BuzzerBeater Forums

20. And I study computer science. And I didn't say that we were close to AI. I said it was possible to code. Extremely difficult, and we haven't quite worked out how, but it is definitely possible.

Feel free to write me a BB-mail.

I don't know how you conclude those things, but they certainly aren't right. Maybe it's because I'm not a native english speaker, or maybe you didn't understand most of the posts made by me here.

If you filter my posts in this thread, almost every single one says we know there are problems, and then you add a full post of arguments that we act like there aren't any. That's just weird if you ask me.

I'm not gonna compare our situation with Hattrick's, since I don't know enough about both to really bring in a good comparison. But I played Hattrick for a long time as well, and there were quite some days where they took down the whole website fixing things. We could have done this as well, but during playoffs, on which you would probably agree with me, isn't the best time in the season to take down the website. Sure you can be mad about problems not being fixed quickly, but I can't do much to make you feel better here other than to hope offseason will help reducing the amount of problems in BuzzerBeater.

Last edited by BB-Patrick at 3/15/2010 12:23:07 PM

just to mention:

for some problems ( sometimes only very minor ones, such as linking a score to a certain player in a different way) you need 50, 100 or more lines of code...

find the problems usually isn't the hard part. the hard part is providing the write code to solve them. ad the more complex a program becomes the harder it becomes to solve problems, because you have to be sure it remains compatible with the other programs.

regards

Rev

off topic ps: BB-Patrick, Astra can read dutch too :p

revo i understand the problem is complex, we discussed it before on skype. My post wasnt criticism this time around, I applaud him to be the first GM or BB acknowledging the problem and I dont believe it is a code problem, I do think it is a server load/capacity problem...

I am sure BB patrick can filter my posts from the past, as I cant and it would take hours and hours to look them up for me, have a look patrick, I have asked in the past why standings and other stats are being delayed more and more and whether this is a server load problem or not. so far i have received no answer, or been told to be patient... If it is part of the BB code that how more and more teams play this game, the game turns slower and slower, than just say so. It is weird, other games dont have this problem and not just hattrick, but I could live with such an answer, I could have lived with any answer, just not "be patient".

You do make it sound like this is a first time occurence off this problem, it has been going on for weeks now, if not months. You can call me critical, and I know I am not a PC wizard, but the symptoms have been there, like a few weeks ago (before you became BB Patrick) when the asian - pacific community couldnt see their games or at another occasion I remember many english coaches couldnt see their matches. the delays werent that bad, but it was clearly a server load problem and not a code error.

I will end my message by saying that I applauded you BB patrick for being for once honest and straightforward. How? By acknowledging there is a problem and that it will be looked at and maybe fixed in the off season. That is all I ask for as a customer and from a customer service point off view, instead off being told to be patient...

Sorry, but your hattrick comparison is off, yes, they have fixes and website down times and I never said or assumed they have no problems, but the communication is always spot on and or very fast, the fixes are indeed during the season, like i said, this problem is going on for weeks if not months now on BB, did it really have to wait this long for it to be fixed during the off season? To have it come to an anti climax when there are hundreds if not thousands off people are waiting to see their play off / relegation games live? Is it really too much asked for to have it looked at an earlier stage and to be atleast communicated to the community that it is being looked at? I know we might have a different opinion on that matter, but I feel it wasnt too much asked for.



Last edited by Astragoth at 3/15/2010 2:39:44 PM

Our communication may have been poor during this time. Though I wasn't aware that in our multiple MOTD acknowledging that games were delayed, etc and we were working on the problem, that we hadn't acknowledged there was a problem.

But let me be clear... there is a problem, we understand there is a problem, we are working to fix the problem. The problem is one of increased load, both through more users and more data that we have to save over time. This is deeply technical problem that is not trivial to fix.. broadly we have referred to these problems as "scaling" problems. I think maybe you have heard us use that term many times. What that means is that nothing is failing to work.. there is no bug in the code.. it just means the code cannot run fast enough for everything to run smoothly. Now sometimes when things don't run fast enough, they cause other things to actually break because only one process can do some things at one time.
Its as if you have one slow car on the freeway and lots of other people can't get to where they want to go, and you get collisions and backups etc in all sorts of unexpected places.

This isn't the sort of problem, where a program crashed for an obvious reason and debugging the problem will reveal the error. This isn't a problem caused by someone failing to do something or push a button ontime.

This is not the first time we have seen problems of this sort.. where things get delayed. However, you can't loop all problems that have the same symptom into the same bucket. Its not like the same solution we used the last time games ran late due to some backlog can be used the second time. Scaling problems don't work like that.. they are usually new and unique each time they come up. I know it appears that the same problem is happening over and over again to a user, but that's not always the case. We have been experiencing a specific scaling problem with the game engine over the last month or so i'd say.

This is also not a problem we have been ignoring. In fact most game days we have been trying various tricks to try to make the problem better. Unfortunately at least in one case I worked a lot on, we made things worse instead, and had to waste valuable game day processing time reversing our changes to put things back the way they were.

My understanding is that Hattrick, in its third year, went through very many similar problems. Now in their 11th? 12th year they now have many more users than we do, and therefore enough revenue to pay for a larger full time staff, and so are able to more quickly solve problems and effectively communicate. I agree we aren't doing as well as they are now.. and we hope to do better.

I'm sorry we haven't been communicating our attempts to address the problem as well as we could have... and that's why i'm responding to you.

Sure, you are right about the problem being here longer, even before I became BB Patrick as you say. Yes the communication was far from optimal before, but that's exactly the reason why Edju and I are here now. We aren't developers, we can't program whole BB. We can increase the communication, the in game problems and thus decrease the time of problems being fixed. We can notify the developers earlier, they got more time to work on the back-end problems instead of responding in threads here.

Hattrick got a few community guys for a long time already, like HT-Tjecken. So long story short, I hope we can improve this communication to you guys, and I'm convinced we can. I could have seen this playoff problem way earlier that day, but unfortunately I didn't, I missed the thread when I logged in early. If I managed to see it earlier this problem (not the others about updates running late) wouldn't have been as big as it was now. When I saw this at first (I'm in European timezone, so I should see these way earlier than BBs who were just awake when the problems started at 9 AM USA Time), it was 15 minutes after my game should start at 7:15 PM my team, 1:15 PM USA time. This means we were behind more than 4 hours, the game engine needed to catch up 4 hours of games asap. This is impossible to do it any quicker than we did now.

I appreciate all the feedback you, and everyone else, gives. That's what keeps us and BB improving. Just as I think we can communicate things more effectively now.

Last edited by BB-Patrick at 3/15/2010 5:13:17 PM

yes. that is what i was trying to say with my post. not so much criticism, you can tell communication is already better. I have said in posts before and how critical i sometimes i am, when I say something nice i am not trying to be sarcastic.

on occasions I have defended the first 2 BB guys (sorry bad in remembering names), because running the show with 2 people I do imagine is hard, I even defended on a few occasions the fact that games were running slow, the original 2 BB guys are from the USA, and they need to sleep too, so when such problems start (the first games starting), they are fast asleep, so we need to be patient...

i also didnt mean it sarcasticly when I said i have gotten used to the current problems, always being logged out and having training updates being later than we are used too, is annoying, but it isnt game breaking and i prefer cheaters to be banned etc or a more realistic game engine than these kind off problems to be fixed, but if both could be done, that would be nice too.

i appreciate your answer bb forest. i hope more people will read it and understand the scale off the issue... i also hope this game will continue to grow and if you check my activity online, despite my criticism I do enjoy this game, it doesnt mean that I accept no or flawed communication.

I am sure with the extra staff, communication will improve and that to me is more important than a quick fix, because I do believe eventually things get fixed and I do realise the time and work BB forest and the other BB have put in to create this game is huge...

thanks for the update guys and good luck with fixing the problem...

Sure, you are right about the problem being here longer, even before I became BB Patrick as you say. Yes the communication was far from optimal before, but that's exactly the reason why Edju and I are here now. We aren't developers, we can't program whole BB. We can increase the communication, the in game problems and thus decrease the time of problems being fixed. We can notify the developers earlier, they got more time to work on the back-end problems instead of responding in threads here.

Hattrick got a few community guys for a long time already, like HT-Tjecken. So long story short, I hope we can improve this communication to you guys, and I'm convinced we can. I could have seen this playoff problem way earlier that day, but unfortunately I didn't, I missed the thread when I logged in early. If I managed to see it earlier this problem (not the others about updates running late) wouldn't have been as big as it was now. When I saw this at first (I'm in European timezone, so I should see these way earlier than BBs who were just awake when the problems started at 9 AM USA Time), it was 15 minutes after my game should start at 7:15 PM my team, 1:15 PM USA time. This means we were behind more than 4 hours, the game engine needed to catch up 4 hours of games asap. This is impossible to do it any quicker than we did now.

I appreciate all the feedback you, and everyone else, gives. That's what keeps us and BB improving. Just as I think we can communicate things more effectively now.

Absolutely - effective communication is something that needs to be improved and that is Patrick and I's number one priority.