Lost items (another plea for item tracking NOW)

[Whitestuff]

Yea, for those of you who have visited the players guide section, you know that I have now been going to MC5 to start gathering rare parts. Well, here's my little story. We go there, my PPU friend and I, and we farm for a little while. 5, maybe 6 parts. We reset, get ready to run it again and when we step inside, low and behold, the commander is behind the cover! w00t!! Let me tell ya!! So, of course, I die, and I thought my PPU would come back in and rezz me since the commander dropped into the center of the room. Well, he never comes back. Why? Because he got killed outside, but I don't know this yet, I'll find out when I eventually GR out... Meanwhile I'm busy checking out the inside of MC5 and trying, now frantically, to find my QB. Turns out, after we get back, it didn't drop. I send in a help ticket and get the part-n-parcel response "sorry, you lose cause we can't replace your stuff (do to a bug that is completely our fault, mind you)". No big deal, I lost some pants. My PPU then exclaims that his QB did not drop outside either. Now I'm a little miffed. You see, he dropped a 3 SLOT HOLY SHELTER that we spent around 500k to build (we only got one 3 slot out of that many attempts). So, what does my friend get as a response? Same BS, only this time, we are out half a mill instead of 14k. The moral of this story?

GET TO WORK ON ITEM TRACKING THAT WORKS. THANK YOU.

[cRazy-]

NOT THE PANTS?!?


lol to be honest I was gonna take this a bit more seriously if it was about the mc5 parts, but some have lost much much more then just 500k for a spell.

[Whitestuff]

Oh, I know they have. But I'm saying, if I can lose 500k on a spell, then I know others have lost more than that.

And the policy on replacing items and stuff is BS. Either they fix it so items don't get lost or they fix it so that when items are lost, they can do something about it. One or the other, but not "oh sorry, our bad, can't give you anything for it though, you might be trying to rip us off and we can't prove it."

[-FN-]

Constructed Rares from Tech Parts - sure.

Constructed MC5 Chips - of course.

Epic, WoC, or some other 'unique' item - yeah.

But Holy Shelters? Um - hell no. Simply put - Item Tracking was on the servers for awhile (remember seeing those weird IDs on items?) - and it was just too much stress on the database. And that was only tracking a small number of items.

Reality is, if you spent 500k building Holy Shelters - A) you should've gotten better than 3 slots and B) you should've had at least a few 3-Slotters and backups of all your stuff.

I feel ya on your loss *cough* 2 Ceres Pistols here lost via bugs *cough* - but your ultimate point of needing Item Tracking for things like this is totally off base.

But - just to be clear - that opinion is based on KK's first attempt at Item Tracking... Anarchy Online (http://www.anarchy-online.com/content/news/articles/5460L/) boasts a type of item and character tracking that seems to work for them. WoW's Support Policy (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01724p) seems very geared towards Item Replacement. I read the support policies for several other MMOs... and was saddened to find that Reakktor's are really the only ones that say, more or less, we won't replace your stuff :(

Most other game's support policies have an "after GM Investigation" typed scenario in them though... maybe it's KK's size and lack of GM power and/or TOOLS that keep the item tracking/support at an inferior level?

[jini]

as a general idea the more time you lose working on ana item the more priceless it becomes. In this fashion, you might have to make 1000 holy rezzes to get the one 5slot you need, and theres simply no price to pay for that, simply because you cant compare the time needed to bild those spells over the time needed to farm mc5 for some parts.

Therefore, KK at this time they dont have a policy on lost items at all. The stereotype "we dont replace... " is just an evidence of this. Sadly, things like that and others makeup the game we all play now, with the loss of population and the like

In short with policies like these, KK lose money, which in turn affects population and our experience


Edit: @ FN: it seems that slots are very hard to get these days FN, and the holy rezz is also very high level spell. I dont know why, but it looks this. If their excuse is the huge load in their servers, then they should find anotherr way of making it happen. After all and as Niddhog have said, it was in their top priorities list, and yet no solution after 2+ years

[johngreen2000]

Constructed Rares from Tech Parts - sure.

Constructed MC5 Chips - of course.

Epic, WoC, or some other 'unique' item - yeah.

But Holy Shelters? Um - hell no. Simply put - Item Tracking was on the servers for awhile (remember seeing those weird IDs on items?) - and it was just too much stress on the database. And that was only tracking a small number of items.

Reality is, if you spent 500k building Holy Shelters - A) you should've gotten better than 3 slots and B) you should've had at least a few 3-Slotters and backups of all your stuff.

I feel ya on your loss *cough* 2 Ceres Pistols here lost via bugs *cough* - but your ultimate point of needing Item Tracking for things like this is totally off base.

But - just to be clear - that opinion is based on KK's first attempt at Item Tracking... Anarchy Online (http://www.anarchy-online.com/content/news/articles/5460L/) boasts a type of item and character tracking that seems to work for them. WoW's Support Policy (http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01724p) seems very geared towards Item Replacement. I read the support policies for several other MMOs... and was saddened to find that Reakktor's are really the only ones that say, more or less, we won't replace your stuff :(

Most other game's support policies have an "after GM Investigation" typed scenario in them though... maybe it's KK's size and lack of GM power and/or TOOLS that keep the item tracking/support at an inferior level?

WoW's item tracking as well as log are unprecidented in my opinion. If a hacker/exploiter or whoever scams an item, mails it to an alt, then sells it, a gm can see all the paths the item took. Ive heard stories of people getting an item back that was stolen form the account, sent to an alt, sold on the auciton house and then used by another player. Thats good tracking right there.

[Tratos]

What saddens me is that we've not had official word on whats happening with Item Tracking since it was last turned on then off iirc.

I dont know if what i'm about to suggest would or could work as i dont know how these things are managed and what they require - it is merely my thoughts on the matter

Either somthing needs to be done to the DB to make it more stable under the strain or better hardware to manage the extra stress caused by the Item Tracking system being turned on which iirc was origianly on its very own machine per server cluster.

[Paper Dragon]

WoW's item tracking as well as log are unprecidented in my opinion. If a hacker/exploiter or whoever scams an item, mails it to an alt, then sells it, a gm can see all the paths the item took. Ive heard stories of people getting an item back that was stolen form the account, sent to an alt, sold on the auciton house and then used by another player. Thats good tracking right there.

WoW's policy also only applies once; use it up, and unless everyone gets afflicted with a problem, you won't get anything again.

[jini]

Isn't there another approach thats doesnt have to deal with db and congestion? some other means of proving what one has and what not? how about a single cabinet per player that will hold/list most our valuables? say 50 places per player

[retr0n]

WoW's policy also only applies once; use it up, and unless everyone gets afflicted with a problem, you won't get anything again.

Actually that 1 time only applies if you screw up, say delete something by accident,
or sell or whatever, you may request 1 item back once / account. If they screw
up and you loose something to a bug, you will always get it back.

[Spoon]

-QB's could have dropped/spawned in the wall/floor or box.

-QB's could have been hacked

-This games' engine/netcode will never be able to handle item tracking(better wait till it gets put on a modern engine).

-If you spent 500k on a build, you should have been able to recoup much of that if you did it right;
*Used Barter to buy parts/chems
*Sold the noslotted/low slotted(and modded) back to the vender/smuggler that sells the item, with a Barter(you can actually make money), as opposed to selling everything back to YO's with no Barter

[retr0n]

-If you spent 500k on a build, you should have been able to recoup much of that if you did it right;
*Used Barter to buy parts/chems
*Sold the noslotted/low slotted(and modded) back to the vender/smuggler that sells the item, with a Barter(you can actually make money), as opposed to selling everything back to YO's with no Barter

True, with barter you can make some nice cash building holy shelters, just remember
to mod the low slotted ones you sell back. But it's not always about money, it's
more about the effort, it can take quite some time to get that 5 slot.

[Mr Kot]

I've noticed the bug recently where the belt just doesn't drop. Talking to various other people, this is becoming more common recently. What's going on?

Funny how the thread starter refers to himself and ppu getting the same thing; when it happened to me, it happened to my ppu too in the same zone (C-11)

At first, i thought a bug where belt doesn't drop would be a good thing.. but the server still steals an item from you when you die. o_O

And i'm not referring to a belt going inside a wall either. It just doesn't drop. Period. You don't even see the thing fly up in the air as you fall, just before landing (or disappearing) somewhere.

[unreal]

I wonder if that happened to me earlier, was on my Spy and got Holy Lightning'd to death after stealthing and running around a corner and up the ramp in the Tsunami sector, and was nowhere in that persons line of sight. I go back there almost straight away, and I find no belt. My spy has 100 SL, and the only character there able to hack was the APU and it didn't look like he had capped Int. Cmastars belt was gone too so i'm not sure if they were actually hacked or just didn't drop a belt at all. Didn't check to see if I dropped a belt on the floor because I was heavily drugflashed after dying and had to relogin, and quickly genrepped out to poke myself and return. One of those mysteries I guess. O_o Thankfully I only lost a Heavy Poison Belt which I keep in my inventory and never use, and not my precious nailgun. ;)