Fragnetics server unreachable - April 03, 2009

[Lhaa]

If you don't care for it, then you are free to try to play on the other server, or play a different game.  No one is forcing you to stay on the Fragnetics donated server.

Certainly. PS has this terrific habit of driving players away, for whichever reasons.

[neko kyouran]

Indeed, giving people free will to choose what and when they do things is certainly not acceptable.

Heck, if we stopped this practice we could then force people to spend all their time on the project and it wouldn't take years to develop things.

/sarcasm

 

[Rigwyn]

I think part of the problem is the lack of communication. Someone from the PS team should acknowledge the problem and at least state that is being worked on... (whether it is or not). If there is good reason to believe that it will be down for a long time then that too should be communicated out of courtesy.  The goal in this is to manage the player's expectations. If they believe it will be down for the weekend then they should be more inclined to find something else to do.

I hope you don't take this the wrong way - I think PS is an awesome game. And yes, its free so people should not expect too much... ( but its a kick-ass game, so they do - like it or not )
 
* Rigwyn's head droops and his shoulders sag as he reluctantly puts his sabers away and looks for a portal to a stange place called earth...
 






 

[Thoss]

If they believe it will be down for the weekend then they should be more inclined to find something else to do.

that's a pretty good point.  I'm silly enough to sit here all weekend trying and trying again!

nice to have the ezpcusa server as a back up though, even if roleplay isn't enforced. 

[Joale]

Thats all I am trying to say, whether the server sucks or not, when it crashes, they go hide in the corner untill it comes back, or atleast pretend nothing is wrong and hope we don't notice, atleast acknowledge that its down!!! And tell us that it is down, and atleast say you are contacting server admin or something, because the post I made is the only thing about it on the sight.

[Mordraugion]

Thats all I am trying to say, whether the server sucks or not, when it crashes, they go hide in the corner untill it comes back, or atleast pretend nothing is wrong and hope we don't notice, atleast acknowledge that its down!!! And tell us that it is down, and atleast say you are contacting server admin or something, because the post I made is the only thing about it on the sight.

Nobody hides in a corner nobody pretends nothing is wrong and saying such is rather insulting. We are all volunteers spread across several timezones none of which match Singapore and surprisingly have real lives to occupy our thoughts as well. So a lack of information here can be for a number of reasons not least, it is better to concentrate on the problem rather than run here every 5 minutes to issue pointless updates of there is nothing to report.

[Thoss]

Nobody hides in a corner nobody pretends nothing is wrong and saying such is rather insulting.

I agree Mordraugion...especially given Weltall's post on the first page of this thread

...Altough it's not sure 100% yet it's most probably something which could require 1 or 2 days.

i'd expect 1 or 2 days from that post...

[Joale]

I understand that you have your own lives, but there is nothing on tthe sight about it at all, the devs havn't said a word, like I said, this is it, and it has been down for two days, all I am saying is, it "SEEMS" that you are yet to accknowledge that there is a problem, which is the case every single time this thing crashes, which is frustrating. Not to mention the fact that it is thrown back in your face when you point that out, and given the "since its free, you don't have to be here" well since its your game, show that you give a shit by posting about it. because 2 week shutdowns aren't exactly normal.

I'm not telling anybody, to rush out to singapore with your personal dev jet, bring all your tools and fix it, just so people don't have to wait a day to play there precious planeshift, take your time, just try to fix it, and I really don't care how long it takes, but when you don't hear anything, it makes you wonder if THEY KNOW anything about it, I don't see, how letting us in on the proccess every now and then, is so difficult, and if you don't know anything about it, just tell us that, its like someone has to squeeze awnsers out of you, when it came back last time, everyone began to think it would be a week or two, and maybe not come back at all, that is how informed the players were.

[enderandrew]

I think everyone should demand a full refund of the money the paid.  Oh wait.

I think there are two sides here.  The devs do this as volunteers, and it is hard to criticize something you receive for free.  It is also entirely possible that they're not sure what is wrong with the server, or how long it will take to fix it.  It could be an hour or a week, and if they go on record saying it should be up at X time, they'd get blasted even more if they're wrong.

The second side is that a community project does benefit from a large community.  Devs come from the pool of players, so it does not help to alienate your player base.  However, I don't think they've done anything here that people should be upset about.  This is a beta product given with no guarantees that the server will be up 99% of the time.  Frankly, the fact that they have a server and bandwidth provided for free, with no advertising to off-set it is pretty damned nice.

What if every member of the community donated $5 to a project to build a back-up server?

[Zontick]

Sheesh.

Yes, someone - be they volunteers or the volunteer's cat - should probably have something on the site that says, "Server's down. Our magic 8 ball says 'outlook not so good'. Go help us with the wiki documentation in the interim, please."

Or something like that.

It really isn't that hard to do something like that. Yes, volunteers, I understand - but a simple statement like the above, as vague as it is, at least tells people "Go do something else and quit slamming the server".

There was a point where I would have been upset about the lack of such notices - in fact I was - but I have come to realize over the months that this is just the accepted practice by the PlaneShift team - lumped all together since it really isn't clear who does what and blah blah yakkity schmakitty. So I don't get upset.

After all, it isn't a user's place to care more about how PlaneShift is implemented than the team. So you can care a lot and be disappointed, or not. I choose not. And that I have reached a point where I procrastinate about bug reports among other things...well, if I felt I could affect the project, I would. But I can't, so I don't.

Apathy. Coming soon to a tavern near you.

[Joale]

You just don't seem to get it, I know its free, and that thier volunteers, but if they are making a game, even a free game, it's still thier job to keep us out of the dark. "Yes, we know the server is down, we are not sure what is wrong with it at this time, but we will get to fixing it as soon as we can, so just hang tight, and we will update you once we get any news" there, that took me 10 seconds, seriously, because this is a free game, we don't deserve that?

[Zontick]

What if every member of the community donated $5 to a project to build a back-up server?

Pay for a backup server with the same level of service? No, it would have to be more than a backup server to pay for - and therefore, it would be more than $5. But if someone made a plausible case, I wouldn't have a problem paying. How much I pay for what  is really the question.

[Shurrim]

Joale.... you'll learn in time.. you'll never get that kind of message. And if you want an answer, join #planeshift, there they will say. We got your point, suffice to say. If it is really serious they will post, for now, try to just live your life. We know, a weekend without ps is a pain, but it happens. It's under development, it's a beta, they are people like you and me giving their time. We are testers. It's down, well it is. It will be up eventually, now go to the door, open it and see the world that awaits for you. Hydlaa will still be here for you when you'll be back.

[enderandrew]

What if every member of the community donated $5 to a project to build a back-up server?

Pay for a backup server with the same level of service? No, it would have to be more than a backup server to pay for - and therefore, it would be more than $5. But if someone made a plausible case, I wouldn't have a problem paying. How much I pay for what  is really the question.

Actually with two servers they might be able to achieve both redundancy that the entire game doesn't go down when one server goes down, and load-balancing to reduce ping times.  I think it would especially help if they could get something with a fast HDD, maybe a SSD for the database.

[d egale]

We are all volunteers spread across several timezones none of which match Singapore and surprisingly have real lives to occupy our thoughts as well.

WELL THERES YOUR PROBLEM!!!! we all know that real devs are geeks with no life and no hope of ever getting a girlfriend or wife and devote all there unused time to developing the game they are working on and whos idea of a perfect day is a dark day spent in a basements of there mothers house working on 7 computers at once

 haha in truth i suport the devs in there desition not to isue updates but i do agree with joale doing an ofitial post and probably stickying it is a good idea however i also agree with mordraugion there is no need to post usless posts ofitialy saying theres no known cause or no current way to make progress however as a verry happy and long term player of PS i do see a need for a regular updates as far as important news in the server say "the server has been corupted and the data needed to be restored and is going to hapen soon" not that this is what has hapened as the fragnetics site is down aswell witch says nothing about the acual server data being corupted but even so it would be nice to be updated on what your doing what the problem is and how your trying to fix it with an eta..... so say your trying one method and it fails.... you decide to try somthing else.... so you anounce your doing somthing else and the ETA has become a lttle more then expected.... nothing to much to ask i think not stupid nothings hapening updates but just when somthing of medeum to majour size hapens so the players dont feal left out of the loop and are unhappy with your work.... i think you DEVS do a great job me i personaly know i couldent do a better job so i thank you a bunch for this game dispite its little problems and ocational mess ups

   peace....