Crashes

[johanmaxon]

Or, to make it Easy, go to the menu and press save character. It takes à sec or so. I always use it when I get a load of DM loot to carry or anything.

[The Ruins of Third Earth]

I am pretty sure that only saves the character to your computer, not the server vault.

[Paha]

Yes, it's local vault. Not server. If you wanna save your char, relog.

[Drakill Tannan]

How about we place an actual suggestion on this thread?

/c save command. Saves your character in the Module vault.

[Paha]

As much as I see the point here, relog does the job already. Also, even if crash happens, these days the jump back is not very far usually. It still won't save one from losing things that are on the ground even if we have save command, which can already be achieved by swiftly relogging.

[ExileStrife]

For concurrency issues, players will not be allowed to initiate server side saves.

We do indeed do daily backups though, so if you truly lost a lot of stuff, sometimes it is possible to find a DM who is willing to go through the recover process with you.  This is not always a guarantee though.  It is done on a case by case basis and is left to the DM to decide.

[Howlando]

There has got to be something done about this.

[djspectre]

As someone who's had a crash happen while dead in the fugue which resulted in a TOTAL loss including equipped gear, I can say crashes are painful and really infuriating at times. Its risky to play on semi-private (non-WoW/CoH/EQ) servers like this one.

Using server side saves probably works similar to how the 'Save Character' option works where your character becomes 'Character Name (1)' and 'Character Name (2)' in the server vault, creating vastly unnecessary copies and likely exponential drive space used.

Relogging is currently the only safe way to make sure that you have the most recent data for your character saved outside of the 10-15 autosave on the server side of things.

The autosave is a far cry better than it was four years ago when I joined and there was NOTHING in place.

From the client side of things, I do not see a viable alternative to relogging. On-demand server side saves would bog the server down and create duplicity thats not needed for each and every character.


[COLOR="DarkOrange"]AN IDEA![/COLOR]
One suggestion that might help (at least with questing) is that perhaps an additional script could be tagged onto the quest completion/boss slaying scripts. Losing quest xp and loot can be costly especially if you had to use lots of supplies.

Here's how the idea works:

When you begin a quest, the same system that adds people to the quest also triggers a backup (similar to a relog) to each character added to a quest.

Similarly, when the boss is defeated, the journal update scripts are piggy backed with the same backup-of-character script used when the quest was accepted.

And finally, when the quest is closed (either by success or failure), the backup once again takes place.

This might alleviate some stress of mid-quest crashes.

This could be adapted to DM-quests by simply tying save character script to the transition of @areas.

The idea above, increase the regularity outside of standard scheduled server backups (which include setting changes too, right?) but dont overly burden the server.

Is any of what I described possible/realistic?

[Bobbybrown]

nice dj, i hope they can do it, once i get Von back up and running as a merchant this might help a bit. That way i can just drop the bags inside the quest area and not worry about them if  the game crashes. The issue is if its possible, and when and if they can get the time to do this. I am also glad even howland recognizes this as an issue.

[Thomas_Not_very_wise]

[Thumbs up to Djspectre]

[Joe Desu]

During my time in the Underdark, I lost everything while in the fugue on more than 5 occasions, or was it 6, maybe 7?

Consider it a server mugging and get on with it.  You are going to lose a few bags because you put them down and the rare crash when you should not put them down at all.  The fact that you are a merchant, who carries a ton of things, but probably does not have much strength, the only thing I can suggest is not to quest with a full cartload of sell-able items.  If you want to be able to carry many things, make a PC with higher strength.

Sorry if I appear to be unsympathetic, I am usually tend to be more kind, empathetic, and generous with my opinions.  :(

[Bobbybrown]

i brought this up cause it is happening more often now, before this one i could ignore it, but now it affected my char and i know others felt it too.

[djspectre]

nice dj, i hope they can do it, once i get Von back up and running as a merchant this might help a bit. [COLOR="DarkOrange"]That way i can just drop the bags inside the quest area and not worry about them if  the game crashes.[/COLOR] The issue is if its possible, and when and if they can get the time to do this. I am also glad even howland recognizes this as an issue.

My suggestion does not fix the problem in bold. As you state, you drop your bags on the ground (packs are not persistent through resets as you probably noticed). They are no longer part of your character and thus are susceptible to being lost in a server crash, if the crash happens between your last backup and the next.

What I suggested simply gave people an crude ad-hoc way to back up their character to the server outside of the standard 15-minute interval thats currently in place and without re-logging.

There is no easy/possible way (that I know of) to save someones inventory 'on-the-fly' while you're making changes to it (leaving items on the ground, gathering quest loot, etc).

There will always be a (albeit small) risk of losing anything you put down on the ground for any reason. The game has no way of knowing that you intend to retrieve it or that random-item-#2744-laying-on-the-ground is even related to your character.

[Howlando]

I am also glad even howland recognizes this as an issue.

No, actually, I do not recognize this as an issue. I just found your outrage to be funny to me.

Crashes are extremely rare, maybe we have one crash once a month? If that?

And you really should NOT be leaving bags of stuff around anyway with the expectation that they will be safe. For one thing, doing so is believed to contribute towards lag for the whole server.

[Bobbybrown]

well actually, there were 3 crashes in one week