Cranberry Wrote:TNT never said this was a "war" -- in fact, they confirmed early on that it wasn't (in last week's editorial):
Quote:This is a plot, and plots can include puzzles and battling (and whatever else we think of).
...
To clarify things for this plot, though, we will tell you that battling DOES count, but for how much, we won't say. *cackle*
I actually think it was quite well done. Yeah, they could have left the opponents around longer, and yes, the lag was killer... but I don't think they saw that coming, and they did all they could to remedy it. I think they probably originally intended to leave each wave there as we got the next, but ended up having to take them away so the lag wouldn't kill the BD. In any case, they had a good number of opponents (12 is already more opponents than any one battler was allowed to fight in any past war), they planned the challengers' battlesets well, and we had a nice range of difficulties to fight. Plus, I'm not quite ready to believe the fighting is all over yet. We could always face another (nice hard) wave or a boss.
Yeah, if they had left the Gravestones in, we never would havebeen able to beat the other challengers because of the lag.
I think the actual plot will be the main part of the score. Battling is just a side thing, and will get you more points that doing the plot alone. In other words, they'll probably make completing all of the puzzles 10,000 points, and assign a point value for each win against opponents and just add it to your score. Then they would add points for potion testing and gravedigging too. After all of that was put together, the highest prize would only be available to people who had battled and participated in the graveyard events, and the second highest would be for people who did the plot alone. Battling without the plot probably won't get you very many points.
That's how I think it will play out in the end. It's only a theory, but regardless of whether it will happen or not, past experience has shown that it's worth your while to do the plots, so if you haven't, you probably should.
I like theories...
As i see giving extra points in function of your wins on the battledome is ot good for the majority. I could get wins on the stones but i wasn't here to do it or on all the waves but i had not lot of time to be on-line and to battle. Therefore i guess they may give points because you did it.
But with the digging and the bone-tester they may use a little trophies like on the LDP (just click on that trophie on any player page).
Cranberry Wrote:Yeah, they could have left the opponents around longer, and yes, the lag was killer... but I don't think they saw that coming, and they did all they could to remedy it. I think they probably originally intended to leave each wave there as we got the next, but ended up having to take them away so the lag wouldn't kill the BD.
TNT has seen "war" lag before, and they knew what to expect. They should have a near perfect knowledge of their active number of users, and a projected number that would be brought out of the woodwork for battling. They also know what the limits on their Database software and hardware is.
By the end of the first wave, the lag was already starting to die down. It had also died down properly before the end of the second wave. Overall, I don't think any but some of the newbies had time to max against either wave, but they had begun to. If there had just been more time between each wave then the lag would have remained consistent regardless (peaking at the release of each new wave, and dying off after a couple of days). Leaving the prior waves up wouldn't have made a tremendous difference (unless half of Neo had been away from their computers and suddenly got on to re-lag the system), and would have been more fair to the category I just cracked a joke about. If anyone was out of town for the past week, they just missed a "war."
And because I believe TNT to not be filled with a bunch of imbeciles, I don't expect them to alienate anyone that missed a week (and a half) at Neo. There are too many inconsistencies with how things have gone: Each wave was released too quickly, each prior wave (except three) was retired when the next wave showed up, and we haven't seen a plot since wave three.
Something's being automated, and if it weren't for the amount of time that TNT had to "fix" any mistake they might have made then I'd think that we weren't meant to have faced wave four yet. It just
feels like something went wrong, even though I can't place my finger on it.
In any case, I'm hoping to see a re-release of each wave, if not all at once. Even if TNT wanted to merely "rotate" them around, it would have been nice if they'd thought about the users that can only get on during the weekend, rather than making it look like nothing happened. And, as I said before, the BD News and the featured Opponent is still the Malevolent Shadow; like someone messily pulled the plug without cleaning up the mess.
Come on... TNT doesn't mean this to be a major part of the plot, just a little bonus. Just like LDP. For whatever reason TNT doesn't seem to want to have battling be a major part of their site anymore. I guess they think it's unfair or something stupid like that, witness the idiocy of COM for evidence of that.
C: I didn't get many Points. ;_;
Shattered Rift Wrote:Cranberry Wrote:Yeah, they could have left the opponents around longer, and yes, the lag was killer... but I don't think they saw that coming, and they did all they could to remedy it. I think they probably originally intended to leave each wave there as we got the next, but ended up having to take them away so the lag wouldn't kill the BD.
TNT has seen "war" lag before, and they knew what to expect. They should have a near perfect knowledge of their active number of users, and a projected number that would be brought out of the woodwork for battling. They also know what the limits on their Database software and hardware is.
Yes, they do, but they still didn't expect the number of people they got. Sometimes they just have to wait and see, and then do what they can to fix lag. From the same editorial:
Quote:Hey TNT! In the plot we now have to battle, but we can't! The Battledome is slow, and for some the pages aren't even loading! What can we do? D= Please help! ~x_laura_buddie_x
This happens whenever there is battling in a plot (not that that makes it any better, but there ya go). 
The number of players in the Battledome at any given time during these events is astounding, and it doubles and triples every time we start a new one. It's amazing it's even up at all! Okay, seriously though, there are several people who are constantly keeping watch on everything, even in the middle of the night, to make sure it doesn't explode completely. The fact is, no matter what we do, there are always TONS of people who hit the Battledome once fighting starts and lag is inevitable. That's the Intarwebs for you. And the whole "You should have seen this coming!" argument isn't valid. 
We did see it coming! With every plot step, we're constantly battling (no pun intended) with ourselves to make sure we do something fun, but also that the site can handle the load. When it goes off without a hitch, you have no idea we were even concerned with such things in the first place. That's the way we prefer it, of course. When it doesn't go off so well, though, understand that we did (and are doing) everything we can to keep things running as smoothly as possible. It's just that sometimes there are bottlenecks in certain places that we can't control. 
Think about it this way - one of the few options we have to fix certain lag issues is to not do these plots at all. That would be lame, though, so we press on anyway and hope that everyone understands. With MILLIONS of people on this site, the Intarwebs can only take so much, even with the 400+ servers we have. *nod* 400+. That's a LOT of servers, and it still has trouble handling y'all.
I also don't think the opponents were automated. Most of them were released along with plot comics/the news, and those things are triggered by an actual person. The shadows I'm not so sure about; perhaps they were supposed to come out earlier but didn't because TNT wanted to give us harder opponents and cut down on some lag/give stronger battlers a chance to get a few fights in first.
chicken Wrote:Come on... TNT doesn't mean this to be a major part of the plot, just a little bonus. Just like LDP. For whatever reason TNT doesn't seem to want to have battling be a major part of their site anymore. I guess they think it's unfair or something stupid like that, witness the idiocy of COM for evidence of that.
While it isn't enough, it IS a heck of a lot more than the LDP, where the battling didn't even count.
I do wish battling would become a bigger partof the site though. We haven't had any new DoN opponents for how long?
Cran, they still have the ability to properly estimate. They knew there was going to be lag, and they knew it was going to be typical war lag. Even if the number of users in the BD exceeded what they expected (by a percent over 5 or even 10), they know the number of users that will make their Database "max out." I'm willing to bet they expected it to max out, even if they ended up with more users than they expected.
If TNT really wanted to cut down the lag, it's simply a management decision to upgrade to a newer version of Oracle, or to upgrade their server hardware (the former would be more effective, since they probably keep adding new servers rather than simply replace old ones, up until the point where old ones need to be replaced).
The News is released at seemingly "random" times, and it's one button that does it. Admittedly, I may be jumping at something that isn't there, but something feels off. Logically I'm probably wrong, but not seeing a plot update for the weekend (and not seeing one for the Shadows) doesn't maintain consistency.
There was no weekend plot update because we have not yet solved the puzzle we were given on Wednesday evening, so the plot can't progress. I doubt there's more to it than that. Also, the news is often released just before the programmers go home for the night (although sometimes earlier to mix things up
). I keep track... I'm a big Mystery Pic/Lenny Conundrum fan and like to catch the news as soon as it goes up, for a better shot at trophies/prizes.
Nice they found Psionic Singularity... (Ice Plasma was the first one). I wish i have any of them.