Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Anyone tired of losing drones due to the Eve server having a problem?
gxgunny
Member Posts: 64
Both my buddy and I were doing a lvl 4 mission together and when the Eve server crashed on us and both of us lost some T2 drones when we came back. My ISP is Comcast and his ISP is AT&T. When I contacted Eve Support, they said they could not find any indication of the problem with the server during that time and would not give me back my drones. This is like the 3rd time this is happened. Yeah, drones are not that big of a loss. I am just worried that this will happen and I will lose something way more expensive than a drone and CCP will give me the shaft. I had two other computers at my house with active connections to the internet during this time when I got my socket error. I attached the segment from my Eve log file that shows me being in combat and then getting a socket errror. Like I said, my buddy had the exact crash as the same time so how could this not be a server error?
Eve log:
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:19 ] (combat) <color=0xffbb6600>Tower Sentry Drone II hits you, doing 13.6 damage.
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:19 ] (combat) <color=0xffbb6600>Elite Drone Parasite aims well at you, inflicting 114.0 damage.
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:19 ] (combat) <color=0xffbb6600>Tower Sentry Drone II hits you, doing 12.6 damage.
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:20 ] (combat) <color=0xffbb6600>Elite Drone Parasite aims well at you, inflicting 117.8 damage.
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:21 ] (combat) <color=0xffbb6600>Tower Sentry Drone II hits you, doing 13.2 damage.
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:22 ] (combat) <color=0xffbb6600>Elite Drone Parasite hits you, doing 96.8 damage.
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:22 ] (combat) <color=0xffbb6600>Tower Sentry Drone II aims well at you, inflicting 16.6 damage.
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:23 ] (combat) <color=0xffbb6600>Elite Drone Parasite places an excellent hit on you, inflicting 145.8 damage.
[ 2010.10.20 11:57:45 ] (info) The socket was closed
Comments
EDIT: TAKE A LOOK HERE
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1038603
BestSigEver :P
Sorry, I don't buy it. My buddy on a different ISP had the same issue. They take completely different network routes. Did you read my original post? Also, I don't have these disconnects in the other MMO's I play which probably take similar routes.
Internet routes have funny habit of converging, especially if talking about intercontinental traffic. And of course one router going even temporarily bonkers can have nice cascade effects netwide.
Internet isn't reliable transport mechanism - it works surprisingly well, but it does have hickups and glitches that no game service provider can do anything about...
/edit
...nor there is any way of distinguishing the connection loss caused by internet trunk hickup or ragequit...
Playing: AC2
Played: UO, DaoC, Horizons, Ryzom, WAR, LotRO, Eve, VG...
Sorry, I don't buy it. My buddy on a different ISP had the same issue. They take completely different network routes.
PLZ POST HERE YOUR PINGPLOTTER IMAGE AND YOUR FRIEND IMAGEBestSigEver :P
I understand what you are saying. I just find it hard to believe that this many people would have these types of issues. The Eve forums are plagued with this error. I would thnk that CCP could make some some client changes to use different routes on failure or to buffer the game in memory a bit on disconnect. They need more verbose logging on the client end other than just a socket error. Also, why do your drones get attacked by NPC mobs when you are not in control of them? They could change that so the player loses very little on disconnect.
Not doing it! I have already gone out of my way as a paying player. CCP needs to do more on thier end. I simply will cancel my account and stop playing. I have plenty of MMO's that I can play that don't disconnect me.
It does not matter.
Since CCP cannot distinguish very well if the problem is on customer or server end, all the can do is to check the server side, albeit the check will be limited.
Sure, they cannot prove the problem is on your end, though neither you can prove that it isn't.
That means no reimbursement unless their limited finding on server side is positive. There is no other way, sorry.
They do try.
Way back, if you logged out, you lost your drones and only way to retrieve them was to fly towards them, scoop them, then dock and put them in your drone bay in order to use them again.
Pretty good improvement when compared to current state, isn't it?
What you suggest might sound simple, however it is not. The problem is, the game does not know if you are connected or not unless some request time out. It is not as easy and every game have to deal with log off exploiting - using logout to avoid harm or consequences. Especially annoying those things are in PVP.
I feel with you but there is little CCP can do about it.
I agree that the changes are better, but they still need to be impoved. How do you know what is simple, are you a coder for CCP? I am only talking about PVE here, not PVP. All that I am asking for is that they kill the NPC rat aggro when there is a disconnect between the Eve client and the server. If I had full aggro on my ship and had 5 drones (do not have aggro) in space and get disconnected, I should come back to 5 drones floating in space. Seems like an easy fix to me. Even if it is a hard fix, we are paying them to make these changes. I think we could easily drum up player support for this.
I am not a CCP employee but I spent some years in software development and have some technical background.
I am not saying CCP can or cannot do this, I present you arguments why I think it is not as simple - same as you say. It is up to you and each one to consider the validity of those arguments.
As I said, the problem is to say if and when the disconnect occurred. The time between occurrence and noticing can have vary. Then again, you cannot say if the client was disconnected or simply terminated.
PVE or PVP does not play a role. In either case, I am not fond to solution where you will be able to save your drones just by closing your client.
The time between occurrence and noticing will still probably be in milliseconds. If you have ever played Eve, you will notice that it takes many seconds, not milliseconds for aggro to shift to another object. My drones are safe if they don't have aggro from the NPC(not players) mobs so closing my client does not make them safer.
It would help EVE devs if people could prove that EVE servers are reachable during those timeouts by using traceroute, pingplotter or similar tool - and at least it would show the point of failure in trunk, which could be addressed, probably by EVE CCP contacting the trunk operator in question.
Due to nature of how internet works there is no way of recognizing how or why connection was dropped, or where, except by end user doing some sleuthing. That's actually one of the reasons why TCP/IP is so widespread, as network stack is lightweight and the best effort transport is usually good enough.
Playing: AC2
Played: UO, DaoC, Horizons, Ryzom, WAR, LotRO, Eve, VG...
Actually due to nature of TCP/IP noticing the loss of connection isn't matter of milliseconds nor can it be - and even making the stack react in milliseconds would be a 'bad idea'(tm).
Internet works pretty much like bucket chain, the packet is handed over to next router once the router can handle it - while juggling with tens or hundreds of thousands of other connections. That makes the whole net best effort - it isn't at all like phone connection where there is dedicated, permanent line created between the two phones.
Playing: AC2
Played: UO, DaoC, Horizons, Ryzom, WAR, LotRO, Eve, VG...
Hmm... one way trip for me is 119 ms. I can't exactly time the reverse route, but I am thinking it would be similar. Assuming it is the same, that is only a little over 2 seconds round trip. More than enough time to save my drones.
~$ ping -c3 87.237.38.200
PING 87.237.38.200 (87.237.38.200) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 87.237.38.200: icmp_seq=1 ttl=116 time=119 ms
64 bytes from 87.237.38.200: icmp_seq=2 ttl=116 time=118 ms
64 bytes from 87.237.38.200: icmp_seq=3 ttl=116 time=119 ms
Sadly for some very good reasons deciding if connection is really down or just suffering a major hickup isn't as simple as closing the connection once one packet hasn't reached destination.
And for the same reason - having a millisecond closure once connection disappears would make a gaping hole for all kinds of nice exploits.
Playing: AC2
Played: UO, DaoC, Horizons, Ryzom, WAR, LotRO, Eve, VG...
I agree this sounds more like a drop in service between you and ccp (yes your freind too) so it wouldn't show up on ccp's end as a server outage
For the record my wife does about 5 l4 missions a day we connect from the UK and in the last 2 years I think she has only had one loss/disconnect in that time (she flies a dominix with 5 sentries) so our connection to ccp is stable as it can be.
I also agree if they did do some sort of instant disconnect for pve mission then it would be abused soo much "ooh too many spawned i'm going to die pulling the lan plug will save me"
If my drones were safe before the disconnect from PVE rats, why should they not be safe when I come back into the game? There is no abuse there. It is just giving me what I had before the disconnect. If my drones had aggro on some mobs, that is another story.
Oh, btw, I forgot to mention that it is awesome that your wife plays Eve with you! I wish I can train mine to do that.
Best you can do is ask your IP provider to trace where the disconnect happened and hopefully fix the problem on their end. Most likely when you and your friend disconnected in the mission the NPC's went after your drones and destroyed them.
the point i'm making is its not ccp's fault your dropping connection so why do they need to fix it ?
They won't put it in simply because it will cause problems they haveto realise every change effects everyone else not just you.
Eve players have been struggling with this issue since 2008. It is all over the Eve forums so it is not just me. My connection is only going down between my client and the Eve servers. Connections to any other game server are solid as a rock There are thousands of posts in the Eve forums about the same issue. I find it hard to believe that there are that many bad connections out there. Just google "eve socket closed" and you will see all of the others having the same issue.
Like you said, it's time to cancel your account.
Sorry, I don't buy it. My buddy on a different ISP had the same issue. They take completely different network routes.
PLZ POST HERE YOUR PINGPLOTTER IMAGE AND YOUR FRIEND IMAGENot doing it! I have already gone out of my way as a paying player. CCP needs to do more on thier end. I simply will cancel my account and stop playing. I have plenty of MMO's that I can play that don't disconnect me.
then good luck and have fun on other MMO'sBestSigEver :P
I googled "I have won the internet" and came up with 203 million results...
WTF! People actually wins the internet. How?
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"