Loss of Skills on Logout? Time to find out!

beechbum

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Bob beechbum da'mon
I'm not sure if this belongs in this section or not since it is an experiment, so moderators can move as necessary!

There has been a longtime 'issue' known amongst some players, regarding loss of skills for no reason whatsoever.

There have been a couple of threads about this in the past:

https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...any-skills-we-lose-every-time-we-log-out.html

https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/skills/174042-loss-skills.html

I have experienced it once (to my knowledge, I never kept a close eye on skills every session) where I reached the same rank and number of points in a skill a few days apart.

I have spoken to some longtime players that have also had this happen, and it has been suggested that perhaps clicking Exit before the 20 second countdown timer logs you off could have something to do with it.

In order to try to determine if this is still an issue that MA has neglected to address, I plan to screenshot ALL skills at the end of each session. I will use jdegre's Skill Scanner to compare them upon logout/login each time. It will take some extra time but feel this would be useful for the EU community to know!

If I see no loss of skills over 2 weeks time during this period (daily logins) I will also test by exiting game before the timer expires to see if that ends up with a different result.

If there is evidence of disappearing skills, I'll file a support case (with screenshots and timestamps) for each instance and see what happens!

Anybody else is welcome to join in this experiment!

Cheers,
Beech
 
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9/2:
One week in and no sign of any skill losses thus far.
Will update weekly or if an 'issue' occurs!
 
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Suscribing for interest.

It would be nice if MA provided a way to export your skills directly to a file, like the russian RCE game that cannot be named here. Im too lazy to do all the screenshots for the scanner after each session.

Also your skills should be available in the website of Entropia in the same way your Inventory is now. After all they are at least as valuable as the items themselves and is in the players best interest to keep track of them.
 
i hope this will show some conclusive results!
 
I'm pretty sure that you can prove this that way. :)

However, for obvious reasons this doesn't cover CTD-situations. I thought I should mention this...
 
to be on the safe side it's best probably to wait 11 mins before logging out. On the same server you hunted or whatever activity you did.

d/c are a problem. You never know when you'll be d/c and could loose skills when that happens.
 
try getting the skill and log off right away for best result
 
Someone needs a new car but not a Volvo.:D
 
I'm pretty sure that you can prove this that way. :)

However, for obvious reasons this doesn't cover CTD-situations. I thought I should mention this...

I suspect it is when the server crashes that skill points arent saved. I think most players get one or two a week - it wouldnt surprise me at all to find out that I lose 10-30 mins worth of skills when that happens.

Be interesting to see what your experiment turns up.
 
I just reached lvl 7 paramedic... last night.. and then again this morning... my fap didn't regain its value.. I am not happy about this. I even waited probably a good 10 minutes or so before logging out.
 
Crazy shit is , that I thaught I have 137HP, even remembered the HP gain, and now I hav 136,75. I either way have very bad memory (not in PC) or there was a quite big (like 1hour of swinging melee) skill loss :((
 
I would think skills get lost only on a server crash, because all frequent game-state changes (like ammo consumption, decay, skill gains, etc) are cached in server's memory and get saved only infrequently to reduce database load. If all these frequent state changes would always get committed right away to persistent storage, expensive I/O would have to be performed each time a player consumes ammo, decays items, gains skills, etc. So, it's a trade-off where some data durability is sacrificed for performance. (This delayed saves can be observed when consuming ammo and/or decaying gear and then checking the inventory for changes on EU website. It can take quite some time before these changes show up there, although everything else is updated immediately.)

Therefore, I'd say that logouts, disconnects or client crashes have nothing to do with skill loss. It can only happen on server crashes (which may occur while already being offline and before the data was fully committed).

Testing it won't hurt, though. :)
 
So far i can tell having experienced it 3 times now that i reached the same profession level twice is that the sync of skills gained is timebased. If you are unlucky enough to get DCed just before a sync you will loose the skills gained since the last sync. I am not sure what the timeframe is but i would guess around 2 minutes at the most.

Taking time to make screenshots before logging off already takes enough time to get past the sync. This is why before logging off the last 5 minutes i spend repairing, putting stuff in storage, putting stuff in auction.

Cheers
Siam
 
It's been going on for a long long time. MA/ FPC doesn't seem to care, warn, or fix the caching problem.

Best advice - do NOT log out right after gaining skills, tp to another far away area ( seems to force servers to correctly cache the skills) Also, look through your skills and prof levels, that seems? to somehow force the saving of them? (not certain)

Never have heard anything from others about it and their support cases... yep, it sucks!!!
 
I had the same problem with a 500 iron challange mission.

I accepted the mission and logged out.
Next day, I logged in and killed a lot of this kind of mob.

After the hunt, I want to know, how many mobs are counted,
but the mission was not in my mission book. :eyecrazy:

I had to accept that mission again.
 
This is definitely more than a d/c problem. I just never manually log out anymore until I hear this is fixed. Let it time out.

PS: Sorry to any friends who try to contact me before it times out :ahh:
 
It's been going on for a long long time. MA/ FPC doesn't seem to care, warn, or fix the caching problem.

Best advice - do NOT log out right after gaining skills, tp to another far away area ( seems to force servers to correctly cache the skills) Also, look through your skills and prof levels, that seems? to somehow force the saving of them? (not certain)

Never have heard anything from others about it and their support cases... yep, it sucks!!!


( It's been going on for a long long time. MA/ FPC doesn't seem to care, warn, or fix the caching problem ).

And do you know whay----> The old story :D they dont lose money on that you do. but if they would lose money on that bug they would fix it in few ours.:lolup:
 
( It's been going on for a long long time. MA/ FPC doesn't seem to care, warn, or fix the caching problem ).

And do you know whay----> The old story :D they dont lose money on that you do. but if they would lose money on that bug they would fix it in few ours.:lolup:

Actually they do loose money on it.
First time it happened i was so out of it that i logged off wrote a support case and watched a movie for the rest of the evening instead of playing.

Everything that reduces the player experience results in less time played which in turn means the company is loosing possible profits. The issue is MA does not realize it.

Cheers
Siam
 
MA officials need to step up and publicly address this issue.. but where are they?



I've lost count how many times i've maxed a bp only to continue to gain qr ratings the next day etc etc
 
MA officials need to step up and publicly address this issue.. but where are they?

Perhaps everyone should focus on proving the problem before demanding a fix.

Evidence would go a long way to validating claims and getting a fix.
 
Perhaps everyone should focus on proving the problem before demanding a fix.

Evidence would go a long way to validating claims and getting a fix.

Well yeah but it's been an ongoing debate for a long time.. not so easy to prove. Hence the need for MA to say something and be honest for once.

Many of us including myself have experienced repeated unlocks of skills... repeated maxing of blueprints.

This is a serious issue and MA know it. Call for the so called community manager anyone? no offence to hanne.. but MA are taking the piss on a daily basis..wake up and smell the shit.
 
So far I haven't experienced any skill losses - so it's making it hard to narrow anything down ;)

I see that this is affecting many players still, so obviously it's still an issue!

I will continue tracking skills - I've even force-closed EU while it was running in the middle of a hunt and after skill gains, but things looked OK when I signed back on. Maybe this 'sync' mentioned already took effect.

I'll try some more of these after I get back from my trip later this month, heading out tomorrow so will be out of game for 10 days.

For those of you losing skills, etc - do you have any screenshots to submit to support (for a canned response...)?
 
Well yeah but it's been an ongoing debate for a long time.. not so easy to prove. Hence the need for MA to say something and be honest for once.

Many of us including myself have experienced repeated unlocks of skills... repeated maxing of blueprints.

This is a serious issue and MA know it. Call for the so called community manager anyone? no offence to hanne.. but MA are taking the piss on a daily basis..wake up and smell the shit.



Taking screenshot (with time ofcourse) of the BP(or skilll points uve accumulated, or any other progres u have made) uve been workin on in a session, and before starting next one compare the skills or BP ratings.
Why is that so hard?
If i was suspicius i would do that every single session, couse if this is happening and its not being dealt with, well how else can u call ot but a plain ripoff?
 
Taking screenshot (with time ofcourse) of the BP(or skilll points uve accumulated, or any other progres u have made) uve been workin on in a session, and before starting next one compare the skills or BP ratings.
Why is that so hard?
If i was suspicius i would do that every single session, couse if this is happening and its not being dealt with, well how else can u call ot but a plain ripoff?

I see your point but i also expect this issue has been reported in detail by other players that are more maticulous than I..as i said.. it's an ongoing issue.. i have complete confidence that MA have reports from many players.. the point i make is that even if it's proven wrong..MA need to comment publicly about this.
 
the point i make is that even if it's proven wrong..MA need to comment publicly about this.

Well, you lost me. If there is a problem and it's proven or not, MA needs to do something about it. Proving it, though, will help to get it fixed.

If it's proven wrong, then MA needs to be spending their time on real problems. There is way too much minutia here on the forums for MA to be spending their time with.
 
Taking screenshot (with time ofcourse) of the BP(or skilll points uve accumulated, or any other progres u have made) uve been workin on in a session, and before starting next one compare the skills or BP ratings.
Why is that so hard?
If i was suspicius i would do that every single session, couse if this is happening and its not being dealt with, well how else can u call ot but a plain ripoff?

Making screen shots of all your skills takes time. In the meantime a sync with the database where your skills are stored has already taken place. Thus making the screen shot exercise unusable.

The times that people noticed this was when they reached a new profession level and just after that got DCed or logged out. And then after logging back in again reached that same profession level again.

I made a support case about this now approx 2.5 years ago i think. It has no priority or they are not capable of finding a solution. I think that storing the skills after each skill gain has to much of impact on the database containing the skills. At least they probably have no solution that could uphold the pressure of many people getting skill gains in a short period of time.

The wisest thing to do is before logging of idle around a bit. Like i said i clean up my loot and place stuff in auction. Also mentioned was changing the server by using a TP to go to another location. Pressing T to go to a revival can also help.

As far as i can tell the sync takes around 2 minutes to take place. The three times i have had double profession level gains was always when inside 30 second or so from the profession level gain i got DCed. And after relogging it mostly took 1 or 2 skill gains to get it again.

Cheers
Siam
 
I made a support case about this now approx 2.5 years ago i think. It has no priority or they are not capable of finding a solution.

Cheers
Siam

Wow! This has been going on for 2.5 years?!
 
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