Ultron Run 1 Issues - UPDATE 5/4 12:30p EDT

Demiurge_Kabir

Hey all,
We're sorry for the issues many players experienced during the first run of the Avengers vs Ultron event. It's obviously not ideal, but we think the risk in trying out new event structures is worth it. We can't make the game better without trying new things, and learning from that experience.

Last night (4/28), we experienced a huge increase in players, and that caused a few database and server issues. We have some ideas for removing these bottlenecks during Run 2.

Now that Run 1 has ended, we're looking into ways to make it up to players for the issues you experienced, namely:

• Network connectivity issues during the start and end of the event that locked you out of play.
• Alliances that completed Round 8, locking their alliance mates out of progression rewards.

If you had a separate issue during the event, please let us know in the comments below.

Please don't submit new tickets for these issues until I update this thread with more info. Our current focus is ensuring Run 2 is much smoother and our engineers will be focused on that for the next few days, so please be patient. I'll update this thread with more info as it becomes available.

Thanks,
Kabir at Demiurge

Update 5/4 @ 12:30p:
The rest of the rewards for this event are going out shortly! We'll have tokens and HP to make up for the network issues, and we bumped everyone over 300K in progression to their next Quicksilver cover. Scarlet Witch covers for ~3K players in Round 7 and ~1200 players in Round 8 are also going out. We expect this to take a few hours at best. If you haven't received your rewards by tomorrow, then you can submit a support request.

If you have questions about any of this, drop me a line in the comments and I'll check in later and reply.

Update 5/1 @ 5:39p:
We'll have Scarlet Witch covers rolling out to the top 10K players that were in Round 6 tomorrow. Assuming no issues arise, expect these tomorrow morning.

We'll continue working on the other rewards for Round 7, 8 and non-Ultron events next week. The players that should have earned a Scarlet Witch cover have a chance to use her in Run 2 during the weekend.
Update 4/30 @ 5:12pm:
Just a quick update with a little new info:
We're trying to get these fixes rolled out tomorrow, so you'll able to enjoy them over the weekend. This will include covers that you were very close to attaining.

I don't have an update on non-Ultron events yet. We'll begin working on those once Ultron is wrapped up, early next week.

Unknown

Last night when I was able to get in late in the evening, I hit the Ultron boss twice, but his health never showed as reduced.

JVReal

Thank you for the update Kabir.

Here is my assessment of the impact of the server issues from last night and the Ultron Event.

I think you need to break the groups down:

1) Those that didn't get progression because Ultron was gone after clearing Level 8
2) Those that didn't get to play AvU the last 5 hours due to Server issues, who would have likely hit progression/beat Ultron lvl and the Prime it unlocked.
3) Those who couldn't participate in Heroic grind for the Red Steve Rogers due to server issues
4) Those who couldn't finish the PVP that ended during the time the servers were down due to server issues
5) Some Iso for those who couldn't even fight in the lightning round because of the server issues
6) Those who could not compete in the Deadpool Daily event for the coveted Black Panther Rage of the Panther cover.

Compensation per group:

1) The next progression reward a person would have hit at the minimum, remaining progression rewards up to top progression at the most.
2) As stated by others above, the next progression reward + the SW cover for the Ultron Prime Node that would have been unlocked if they were in the process of defeating Ultron level 6 or higher.
3) The top Progression reward for those that missed a whole night of grinding for points in a heroic, the Red Steve Rogers cover.
4) This one, I don't know what to suggest. PVP is so volatile in the last few hours, you have shields expiring, progression gained, points lost, it's a **** shoot where you'll end up. I have no suggestions as I'm a casual PVP player, 300 - 400 points max, and whatever rank that gets me based on my slice/bracket.
5) Whats the average Iso gain from a lightning round? I seldom play them.
6) Insert the Black Panther Rage of the Panther cover again tomorrow so that people can attempt it again. Some may get a duplicate, but they still have to work for it, and you'd still have to have it to get it instead of a blanket gifting.


For me personally, I fall into group 3 only. My PVP has a couple more hours to go, and I seldom play the lightning rounds. Half of our alliance fall into group 1.

I'd be happy with compensation equitable to the group I fall into... namely a Red Steve Rogers cover.

Unknown

Thank you for the continued communication and I wish you good luck in having the second run go more smoothly.

Unknown

I just experienced the network outages at the start and end, but was lucky enough to get the million mark. My wife not so much.

We have not put through a ticket since I believe this will be recomped globally, and the more tickets at this point would just delay things.

MojoWild

Thanks for looking into this.
The servers being down prevented any play at all, some of my alliance couldn't get in all day. I couldn't finish Earth's Mightiest. I'd just finished the DDQ when the last crash happened but imagine some people were locked out of that too. Plus Oscorp Heroic.
So it's not just the Ultron event that was affected. My wish list would include something for all these events...

Malcrof

We appreciate the heads up. We missed out on finishing round 6 to get our SW cover for the next event. We were close, and would have made it easily.. until the servers went down. With almost no SW's in the alliance, we have no chance in the next event. My wife even came home with a couple google play cards to use for health packs just to make sure we got it done.. as had a couple alliance mates (some RL friends).

3 or 4 of my alliance mates missed out on QS covers they were 1 or 2 kills away from.

edit: i sent a ticket in game before i saw this, i apologize for the massive amounts of tickets you probably have right now, i will update everyone with info we get here.

Dragon_Nexus

I'm *still* unable to connect to the game. That's actually surprising since the first outage wasn't nearly this long.

I dunno if I'd expect any compensation from this, personally. My alliance, last I checked, was at about 2 million HP to go on Ultron in round 7, so I kinda doubt we'd have done that in 5 hours, so it's unlikely we missed out on Scarlet Witch covers. I, personally, got all the progression rewards. I don't know how many in my alliance might have come up short of one or more Quicksilver covers. I don't think any of us put any work into Heroic:Oscorpe since we prioritised Ultron.

Some level of compensation would be nice for others though, like giving them the next reward up in their progress or some such.

Unknown

Demiurge_Kabir wrote:

Our current focus is ensuring Run 2 is much smoother and our engineers will be focused on that for the next few days, so please be patient. I'll update this thread with more info as it becomes available.

Round 2 is still on course for 12pm eastern time?

Unknown

Hello.

A number or our alliance players experienced network issues last night starting around 6:00pm CT and lasting until the event was over.

I'm not sure how you're quantifying potential impacts, but as an alliance we had planned a push to finish the event and were unable to do so. On a personal level, I was pushing for the SW and Quicksilver covers.

Really hoping that we - everyone that was impacted - are awarded with fair "make up". You guys have been historically generous in the past with these types of offers, so hoping the same will happen here given the impact of last night's event and the rewards at stake.

Thanks for keeping us informed throughout as well,Kabir and team.

Players Impacted (not complete): Sindril, Capnzac, IamTheBiggs, El Santanno, Weenerman, Channel-44, Orichkin, Kansieo, Akronon, MattCO2
Alliance: Infinite Lives

Unknown

It's obviously not ideal, but we think the risk in trying out new event structures is worth

err what? Sorry what risk is there? You knew there would be an increase in players, we all knew you would struggle and so it happened. This isn't some sort of risk/reward thing here, you haven't had new content for ages for pve and even after a year of the game the whole thing collapses the moment you have a rush of new players.

I mean, come on guys. Maybe you have worded that badly but it comes across as "well you wanted new stuff and we are willing to be all risky to try it.". it's new levels for a year old game, not some new concept. I get there might be problems in a game, but claiming adding new content is a risk and loads of players might be locked out as a result is, well, a bit silly.

mrflopwelligan

I've encountered several issues (not receiving an award after finishing a round, beating Ultron but not getting points, etc.)

Since they're won't be any individual compensation - should I still file a ticket?

Marc_Spector

Hi Kabir; thanks for the update.

My alliance was communicating/coordinating grind-downs throughout the event, and many of us who are friends IRL met up for a BBQ and final push last night, only to find the Events page blank for most of the evening. We wound up having to actually talk to each other instead, Kabir. Human interaction, minus MPQ. I'd almost forgotten what that was like.

Anyway, I've enjoyed the event -- but hope the server issues can be corrected for the rerun of it.

Heartburn

Just shy of downing ultron 6 for the first scarlet which cover due to outage. Many of my alliance mates reported they couldn't log in to finish him off. also my brother couldn't log in to finish grinding for Lcap progression reward.

Demiurge_Kabir

mrflopwelligan wrote:

Since they're won't be any individual compensation - should I still file a ticket?

Not yet. We're still evaluating everything, and I'll update if players need to put in more tickets.

Noobulator

Would be nice if you could re-run DDQ for Black Panther's Black.

brisashi

Granted, I could be off base here, but if I was in your shoes I would probably give everyone at least a SW cover for the issues, but I would wait until after round 2 where I assume she will be essential.

Meto5000

hermanbloom wrote:

It's obviously not ideal, but we think the risk in trying out new event structures is worth

err what? Sorry what risk is there? You knew there would be an increase in players, we all knew you would struggle and so it happened. This isn't some sort of risk/reward thing here, you haven't had new content for ages for pve and even after a year of the game the whole thing collapses the moment you have a rush of new players.

I mean, come on guys. Maybe you have worded that badly but it comes across as "well you wanted new stuff and we are willing to be all risky to try it.". it's new levels for a year old game, not some new concept.

I feel like the server issues have nothing to do with it being a new type of event and more to do with the event having terrific rewards, and being tied to what will probably be this years top grossing movie and potentially shatter all sorts of other records. So many veterans came back in our alliance that hadn't played in months and I'm sure there was a huge influx of new players. All of this means that the server load they encountered was way more than they were equipped to handle. I hope they release some numbers for the amount of active players there were because I'm assuming it smashed any previous high to pieces.

It sucks that they couldn't handle it, but obviously they're trying to do the right thing and I am hoping we can expect some pretty nice compensation for all the **** that happened.

AionTeleos

I really appreciate to communication; thanks.

I said this in another thread, but since the problem my alliance experienced isn't among those you listed, I'll repeat. We had a problem in which we'd reduced Ultron to 0 hitpoints, but the corresponding node in Ultron Prime didn't unlock. It was node 6, aka the first node that would have yielded SW cover. It did finally unlock for me and a few of my alliance mates, but most of us were unable to open it (or get the app to load at all in some cases). I submitted a ticket for it last night. Sorry for contributing to the deluge.

Unknown

Meto5000 wrote:

hermanbloom wrote:

It's obviously not ideal, but we think the risk in trying out new event structures is worth

err what? Sorry what risk is there? You knew there would be an increase in players, we all knew you would struggle and so it happened. This isn't some sort of risk/reward thing here, you haven't had new content for ages for pve and even after a year of the game the whole thing collapses the moment you have a rush of new players.

I mean, come on guys. Maybe you have worded that badly but it comes across as "well you wanted new stuff and we are willing to be all risky to try it.". it's new levels for a year old game, not some new concept.

I feel like the server issues have nothing to do with it being a new type of event and more to do with the event having terrific rewards, and being tied to what will probably be this years top grossing movie and potentially shatter all sorts of other records. So many veterans came back in our alliance that hadn't played in months and I'm sure there was a huge influx of new players. All of this means that the server load they encountered was way more than they were equipped to handle. I hope they release some numbers for the amount of active players there were because I'm assuming it smashed any previous high to pieces.

It sucks that they couldn't handle it, but obviously they're trying to do the right thing and I am hoping we can expect some pretty nice compensation for all the **** that happened.

It died at the start of Seasons, died at the release of 4* characters etc. Happens any time something big happens in game. I get they could struggle but claiming they are risking things to provide us, the humble player, with new content for a game that is starved of new levels is just hilarious. I back these boys whenever I can but sometimes the stuff they put out to the public language-wise is just awful. Just say "we had loads of new players and we still can't handle spikes after 18 months or whatever of developing this game, sorry". At least it's honest.

Anyway, won't change anything so I'll back out. Just bugs me each time this happens.

energythief

I would like to see a snapshot of where everyone was taken from prior to the server crashes and the game reset to that state across all events. Add a day to the end time of all the events and let us finish our games.