Tenebrose

I was gone for the weekend, so I haven't been on since Friday morning. Logged in a few moments ago, claimed influence from sold items in the AH, then attempted to claim one unslotter. Nothing.

I was in the middle of a task force and couldn't claim any items from email. At this point, it's gone from a nuisance to being extremely frustrating.

Still happening, and it doesn't seem to be directly related to Super Packs. Today I claimed a bunch of unslotters (210), put them up on the auction house, then went back to claim more unslotters. It didn't allow anything else to be pulled from the email. I didn't open or buy any Super Packs.

Thanks for the reply, @Telephone! After decades of database work, my SQL-sense was tingling on this. 🙂

Those sound a bit more like "personal pet peeves" than possible "culprits", but lets consider them: "Abusing packs could be the culprit" - You'd need to explain what "abusing packs" means. "Too many multi boxers could be the culprit" - "multi boxing" (using more than one account for one player) is no different to the system than two individuals playing. That is extremely unlikely to be the issue here. "The fix to the reward tables could be the culprit" - I'm not sure what "fix" to a rewards table would cause email and super packs to become unavailable. The last changes to the Super Pack tables that I'm aware of was right before and after the New Year, when Experience Boosters accidentally took the place of Experienced charges. This appears to have started about 2 weeks ago. "Could be so many things." - Could be, but usually it's best to start with the most likely using experience as a guide. That often narrows the "many things" down to "only a few".

I was able to reproduce the first oddity, but I couldn't for the second. What do the "phantom" items look like? Just blank lines in your email?

From what I'm gathering, three things are true: 1. It's not client-server lag. if it was lag, other aspects of the game would be affected, but they are not. 2. It's not having too many items in email. Accounts with few items are experiencing this. Plus, if we were hitting a limit, it would never allow opening packs. Yet, it allow as soon as you log in, and sometime it allows after some time. (EDIT: It's not due to individual accounts having too many character items in email. I strongly suspect this issue is coming from there being too many items overall in the system, or too many characters with large numbers of items. I don't feel this is account specific.) 3. It's hitting people on multiple servers. This makes sense since the email system isn't specific to a server. But it likely points to an issue with the system and not specific accounts. One thing I'm suspecting but not 100% certain on: It started about two weeks ago. I've never had or heard of these issues before about May 11th or 12. Which, again, points to an issue with the system.

I do have a large number of items in my email, both in the "regular" and "character" tabs. But I'm hearing similar things from people who have considerable less stuff in email. If this was a limit of some kind, I'd expect that I couldn't open/email any more things. But that's not the case. After a while, I am able to open the packs. This does feel like a data access issue. It has the hallmarks of a deadlock situation.

I haven't tried mailing them to myself, but damn that would suck as a workaround. I bought about 30 packs today right after logging in (Torchbearer) and couldn't open any of them. Usually that doesn't happen until I open a few and buy more. My friend said he bought packs last night, was able to open a few, then suddenly couldn't open them anymore.

Yeah, there is no feasible way this is simple "bad connection" issues. When it happens, I can't open packs and I can't pull anything from email. But I am able to do other things, such as convert brainstorm ideas to salvage, place the salvage on the AH, move back and forth between zones, send and receive messages, communicate in the channels, etc, etc. It's not just lag. It's 100% reproduceable (as I've done every day this week), so it's not "random" as one would expect from packet loss or the such. And it's happening to too many people recently who state they didn't have this problem before. My $$$ (influence?) is on database issues. From what I understand, the HC team hasn't changed anything in the AH outside of changing limits. This is feeling like issues we have in our systems when a threshold gets hit that starts causing problems "out of nowhere". Perhaps it's because individuals now have more objects in email/AH than ever expected by the designers, or even the smaller userbase overall has managed to exceed the total expected. But it really, really needs to be looked into. These are the innocuous and ignorable signs that tend to pop up before a catastrophic nosedive.

Any updates on this, or any word on other players seeing this issue? I now had 2 other accounts state that this started recently. The support ticket "Closed Due To Inactivity". https://forums.homecomingservers.com/support/34866/ 25 years of database and software engineering experience talking (and without looking at the code), but this seems like a data access issue from the database. Something appears to be locking up the query. Once that lock releases, we can access again.

I suspect the issue is that the AH coding is such a mess that nobody feels confident touching it. I've seen this happen at work often. There's obviously a check in place to make sure you aren't trading with yourself. So at some point the code knows that you would win the bid and you are the seller. Perhaps the matching functions themselves are not privy to who is buying and who is selling, and the check is made outside of that function? It's possible that throwing "but not to myself" into the logic will mean new indexes to keep the code performant. Which, in turn, could be the cause of concern if the devs are not comfortable with those kinds of changes. I've recently seen other cracks in the AH and email regarding what appears to be massive lag accessing data. I suspect those are due to similar issues that will eventually need to be addressed. Of course, all speculation without seeing the code itself. But speculation based on 25 years of database and software engineering experience. Not my first rodeo lol.

Update: I have confirmation from a third account of this occurring.

Over the last few days, I've been having troubles with both opening Super Packs and getting items out of email. When trying to open Super Packs, right clicking and clicking "Open" simply does nothing. Email will likewise do nothing when trying to "Claim" character items. I found that logging out for a while and logging back in would allow me to open packs. But if I bought any additional packs, those new packs would likewise be impossible to open. Occasionally, I'd get a "Please wait a moment" message when trying to claim items from email, but often nothing would happen at all. When claiming items, one time I tried to claim items with one character. Nothing happened. I logged out and back in with a different character. Then out of blue the items were claimed on that character. This morning I tried to claim Super Packs, and it didn't work. I logged out to character selection and stepped away. When I came back, I had this message on the character select screen: After logging back in, I was able to open the packs. I bought more, was unable to open them, so quit to character select and waited. This time I got this message: I petitioned in game for help. The GM suggested that I check my internet connections. I'm confident it's not a connection issue, or at least not a connection issue alone. This is due to the fact my friend in another state just started having the same issues. Between the two of us, we've literally opened thousands of packs over the last year, claimed untold thousands of character items. And we've never seen this before. Most importantly, it's completely reproducible from multiple accounts on different machines in different states. These are the steps we took to reproduce it: 1. Wait at least 10 minutes. Log into the game with a character. 2. Buy 10 hero super packs 3. Buy 10 villain super packs 4. Open all the packs. They open fine. 5. Buy 10 more of each pack. 6. Try to open the packs. None of them open. No messages are displayed. 7. a. If you log out to character select, you'll eventually get an error message. 7. b. If you wait in game log enough, the first pack may eventually open. If they do, you can try to open more. Sometimes they open, sometimes they don't. I really don't see this as being an internet connection issue, since it started recently with more than one person. Plus, my internet is actually considerably better than it has been in years. Any thoughts on what is happening? EDIT: Update: I have confirmation from a third account of this occurring.

Not sure about a spreadsheet, but I've been using this as the guide for determining with Assault to take. It's a few years old, but seems to still apply: In a nutshell, if I'm not very close to the damage cap and have a character that quickly attacks over and over, I go with Core (stacking damage % boost). If I have a character that either attacks slower, depends on one or two "big" hits up front, or is close to the damage cap, I go with Radial. If anything, this guide helps clear up what "doublehit" really is. It's not really "double" anything. It's more like the proc chances of IOs.

Thanks for the clarification. In that case, personally, it doesn't affect me too much. I already have around a hundred charges of Experienced, so getting those is almost like a dead card to me anyways. I was more concerned if it took the place of other cards that I do want from the packs. Still sucks for those who are wanting the Experienced charges, no doubt. But I'll probably still open packs while this gets resolved.

Late to the "party", but, yeah, the Super Pack versions are identical to the P2W version. Before seeing this thread, I tried claiming one on a lv50, and it stopped me. I also tried to claim one on a lv 8 character who had a P2W Double Booster running, and it also stopped me. When I deleted the Double Booster, I was able to claim the 25% booster from email. Then when I went to delete the 25% booster, it asked something like "Delete 25xpb2877?". Smelled buggy.

Thanks @Apparition. I was searching for "XP Booster" and missed this. I kinda figured it was a bug. When I was testing what they did, I claimed a 25% booster from a pack. When I deleted that power, it asked something like "Delete 25XPB0283?".

About a week ago I starting seeing 25%, 50%, and Double Experience Boosters coming out of the Hero/Villain and Rogue/Vigilante Super Pack. They appear to be Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare drops, respectively. I don't open many Winter Packs, so I don't know if they are in there. I can say with 99.999% certainty that they were not part of the drop tables before either the new Issue/Page or perhaps the start of the Winter Event. I've opened well over 1000 packs over the last few months and never seen them until this week. And now I have a few of each. They appear to be identical to the free boosts at the P2W vendor: They boost XP while reducing influence gain. You can't claim them if you already have a PW2 booster active. You can't claim them at 50. My questions are: Why? Is this intentional? Is it a throwback to live, before P2W? I only started getting into opening packs few months ago, so I don't know if that was "a thing" last year. I don't see any mention of it in the release notes, notes on Winter Events, or anywhere in the forums. Are these replacing another item on the table? Or are they diluting the chances of getting everything else by being added to the table? Was this a bug that snuck in the the last release? The heart of the problem is that they appear to be utterly worthless. You are paying the same 10mil and getting at least one less item. It would be like getting one of the 5 "Starter" IOs that are available for free from the P2W vendor. And not everyone farms. So spending that to get a pack with literally a dead card would suck. Especially if it's a temporary issue. It would have been "ok" if they worked on lv 50s or in conjunction with the P2W boosters. Anything but what we can already get multiples of for a click of the mouse using any lv 1 character.

This. I'm more than happy to donate on a regular basis.

It appears that the server at patch.savecoh.com is down.