Incident Report for Item Loss Bug

lol i wouldnt dare to check if i still have my shav with me... there goes my last purchase of pack T_T

A very rare Vaal Orb corruption.

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greg2367 wrote:

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Archwizard wrote:

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greg2367 wrote:

so GGG, you can MANUALLY, INDIVIDUALLY restore player characters that died to your own 'bug' of carrion queen damage value(s), but you are now refusing to restore players' items that were literally deleted solely by your own mistakes, through no fault of the players themselves? Hell, they didn't even have knowledge of it, let alone fault.

Chris was right, you guys DID set a dangerous precedent when you restored those characters. Now you're all hypocrites, RIP.

I love you guys, always have (and you even fixed desync, something I thought impossible even for you guys!), but this is just inconsistent, unprofessional, shameful behavior.

final verdict:
0/10

You understand that the logging of those two events (character death vs. item deletion) is totally different right?

People also need to realize that "deletion" means deleted from memory, be it via /destroy, dropping in town, selling to a vendor, being in an instance when it despawns, etc. We don't know what their logging fully looks like, so commenting on it is asinine. It's also asinine to say they should have set logging up "in case this random glitch causes tiny bits of memory to be set to 0" AND that that is even possible.

To people thinking that GGG did this maliciously, or makes comments like "I hope they leave our other stuff alone", just wow. You really think GGG ever wants to make it less fun for people to play their game?

Folks that think GGG is lying about their logging/ability to restore items: get off the forums. If you don't believe what GGG says, there's really no point in being here.

People who don't want to support anymore: that's your right. I think you're stupid, but it's your right. GGG works damned hard to make a great game, talk to their players, listen to their players, and be up front with what's going on in their Dev world. They also happen to be human, which means shit happens. It's how they handle that shit that defines the company. If you think GGG is bad, I think you need to set more realistic expectations. Call Comcast or something and then tell me GGG is bad.

You can call me stupid if you want, but GGG could have easily said "we will work hard to try and differentiate legitimate item deletions, and deletions due to the memory corruption that happened because of our mistake. please message support if you are missing items."

But they specifically just said that they are intentionally and categorically doing nothing.

If you think that's the right way to handle this, speak up again and defend it, instead of just calling people "stupid".

Sigh. They specifically said they are doing nothing because they cannot. It's really that simple. They are not choosing to avoid work or anything like that. If it can't be done, it can't be done. I choose to accept GGG's word on this. There's simply no point in reading anything GGG posts if you assume they're lying. I never said it is the right way, I said I accepted GGG's word that it's the only way.

Seeing as I do not program for GGG (and neither does anyone else other than GGG employees in this thread), I cannot know what it would have taken before hand to make it possible to make it so item restoration is possible in this scenario. I can tell you that, as someone who's programmed a game for 19 years with 10 of those as an Admin, this crap can be super nasty to track down. No logging system is perfect because there is simply no way to anticipate every way in which a bug can manifest itself. My game has millions of lines of code in it, and it's a small game with a small player base.

People need to get over their unrealistic expectations. I drive an older car, 2002 model year, and last year I got a recall notice for an issue with the ignition switch not working properly. That means it took the car company 12 YEARS to find a problem with my car's make/model and come up with a fix for it. I've never experienced the problem they describe, but I should probably get that fixed eventually....

Anyway, the point is, in the real world, mistakes happen. It is unavoidable. If you really feel GGG's error here was so atrocious that you simply cannot abide the thought of giving them money, don't. I still think that's stupid, because whether or not to support GGG should be a more complex thought process than "well, this one bug screwed a few people over, so fuck it I'm out." Weigh everything involved, the game itself, your enjoyment of it, your financial situation, GGG's work ethic, GGG's communications, GGG's mistakes, GGG's efforts to learn from mistakes, etc. Everything should be weighed, both good and bad, before coming to a decision on what to do.

I'd have a lot more respect for people that said "Given x, y and z over the past year, I simply find myself unable to believe in GGG anymore, so I won't be supporting" rather than those that say "OMG THIS LATEST OUTRAGE IS OUTRAGEOUS NO MORE $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ FOR YOU." The first is a reasoned, thoughtful analysis. The second is knee-jerk asshattery.

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Aaardvark wrote:

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Archwizard wrote:

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OptimistMind wrote:

I shouldn't, but I have to also express my dissatisfaction at how item losses (which are not the player's faults) are handled by GGG as a company.

"You played every day for almost a year and saved up every bit of currency you made to afford that 6L Shavs? Well it's going to disappear, but sorry, we will not give it back. But wait, you don't get your currency back either." Read that and tell me how this item loss bug has been handled is the correct route.

Back in the 1 Month Bloodlines/Torment Event I chanced a Cloak of Defiance while partying with a public group. Picked it up off the ground, got the achievement, linked it and said "Holy shit just chanced this," not 20 seconds later everyone in my group disconnected, I logged back in, no Cloak of Defiance in my inventory.

Still had the achievement though, but I suppose when you get the achievement "Left to chance" it does not log which item base the chance orb was used on.

Was pretty pissed to be honest, can only imagine what people who lost mirrors/acuity's/Shavs are feeling.

Easy: you're assuming they have the capability. They have stated they do not. So either you have no reading comprehension, or you assume GGG is lying.

Do you think this is a server resource issue? I would think that item tracking would also help them shut down RMT facilitators, as well as allow GGG to replace items they deemed to be caused by bugs and not player abuse.

I have no idea, I don't work for GGG. I just choose to believe what GGG says because to assume they're lying is counterproductive at best.

You know about 300 items were affected but you can't tell whether they were deleted by the player or by erroneous code? That sounds a little off to me.

This situation is analogous to walking home with bags of groceries, the shop randomly grabbing one of the bags from you, and incinerating it. Or a bank deleting some of your money and claiming they're not sure it wasn't you who deliberately deleted your own cash so won't refund it. Other vendors would not get away with this, but we excuse it because it's a computer game. Items are the number one most important part of an ARPG and if they're not safe it's very worrying.

Players should get four 'lock and key' stash tabs where you can place your most valuable items which gets backed up every day. Maybe you generate unique item identifiers for everything in there, I don't know.

This makes the game quite frightening to play for the players with a lot to lose, which are often the ones who spend a reasonable amount of money on the game.

Ben

Actually if they'd be fair (I mean GGG) they would not post stupid excuses but they would just give those poor guys back items they lost. For instance those Shavs. Thats how it should work IMHO.

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geradon wrote:

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Chris wrote:

Players who lost microtransactions should contact support@grindinggear.com so that they can determine if any are missing and replace them.

this would require that players know which microtransactions they spent points on at all. which is generally not the case.

I would like to offer the consolatory point that "If you don't know what's missing, you probably won't miss it."

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phlawski wrote:

Actually if they'd be fair (I mean GGG) they would not post stupid excuses but they would just give those poor guys back items they lost. For instance those Shavs. Thats how it should work IMHO.

A) They have no means to verify that X person ever had a shavs.

B) They would have to traipse through terabytes of data manually to find and rectify the bug (because they don't have the means to create items on the live production realms)

I don't think you understand just what a titanic undertaking that would be. You're talking a team of 4-5 people working months to restore each of those items, and that's assuming that each and every complaint is legit (which everyone and their pet rocks knows will never be the case). It just ain't going to happen.

It's not a happy situation, but it's the only one that can happen. People are demanding the impossible.

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TikoXi wrote:

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phlawski wrote:

Actually if they'd be fair (I mean GGG) they would not post stupid excuses but they would just give those poor guys back items they lost. For instance those Shavs. Thats how it should work IMHO.

A) They have no means to verify that X person ever had a shavs.

B) They would have to traipse through terabytes of data manually to find and rectify the bug (because they don't have the means to create items on the live production realms)

I don't think you understand just what a titanic undertaking that would be. You're talking a team of 4-5 people working months to restore each of those items, and that's assuming that each and every complaint is legit (which everyone and their pet rocks knows will never be the case). It just ain't going to happen.

It's not a happy situation, but it's the only one that can happen. People are demanding the impossible.

Don't say that there is no way to grep (even terabytes) of logs they track for sure against existence of item named XYZ. In this case (as Chris said only about 300 accounts affected) even some small gift would do the trick. They need to keep the face imho, and again - that's how it should be if they want be really fair.


EDIT: And come'on - it's not 19 century - they have computers, you know, with computers you can search quite fast nowadays ;) No offence - just joking....

GGG knows that there are around 300 cases. So they are identified. So they can restore what has been altered/destroyed. What is missing here ?