[ANNOUNCEMENT] Additional Information Regarding Recent Server Disruption - 04/01/2015

[big_bad_lynx]

Welcome to the club. I hope you didn't have any planso of winning the race to Elite.

~Steve
TICKET #00000018900

Ticket Status:	We are investigating

No i don't. I just want to play. Support was in touch with me but it was very vague

[aladinf]

I wondr what i can deduct from the fact that my ticket number is lower than yours and i don't have any reaction at all. Should i make another ticket?

[Capricos]

Again, I (and the whole of the online team) apologise for the disruption you may have suffered over the last few days. As you can see, we reacted promptly to the situation but simply failed to communicate this in good time with the players.



This is just a complete and blatant lie trying to downplay how bad you dropped the ball.
I have been plastering your forums and social media since Jan. 1 and you have not so much as offered a PEEP about this issue. You telling us that you were aware of it immediately and were working on it is just a complete and blatant lie. My tickets have STILL not been responded to. I STILL cannot sell my commodities.
It took you FOUR days to inform your gaming community about this error? That's a lie. You didn't know about it. If you did, you would have let us know you knew about it and were working on it. Otherwise, you again solidify Frontier's reputation for customer service and tech maintenance as atrocious and non-existent.
Admit you guy released a buggy game months before it came out of beta and you all MADE A HUGE MISTAKE by completely bailing on customer service and tech maintenance so you could go on vacation.
I was actively working on the competition. YOUR error and complete failure to address and fix it has basically booted me, and many others, out of it. I just lost four days of game time.
Also, your "refund" is a blatant lie too. That number, 4,296,695,965 was given in credits to those just jumping into sectors. Or for profit on trades. Or as rewards for missions. Or, in my case, the bill to reload the non-existent weapons on my trading ship. That error and number didn't occur because YOU were refunding anything. That number kept popping up because of your database failure.
You completely dropped the ball on this, the LEAST you could do is be honest about it. You're just lying to us trying to cover your ass.

[Chris Dettmar]

I was asked a question in a ticket earlier today. I replied, but the ticket still says "Waiting for user reply". Is there a bug with the ticketing system? Am I going to have to raise another ticket for the reply to be looked at?

[Fellow]

Haven't been compensated or contacted by support yet. My ticket id is #00000018354, hopefully you'll see this post and at least check it out and not leave me hanging.

[Ravenloft]

Again, I (and the whole of the online team) apologise for the disruption you may have suffered over the last few days. As you can see, we reacted promptly to the situation but simply failed to communicate this in good time with the players.



This is just a complete and blatant lie trying to downplay how bad you dropped the ball.
I have been plastering your forums and social media since Jan. 1 and you have not so much as offered a PEEP about this issue. You telling us that you were aware of it immediately and were working on it is just a complete and blatant lie. My tickets have STILL not been responded to. I STILL cannot sell my commodities.
It took you FOUR days to inform your gaming community about this error? That's a lie. You didn't know about it. If you did, you would have let us know you knew about it and were working on it. Otherwise, you again solidify Frontier's reputation for customer service and tech maintenance as atrocious and non-existent.
Admit you guy released a buggy game months before it came out of beta and you all MADE A HUGE MISTAKE by completely bailing on customer service and tech maintenance so you could go on vacation.
I was actively working on the competition. YOUR error and complete failure to address and fix it has basically booted me, and many others, out of it. I just lost four days of game time.
Also, your "refund" is a blatant lie too. That number, 4,296,695,965 was given in credits to those just jumping into sectors. Or for profit on trades. Or as rewards for missions. Or, in my case, the bill to reload the non-existent weapons on my trading ship. That error and number didn't occur because YOU were refunding anything. That number kept popping up because of your database failure.
You completely dropped the ball on this, the LEAST you could do is be honest about it. You're just lying to us trying to cover your ass.

We certainly are not hearing the full story. It was released too early in order to cash in on the Christmas sales. Some content was promised for the release date and never materialised - including more ships and more importantly the bobbleheads!!! On a more serious note, their customer service is appalling and rank amateur. First rule of customer service - "treat your customer the same as you would expect to be treated yourself" - second rule of customer service - "keep your customer informed". Whomever is leading this service shambles should be shot or at the very least booted out the door. During Beta my tickets were unanswered bar one, during Gamma none of my tickets were answered and just wiped. All my tickets since launch have remained unanswered. During beta and gamma I can kind of understand but since launch that is just s**t. I feel Mr Andrew Barlow is sweeping up other people's mistakes and trying to put fires out.

[Redglyph]

None of these players will be eligible for the "Race to Elite" competition if we feel they have gained an unfair advantage over the competition.

That's quite bold. Isn't that what they call 'adding insult to injury'?

[Verenikin]

I am STILL unable to play. I have 100 gold in my cargo, but I CANNOT sell it. It says "unable to complete transaction". I have only 6000 credits left,and no other vessels.

PLEASE HELP ME SO THAT I CAN PLAY! Your database fix did absolutely nothing.

Ticket number:

#00000020153

[ssanchez]

Glad to see this being dealt with the right way. What would be really cool is if you deal with it as part of the in game story - either as a major glitch in the station trading systems (cargo not being removed from ships, money being credited / debited incorrectly) and/or suggestions of cyber warfare with Federation and Empire accusing each of other of causing the problem. Along with promises from the government to resolve the issues.

I hear the concerns of people who have not been able to play for a week, and this is not intended as a glib response or to make light of the issues they are having. Let's remember that up until this incident, it has been pretty stable server side for a 1.0 release. Give FD the opportunity to resolve it during a normal working week.

[Evilroco]

Well 24 hours have passed anyone had their tickets on this resolved?

NOT ME

Ticket on this issue from 16 dec 00000003396
ticket from the 1st on this issue 00000018267

Both still show as new ,I understand you a very busy maybe 48 hours would have been a better timeline ?

[PIXEL]

Glad to see this being dealt with the right way. What would be really cool is if you deal with it as part of the in game story - either as a major glitch in the station trading systems (cargo not being removed from ships, money being credited / debited incorrectly) and/or suggestions of cyber warfare with Federation and Empire accusing each of other of causing the problem. Along with promises from the government to resolve the issues.

I hear the concerns of people who have not been able to play for a week, and this is not intended as a glib response or to make light of the issues they are having. Let's remember that up until this incident, it has been pretty stable server side for a 1.0 release. Give FD the opportunity to resolve it during a normal working week.

What would be really cool is everyone who made gazzillions of credits in this train wreck suddenly found themselves forced into a situation where they could only play the game after a wipe of their save.... oh some have done that
What would be really cool is if everyone who can play this game had some sympathy for those that can't even get into the game... oh some have done that
What would be really cool is if FD wriggle out of a situation where online play (which is 24/7 by definition) has been impossible and give all the credits from those who gained them to those that didn't... coming soon

What would really be cool??

I'm still scratching my head as to how 'Lore' or any story line would be acceptable to anyone who isn't doing 'all right' the way it is.

Oh I know... a wipe for everyone one <Pixel attempts to hide under cat>

[big_bad_lynx]

If anybody read this from Frontier:

I really don't believe that you guys care about your fan base and players. Myself along other players can't normally play for days and support at Frontier IS NOT EXISTING. Someone managed to reply to me but I received only "we appreciate your waiting". I paid for this game and supported you from beta stage with my hard worked money and have every right to play it. There is almost no communication with Frontier. After a couple of days i read this blatant communication that you did react swiftly chasing people who earned billions. people who can't play - still can't play. My question is - what do you have now to keep me with this game? I can assure you that I will not be spending money on your future projects or add ons. The same situation was with Battlefield 4 - they broke their franchise and I'm not willing to buy anything from them anymore.

[Sozzac]

Well I been creating tickets from
the start of the game

and ofc about this problem where Items cargo my credit in wallet (where is my billion credits?) and
just wannish my guns wannish
cant either be fund on market either

BUT no response on any ticket from the game went live Neither has anything been fixed

Hello,

I had previously posted a message similar to the following in the forums already (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...=1#post1425751), but felt the players (you guys!) deserved a little more explanation and a plan of things to come!

Firstly, I'd like to apologise to all commanders affected by the recent server issue we suffered over New Year. On January 1st 2015 around 11:00pm we had a network issue with one of our databases. Our online engineering team spotted the issue and reacted to it immediately. During this period, a relatively small number of commanders were affected in various ways. Some having cargo stuck in their ship, others with missions that couldn't be completed/aborted and vanishing ships. Our customer services team have been working through tickets to resolve these issues on an individual basis since the event. We have also updated and improved the architecture and solidified our server side technology to avoid this happening again.

After shoring up the database, in the early hours of the 2nd of January, we automatically refunded all the affected players for their lost transactions and also granted them a 20% bonus for their troubles. However, during this refund process, a very few (lucky) commanders received more credits than perhaps they were entitled to (5 billion credits in some cases)!

To be clear - these players will not be banned. Over the next 24 hours we will be investigating every affected player and performing individual commander rollbacks where we feel it's fair to - which may include credits, assets and rank where appropriate. We may reach out to individual commanders where this situation may not be straight forward. None of these players will be eligible for the "Race to Elite" competition if we feel they have gained an unfair advantage over the competition.

On the morning of the 3rd of January, after reports that some players were still having issues, we ran a second pass over the database to remove any excess cargo commanders may have still been carrying, which should have unblocked the commodities markets for those remaining affected players. In the next 24 hours we shall also be issuing a server side fix to automatically issue a credit or asset refund on login after cases similar to these. Of course, if you are still having problems, please submit a support ticket at https://support.elitedangerous.com - our customer services team can help.

We are also aware of an exploit (I wont detail it here) which occurred due to this database error, where players have been abusing the broken state of their ship to "create credits". These players know they are exploiting the system and will also be investigated. Actions may be taken against players who are known to be exploiting the system and do stand out from the commanders who were simply given the credits during our credit refund process. These players will also not be eligible for the "Race to Elite" competition if we feel they have gained an unfair advantage over the competition.

Again, I (and the whole of the online team) apologise for the disruption you may have suffered over the last few days. As you can see, we reacted promptly to the situation but simply failed to communicate this in good time with the players.

To avoid this happening in the future, in the next week, we shall be publishing a "Server Status" dashboard which you can use to see the state of the online galaxy. From here we shall let you know immediately of any problems we are currently facing, any known issues and any scheduled down-time for maintenance. This should give us a single place for us to be able to communicate directly with you guys about any problems the servers are currently facing - or hopefully - simply that all is well in the galaxy.

Finally - if you are still affected by this issue in anyway, please do submit a support ticket: https://support.elitedangerous.com. Our apologies for the disruption and we shall endeavour to communicate with commanders more promptly and directly going forward.

As always, fly safe commanders!

Andrew Barlow

[FelixMaximus]

If anybody read this from Frontier:

I really don't believe that you guys care about your fan base and players. Myself along other players can't normally play for days and support at Frontier IS NOT EXISTING. Someone managed to reply to me but I received only "we appreciate your waiting". I paid for this game and supported you from beta stage with my hard worked money and have every right to play it. There is almost no communication with Frontier. After a couple of days i read this blatant communication that you did react swiftly chasing people who earned billions. people who can't play - still can't play. My question is - what do you have now to keep me with this game? I can assure you that I will not be spending money on your future projects or add ons. The same situation was with Battlefield 4 - they broke their franchise and I'm not willing to buy anything from them anymore.

I really thought I'd see some movement by now. Players who can't login should be max priority, followed by sorting out bugs. I am starting to think that the problem is more serious than FD are letting on.

[Andrew Barlow]

I really thought I'd see some movement by now. Players who can't login should be max priority, followed by sorting out bugs. I am starting to think that the problem is more serious than FD are letting on.

Hello Felix,

Rest assured that players that cannot login are our top priority right now. We have a server side fix in-place to go live tomorrow, it's just undergoing some final testing tonight and tomorrow morning before making its way to the live servers. This should fix it for everyone that's not already been fixed by customer services already. We just want to ensure that the fix is correct and safe so we don't cause more issues for players that are currently unaffected - but we're working on it as quickly and safely as possible, promise!