GM's and the power to summon them.

Bugz

Fledgling Freddie
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May 18, 2004
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7,297
As of lately, ML Raids have been bugging alot - today for example we had trouble doing ml 4 because sauts were constantly spawning in the 4.8 area.

An e&e was on but he explained to me that nothing can be done if a gm is not online.

So - do you reckon e&e's should be able to contact a GM more efficiently and do you think they should recruit more gm's.

Discuss.
 

Elitestoner

Can't get enough of FH
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Jan 21, 2004
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Bugz said:
As of lately, ML Raids have been bugging alot - today for example we had trouble doing ml 4 because sauts were constantly spawning in the 4.8 area.

An e&e was on but he explained to me that nothing can be done if a gm is not online.

So - do you reckon e&e's should be able to contact a GM more efficiently and do you think they should recruit more gm's.

Discuss.

if gms arent at work why should they spend all their free time working?

and recruiting more gms would up the sub fee.
 

Bugz

Fledgling Freddie
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May 18, 2004
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7,297
Elitestoner said:
if gms arent at work why should they spend all their free time working?

and recruiting more gms would up the sub fee.

I'd be willing to pay 10 quid a month if they promised a gm was avalible all times.

The fact is, doing ml raids is useless without a gm on now a days cause so many encounters bug.
 

Elricstormbringer

Fledgling Freddie
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Dec 23, 2003
Messages
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Apart from being able to contact a GM to do anything like resets they have to be at work. As far as I know the GMs are online on my msn or maybe in IRC whilst they are working and sometimes when they are not. I do not think they would want E&Es to be ringing them up to get them into the office to sort out bugs.

Also, 24/7 suppport will cost more.
 

Bugz

Fledgling Freddie
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24/7 support isnt really needed.

a gm on at 7pm gmt - 10pm gmt on weekends and stuff is though cause alot of ml raids are hosted them/
 

lairiodd

Loyal Freddie
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Feb 2, 2004
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Tbh, all you need is 1 GM for all the servers on at a given time. I assume that it is just a single command to reset an arti encounter. Get the GM to log on one account on each of the servers/realms. In fact, it would be easiest if this would be a standard account so E&E could /send secretGMname

There is ofc the problem that the GM would have to check multiple instances of daoc though :).
 

Gear

Can't get enough of FH
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Just chain em in the office! Free-time... ts ts ts, such lenient human resources policy by goa :mad:
 

Awarkle

Fledgling Freddie
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how the game works is that the gms have special accounts that give them access to all in game comands such as resetting. Therefore from what i can tell even when its late at night and we the e&e's have gotten hold of them they normally log on and sort out problems.

However i would have to agree that a saturday sunday gm slot would be nice but i wouldnt expect anyone to work on days off.

Its all a case of realism would you be expected to be on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

My dad does that as a solicitor normally 24 hours out of a single month or 2 week period where clients can get hold of him at all hours it leaves him totally shattered.

The only way to ensure 24/7 support is shift work and tbh i dont think the european population warents that kind of customer support. I mean wow has it but they have a much larger population.

Normally if im online nad somoen pms me if its before 9ish then i can somtimes get hold of a gm but i wouldnt go spamming them if they can help they can help if they cant then its tough luck. Weekends are the grey area pitty they couldnt hire an extra 1 or 2 people to cover weekends but thats still 1 or 2 extra peeps per server or shared out among several servers.

Its all a case of cost :)
 

IainC

English WAR Community Manager
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Apr 21, 2004
Messages
1,862
lairiodd said:
I assume that it is just a single command to reset an arti encounter.
Nope, each encounter has a different method for resetting. Some just need all the mobs to be depopped then repopped, others need flags and other variables to be set to various settings as well - resetting ML4.2 for example is about 200 lines of code.
We also need to know the reference numbers relating to the various indexes, flags, monster generators, etc - usually 5 digit numbers and assigned in no particular order. At the office of course we have look-up tables and manuals which tell us most of the important ones, however those resources aren't available to us at home. Recently I reset part of an ML6 raid from home and it took me about 30 minutes of trial and error to find the three numbers I needed for one encounter. If it had been one of the more complex encounters I couldn't even have tried.

Occasionally I am contactable out of hours and usually I'm happy to help however it's very limited compared to what I can do in the office. For security reasons many of our tools and resources will not work from outside the office. If you do run into an urgent, game stopping problem (i.e. your big raid has run into a problem that prevents you from continuing - I don't want to be dragged away from my free time because you think the pop for the artifact you are camping might be bugged), it's always worth getting hold of an E&E. If I am around and I can realistically help I'll do so. However there will never be official support after 2300CET weekdays or at weekends.

For reference, the continual Setian spawn at 4.8 isn't a bug, there are conditions which can trigger that normally. In general, the vast majority of ML and artifact encounters work reliably now. There are still some problems, but over the past year or so a host of mostly invisible fixes has been steadily put in place to make them much more reliable.
 

GimmlyTheDorf

Banned
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665
Requiel said:
Nope, each encounter has a different method for resetting. Some just need all the mobs to be depopped then repopped, others need flags and other variables to be set to various settings as well - resetting ML4.2 for example is about 200 lines of code.
We also need to know the reference numbers relating to the various indexes, flags, monster generators, etc - usually 5 digit numbers and assigned in no particular order. At the office of course we have look-up tables and manuals which tell us most of the important ones, however those resources aren't available to us at home. Recently I reset part of an ML6 raid from home and it took me about 30 minutes of trial and error to find the three numbers I needed for one encounter. If it had been one of the more complex encounters I couldn't even have tried.

Occasionally I am contactable out of hours and usually I'm happy to help however it's very limited compared to what I can do in the office. For security reasons many of our tools and resources will not work from outside the office. If you do run into an urgent, game stopping problem (i.e. your big raid has run into a problem that prevents you from continuing - I don't want to be dragged away from my free time because you think the pop for the artifact you are camping might be bugged), it's always worth getting hold of an E&E. If I am around and I can realistically help I'll do so. However there will never be official support after 2300CET weekdays or at weekends.

For reference, the continual Setian spawn at 4.8 isn't a bug, there are conditions which can trigger that normally. In general, the vast majority of ML and artifact encounters work reliably now. There are still some problems, but over the past year or so a host of mostly invisible fixes has been steadily put in place to make them much more reliable.
Shouldnt you be tucked up in bed? its 3:50AM :eek6:
 

Daedalus

Can't get enough of FH
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Requiel said:
Nope, each encounter has a different method for resetting. Some just need all the mobs to be depopped then repopped, others need flags and other variables to be set to various settings as well - resetting ML4.2 for example is about 200 lines of code.
We also need to know the reference numbers relating to the various indexes, flags, monster generators, etc - usually 5 digit numbers and assigned in no particular order. At the office of course we have look-up tables and manuals which tell us most of the important ones, however those resources aren't available to us at home. Recently I reset part of an ML6 raid from home and it took me about 30 minutes of trial and error to find the three numbers I needed for one encounter. If it had been one of the more complex encounters I couldn't even have tried... *cut*

Next time you ban a macro'er, ask him which program he uses and set it up to reset ML encounters for you, heh. (though, be careful that Zenythe doesn't find out, lest she may ban you for using third-party tools).
 

Bugz

Fledgling Freddie
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Requiel said:
For reference, the continual Setian spawn at 4.8 isn't a bug, there are conditions which can trigger that normally. In general, the vast majority of ML and artifact encounters work reliably now. There are still some problems, but over the past year or so a host of mostly invisible fixes has been steadily put in place to make them much more reliable.

It's not a bug?

How do we prevent it then?

We tried gettin rid of all pets but to no aval, heck we even all suicided to no avail. They just repopped at Stygia Haven, moving to others Havens spawned them aswell. Only way we stopped them constantly repopping was for 50 odd people to relog - wasting overall about 1-2 hours of our time.
 

Laston

Fledgling Freddie
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Requiel said:
It's 4:50am where I live.
Jetlag sux.


yeah one of those annoying bugs god never fixed, been around since day one but he still cba to fix it :(
 

Laston

Fledgling Freddie
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Requiel said:
It's 4:50am where I live.
Jetlag sux.


yeah one of those annoying bugs god never fixed, been around since day one but he still cba to fix it :(
 

adaptive

Fledgling Freddie
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Requiel said:
However there will never be official support after 2300CET weekdays or at weekends.

while its understandable why we dont have 24/7 support, i find it quite ridiculous that there isnt "Official" support available at weekends - unfortunately, those of us that work, mainly play evenings and weekends and would appreciate a GM online over the weekend during peak hours.
 

Belomar

Part of the furniture
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In regards to the problems with 4.8, my theory (probably not true) is that it is caused by the pets of people who enter the portal on the pyramid trying to run to the pet owner and thus being dragged through the Stone of Atlantis camp in Stygian Delta, thus activating the encounter (and once that happens, you're in a world of pain). The simple solution for this would be for everyone to release their pets before they enter the pyramid portal.
 

Killder

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Bugz said:
It's not a bug?

How do we prevent it then?

We tried gettin rid of all pets but to no aval, heck we even all suicided to no avail. They just repopped at Stygia Haven, moving to others Havens spawned them aswell. Only way we stopped them constantly repopping was for 50 odd people to relog - wasting overall about 1-2 hours of our time.

Find out how to make this 'non-bug' happen and we can forget about ever going on a Fins PL session again.
 

Zenythe

[GOA] English Servers GM
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332
Aoln said:
US players get 24/7 support and they pay less than us?


Justa guess but different economy/currency/pay rates/cost of living/ etc etc etc...
 

IainC

English WAR Community Manager
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Aoln said:
US players get 24/7 support and they pay less than us?
Alos Mythic get subs + licensing fees, we get subs - licensing fees.
 

old.Whoodoo

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Aoln said:
US players get 24/7 support and they pay less than us?
Also are not most of their support also developers who are testing/changing the game during the course?
 

RS|Phil

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Requiel said:
Alos Mythic get subs + licensing fees, we get subs - licensing fees.

You should license your license out to some third world country to make up the shortfall . Hehe.
 

Chronictank

FH is my second home
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Laston said:
yeah one of those annoying bugs god never fixed, been around since day one but he still cba to fix it :(
its not a bug its a feature!
Requiel said:
Alos Mythic get subs + licensing fees, we get subs - licensing fees.
couldnt you just cycle the shifts for the 5(?) gms
i.e a gm be on sat and sun but not come in mon tues etc?
that why 7 day support at little/no extra cost

just a thought :p
 

Bahumat

FH is my second home
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I cant see the gm's will put much effort into working extra time or weekends or hiring more ppl to do graveyard shifts etc. Its not that we need more support its the fact things seem to go wrong quite often.

1 major improvement for Daoc would be the ml's.....too many of them are way to boring and fiddly. if you make a set of quests that takes alot of ppl to do why make Chess steps etc. ml2 is by far the worst ML just cause of that step...some poor sod always has to do this 5 or so times.....it hjappened to me once ages back, 13 TRIES dammit!

why not make the ml's so you do more productive things....take EoY for example. you use the rams to knock the pillars down etc....things like that are more fun than all swinging your wpn at a mob for 10 minutes then having to explain the meaning of life to a taur!

i dont think there is an element of difficulty in the ML's more of a frustration with gimped tasks.

another nice step is in ML3 (i think) you end up near tarts gift and about 10000 mobs zerg you, everyone has to defend against all the mobs.....there is an element of fun in doing this.

kind of off topic i know but surely i cant be the only one fed up smacking some random mob for 5 mins with the ml's.
 

RS|Phil

Can't get enough of FH
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Chronictank said:
its not a bug its a feature!

couldnt you just cycle the shifts for the 5(?) gms
i.e a gm be on sat and sun but not come in mon tues etc?
that why 7 day support at little/no extra cost

just a thought :p

EU Health and Safety Laws don't allow only one person the workplace in case of accidents and medical emergencies :D
 

Adoctor

Fledgling Freddie
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RS|Phil said:
EU Health and Safety Laws don't allow only one person the workplace in case of accidents and medical emergencies :D

get a blow up doll and put it on the pay roll ....instant cheap 2nd worker
 

georgie

FH is my second home
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Not to mention some relief during those quiet times. :wub:
 

eggy

Fledgling Freddie
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Chronictank said:
couldnt you just cycle the shifts for the 5(?) gms
i.e a gm be on sat and sun but not come in mon tues etc?
that why 7 day support at little/no extra cost

Three GMs are responsible for the English servers.
 

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