Super Packs & Email Issues

[Tenebrose]

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.

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Tenebrose

[Tenebrose]

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

[Tenebrose]

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.

[UltraAlt]

I'm only working with one account.

I had the problem with not being able to open superpacks or download superpack items from email on Tuesday after server resets.

I'm not 100% sure when things may have been corrected, but by Wednesday afternoon, I was able to open card packs and superpack items from email.

 

Is there perhaps a 24 hour period between purchasing card packs after the update and being able to open them for the first time which is also linked to email? Possibly.

 

Need to do something then I'll check my other account.

 

[UltraAlt]

Logged into my secondary account. Bought a H/V and V/R card pack. Opened them. And pulled card pack items out of email.

I have never purchased cardpacks with this secondary account before and so had no card pack items in email before I opened those 2 packs.

It seems to be working for me at this point regardless of account.

[General Idiot]

I had this same thing happen to me a couple of nights ago. Opened 20 packs, claimed the items, put them all up on the auction house and some sold instantly so I bought a few more. The second lot refused to open for upwards of 10 minutes before I gave up and logged out, then got that same error message.

 

And for the record, while I'm in New Zealand and my internet -is- occasionally a bit flaky it's not ten minute delay before even getting an error message level flaky.

Edited May 19, 2022 by General Idiot

[Tenebrose]

1 hour ago, General Idiot said:

And for the record, while I'm in New Zealand and my internet -is- occasionally a bit flaky it's not ten minute delay before even getting an error message level flaky.

 

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.

[Destruktor]

I have the same issue, although I'm trying to claim Enhancement convertors.

I can definitely confirm it's not my internet connection as I typically have a game client running on another PC without any issues (and have more than enough bandwidth and nothing else running in the background that might be causing network related issues).  Also, when the issue occurs, everything else is fine in terms of wandering around in the game with that same toon trying to reclaim items.

It seems to be semi intermittent, ie if I try to claim items early in the UK day I don't hit this too much, but trying to do the same in the UK evening I've found it more likely to happen, which would also coincidentally align with higher player numbers suggesting there might be a limit somewhere that gets hit more easily with more people on (as has been previously suggested).

If someone who has access to the logs can check, I hit the "character or account item claim failed, another request is pending" error at 13:34, 13:35, 13:37, 13:38, 13:54 UK time today (21st) on Reunion, hopefully this can aid in finding the issue as I appreciate finding cause for an intermittent issue can be tricky. 

Edited May 21, 2022 by Destruktor
Additional information

[starro]

I don't know if this is relevant on homecoming and a decade later - How full is your inbox?  Do you keep several emails in account holding items?  I wonder if there is an unwritten limit.

 

Back on live I had a wonky issue with having 30+ emails and I could no longer reclaim the attachments - became a black hole.  The funny thing is I must have gone years carrying a lot of emails on my account before I ever saw a problem.

[Apparition]

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

Interestingly enough, I only seem to have this problem on Excelsior.  Or let me be more exact:  I have only encountered this problem on Excelsior, on more than one account.  I *HAVE* been able to claim items on Torchbearer without problem.  I have not tried the other servers.  My current workaround is to claim items on Torchbearer and email them to characters on Excelsior, which is a pretty poor way to do things.

[Tenebrose]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Interestingly enough, I only seem to have this problem on Excelsior.  Or let me be more exact:  I have only encountered this problem on Excelsior, on more than one account.  I *HAVE* been able to claim items on Torchbearer without problem.  I have not tried the other servers.  My current workaround is to claim items on Torchbearer and email them to characters on Excelsior, which is a pretty poor way to do things.

 

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.

[Tenebrose]

3 hours ago, starro said:

I don't know if this is relevant on homecoming and a decade later - How full is your inbox?  Do you keep several emails in account holding items?  I wonder if there is an unwritten limit.

 

Back on live I had a wonky issue with having 30+ emails and I could no longer reclaim the attachments - became a black hole.  The funny thing is I must have gone years carrying a lot of emails on my account before I ever saw a problem.

 

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.

[starro]

38 minutes ago, Tenebrose said:

 

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.

 

If you can maybe offload to a vault or super group for storage maybe the shenanigans will clean up.  Admittedly, the email system is WONDERFUL for pulling out a spare rez when the whole team is dead for the 13th time or you have the at uber super thing, but not sure which of the 30 heroes you want to apply.  I hope you get a resolution!

[Destruktor]

57 emails in my inbox (used tos huffle inf and IOs around)

Loads more than that as character items though (enough that I'd prefer to not count them - there are "many")

[kepik99]

Similar issues.  Can't open Super Packs.  Can't claim items in the "Character Items" window.

 

 

[Zect]

Hi. I have been encountering this problem too.

 

I noticed 2 oddities that have not been mentioned yet.

 

Firstly, when my account is in the state of being able to claim items from Character Items, any AH-related activity (putting items in the AH, claiming inf, listing for sale etc) almost always causes Character Items to stop working for a while. Oddly enough the converse is not true - I can always buy and sell normally on the AH even when I cannot retrieve things from Character Items.

 

Secondly, when I try to open a super pack and it fails, the number of super packs in salvage will not decrease, but "phantom" items will spawn in Character Items, as though the super pack was successfully opened. The more times I try unsuccessfully to open a super pack, the more "phantom" items appear. During this time I am unable to claim anything from Character Items for a while. After several hours to a day, these "phantom" items then disappear and I can open the super packs again.

 

In my support ticket the GM asked to check if Character Items was full. I withdrew over 2200 items from Character Items to try and resolve the issue, to no avail.

[Tankshock]

It happens on Indomitable as well.  It happens with claiming email items as well as opening super packs.

If it happens on one character, it happens to alts as well.

[Tenebrose]

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.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Tenebrose

[Tenebrose]

9 hours ago, Zect said:

Hi. I have been encountering this problem too.

 

I noticed 2 oddities that have not been mentioned yet.

 

Firstly, when my account is in the state of being able to claim items from Character Items, any AH-related activity (putting items in the AH, claiming inf, listing for sale etc) almost always causes Character Items to stop working for a while. Oddly enough the converse is not true - I can always buy and sell normally on the AH even when I cannot retrieve things from Character Items.

 

Secondly, when I try to open a super pack and it fails, the number of super packs in salvage will not decrease, but "phantom" items will spawn in Character Items, as though the super pack was successfully opened. The more times I try unsuccessfully to open a super pack, the more "phantom" items appear. During this time I am unable to claim anything from Character Items for a while. After several hours to a day, these "phantom" items then disappear and I can open the super packs again.

 

In my support ticket the GM asked to check if Character Items was full. I withdrew over 2200 items from Character Items to try and resolve the issue, to no avail.

 

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?

[Yomo Kimyata]

Over the weekend this is now occurring for me on Indominable, Everlasting, Torchbearer, as well as Excelsior.  The Character Items menu is completely unreliable now.

[LocalJoe]

Abusing packs could be the culprit 

Too many multi boxers could be the culprit 

The fix to the reward tables could be the culprit 

 

Could be so many things.

[Tenebrose]

3 hours ago, LocalJoe said:

Abusing packs could be the culprit 

Too many multi boxers could be the culprit 

The fix to the reward tables could be the culprit 

 

Could be so many things.

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".

[LocalJoe]

Are you sure?

[RikOz]

On 5/21/2022 at 9:41 AM, Yomo Kimyata said:

Interestingly enough, I only seem to have this problem on Excelsior

Ah, there's the problem. The server is trying to PvP you.