Cyan, I'm a loyal fan, and you owe me an apology

Artic_Wagon · **Joined:** Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:00 pm **Posts:** 4095

As a "seeker" (not as a worshipper), I would suggest that negative feedback is a very good thing.

If people like me were to become very quiet, do you beleive that problems would get solved faster ....or slower ???

A token does not have two sides but has three sides. The cutting edge is the third side (us the seekers)

Spacehead · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 12:42 pm

rsjm wrote:

. To be honest, I wasn't expecting that many of you to bombard the hood to see Rand when a new Age is out.

I am confused by this comment. Thats like saying there are cookies AND cake for the having, why would you be suprised when they are both snatched up? It is a tough choice, (A) wander about in a sandy desert that will be around for the rest of whatever or (B) go to see what Rand has to say. (C) all of the above.
So what was going on in Beta as far as stress testing? Were there just not enough testers to load the servers this way? I applied for Beta very early on and never got an invite

but I figured they had enough testers to accomplish whatever they needed. I am sure I am not the first to ask but I would really like to know. If Beginners Bevin locked up at 180 people and with 50 in the city and say another 100(generously) in other Bevins... How many players is this game designed to handle?
Ted's pockets are deep Why won't he cough the $ for a bigger server... or is this some other problem?

Artic_Wagon · **Joined:** Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:00 pm **Posts:** 4095

I beleive Spacehead is asking a good question. Thumbup :lol:

How come Net Providers can successfully handle millions of their clients at any one time ? :wink:

chucker · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 12:56 pm

Spacehead wrote:

So what was going on in Beta as far as stress testing? Were there just not enough testers to load the servers this way? I applied for Beta very early on and never got an invite

but I figured they had enough testers to accomplish whatever they needed.

Optimization is a difficult process that can't be accomplished through a few stress tests. It is probably reasonable to assume that 1) they have been continuously (slowly but steadily) improving this, and 2) through Rehearsal and/or internal testing, they have been performing stress tests as well, perhaps in simulation.

In other words, this will improve over time. We all want it to happen faster (no doubt Cyan do, and GameTap also do), but there's only so much that can be done. While Cyan is understaffed, it is also a fallacy to assume that throwing more staff or equipment will instantly increase the pace at resolving this; the man-month is a myth. That is to say, there is only so much that can be done at getting this fixed ASAP. Beyond a certain point, all that anyone (including Cyan's engineers) can do is wait.

Your disappointment is probably heard loud and clear (Ryan Miller's post as well as GameTap's quoted e-mail response should be proof enough that Cyan and GameTap do indeed care about this), but it simply isn't something that can be tackled from one day to or another, or even within a week.

Quote:

Ted's pockets are deep Why won't he cough the $ for a bigger server... or is this some other problem?

Actually, Ted Turner resigned from vice chair a while ago.

Anyway: patience is a virtue. Nobody can blame people for cancelling their subscriptions if they feel the current offering with all its flaws just doesn't cut it, but I think people would do themselves a favor by at least reevaluating such a decision about every other month.

chucker · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 1:02 pm

Artic_Wagon wrote:

How come Net Providers can successfully handle millions of their clients at any one time ? :wink:

For one, because those clients don't need to be mutually synchronized in any way. No ISP customer's computer needs to know anything about what a co-customer's computer is doing*. That's a fundamental difference to a massive multiplayer online game, where there need to be re-synchronizations many times a second: about where other age players are, about what direction they are walking and at what pace, or perhaps what kind of emote they are performing, about text messages or voice chat they may be sending, about link-ins and link-outs, and so on. Keeping all that in sync with an error rate so low that nobody is going to notice isn't easy. It can be done, as other MMOs show, but it's very different from what ISPs do.

*) Which is not to say that such computers can't send messages to each other. Of course they can; through e-mail, instant messages, etc. But none of those require any particular speed; even with an "instant" message, delays of several seconds are generally accepted and quite typical. Only few applications rely more on low latencies; audio and video chat come to mind. MMO gaming is among the most latency-relying Internet applications by a wide margin; web browsing, e-mail, file transfer, etc. don't even come close.

Artic_Wagon · **Joined:** Fri Oct 13, 2006 6:00 pm **Posts:** 4095

Hey chucker,

Could send me a copy of all the knowledge that is stored in your brain ?? :lol:

Do not forget to zip it, first.

It should be a three to five years download, even if I have a Cable
Extreme Speed connection.

chucker · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 1:20 pm

Artic_Wagon wrote:

Hey chucker,

Could send me a copy of all the knowledge that is stored in your brain ?? :lol:

Do not forget to zip it, first.

That'll be 256 batches, at $10 each.

Just kidding. I help where I can.

C'ristan · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 1:41 pm

Firstly, big thank you to [Rand's "little brother"

*] rsjm for your honest and upfront post. People are always put off by 'nameless', 'faceless' organisations that don't seem to be responding to their concerns. I would frankly be amazed, given Cyan's history, if the situation were anything other than that which you describe.

*Check out KateVa's chatlog

Secondly, here is a post I made yesterday over at UO (before the meet and greet), talking about the main city limit, which offers a little suggestion on improvements at least in the short term. I guess it also echoes chucker's more informed post above me here

Quote:

100-150? That would be great ... but longer term I think the figure ought to be even higher.

Quite probably, software optimisation and hardware upgrades will get the city limits up to those kind of levels ... but as far as I can tell, none of that can be addressed to that degree in the short term. Personally, I'd sacrifice some of the realism associated particularly with persistence of things such as cones, at least in the main city (don't shoot me, Kia!

), in return for less lag and higher city limits ... until such time as the necessary software and hardware improvements could be implemented.

That is if omitting them/reducing their numbers made a noticeable difference, of course :thumbsup:

In fact, to refine the suggestion, things like cones could be disabled during peak stress times, and re-enabled after, maybe.

EDIT: thank you chucker ... your link works for me now, post corrected ... how did you get that? There doesn't seem to be a 'link to this post' button on the post itself?

I was trying to achieve the same thing when constructing my post (using the 'find all posts by this member' function) but for some reason it just kept taking me to the head of the topic :roll:

... and the URL it gave me was longer than yours

chucker · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 1:51 pm

C'ristan wrote:

*I can't get the link directly to the post to work properly right now, but look for KateVa's post and chatlog 2/3rds the way down the page.

Try this link:
http://www.uruobsession.com/forum/index ... ntry511388

Chacal · **Joined:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 5:07 am **Posts:** 155

Honestly, it has been clear to me from the start that Cyan wanted Thursday to be one big stress test for MOUL. There is no other reason to release the new Age AND have Rand in the game at the exact same time.
Add to that: announcing the event days before, a server update the day before, and the fact that Rand, in the end, had nothing better to say than: I'm happy, let's dance.

Normally I avoid the game on update nights, but this time I decided to hang on to help with the test. When Minkata came out I rushed to the link, fully expecting the server to buckle under the load. I wasn't disappointed.

I guess it's a matter of expectations. I just hope they got sufficient data to help with the debugging. My fear is that this performance issue isn't a bug, it's bad design and it's too late to change it.

urukat · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 1:56 pm

rsjm,

Thanks for the reply in this thread.
I don't feel like I need an apology, and I just wanted to thank you for visiting our Gameboomers Bevin last night and giving us the rare chance of meeting RAND too!
It was such a surprise to have him drop in to our Bevin!! We were all so surprised and had never considered the fact that we would actually get to ask him any questions....so we weren't really prepared for that. But it was graet just to chat with him for a while.....both of you are very nice guys!
BTW....for those who don't know....rsjm is Rand's baby brother! I hope it is okay to divulge that information. :lol:

It's nice to know you raed the forums too!
Thanks again for the exciting evening!!

I posted our Chat Log and experience on Gameboomer's Website if anyone wants to read it.
http://www.gameboomers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=149037&page=0#Post149037

greydragon · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 5:21 pm **Posts:** 886

First let me talk from my own personal experience and then let me explain what the company is doing.

I, like rsjm, am sorry that you had a bad experience. When it was decided to announce an event at a certain time and place I was worried. We don’t release that information normally because of what happened last night. At this time the game is not optimized enough to allow hundreds of people in one place. I wish it would have been marketed in this manner,” Rand Miller will be in the game from 5 till 7 visiting various hoods. We hope to see you in the cavern.” Not everyone would have seen Rand, but at the same time everyone’s expectations are lowered.

I’ll open up the curtain here a bit. Rand waited on a black screen for 25 minutes in order to get into that Bevin. I was sure it was dead.

Again I would say Cyan understands your frustrations and hopes to improve the game so this doesn’t happen again. Cyan Worlds, Inc. would like to thank everyone who participated in the “Scars” Episode. We have learned a lot in this last week. We will use this knowledge to improve future episodes.

Now for some secrets,

Right now we believe we found a way to improve the city count. We won’t know till it has a stress test on the rehearsal server, but I am crossing my fingers.

The next episode is in testing on an in-house server.

I hope to have more information on the next episode soon.

One last thing…

I have to applaud you the explorers. Being behind the curtain and watching the events of the last week play out, we couldn’t have done it without you. I hope we gave you plenty to speculate and theorize on.

Thank you,

Ryan Warzecha

Malia · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 5:32 pm

I like the idea someone posted earlier in this thread about broadcasting a videoconference of events in all hoods. There are several imagers around that could be used.

If this is not feasible, then how about another idea - take an "official" video of the meeting (complete with chatlogs visible), and post it on this site under the "what's happening now" section.

It would be less dull than a plain chatlog, at least we could pretend we were there... sorta, kinda...

Waldorf · **Posted:** Fri May 25, 2007 5:40 pm

greydragon wrote:

I’ll open up the curtain here a bit...

The curtain parted and I was bathed in the pure white light of knowledge...

I feel as Moses must have when coming down from on High...

Shamed for having asked the question...
Fulfilled for having had a glimpse of pure revelation...
Apprehensive for the future given what has been revealed...

Thanks GD... The peek behind the curtain means alot.

Uileag · **Joined:** Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:54 pm **Posts:** 13

I am also one of the frustrated. And that frustration comes froms stack dumps, Network sixes, freezes, crashes, and lengthy vists to the Black Age.

Yes, it's a learning expiernce - for everyone. And I'm glad to see that there's been a response here (although unofficial) from Cyan team members.

That said, I would much rather have seen a request for explorers to hit the city/bevin/ages/whatever on a particular date and time so that information on the problems could be gathered in a controlled setting. Basically, let us be the guinea pigs. If they want realtime information so they can really pin down the issues, does anyone honestly believe that we wouldn't help? It would benefit all of us.

But the sad truth is that no matter where the problems are, or who wants to blame whom, the past week has shown weakness in reliability of the game. And whether or not any of us want to admit it, when we get down to brass tacks, it *is* a game. It's supposed to be fun and/or enjoyable.

Sitting and staring while waiting for the Black Age to go away, or getting dumped off the server, or crashing, or getting hit with lag so bad that it's almost impossible to even get your Relto book open to try to link out. None of those are fun. And when a game (or a hobby) isn't fun any more, there's little point to continuing with it.

To Cyan, I say thank you for years of enjoyment through the Myst series, and the novels, and for the incredible content you've provided to us in this latest endeavour. The hard work does *not* go unnoticed.

But last night, when Rand Miller suggested dancing to crash Uru, I didn't find it amusing at all. I'm sure that it was intended as a light-hearted comment meant to be funny, but it really wasn't. Not to the many of us who have had too many problems. Spent too much time in lag and Black Ages and crashing. And certainly not from The Man Himself.

I truly hope things get better. I can't imagine them getting worse.

I'd love to see Uru continue on for years and years, but I really can't see myself spending any more time getting frustrated at something I'm supposed to be enjoying.

Long Live Uru. But it's about time for it to just go right on living without me.

Cyan, I'm a loyal fan, and you owe me an apology

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