Missing Loot from Hof. MA Logs show nothing.

Great to read it turned out well :)

But have to say it is not a reasuring apology.
How did it happen then MA, what asurance do you give that thsi won't happen again?
Shortest response for very serious scenario that I have read in a while.
Even worse than a bank or insurance company.

You know that even food chains would give you a token 'fries' for not having put the things you were meant to get in you 'loot' bag. Am dissapointed to see the lack of time spent to make you feel it was a freak accident.

I for one do appreciate the response was not meant for my/our eyes. So thank you Jack for bringing this to our attention. Who know what else similare to this is not shared with us.

On side note too...am yet to experience an error in my favour.... MA in the past have double dipped many many times (so check you records)... and take screen shots :)

I wish us all luck and hope that MA actually have the balls to say sorry officially and make some sort of attempt to give cutomers assurance.

Aside from being happy that Jack got his well deserved loot am not really to sure what to think about this overal all scenario.

All the best,

Indica
 
This still seems like a very serious issue even after this positive outcome for Jack. Should we worry about the everyday loots?
 
Glad the OP received the loot he should have received at the time, and glad that a screenshot was taken as evidence which was irrefutable proof.


I do remember about 4 years ago something similar was occuring, in which you would loot an item in the loot window but you'd check inventory at the end of the hunt and it wouldn't be there. Mindark fixed it after about a month but it was irritating (well that's putting it politely)

I cant help but wonder how many other people didn't get the full amount of ped from HOF's during this time?



:xfrown:
 
Maybe we should all submit support cases asking them to check our loots for the past few years?
 
"Hi... I hit the jackpot, but the slots only payed out $1k of my $2.6k jackpot"
...
"Sir, you're mistaken. You only won $1k, not a $2.6k jackpot."
...
"I have pictures..."
...
"Oh you mean THAAAAT jackpot... here, have this $1.6k and go gamble some more"
...
"How do I know this won't happen again?"
...
"You don't. NEXT PLEASE!"
 
Maybe we should all submit support cases asking them to check our loots for the past few years?

As it stands they (MA) can just say its the first time it has ever happened as none of us have any proof whatsoever we may have missing peds, it is only the fact jacks was such a huge amount that it was noticed if it was 1k or 2k missing rather than 16k he may not of noticed at all with it blending into any res aquired thru the complete and almost successful attempts which is all the more concerning.

But from this support case MA must figure out some way that reassures us we are getting what we think we are getting.
 
"Hi... I hit the jackpot, but the slots only payed out $1k of my $2.6k jackpot"
...
"Sir, you're mistaken. You only won $1k, not a $2.6k jackpot."
...
"I have pictures..."
...
"Oh you mean THAAAAT jackpot... here, have this $1.6k and go gamble some more"
...
"How do I know this won't happen again?"
...
"You don't. NEXT PLEASE!"

LOL that about sums it up, A+ :)
 
ok, nice it turned out ok for you jack.

so whats the conclusio here? i mean, i feel a bitt worried.... no logs? support knows shit? no real excuse from MA? no public made announcement what is happening ?
i mean this is about money, yeah? you dont forget that -lets say- 90% here put in money they earning for their everyday job - hard earned money.... on the other side we have the blackbox entropia, we dont know shit whats happening inside, we just trust mindark that they have their algorythms and processes right. :tongue2:

so lets see, last few month there happened a few glitches that dont increase my trust in MA, and my "trust-level" is near zero (i sold all toys >1kped in value and cashed out my money):

- lootfuckup: sandking, beacons, missing ped in hof
- support: poorly implemented support (well we know that :girl: ), no straight line for major bugs/problems, no corporate behaviour guidelines
- no logfiles - yea right, you heard right, NO LOGFILES! in a game thats basically all about money. if this information is right, i think this breaches various policies MA has to keep. (aml, terror etc...)
- information policy: whats with the beacon incident, that happened in twin? i didnt get this info because i was out producing decay - so i made a beacon with friends and we lost ped (hard earned money, see above)
- space: one great fuckup, i dont know where to start (obviously fixed now)

not that i think it will change something - but i demand an official announcement from mindark whats exactly goin on here. wtf. i pay, i wanna play - but with that in mind, i feel ripped of with every drop, every shot and every klick i do.

i know u dont give a shit if i quit after almost 6 years of playing. customers is a foreign word for you, you have no competitors so you can basically do what you want - but mebe for christmas, for 1 minute, go back 10 years- feel the spirit that you all felt (well that guys who was there at that time) - feel what you felt as player, and you will see how we feel at the moment.

i feel ripped of.
 
has this made anyone wonder if they are missing some loot on everyday things... u get 10pedder which was actually 40pedder and so on.. u never know.. MA logs that they paid u 40ped all tho u were left with 10ped.. would explain my own shit streaks clearly

Not only have i wondered about it, i made a support case long time ago, but how can you possibly prove that you clearly didn't get all the loot you were supposed to when it's not as obvious and recorded as a HoF the size Jack had?

It has happened before. It's a serious mistake or glitch in their system, and as they haven't even noticed it (there's no procedure, no fix, they even denied the problem at first despite the screenshot proof) it will probably continue to happen ... and it perfectly explains the bad luck some avatars seem to have. :(

The good thing is we now have an example that shows that it's real, and hopefully this will draw enough attention to find the bug/glitch/mistake and have it fixed. This problem (affecting security, stability of the RCE, trust of the players/customers, ...) should be the one and only priority for the time being if you ask me ...

This still seems like a very serious issue even after this positive outcome for Jack. Should we worry about the everyday loots?

What he said.
 
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This happened to me with my allophyl global years back, support only go by logs, if there is an error in the log, the error in the log showed i had no global according to entropia trackers time of record , but when it went to the balancing development team they go through the accounting and it balances, im still saying even if you didnt realise you wern't paid for a hof, im sure when balancing development team do the accounting im sure your avatar would pop up and you would be compensated. no PED or pec never goes unaccounted just sometimes logs are never always accurate and visual bugs can occur in anyones logs , loot window , chat window. Sometimes it may inconvienence you for a short time (this time i admit it was alot of PED unaccounted for) im 100% sure that PED would have been compensated down the track , everything has to balance, we are talking REAL MONEY, real accounting, not WoW gold !

im glad it was rectified ill try to find my old support case mine wasnt a visual bug it was an out of sync entropia tracker, but this is an example of how MAs loot balancing works and how accurate the logs are.

here it is
-----------------------------
2009-07-29 05:07 You wrote:

Hey , 3rd support case - man there are serious problems

This is happened before but problem is this time I need a log account of this hunt - because somehow value of loot is missing from my inventory, Ive noticed sometimes ive globalled but the loot doesnt go into my inventory this has happened on more than one ocassion and this time I have noticed abnormal tt value in my inventory.

I globaled a 71pedder allopyl mature at the time listed of the incident but somehow the tt value failed to go into my inventory, this is a serious issue that needs to be dealt with because if tt values of loot not going into my inventory this is bad, I have reloged to no effect then the next global a 73 pedder actually registered in my inventory, again this has happened on more than one ocassion and this time im acting because losing that amount of ped and god knows what ive missed before has put me out .

I have yet to go to the trade terminal so see if its a miscalculation because ive noticed that there is something wrong.
------------------------
2009-08-04 14:17 Entropia Universe Support:

Hi,

First we would like to apologize for the late reply. Due to unforeseen circumstances your case have not been replied to in a timely fashion.

According to our logs the Allophyl Mature that you killed at this time was a no-looter, as was the one you killed before this time.

We can see your other global that you received some time after this one in our logs, but we have no record of a global from the one you killed at 04:22.

We are sorry, but incidents that we can not confirm in our logs can not be compensated immediately, but we have forwarded this to the design team for further investigation. Any adjustments will be implemented automatically.

Thank you for your patience.

Kind regards,
Entropia Universe Support
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
2009-08-05 06:45 You wrote:

Thank you for your reply but I dont take screenies of every global i get, however according to your records I only got one global - but i swear i got 2 and even entropia tracker picked it up - even though tracker is not official record, i wonder why I globaled and its showing on your logs as a no loot, does it mean i have to take screenies of all globals I get.

From Entropia Tracker
Allophyl Mature 73 PED Wednesday, July 29, 2009 04:55
Allophyl Mature 71 PED Wednesday, July 29, 2009 04:22

Even entropia tracker picked it up - but was not paid into inventory - so was it a false global that was no really a global.

Hopefully further investigation will reveal something.

---------------------------------------------
2009-08-14 11:14 Entropia Universe Support:

Hi,

Let me start by apologizing for the information in our last reply which is not correct. We have taken a deeper look into our logs now and this is what we found:

2009-07-29 04:51:22 4282085/Agis Allophyl Mature 73.60037 PED
2009-07-29 04:18:49 4282085/Agis Allophyl Mature 71.21467 PED

I guess we missed this due to the noted times not being synched with the Entropia tracker.

The loot for 71 PED that you felt you did not receive was these items:

2009-07-29 04:18:49 4282085/Agis 1015/1/Light Weapon Cells 9.80000
2009-07-29 04:18:49 4282085/Agis 3814/3/Fine Wool 33.60000
2009-07-29 04:18:49 4282085/Agis 10742/1/Animal Oil Residue 0.01000
2009-07-29 04:18:49 4282085/Agis 10739/3/Animal Thyroid Oil 27.80000

This sums up to the value of 71.2 PED which was transferred to your inventory. We hope this clears it up for you.

Kind regards,
Entropia Universe Support
-----------------------------------------------
2009-08-18 18:06 You wrote:

thank you I just swear i had more animal thyroid in the loot - my mistake not noticing the increased fine wool, I apologise just that it seemed out of the ordinary thank you and sorry for the mess up

------------------------------------------
This is an example of what can happened due to entropia trackers inaccurate time stamps fortunately i was not out ped like you were but tracker logs arent always right, they sometimes have to be looked into by the development (in-world balancing) team.

Again im happy for you enjoy your HOF

and remember entropia tracker cannot be relied as accurate timing or used as evidence, but again this delimma could happen. but im sure no PED would go without go without being compensated down the track

cheers:)
 
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Indeed. I'm glad for Jack he got his loot, but I do think some explanation of how it happened, how often it has happened, and some reassurance that it can't happen again is necessary now.

Still no explanation from MA...
 
Still no explanation from MA...

There wont be an explanation i can assure you, as i said before even if you did not log the support case the balancing system would detect an incorrect loot distribution and recify it at a later date, this is real money, not play money so there must be a system to detect these loot inbalances, or they will be out of business, even shut down by the swedish government, i 100% assure you there are backup systems to compensate incorrect or loot distribution errors. Im sure this is the biggest case of incorrect loot distribution but im 100% sure this has happened in the past as well without support cases lodged.

I have faith in Mindark Balancing System and they would be stupid not to have backup systems to check accounting systems cause they used to have a banking licence and to have a banking licence the system needs to come under proper criteria by the finance ministry in the swedish government or EU union (dont know how it works over there, but just using australian political system with granting bank licenses im sure sweeden or the EU union has something similar)
 
Obviously MA is aware of this thread, as the OP has linked to it in his support case. I'm considering giving them a week to respond with an official statement, apology, and explanation before sharing this thread with some of the major gaming publications (Kotaku, Joystiq, GameRant, IGN, MMORPG.com)

Sometimes some public knowledge and negative publicity can spur a company to action. It's only fair, as myself and probably others initially came to EU based on positive publicity hyping the RCE after major events such as the buying/selling of CND.

I'm not trying to be a douche, but at the same time this thread reminds me so much of some of the threads regarding Full Tilt Poker back on the 2+2 poker forums.. right before Black Friday hit and it came to light the company was so immorally f***ed that they were millions in the hole and countless players got the shaft with their funds.

This community is full of intelligent people, it's a natural byproduct of an expensive hobby, most of us are professionals with disposable incomes. We have teachers, engineers, and other respectable jobs. So come on MA, give us some technical details, explain how your coding sucks and how logs can have gaping holes for key entries with regard to globals. I know programming/system development as do quite a few others on here. We want, and can handle the details. Rebuild our trust in the system.

Thoughts? I really don't know what to do with this, I didn't even bother logging in last night.
 
Obviously MA is aware of this thread, as the OP has linked to it in his support case. I'm considering giving them a week to respond with an official statement, apology, and explanation before sharing this thread with some of the major gaming publications (Kotaku, Joystiq, GameRant, IGN, MMORPG.com)

Trust is easy to lose and very hard to regain, and I think things like those would end up hurting everyone more in the longer term. I'm concerned too, but I think it would be best just to point MA officials about the response OP got from support and the way his case and others' were handled. Truth to be told, this is the first time in 4+ years of playing I've had a bad feeling about the inner workings of the system but I do think it would be better to wait for an answer. As you said, MA is well aware of this situation, so I'm sure they'll eventually post something about it. It wouldn't be on their best interests to remain silent.
 
Trust is easy to lose and very hard to regain, and I think things like those would end up hurting everyone more in the longer term. I'm concerned too, but I think it would be best just to point MA officials about the response OP got from support and the way his case and others' were handled. Truth to be told, this is the first time in 4+ years of playing I've had a bad feeling about the inner workings of the system but I do think it would be better to wait for an answer. As you said, MA is well aware of this situation, so I'm sure they'll eventually post something about it. It wouldn't be on their best interests to remain silent.

I'm inclined to agree with you, I know the long term repercussions could hurt the community as a whole. It's one of the reasons I wanted some opinions and the option of giving a week deadline. My bigger fear, beyond the community/game having long term trust issues that dry things up, is rather the opposite - that this gets swept under the rug and we collectively just forget/get over it. Reading some of the posts in this thread alone, disregarding others I've heard, it sounds like this issue (or loot issues in general) have happened in the past.

The last thing I want is to have a permanent negative impact on the community or game. Ideally I'd love for MA to come and explain the issue, restoring our faith, so I can go back to blowing PED every night, content in my own little world.

As I said a few posts back, trust is the most paramount issue we as a community want. We accept all sorts of shenanigans, blowing money with impunity, but the moment we feel we are being blatantly "robbed", intentional or not, that is going to dry up. The long term negative effects might happen regardless, as I can't imagine I'm the only one considering chipping out and just finding a new hobby.

In the end, I'm hoping for some mature dialogue and ideas between community members, and praying MA steps up and sheds some light.
 
Thank you very much Agis for posting your story (post #251).
It shows a much better level of support AND you happened to be wrong about the case.

The case here is the opposite, but we can learn valuable information from your case about human error on both sides etc.
For people writing support cases based on tracker details, it shows that it is helpful to have a reference global/hof as near as possible to the disputed one, so that a time synchronisation difference can be identified!

The log provided to Agis includes ALL the loot that was logged.
The MA developers must therefore know what loot the system thought it paid out exactly. As they paid out what was missing in residue I believe, this may mean that there really was no log at all of the remainder, and they also don't know what the loot 'should' have been in composition.

There does also remain the question of whether the error which occurred would have been picked up on automatically at some synchronisation point. On occassion it has 'seemed' to me that I get the shots and ammo decayed needlessly due to bad lag, for example, back to my loot in the next looter. We all know what loots to expect and it has even been shown to be in bands. Loots that seem to be 'out, and a bit better than expected' do often come after a lag or ctd, for example.

The problem is, we can only have theories, one or more of which may provide a developer with an 'AHA' moment! The devs themselves must know what paths the software takes to resync systems, but obviously can't provide details. My above is thus somewhat a shot in the dark.

My origin tip for the devs still remains: check when the global message activation and other effects are triggered in relation to logged events. Is it possible for an event to activate the effects without actually making it into the log, or are all effects triggered by the act of successful logging? The difference may seem to be small, but actually it is HUGE in the implications...

An MA comment that the content of this thread is being passed to the developers would help a lot, so that we know that we are not talking to a brick wall, even if no answer with actual results can be given either.... ty
 
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I demand for MA to make an official statement regarding this issue or I may never play again... well atm I don't feel to play anymore because the dynamic loot is costing me to much at my level from $8 to $65 per month.
 
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There wont be an explanation i can assure you, ................
I have faith in Mindark Balancing System and they would be stupid not to have backup systems to check..............similar)

DUDE im getting sick reading your replies acting as a lawyer for MA, seriusly....

ask yourself, how many times i got a 20 ped loot that was actualy higher than that?

i remember when i was getting the shitiest loot in my eu career, in over 200 globals i didnt had a single one bigger than 300 peds. On top of that my average global size was about 60 peds. When i contacted MA, they told me "we have checked your account and everything is in order", yeah right.

way to go MA, confidence in you couldnt be lower at this point, and still you choose to be quiet on the matter, my fun money gonna be going to other places for a while, but its how you want it obviusly.
 
I do think people should calm down somewhat here, i have tracked loot fora long time and return % has always evened out around the same % over 100k turnover. I've never to the best of my knowledge had something like this happen in 5 years, so we can presume this is a freak occurance.

I'm pretty sure MA will be looking at this for sure, but i guess the circumstances surrounding this "bug" may be hard to pin down. Just keep an eye on returns/loot after a run and contact them if you believe anything is amiss, also screenshot bigger loots so you can have evidence if something untoward occurs.

With the screeny evidence they paid the OP what he was missing, so all has ended well here.


calm down :)
 
One large issue here is that support needs to be trained better. They should have been able to query the database to see what was looted that day and tell him exactly what was logged in the hof. The DB query they did or at least posted in the support case was piss poor.

On day 1(once the case was addressed) that info should have been in the support ticket.

As for what happened, the fact that they gave him items means the items were missing, and that is worrying. I would like to know what happened.

This seems to be either a rare issue, or a new issue.

I track all my loot diligently and ive never seen a problem. With somewhere around 700-1000 globals and hofs, largest being 9,816.7159 PED, the items in the loot window has always added up to the same number as the global(without the pecs, since the global number is rounded down). I have screen shots of all the globals as well as a text file that contains the exact items, quantities and tt values. I dont do this to second guess MA, i do it to track what i do so i can repeat what works and stop doing what doesn't.

-----------------

If there was one thing to come out of this thread, i would like our client side log files to log each item we loot with time stamp, item, quantity, and ped value. Ive wanted this for a long time, i want it even more now.
 
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If there was one thing to come out of this thread, i would like our client side log files to log each item we loot with time stamp, item, quantity, and ped value. Ive wanted this for a long time, i want it even more now.

I really like this idea. :)
 
There does also remain the question of whether the error which occurred would have been picked up on automatically at some synchronisation point. On occassion it has 'seemed' to me that I get the shots and ammo decayed needlessly due to bad lag, for example, back to my loot in the next looter. We all know what loots to expect and it has even been shown to be in bands. Loots that seem to be 'out, and a bit better than expected' do often come after a lag or ctd, for example.

You misread the facts, but you do raise another interesting issue.

Not only did a bug result in the wrong loot being given, but actually 17 DAYS passed between the Hof and restitution, and only then as a result of a Support Case.

So there was no reconciliation process; MA can have no mechanism for picking up such errors.
 
I expect to get as much explanation and clarification about this subject from MindArk as they have given us about Nostrop et al.
 
If there was one thing to come out of this thread, i would like our client side log files to log each item we loot with time stamp, item, quantity, and ped value. Ive wanted this for a long time, i want it even more now.

I vote for it too :cool:
 
I have faith in Mindark Balancing System and they would be stupid not to have backup systems to check accounting systems cause they used to have a banking licence
No, they did not.

I've said it before, and it seems I have to say it again: I personally contacted Finansinspektionen, the Swedish gov't agency handling such matters, and was informed that what MA had gotten was a preliminary statement that Finansinspektionen did see no immediate obstacles.

It's a bit like, while fully dressed, having a doctor take a look at you to state "I see no immediate problems", even that you may have pancreatic cancer, epilepsy, 10/10 vision, colorblindness and Alzheimer's. Such problems would only show up during the more thorough examination when you actually asked for your commercial pilots license.

According to the information I got from the government agency, MA has never had a banking license.
 
[informing relevant news outlets]
Trust is easy to lose and very hard to regain, and I think things like those would end up hurting everyone more in the longer term.
I don't. We know from history that MA "solves" these issues by sweeping them under the rug, and NOT by auditing and fixing the broken system(s).

If you don't stand up now, what do you expect would happen if you got an ATH that wasn't logged by their system(s). Imagine it being during a time with almost no other avatars logged on, no screenshot, and no one willing to come forward to back up your claim.

"Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me"

My opinion is that there is no time like the present for MA to perform this way overdue audit, report that they are doing it, and finally report the findings. IMO it would be a (the only?) credible way to regain some semblance of trust. It will obviously never happen, and next time it might be you at the wrong end of the supercharged cattle prod.
 
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