The Mana World Forums

Dyna wrote:Again...the average player, all we can do is sit on the shore and watch it sink. What else have you given us to do?

What do you expect us to give you? Do you expect the TMWC to do everything that the most vocal members of the TMW community say? We aren't seeing the "one million moms" effect yet, so that's a terrible idea.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It should be a democracy for admin positions with power (not technical positions). Just like elections in a local city, with voting, term limits, etc. To run for town councillor, you don't have to be a civil engineer, urban planner, or lawyer; they don't tell you to come back when you have those skills. You have only to care passionately, and to convince your fellow citizens of the same. Similar to how we elect GMs here also, but with term limits, and they work for all the community, and are not the law enforcement officers. Don't get me wrong, we still need GMs too, I'm just giving comparisons to illustrate my point. This game should be 100 percent community driven, of the community, by the community, for the community.

blackrazor wrote:It should be a democracy for admin positions with power (not technical positions).

Well, that's where you have it wrong. Admin is NOT about power, it's about responsibility.

The GM position is open democratically, and the developer positions are open meritocratically. Only admins are added by nomination, and in many ways admin is the most restricted position as far as what you can do.

Dyna to be fair... the developers log into testing servers so they don't have to be distracted by people enjoying themselves on the public server. This betters the games organization and I think this was a good choice. Currently the game is open to community suggestions but ultimately up to the people who want to produce data (tmws developers). o11c is a bit systematic and has to do the things he does his way or it doesn't work. This is not necessarily a bad thing and not meant as an insult. There just seems to be a rudeness in the way o11c goes about things even if he doesn't realize it but I believe his intentions mean well to the project.

It is sad for me to see frost leave the project. In my opinion he was and, should he return, still is an important part of the team and community just like many other contributors are.

Thank you frost.

P.S hope to see you all around soon

o11c wrote:

blackrazor wrote:It should be a democracy for admin positions with power (not technical positions).

Well, that's where you have it wrong. Admin is NOT about power, it's about responsibility.

The GM position is open democratically, and the developer positions are open meritocratically. Only admins are added by nomination, and in many ways admin is the most restricted position as far as what you can do.

Power and responsibility go hand in hand, and we can quibble semantics, but the reality of it is that the two are one and the same here, and in the history of TMW, the admins have had a lot of it, for better or worse. None of these recent topics would be cropping up, if that were not the case, and if it were not controversial.

o11c wrote:Well, that's where you have it wrong. Admin is NOT about power, it's about responsibility.

And Frost had it. He had idea how to keep things running and it worked, btw. For quite some years. And if we're about responsibility, let's admit you, strange guy, has been stupid enough to change server software to BUFFER logs (in volatile RAM which is lost on crash/reboot/powerloss!) "to improve speed" (has this been bottleneck ever, in first place?). As the result, logs are getting LOST on any crash and DO NOT APPEAR on disk right when GMs want to see them. This is great example of lack of responsibility. Needless to say, person who fails to learn very basic things about storing data to disk storage in reliable ways can't be considered adequate system administrator anyhow. And then you tell something about responsibility? Amazing double standards. When you messed up with logging code, you haven't thought even a second that logs are vital part of system administration (and some players investigations). You haven't even thought how GMs/admins could/would use logs. That's how real lack of responsibility looks like.

P.S.: you lost 2 team members and player count hardly exceeds 45 at best time. This mostly traces to your attitude. What's next? Being king of an empty server? Hmm, okay.. let there be manaserv #2. Except that now it would be on main TMW server .

And yes, thank you Frost for being system administrator and just some kind guy who is pleasant to deal with. I would miss you as system administrator. Hopefully I would see you as player at least.

.:WildX:. wrote:I don't want to start a flamewar on this thread, but[...]

I think that you just did.
Good luck Frost, I wish you will stay around as a player.

And to put some wood on the flamewar/offtopic: if you're not happy of the actual management of TMW, you can just fork it and make it at your taste. (it works)

t3st3r wrote:And Frost had it. He had idea how to keep things running and it worked, btw. For quite some years.

As someone who does, I can forcefully say, that Frost did *not* know very much about how TMWA works and did not care to learn.

t3st3r wrote:stupid enough to change server software to BUFFER logs (in volatile RAM which is lost on crash/reboot/powerloss!) "to improve speed" (has this been bottleneck ever, in first place?).

Yes, it has. It was probably the #1 cause of problems on Platinum, and even now that we have halfway decent hosting it is still a significant concern. We had to disable the high score list for Illia and cut it for the Fluffy hunt because players were reporting huge lag spikes.

And unlike save files, which *can* be done asynchronously, an asynchronous log would have the exact same problem you're complaining about.

t3st3r wrote:As the result, logs are getting LOST on any crash and DO NOT APPEAR on disk right when GMs want to see them.

It has been fixed for quite a while, can you drop this discussion?

t3st3r wrote:player count hardly exceeds 45 at best time.

People keep saying that, but I haven't seen any evidence of a decrease in the last 3 years. And in that time, we changed the rules to disallow multibotting!

I have heard convincing arguments that the player count was higher before I joined. But what we have now is exactly what I remember from when I first joined: a daily minimum of about 20 and a daily maximum of 70-80, which is exceeded only during summer.

Does anyone else have any *actual* numbers from 2-3 years ago? I know that some people *used* to keep stats, but I am going entirely from memory (the only stats I kept were for the *total* number of players online in a day/week/whatever, not the number online at a given moment).

Numbers from this summer are completely useless. Lots of people who play TMW have to go to school, and we have a strong bias for the Northern Hemisphere.

o11c wrote:As someone who does, I can forcefully say, that Frost did *not* know very much about how TMWA works and did not care to learn.

System administrator should really go insane to use software which does logging the ways you did it. If you failed to get idea, take a look on how other server software does logging and understand why it happens this way. It's common practice to flush logs line by line to ensure logs would stay even if program or whole system crashes, etc. This way only 1 line lost at most: that one where crash occured. Since logs are used for security/evidence and so on, it don't have to be underestimated.

Yes, it has. It was probably the #1 cause of problems on Platinum,

IIRC, platinum had no major performance issues visible to players last year or two before server move, as far as I can remember. I've done heck a lot of candor running, which is really time-critical stuff. Furthermore, from player-visible side there is hardly any improvement at all. Not to mention I can now lag server at my will (though it's not your fault: as I can understand now there is less CPU power).

and even now that we have halfway decent hosting it is still a significant concern. We had to disable the high score list for Illia and cut it for the Fluffy hunt because players were reporting huge lag spikes.

These are not GM logs, aren't they? Why treat everything in same ways? And if synchronous/flushed write of one line to file takes more than few dozens of milliseconds, there is something really screwed up in OS/filesystem/somewhere else. And GMs aren't flooding logs too much anyway, so server should cope with synchronous writes.

And unlike save files, which *can* be done asynchronously, an asynchronous log would have the exact same problem you're complaining about.

So I've seen after update GMs blamed some player for lie due to fact log which can prove player's words was not flushed out. That's what happens when someone does things in irresponsible ways. I bet GMs were unable to imagine it can happen THIS way.

It has been fixed for quite a while, can you drop this discussion?

I suspect you've just relaxed problem a bit, don't you? The only real way to write data reliably is to write logs flushing them line by line to get data actually written, so data would be here and not lost if something crashes. For logs with little activity (like GM log) it should not be an issue, unless there is something screwed up in underlying system/FS/hardware.

People keep saying that, but I haven't seen any evidence of a decrease in the last 3 years. And in that time, we changed the rules to disallow multibotting!

Now it's hardly 45 (in rare occasions 50) players at best time. And no, it's not like if I played with bot stacks too much. But somehow I can see half of players I had fun to play with, left to other servers/games, etc. And topics like this could suggest there're issues.

and a daily maximum of 70-80, which is exceeded only during summer.

Now daily maximum looks like 45. Or maybe 50 at very best. So now it's troublesome to play Candor, etc. It's 1st time in 4 years I face such situation.

Numbers from this summer are completely useless. Lots of people who play TMW have to go to school, and we have a strong bias for the Northern Hemisphere.

I can imagine you have point about seasonal stuff as people also take vacations at summer, etc so it's quite possible. But overall server starts to look somewhat empty. And if you failed to notice, latest resigns upset quite a lot of players, btw.

The usual disgusting flamewar.. Sigh.

All TMW has to do is GET Chocolate Cupcake DONE. That's it. Do you see wushin engaging in these strange pseudo-political battles? No. He's making content. Even finding a way to bring the players in on it.

Keep throwing around red-tape, flames, and accusations guys. I'm sure you can chase yet another person away from TMW with this nonsense and make the problems even worse.

Oh wait, what's that? You want TMW to improve? Then get to work! TMW needs help, as much as it can get! Not arguing and a gigantic book of policies.. Actual help. People willing to sit down, do some work, and ignore the nonsense that some players/devs/admins seem to be wasting so much of their time on these days.

To all you who like to start flamewars and point fingers and start/perpetuate drama: Please stop and get your priorities straight.

Frost, sorry to see you go. You were good at playing the devil's advocate and keeping devs from doing stupid things. I'm sorry TMW went in a different direction than you envisioned.. Maybe next time don't dig in your heels *quite* so hard when putting on the brakes? :/ Sometimes things just have to get done even if it's not 1000% proper. You gotta bend and flex and move with the wind, like a ninja!

MadCamel wrote:All TMW has to do is GET **** DONE. That's it.

That' Duck false, If it was we would not have 3GMs, 2 admins, and many other people who came back after the move leaving in a so short period.

Other things at:

viewtopic.php?p=139790#p139790

I don't thank you for leaving the boat Frost.

o11c wrote:

t3st3r wrote:stupid enough to change server software to BUFFER logs (in volatile RAM which is lost on crash/reboot/powerloss!) "to improve speed" (has this been bottleneck ever, in first place?).

Yes, it has. It was probably the #1 cause of problems on Platinum, and even now that we have halfway decent hosting it is still a significant concern. We had to disable the high score list for Illia and cut it for the Fluffy hunt because players were reporting huge lag spikes.

And unlike save files, which *can* be done asynchronously, an asynchronous log would have the exact same problem you're complaining about.

remarks:

• It was probably the #1 cause doesn't mean it was
• the lags are not caused by the score lists

t3st3r wrote:player count hardly exceeds 45 at best time.

People keep saying that, but I haven't seen any evidence of a decrease in the last 3 years. And in that time, we changed the rules to disallow multibotting!

I have heard convincing arguments that the player count was higher before I joined. But what we have now is exactly what I remember from when I first joined: a daily minimum of about 20 and a daily maximum of 70-80, which is exceeded only during summer.

Do not confuse online list number and player number. As an admin you should be aware that a lot of alts are online, which represent 10 to 50% of the online list. I am sure of the 50%, and estimate 10% as an under limit (statistic extrapolation from my own database). The account number increase is cheated by some players (admins (?)) who create a huge number of empty accounts. only a few of them are used actively, at the moment and sometimes along time after they have been created. My estimate is that there is less than 10% of the new accounts that are effective new players.
The minimum of 20 this summer is false, it went under 20, while in 2010 to 2012 Summer was a period of higher activity because of student holidays. We could also see with last halloween, that the connexion peak that occured for seasonal events has been seriously eroded. Every person who comes online finds it obvious, with the tools and skills you have, it is easy to have better estimates than I have. Maybe, if you haven't them, it is because you have at least no interest in them; maybe this is the reason why TMW site and game have no public stats.

Does anyone else have any *actual* numbers from 2-3 years ago? I know that some people *used* to keep stats, but I am going entirely from memory (the only stats I kept were for the *total* number of players online in a day/week/whatever, not the number online at a given moment).

Yes; it is easy to have a good estimate with Pjotr's online list.
*slaps his face*
I cannot re-publish it to respect xxxx, yyyy, and zzzz "privacy". You have to find them elsewere.
btw, I can certify on honor that online list went over 100 in 2010 and 120 in 2011. with as little as 70 in the lowest hours. I doubt that the actual server is able to deal with such high numbers since the lag issues have increased since we left platinum and german server.

Numbers from this summer are completely useless. Lots of people who play TMW have to go to school, and we have a strong bias for the Northern Hemisphere.

which number is good if neither summer and out of summer numbers are useful ?:lol:

P.S. your login time improvement is flooded by the time to assemble the news pieces. Consequence is that the login time increased after last tmwa update.

I can confirm that we had in excess of 200 players online half a decade ago. Player count is declining.


---Freeyorp

Freeyorp101 wrote:I can confirm that we had in excess of 200 players online half a decade ago. Player count is declining.


---Freeyorp

Right, but it's the time after that (2-3 years ago) that we're arguing about.

The most I ever saw was about 120 in the summer.

I found out about this game because it was on Ubuntu's software channel half a decade ago.

I wouldn't want to maintain those packages, just saying it was a nice entry point.