Definition of DATA LOSS (changed from roll back)

Androconium

Merlight wrote: »

Androconium wrote: »

• Your connection fails at some point.
• Your client continues to function.
• The game stopped processing your activity from the time of the connection failure.
• Your client software finally times out and the game dies.
• When you restart the game; and login; and select ANY character: the game picks up from the last transactions that the server logged.

It is not a planned countermeasure; it is a scripted process that runs as part of the character load process.

The problem is that the connection between your desktop client and the server database is cut, for whatever reason.
The data generated by your client software, after the disconnection, but before the client software fails, is LOST.

When you login again, you pick up where there server was at the time of the disconnection.

There is no client-generated data. You cannot make any progress on your character without connection to server. Character movement is kinda client-side, in that the client allows you to walk around freely, sending that information to the server, but not waiting for acknowledgement. The moment you try to use an ability, harvest a resource node or speak with NPC, the client requires response from the server. How do I know? A few months back I was on a really really bad Wi-Fi, and I could run around just fine, but whenever I actually wanted to loot something I had to wait several seconds, sometimes tens of seconds.

The data loss you're observing, is data generated on the server, at some point floating somewhere in the server's memory, but either not making it into the database, or being rolled back for who knows why.

Androconium wrote: »

There is NO technical rollback of any software. For that to occur, as I said earlier, your currently loaded client software image would be overwritten with a previous version, that does not happen here.

Otherwise everyone would downloading new client images; or the server would be offline while the sysadmin were restoring the server image.

Client image is just artwork and UI. There's no character data, inventories and such stored client-side. Only UI/add-on saved variables, and those you can delete any time without losing anything related to your characters' state in game world; you only lose some local configuration settings.

As for sysadmin restoring server image (I assume you mean database), that's probably your biggest confusion about what a rollback means. Rollback in databases is a very common operation happening on transaction level. There's no need for admin intervention, they're coded in the software to handle error conditions. They can rollback individual transactions that went wrong for whatever reason, while the rest of the system continues its function, properly committing transactions pertaining to other clients.

Seri wrote: »

Especially when you factor in that other people in the zone all move, see you move, etc. And generally a bunch of people all in the same zone get disconnected at the same time. That _and_ the fact I got rolled back to a different zone (my house actually) means for that same logic means in my disconnected state I changed zone, and was talking to people in that zone.

There's no way you would see other people move around, and them see you move around, after you lost connection to the server. How could it happen? Game client guessing where they'd move were you still connected?

As for talking to people in zone after disconnection... has ESO client just passed the Turing test?

If you changed zones, looted some stuff and disconnected, and later found yourself in another zone without the loot, it's probably a problem in inter-server communication, where the old zone's server didn't sign you out properly, so from the megaserver's point of view, you shouldn't have been looting stuff in the new zone, and it rolls that back you "cheater"!

(I assume you mean database)

you assume incorrectly; or more specifically: your recalcitrance leads you to an incorrect assumption.

My original intent with this post was to highlight the fact that this behaviour is not only abnormal, but indicative of a more serious problem. Comments suggesting that 'rollback' is both routine and minor are disingenuous.

Merlight

Androconium wrote: »

My original intent with this post was to highlight the fact that this behaviour is not only abnormal, but indicative of a more serious problem.

Your original post was an attempt to school people; you wrote that what they call rollback is data loss, not rollback. Without fully understanding the scope of the term yourself. It was like saying "Why is appendectomy not being described for what it is? i.e. WEIGHT LOSS." Those people you were trying to school were not using the term incorrectly, your interpretation was incorrect.

Androconium wrote: »

Comments suggesting that 'rollback' is both routine and minor are disingenuous.

Yes, rollback of one character's data while hundreds of others keep going is routine and minor.

/thread

DaveMoeDee

Androconium wrote: »

To answer several other questions, this:

Master_Kas wrote: »

I just finished a entire zones skyshards & lorebooks, get logged out + rollback and have to do it all again... xD

is not roll back. No process has been initiated.
What has happened is that ESO has stopped saving your game as it normally does.

So when you are disconnected, you restore from the last good save-point and you lose data AND progress; from the good save-point forward to the point where you were disconnected.
Whatever random 'wins' that you might have had with RNG are gone also.

Given the way that ESO has successfully managed this issue in the past (transaction logging or something similar) to see so many players complaining about this suggests an imminent failure.

Game-play in ESO is real-time.

Whatever you believe an MMO should do, real-time game-play data loss in totally and utterly unacceptable.

Unless you want the client to not be able to recover from very brief connectivity issues, your broad conclusion isn't reasonable.

The problem with what happened to the OP is that when such connectivity problems happen, things like skyshard collection should not be possible. You should not be able to manage inventory, loot, attack things, interact with skyshards, etc while there is a connectivity problem. Any transaction logging has to be server-side, which means the connection needs to be there.

It sounds like the OP wasn't experiencing a disconnect though.

idk

Merlight wrote: »

Androconium wrote: »

My original intent with this post was to highlight the fact that this behaviour is not only abnormal, but indicative of a more serious problem.

Your original post was an attempt to school people; you wrote that what they call rollback is data loss, not rollback. Without fully understanding the scope of the term yourself. It was like saying "Why is appendectomy not being described for what it is? i.e. WEIGHT LOSS." Those people you were trying to school were not using the term incorrectly, your interpretation was incorrect.

Androconium wrote: »

Comments suggesting that 'rollback' is both routine and minor are disingenuous.

Yes, rollback of one character's data while hundreds of others keep going is routine and minor.

/thread

I agree with you on this. It seems disingenuous for OP to suggest this new motif when it is not even mildly apparent in the OP. It seems more that OP was just seeking an argument on the definitions and that is based on the first post and the OP's replies.

Seri

Androconium wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Vandril wrote: »

That would seem to imply that the client continued to function despite being disconnected from the server for over 15 minutes, and that seems really far fetched.

Especially when you factor in that other people in the zone all move, see you move, etc. And generally a bunch of people all in the same zone get disconnected at the same time. That _and_ the fact I got rolled back to a different zone (my house actually) means for that same logic means in my disconnected state I changed zone, and was talking to people in that zone.

Androconium wrote: »

• The disconnections are happening because the server is overloaded (still); and we all complained about login queues, so they turned them off.
• Your rollback 'feature' is NOT an active decision.

I'm not fully convinced server load has a huge amount to do with it. NA never had queues enabled and I was 'rolled back' last night on NA, at around 6am EST (so, dead of the night).

In reality it seems more like a protection mechanism, possibly within the megaserver architecture where changes from that "shard"/zone/instance don't get merged properly into the global state (I assume this happens periodically rather than continuously), thus that transaction is rolled back/discarded/whateveryouwanttocallit. This does make some assumptions on their server architecture, but from my general observations, the issues tend to be zone specific, and when the disconnections/rollbacks/dataloss happens, it's usually a whole bunch of people from that zone at once.

Edit: Expanding on this

The problem is that the connection between your desktop client and the server database is cut, for whatever reason.
The data generated by your client software, after the disconnection, but before the client software fails, is LOST.

A lot of what your client does requires server input. This includes all guild events, chat, inventory, most skills, ultimate, etc. If your server connection is cut, you will not be able to most or all of that stuff. Hence my feeling it's more a consistency issue between your specific server instance and it's database (or when replicating it's local database).

I'll happily accept all the arguments raised here. As I said earlier, I don't have intimate experience with client/server operation.
I do however, have experience in software rollback functions on mainframes, minicomputers (when they existed) and PCs. So I have a specific view on what a rollback is; along with roll-forward of transactions. This is why I am insisting that the fundamental problem here is the disconnections; with data loss being the obvious symptom.

My original intent with this post was to highlight the fact that this behaviour is not only abnormal, but indicative of a more serious problem. Comments suggesting that 'rollback' is both routine and and minor are disingenuous.

Why not both? *shrug*

Rollbacks at a database/software level are very routine from perspective of preventing data integrity issues - which is absolutely a good thing. I don't think anyone is seriously suggesting they're desired though. ZOS has previously had issues where certain zones were susceptible and usually work to resolve the underlying cause.