the weekend we naturally want to push for getting a planned patch out before then - as this is mostly our only “heavy load” test time of the week. Sometimes things will cause delay and thus an event may be disrupted. This is of course not ideal but we will still push out the patch and do so in order to get feedback than to wait and risk not getting it until the next weekend.

- Trusty

Makes sense, saturdays/sundays/mondays are indeed when most ppl are on.
Thanks for the clarification.

[John Jones]

You guys seem a little overly but hurt over something so small dont you think?

Not particularly. I was fortunate to get back into game relatively quickly but I had enough sympathy with the folk who were unable to spawn back in to ask the question after I had finished playing.

Trusty - as Redleader said, thank you for the clarification but I echo what he said about new players not really understanding whats going on. Would it be possible to have some kind of game wide warning before you push an update? If nothing else it would provide an opportunity to pre-plan grabbing a beer/cuppa/snack and watering our boots.


Sgt Jones

[Fancy Sweetroll]

Allow me to clarify what happened, as well.

We didn't shut down the servers. The server crashed due to a packet error which is increasingly likely to happen, the more players that are on the server. (Technically it didn't crash, it just dropped all the players on it, and then I manually shut it down afterwards to get the 1.5 million line log file out of the server). We have seen different packet related crashes in the past and are slowly working towards solving them, but this takes time and does require a lot of 150 player tests and possibly server crashes, in order to confirm if the issue has been fixed, or if we've simply moved onto a new issue in the list of issues, as in this case.

I did push a small update 15-20 minutes before the server crashed. But this was a client only update so the servers didnt need to be restarted. It was quite unfortunate the server crashed shortly after, but it is also extremely unlikely this update had anything to do with it.

The small update contained some additional shutdown fixes. Personally from the initial testing I made, I managed to join the server 6 times in a row, and quit from the server, back to the desktop, without having to close the game via task manager, 6 times in a row. So please let us know over the next week if shutting down the game has improved, and if you do crash, or the game doesn't shut down properly, make sure to use the error reporter: https://warofrights.com/ErrorReporter

[John Jones]

Allow me to clarify what happened, as well.

We didn't shut down the servers. The server crashed due to a packet error which is increasingly likely to happen, the more players that are on the server. (Technically it didn't crash, it just dropped all the players on it, and then I manually shut it down afterwards to get the 1.5 million line log file out of the server). We have seen different packet related crashes in the past and are slowly working towards solving them, but this takes time and does require a lot of 150 player tests and possibly server crashes, in order to confirm if the issue has been fixed, or if we've simply moved onto a new issue in the list of issues, as in this case.

I did push a small update 15-20 minutes before the server crashed. But this was a client only update so the servers didnt need to be restarted. It was quite unfortunate the server crashed shortly after, but it is also extremely unlikely this update had anything to do with it.

The small update contained some additional shutdown fixes. Personally from the initial testing I made, I managed to join the server 6 times in a row, and quit from the server, back to the desktop, without having to close the game via task manager, 6 times in a row. So please let us know over the next week if shutting down the game has improved, and if you do crash, or the game doesn't shut down properly, make sure to use the error reporter: https://warofrights.com/ErrorReporter

HI Fancy,
Thank you very much for the detailed reply to contextualise last night's issue and thank you for the continued efforts. Much appreciated.

[cheeyeah]

In fact, there's a lot of chance that there's at least one server that has a lot of players, 30 to 80 people, every Friday and Saturday morning.
At present, the feeling is very stable, probably can run to FPS 40 above.

[Redleader]

Allow me to clarify what happened, as well.

We didn't shut down the servers. The server crashed due to a packet error which is increasingly likely to happen, the more players that are on the server.

Fancy,

I'm not sure if this is related, but might be some intel.



The server had some 74 ppl on.
We mass connected
About half of the players dropped to 25-45 some.


We have a feeling (could be coincidense) that when an event is about to start and people mass connect, the server tends to drop some or close the session.
Thing is, we had events of 100+ running stable.

[A. P. Hill]

You guys seem a little overly but hurt over something so small dont you think?


Two Ts in that butt sir!