"No evidence of server lag"

I'm always curious to see how features like these would do on a larger scale, like:
What happens if a player disconnects during a Zakum run, would he spawn in a map that has said npc?
What happens if a player dies during a lag spike, does this render him unable to return while it wasn't his fault?
What if a player disconnects to player mistakes such as graphical issues or clicking your pet away, wouldn't they be able to abuse it as long as they come back within 1 minute?
These are just some of many examples I can think of where the system would probably not work the way we want it to.
I can see a lot of up and downsides to having a new system or feature, which is why I'd rather hope the lag issues will just become less once we have switched over to the new DDOS protection. (Since the current one is causing a lot of lag issues)

 

doesn't matter if they disconnected and it's not a death they should be allowed rewarp, when the player logs on he'll be at the map before zak so he'll talk to npc and get rewarped in.
there's no way to abuse, if the player dies then he's dead he can't use the option for rewarping he has to get ressed.
there's no way to abuse it cause it's a 1 time per run so if you dc twice then that's bl, if anything it'll help the players and everyone will be happy , plus you'll get less people complaining.
the main point is that people who dc from boss runs don't even get a slimmer of hope to be able to rejoin cause of so many requests and cause gm's will only rewarp if there is evidence and on a busy server like royals there's no time to do all that so quickly, so this will stop that because players will be able to rejoin themselves, i'm pretty sure if this is in the game everyone will be happy.
and if anything the staff can remove it if they feel theres something wrong or bad about it.
may not be a final solution but it's still something that should be considered cause it's a great idea
i think the option of being able to rejoin is the main factor here, atm as most people know once you dc it's pretty much gg you're out and your teamates have to finish the rest or the run will be cancelled midway, so yeah this will greatly help that and be a good addition to MapleRoyals.

 

I'm quite hesitant to post in this thread at the moment because I can think of a lot of reasons that support both sides of this argument. With that aside, however, I'd like to reply to this specific post - this isn't exactly on-topic so I hope it isn't received too badly.

I agree that GMs have a lot to do, and it's almost insulting in a way for me to say that I 'understand' how much work they have cut out for them, simply because I don't. I haven't taken on the duties of a GM before, so there is no way for me to have an accurate idea of just what the duties of a GM entails. That said, it's quite obvious that 10 or so staff members trying to satisfy a player base that's so big that there are almost always 1000+ players online at all times is a strenuous task.

Yes, GMs are here as volunteers who are helping out the community because they'd like to give back to the server, what the server has given to them. That said, I get annoyed when I repeatedly see people saying it's a complete 'side job' - it definitely is, and of course GMs are people with real life obligations with education/jobs/relationships/etc. However, the process of becoming a GM is one where people need to apply, and then are taken into the team. Most of the people who are vying for a GM position are trustable people, and some of them are known for their charitable contributions to the community. And because of this process, there is a certain obligation for those who are chosen to become GMs to be hardworking and open to new ideas (obviously I mean feedback threads like these, and not ideas from people who want to implement Gollux into Royals). This 'obligation' I speak about wouldn't be an obligation to the rest of the community, but rather one to those who applied and were denied a position - an obligation created by the fact that they were chosen over the rest of the applicants who are arguably just as willing to learn and help as a GM. Who's to say (and sorry for using actual examples) that @Plenty or @AdamBrone - both past applicants - were uncapable, or lacked the skills to become a good GM?

I love a few of the GMs as people (those I know who I can call my friends), and I respect all of them for the duties they carry out. I am not anti-Aaron either, and am in no way trying to bash him; he's been very helpful in the shoutbox and I've personally received his help in-game. I have also been playing on this server long enough to know that most, if not all GMs maintain a very helpful attitude. However, I do not appreciate posts like yours that indirectly support the mentality that because GMs are volunteers, it is justifiable for valid suggestions made by people who also care about the progression of this community (in this case @Liomio ) to be repeatedly shot down and ganged up on against because it is at first glance seen as impractical, without an actual in-depth look into whether it's a viable suggestion/method or not - it really is quite painful to read. Reasonable suggestions have been made and most have been shot down without much comprehensive reasoning from the opposing side. From the un-answered comments so far, the most pressing point that I see from Liomio is

"there were at least 15 refund submissions that Aaron denied that have ss and are in the correct format"

Liomio is citing threads that are close to each other in terms of time-frame, and are diverse in terms of the regions that the reports have come from, yet have been denied. This really challenges the standing that the GMs are currently taking on this topic, and I think it warrants some further investigation or clarification to the readers of this thread.

As someone who has been talking with several active people who have felt the same way as Liomio about the recent replies to boss rewarp threads, I can definitely see their point in that there seem to be several cases where there are multiple threads posted within a short time frame from people obviously coming from different regions of the world (e.g. a post made by a TW followed by a European), that have been denied. Either staff have internally reviewed and revised how strict they should be with boss rewarps (and I am not referring to this) recently without the community knowing, or Liomio is raising an important point that is of significance to many of the current players who boss regularly.


EDIT: Upon reading back on my own post, I've realized it may be quite hard to understand as there are a lot of points that I raise; I'm on my phone right now and have just tried to jot down all my thoughts as fast as I could - I'll be editing this once I get access to my computer again.

 

we should focus on a solution together as a community instead of dabbling about the problem that will get us nowhere but further arguments.
we're like the best server out there so let's act like the best server, let's improve and change , yes things may not always go to plan and who knows it might end up worse but theres one thing for sure i know is that royals didn't make it this far by trying to keep it's picture the same color , it was always improved and worked upon , let's continue that, we're already supporting it by choosing to play here let us help make it better. #positive

 

So how could the NPC distinguish between a disconnect due to lag and someone disconnecting on purpose? Because here is how I would abuse that NPC. I ran out of pots or am about to die and there's no one who can res me. I'll purposefully disconnect, go to town and get pots or have someone meet me at the map to give me the pots I need, talk to the NPC, and boom I'm back in the boss. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the party. Even if done only once, that's now defeated the purpose of a boss battle imo. I'm not trying to shoot your idea down, but I am saying that while you don't think it's abusable, we've seen it all and I can guarantee this is what people would start doing. As is, we have people who have flat out said to their buddies to disconnect and claim that it was a server lag, even if the person wasn't experiencing lag themselves.

@Kivin, to respond to your point that you stated remained unanswered, I believe it already has been answered that even amongst the threads that had the SS and were in the proper format, there were no reports from others at the time that there was lag, or anything server sided that would have justified a rewarp. I really don't know how else to phrase what myself, Sila, Jeen, and Dimitri have already said. Fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter WHAT GM it is, the result of whether the particular people would have been rewarped or not would not have made any difference.

 

Ok so what if people can get pots is that such a big deal that doesn't affect anything man the point THE main point is people getting their rewarps, that's all nothing else that's barely a con to not give that idea a chance, so what if someone forgot to bring pots obviously they're not going to do that every run im pretty sure if they don't bring enough pots it's by mistake not on purpose , you should just be more forgiving to the players after all these pleas and you still won't budge, you still can't suggest anything this is the best we give you atleast try it out and see how it goes, i think you're paranoid for change John you don't want to see us change Royals.

 

The point is, there's no need to sacrifice the integrity of a boss run by having an NPC that will warp you back in no matter what. We had discussed this before. If you search the forums, you can see such a discussion and why the idea wasn't able to be implemented back then. Since you had provided the same solution as before, I asked you a question to seek clarification as to how you would avoid one of the issues preventing us from making the idea possible.

I want to remind you, the staff aren't the ones who need to make the suggestions as we don't have a problem with how the system is, it's you, the player. If you have a suggestion, we're perfectly capable of listening to it (you don't see us locking this thread, right? ) but if there's flaws we see based on our experience or our unique view of the game, then you also need to be prepared to either defend it, give clarification, or modify that suggestion to work in these other points of view. Calling me paranoid really doesn't help your case as that is simply not true.

 

Maybe set a timer? Like you can't be rewarped 5 min after you disconnected for example

 

Are you referring to my comment? If so, it may got out of context - when I said I feel like you don't acknowledge the problem I was talking about rewarps, not regional / server-sided lags. I know you guys doing everything in your power to fix those.

 

@Kivin You have completely warped what i originally said into something that seems fitting for you to argue about. Please tell me how you came to the conclusion on your assumptions that i " indirectly support the mentality that because GMs are volunteers, it is justifiable for valid suggestions made by people who also care about the progression of this community (in this case @liomio ) to be repeatedly shot down and ganged up on against because it is at first glance seen as impractical, without an actual in-depth look into whether it's a viable suggestion/method or not "

You said so yourself, GM's are volunteers. But never did i say that MY mentality was anything along these lines, i originally said that " @liomio gets paid to work his job as a data company, which you would ASSUME he would have quite a lot of experience, (lets be honest, you wouldn't bring up the fact you work at a large data company if you didn't know what you're talking about, right?), for all we know he could do his job more efficient than 5-10 GM's combined, and for that matter for all we know some of the GM's might be just as good as he is. I was not siding with anyone on the situation, i was clearly pointing out the fact that he most likely has a lot more experience in what he is talking about, while it might be easy/quick for him to find the information that would be needed, it could take a lot longer for someone who has less experience with it. And that the GM's might not have the "spare time" to go through all the data to check for "national dc's/ regional dc's" just for the sake of "15 correct formated rewarps". Because from what i have seen, just because you post in the correct format, does not mean you have provided the correct evidence to support what you are claiming.

Although i am taking time off royals, i still care about the progression of this server, so please don't try and label that as my mentality because it is not the case.

 

Firstly, I'd like to apologize if you took offense to what I said; my statements were not a personal attack against you, and I can see why you'd be slightly annoyed - your response made it seem like I was somehow decrying you, which was not my intention. I don't know if you've seen some of my other posts on the forums, but I tend to try and avoid drama as much as possible. I did not claim that this was your mentality; I merely said that using such arguments at such a timing may be taken that way. I thought I made it clear that this was not to be taken too personally when I used the phrase "indirectly support" - this was meant to be a message to you that this may very well not have been your intentions, it's just that that's how some people (like me) are bound to interpret your comment.

With that out of the way, I'd like to clarify what exactly I meant by saying you "indirectly support the mentality that because GMs are volunteers, it is justifiable for valid suggestions made by people who also care about the progression of this community (in this case @liomio ) to be repeatedly shot down and ganged up on against because it is at first glance seen as impractical."

As someone who has, I'm assuming, commented on the thread after having looked through the claims that Liomio has presented in his argument (i.e. using the forums search function to look up some of the recent refund threads, to check that really none of them have any inconsistencies in comparison to the way GMs have traditionally replied to rewarp/refund threads), you would be able to see that there are a few instances where multiple people from various regions of the world have posted refund threads around the same time frame citing 'server lag', and have been denied a refund. As a somewhat active bosser, I really found it weird as this was not in line with the actions of other GMs from the past - and these thoughts were confirmed when people like Hampa (who is without a doubt one of the most experienced bossers and has definitely requested an ungodly number of rewarps over the time he's been playing) noticed an irregularity in the decisions that were being made in regards to rewarps/refunds.

When active bossers who have had no previous complaints with the refunding system suddenly start making feedback threads citing that there's a problem, there most likely has been an inconsistency with the way recent rewarp threads have been handled. When Liomio and @Hampa proposed that there should be a viable fixing method that won't be too hard to implement and execute, the suggestion was shot down without much of a comprehensive response. I don't know if he wants other people to know this, but Liomio is a 19 year old college student who's interning at a large tech company for the summer. He is not, by any means, the tech whiz you are making him out to be who possesses skills that are out of a GM's mental capabilities and reach. That said, he is not naive enough to suggest fixes and workarounds without first imagining how much effort it would take to actually implement such ideas.

The argument that "GMs are doing this as a side job" in itself isn't wrong, I completely agree with it, as I clarified in my first post. However, the situation in which you used this argument (i.e. in response to Liomio's post that tried to claim it would not require an immense amount of effort) just sort of indicated to me that you supported the way Liomio's suggestion was taken and treated. To which extent, then, is it expected for a GM to do something on behalf of the community, and from which point is it fair and justifiable to say "but it's just a side job"? As I said above, I hate personal attacks and flame wars, and I said that my post was not an intentional attack on you. If you reply to this post in a personal manner like you did with my first one, I won't bother giving you another reply.

 

I want to point out that, to my knowledge, what we are calling "regional disconnection" is a fairly new phenomenon to our server, and has only become a rampant problem in the last month or two. One point raised by posters in this thread was that it wouldn't be impossible (maybe it would even be easy) to implement a system to figure out exactly what was server sided or client sided as far as a regional disconnect.

And maybe that's true. It probably is. I'm no developer, but computers are amazing things.

Let me ask this though - why find a way to live with the problem when we can instead just... fix the problem. That's what we always have and always will aim to do here. In this particular case, the issue raised is regional disconnects and a potential inability to properly define when they happen, resulting in player dissatisfaction and trust me, as a player I completely understand why this is upsetting. I'm a player myself. What we aim to do is not make a bandaid fix to figure out how to properly rewarp for regional issues, but rather we aim to remove them and not have to rewarp anyone at all... because nobody should be disconnecting.

So I will make the point that I believe every GM on our staff is doing the absolute best that they can to properly refund anyone who deserves it while these issues are persisting, and assure everyone who reads this thread that we are doing all that we can to make regional disconnects a thing of the past. I ask your patience with us while we resolve the issue and I'm truly do apologize anyone who believes they were wrongly denied a refund.

 

I did not take it as a personal attack to begin with, as you may well know it's hard to show emotion through text, i was no offended by anything you said so do not stress on that matter.
I do not agree that there is inconsistencies( ill explain why below), but as its already been said, if there was no "known" server lag at the time, then it's just bad luck isn't it? I mean, i personally can handle being told i can't get a rewarp , it is a private server after all that is under constant development. Now im not saying you should expect bad quality from it because that would be stupid, but as someone who has played many private servers (different games) there is ALWAYS issues, so its just something that comes with the private server name. And normally when one issue is fixed, 3 other pop up out of no where, which then have to be fixed- it's a vicious cycle of bugs. And it looks like this "regional dcing" is a very new issue.

Also having read the claims, you would probably notice that the text GM aaron says is a copypasta, much like tims" looks like youve been hacked due to poor account security blah blah you wont be refunded blah blah" which you would be seeing a LOT recently in the ban appeals section. I don't think using the "key terms" query is a way of basing how he handles it as a GM honestly..... Its obvious that he has just replied the same thing to all of these threads much like tim has been doing. IF he was not using this method and still declining so many rewarps, then i could see it as being inconsistent, but this is more along the lines of " the most efficient way to handle a thread that DOESNT meet the requirements". It honestly looks more like the GM's have a template of what to reply to certain threads now i think of it...lol?

I 100% agree with you that while claiming "its just a side job" shouldn't be the way to approach issues like this, and i have not seen any GM claim this, it was my words stating that this is just a side job for them, although keeping mapleroyals running would be a full-time job with how many people are now playing, i would go as far as to say this server is understaffed for its current player base, which could be one of the main factors so many threads get turned down, because it is getting busier and they might be trying to get through the backlogs as quickly as possible.

 

So, I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to bosses. I've done Zak a few times, never tried Krex or HT because I'm lazy and can't do much as a FP AM. I don't ever do gfx nor have I ever dc'd in a boss run so I'm certainly not aware of how rewarps work, the map you spawn when logging back in, etc. Also, my coding experience is quite close to zero. In any case, here's what I came up with:

Lets say you're on a Zakum Run and you get dc'd. Your client shuts down shortly after. You relog on a random channel and spawn on some map in El Nath.

I think if you get a pop-up like

If 'Yes', you'd get a 15 to 20 second timer to setup your pet, buffs (since MG is important) and get warped to the boss map you were in once the timer reaches 0:00. I'd make it so that you warp to one or your party members (for practical purposes), which wouldn't really cover the whole issue, since a full party dc could happen. However, this would certainly reduce the amount of threads and GMs being messaged for a rewarp.

If 'No' the pop-up would go away and nothing would happen other than upset party members.


Here's the list of conditions you must fulfil in order to get the pop-up message:

1. Logged back in within 60/90 seconds.
2. Must be in a party.
3. Capped at one pop up a day.

Here's some things to take into consideration, that I'm assuming are possible.

1. First, cross-channel warps. I once GM'd a server in which you had to use the !warp command twice to get to a player's map. First one would CC you to the players map and second one to his/her map. I'm assuming it works properly here: When getting warped back into the boss map, you'd get warped to the boss map in the channel you were previously.
2. The pop-up would be available for a set amount of time after you login, else you would have people not clicking neither 'Yes' or 'No' and warping to the map when the run is almost over/over. I'm thinking 15 or 20 seconds could be enough. If nothing is done, clicking 'Yes' or 'No' would do nothing and you'd received a message on your chatbox explaining why nothing happened.
3. You can't type, move or anything while the pop-up window is active. Naturally, no clicking the CS/FM button and no ccing.

In the end, you'd lose around 2 minutes of the run.

 

If we take HT sed as an example, someone may get sed and realize they have literally no chance of surviving the sed (e.g. you're sed towards the tail while it's alive, the bishop is dead, and your Hero's Will is on cooldown). You purposefully disconnect and then use the method you proposed to get warped back in and voila. I'm afraid this isn't a viable solution unless there really is a way to distinguish between a server lag induced d/c and an intentional one - which is really the underlying objective of this thread.

 

It could also be as easy as a buyer dies by not paying attention and getting pushed into body.. Say bishop resses them but they die again (happens quite often especially to 1/1), or there's no chance of them surviving since theyre on top of body. All they'd have to do is relog and bam, they get warped back in when they legitimately died.. That's the biggest issue with an automatic rewarp option. And what if someone's power gets knocked out? They still d/ced but thats their fault. (Happened to me once - went into krex, halfway thruogh first eye storm knocked my power out. Rip run.) Or their internet cuts out... There's really no way to discern the cause of a d/c in the client i'd imagine. A d/c is a d/c, a log out is a log out. Whether it's the client closing because of gfx issues...power going out...someone logging out intentionally, or the server lagging. That's kind of why we GMs are the mediator to determine whether or not the issue was on the server or on the player. We're not perfect, but we definitely do our best and if we're unsure about something we ask one another.

That said, I'll repeat that we're trying to eliminate all the lag to begin with. If we know the server is going to be laggy for an extended period of time, we put up a notice to warn people boss at their own risk and that they can claim refunds for failed boss runs that happened around that time, while we try to fix the issue. Anyone who was around Christmas of 2014 would remember how bad the lag was from the Snowblower and how we often d/ced every 20 minutes or so. Whole server d/cs, too. We managed to remove that lag, now we're getting server based from DDOS protection so we're upgrading that.