So before I say anything I would like to mention that I am very thankful for all the hard work the staff has put in the server and to see the progress in the new source. That being said I would like the following thread to be nothing but FEEDBACK and NOT ATTACKING THE STAFF. The main reason I made this post is because of the lack of transparency between the staff and community. When the server was in a critical state with almost nothing working, we were told to patiently just wait. Now, I personally don't see why the staff can't be a little bit more detailed. For example, simply explain: "Hey we were working on the cash shop and this and this and this happened so we must now do this and we'll see what happens after that." I know for a fact the community would love and accept such a response with much more open arms and be much more tolerant. But when we got no update posts for months, people start to get annoyed and lose hope. I'm not sure if the developers are worried someone might do something but, what can someone really do by just talking about something. TDRL a simple update post once in a while with some detail? Also, I'm not sure what's going on lately with server checks. A lot of people have mentioned zak/krex and dc issues were resolved due to a server check but there was no post mentioned or anything. The server check before that, there was a notice in game saying there will be patch in 1 hour. After 1 hour, the server just crashed. You used to give at least a 2 minute timer so we can see when it's going to happen. Lately we're not even getting that. Is that not working in the new source? Or are you just choosing not to do this? and why? Thank you all for your time
As far as the cash shop update goes, there were posts made on March 13, March 21 and April 9 regarding the status of the update. Perhaps there should have been more frequent status updates but I personally don't see how "hey, we're working on X at the moment" leads to anything positive. We try to give a heads-up when there something worthy of sharing although in my experience over the last few months having no status updates at all only leads to anger and frustration while more frequent updates just creates unnecessary speculation as people seemed to interpret the updates as something being ready for release the same day. I think there is room for improvement but you can't please everyone. We are still monitoring the effects of the changes made during the last server check. The disconnection issue is far too situational for us staff members to test within the time frame of a single Zakum run which is why we haven't posted anything regarding the last server check. The server clock command isn't working at the moment which is why we've been trying to schedule server checks as close as possible to the next hour.
Thanks so much for the swift reply! I agree with you on this, you can't please everyone. As far as saying "hey we're working on x at the moment" I would say that it might not lead to anything positive but, it doesn't lead to anything negative either. If you tell the server "horntail isn't working. It will be fixed soon." You might get a lot of questions or negative responses such as why? or when will it be fixed? or is it a priority? etc. (Btw I'm just using HT as an example) If you say "horntail isn't working at the moment because it needs to be coded from scratch. We currently are working on the dc issues since that is deemed a priority and horntail will be coded after dc is resolved" I think that responses will not bring up as many questions and satisfy their curiosity for a while. A post mentioning this would have been awesome. I was busy all day that day and didn't hear about it until the next day. When people told me, I didn't want to just talk people's word for it. I wanted official staff confirmation but there was none on the forums. I think a post saying "Hey we tried and fixed some dc issues out. Let us know if you experience any problems." would have gone a long way.
There wasnt a post on it because the SC wasnt an update...thus no update post. We made some backend changes and wanted to give it a day or two to see how well it went over before we made an update post. Rather than saying "We fixed the d/c issues" and then finding out 10 hours later that there are still some remaining issues - which would've made the post inaccurate. As for the first part - well, we've already been doing that. It wasn't enough for people. We tell people all the time we've been working on the d/c issues and that merchants will take at least a week or longer once they're even started. People still ask daily, and assume that an SC = merchants are coming. People even go as far as to assume that a bout of server instability = merchants are coming. Realistically, if we asked Kevin to stop coding every day just to give an update, it would stop his workflow. Often times he'll spend an entire day or two working on something without updating other staff, then suddenly comes back with something that needs testing. Usually that testing leads to more things needing done, so the process continues. We update if there's something important to update on, but overall we just need to let the man work.
Thanks for the reply Sila! This is something I, and probably many others didn't know. We didn't know you don't know anything if Kevin is in his zone haha. Knowing things like this will put me at ease and not flood my brain with questions. The whole point of this tread I guess I should say is just transparency. I understand there are posts, but a little bit more detail. No need to promise anything.
