Take server down before event ends?
Maintenance for the week of April 7:
• [COMPLETE] ESO Store for maintenance – April 09, 2:00PM EDT (18:00 UTC) - 11:00PM EDT (03:00 UTC)
• ESO Store for maintenance – April 10, 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC) - 3:00PM EDT (19:00 UTC)
• [COMPLETE] ESO Store for maintenance – April 09, 2:00PM EDT (18:00 UTC) - 11:00PM EDT (03:00 UTC)
• ESO Store for maintenance – April 10, 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC) - 3:00PM EDT (19:00 UTC)
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hiyde✭✭✭✭✭
✭Silverfaerie wrote: »employee scheduling for what? extending the event? does that really take that long to change the date in a variable??
It took a week and a maintenance to change the in-game countdowns for the 2 extra days. (which, by the way, the countdowns are now wrong again, 4 hours in the other direction), so....yes?
@Hiyde GM/Founder - Bleakrock Barter Co (Trade Guild - PC/NA) | Blackbriar Barter Co (Trade Guild-PC/NA)2 -
Silverfaerie✭✭✭
Budgeting for pixels.
I and others however paid real world money to access a game.
and I didn't?
you are aware that you can only have 12 tickets at any given time, yes? you do remember you only get one pack per day in a box yes? so if you want to end the event with 12 tickets, there is some preparation involved in that. aka - budgeting.
ZOS KNOWS THIS. THEY ARE THE ONES THAT SET THIS UP THAT WAY IN A FIRST PLACE.3 -
Silverfaerie✭✭✭
It took a week and a maintenance to change the in-game countdowns for the 2 extra days. (which, by the way, the countdowns are now wrong again, 4 hours in the other direction), so....yes?
my cooldown is showing as 11 hours and 38 minutes as of right now - which is correct. it took a maintenance. it took a week to HAVE that maintenance, but the change it self took a maintenance, aka taking the game down. which they are already doing. and while we are at it - just extend the thing for everyone.
that said, in my annoyance and publicly working through said annoyance, I just realized... why only PC NA server being taken down? weren't both EU and NA players affected?Edited by Silverfaerie on April 25, 2024 2:25AM0 -
spartaxoxo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Silverfaerie wrote: »
employee scheduling for what? extending the event? does that really take that long to change the date in a variable??
Are you able to just ignore your schedule and come in whenever your boss feels like it? Like I put you on the schedule at 4am but LOL never mind just sit around til noon and come back. Maintenance takes time and expertise and scheduling.
They can probably extend it. But we just don't know that for sure.Edited by spartaxoxo on April 25, 2024 2:27AM1 -
hiyde✭✭✭✭✭
✭Silverfaerie wrote: »
my cooldown is showing as 11 hours and 38 minutes as of right now - which is correct. it took a maintenance. it took a week to HAVE that maintenance, but the change it self took a maintenance, aka taking the game down. which they are already doing. and while we are at it - just extend the thing for everyone.
that said, in my annoyance and publicly working through said annoyance, I just realized... why only PC NA server being taken down? weren't both EU and NA players affected?
Only PC-NA accounts require rollbacks (for the locked out people).
None of the PTS contraband made it to EU servers.@Hiyde GM/Founder - Bleakrock Barter Co (Trade Guild - PC/NA) | Blackbriar Barter Co (Trade Guild-PC/NA)1 -
Lillisia✭✭✭Silverfaerie wrote: »
reasonable solution - have maintenance proceed as planned. EXTEND the EVENT by at least one day. problem? solved.
I would say - maintenance as planned to unlock the locked accounts and extend the event until Mondays maintenance so those who had locked accounts can at least get to experience a bit more of the event and so those who thought they were gonna get their last 3 tickets tomorrow at reset can still get whatever it is that they still want.
Hopefully that would be enough to make everyone happier than they are right now.PC NA. Despite my forum account saying I am new to ESO, I am not. I have been playing since 2015.
Have a good day everyone. Practice smiling and showing others love. It will go a long ways.6 -
TKo_ROUSE✭✭✭✭Silverfaerie wrote: »
reasonable solution - have maintenance proceed as planned. EXTEND the EVENT by at least one day. problem? solved.
@TKo_ROUSE no, I'm not dismissing you - and you know what? maybe they SHOULD have rolled everyone back and then extended the event for everyone. I'm not entirely convinced that they did it to please the players that didn't use pts and so weren't affected by the bug, but that would have also prevented the issue where apparently some people managed to transfer their ill gotten gains away from their main accounts - an issue that may not be solved even now. however - that doesn't change the fact that they are not making EVERYONE unhappy. and they didn't have to. and being excited by getting your account back now - doesn't change that.
Most players whose accounts were affected initially wanted a full rollback but it was fought hard on the forums as unfair. People didn’t want to lose a couple hours of potential progress so they decided to go the route they did. They got a style page or whatever. However they could have done this and just given everyone the style pages extended the event and we would all be chilling. I would have been very happy with that. And I truly think that would have actually been the most fair route.
Whether or not people took money off it was irrelevant. They had to do some sort of roll back for accounts because it messed with peoples accounts cp wise character wise crown store wise. I’m guessing they are still tracking down the money.
But at the end people fought the rollback which would have been simplest. So Zos decides to go a convoluted route. And you’re right in the end it made everyone unhappy anyway. I think any route they did would have been unpopular but they should have ripped the bandaid day one compensated everyone fairly and equally and this whole mess is in the past.Edited by TKo_ROUSE on April 25, 2024 2:33AM4 -
Silverfaerie✭✭✭spartaxoxo wrote: »
Are you able to just ignore your schedule and come in whenever your boss feels like it? Like I put you on the schedule at 4am but LOL never mind just sit around til noon and come back. Maintenance takes time and expertise and scheduling.
They can probably extend it. But we just don't know that for sure.
wrong comparison. I come to work at my usual time, pick up my usual workload, only for my boss to come up and tell me - I need you to prioritize this particular account before you get to the rest of your workload, and so I shuffle my stack of work and do the work on account I was asked to prioritize and finish. but I'm already there to work to begin with.
they have the maintenance already happening. server is already being taken down. employees are already working on it. at that point they are already there - doing one more thing - is pretty much like my boss asking me to do this one account first thing.
(also, I've worked jobs where I was called in at the last moment to cover for someone else and was paid to come in to do so. its not unheard of in US at least, not sure how they handle people calling out sick etc in other countries. here they ask other employees to cover for them, whether it means staying late or coming in outside of your scheduled time - for pay of course)Edited by Silverfaerie on April 25, 2024 2:35AM1 -
Silverfaerie✭✭✭
Most players whose accounts were affected initially wanted a full rollback but it was fought hard on the forums as unfair. People didn’t want to lose a couple hours of potential progress so they decided to go the route they did. They got a style page or whatever. However they could have done this and just given everyone the style pages extended the event and we would all be chilling. I would have been very happy with that. And I truly think that would have actually been the most fair route.
Whether or not people took money off it was irrelevant. They had to do some sort of roll back for accounts because it messed with peoples accounts cp wise character wise crown store wise. I’m guessing they are still tracking down the money.
But at the end people fought the rollback which would have been simplest. So Zos decides to go a convoluted route. And you’re right in the end it made everyone unhappy anyway. I think any route they did would have been unpopular but they should have ripped the bandaid day one compensated everyone fairly and equally and this whole mess is in the past.
At this point I hope this would be a learning experience for them and if/when something like this happens next time - they just roll back the servers, give players a voucher for a motif of their choice or something like that and call it done.0 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭valenwood_vegan wrote: »I've gotta say it again. It's just so profoundly depressing how many players wanna make it "us vs. them" instead of focusing on the party that is actually 100% responsible for every aspect of this debacle.
This wasn't some kind of zero-sum game. We could have all won here, if different decisions had been made. It feels more like we've all lost, and no group of players is responsible for that.
Exactly. It was a series of decisions and statements made by no players that have now put players against players, and is ultimately resulting in most players being unhappy.
I don't see how anybody wins in this situation. And it was 100% avoidable.12 -
spartaxoxo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Silverfaerie wrote: »
wrong comparison. I come to work at my usual time, pick up my usual workload, only for my boss to come up and tell me - I need you to prioritize this particular account before you get to the rest of your workload, and so I shuffle my stack of work and do the work on account I was asked to prioritize and finish. but I'm already there to work to begin with.
they have the maintenance already happening. server is already being taken down. employees are already working on it. at that point they are already there - doing one more thing - is pretty much like my boss asking me to do this one account first thing.
(also, I've worked jobs where I was called in at the last moment to cover for someone else and was paid to come in to do so. its not unheard of in US at least, not sure how they handle people calling out sick etc in other countries. here they ask other employees to cover for them, whether it means staying late or coming in outside of your scheduled time - for pay of course)
No. Not really. You're asking for the employees to either come in 4 hours later (and leave 4 hours later) or to work 12 hours for 8 hours maintenance. Yes, I have also come in outside of time initially scheduled to work. When I'm available. I have also had boss call me in and had to tell them "Sorry, I have an appointment" or whatever.
We don't know the internal logistics behind pushing back this maintenance, so we can't know if it's possible. Only that it would be the best course of action if it is. This would be a super last minute pushback.Edited by spartaxoxo on April 25, 2024 2:53AM3 -
Silverfaerie✭✭✭spartaxoxo wrote: »
No. Not really. You're asking for the employees to either come in 4 hours later (and leave 4 hours later) or to work 12 hours for 8 hours maintenance. Yes, I have also come in outside of time initially scheduled to work. When I'm available. I have also had boss call me in and had to tell them "Sorry, I have an appointment" or whatever.
We don't know the internal logistics behind pushing back this maintenance, so we can't know if it's possible. Only that it would be the best course of action if it is. This would be a super last minute pushback.
implying that extending the event takes... 4... hours????? and yes, its certainly is a super last minute pushback, you are right about THAT. you know... leaving many PC NA players in a lurch like that at the last minute and all.
no matter how you try to spin it - ZOS didn't think any of this stuff through. sigh.... and now I'm too tired to argue anymore. I hope, i REALLY hope ZOS learns from this and does better in a future. I still have that much optimism left.Edited by Silverfaerie on April 25, 2024 2:58AM3 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭If this is ZOS's attempt to make as many players leave the game as possible so they can stop making content for it and focus on their new project, then by golly ZOS, I'd say this event has a been a catastrophic success!
The problem with this line of reasoning is that people will remember this, and other incidents like it, when considering reaching for their wallets for the upcoming projects.9 -
hiyde✭✭✭✭✭
✭Silverfaerie wrote: »
and now I'm too tired to argue anymore.
You had a very solid run. Rest earned.@Hiyde GM/Founder - Bleakrock Barter Co (Trade Guild - PC/NA) | Blackbriar Barter Co (Trade Guild-PC/NA)1 -
DewiMorgan✭✭✭PC-NA were promised "two days" (implying six tickets) of extra event. People trusted this, and budgeted their ticket spend with that expectation in mind. The tickets are already spent. Some people now won't have enough tickets to buy the confetti for the mount.
Because only now, they're told they only get three tickets, because the event will end early, just as the last (4-hour) day starts, rather than waiting four hours for people to get the last tickets first thing in the morning, and for the event to finish.
PC-EU don't get this 3-ticket penalty, and they get 6 extra tickets from two full extra days. They'll also be able to do writs on their characters for another day (another 140 anniversary jubilee boxes).
This downtime feels like it was scheduled mistakenly, by someone who believed the event ended at the 6 EDT refresh, rather than "runs until 10AM EDT".
This event has already been a bit of a bad-taste-leaving mess (low-odds gambling-grind where almost nobody got the five items despite days of grinding; the PTD bug; etc). Ending it unexpectedly early in this way, taking 3 tickets away from all PC-NA players...
... well, I guess it means we'll all have good "I survived the 10th" tales to tell at the 20th!
(Yes, I've ordered the T-shirt from the Bethesda merch store! I should get the hoodie, too!) Edited by DewiMorgan on April 25, 2024 3:41AM5 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭DewiMorgan wrote: »PC-NA were promised "two days" (implying six tickets) of extra event. People trusted this, and budgeted their ticket spend with that expectation in mind. The tickets are already spent. Some people now won't have enough tickets to buy the confetti for the mount.
Yes, people are arguing over semantics, but the bottom line is that they insinuated that we would be getting 2 days worth of rewards, but are only delivering one day's worth.
However, since historically the servers stay up between one and five minutes past the scheduled shut down time, it may be possible to get another gold box and three tickets, if we're lucky. Just be sure to have a daily quest ready to hand in when the clock flips to 3am PST or 6am EST, and when you get the new day notification, try to get the daily completed before they pull the plug.
it's not an ideal situation, but they're the ones that set the times, and it's up to us to figure out how to make it work.1 -
mctaff✭✭✭Let's explore the entirety of this event, and the major plot points we have had along the way.
1) The choice to lead with a grind to get the Style Pages.
On the last day while I write this (yup, still grinding myself), the bosses in Vvardenfell were still getting camped by more than 12 people trying to get the style page. Drop rate was far too low, and there was no achievement-related way to earn them. A significant number of players did not manage to get all of them, and in many cases in my guilds, only or or two. (only a few hours to go, and nearly ten days of farming Vvardenfell World Bosses and I only have one of the two, myself)
In many cases, a person getting their fifth and final Bound Style Page seemed to be followed immediately by a sigh of relief, a handful of unkind words and them logging off almost immediately. Not the effect being aimed for.
The one positive value of them being a Bound Style Page to prevent price gouging was completely mitigated by the inability for people who do not have long periods of time to play being unable to get them. Yes, there was a lot of built-in benefit to the grind with the Anniversary Jubilee Gift boxes, but again that was offset by the inability to purchase or acquire the Bound Style Pages with currency. This was a frustrating and disappointing mechanism to deliver what is supposed to be a celebratory reward.
2) PTS/Live server issue.
Having the PTS go live during the event was an unneeded risk. There was no need to do so except for meeting Launch/Update deadlines, and this was just inviting a demonstration of the The Swiss Cheese model (James Reason, 1990). PTS shouldn't be running during an event, as many of the Stream Team and other folks then have to choose what content they are going to stream. Having a constant, ever changing flow of things for them to provide is far better than releasing several things at once and then making them stick to one or try too hard to cover everything. For the most part there is already plenty of in-game content to spread themselves over, or they have a specific topic they always cover so giving them a handful more to deal with is unnecessary. Unless the intent was to hide the horrendous grind by giving them PTS to broadcast instead, there was no value in having the two things running concurrently. PTS should have gone live the day after the Event, and the Anniversary event moved forward to accommodate.
3) Maintenance taking place during the event at all, and at inopportune timeslots for some.
Maintenance at 0400/0600 PST is not ideal for a lot of players. Whilst this is not "prime time" for the bulk of the US player base, it was absolutely prime time for the entirety of AU/NZ/Oceania/Asia.
Maintenance at several times during the event ended up with guild-run events (often to try to get Bound Style Pages) being cancelled as they fell right on the available play time for those people. The better solution would be to align ALL maintenance periods to fall outside of ESO Events. This could be assisted by having essential maintenance run on days previous to Events, and the day after Events, and a minor delay of maintenance start times in general.
4) Confetti Packs earn rate being insufficient, requiring some careful budgeting on the part of players in order to ensure they had enough to get the mount.
The mathematical process behind figuring out how many days were left, and how many tickets the player needed to allocate to purchasing does not seem especially taxing, but a significant amount of planning was required to combine the two 'income streams' and was entirely unneeded. Many players purchased more than required due to calculation errors, and players who were unable to log in due to circumstances beyond their control for any number of days faced a linear progression problem of missing out on a pack AND the tickets required to purchase them. Most players would agree this wasn't adding any value or "fun".
5) Extension of the event not being properly promulgated to the player base.
The forums is absolutely a good way to notify a proportion of the *engaged* community of extensions, but there is a large portion of the players who do not check the forums and only heard about the Event extension through word-of-mouth/zone chat which is not a reliable source of information. There was no announcement pushed through the Launcher, and the Event timer did not update until the original timer for the Event had expired - even though the servers were down for maintenance not long after the extension was announced. Three missed opportunities to engage with and clearly establish intent to the player base were not utilised (i.e. In Game Mail, Launcher notification, and adjusting the event timer)
This also applied to the second round of maintenance scheduled for tonight - people were counting on getting up early to get their last packs/tickets, and they'd have done so only to find the servers offline.
6) Event Extension then making confetti packs that were previously purchased by players in order to budget for the mount becoming an immediate waste of event tickets.
Many players now have one or more of these sitting in an inventory and no clear idea of if they will be converted back into Event Tickets to recoup the loss. The extension caused players to have to recalculate number of packs/tickets earned, introducing a further opportunity for error.
7) Promised extension of the event then being interrupted by further maintenance.
The affected players that lost playtime for the majority of a day, were promised an extension only to find it was truncated by more of the same thing that caused the problem in the first place - a maintenance period. Players counting on the play time to get more event tickets or confetti packs were further inconvenienced, and even more calculation errors introduced. This is the third goal-post-moving issue - and the second done through poor post-incident decision making.
8) Locked out players have no way of partaking in the event for a large proportion at all.
Remarkably, they have been offered a Daily Login reward but not much else other than an ESO Plus bump {edit: All expected daily rewards given, but still some questions over tickets they could have spent on past rewards, and the normal loot from purple boxes exists}. As a reminder, these are the players that were going out of their way to spend time working on the PTS, too (Code, for example, is a prolific Add-On developer). They have missed out on a large number of Event tickets, and the ability to spend them wisely, and the mount in question. They have missed out on countless Anniversary boxes and the rewards inside them.
Note: Players don't necessarily want "those responsible to be sacked" or some ultimately insignificant action to them. What they want is for their money and time to be valued. Most of us have a combination of work, school, family, personal health, commitments and other requirements placed on their time, much of this seems to have been lost on ZOS. This should be learned from. Events and celebrations should be fun and engaging, and recognise the players and why they play - fun, escapism, friendly competition, all those things, and not require them to spend endless hours trying to get something they want and ultimately not get it.
Going forward, ZOS should be doing the following:
a) Forward planning to prevent PTS uptimes, Events, Server Maintenance and other game-related evolutions from overlapping. All essential maintenance to be scheduled before and after in-game events. One calendar needs to be held by one business unit, and a conversation had between stakeholders to prioritise when certain things should happen. If this is already the case, it is clearly not working and the process needs to be looked at for improvement.
b) Provisional/temporary six month period for maintenance start times to push back by two to three hours. This would impact Central Asia more than the NA-focused AU/NZ/Oceania/Eastern Asia player base, and those players have the EU servers to gravitate to (they are geographically closer). This would allow for late-night gamers in the US to stay on longer and the smaller player-base in AU/NZ to be impacted a lot less. The player metrics can be studied, and any measurable impact can be then weighed up after the temporary change to see if there is any benefit.
c) A commitment to avoiding "grind" as a reward gate. Easily obtainable achievements or evolutions (trials, dungeons, a specific number of in-game completions of incursions), or other trackable numbers are a far better way of actually engaging the players.
d) A commitment to using far better ways of communicating with the player base, not just the Forum Community; especially for publishing planned maintenance, outages and other important notices. The Launcher should absolutely be prioritising these notices.
e) Fixes/adjustments for affected players [best done at an easily communicated time, such as U42 going live, or something] :
(i) Current Confetti Packs owned by players who have the achievement to convert to a new item, and able to be subsequently exchanged for 3 Event Tickets at the Event Merchant Assistant.
(ii) Players who have not got the mount achievement, have all unconsumed Confetti Packs removed from their inventory. They are then awarded Golden Anniversary Gift boxes equal to the number of confetti packs left remaining on the achievement. This will adjust all players who have attempted the achievement in some way to receive the right number of packs to get the mount, and also a significant start to the missing rewards from being unable to play.
f) A proper engagement with the affected players locked out for ways to compensate the loss of in game rewards.
This doesn't solve everything, but it's going to address a lot of the issues to start with - and should be a learning point for the business model being used within ZOS.Edited by mctaff on April 25, 2024 12:27PM21 -
Ilsabet✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I'm mostly glad (and lucky) that I happened to see a Twitter post about this maintenance before I went to bed. I'd be actively irritated if I woke up tomorrow morning and discovered that I'd been locked out of getting the horse after carefully planning out my confetti acquisitions this entire convoluted event.
I'm glad the lockout nightmare seems to be coming to an end, but this is an undeniably awful way to schedule things.Ilsabet Menard - DC Breton Nightblade archer - Savior of Pretty Much Everything, Grand Overlord & Empress Nubcakes
My characters and their overly elaborate backstories
Ilsabet's Headcanon
The Adventures of Torbyrn Windchaser - Breaking the Ice & Ashes to Ashes
Bastian's Tattoos: An Inaccurate Headcanon
PC NA20 -
Gorø✭✭✭kumenit_taeynav wrote: »
arent the players whove been locked out already getting a whopping 16k endeavours, the jubilee horse, AND literally all the replica style pages? can those players not just sit tight for a couple more hours so everyone else on pcna can get their tickets?
No??
You guys got the event extended, we've been locked away for more than a week (in fact, nearly 2 weeks).
If we add in, 4 hours before the maintenance starts, that means for those who are locked and play on EU, will be free at midnight.
Should have farmed your stuff earlier and as of your tickets, should have counted the 6 tickets from the 2 days extended period as a bonus.
Side edit: even those who are not locked just want for this bunoutfest of an event to endEdited by Gorø on April 25, 2024 5:40AM4 -
xclassgaming✭✭✭✭✭
✭Dagoth_Rac wrote: »Restore the locked accounts tomorrow
NO. We want to get back in ASAP. I do NOT WANT TO WAIT another DAY!Give us clannfear mounts!2 -
MreeBiPolar✭✭✭✭✭... Just extend the event till the actual next reset, and make all further events start and end on reset times?
SO MUCH confusion will just go away...8 -
Carcamongus✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Oh, humm, well, I guess someone had to say it eventually: I do hope everything works fine with the rollback and account restorations. The mood's sour enough as it is, the last thing we need is for something else to break.
*knocks on wood*Imperial DK and Necro tank. PC/NA
"Nothing is so bad that it can't get any worse." (Brazilian saying)5 -
MasterSpatula✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Anyone who thinks screwing over a bunch of people on purpose helps make up for screwing over a bunch of people on accident, well, I just don't even know what to say to that. There's not supposed to be any children here,"A probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility." - Aristotle10 -
The maintenance starts in less than 10 minutes. Now all we can hope for is for the servers not to blow up during this time.0
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Blood_again✭✭✭✭✭Well, it was just the most massive cake-eating meeting I've ever seen
We have the whole 35 seconds3 -
merevie✭✭✭✭✭
mass server cake spamming = tickets for all
& I recognize the mood in the room
from NW Sept 22
Pray nothing else goes wrong.Edited by merevie on April 25, 2024 10:06AM0 -
master_vanargand✭✭✭✭✭
✭I have 24 pieces, but if the event ends due to maintenance, I won't be able to get the 25th piece.
Is it appropriate for the 10th anniversary to punish the many players who played the event in a planned manner?7 -
BretonMage✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I feel really sorry for those with locked out accounts who essentially missed out on half the event tbh. I agree the event should be extended for at least a day after their accounts are restored.Carcamongus wrote: »Oh, humm, well, I guess someone had to say it eventually: I do hope everything works fine with the rollback and account restorations. The mood's sour enough as it is, the last thing we need is for something else to break.
*knocks on wood*
Hmmmm. I hope it wasn't necessary to take a screenshot of our inventory. *Crosses fingers*3 -
Anachronian✭✭✭I'm guessing equipped items and inventory in theory should be fine for the rollback, as well as bank and crafting bag, but other aspects might depend on how they rolled back any changes from the PTS, like unlocks from crown store.
Guild trades, mail, and other aspects might be more complicated since those are potentially between multiple accounts and systems that could now be out of synch.1