Guild Wars 2

Maybe, if they could, they should beta it off of the beta weekend, get it all up and running

Trevor Bennett.3691:

thrag.9740:

When we go to red portal, it is greyed out, but we are in a squad, hellp? do we need 10 ?

We’re turning it back off because of the instability, but when you do get a chance to try it again, you have to change your squad to a raiding squad. Somewhere on my list of stuff to do I’ve got a task to make that better messaged.

Ah well, thanks for all the effort everyone is putting in! Some people are just grump trucks, but what can ya do. I can’t wait to try the raid in all it’s intended glory!

Shouldnt this be named Alpha weekend event?

Im stuck. I cant leave or talk with/in my current party. fish.2170! halp!

OH MAN! Almost had a full raid too!! BOOOOOO

I know you guys are trying, but can there be a bit of warning? Some of our group went to bed because we were told there would be no raiding. When we were suddenly prompted that there would be raiding, everyone dropped what they were doing to try and organize. Before we even got to squad up it was disabled again.

Maybe say “we’re going to re-enable it in X hours for a test”? Or silently enable it and see if something breaks before announcing that it’s up? We really appreciate the work you’re putting in, and we know it’s not easy, but the off-on is making it stressful for players, too.

Could someone please convince Colin that Druid, Scrapper, squad UI, and raids are not ready? This squad UI fiasco is making it really obvious you guys are too rushed right now. These things need some proper development and testing time, and Scrapper and Druid deserve to have more significant changes available to them (if needed) that the other elite specs have already benefited from. I’m not going to blame the programmers of the squad UI for this mess. I’m going to blame the release date and whoever is responsible for not pushing it back.

What’s the huge issue with the UI being on? Is it impairing other game functionality, or is it just the fact that it’s really buggy and hard to deal with? If the latter, why not just keep it on even with the bugs? That way people would still be able to get a taste of the raid content.

But if it’s affecting other areas of the game, or affecting server performance, then that’s understandable.

Darmikau.9413:

I know you guys are trying, but can there be a bit of warning? Some of our group went to bed because we were told there would be no raiding. When we were suddenly prompted that there would be raiding, everyone dropped what they were doing to try and organize. Before we even got to squad up it was disabled again.

Maybe say “we’re going to re-enable it in X hours for a test”? Or silently enable it and see if something breaks before announcing that it’s up? We really appreciate the work you’re putting in, and we know it’s not easy, but the off-on is making it stressful for players, too.

This was exactly my experience, Except every one is now increadably kittened

fyi, now the guild chat is not working… GG…. XD

So, update? Anet pls

hey, just fyi for devs, about when the forum post went up about reenabling raids, our party in Arah broke. party chat was nonfunctional, and when a reaver tried to switch characters at the end (so he could get the loot) he was unable to rejoin the instance. we couldn’t even kick him or leave the party ourselves, thats how broke it was. It threw errors that the party or channel didn’t exist.

Stephen ClarkeWillson.1802:

Okay, there are still some crashes. We are going to turn it back off at 11:25 pacific time (or so). We encourage you to get a raid team together and get in and have some fun.

We have gathered more data from this experiment but it’s getting late. I don’t know (honestly) if we will try again tomorrow or not.

Thank you for your patience.

Where does it crash?

If its raid only from the last boss and only affects the raid group, I’d honestly just leave it like that. Because then at least we can experience most of it…

If it continues breaking general PvE (which it has been a few times tonight) please stop bringing it back.

Edit: Potentially ruining the majority of the player base’s dungeon and fractal runs by having this party issue is NOT acceptable in order to open up raids for 5 minutes at a time.

Are you planning to turn it on again tonight or we can just relax and sit back for now?

Stephen ClarkeWillson.1802:

Okay, there are still some crashes. We are going to turn it back off at 11:25 pacific time (or so). We encourage you to get a raid team together and get in and have some fun.

We have gathered more data from this experiment but it’s getting late. I don’t know (honestly) if we will try again tomorrow or not.

Thank you for your patience.

So once there are 11 people in a raid squad it bugs out? And because most people just search for enough members in map chat they will most likely have over 10 at one point it breaks?

Do we have to do sub groups within the squad? The dragging people into different groups did not work for me.

Since you’re looking at the thread, I’ll ask a question I saw posted elsewhere: Why squad UI for raids instead of trying 10-man parties? Two birds with one stone? Is the party UI difficult (or impossible) to change?

Also, will squad UI show boons/conditions in the future? We can see health levels and when players are down, but seeing what boons and conditions are on your allies at a glance is super important.

Thanks for all the hard work you guys are doing. We really do appreciate it.

I actually did get to try the raid. My group got in and didn’t get kicked out either time that you guys turned it off. I have to say, Bravo Arena Net! We didn’t beat it. Truly challenging content, as promised. I will be uploading our experience and posting it on the forum in the appropriate place shortly. slow clap

Do you guys realize you’re doing all of this on a live server? Please stop ruining people’s fractal and dungeon runs.

Don’t forget to take a group photo of the team bleeding from the fingers, trying to get the raids going at midnight on a Saturday.

Thanks so much for your tireless efforts.

This sucks but be happy it happened during beta, i hope i wont see this after 23rd.

Had a blast testing the raid.

Sad the squad UI isn’t up to snuff.

Lopez.7369:

Do you guys realize you’re doing all of this on a live server? Please stop ruining people’s fractal and dungeon runs.

How else are they going to determine whether or not it works if the literal only way they can check is on the live servers, since the problems can’t be reproduced on their internal testing servers/clients?

I’m not a programming expert, but I’m going to take a huge guess on what’s causing the problems:

When you guys enabled squads, it causes all existing parties (including the ones in PvP ones) to no longer be parties when the game tried to make them compatible for squads. In effect, it could no longer be squads either since you need a tag to make one (and to hit the button). Some parts that point to all this are:

1) The party doesn’t exist/not compatible with current content, so you can’t “leave” something that doesn’t exist.

2) You can’t join on a party that doesn’t “exist” (just tag ‘not compatible’ with that word)

3) Since it can’t be a squad, it’s not a squad either.

4) Squads are working fine for raids aside from the UI disappearing at one point. This may have been due to someone leaving after the first wipe and the squads were disabled at the time.

5) You can’t party chat in a party that doesn’t exist. You can’t use squad chat either because you aren’t in a squad, and your party can’t be converted to a squad

6) Either the parties don’t exist, or they no longer because compatible as parties and as such anything party related didn’t match up and caused all party features to be missing or not working.

7) Leaving an instance is a group feature tied to parties/squads/instances. Again with the non-existent thing.

8) I’ve had the problem of being stuck in PvP matches in other games due to a party error. I think the way they described the problem was that the server part handling party requests wasn’t working so you couldn’t leave because it had to boot you from the party before it booted you from the room. And if you can’t leave something that doesn’t exist, you were just stuck indefinitely. Could be a different problem now, but I don’t know.

I’m pretty sure you guys have thought of these things but I don’t see any other reason that causes all of the same problems from one issue.

My condolences to the hard working people at ArenaNet to salvage this beta weekend.

Small Note on Raids: I was lucky enough to finally try it. Super. kittening. FUN.

Edit: Potentially ruining the majority of the player base’s dungeon and fractal runs by having this party issue is NOT acceptable in order to open up raids for 5 minutes at a time.

it doesnt ruin runs, it just makes it impossible to use party chat or to invite new members

you can still use local and map chat and complete runs with the members you have

Trevor Bennett.3691:

While Enhanced Squad UI is enabled you cannot be in a party and a squad at the same time. Reform your squad to take advantage of the full enhanced squad functionality.

That said, we are still having some stability issues…

Wait… What? Will we l not be able to use party system in squad? And how to find people to play?

Purple Miku.7032:

Lopez.7369:

Do you guys realize you’re doing all of this on a live server? Please stop ruining people’s fractal and dungeon runs.

How else are they going to determine whether or not it works if the literal only way they can check is on the live servers, since the problems can’t be reproduced on their internal testing servers/clients?

It could be tested on a separate server set from the live game. It shouldn’t need to be on that specific hardware, just another set of servers with the same configuration and interactions. The only difference would be that they’d likely have to open it up to more than just HoT pre-purchasers to get it populated enough for a proper stress test. Having a beta for all paid accounts, or even an open beta would probably be good for marketing/hype anyway.

Despite my not agreeing with doing beta experiments on the live server with players that don’t want to be testing HoT, I do have to give props to the devs that were working at midnight (or beyond) on a Saturday to test and fix this. That’s dedication and deserves some mention.

WEXXES.2378, it a little more complicated then just incompatibility. it seem the dev are suggesting party are failing because the server keeping the data are crashing, making it more of a runtime failure which may or may not be related to logic at all.

imo, the “bug” may actually had existed in live server for weeks before the beta. if you tag up, you can no longer “invite to party” like you can weeks ago, this problem isn’t new.

as to why it wouldn’t show up on internal testing, if I guess correctly, those test machine are setup to test new content, they don’t really have the machine, people nor time to duplicated the “old world” and test everything again, this is probably why they miss such a huge bug in the first place.

this is also why i posted a thread with negative view about the status of HoT on launch, it alot harder to fix bug that rises in the old world then the new one. certain thing just cannot be promised; aka “when it is done™”. the confidence of the dev on stream, doesn’t sound so reassuring now…

It could be tested on a separate server set from the live game. It shouldn’t need to be on that specific hardware, just another set of servers with the same configuration and interactions. The only difference would be that they’d likely have to open it up to more than just HoT pre-purchasers to get it populated enough for a proper stress test. Having a beta for all paid accounts, or even an open beta would probably be good for marketing/hype anyway.

since the game is no longer sharded, even a close approximation beta-server could have serious flaws duplicating a live environment. this could lead to unpredictable bugs when that content is pushed live. While there have been some minor inconveniences for live players this BWE, it is at least a wash in terms of reliability versus pushing systems live that were only tested in a very limited environment.

i’m sure the commander system worked fine internally and on their test servers. it only crashed and burned when pushed live. Better now, in BWE, then on launch day.

Reading back on the dev posts and it seems that the bug is probably related to update concurrency of the raid UI on the backend.

Xehanort.7034:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Hey everyone, I have an update regarding the availability of raids.

Due to the issues we experienced yesterday with the Enhance Squad UI and with further internal discussion, we have made the very difficult decision to keep raids turned off for the remainder of the beta weekend.

We are continuing to investigate the issues and also looking into options that would allow us to get more testing on these features before we release.

We thank you for your patience and understanding.

honestly speaking, why does this not surprise me?

Because it’s a beta, and the whole point of it is to find issues like this before launch.

Shoe.5821:

It could be tested on a separate server set from the live game. It shouldn’t need to be on that specific hardware, just another set of servers with the same configuration and interactions. The only difference would be that they’d likely have to open it up to more than just HoT pre-purchasers to get it populated enough for a proper stress test. Having a beta for all paid accounts, or even an open beta would probably be good for marketing/hype anyway.

since the game is no longer sharded, even a close approximation beta-server could have serious flaws duplicating a live environment. this could lead to unpredictable bugs when that content is pushed live. While there have been some minor inconveniences for live players this BWE, it is at least a wash in terms of reliability versus pushing systems live that were only tested in a very limited environment.

i’m sure the commander system worked fine internally and on their test servers. it only crashed and burned when pushed live. Better now, in BWE, then on launch day.

The current megaserver system isn’t really much different than the previous server setup, it just manages the same instances in a different way. This system actually did exist since launch, as the overflow system. They basically just took out the pairing of players in pve instances based on chosen home server and made them act as an overflow with new player pairing methods. The remnants of the old system still exist, as is evident when you go into a dungeon or any other instanced content. Your friends will see you as being on whatever your home server is.

You’re likely right that copying the environment to a test server might not be completely thorough(largely due to the scale), but it should be enough so that much less testing on the live server would be necessary. We’ve had bugs (some game-breaking) and disruptions all week that likely could have been avoided, or condensed into shorter tests like the raid UI experiments last night.

Spoj-chan,

I told you so. It seems not simple with a few workaround after all.

I’m a programmer going into the office on Sunday (today) to spend an indeterminate amount of time fixing something. I know how it feels to keep trying and hoping you’ll find a fix before it’s too late. :} Keep fighting the good fight, brothers. Take deep breaths, drink some good tea. In, out.

Vael Victus.2654:

I’m a programmer going into the office on Sunday (today) to spend an indeterminate amount of time fixing something. I know how it feels to keep trying and hoping you’ll find a fix before it’s too late. :} Keep fighting the good fight, brothers. Take deep breaths, drink some good tea. In, out.

LOL, there are a lot of us. I am trying to debug an errant data load before business opens tomorrow. I appreciate the effort you’re putting into this and raise a glass to you.

Iris Ng.9845:

Spoj-chan,

I told you so. It seems not simple with a few workaround after all.

I was referring to players leaving the game and reforming squads to get in. That is simple and you do get in eventually. But i had no idea it was breaking other non squad parties elsewhere. Doesnt matter though. I never said i disagreed with the devs decision to disable it. Even if i would personally prefer to keep trying on a broken system.

A lil offtopic but I’m gonna say it anyway: I am a bit relieved. Trying to put a team together with no help was the most stressful thing I’ve done in a while. I feel… unsettled at the thought I may have to do it time and time again, only to have people do whatever-what-the-kitten-ever, only to fail at everything and getting your mouthful of blame to chew on. And it’s bitter.

spoj.9672:

An opinion is always correct. Its an opinion. It can be based on false information. But the opinion itself is always valid. If you say “I think pigs can fly” thats fine, its your opinion even if it has no basis. However if you say “Pigs can fly” then you would be talking bullkitten.

That is exactly what I said. I was not arguing the fact you CAN give opinions. Yes, you are free to do so and you can. But that doesn’t exempt you from the responsibility of what you are saying. Like “pigs can fly” or “the sky is purple”. The information is wrong, and the fact that you can freely give your opinions doesn’t make them right. People were throwing trash at ANet without really knowing what was going on and still asking for a reimbursement???? It is not about being superior, it is about having common sense.

european primetime begins, hope if they try the system again today (for 10 mins or so) it will be not midnight in europe. i wanna test it so badly

Purple Miku.7032:

How else are they going to determine whether or not it works if the literal only way they can check is on the live servers, since the problems can’t be reproduced on their internal testing servers/clients?

A public testing server. The disaster that has been this beta weekend is one of the many, many reasons this game needs one, just like every other major MMO uses one.

I’m not sure why they’d want to pay for a public testing server, its maintenance and all the mess that undoubtedly will follow – when they can just let the players roam freely on release date and then fix all the broken stuff.. while it breaks. Much simpler! Hnnng.

I hope they try and release squad UI fully in live before hot release to be honest. Same should probably done with some other UI/system related stuff. Like the new guild stuff?

lagrangewei.8516:

WEXXES.2378, it a little more complicated then just incompatibility. it seem the dev are suggesting party are failing because the server keeping the data are crashing, making it more of a runtime failure which may or may not be related to logic at all.

Welp that’s why I said it was a huge guess. \o/

Maybe its both. Who knows…

They had it turned on for a few mins. Its now turned off again. Seems like their working on it today.

If anyone from Anet is reading this please please please. Can you open the squad UI for just a moment so that people can get their parties into the raid. I find it extremely unfair that it was opened without any notice. Managed to get a party of 7 in but by the time we got the other 3 up from their sleep it was closed already. We guys in EU have been waiting up for the last 72 hours straight spamming enter on the raid portal, and the one moment a few of us try to get some shut eye, you open it for a few minutes and we miss out. It’s extremely frustrating. So please, PLEASE open the squad UI for 10 minutes and let us know when you are going to do it. I’m begging.

My EU Raiding Guild and I have been waiting online all day every day since we first got locked out of the raid, and you turned it on for a FEW MINUTES during NA prime time without announcing it to anyone as “Please be aware the UI may still prove unstable enter at your own risk”. Can we please get some communication on whether or not these UI problems would have precluded us from fighting the boss in any way? Or did you simply not wish people to raid without the new UI? Please communicate with us here, we woke up several eager raiders at 2/3am who were HAPPY to log in to raid if it was available but only 7 of us got in. Can we please be given an option of a 5 minute window to fill our raid with the understanding that we know the UI doesn’t work?
Please, talk to us here.