Thursday 22 July 2010

Voting changes & suggestion for hourly reset lag




Okay I've made some new changes to the voting system. You'll see it labeled "V2.0 Beta".  What's been changed? Well, when I started to log players to see who completed their vote or not I got a lot of complaints saying some voting sites won't accept the vote etc etc. It's funny that these errors come to me now and not before.

The problem is that you can vote at 11pm game time, then when it resets at midnight, you can vote again, so of course it won't work because you voted an hour ago!

So what's changed?
- When you vote it sticks a timer on that vote site. The vote site will NOT pop up again for another 24 hours (12 hours for the 12 hour ones). Which means you'll be able to fully vote once every 24 hours properly without any problems. This won't change the way the voting daily quest works. This will also take less lag off the main midnight reset.
- There has been some cosmetic layout changes done
- The 5 second block has been  removed. Now we're logging all votes we have no need to for the 5 second block.

Please bear in mind you're still being logged and this...

 















 



...will happen to you when you're caught not completing your votes.

Everyones voting has been reset now. So you can vote NOW but when you do it will be 24 hours until you can again (doesn't matter if you've already voted today)


There may be glitches over the next 48 hours whilst we test this in the real environment, so if you're having issues, please report on this forum thread ONLY. We will be watching closely on this.

The coven life bonus was causing a lot of lag on the hourly reset. Now more people are battling because of the wars its started to creep up again. I've had a suggestion where I add turns half past every hour, and just the revival at top of hour. The turns would add HALF PAST each hour instead of ON the hour. (I.E 22:30 instead of 23:00) What do you think? Let us know on this forum thread.


Thanks,
Ash

59 comments:

Drake Dragonslayer said...

Good. Now that it resets once at midnight, that makes it easier for me to keep track of my voting.

Anonymous said...

ok ty ash

Duke Danse Macambre said...

Well at least I am happy to see the 5 sec timer gone. :D

On the later of the mid way reset turns its a bad idea because it will hinder alot of peoples killing as they will have no turns and half way though no one decent will be left to kill. :(
Something however does need to be done, I nearly have a 3 min ToH reset.

Anonymous said...

oo i like the new way i can see what i gotta do in them now cause i like to save the one that i have to type in for last but i can never remember order so i can save last ty ash

Kalona RavenWolf said...

I like the idea of the turns at half past the hour, if that will speed up the lag time at reset.

Kalona RavenWolf said...

If no one will be alive at half past, then save your turns you receive until ToH. It will just have to be more of a strategy to save turns.

Colette ~Kali~ Fëaduhith said...

Thanks Ash! Just finished the voting and everything worked great :) Greatly appreciate removing the 5 second block!

Anonymous said...

Hm, ok. Thanks Ash.

Anonymous said...

Eh... Well, I'll have to vote again... Needed to fill the captions. I apologize Ash.

Anonymous said...

Might be more helpful if you didn't insinuate that people who are complaining about the sites not letting them vote are in essence lying. Those people who are new to RoB and I am one of those, have found that when we try to find a way to let someone know, HELP TICKETS are NOT answered. And that is not helpful or beneficial. Whether we ask questions in help tickets or on the forum, the answer should be forthcoming no matter what. I don't care what you do as long as its fixed.

Boo(Mitch) said...

Maybe it's time to bring back the old message that appeared at the resets, a long time ago.

Kalann said...

Thanks for adapting the voting process, it's running nicely. :) I'm all for adding turns at the half hour ~ anything which makes the game run smoother in fact.

Anonymous said...

I like the new method of voting and the page looks great so thumbs up from me.

Fei Victas said...

I play with a friend at work and I know that to the outside world our IP looks the same. (yes, you should have our declaration on record regarding the situation)

I know that some of the vote sites have limited us to one vote because of this problem. Hopefully the new method you've implemented will not have similar effects for all of the vote sites. :(

DarkAsh said...

@ Fei Victas - We'd check work/school permissions and check that at least 1 person on the network is voting.

Anonymous said...

Some of the vote sites (especially those that have two vertical scroll bars) do not have a place to vote. I've gone to help chat and have been told that all vote sites have an easy to find place to vote, but I disagree. Can someone explain to me where to vote on the sites that have two vertical scroll bars? I have even tried firefox to see if it was a problem with internet explorer, but firefox didn't help. It did help with the problem of captchas that don't work in internet explorer, though.

atar said...

I have had sporadic problems with several votring sites..one of them the captcha reads ERROR code and a couple of others just say that code didn't match and gives you a new code...

Atar

Slayheal said...

switching to firefox fixed those problems for me atar

Amber Rose said...

Cause I like to do the 12 hour ones before work in Ausralia and the 24 hour ones when I get home, would it be possible to put some indication on the links as to which ones are 12 hour reset?

Anonymous said...

I think adding turns at half past the hour stinks...Don't do that...people need those turns at ToH.

Anonymous said...

You cant get the turns and then wait a half an hour? It's called patience. :)

Anonymous said...

... But three sites allow votting every 12 hours reset 1EST time...

Anonymous said...

Hm, I don't much like the idea of splitting the revive and turn gain times.

The new voting system sounds great though.

Anonymous said...

ok when i went to vote today i like 5 of the sites that wouldnt let me vote or told my time expired. just for feedback

Faye Iceshard said...

All right... this still doesn't change the fact that no matter how long I wait since I last voted, on a couple sites I always get error messages for the code I'm supposed to type in to verify the vote.

Tiamat Kestrel said...

As some of the sites just pull up a screen that shows the list of games and nothing to click, I assumed that the vote had been recorded somehow. If I was wrong, then I apologize.

Darion Lancaster (203259) said...

Love the update. Awesome on the 5 second removal. LOVE the idea of half hour turns! There would undoubtedly be rough spots where people forget they don't get turns at ToH, and can't kill...... all the better for those that remember!

Legion White Tiger said...

Interesting... This means then, that we can only vote once a day on the three sites which previously allowed twice-daily voting? I'm not sure that this is the right solution... Ash... can you not interact with the sites which refuse voting within 24 hours in such a way that we are allowed to try again by keeping them on our voting lists? It's a tricky one. :s

Legion White Tiger said...

... or keep the timer *just* for those sites that refuse within 24 hours?

Anonymous said...

He mentions there's a 12 hour timer for the 12 hour ones if you look.

Anonymous said...

yes okay but why has my voter quest not turned up yet

DarkAsh said...

The 3 x 12 hour ones will appear after 12 hours. (If all goes well)

Legion White Tiger said...

Yep - The Jag site turned up after 12 hours but so far not the other two. It may just be me being too quick off the mark. :s

Legion White Tiger said...

Hush my mouth - I did the Capcha sites an hour later... I'm sure they'll turn up. Whatever works for you Ash, in any case in this matter I'm neutral I have no complaint... But... I really would like to push a basic principle down your throat again... Complex systems go wrong more often and take longer to run and maintain... If I were you I'd be stripping out rather than adding in. Meet you in the hell where all the users and accountants want to send programmers. ;)

Legion White Tiger said...

Sorry for spamming... Just wanted to confirm it's working, those last two sites turned up. :)

Elijah Night said...

The new format for the vote page is fantastic, thank you for the update. Oh and thank you for removing the 5 second rule. It's actually faster for me to vote legitimately now than to cheat the 5 second system.

Whiz said...

How about a gradual turns regeneration, rather than a lump turn regeneration. Every 4.5 minutes, another turn is added, or more frequently if VIP. Just make sure that the 4.5 minutes doesn't fall on the hour.

The same could be done with health. Every few minutes add back 1% of his/her health. A player cannot be attacked, nor attack if their health is below 10%, essentially they are dead.

This would probably add to the overall processing during the course of the day, but at least you wouldn't get everyone on at the hour, clicking refresh.

Elphaba Reve said...

I like the new voting.

I also like Whiz's idea about gradual turn regeneration, but not health regeneration.

Anonymous said...

Voting takes the fantasy out of the game. checked awful btw.

No disrespect intended.... said...

As someone already mentioned, some sites just error all the time (3 come to mind), they don't accept the captcha code no matter how many times or how carefully it is typed. In fact for one of them, the captcha itself always spells out ERROR. No it isn't funny, and it isn't only coming to you now. I myself mentioned it over a year ago (both in a blog comment and a support ticket) and have seen others do as well.

In addition to this, some of your staff don't read tickets very well. They apparently skim through quickly, write back a hasty reply and close the ticket, without having understood what the issue really was. (For example, replying "you made a typo" when it has been explained that the captcha isn't accepted, EVER) Most people probably feel awkward sending in another ticket after that.

Oops one more thing said...

So busy rambling about the error issue, forgot to say.... yes, half hour turns sounds like a great idea. Thank you Ash.

Whiz said...

Elphaba Reve said

"I also like Whiz's idea about gradual turn regeneration, but not health regeneration. "

I change my suggestion about the health regeneration. After some thought I realize that this would put a huge stress on the server. Turn regeneration only affects the individual player, and so only needs to be calculated during page load (ie if CurrentTime > LastRegenTime + 4.5 Minutes, then CalculateTurnRegeneration). But player health affects all players, and so would need to be calculated regularly, for the entire player table.

Maybe something like a PlayerDeathTime field. Then, every fifteen minutes query this field for any value between CurrentTime - 60 minutes and CurrentTime - 75 minutes. All players that meet that criteria get their health restored.

This might be flawed as well in that instead of a mad rush at the top of the hour, there is a made rush every 15 minutes, but maybe it will in some way reduce the frenzy if not all players' health are restored at the same time.

Anonymous said...

i like what you did to the voting page,just a pity some sites dont work properly at least 2 requires a click to confirm vote but nowhere to click on another just bounces me back to rob voting page and then there are the errors with the capcha...makes me think that some sites just wont get their house in order so its easier to lay the blame on players

DarkAsh said...

I go through all the vote sites every day like everyone else had have no problem with the codes.

Shinya said...

And since YOU have had no problems, that means obviously it must not exist? Have you tried all the sites using different computers? Different accounts? Different browsers? Experiences will vary. I know, we are (or were) a multi-player household, and have varying experiences with the voting.

Different browsers may affect results, although one of teh sites, the one that gives ERROR as the captcha, used to work in Opera but not in Firefox. Now, it errors in Opera too.

Also something new I hadn't noticed before, because I had no way of knowing until each site was labeled as click-through or captcha type: some of the sites that are supposed to be captcha do not show as such. I just had a couple of them bring me directly to a confirmation page instead of asking for any codes.

Of course, as there is actually NO problem with any of the sites, this must be all in my imagination. I'm either hallucinating, or a liar.

Anonymous said...

yea three always mess up on me too... well now only two... I always get the "ERROR" one too as some others have above, one of the ones that never accepted my captcha codes annoyed me so much that i decided that it was the same as not putting anything in so I didn't and I clicked yes to proceed... and then it accepted it and told me my vote was counted?? all prior times when i put the correct code in it always refreshed the page and asked me to enter a catcha code? weird!!

Tasty.™ said...

Lol @ Darion. It will be an advantage for those with half a brain. :p Sounds good, Ash.

Aestolia said...

Too all the people getting errors on the voting sites: Have you made sure all your browser plug-ins are up to date? I've never had a problem with voting, and have tried voting in Chrome, and in Firefox. I plan on trying in IE and Opera over the next two days.

Usually for sites if something's not working for some people but is working for others the problem is either:

- Location ocation (no streaming outside US)
- Browser Compatability
or
- Out of date plug-ins (java / flash)

I'm fairly certain most voting sites don't have care where you're from. And as I mentioned I'm in the process of testing different browsers. (sadly i can't test from a mac, and would love to find someone willing to do this for me)

If I can get it working in all the browsers then odds are it's probably an out of date plug in on your computer. Before you complain a site isn't working I'd double check them.

Ash can't check everyones computer to make sure it's up to date, but I'm willing to help if your having problems.

Feel free to send me a BL.

Wolfpack said...

it works fine for me now, lag is mostly gone and you got rid of the voting sites that took a long time to load when voting.

Anonymous said...

you need to add or change some staff members, the help tickets suck, and that is not a software error its a human error, always being hasty and disrespectful to the members of the game.

Unknown said...

Bottom line....Untill you grow a pair and stop all the multi-tabbing the lag is goin ta be terrible. I mean hell, youre takin stuff away from good players because ya refuse ta listen ta reason..

Anonymous said...

is anybody els having problems logging in today??

Anonymous said...

hellllppp I cant Log in what the hell is going on IM getting a syntax error message and I dot know what to do I need my ROB Daily Fix OMg im a wreck :(....

Anonymous said...

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '}' in /home/dacpanel/public_html/MySQL_session_handler.php on line 31


what the heck is this shit !!!

Anonymous said...

We're making some changes, you may not be able to login for a small while.

Anonymous said...

Top 100 Web Games.doesnt give confirm vote link.i use opera mini on my cellphone.

Kisaki said...

@Aestolia When we got this computer a couple months ago, everything was installed current, but there was no change in our error issues.

And nobody's asking Ash to check everyone's computers. We just want him to NOT be insulting.

Anonymous said...

@Aestolia:
This doesn't help those with the "Too many connections" issue as this is server-side.

Anonymous said...

keep the turns and revive together

Post a Comment

Comment this update.

Popular Posts