My problems with downtime. NOT A RANT! (in General)

Instead of just ranting, I would like to share something:

The only problems that I personally have with downtime are:

1) Auctions:

Q: What happens if an auction ends during downtime? Did Mr. Chairman bid on it? Does the auction time extend the amount of time CB was down?

This can potentially be a problem.

First, if your auctioning an item and is over during downtime, you potentially get the loss of bids from others AND Mr. Chairman.

If your buying an item and hope to wait untill Mr. C bids, you lost your chance to get it.

2) N*B:

The N*B is a time based occurrence in CB. The N*B, auctions and tournaments are the only "time" based things in CB. For tourneys, everyone is at the same start/end point so it balances out and is not that important.

But the N*B is fixed at 6 months. Many down times limits the amount of BA you get. Compared to non-N*B characters your time to catchup is diminished.

I personally would like to see the following solution to these problems, to be fair to everyone:

1) Auctions are extended the amount of time CB was down. If possible to calculate the downtime.

2) N*B's get additional time. I know it is based up cache flush and therefore 24 hour intervals, but if it possible to keep a tag on each N*B with the total downtime, get 1 more day every 24 hours of downtime. Rounded down of course.

I have no idea if this is possible.

I welcome all constructive discussion.

I agree on the N*B part...way back when, when I did my first NCB, it got _totally_ killed by downtime. I'd hate to see this happen to anyone else.


However, banana split happens. Can't be helped.

The thing to keep in mind is that the downtime is not by choice. Maybe if there is a way to "Freeze" the data if the servers go down. I don't know how or if this is possible.

I have missed the EXP time twice myself due to the downtimes and was disappointed but figure it's just like more server based games where you know you will have to endure "downtime" or technical issues. Steam is classic right now for having server crashes and instability issues and is reaking havoc on the clans that host their servers.

As for ideas for a solution, what about free BA added for the amount of time that it was down for everyone?

Comparing CB to other online games is a bit inadequate since CB is the only game I can think of with a N*B as advanced.

However, if it is possible to calculate the BA lost that may be a nice solution.

But I do feel the N*B thing is a real problem of sort with down times.

But, yes, I think most of us realize that things happen and sometimes things are not 100% entirely fair/balanced/equal.

Would it be too much to ask for a "Server is currently offline, CB will be back shortly" page? Or maybe even a clock showing when it went down? I know it's not much, but it removes the mystery of the blank white page.

lol Revs.. I thought my internet was down everytime I saw that blank page haha

The downtime that afflicts bonus-laden characters doesn't matter. See my other post regarding how it blends with the equivalent downtime experienced by a Jan 1 char.

The downtime that afflicts auctions is more valid. Here, it'd be cool to be able to automatically extend auctions. The hard part is figuring out when the downtime is occurring. Remember that it can manifest itself in various ways.

Did the connection to the net go down? Did the server crash? Did the hosting company shut us off? There's no way to really know.

The only surefire way to know is to have some external bot keep connecting to CB every 15 minutes (there are services that do this that you can pay for). But then, you have to go and undo auctions that already closed, extending their time. That's very complicated to handle properly. Plus, you are now in a situation where it's possible for the user with the winning bid who expected to win at some specific time, now won't know the actual closing of the auction.

There's too many facets of that coin to make the system truly fair in that regard, and it's a programming nightmare even if it were possible in theory.

if free ba is ever given, i would like to propose that it be given as a credit on purchaseable ba. that way the free ba wouldn't make us reach our ba cap sooner and if we only come back at the correct interval for optimum ba waste some accrual.

for example, i burn all ba at 9 am server time. jon gives free 200 ba at ten. i come back at 4 pm server time to burn my almost 160 ba only to find that i have been capped for hours.

NS, this is from the other thread, but relevant to your post here as well:

That logic is not entirely true as the N*B is designed to get you to 95% of where characters are NOW, not where they would have been without any outages in the past.

If Jon can make the N*B based upon where the top character would be, then allowing for down times during the N*B run would be adequate.

And who knows, this may be the beginning of a long streak of daily down times.

And Dudemus,

That is a far better idea. A BA credit. For all characters of course that miss BA not just N*B.

"And who knows, this may be the beginning of a long streak of daily down times. "

Let's treat the problem and not the symptom :)

With no more downtimes, no more issues :)

And really, there haven't been any downtimes in ages except for the past couple days. CB has been massively stable compared to previously.

I do agree there, CB has been one of the most super stable games I've played for quite some time. If the downtimes go away, there's no need to come up with a solution to make up for downtime. :D

So that leads me to the logical next demand: Fix it, NS!