First of all, I hope I didn’t miss an existing topic on the matter, to my surprise I could not find one.
I think it’d be a good idea if there would be a system in place for handling crashes/disconnects in a better way. Specifically to avoid the loss of rewards, effort and/or time spent due to these.
For someone like myself with a pc on the lower end of the game’s requirements crashes happen quite frequently. I’ve also seen frequent complaints about disconnecting in general. Since this in an MMO there will always be a significant amount of people experiencing these.
For reference, here’s a list of the specific problems I’ve encountered:
Personal story:
Crashing during any chapter and having to start over.
Any boss/event:
Crashing and losing the reward.
Regular maps:
Crashing and being put into a random other instance of that map. (Especially if you’re waiting/working on a major event such as Tequatl or Silverwastes.)
Silverwastes:
Doing the whole event chain for the nice buffs followed by a crash and losing them.
Dungeons/fractals:
A crash will kick you out of the instance and make it impossible to rejoin your party if they are in combat. Possibly even lose the final reward if you crash during the final boss.
I don’t see any possible balance or gameplay reason why crashes should be handled in this way. (Feel free to correct me on that.) There’s no advantage to be had in not having a player around to contribute.
A lot of features of this game become far less enjoyable because of these issues as well. For me personal story has gone from “Oh I wonder what’ll happen next.” to “skip skip hurry up, finish before I crash and have to redo the whole thing ><”. Similar effects apply to the other issues mentioned above.
My suggestion for solving these would be the following:
If a player logs out in any map reserve the slot for 5 minutes. That way if they crashed or disconnected they can log back into the same instance of the map.
Events/bosses:
If a player is not online but has contributed to killing a boss/event there should be a 5 minute window during which they can log back on and collect their reward/loot.
Silverwastes:
If a player logs back in (into the same map) within 5 minutes the buffs should still be present.
Dungeons/personal story:
Same as the above, give the player a 5 minute window during which they can log back in without being kicked outside, losing progress or losing their reward. Assuming they are still in the party.
Of course crashes/disconnects will always be annoying, and that’s something that comes with online gaming in general. However with the above fixes at least it’ll be less likely for players to lose their time, effort and fun in doing these activities.