ZOS, do NOT lie to me

DoofusMax · July 5

Getting and staying connected to the PC NA servers has been a bit of an issue today. No idea why and not pointing any fingers here because my ISP has been particularly flaky today, too. I logged out with a character around 2pm (local time) and was unable to log in with another for some reason. Not huge deal because I had guests coming over and needed to get the grill going anyway; it just delayed a couple of sets of daily crafting writs which weren't going to disappear until server reset. Guests came, grill cooked, food and beverages were consumed, and a good time was had by all. Then I came back to do those writs about four or five hours later. When trying to log in with the next character, I was presented with the message that my account was already logged in. Regardless of the truth condition of the error message, no reading of that error message looks good for ZOS.

If true, then it means that the character who logged out around 2pm (local time) was still logged in. Keep in mind that I couldn't connect to log in a different character, so I went off to do grilling instead, and apparently remained logged in for those four or five hours while a good time was being had with other activities. Remember that I'm assuming the "true" condition, not that it's actually the case.

If false, then it means that the game just flat out lied to me. There is no assumption which can mitigate a false statement. If it's false, then that's just a bald-faced lie.

If the game threw out something as an attempt to explain a failure to connect without having proper truth conditions to generate the message, then that is also not a good look. I'd refer you to the late Harry Frankfurter's treatise "On BS" (let's keep it G or PG). It's a very worthwhile read, but the thumbnail version is that a statement is BS when it is made without regard to its truth or falsity but only with regard to its effect on the statement's audience.The liar at least has some regard for the truth because the lie attempts to conceal it, but the BS'er uses whatever gets them the desired effect from the audience.

So which is it: truth (logged in for 4+ hours), lie, or BS? I had nothing but an easily replace food buff running on the character who logged out at 2, so there is no horrendously bad effect if the error message were true (unlike the prior character who logged out with a ticking 150% XP buff and 100% wayshrine discounts which still had about 50 minutes to run). But I can guarantee that you're not gaining that desired player trust with lies or BS.

Nestor · July 5

The game thinking you are still logged in can happen if you get kicked for network issues or local client issues. There is some information that is gathered at game shut down by ZOS. Try a reboot of your system, that should clear out the sludge.

Also, even under good conditions I have had to "bang my head against the login gate" a few times before the server would realize I was not really there.

DoofusMax · July 5

Thanks for the suggestions, but the error cleared itself. It's mostly that particular "this account is already logged in" error that set my teeth on edge. The endless chain of "an unknown error occurred" or "lost lobby connection" or whatever are frustrating, but "something didn't work right and we don't know what it is or why it happened" is at least a truthful message. It's not particularly helpful, but it's at least truthful.

virtus753 · July 5

DoofusMax wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestions, but the error cleared itself. It's mostly that particular "this account is already logged in" error that set my teeth on edge. The endless chain of "an unknown error occurred" or "lost lobby connection" or whatever are frustrating, but "something didn't work right and we don't know what it is or why it happened" is at least a truthful message. It's not particularly helpful, but it's at least truthful.

That first error message is actually a really interesting thing to hear exists.

Sometimes I have logged into alt accounts to trade with my main (as permitted by ZOS). A handful of times I have forgotten to switch the account name (tells you how rarely I do this, and also speaks to a distinct Lack of Coffee), and I end up signing into my main account again.

I do not get any sort of error message about already being connected. The game just insta-boots me back to the login screen on both instances of the client. I am then locked out of signing back in for a couple of minutes while the game registers I’m not logged in anymore. 2-3 minutes later I get back in on my main and I make sure to sign in with the alt account properly next time.

So that error message about already being logged in may be showing up for you where it isn’t true, but it is definitely not being used in cases where I know it is true.

Sounds like ZOS really needs to have a look at when it’s applying versus when it should be applying.

DoofusMax · July 5

I've seen that particular message before, but it has always been in the context of getting booted or an otherwise unexpected disconnect and it has always cleared itself within a minute or two. The unpleasant surprise was seeing it after not being logged in for 4+ hours on an account where the previous successful login had ended with a manual logout. The login attempts after that logout had all failed for a variety reasons, accompanied by appropriately unhelpful messages that mostly reduced to "it ain't workin' right now, so maybe try again later." So if the last successful login had been manually terminated, the handful of other attempts had all failed, and several hours had passed, there is no reason why an account should be erroring because of being logged in.

I have my own gripes and complaints about the quality of the information provided by error messages (mostly the lack of quality), but at least none of them are demonstrably false like this one was.