War timers appear to be Time Traveling (Edit: And everything else)

[HM Solomon I]

All money sent to the game are donations. It explicitly states on the Donate page that you're not paying money, you're donating money to support the game.

 

I understand your sentiment, but you obviously aren't privy to the same information I am. And I'm also tired of this "I paid money treat me special" attitude. I don't treat players that donate any different than players that don't, aside from the things like flags that are listed.

That's not what Saru was saying.  The problem is whatever semantics you choose to apply, money is being given to you to support this game, which means that while no special treatment for those donating is expected, it is expected that you use that money to do basic things like back-up the game for situations like this.  Simply saying "oh well" does not cut it.  Even a bona fide charity would not be able to pull this crap and have people be fine with it, and this is no charity.  Whatever you want to call them, when people pay money in exchange for anything of value, it is not a donation in any real sense (legal or otherwise).

[Samwise]

I fully agree that those players at war got screwed over and all that but maybe someone should of called a cease fire when the bug was first discovered instead of players trying to take advantage of the situation and then blaming Sheepy for not fixing it quick enough

 

In my case the damage had already been done when the game glitched.  Any wars declared later were last ditch efforts to kill off enemy military and spread more nukes around. I already knew I hosed before declaring new wars.

 

You can't expect during a war that a ceasefire is going to be called even in an event such as this one. Not long after it happened one alliance even made an announcement stating that this changed nothing and the war was still on. It's not the first time a problem has occurred and Sheepy has hesitated or outright neglected to disable the game while he fixes it when he should have. When it's a game problem, it's absolutely his job to take the game down rather than expect the player base to work around it.

 

All money sent to the game are donations. It explicitly states on the Donate page that you're not paying money, you're donating money to support the game.

I understand your sentiment, but you obviously aren't privy to the same information I am. And I'm also tired of this "I paid money treat me special" attitude. I don't treat players that donate any different than players that don't, aside from the things like flags that are listed.

I'm fairly certain that I've donated money before with the intention of helping pay server costs, and whatever else it takes to keep this place running. I've asked for no special treatment and am quite content with the cosmetic bonuses on my nation page. However, why should I ever donate money in the future when steps aren't being taken to make this game playable? You have major, game breaking exploits that happen every couple months. Someone even had access to what was it again? The database that allowed them to spawn in things like cash, resources, projects and cities? And oh yeah, that was going on for months. Problems will occur. I understand that. However, I don't see you taking the proper steps to prepare for those situations when they arise. And considering the games track record, it'll happen again soon. You need more staff, and there needs to be proper backups happening regularly. It's already too little, too late, but you have to start somewhere.

[Avruch]

You guys are playing a game created by one guy who was until recently in high school. He has one other guy, recently hired, assisting him. If you want to play a game supported by a huge corporate infrastructure and multilevel bureaucracy, you can. There are millions of them, but this isn't one. 

 

Sheepy is obviously doing the best he can, and he's contending with the problems themselves, with hackers and cheaters creating them, and with disappointed players kvetching at him. This particular bug did not wreck anyone's whole account or unbalance the game. He probably does not have a big red "ROLL BACK" button he can just press. So relax, remember that it's a game, and cut him some slack. 

[LordRahl2]

What Avruch said.  Just consider this a feature and not a bug and you can rest easier.  Do your best to take it in stride, modify your planning and in game actions, and roll on.

[PigInZen]

You guys are playing a game created by one guy who was until recently in high school. He has one other guy, recently hired, assisting him. If you want to play a game supported by a huge corporate infrastructure and multilevel bureaucracy, you can. There are millions of them, but this isn't one. 

 

Sheepy is obviously doing the best he can, and he's contending with the problems themselves, with hackers and cheaters creating them, and with disappointed players kvetching at him. This particular bug did not wreck anyone's whole account or unbalance the game. He probably does not have a big red "ROLL BACK" button he can just press. So relax, remember that it's a game, and cut him some slack. 

 

What Avruch said.  Just consider this a feature and not a bug and you can rest easier.  Do your best to take it in stride, modify your planning and in game actions, and roll on.

 

B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-but MUH PIXELS!  I GAVE $30 a month for MONTHS for those!  [/sarcasm]

[Alex]

You guys are playing a game created by one guy who was until recently in high school. He has one other guy, recently hired, assisting him. If you want to play a game supported by a huge corporate infrastructure and multilevel bureaucracy, you can. There are millions of them, but this isn't one. 

 

Sheepy is obviously doing the best he can, and he's contending with the problems themselves, with hackers and cheaters creating them, and with disappointed players kvetching at him. This particular bug did not wreck anyone's whole account or unbalance the game. He probably does not have a big red "ROLL BACK" button he can just press. So relax, remember that it's a game, and cut him some slack.

 

Thank you. I don't ever wish to make an excuse for poor management or administration, but I will admit I am not an expert programmer and have made many mistakes in the past. I learn quickly though, and am continuing to improve my performance for the game and for you all, the players. I've had many, many a headache and frustration doing this, but I haven't given up yet, and I simply ask that everyone else not give up yet either.

[Saru]

All money sent to the game are donations. It explicitly states on the Donate page that you're not paying money, you're donating money to support the game.

 

I understand your sentiment, but you obviously aren't privy to the same information I am. And I'm also tired of this "I paid money treat me special" attitude. I don't treat players that donate any different than players that don't, aside from the things like flags that are listed.

 

Exactly. Yet on numerous occasions you have seemed to refuse to spent a small portion of the money you received to hire professionals if you couldn't do something yourself. The exploits being a case in point, had a professional ethical hacker been hired I am sure they would of found the areas of exploit.

 

As for the issue we are speaking about, you ALWAYS refuse to roll back the game. 

 

And noone said that you treat donators differently. I am saying that you need to accept more responsibility given that you do make money from this game -- because it's incredibly frustrating for people when you refuse to do rollbacks, and noone knows why. (and I am not talking about just the most recent event.)

 

Perhaps when you tell us why you never opt to roll back, then the criticism will not be as strong. But right now it looks like it's just because you don't keep back ups or someshit. I'm not criticising your programming skills, I am criticising how you choose to deal with some of these situations... the cheaters pumping money into the company for months before as an example.

 

 

This particular bug did not wreck anyone's whole account or unbalance the game. He probably does not have a big red "ROLL BACK" button he can just press. So relax, remember that it's a game, and cut him some slack. 

 

 

That's a matter of who you ask. I've come across a couple of players who have gloated about benefiting from the timers being sped up, and many who claimed that it !@#$ed up their ingame plans/put them at a disadvantage and so on. How true that is I don't know as I haven't paid attention to this particular bug. The issue I have is that I know for a fact that we have had situations in the past where rollbacks were appropriate, but apparently couldn't be done -- and this had consequences ingame. It seems we still haven't learned from the past, and the capability to roll back isn't there.

 

Keeping backups may not be as easy as having a big bed button to press, but it's certainly not as technically challenging as you are trying to imply. And again the money received in donations, isn't mere change. Professional help wouldn't cost a fortune, and would ensure that there are no headaches in the future.

 

 

I simply ask that everyone else not give up yet either.

 

If we had given up, we wouldn't be here.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Saru

[seabasstion]

to hire a professional whitehat isn't as cheap as you would imagine. at least the quality of whitehat that would catch everything you would want them to catch and give good suggestions/strategies on patches that would be able to implement without too much headache.

 

these guys don't exist on fiverr and if it came to it and he had freelanced an affordable whitehat then the issue is "was he good enough" which could easily turn into "sheepy cheaped out on it" when the next bug/exploit became known. would a whitehat even catch this if it was a server issue? i dont think we know if it was a hack or not at this point (although the timing is suspicious)

 

the most impartial and fair thing to do is just to keep the game rolling as is. if you roll it back you give others competitive advantage/disadvantage by knowing who will be attacking whom which could potentially lead another whole slew of timeline problems with the war. 

 

i think we should cut him some slack. this is still a pretty polished game with a development team of 1. he isn't sitting back like this is a cash cow and looking at vacation homes - he's still putting investment (through his time and money) into making this a better experience for us so when something like this comes around he will fix it, learn from it, and use the knowledge gained in other applicable errors. 

 

95% of the code i learned was through fixing problems. you can read all the reference files you want but until you get into your own dev project there are simply some unforeseen issues you have to experience and figure out for yourself

[Saru]

Oh look right after my post someone has taken over the VE AA, and kicked everyone and probably caused more damage in the process. Still no need to keep backups?

 

This is ridiculous.

[Saru]

to hire a professional whitehat isn't as cheap as you would imagine. at least the quality of whitehat that would catch everything you would want them to catch and give good suggestions/strategies on patches that would be able to implement without too much headache.

 

these guys don't exist on fiverr and if it came to it and he had freelanced an affordable whitehat then the issue is "was he good enough" which could easily turn into "sheepy cheaped out on it" when the next bug/exploit became known. would a whitehat even catch this if it was a server issue? i dont think we know if it was a hack or not at this point (although the timing is suspicious)

 

the most impartial and fair thing to do is just to keep the game rolling as is. if you roll it back you give others competitive advantage/disadvantage by knowing who will be attacking whom which could potentially lead another whole slew of timeline problems with the war. 

 

i think we should cut him some slack. this is still a pretty polished game with a development team of 1. he isn't sitting back like this is a cash cow and looking at vacation homes - he's still putting investment (through his time and money) into making this a better experience for us so when something like this comes around he will fix it, learn from it, and use the knowledge gained in other applicable errors. 

 

95% of the code i learned was through fixing problems. you can read all the reference files you want but until you get into your own dev project there are simply some unforeseen issues you have to experience and figure out for yourself

 

oDesk/eLance has been fully qualified professionals at very affordable rates. I have used them, and they did a great job. Maybe you are underestimating how much money has been "donated" to this game. And I will guess that a white hack hacker is capable of finding the exploit, if we have the likes of Sith/Jemmm finding them.

 

... Anyway looks like we've had another major breach of the games security, with VE's alliance being taken over, some of their members kicked etc. So let's hope Sheepy manages to deal with this.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Saru

[seabasstion]

i dont disagree with you that security needs addressed and that backups should be collected. i just disagree on the magnitude of the criticism being delivered

[Longbowe]

 I learn quickly though...

 

I'm not too sold on this given the history of this game and your last.