Chapter 9.2 Divided Loyalties all black in solo instance

[KaiserThorin]

I started the solo instance for "Chapter 9.2: The Divided Loylties of Glurkub the Goblin". After fighting the orc and choosed by Glurkub, I got ported into another area. There my screen was black, I saw the UI but could not see the surrounding area. Not sure what went wrong, but after multiple tries always same outcome. Does someone know how to fix that and finish the quest?

[KaiserThorin]

k had something to do with graphic settings. Turn down to low and it worked.

[shiva9000]

k had something to do with graphic settings. Turn down to low and it worked.

no,.it apparently does not ,.. the PICTURE has formed and can see door behind collapsed rocks ,. but no way to do anything , no doors no other items show with DELETE search ,. what are supposed to do in there??

[OldMadeOfLions]

no,.it apparently does not ,.. the PICTURE has formed and can see door behind collapsed rocks ,. but no way to do anything , no doors no other items show with DELETE search ,. what are supposed to do in there??

Have you tried turning around and looking on top of the stone block in the middle of the room? It's possible something hasn't loaded in correctly for you, but that's where you're supposed to be looking.

MoL

[shiva9000]

Have you tried turning around and looking on top of the stone block in the middle of the room? It's possible something hasn't loaded in correctly for you, but that's where you're supposed to be looking.

MoL

as nothing turned up besides the door with the DELETE search ,.. what AM i supposed to see??

[Laurelinarien]

This is what happened to me in the LAST section of the session play. I was able to relive the Goblin's previous stories but the Hrímil encounter blacks out. I managed to complete it and advance the quest by using the minimap to click on the NPC rings & then U key to interact. Also had to put Muzmak on follow.

[H4x]

I tried 5 times to get this sess play to load properly so I could pull hammer, then restarted computer and it worked....
Until phase where I also got just all black screen and stars, luckily I managed to finish it anyway *)

[OldMadeOfLions]

It seems to me that there are two different issues going on in this space, and I'm annoyed by both of them!

I started the solo instance for "Chapter 9.2: The Divided Loylties of Glurkub the Goblin". After fighting the orc and choosed by Glurkub, I got ported into another area. There my screen was black, I saw the UI but could not see the surrounding area. Not sure what went wrong, but after multiple tries always same outcome. Does someone know how to fix that and finish the quest?

We fade to black and fade back up all the time, so this one's a head-scratcher. The way these work is that there's a square area that is listening for a signal, and when it receives the signal it removes the blackout from everybody inside the square. It's possible that there was a server hiccup when the square should have received the signal. I assume you probably waited for awhile, just in case, but my advice is to sit tight; otherwise you might leave the square and then there's nothing to tell the blackout to go away. I'm not happy about it! I'll keep thinking about ways to make this more reliable.

I tried 5 times to get this sess play to load properly so I could pull hammer, then restarted computer and it worked....

no other items show with DELETE search ,. what are supposed to do in there??

So I thought maybe the quest item just wasn't spawning for you, but it turns out that QA was able to go into the space and use their invisible eyes to see that the quest item was correctly spawned... but that the sessionplayer goblin just couldn't see it or interact with it. I don't know why that would be, but here's my best attempt at fixing it: I'll be adding a backup to the space that will start counting when you approach the place where the quest item is supposed to be. It'll count for 25 seconds, and if you still haven't clicked on the quest item (because how can you, if you can't see it?), then it'll progress the quest automatically. Not ideal, but better than getting stuck. With luck this should be in the next patch.

MoL

[WeirdJedi]

I received the black screen when I was pursuing the hammer. Funny thing, I thought this was intentional! You are a goblin trying to squeeze yourself through a tiny crack.

After about 30 seconds, I realized that nothing was changing. I looked at the radar and realized I was bumping into a wall. I turned around, moved forward, and was able to see the floating "Shiny Hammer" at the end. After using it, the story progressed. I didn't experience anything else wrong with the session play after that.

[Nubja]

It seems to me that there are two different issues going on in this space, and I'm annoyed by both of them!



We fade to black and fade back up all the time, so this one's a head-scratcher. The way these work is that there's a square area that is listening for a signal, and when it receives the signal it removes the blackout from everybody inside the square. It's possible that there was a server hiccup when the square should have received the signal. I assume you probably waited for awhile, just in case, but my advice is to sit tight; otherwise you might leave the square and then there's nothing to tell the blackout to go away. I'm not happy about it! I'll keep thinking about ways to make this more reliable.





So I thought maybe the quest item just wasn't spawning for you, but it turns out that QA was able to go into the space and use their invisible eyes to see that the quest item was correctly spawned... but that the sessionplayer goblin just couldn't see it or interact with it. I don't know why that would be, but here's my best attempt at fixing it: I'll be adding a backup to the space that will start counting when you approach the place where the quest item is supposed to be. It'll count for 25 seconds, and if you still haven't clicked on the quest item (because how can you, if you can't see it?), then it'll progress the quest automatically. Not ideal, but better than getting stuck. With luck this should be in the next patch.

MoL

I have a recording of the issue if you need it, happened in two places in the session for me

[OldMadeOfLions]

I have a recording of the issue if you need it, happened in two places in the session for me

I don't need the video, but if you could list the spots where the two blackouts wouldn't go away, that would help -- since this doesn't happen when testing locally, it'll be good to know which blackouts are the trouble spots; that way maybe I can build in a backup that tries to remove them again, just in case.

I'm curious if it's always the same spots for everybody, or if any blackout has the possibility of sticking around.

MoL

[Nubja]

I don't need the video, but if you could list the spots where the two blackouts wouldn't go away, that would help -- since this doesn't happen when testing locally, it'll be good to know which blackouts are the trouble spots; that way maybe I can build in a backup that tries to remove them again, just in case.

I'm curious if it's always the same spots for everybody, or if any blackout has the possibility of sticking around.

MoL

I had one after the first blackout and the other was at the last blackout. I could still move and interact for the last one everything was just black (finished the session this way). I couldn't progress when the first blackout bugged, had to retry 3 times.

[flirtswithmediocrity]

I had two black screens in this instance.

1. in the room with the weapon

the delete key did not target the item, even though I was right next to it.

2. in the final area

the 3 npcs were selectable, however all was black.


Ran the session twice, first time got stuck at weapon room, changed graphics to low tried again, and weapon room worked fine, but experienced #2. Was able to complete session play. Bummer this happens as I rather enjoy session play and the story was fun but diminished by these technical issues.

[OldMadeOfLions]

I had one after the first blackout and the other was at the last blackout.

I had two black screens in this instance. 1. in the room with the weapon 2. in the final area

Thanks, this is helpful -- I've got some fixes in the works that should make these blackouts less permanent and more temporary; and also a backup for the non-interactive quest item, where if it fails to spawn for you the quest should advance anyway (after about 25 seconds).

MoL

[rufen]

I Had to restart this quest 4 times. 2 were blackouts, 2 I just never got a quest advance to the point where Gorgar is telling you to grab the hammer.

There's something wrong about the transition indeed.

[Braer]

Has there been a thorough review of the tools now being used to build these environments in such populous conditions?

[OldMadeOfLions]

Has there been a thorough review of the tools now being used to build these environments in such populous conditions?

Now you've done it: you've gotten me started on one of my favorite subjects that I can't stop talking about, once I've started!

We have a lot of tools that we use to make LOTRO: there's a quest editor that content designers use to write and structure quests, and there's a worldbuilder tool that lets us place things directly in the world; there's a place for writing strings and there are applications for producing and fine-tuning the landscape. We use all these (and more!) to make LOTRO -- couldn't do it without them!

But it's always people that make the game. Nothing happens without someone to operate the machines. And that operation comes in the form of hundreds (or thousands, really) of decisions, some large and some small. Every step of the way, someone is making a choice: 'should I do it this way, or this way? Or maybe this way?' Those choices are informed by training, and experience, and sometimes we get them right and sometimes we get them wrong: most recently, and famously, my belief that it wouldn't be a big deal to require people to complete LoD 1-4 before starting 5.1 seems to have been the wrong one (expect a fix in the next patch). But someone had to decide to do it that way, and when the results of that decision go live we then see how people react. In that case: not well! And that's fine: nothing bruised but my self-esteem.

But it wasn't the quest tool that chose to do it that way. Similarly, the worldbuilding tool that we use to construct these instances only does what we tell it to do, and for this quest it's doing exactly what it thinks it should: when the player arrives in this location, tell the blackout to fade up, tell Gorgar to say his line on the other side of the rocks, and advance to the next stage of the quest. For much of the past year, every time I or QA looked at this quest, it did exactly as it was supposed to. "Looks good to me!" we all said. But it turns out Gundabad is pretty popular, and sometimes when players land in the space, some or all of those messages don't go where they're supposed to. Maybe the blackout doesn't go away; maybe Gorgar doesn't say his line; maybe the quest doesn't advance: it's that most frustrating of experiences for a game designer, where the design, which worked flawlessly for months, suddenly doesn't.

It's at about this point that I think a lot of players are saying "Well, you should have expected it to be like this." To some extent we do, but at some level we have to trust that the game is going to listen to our commands. We can't tell the engine to do everything twice, just in case! Instead, when something like this happens, most of us do what I do: get really frustrated, get really sad, and then pick ourselves up and come up with some way to rework the unexpectedly inconsistent sequence.

But back to your question:

Has there been a thorough review of the tools now being used to build these environments in such populous conditions?

It's not the tools that need levelling up here, because as far as they know everything here is fine: they don't know the signals are getting lost in the internet. What's actually been levelled up in this case is me, because by looking at this situation, I now know I can't entirely trust that when the player arrives in a new space the things I expect to happen will happen, so I need to account for that in future designs. I have something of a reputation around here of distrusting anything that broke for me once, and now this sort of arrival setup gets filed in that bin. Since it's the people that make the games, it's the people that learn from the problems, and have to work to prevent them in the future. So that's been my weekend!

I'm hopeful the various backups and failsafes I've added will make this a smoother experience when they arrive in the next patch. I say this a lot, but I think it bears repeating: for as frustrating as this sort of thing is for players, it's at least 10x as frustrating for the folk who've spent the last year pouring their hearts and souls into it. Trust me on that one.

MoL

[rufen]

Well I don't know how many quest I did so far in Gundabad, but so far good job!

There is only 3 bugged quest that I can't advance, and this one that required restart.

The quest line for the epic story is quite epic indeed. I laughed a lot at the mention of "Actually, let's skip this part..."

Again, congratulation on a job well done!

[Starliteyes]

I say this a lot, but I think it bears repeating: for as frustrating as this sort of thing is for players, it's at least 10x as frustrating for the folk who've spent the last year pouring their hearts and souls into it. Trust me on that one.

MoL

THIS is why it infuriates me when people say, quite flippantly, that the Devs don't care or are ignoring us.

PS: Gundabad is fabulous!!! TY to you and all the others on your team!

PPS: To me, skipping quests to get to endgame is like skipping a fabulous entree just to get to dessert. Play how you enjoy, but that's my take on it, lol.

[oggbnvwnyc]

THIS is why it infuriates me when people say, quite flippantly, that the Devs don't care or are ignoring us.

PS: Gundabad is fabulous!!! TY to you and all the others on your team!

PPS: To me, skipping quests to get to endgame is like skipping a fabulous entree just to get to dessert. Play how you enjoy, but that's my take on it, lol.

The burden of proof is on you: where does SSG actually "care", or is MoL talking a few sentences about graphical issues in a single quest instance already enough to blanket-praise SSG's "care"?

Just skim through general discussion and you will see a lot of threads regarding SSG's "care" they e.g. put into Gundabad, the "improved" LI system or server performance.

[LagunaD2]

I say this a lot, but I think it bears repeating: for as frustrating as this sort of thing is for players, it's at least 10x as frustrating for the folk who've spent the last year pouring their hearts and souls into it. Trust me on that one.

You seem to ignore the elephant in the room:

Do you think the testing and QA done on this expansion was anywhere near adequate? Only 6 names are listed in the credits as involved in some sort of QA role; for the Mines of Moria expansion (which was comparable in scope), there were 62.

I was in Moria beta, which ran continuously, for months, and had time to play through most of the content several times. This time, the test server content was so obviously incomplete and unfinished, less than a month from launch, and so briefly available, that I wasn't motivated to experience it any more times than I had to (i.e. on Live).

No doubt, as you say, there are countless ways to go wrong when implementing complex logic and behavior, and it's unrealistic to expect one person to anticipate them all. Testing is the only solution.

[LagunaD2]

But it turns out Gundabad is pretty popular, and sometimes when players land in the space, some or all of those messages don't go where they're supposed to.

Unclear what you mean by this. Despite the often crippling server lag, I never have dropped packets, and you can't be suggesting that hundreds of players all over the world experienced a glitch at the exact same point in the questline due to random packet loss on the internet.

If the packets were sent and received between client and server, and improper behavior resulted, how is this not a bug in your (SSG's) code somewhere?

[Braer]

MoL

It's a topic of great interest to me. Thanks for engaging.

What you are saying is you do not have a test environment that simulates a high population conditions. I have reported experiences whilst "dual boxing", but specifically one boxing two clients, where client conditions are by definition exactly the same. At times of severe server stress one client gets short shrift from the server with delays and skills locked and the typical Evernight issues many are complaining about, the other client oblivious to these issues and all working fine. I always play with the Task Manager Performance tab in view so I can quickly and largely count or discount client-side issues in the moment. A Tracert can point to other factors if necessary.

Now you saying you have to cover for the times where the messages don't get through is like me faced with a buggy quest and being stimulated to discover a work-around for myself and others on these forums. But neither is a good option for the game. For all the good it's doing you could set up a bot to ask for performance feedback every other week and do less harm. Addressing issues seen by the many is one thing but ignoring the hard to see things for lack of numbers reporting, arguably more consequential long term.

I only see displays of complete indifference to the game and it's systems every Friday lunchtime. All I get is threats for my honesty, the rules setup to cover all your rears. Can't even admit to widely know facts fearing a lost of ill-earned trust. But you guys would rather hire a streamer than employ someone to fix your issues.

You can tell me why having some boglurkers wandering the marshes adjacent to the Bruinen are a necessary inclusion to the 02 Mission and others load with the default environments under stress? We can see you are aware of it because you have attempted to hide it from us by booting us out now, but it's not actually fixing the problem: messages going AWOL because your systems can't cope and you are stuck with a poor choice made further up the chain.

[Braer]

Unclear what you mean by this. Despite the often crippling server lag, I never have dropped packets, and you can't be suggesting that hundreds of players all over the world experienced a glitch at the exact same point in the questline due to random packet loss on the internet.

If the packets were sent and received between client and server, and improper behavior resulted, how is this not a bug in your (SSG's) code somewhere?

The thing is when most of us are talking of packets and the internet we are referring to TCP/IP. A protocol that makes sure all the data is coherent and will keep asking until everything is cushty. We are using UDP for comms and it's down to the server and client to organise the data coherently. If it's not handling things when under stress then it's not doing the job it needs to do. But you can't run a game like lotro on TCP/IP, then it would be a slideshow.

I can only guess it's needs an expert to go through that ancient UDP code. The problem would be that it needs to receive something to act on it and if nothing is received nothing is done. That issues becomes prevalent under load you'd have to take steps to spread that load by increasing all factors involved in that process: Processors and Bandwidth would be my guess.

[LabadalofDorlomin]

Now you've done it: you've gotten me started on one of my favorite subjects that I can't stop talking about, once I've started!

We have a lot of tools that we use to make LOTRO: there's a quest editor that content designers use to write and structure quests, and there's a worldbuilder tool that lets us place things directly in the world; there's a place for writing strings and there are applications for producing and fine-tuning the landscape. We use all these (and more!) to make LOTRO -- couldn't do it without them!

But it's always people that make the game. Nothing happens without someone to operate the machines. And that operation comes in the form of hundreds (or thousands, really) of decisions, some large and some small. Every step of the way, someone is making a choice: 'should I do it this way, or this way? Or maybe this way?' Those choices are informed by training, and experience, and sometimes we get them right and sometimes we get them wrong: most recently, and famously, my belief that it wouldn't be a big deal to require people to complete LoD 1-4 before starting 5.1 seems to have been the wrong one (expect a fix in the next patch). But someone had to decide to do it that way, and when the results of that decision go live we then see how people react. In that case: not well! And that's fine: nothing bruised but my self-esteem.

But it wasn't the quest tool that chose to do it that way. Similarly, the worldbuilding tool that we use to construct these instances only does what we tell it to do, and for this quest it's doing exactly what it thinks it should: when the player arrives in this location, tell the blackout to fade up, tell Gorgar to say his line on the other side of the rocks, and advance to the next stage of the quest. For much of the past year, every time I or QA looked at this quest, it did exactly as it was supposed to. "Looks good to me!" we all said. But it turns out Gundabad is pretty popular, and sometimes when players land in the space, some or all of those messages don't go where they're supposed to. Maybe the blackout doesn't go away; maybe Gorgar doesn't say his line; maybe the quest doesn't advance: it's that most frustrating of experiences for a game designer, where the design, which worked flawlessly for months, suddenly doesn't.

It's at about this point that I think a lot of players are saying "Well, you should have expected it to be like this." To some extent we do, but at some level we have to trust that the game is going to listen to our commands. We can't tell the engine to do everything twice, just in case! Instead, when something like this happens, most of us do what I do: get really frustrated, get really sad, and then pick ourselves up and come up with some way to rework the unexpectedly inconsistent sequence.

But back to your question:



It's not the tools that need levelling up here, because as far as they know everything here is fine: they don't know the signals are getting lost in the internet. What's actually been levelled up in this case is me, because by looking at this situation, I now know I can't entirely trust that when the player arrives in a new space the things I expect to happen will happen, so I need to account for that in future designs. I have something of a reputation around here of distrusting anything that broke for me once, and now this sort of arrival setup gets filed in that bin. Since it's the people that make the games, it's the people that learn from the problems, and have to work to prevent them in the future. So that's been my weekend!

I'm hopeful the various backups and failsafes I've added will make this a smoother experience when they arrive in the next patch. I say this a lot, but I think it bears repeating: for as frustrating as this sort of thing is for players, it's at least 10x as frustrating for the folk who've spent the last year pouring their hearts and souls into it. Trust me on that one.

MoL

You know it is really refreshing to get an insight into the real life issues that you devs face when designing not only the space but the mechanics to make the space work.
I know I have always had ambivalent feelings about some of the posts you have made in the past and also some of the decisions you made for the world (still not forgiven you for the rope over wall into Caras Galadhon ) but there is no denying your passion cannot be questioned and that cannot be learned, whereas everything else can be worked on and let's face it, some of the best designs generally come from learning from the mistakes.

I really enjoy this frank and openness we have seen these past months in the forums..

I look forward to running a bug free version when I get there in the coming months