Shield change

Unknown

I have twice in the last month bought a shield only to get hit a minute or two later and get dropped in rankings. I am still talking to support about what can be done, but they make it sound like you can get hit either right before, or right as you are buying a shield and this takes a little bit to register. I don't know if this is something that they will fix, but I think it would be nice to offer some kind of limited short term buy back for shields maybe a 5 min or less buy back incase this happens. I know you would have to impliment some kind of limit so it doesn't be abused, but I think it would be helpful in this situation. I was sitting at a solid 812 in my bracket after a hard push but lost 35 points a minute or so after shielding. If I had a buyback or some option, I could have got my 150 HP back, battled a few more times, and shielded up again once over 800. As it is, I am sitting at 777 because I didn't want to break shield and lose the 150HP and have to worry still about getting hit while buying a shield again. I'm not sure if that will be enough for top 10 considering how competitive this tourney has been.

BTW, Does anyone else have this problem?

Unknown

Nope: I buy a shield, and I might still get hit, because someone was already in a fight with me, but the point loss is dropped to zero, so the message is only there to show you the shield was not just potentially effective, but actually effective. You can easily tell because you see they gain their regular points, but on the right side, you see 0, and the icon is not red, but light gray.

Unknown

Yes, just happened to me and it's happened before. I got hit when I was buying the shield, lost 20+ pts and I wouldn't have shielded had I known. But there is a known delay in the reporting and frankly it's not that long considering, so I doubt it's a big deal, really.

Phaserhawk

i-am-amish wrote:

I have twice in the last month bought a shield only to get hit a minute or two later and get dropped in rankings. I am still talking to support about what can be done, but they make it sound like you can get hit either right before, or right as you are buying a shield and this takes a little bit to register. I don't know if this is something that they will fix, but I think it would be nice to offer some kind of limited short term buy back for shields maybe a 5 min or less buy back incase this happens. I know you would have to impliment some kind of limit so it doesn't be abused, but I think it would be helpful in this situation. I was sitting at a solid 812 in my bracket after a hard push but lost 35 points a minute or so after shielding. If I had a buyback or some option, I could have got my 150 HP back, battled a few more times, and shielded up again once over 800. As it is, I am sitting at 777 because I didn't want to break shield and lose the 150HP and have to worry still about getting hit while buying a shield again. I'm not sure if that will be enough for top 10 considering how competitive this tourney has been.

BTW, Does anyone else have this problem?

From my experience it's that someone has already opened a match against you before you were shielded. Meaning if you shield at 5:05pm anyone that has you qued up and plays you after that time frame you wont lose points, you will be shielded, but. If someone started playing you at 504pm and finishes the match at 508pm you are going to take a loss because you were not shielded when that person started their match.

mags1587

I had that happen to me a while back. I put up a shield, left, came back later and had one attack where I lost points and the rest where the shield held. I went back and forth with support on it, but eventually they refunded the HP I spent on my shield. Honestly I'm still not clear on exactly what happened. Like you, support made it sound like if someone was in the middle of attacking me when I put up a shield, I could still lose those points. But later, they said shields protect players from losing any points. So I still don't know if they consider this a bug or if it's working as they intended.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

From my experience it's that someone has already opened a match against you before you were shielded. Meaning if you shield at 5:05pm anyone that has you qued up and plays you after that time frame you wont lose points, you will be shielded, but. If someone started playing you at 504pm and finishes the match at 508pm you are going to take a loss because you were not shielded when that person started their match.

I don't think that makes sense. Because if that same person got distracted from playing their match for 30-60 minutes and came back to finish it up, I highly doubt their attack would still negatively effect someone's rating.

Unknown

So support will return my 150HP I spent after the event?

mags1587

i-am-amish wrote:

So support will return my 150HP I spent after the event?

It took a while, but they did for me.

Unknown

I had this same thing happen last night, and it's happened before. I was #1 in my bracket and could only find opponents worth 15 or less. I got hit twice in a row for about 70 points so I put up a shield for the night. As soon as my shields went up, it showed that I was attacked again for about 30 points. A minute or two later, it said I was hit for 45 points. So, I checked to make sure I was shielded. My score hadn't changed , so I figured I was ok. Then several minutes later, my score dropped by that amount.

I realize that the timing of everything isn't instantaneous, and we might just be getting a notification for an attack that happened a couple minutes ago. Still, I lost 75 points after paying for a shield, and I was dropped from first to third. It's not a big deal for me in this event (as long as I stay top ten), but it's certainly disappointing to spend HP to maintain a score and have it drop so much after the fact. If I had a chance to push my score up a little I would, but I'd have to break my shield to do that.

reckless442

It also may be that the battles were finished before you got the shield up. They sometimes take a few minutes to register. I had that happen when I was shooting for a 900 progressive. I hit 902 and came out of the battle to see the screen say I was at 902. I then shielded, but then the window popped up and said I had been hit for 36 points. I did not get the 900 award even though it momentarily said I had passed the threshold because the loss had occurred before I reached 900. I was annoyed because I had bought an expensive shield and them had to break shield to get back to 900. But that is just how the game works. With so many people playing at once, there is bound to be a slight server lag. I'm actually surprised it's not slower.

Unknown

I get that notice where I am at a reward threshold a lot but don't get it because I am attacked. I would say that happens at least once per event for me.

Moral

As far as I can tell, the purchasing of a shield itself does not send the shield until the next regular communication.

When I shield, I now open player rankings and toggle to my score. They client communicates to the server when it checks.

I have not had the late arriving point loss since I started doing that.

Edit: I have had the situation Reckless describes. Toggling the score updates as well. If the server registers a loss before the shield arrives you're out of luck.

bahamut685

Toxicadam wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

From my experience it's that someone has already opened a match against you before you were shielded. Meaning if you shield at 5:05pm anyone that has you qued up and plays you after that time frame you wont lose points, you will be shielded, but. If someone started playing you at 504pm and finishes the match at 508pm you are going to take a loss because you were not shielded when that person started their match.

I don't think that makes sense. Because if that same person got distracted from playing their match for 30-60 minutes and came back to finish it up, I highly doubt their attack would still negatively effect someone's rating.

That is the case (unless they've changed it)... I once had a point loss in between shielded losses when returning, which I presumed was from exactly that situation. I saw no reason to report it to support, since they've always been extremely unhelpful when I've dealt with them. ("Thank you for reporting this, we'll work on it." or some such, followed by everlasting silence.)

Unknown

There is a race condition genuinely. But it could be covered with not too much effort really -- just like backquotes work in a trading system.

Obviously the devs, having more serious problems with their server design will not give a flying kitten.

Unknown

So I was talking to a support guy, and they said it was latency.

"In these cases, this is what happens:
- You are attacked by another player. This player completes their fight, defeating you.
- You purchase a shield.
- The server is notified you purchased the shield immediately, but the other player's fight has still already completed and you have lost points.
- The server informs you you have lost points.

From your perspective, it looks like you were attacked with the shield up. In reality, you were attacked beforehand and had already lost those points by the time you put up the shield.
This isn't a common issue, only occurring in the few cases where you are attacked and the fight is won in the ten seconds or so before you put up the shield.

Unfortunately, we are not able to offer a reimbursement in this case as everything worked as intended."

It is this last line, about everything working as intended that bugs me. Seriously, that can not be how the game is intended to run, AKA screw people over with latency issues. If the server is sending the attack notice after it recieves a shield notice, it should block the points lost, plain and simple.

mags1587

Well, that must be a new policy seeing as I got my HP back. That last line does rankle. It's nice that they actually explained it and I can understand why it happens and why it might be hard to fix, but really, come on. The player puts up a shield at a certain number of points because he/she does not want to lose any of those points. If the player knew an attack was coming in he/she might have played one more match.

Unknown

i-am-amish wrote:

Unfortunately, we are not able to offer a reimbursement in this case as everything worked as intended."

LOL, this is really something.

Again, *I* feel ashamed for this level of incompetency.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

i-am-amish wrote:

Unfortunately, we are not able to offer a reimbursement in this case as everything worked as intended."

LOL, this is really something.

Again, *I* feel ashamed for this level of incompetency.

seriously, I wish support had the names of who you were working with so you could complain if you got someone ridiculous. instead, everyone is d3publishers, and that's it.

Unknown

mags1587 wrote:

Well, that must be a new policy seeing as I got my HP back. That last line does rankle. It's nice that they actually explained it and I can understand why it happens and why it might be hard to fix, but really, come on. The player puts up a shield at a certain number of points because he/she does not want to lose any of those points. If the player knew an attack was coming in he/she might have played one more match.

So should people get to complain because they shielded and nobody attacked them?

You shield to prevent people from continually knocking your points down. If someone beats you before you purchase the shield, so be it.

Unknown

mags1587 wrote:

Well, that must be a new policy seeing as I got my HP back. That last line does rankle. It's nice that they actually explained it and I can understand why it happens and why it might be hard to fix, but really, come on. The player puts up a shield at a certain number of points because he/she does not want to lose any of those points. If the player knew an attack was coming in he/she might have played one more match.

It's not really hard to fix:

1. On the dialog where you confirm the shield purchase add "you have 1234 points" -- confirm shield
2. the number is sent to the server in the request packet
3. the serve looks at the current state,
3a, if the points match or higher the actual state applies the shield as now
3b, if the points are lower sends back the current amount and on the client you get back to 1.

The "advanced" version has 2 buttons: one for this behavior and one for the current that applies immediately without check.

Another max 4 hour task that would have gained back the costs just from the waste on the support side, not even counting customer satisfaction.

Our QA guys would definitely stop deployment with such race condition just claiming "we can't show ourself to be THAT lame, can we?"

Puritas

Just to clarify:
You've already lost the points before you buy the shield.
If you take a look at the top scores/your place in the rankings, your score there will have already changed.

Where the lag comes in is displaying the change on your fight screen and the little popup window.

It'd be nice if it there wasn't that delay, but in the meantime check the ranking page I guess

Then again I've gotten hit in between checking rankings and putting up the shield, which really made me sad.