I have a wish.

[h4l0]

MAKE SEPERATE CHAT FOR THE ARENA AND THE BEGINNING. Please. Not only has this slowed the ENTIRE game to a ridiculously hard to put up with crawl, but the trolls have been out in full force when I DO decide I want to use the Tavern. The game is almost literally unusable anymore, and I know I'm not the only one that has experienced this or had to put up with the trolls from The Beginning II. I hate to say it but I haven't even bothered to actually try and play The Arena since Christmas Eve. I really want to be able to play this game, but as it stands now mining is about all I can do without feeling like throwing my iPod through the wall. Please, devs, I'm begging you, address this problem, and fix it.

EDIT: Jason has since fixed the lagging problems, but I still insist on seperate, numerous chat rooms to reroute traffic from the single room

[samuraijack]

Ditto. I have a hard time dueling ghosts because the game can't seem to download the information to see I have one. When the chat is updating correctly there are times I can't click on and get to another person's profile. There are just so many instances the game is telling me I'm not connected to the internet when I think even the game knows I am. There is another thread or two of people complaining about connectivity problems, but the problems I and at least one other is having did not start until after Beginning 2 came out.

I can see at least one really great reason the developers could have for doing this. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a great way to promote the jump from Beginning to Arena. There are an awful lot of people asking about the differences between the two games, what ghosts are, that they love Beginning and wondering if it's worth the money to upgrade. Well, with this update making the game rather tedious... it's not.

[velosi]

Er, please don't impose forced segregation in the chat. I play Arena but enjoy randomly chatting with people (or just lurking and listening on chat) regardless of whether they're using Arena or Beginning. Simply separating the two games doesn't really help because eventually there'll be enough Arena players to cause the same sort of slow-down, and there are always going to be trolls.

"I can see at least one really great reason the developers could have for doing this. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a great way to promote the jump from Beginning to Arena."

Yah, but wouldn't it suck to have to lose contact with all your game friends when you migrated from Beginning to Arena just becauase they had separate chats?

I'd much rather the performance scalability problems be addressed by adding server capacity and maybe separate tavern "rooms" you can choose to join, and the trolls be addressed by giving us the ability to ignore/block certain players in chat or some other moderation mechanism.

[samuraijack]

Adding server capacity, programming in separate tavern rooms, programming in the ability to ignore certain players... those are all things that must be done externally to what any of the games are now. And those would all be awesome. But two weeks ago I had zero problem connecting to any portion of the Arena game. Now I have almost zero ability TO connect to any portion of the Arena game. Unless someone can explain it to me, I'm going to assume two things: a massive influx of players jumping onto the update version of the Beginning game, and the specific method in which the chat function works. The game has slowed to a crawl, and personally I don't care about losing the ability to talk with game friends who haven't upgraded, because... they haven't upgraded. For every person spending $.99 to play a game, that is one more person slowing down anyone who has paid $7.99 to play a game. What sense does that make?

[velosi]

Dec 27, 2008 20:39:20 GMT -5 samuraijack said:

For every person spending $.99 to play a game, that is one more person slowing down anyone who has paid $7.99 to play a game. What sense does that make?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that paying $7.99 to be able to interact with fewer people in an MMO (or whatever Aurora Feint considers itself) doesn't make much sense either. Granted, it shouldn't come at the cost of being able to play the game properly, but surely there's a better solution than this.

[samuraijack]

You and I are just coming from two different directions I guess. I would rather be able to play the game than not be able to play the game. A week ago I was able to play the game. A week later I am not able to play the game. How to go about fixing the problem? Remove whatever happened in those seven days that changed can play to cannot play. Buying or upgrading servers, writing new code... blah. Aurora Feint II: The Arena is one game. Aurora Feint II: The Beginning is a separate game. They are priced differently and have different game mechanics. Yet somehow those who pay $7 less are able to destroy the experience for those paying $7 more. I have suggestions galore on what I would like to see in the game. But the quickest fix is just to put things back the way they were.

[velosi]

Segregating the chat would probably require writing new code anyway. The only way to put things "back" the way they were would be to get rid of the paid version of The Beginning. And like it or not as things stand and as the number of Arena players grows, the same problems will have to be dealt with (and there won't be an option to separate the chat).

I appreciate the frustration of not having the game function - it affects me too - but I just don't think what is proposed here is a magic solution, and furthermore it diminishes the value of the game for me.

[theconfuzed1]

I agree with Jack. I've had trouble with every portion of the game that requires internet connectivity, for the last few days.

[samuraijack]

You appreciate the frustration of not having the game function, but you feel removing Beginning's chat function would diminish the value of the game. Are we playing the same game? Or I should ask, are we not playing the same game? There is no value in a game that relies entirely on an Internet connection but can never connect. Beginning doesn't not require an Internet connection to play. Once the charcter is logged with the server, a player can go from level 1 to level 68 without ever connecting to the server. But in order for me to duel with one other player, I MUST have a connection in order for the game to know I have a ghost, to download the other player's ghost, and to record the outcome. That ability no longer exists because a large group of players who require no Internet connection to play have been dumped onto the servers with a constant connection. I'm glad your value of Arena is higher than mine because you can chat with a group of people who are not playing the same game as you, because the value of the game for me is zero as long as I cannot functionally play the game.

[velosi]

Dec 28, 2008 20:34:31 GMT -5 samuraijack said:

You appreciate the frustration of not having the game function, but you feel removing Beginning's chat function would diminish the value of the game. Are we playing the same game?

All I'm asking is that if the chat is going to be separated, then don't make it mandatory and leave in an option for those of us who like to be able to chat across games. That's all.

The other issues of performance/scalability are up to the devs to sort out, but either way separating the chat as was the original suggestion in this thread isn't going to be a silver bullet.

For all we know, they could be installing a new server right now which would fix the problems for everyone and your woes will go away like magic. Asking for the chat to be separated right now is, I think, jumping the gun.

Edited to clarify: I'm really just responding to the original poster's suggestion for separate chats for Arena and Beginning. I know the game is broken right now; chat is laggy, profiles don't come up, and ghosts never load. I just disagree that the proposed idea is a desirable or effective way to fix it.

[Jason Citron]

Hey Guys,
Good healthy discussion here. Our solution to this issue has been to deal with the scaling of our back end servers. Everything should be working now. In the future, if for some reason you are unable to log on, please PM or email one of us or our help address ([e-mail]). Hopefully we won't have a lapse like this again. We're not trying to swindle or cheat anyone here. It's all about making a great online game. It just so happens it's kind of tricky to do that.

My Apologies.