Discussion GBG stuck flag - How to help Inno?

[ArklurBeta]

Today we wanted to make sure a guild is being HQs as much and for as long as possible, keep them in "jail", as we call it.

Everything was going good, blocked many of their attempts, then not much longer ago, we faced the still existing but of flags being kept without any connected sector.



You can imagine how frustrating that is when a GBG round is not about hits but actually fighting against another guild.
Now I understand Inno is aware of this bug but this exists for months or rather years. Now it's even more annoying given there is no free fights anymore, so any attrition wasted can be a key of winning a race another time.

My question is, and of course mainly hoping to get an "official" answer...is there a way a player can help somehow? Report the issue with a timestamp so the devs who have access to logs (if necessary logs exist...) can look at them?

I even tried to contact support if they can manually do something about it, but, as expected, the answer was "No", and the usual template message before/after.

 

[outoftheline]

tbh i dont think we can help with data, because from my observations it looks like this happens when progress is made in the same second a sector is cut off.

inno is historically bad with fixing bugs that have to do with too many players playing at once (see all those gvg bugs that mostly only occur when the server is really busy -> bug cannot be reproduced).

imo they need to do an hourly sector-connection-checking and remove the buggy flags. this would at least help with the frustration.

 

[ArklurBeta]

imo they need to do an hourly sector-connection-checking and remove the buggy flags. this would at least help with the frustration.

That's exactly what I had in mind. If the core reason of this issue is happening is too hard to fix, do a "connection check" every 5-10m (don't know how expensive would it be to check, there are many rounds on each server...would like to think it shouldn't be that bad?...) if there is any flag that should be removed.

Of course this isn't a fix, because no matter how often the system would check, there might be cases where a sector is just being reconnected, seconds before a check would occur. But of course the more frequent it is, the less likely the bug causes "trouble". In the meantime, Inno can still work on fixing the actual bug .

 

[Thunderdome]

That looks like it's just a one-in-a-million type of bug. In a race, we would see a sword icon crossing over the flag icon when a sector is taken by a winning guild. However, I would just want to see the other flags disappear when a sector has been taken by the guild who won it

That's exactly what I had in mind. If the core reason of this issue is happening is too hard to fix, do a "connection check" every 5-10m (don't know how expensive would it be to check, there are many rounds on each server...would like to think it shouldn't be that bad?...) if there is any flag that should be removed.

They do a check on how many sectors a guild has and how much VP an hour it gets that after each hour, it updates the total VP a guild gets for placement. So, why couldn't they do that for checking sectors and removing unwanted items off the board?

 

[ArklurBeta]

That looks like it's just a one-in-a-million type of bug.

And it is. In fact, I actually don't think I saw it since weeks, probably that's why it's not a priority for Inno to fix it, affects only a minority of the playerbase, and yes, happens rarely. Still, it's a bug that exists for years (?), hence one might say it's time to end its existence.

They do a check ..VP ...each hour...so, why couldn't they do that for checking sectors?

It could be a solution, though 1 hour is a bit long time. But hell, 1 step closer to being less frustrating I guess .

 

[Emberguard]

tbh i dont think we can help with data, because from my observations it looks like this happens when progress is made in the same second a sector is cut off.

Oh! GvG had that too with capturing sectors and refilling defending armies

They do a check on how many sectors a guild has and how much VP an hour it gets that after each hour, it updates the total VP a guild gets for placement. So, why couldn't they do that for checking sectors and removing unwanted items off the board?

If I had to guess, probably less intensive than checking individual sectors. All they'd have to do for a VP count is update the totals when you change something. If you're checking for false connections then you're checking every connection, not just a single running total figure

 

[planetofthehumans2]

I'm pretty sure when this has happened to my guild, I wasn't allowed to attack that sector at all and the flag went away eventually. Don't worry about it.

 

[LafThePirate]

We call those "ghost flags" and best guess is with the new buildings extending the tile hit count, once the ghost flag guild goes over 200/220 they flag stays. This is not new. It's been happening since the first year of GBG. If another guild captured that tile, the orange flag would be cut in half, and would continue to be halved but never get below 1. I recall that exact scenario several years ago, not long after GBG was launched. Siege camps added no extra hits, but outposts and forts did. That's the best guess any of us had as to why those 'ghost' flags occurred, and yes it's been reported and 'we're working on it"... well, huge revamp with the buildings and it's still there. I think it's never going to get fixed.