Kris Kringe…
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Yes, 
This probably because of the mess 
I love this phrasing 
Hope you’re feeling all better now! And thanks for yet another detailed post, they really are super appreciated.
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I hate to say it, but that will probably require researching individual cases, implying (as black boxes go) that further details can’t/won’t be publicly available.
I agree that subtle bugs are often MORE dangerous to deal with.
personal anecdote follows
One small site I was on I designed a suspension (temporary ban) system for. The design seemed pretty simple – add a new database table to record information about suspensions issued, each row with start/stop timestamps, etc., then write the tools to manage it. The tools were smart enough to search for a pre-existing suspension before issuing a new one, and in that event merely update the existing entry instead of trying to insert a new one (because primary keys and whatnot).
Naturally, this included updating the login code to check for an active suspension on the current user(s), and display a suspension message if so. I was also “smart enough” to anticipate that in the event of short suspensions (say, less than 24 hour durations) a user who doesn’t log in often could evade a suspension simply by not visiting the site during the interval … so I wrote code to prevent this: when a suspension was issued, it was flagged as “pending” and the start/end times of the suspension are offset relative to whenever the suspension message is actually shown to the user (i.e: upon a rejected login attempt).
Some time later, I received an emotional email from a user complaining that they had been suspended for – according to the message – something like over 6 months long. When the maximum duration provided by the tool was only 30 days long (which I knew because I wrote the tool myself).
What the bug!?
Turns out the problem was a combination of how I recorded the start/stop timestamps in the database table, the tool’s ability to recycle old rows instead of inserting new ones, AND the “pending” flag mentioned above.
- Say at one time I issue a suspension. The database records a “start” and “stop” time for the suspension, also sets its flag as “pending”. Working as intended!
- When a user next logs in and is discovers their suspension, the “pending” flag is removed, and the “stop” time increased by the difference between the “start” time and now(), making it functionally relative to their login attempt. Also working as intended!
- For record-keeping purposes, a suspension is not removed from the table after it expires. So in the event the user receives more than one suspension (e.g. for separate isolated incidents), instead of deleting the previous row, the tool would simply update the existing row with a new expiration (= now + duration) and flag the entry as “pending” again. Unfortunately, in this case I forgot to also update the “start” date during that step, meaning the start/stop dates fell out of sync with each other and the “duration” (which was never actually stored, instead derived from stop - start) gets perceived as artificially long. Combine this with adjusting the start/stop relative to the user’s next login attempt (which wasn’t bugged) and suddenly, issuing two suspensions (for unrelated incidents) six months apart caused the latter to be declared as lasting six months longer than intended.
OOPS. Fortunately there was literally only one affected user so I was able to get it resolved (and fixed in code) quickly, but WOW was that embarrassing to discover the hard way. And in hindsight, not storing the actual duration specified by the tool was a mistake.
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I just received 50 gems compensation for the ban bug as someone who was not mistakenly banned.
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I guess is for everyone, like the ones that spent way more than just 50 to compensate for the ones banned in weekly event or barely played out of fear. It’s insignifcant amount because they don’t want to break their economy but when they refuse to give what we would get by normaly playing using that excuse makes me think that playing normaly breaks their economy, like collecting a lot of tributes per day and the ban wave was a solution for that.
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Nice thaty the compensation has been sent, apparently, 8 days ago. So nothing we could say would change this offensive decision.
Also it was not a “bug”, no matter how your lawyer tells you to call it. It was leaving a badly designed ban bot - something you you swore you never would use - unattended for days. Yes, it would grant enough reason for a class action, since we are, you know, paying customers.
Time to broke the economy by going full free-to- play.
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50 gems. The lousy global 50 standard gems, they give out, whenever something does run wrong.
Why would anyone expect, that they put any effort and thought behind a compensation for a bunch of players, who got kicked out of the game, when they can simply flip the preinstalled switch, that they got for their bianually messups?
The only surprise about is would be, that they remembered to write a new message about it (which, by the way, is a steady reminder, that a PN-system between players is not impossible, just unwanted), instead of copy/pasting an old one in.
They are not trying. They are not pretending to try. They do not care.
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I completely agree with you. When they first announced the gap event, I thought that we would see 1 gnome per fight for 15min. I was fortunate enough to be there the first thursday, and man did it change my game.
3, 4 vault key per match, many epic vault key… And also musicians…
It’s them who broke economy, and they try to fix it since then. But since the majority of heavy farmer already got a truckload of ressources, the ones who pay are those who have missed the first few event.
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i was there that first thursday. i have since been sat on at least 30 palooza each weekend
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Good point is good.
I definitely appreciate the detailed responses from Kafka, personally, aside from the rest of the fallout.
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500 gems per player wouldn’t break the community.
Auto banning players over Christmas breaks the community.
The target for compensation shouldn’t be “the least you can do.”
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50 gems? Yes, that’s what we deserve. Like most of the “free” stuff we get it’s something we could get without a problem. We should get something the average player can’t get within less than a minute.
Not surprised tho’, just disappointed. Is this something we should just take and shut up and continue moving along with? Well, to be clear, time will tell how things go from here.
Of course I’ll keep playing (for most of those in the back who keep saying, “shut up, you’ll play anyway” ) but this doesn’t mean I’m OK with it.
What a let down. I’m just going to focus on achieving my goals that I want to achieve while playing this game, because I’m a gamer. I love video games and there are some things I want to achieve, but what happened with “Bangate”, made things difficult.
(Put Kris Krinkle back to normal, because that’s something I could take more than this apology, at this point more than these 50 gems)
I was never expecting anything more though. Oh well back to focusing on my goals while I can still play this game… so, the show must go on.
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Update:
We’ll be running an extra Vault Event weekend once the Kingdom Pass has finished.
This way everyone can play with their usual play time but get the extra Rewards during the event that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.
It also means you’ll get an assortment of rewards from the Gnomes in amounts more respective of your individual play time rather than us sending out just the compensation based on average free Gems earnt per day, which is much lower for some players and much higher for others.
So it’s 200 Gems for banned players, 50 Gems global comp, and an extra Vault weekend.
Date is still to be advised, we will announce it through the blog like the regularly scheduled events.
Also, we hear your feedback about our global compensation not just for this issue but for previous issues as well and we will be reviewing our compensation policy for more widespread issues and updating them following this.
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Can you convince your corporate overlords to look over the length of the Kingdom Passes?
35 days, then a vault event, then another 35 days for Vulpacea
Just like McDonalds, I’m not lovin’ it.
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I’m working 98% of the weekends (including Sundays too), so usually on vault events I can do 4 or 5 Gnome’a’Palooza’s. This weekend (Arena weekend) I’m at home from Friday to Sunday. Any possibilities to launch the vault event this weekend?! As someone that has been banned for almost 3 whole days this would mean a lot to me and also be helpful to my guild. Otherwise I would have to skip most of the event that you’re giving out as “compensation”. 
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So … round about when we’d be due for a Vault weekend anyway, then?
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Last Vault was on 2nd December. We are already due one. After kingdom pass ends (5 February) - it will be way, way past due.
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As for true compensation… How about give each player a single mythic of their choosing and call it a day?
Unless there are two Vaul weekends in a row, I’m going to assume they already had a Vault event scheduled for the weekend of February 10th and they’re fooling us by saying it’s compensation for the bans. It is not any compensation if we then have to wait months until the next Vault, it would not be an extra event on February 10.
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