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EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:02 am
by RedGiant
EST evening resets seem to be habitual. Any chance of breaking this up? Seems like a peak time for the server.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:13 am
by malcolm_mountainslayer
it does often happen when I am about to finally get some long awaited play time and then suddenly find myself unable to complete a writ or 2 for the whole night due to time limitations. (since all the time before the reset often gets 'axed' in terms of not being able to move forward when a reset gets announced, ioften members of parties are lost if in middle of something too).

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:13 am
by ReverentBlade
I'm glad I'm not the only one that notices this. Habitual resets at peak evening times is bloody weird. Just set them up to reset automatically every day at a graveyard hour. There are far more primitive servers than Arelith that do the very thing. Is there any particular reason for doing it by hand?

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:19 am
by theCountofMonteCristo
And it seems to me that EU prime time gets more resets, but that is when I'm more active. I think this is just perspective. A few friends that I play with in the EU get grumpy because it always feels like there are resets in their prime time.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:33 am
by Xerah
Resets happen. This not primitive or "bloody weird".

There are no plans to schedule them.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:34 am
by MalKalz
The servers were nearly up for two days. It needed a reset.

Resets happen when needed and we are available.

Edit: Xerah said it more correctly - we don’t have plans to make a schedule at this time.

I’ve also unlocked this thread to still permit discussion and receive feedback if it’s believed to be a good thing or a bad thing to have an automated schedule.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 3:55 am
by Nevrus
Possible negative consequences: People gaming the automated resets to farm rune chests/adamantine. I think some tech was put in to delay adamantium spawns after resets to prevent this, doing the same with rune chests could bear fruit and prevent cheese. Everything else isn't really that impressive and can't really be gamed.

Possible positive consequences: Ensure the server receives timely resets at low peak hours.

Proposed timing: 3 AM EST. That's midnight PST which is pretty late, 8 AM GMT which is pretty early, and ~5 PM in AU time which is early enough that most people would just be getting off of work and wouldn't be in the middle of stuff.

Being able to plan around it- even having the countdown to the next auto-reset in -date- would ensure that surprise resets don't dunk on people's plans.

Of course sometimes crashes will happen and there's nothing we can do about that.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 10:54 am
by Nitro
Rune chests already have a spawn delay before they populate with loot after a server reset.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 11:41 am
by CorsicanDoge
It seems like an automated reset will help with server issues since it being on for merely two days causes UD to start melting. On top of that, it'd lighten the DM load by 1% which seems like it's sorely needed on a server of a handful of DMs and 100+ people. Also nobody's really has events on certain hours at all and it'd be fairly safe to just have it set at around the time of this posting (5 AM CST).

Sure, someone could time the resets to milk some extra treasure for themselves but they won't always be the only one and they'll contend with other people. I'm not sure why we should shoot ourselves in the foot for one or two enterprising individuals. The alternative here is peak hour resets, in the middle of events and RP, and getting a DM over here to do it every day since it can't really last for more than 2 days, and DM Wrath's punnery.

You guys are volunteers and I imagine some of you guys didn't DM for the admin work alone, so why not?

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2020 6:01 pm
by Definately Not A Mimic
Years ago when I first started playing, we had auto resets, twice a day I believe. I don't remember though why that changed and went to manual.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 12:50 am
by Curve
People gamed auto resets hard on FL when that was a thing.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 1:23 am
by KeldonDonovans
Curve wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 12:50 am
People gamed auto resets hard on FL when that was a thing.
Great thing about scheduled resets, you know how many hours the server will be up for. This lets you define a range for a random number generator. So now they don't have to worry about people timing it right to game the system.

You just generate a random time between 0 and 24, could even do 1-23 if you want to avoid proximity to the reset. Then you spawn said items that far in, time-wise. Since the server resets every 24 hours like clockwork, the simple random number generator makes it so that those items will be available once per real life day (or you could split it up for multiple spawns, have one spawn 1-11, 12-23 for the second, stuff like that).

For what its worth, I love the idea. Just the other day a guy decided to buff me and another low level character to the nines so that our writs would be manageable. We literally stepped out of the city, then got the announcement about the reset. Had we known a reset was scheduled for 10 minutes from then, we would've known better.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 3:00 am
by RedGiant
Not disputing the necessity or even past / current reset mechanics, just communicating my anecdotal experience that many EST evening peaks we get resets.

Respectfully request some thought to this as the casual players are hit hardest by this. Moreover, my undiagnosed Adult ADD brain will do something else to occupy itself, then find my increasingly precious Arelith time has evaporated!

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:41 am
by Reallylongunneededplayername
I think there is always a time when a reset comes up and you'd be like "Aww man!".

It's part of the experience.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:44 pm
by Lexx
Reallylongunneededplayername wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:41 am
I think there is always a time when a reset comes up and you'd be like "Aww man!".

It's part of the experience.
This sums my feelings up. And no to scheduled resets. It's way too easy to game those to personal benefit if they followed a forecasted schedule.

Being a EU timezone believe me we get our fair share. They crop up a lot during the quietest hours of the server (understandably). So US zones definitely aren't getting some sort of singling out. It just so happens the chances of a reset being needed will crop up from the more big movements of players on events happening happens. So inevitably those types of resets will impact US prime hours more often.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 11:59 am
by Babylon System is the Vampire
Lexx wrote:
Sat Nov 21, 2020 8:44 pm
And no to scheduled resets. It's way too easy to game those to personal benefit if they followed a forecasted schedule.

This is pretty much all that needs to be said on the topic of scheduled resets.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 3:51 pm
by Cybren
I'm genuinely confused here. If the reason that there are no automated resets because that would make it too easy to game certain server reset things (and I understand this impulse, mostly), is the current situation of resets generally happening within the same timeframe going to run into the same problem? And if the typically 3-6 hour window that the average reset varies by is enough to prevent those issues, could the resets not be scheduled with a 3-6 hour random offset?

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 3:55 pm
by The GrumpyCat
I think resets happen in this frame because this is when most DMs are on.

Resets nowadays are a bit of a pain, as we tend to crash when hopping between servers and we have a lot of servers. So it helps if there are multiple active DMs on.

Also it's when a DM notices and goes 'whoop, servers have been up for 24 hours!

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2020 4:01 pm
by Irongron
Developers too have the same playtimes as most others, so if a coder needs to get his update live and be available to ensure it runs smoothly they're going to do it in their evening, rather than wake up at 4am to avoid inconveniencing players.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2020 10:58 pm
by Barkoneus
Nevrus wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 3:55 am
Proposed timing: 3 AM EST. That's midnight PST which is pretty late, 8 AM GMT which is pretty early, and ~5 PM in AU time which is early enough that most people would just be getting off of work and wouldn't be in the middle of stuff.
This proposed timing happens to be terrible for me and the people I mostly play with. I suspect it is true that ANY proposed time is bad for SOME players.

It does not seem like scheduled resets are going to happen, but if they do I strongly feel the time should be variable. Otherwise some subset of the population is going to get consistently hosed.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2020 12:08 pm
by Tikin
If the question is "would I personnally prefer resets to be scheduled?", the answer is with 0 doubt YES.

About the technical specificities, like "some players exploit resets!" ... From where I stand it looks like the problem isn't solve by unscheduled resets, and probably could be solved differently, but I clearly am ignorant of technical possibilities, and leave the question to those who have a real knowledge of them.

The "occasionnal necessary resets for server developpement/fixes" are welcome and appreciated whenever they happen, as is the work of our beloved team. ;)

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2020 3:33 pm
by -XXX-
Adding a timeframe variable to a potential automated reset script might help with addressing some of the issues (reset happens daily at 12 and 24 +/-3hrs for example)

That being said, I am not the biggest fan of this.
As has been outlined already, you won't find an ideal timeframe that wouldn't interfere with someone's playtime. An automated script would turn an occassional interference into a constant and regular one for them.
All servers appear to be fairly populated with characters all around the clock, so whose time should be officially considered inferior?

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2020 7:01 pm
by Gouge Away
Maybe they just automatically reset when they've been up for 24 hours? Then you'd have fair warning on the portal and it would be variable after resets by DM or for updates.

(I also play late in the day/evening PST time, it would suck to have a reset every day at that time, and there's still a decent population around so it's not like it is some total dead zone)

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2020 9:12 pm
by godhand-
Xerah wrote:
Fri Nov 20, 2020 2:33 am
Resets happen. This not primitive or "bloody weird".

There are no plans to schedule them.
I think this is exactly it. Resets happen.

Resets have been a thing for as long as i can remember on arelith. I'm okay if they continue happening. You will get used to it, use that time to maybe make a coffee, roll a joint, play with your kids. IDK, you do you.

I play in Australia, and sometimes it feels like every night i get online (usually only a couple days a week) theres a reset.

Its easy for us to feel like "Oh its interrupting my only time to game" when it happens, because lets be real, it certainly IS frustrating when your only hour or so to play is interrupted by a 15 minute outage.... and it can feel like it happens all the time.

But, i'm also grateful this community is still going 20 years after NWN was released, pumping out quality content, consistently improving the game. So, i can deal with an outage every now and then for the overall quality of the game.

Re: EST Evening Resets

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2020 10:01 pm
by andthenthatwasthat
I wouldn't judge the frequency of resets based on how many you experience while playing (might be misleading to think they are not happening during times when you are offline).