The lack of any sort of reconnect feature and DoA...

<RANT>

Anyone else think it's completely ridiculous that they still haven't created a way for people to rejoin the games which they're booted out of? The only real challenge in DoA is avoiding the inevitable ERROR 7 HAMMER OF DOOM and hoping to God it doesn't hit you, your tank, or basically anyone in your party.

It's completely reasonable for there to be a way to join games already in progress. I don't see how this is too "difficult" or too "unbalanced" to do? I mean, your game server as far as we know will continue to exist as long as there are players in the game. I know there are a lot of exploits possible with dropping out to go sell and coming back with more inventory space but problems like that can be fixed by forcing players to choose to rejoin as soon as they log in and before they're in town...

Anyways, I've had more trouble completing the quests in DoA from error 7 (and one full crash) than the actual mobs. If you put quests into the game that take about 4 hours currently (less later, we were clearing Stygian Veil very fast actually) and then offer people no way to come back to their games, how is that a good way to treat your customers? I think every other single MMORPG out there lets you log back on in EVEN in instanced zones (Lost Dungeons of Norrath in EQ for example had all instanced zones like GW) - why can't A-net provide this feature to all of us?

I just don't get it. The core game has been out for almost 2 years and it's still lacking the most basic gameplay concepts you find in every other successful MMORPG. All I want to know is why they're taking their sweet time to "work on this" as Gaile puts it for an undisclosed amount of time when it has such a negative effect on gameplay?

</RANT>

Now, I'm hoping to eventually beat the Stygian Veil without err7ing... a man can dream... a man can dream......

/signed

Wiped after losing a healer some 3 hours into the quest.

This made me stop playing completely after getting so many disconnects in Factions elite missions. It was the norm that only 80% of group members made it to the end. But there it hardly mattered.

It doesn't just come down to some people having sucky internet. Disconnects happen. That is the only constant and the only thing that cannot be changed.

Allowing to replace members who go afk or need to leave for other reason would be a completely different thing altogether.

/signed

simple laziness that they haven't worked this one out -- Gaile has said for a VERY long time that this is on the top of their priorities, but hey why waste time fixing such an obvious deficiency when there's another chapter to capitalize on?

again, simple laziness

/signed

All the fun is rapidly draining out of this. Was it a cool challenge to try and complete hard, hard missions no one had the answers for on day one? Sure.

But it's like getting kicked in the nuts to work to figure areas out and then have the only reason you fail to finish a part of the quest be D/C's... over and over and over again. The lengths of time involved only to have this keep happening leads me to believe they don't give a crap what the players are putting up with. They just throw stuff out there and say take it or leave it.

Reconnects would be great and I'd say "necessary" for those long missions and quests.

But from what I remember Gaile saying is that reconnects are hard to implement because of the way GW is setup with their streaming and instanced technology. It's not a matter of them being lazy (Please stop such idiotic accusations like that) but simply that they don't know how to do it at this point.

Consider this:

You have a kabillion players on a server.

One drops.

You must find him and reconnect him in a timely fasion.

Now picture that tons of players do this all the time.

Deal with no reconnect, I don't recall any game having Reconnect.

/notsigned

Since when was Err7's Anet problem/fault? If people have dodgy connections then thats down to them..I've played GW 15 odd months now and had Err7 once..

/signed

The reconnect issue has been described by Jeff as high priority on thier to do list even before Factions was released and now 2 Chapters past that comment, i think its more urgent now than ever in the case of DoA.

since you didnt read the early explanation or the words were to complicatedhere it is again.

the instances were designed from the start to be hackproof so nobody could get into where you and your group were playing.

understand?.....hint.....secure instance.....??get it yet?

that makes it almost impossible to fit a reconnect feature without blowing the concept of secure instance to hell.

everybody from Jeff Strain down knows it would be a blockbuster feature to add........IF..THEY....COULD.

unless they are ALL lying they are trying to work out a solution that doesnt blow security out the window.

if they can they will and bitching wont speed it up

Every single online service has re-connect. HTTP and FTP protocols both have option to continue from arbitrary point, every single online game allows you to continue from where you were, not losing several hours after disconnecting.

LOL..he's back

Antheus, your right but cause this game is kinda not really an online game in some regards it has different standards.

i have to agree. I played a prophecies mission three times today, simply because I got disconnected twice. The third time, we just lost, but that is beyond the point. I was able to reconnect within a minute, but had to start all over again with a new team. If I was simply able to rejoin my team then I could have helped them win the mission

/not signed

Home > Press > Interviews

In other words stop bothering us ^^

I don't think they need to implement reconnects because The Admin's Bane has only had one err 7 in 15 months...

:-)

i really dont get those who /notsigned this. will it bother you? lol
or do u rage quit and pretend u got err 7 from partys?

and what security are u talking about? reconnects would be provided by servers, not that they can't acces our accounts anyways.

anyhow, /signed x100 from me

I think the idea sounds a lot more simpler than it really would be to add in. It would be nice, but since we don't pay a monthly fee, and playing on the servers is already costing them money, but free to us after buying the game... I don't think it's a necessity.

he is lucky as i have had 3 in 19 months/1200+hours

I was recently in stygian veil and our nec err 7'd right at the end when we had 1 claw left to kill..if that was you than im sry man that sucked
rt/w - marius xaver

heh, you should switch ISPs or upgrade your hardware. Either your connection sucks or you went cheap on the ethernet adapter/switch.

:-)

C'mon! Giving a Scyth to Varesh Minipet was a much more urgent matter!

Please implement this feature. Hours wasted already in DoA due to tons of disconnects(including me), which is bound to happen if you're playing for a long stretch of time.
When you play with people not only using different types of internet connections, but also are spread across the world, this will always happen, and is not uncommon in MMOs. Hell, I cant remember the last BWL raid in WoW I was a part of where all 40 members stayed online throughout the time.

I wont bother to narrate my bad experiences because of the lack of this feature, since the problem is obvious and long-standing. But introduction of elite areas which require 2-3hrs of time, if not more brings this into sharper focus. Yes, this was a problem in Urgoz and The Deep as well, but since accessibility to those places was so limited, not many raised their voices.

/beg
/signed

And where did you gain your 10 years of experience if programming games, dear, that you can say this so surely? The fact that we do not yet have reconnects is due to the fact that adding reconnects is a very complex challenge, that it is not easily accomplished!

We are working on it.
We will continue to work on it.
We will add it, as soon as we have it developed, tested, and proved.

But please, be fair: Don't denigrate the team with silly comments that are 100% inaccurate.

Why would A.Net impede the development of a superbly cool feature?

Laziness is not a reason coz if they're sure damn lazy, prolly there's no chapter 2 and 3 out now.

That is true. The addition of this to Guild Wars is a sophisticated technical addition because of the way it currently works. If you log out at a particular place in town, you dont log back in at that same place, which is what you might expect if you've played other mmos. 'Remembering' where exactly a player is at any point of time is a significant database burden, which the devs originally thought to simplify by just remembering the zone. Currently, if you log out/disconnect at an explorable area or mission, you are ported to the last town/outpost you were in before that.

When this change were to take place, not only will the game have to remember and decide where in the zone to put you (start of zone? rez shrine closest to party? what happens if there's no rez shrine? ), but the major task will be to map you back to the same instance you were in. If I was starting development of a new game, would I see this as an immense technical challenge? Not really. But for an existing game, this would mean recoding a massive part of the existing stuff.

So, yeah, we're not expecting this in an update this weekend. But that doesnt mean the complexity makes it not worth implementing. This is a very important aspect which the game needs, and which we are (atleast I am) keenly awaiting.

Hasn't this been true of The Deep etc for a long time? People managed there.

I think you need to take it with a pinch of salt when people tell you they got an err 7. 3 or 4 hours is a long time to commit to something, how many people are actually just quitting because they want to do something else or are being made to by parents or because they have work/school the next day.

Compare 2 situations:

1:
"sorry gtg"
"you lamer why did you come if you can't stay ffs"

2:
"err 7"
"np"
"anet ruined it for us"

For example when playing The Deep, I tried with PUGs many times, most got an error 7 in the first few minutes after dying. Sometimes people got an error 7 when it was getting late. I try with a guild group, no error 7s at all, complete it with all 12 players. Hmm. Try with a PUG again, same thing happened every time. So I go with a guild group, nobody leaves at all and we finish again.

People didnt manage there. More than half of my Urgoz runs failed because of people getting disconnected.

Yes, what you say is true. A lot of times a player goes offline, its because he cannot carry on, and doesnt want to take the blame. But there are as many, if not more occassions where its a genuine disconnect/game crash and such.

Gaile,
People are frustrated, naturally impatient, and greedy for more.

The "how much further..." syndrome is what we have but unfortunately Anet responds with the "not far now...." answer continually.

It is a fact that feedback regarding features such as reconnect and trade improvements have been asked for by the community frequenting sites such as guru and gwonline since chapter 1.

People are becoming more frustrated and many may feel that they're being strung chapter to chapter as the song never changes...

I hope that by the time Anet has accomplished reconnects, trade improvements, fixed the broken AI that there are enough people around for it to make a difference.

Yes it's your game and you can do whatever you want on your schedule but TTM (time to market) is a factor in all sales organizations - obviously Anet recognizes this with a chapter turnaround time of 6 months but people will only purchase new content if they're happy with the game as a whole AND want the new content.

The improvements such as this affect all chapters and are core elements but Anet doesn't put them on equal footing with new chapters (I can only presume for money reasons).

Speaking as a player with 2 accounts and all chapters for both accounts, I'm losing my faith fast that long standing features that are "being worked upon" will actually ever make it.... God I hope you prove me wrong and we don't have vaporware here.

Would you people get off Anet's backs already. They're doing their best and you guys whining about it won't speed it up any further. It's not out of loyalty or anything, but try putting yourselves in their shoes and see the endless stream of complaints that they have to deal with. The fact that they DO listen to their fans should be enough to know that they WILL do something about it.

It's cool if I say that was a pretty stupid comment right?

Anyway, yeah reconnects would be great (I hardly err7, if ever, but for party members its great). Someone posted that QandA about reconnects, and yeah thats what is holding it back . Makes me kinda sad.

So did mine, but only the ones with PUGs and where they aren't on TeamSpeak with you. It is never me that has the err 7.

Also I love the old "hey guys I'm getting lag if I leave it is err 7". People say this just before they want to leave.

There's a fine line between whining and constructive feedback.
I would contest the point and that loyalty is exactly the reason why people are complaining.

Many of the people who post here are the biggest GW players and who only want to see the game improve.
We get frustrated as improvements aren't happening fast enough and we see ways of how to improve the game.
I bet most of us care deeply about the game and want it to be the best it can be.
Let me ask the question - "would you bother reading forums everyday, sign up and post for a game that was bad or even mediocre?"

Most people would answer this with No so the vast majority of posters want to make this great game even better - as there's no instant fix frustration/ranting often prevails as they can see how to improve the game in their eyes....

Me, I own many many games and there's only a handful I have registered for forums but GW I read guru and gwonline everyday right now... Bad games - I play them for a few hours and never again.

Signed - a whiner who cares.

Rose, because I believe you do care, and are not just making noise to admire the whining sound, I promise you a dozen of my rather-famous homemade truffles if we don't deliver on reconnects. I will promise you double that number if we roll it out but make it exclusive to a specific campaign.

Honestly, and truly, folks: This is under development, and it is very high on our list of priorities. Please keep faith -- it's not as far as you worry that it may be, and not as hopeless as you seem to feel that it is!

And when it comes, I expect a whole lot of emails from happy players, so I can put them on my Wall of Fame.

I'll be among the first Gaile.... ...um to email you gleefully I mean ... and in this case hopefully NOT be munching on newly arrived homemade truffles.

Good luck - I hope you crack reconnects and GW progresses from strength to strenght via great chapters and heavily requested core improvements.

Heh I agree. If ANet says its hard to implement then I accept that answer for two reasons. 1. Because I don't have the experience or knowhow to say otherwise and 2. Because I sincerely doubt they would lie about it, and they know their code best. However, I would prefer to be told flat out "We are no where near even starting development of said feature" than "We are working on it. We will continue to work on it."

Now I want it clear, I'm not saying that in this instance Gale is just repeating herself or that they have indeed been singing the "same ol' song" over and over. I've seen reconnects mentioned once or twice before and don't recall reading a response from ANet (most likely because I didn't read every post and missed it). I'm just saying that I think most people are looking for some sort of "timeline" if you want to call it that. Not actual dates per say but maybe just whether there is any progress or not.

"We'll continue to investigate the possibilities and will weigh the merits and drawbacks in the context of several ideas we have on the table."

Maybe something telling us if one of the possibilities has panned out or is at least feasible? Or if they are still exploring options because they haven't found anything that they think will work yet? Not asking for specifics, just some sort of progress. Saying "We are working on it. We will continue to work on it." could mean one guy looking at it every now and then, or it could mean a team of people spending all day every day. It tells us nothing of progress which is what I think people are more after than an actual time and date.

With that said I understand that ANet owes us no explanation on these facts. However, throwing us a few bones will probably keep the "dogs" (being us the players ) at bay.

EDIT: Just want to say I started this after reading 3 posts up :S

definately try a different isp...if youre running high speed broadband like i used to it had huge speed spikes and was causing me to disconnect. i now use either low speed dsl modem or dial up and both have very stable connections and have had no problems with disconnects with either of them..56k really isnt as slow going as you might think with this game and im amazed it isnt....gj on that anet

I'm actually going with Gaile's explanation here. Anyone who has had to redesign, refactor, or fix anything major in the software industry after it has already been implemented knows that the job sucks and takes a while depending on the task at hand. I don't doubt that they have their work cut out on them and seeing as how it will be a live update will probably have to go in baby steps.

however, it can be said that the situation has arisen as the result of very poor foresight. Design issues in the beginning obviously did not take disconnects during really long missions into account (or they thought it was minor). In this case I would not (and would hope the rest of you would not) put any blame on the developers. I am sure they are doiong the best they can. However, I would assume that the lead designer (as well as the requirements manager) is either really closed-minded, or just a plain ***** not to have foreseen this. What's done is done though and nothing can be done about that (toungue twister ehh lol).

Give the devs time like hse says and don't blame them.

FYI, quite a bit of refactoring instances come about because of a later redesign due to new requirements. While this is most definitely a new requirement, it seems to be so through lack of forethought and not because of changing conditions/targets.

EDIT: sorry, shouldn't have called anyone an idiot, regardless, so I edited it out.

Yeah I ran this game on 56k for about 4 of the 16-17 months I've played. As long as you stay in unpopulated districts its not bad and err7's are rare. Once you are in the instances its all good from there until you load back into a town.