Skill Line XP Constantly being Deleted. Unacceptable/Pathetic ZoS.

Ruebs

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Ruebs wrote: »

I'm not sure why My OP got so many "LOL's" .
I raised a legitimate problem and refrained from being rude and immature throughout. (Which was difficult)
I guess fan boys are patrolling these forums with rock hard c##ks, ready to pounce on anyone who says a bad word about their precious game...

Yes, this is the case. The fanboys are out patrolling with cursor poised above the L-spot.

Hey look^! Two of them just attacked your post! lol

Leeric

Got level 49 on heavy armor 3 times now....

elowan

First off, while I haven't seen this bug on any of my characters yet, I completely sympathize with you guys. It would be spectacularly annoying to appear to level up, only to have the level "rolled back," particularly more than once.

I also think the devs silence / totally blase response is unacceptable, even for what they claim is a completely cosmetic. This bug is causing real frustration with real players, even if it's not a permanent blight on their character.

That said, I think some of y'all are misinterpreting the explanation ZoS gave us on the first page:

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

To explain a little more in depth, both the client and the server independently go through the routine of updating your skill experience. In some fairly rare cases they can get slightly out of sync—sometimes you’re actually earning slightly more than it looks like, sometimes slightly less.

Several posters have asked things like "will we get our XP back when the bug is fixed?," implying that there is lost XP involved here. I just don't think it's the case.

My interpretation of the explanation above is as follows: your CLIENT is displaying a higher XP gain than what is really going on server-side. As such, the client is showing you as "hitting a level" (or several levels), significantly before you're "really" hitting it, according to the server.

Example:

Say you log in and start at 1/100,000xp at level 47 of Duel-Wield. Go do a bunch of grinding / farming/ what have you, and your skill screen shows you at 50,000/100,000xp. What ZoS is saying is that in reality you are (just as a hypothetical example) somewhere less than that, say at 20,000/100,000.

If you keep whacking away, and hit the magical 100,000/100,000, your client reports to you that you've leveled up to level 48 in Duel-Wield, and you now are at 1/150,000 (towards level 49). But because you're experiencing this bug, the client is wrong. You're nowhere near level 48, you're only at 40,000/100,000 in level 47 (and therefore should not have received the "level up"). If you extrapolate this kind of error over a long enough session, you could end up appearing to gain multiple levels when you're not "really" doing so, according to the server.

The real test of this would be as follows: Check your exact xp number when you first log in (assuming it's completely syched / reset). Do some leveling / grinding of your skill, mark down your new skill xp number. At this point, you can figure out the difference between your starting xp and the new (non-reset) xp. This is the XP your CLIENT thinks you gained.

Zone, wayshrine, log off, whatever you need to do to resynch the xp. Check the new (presumably lower, if you're having this bug) xp. The difference between the very first XP number and the new one is the xp you actually gained according to the server.

As a final note, the kinds of discrepancies people are reporting would suggest that something is seriously wrong with how the client and the server are tracking XP, and ZoS should respond asap.

That said, if my interpretation is right, they're not stealing your XP, you're instead being lied to about how much you're gaining in the first place.

Probitas

3 times according to one player. How can a game make that same mistake 3 times? That's more than just a glitch.

elowan

Probitas wrote: »

3 times according to one player. How can a game make that same mistake 3 times? That's more than just a glitch.

Pretty clearly, this is an issue introduced in 1.4, or one of the other smaller patches since then. It's not that the game randomly freaked out multiple times on one player - that player has this bug, and therefore experiences it basically every time they play (or maybe under certain circumstances -- don't think any of us have a clear idea of what the mechanics are). When you zone / or log out, the xp seems to reset to the server-side number - so each instance is not so much a single bizarre mistake, but a whole series of client errors followed by server side return-to-reality resets.

Ruebs

elowan wrote: »

First off, while I haven't seen this bug on any of my characters yet, I completely sympathize with you guys. It would be spectacularly annoying to appear to level up, only to have the level "rolled back," particularly more than once.

I also think the devs silence / totally blase response is unacceptable, even for what they claim is a completely cosmetic. This bug is causing real frustration with real players, even if it's not a permanent blight on their character.

That said, I think some of y'all are misinterpreting the explanation ZoS gave us on the first page:

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

To explain a little more in depth, both the client and the server independently go through the routine of updating your skill experience. In some fairly rare cases they can get slightly out of sync—sometimes you’re actually earning slightly more than it looks like, sometimes slightly less.

Several posters have asked things like "will we get our XP back when the bug is fixed?," implying that there is lost XP involved here. I just don't think it's the case.

My interpretation of the explanation above is as follows: your CLIENT is displaying a higher XP gain than what is really going on server-side. As such, the client is showing you as "hitting a level" (or several levels), significantly before you're "really" hitting it, according to the server.

Example:

Say you log in and start at 1/100,000xp at level 47 of Duel-Wield. Go do a bunch of grinding / farming/ what have you, and your skill screen shows you at 50,000/100,000xp. What ZoS is saying is that in reality you are (just as a hypothetical example) somewhere less than that, say at 20,000/100,000.

If you keep whacking away, and hit the magical 100,000/100,000, your client reports to you that you've leveled up to level 48 in Duel-Wield, and you now are at 1/150,000 (towards level 49). But because you're experiencing this bug, the client is wrong. You're nowhere near level 48, you're only at 40,000/100,000 in level 47 (and therefore should not have received the "level up"). If you extrapolate this kind of error over a long enough session, you could end up appearing to gain multiple levels when you're not "really" doing so, according to the server.

The real test of this would be as follows: Check your exact xp number when you first log in (assuming it's completely syched / reset). Do some leveling / grinding of your skill, mark down your new skill xp number. At this point, you can figure out the difference between your starting xp and the new (non-reset) xp. This is the XP your CLIENT thinks you gained.

Zone, wayshrine, log off, whatever you need to do to resynch the xp. Check the new (presumably lower, if you're having this bug) xp. The difference between the very first XP number and the new one is the xp you actually gained according to the server.

As a final note, the kinds of discrepancies people are reporting would suggest that something is seriously wrong with how the client and the server are tracking XP, and ZoS should respond asap.

That said, if my interpretation is right, they're not stealing your XP, you're instead being lied to about how much you're gaining in the first place.

This is a much clearer explanation. Thank you very much for this.

That being said, I not so sure you're 100% correct. The reason a say this is: the total Skill Line XP as shown skill's Tab, consistently reverts to EXACTLY the same numerical value, as a previous Save/Checkpoint.

For example, say i enter Spellscar and my DW XP (as shown in the Skills tab) is 100,000. I'll grind it to 150,000 gaining several levels. When i leave that zone/log out My XP is reverted back to exactly 100,000. ALL XP gains are lost. Hence i find it hard to believe this is a UI error.

jeevin

elowan wrote: »

Probitas wrote: »

3 times according to one player. How can a game make that same mistake 3 times? That's more than just a glitch.

Pretty clearly, this is an issue introduced in 1.4, or one of the other smaller patches since then. It's not that the game randomly freaked out multiple times on one player - that player has this bug, and therefore experiences it basically every time they play (or maybe under certain circumstances -- don't think any of us have a clear idea of what the mechanics are). When you zone / or log out, the xp seems to reset to the server-side number - so each instance is not so much a single bizarre mistake, but a whole series of client errors followed by server side return-to-reality resets.

I actually went back to level 40 bow a total of five times. I wish I could agree that it resets to server numbers when I log out but the fact that the numbers can go forward or backward, I'm just not convinced.
The biggest problem a player may face is the potential to lose skill points. From my experience so long as I'm careful when I spend them I have no other problems with this bug. It's annoying and makes me question the already questionable quality of the game. Thats it.

Elsonso

Ruebs wrote: »

That being said, I not so sure you're 100% correct. The reason a say this is: the total Skill Line XP as shown skill's Tab, consistently reverts to EXACTLY the same numerical value, as a previous Save/Checkpoint.

For example, say i enter Spellscar and my DW XP (as shown in the Skills tab) is 100,000. I'll grind it to 150,000 gaining several levels. When i leave that zone/log out My XP is reverted back to exactly 100,000. ALL XP gains are lost. Hence i find it hard to believe this is a UI error.

Well, your example really does not rule out a UI error for a couple of reasons. One is that your example starts too late and ends too soon. The other is that I think that the "UI" means something different than what we are assuming.

If the client is actually out of sync with the server, and the server is authoritative, then any numbers that you see on the client are suspect. You can try to derive meaning from how they change, and maybe you can draw a pattern, but you have to assume that the numbers are a lie.

The client is probably only telling the truth occasionally, after the server has updated the numbers. In that instant, and until the client sees the need to change the numbers, the client is telling the truth.

Without access to what the server thinks, your example has to start and end with one of these events in order to demonstrate that it is, or is not, the UI.

The most reliable way that I can think of to force one of these events is to log into the game. This is the one time we can be reasonably sure that the server will always update the client.

From my perspective, the only way to prove that the server is not tracking XP properly is to catch it in a situation where XP is earned but not recorded by the server. Checking the UI manually can be done, but an add on can probably detect this faster and easier. The play session must be short. Log in, quickly earn some skill XP, immediately log out. Next time you log in, the skill XP should be different when compared to the start of the previous session. Repeat until it fails.

The real way to tell is to be able to monitor the client and server at the same time, which we cannot do. I am not even sure that they can do it.

istateres

Totally agree. If the server is "truth" and we can only know this truth through the UI, and the UI is not correctly giving us "truth"; then we know NOTHING and can trust nothing about our characters.

Imagine your bank saying that sometimes their web client shows you have more money in your account than you actually do. Don't worry, because behind the scenes they are keeping track correctly. Oh, and they will not let you look at the actual numbers. Oh, and if this is a bug, they aren't going to fix it quickly or acknolgedge its important. Would you be thinking of switching banks?

Probitas

Damn straight I would, because the reverse could also occur, and a failure to record or document a known issue that could essentially cause theft in real terms (aka fraud) isn't something reputable companies would engage in. Mind you I find it hard to use the term bank and reputable in the same sentence without pointing out American stock fraud and general malaise in the system.

Is it possible that game companies could engage in similar behavior? Sure, though I don't know what the goal would be. Dishonesty I get, see Turbine/WB and the current lawsuit working it's way through the court systems (some companies will do anything to capitalize an IP). But other than continuing to attempt to keep people paying for mismanagement and just plain bad design that they have no desire to fix, I can't imagine what it could be. And why would a company release product they don't intend to really polish and fix? Maybe my experience with Turbine has made me a bit too cynical.

Elsonso

Because game XP is obviously as important as real world money, I can do nothing but agree.

starkerealm

Ruebs wrote: »

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Ruebs wrote: »

I'm not sure why My OP got so many "LOL's" .
I raised a legitimate problem and refrained from being rude and immature throughout. (Which was difficult)
I guess fan boys are patrolling these forums with rock hard c##ks, ready to pounce on anyone who says a bad word about their precious game...

Yes, this is the case. The fanboys are out patrolling with cursor poised above the L-spot.

Hey look^! Two of them just attacked your post! lol

No, I actually laughed at the "L-spot" line.

I'm also getting this on at least one of my characters, so it's not some kind of willful apathy. Though, to be fair, after the deterioration bug, this is small potatoes. It's annoying, but I can live with it.

Probitas

lordrichter wrote: »

Because game XP is obviously as important as real world money, I can do nothing but agree.

You are quite correct to point out that people should not equate bad software with something like real money loss. Though I suppose since we do pay for access there is money going in one direction, and broken product coming back. So in that sense we are talking about real money.

I think that's why a lot of newer games go right to f2p. Not because they need it to launch, but because it gives them the largest access to the most wallets out there. If you intend to run a scam (not saying this is actually the case for this company), you have to figure some people will see right through it and never partake. So the best way to hedge is to allow as large a number of people as possible to become 'marks', gaining you the most money. And with the way online games really don't have a lot of consumer protection, particularly in the US, well, you can see where I'm going with this. Like I've said elsewhere, EB and to a larger degree Turbine have left me very cynical.

Do I think Z intended to scam? No. Makes no sense. Do I think they intended to release product they knew to be broken? Yes, Hell yes even. Seems to be the way online companies release product these days, busted and expecting to get paid to use it while busted. And too many players are willing to accept that business model, and defend it even. Same way people vote against their own self interest. The only people that could rationally argue against better business methods are those that benefit FROM the current method, the business and their employees (and investors).

I do know this game cannot continue in it's current state for much longer and be successful, not without major changes. And those cost money, and I don't know if enough people remain subbed to make that money available to pay for the changes required. I also know that I'm no longer willing to pay and hope changes are made. I don't give companies that benefit of the doubt anymore. If the only way to get changes are to pay for a game that I can't use fully due to bad design and broken skill mechanics, for however long that takes, then I'd truly be a sucker to continue to pay for it when there is no communication stating they know what is wrong, and what steps are being taken to fix it, or even admit they made mistakes in implementing some of the bad things, like the guild only economic model.

Which is why they should have spent more time polishing and testing. That's the problem with investors, they want returns now, so players pay for it with dealing with shoddy product, which is why most new games don't succeed; players aren't not willing to play online games, they are just being driven away by the very companies dependent on them to survive. Investors are important, but paying customers should have priority. Without them, you have no business at all. Of course that assumes you are actually in it because you believe in what you are doing, and not just looking to flip a product for a quick buck.

Rune_Relic

Ruebs wrote: »

elowan wrote: »

First off, while I haven't seen this bug on any of my characters yet, I completely sympathize with you guys. It would be spectacularly annoying to appear to level up, only to have the level "rolled back," particularly more than once.

I also think the devs silence / totally blase response is unacceptable, even for what they claim is a completely cosmetic. This bug is causing real frustration with real players, even if it's not a permanent blight on their character.

That said, I think some of y'all are misinterpreting the explanation ZoS gave us on the first page:

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

To explain a little more in depth, both the client and the server independently go through the routine of updating your skill experience. In some fairly rare cases they can get slightly out of sync—sometimes you’re actually earning slightly more than it looks like, sometimes slightly less.

Several posters have asked things like "will we get our XP back when the bug is fixed?," implying that there is lost XP involved here. I just don't think it's the case.

My interpretation of the explanation above is as follows: your CLIENT is displaying a higher XP gain than what is really going on server-side. As such, the client is showing you as "hitting a level" (or several levels), significantly before you're "really" hitting it, according to the server.

Example:

Say you log in and start at 1/100,000xp at level 47 of Duel-Wield. Go do a bunch of grinding / farming/ what have you, and your skill screen shows you at 50,000/100,000xp. What ZoS is saying is that in reality you are (just as a hypothetical example) somewhere less than that, say at 20,000/100,000.

If you keep whacking away, and hit the magical 100,000/100,000, your client reports to you that you've leveled up to level 48 in Duel-Wield, and you now are at 1/150,000 (towards level 49). But because you're experiencing this bug, the client is wrong. You're nowhere near level 48, you're only at 40,000/100,000 in level 47 (and therefore should not have received the "level up"). If you extrapolate this kind of error over a long enough session, you could end up appearing to gain multiple levels when you're not "really" doing so, according to the server.

The real test of this would be as follows: Check your exact xp number when you first log in (assuming it's completely syched / reset). Do some leveling / grinding of your skill, mark down your new skill xp number. At this point, you can figure out the difference between your starting xp and the new (non-reset) xp. This is the XP your CLIENT thinks you gained.

Zone, wayshrine, log off, whatever you need to do to resynch the xp. Check the new (presumably lower, if you're having this bug) xp. The difference between the very first XP number and the new one is the xp you actually gained according to the server.

As a final note, the kinds of discrepancies people are reporting would suggest that something is seriously wrong with how the client and the server are tracking XP, and ZoS should respond asap.

That said, if my interpretation is right, they're not stealing your XP, you're instead being lied to about how much you're gaining in the first place.

This is a much clearer explanation. Thank you very much for this.

That being said, I not so sure you're 100% correct. The reason a say this is: the total Skill Line XP as shown skill's Tab, consistently reverts to EXACTLY the same numerical value, as a previous Save/Checkpoint.

For example, say i enter Spellscar and my DW XP (as shown in the Skills tab) is 100,000. I'll grind it to 150,000 gaining several levels. When i leave that zone/log out My XP is reverted back to exactly 100,000. ALL XP gains are lost. Hence i find it hard to believe this is a UI error.

That sounds like a corrupted variable or something.
So its using the last know good data kind of thing.

Ruebs

lordrichter wrote: »

Ruebs wrote: »

That being said, I not so sure you're 100% correct. The reason a say this is: the total Skill Line XP as shown skill's Tab, consistently reverts to EXACTLY the same numerical value, as a previous Save/Checkpoint.

For example, say i enter Spellscar and my DW XP (as shown in the Skills tab) is 100,000. I'll grind it to 150,000 gaining several levels. When i leave that zone/log out My XP is reverted back to exactly 100,000. ALL XP gains are lost. Hence i find it hard to believe this is a UI error.

Well, your example really does not rule out a UI error for a couple of reasons. One is that your example starts too late and ends too soon. The other is that I think that the "UI" means something different than what we are assuming.

If the client is actually out of sync with the server, and the server is authoritative, then any numbers that you see on the client are suspect. You can try to derive meaning from how they change, and maybe you can draw a pattern, but you have to assume that the numbers are a lie.

The client is probably only telling the truth occasionally, after the server has updated the numbers. In that instant, and until the client sees the need to change the numbers, the client is telling the truth.

Without access to what the server thinks, your example has to start and end with one of these events in order to demonstrate that it is, or is not, the UI.

The most reliable way that I can think of to force one of these events is to log into the game. This is the one time we can be reasonably sure that the server will always update the client.

From my perspective, the only way to prove that the server is not tracking XP properly is to catch it in a situation where XP is earned but not recorded by the server. Checking the UI manually can be done, but an add on can probably detect this faster and easier. The play session must be short. Log in, quickly earn some skill XP, immediately log out. Next time you log in, the skill XP should be different when compared to the start of the previous session. Repeat until it fails.

The real way to tell is to be able to monitor the client and server at the same time, which we cannot do. I am not even sure that they can do it.

I wont argue with you, I know next to nothing about coding and the like.

Server side or not, the fact I've now reached lvl 47 Duel Weild (the 'error' has not effected me for several days) and still not received the 'lost' XP means this can't be simply passed off as a nonchalant UI error, even if it is.
Be it cosmetic or not, it's impacting the game in a BIG way.

Holycannoli

So basically if I want to start playing this game again I shouldn't.

Guess I'll stay away for another month.

starkerealm

Holycannoli wrote: »

So basically if I want to start playing this game again I shouldn't.

Guess I'll stay away for another month.

I'm losing a chunk of my earned bow XP, but not all of it. This no advancement issue sounds like it might, technically, be unrelated.

But, you know, insulting the devs in the topic title is sure to get them to hop right on this. So no worries, come on in, the water's fine. It'll be fixed before dinner; I'm sure.

Holycannoli

But the thing is my highest level character is only 31. I have a lot of leveling to do which means a lot of skill points to spend, and that seems risky to do. It's risky enough that CS is recommending we don't do it.

So why bother playing before it's fixed? It's not like there's anything else for me to do in game.

starkerealm

Holycannoli wrote: »

But the thing is my highest level character is only 31. I have a lot of leveling to do which means a lot of skill points to spend, and that seems risky to do. It's risky enough that CS is recommending we don't do it.

So why bother playing before it's fixed? It's not like there's anything else for me to do in game.

So far as I know, it doesn't affect class or guild skill lines, only weapons and (maybe) armor.

The best suggestion is only buy skills in those lines after you zone or after you've logged in. Also, keep track, if your skills are getting completely reset, tell customer service about it. That is not a UI issue, and really needs to be addressed separately.

kewl

jeevin wrote: »

It's annoying and makes me question the already questionable quality of the game. Thats it.

Yep, that is the issue here. How long can a customer pay for a product that may or may not work as intended; on any given day. Will subscribers continue support a company they don't trust? Time will tell.

starkerealm

I just noticed something weird... I've got a character that's... probably bugged with this.

They're a VR3, when I was running VR2 content (I still haven't finished Stormhaven) I was seeing some rollback, and I dropped into VR1 content to test it with some grinding...

But, now that I'm doing VR3 content in Rivenspire, I'm not seeing any roll back at all, even when jumping in and out of the zone.

I wonder if there's supposed to be scaling with enemies at a lower level than you for weapon XP (Possibly to close the cold harbour farming), but it's not making it's way to the UI.

EDIT: Nevermind, next piece of XP I got after posting caused a rollback.

Christianm55

I've hit lvl 28 in the assassination skill line for the 3rd time now! It's definitely putting me off playing
It seems to be only this skill line though. Everything other one is working fine it seems
Please fix this, I'm fairly sure it's not a UI error!

Ruebs

starkerealm wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

But, you know, insulting the devs in the topic title is sure to get them to hop right on this. So no worries, come on in, the water's fine. It'll be fixed before dinner; I'm sure.

Indeed.
Also partly frustration. I wont deny I was 'ropable' when it happened for a third time that day. And rightfully so, If you ask me.

Leeric

Once I /bug it, my xp returned I had to level to 49 3 times on heavy armor. The next day I was a smidge from 50. Sooo I think if you /bug they might add your values back in.

Soulshine

Seems like this bug is similar to the zone quest achievements one we had to put up with, in which they insisted it was "just a visual error" yet I had to go back and redo a large amount of quests I had already done in several zones to get the achievment again, so in a sense this is a reapeat of the same type of data problem we have put up with before, not to metion that they keep sticking to the same explanation for it yet the impact of the problem is not what they claim.

I have a number of alts I have been playing lately and have not notived if this is occurring, but I do know if I catch that it is on one of them, I will not be playing them until this gets corrected.

bunnytrix

This is affecting all class skill lines too. I have noticed resets of class xp on 3 characters. This xp is gone for good and you have to re- level it. Not a UI issue.
Pure silence again from Zeni on this. Another issue they obviously hoping we will forget about and it will go away.

heyguyslol

bunnytrix wrote: »

This is affecting all class skill lines too. I have noticed resets of class xp on 3 characters. This xp is gone for good and you have to re- level it. Not a UI issue.
Pure silence again from Zeni on this. Another issue they obviously hoping we will forget about and it will go away.

They will most likely fix it at some point since it's not related to pvp. How long? Who knows but hey your $15 a month is greatly appreciated as it helps feed and shelter ppl who can't or won't do their job, lol. Man this company gets better and better with each patch. I don't know about the rest of u but I defiantly look forward to buying games made by these developers in the future.

Elsonso

They have already said they are investigating for the purpose of making a fix.

starkerealm

heyguyslol wrote: »

I don't know about the rest of u but I defiantly look forward to buying games made by these developers in the future.

"Defiantly?" Or did you mean "definitely?" I mean... either one could work...

Sablemane

I've been bug reporting this since 1.4 I believe. As an altoholic I keep paper logs of all my toons for inventory management purposes mainly, but also to keep track of character progression. Nerd you say? Perhaps. This includes skill line leveling. I update this log religiously and as soon as I level anything. The first time this happened to me i thought I made an error in the log. Then I noted the same skill line leveling again as many have experienced. Earthen Heart (31/32), Daedric Summoning (11/12) and Siphoning are my issues.

I finally progressed to 33 in Earthen Heart after spending a skill point on an active. I have not experienced any skill point loss so far. Good to see others are reporting now.