Game progress losses - why and how

[DeeDe99]

Hi Everyone,

I see a lot of frustration here and elsewhere about people losing their progress.

" Won in the arena, but when I went back, same round of the tournament"
"Put two dragons on the nest, when I went back they were gone"

That sort of thing.

We all need to remember we are playing over either our telco's data service or wi-fi at home.

Let's look at wi-fi first. Your router has a limited "pipe" to allow data traffic through. If you share that router with other people in your house (teenage kids, for example!!) you will find your communication to and from the internet is often compromised. Those kids might be playing a more bandwidth hungry game which has a higher priority setting and YOUR traffic gets bumped.

Sometimes there can be momentary outages - perhaps not perceptible if watching a video or catch-up TV because videos and TV buffers (downloads a little ahead) so if there is a blip in the connection, you don't notice it. However, with an on-line game such as Dragon Story, you are sending data updates from your device to the server. You win a battle in the arena, that data is sent to the server. Next time you go to the Arena, the server is checked to see where you are up to (I'm guessing at the timing here, but theoretically). If the update never got to the server from your last win because of a comms issue between your device and the "cloud" you will face the same dragon again because that is all the server knows about.

I live alone, so I have NO problems on my wi-fi - but when there were four kids living in this house, often I couldn't even watch a video on my computer because they had hogged all the bandwidth. Your router may be wired to your internet provider's equipment, but the wi-fi isn't. There can also be interference from other wi-fi in the building if you live in a flat or apartment. We have this problem at my work where there is a LOT of different wi-fi networks in the building.

Now let's look at the phone. Definitely not a wired connection. Data services can be flaky at the best of times. Travelling on a train for example - often the train passes through areas where the signal is very poor (no close cell towers, for example). In tunnels there is nothing. Where my sister lives in the country, to make a mobile phone call I literally had to stand in the middle of the road. Data services? Not a hope!

When it comes to Dragon Story I never do anything that is important when I don't trust the connectivity from my end. Sure, I'll collect coins or visit neighbours when on the train (in areas I know are OK), but I don't battle or breed. When there is no Tales/World Event I might plant or collect crops, but not during events when a "missed" action can be a major pain in the you-know-where.

I've only had one situation where I "lost" an action - a breeding pair disappeared from the Breeding Den, something that was actually in my favour at the time.

Technology IS great and we all use it. We play games using it. But how often have you not received a text message until the next day? Or can't make a phone call because the signal is bad? We all KNOW the technology is not 100% reliable - if we chose to play ON-LINE games on mobile devices, we have to accept that sometimes our device will, for whatever reason, lose connectivity and our progress updates won't reach the server. Yes, partial updates can happen too, I won't go into the technical details, that would bore everyone silly, but trust me, it happens.

That's life in the digital world.

[sam204]

Hi Everyone,

I see a lot of frustration here and elsewhere about people losing their progress.

" Won in the arena, but when I went back, same round of the tournament"
"Put two dragons on the nest, when I went back they were gone"

That sort of thing.

We all need to remember we are playing over either our telco's data service or wi-fi at home.

Let's look at wi-fi first. Your router has a limited "pipe" to allow data traffic through. If you share that router with other people in your house (teenage kids, for example!!) you will find your communication to and from the internet is often compromised. Those kids might be playing a more bandwidth hungry game which has a higher priority setting and YOUR traffic gets bumped.

Sometimes there can be momentary outages - perhaps not perceptible if watching a video or catch-up TV because videos and TV buffers (downloads a little ahead) so if there is a blip in the connection, you don't notice it. However, with an on-line game such as Dragon Story, you are sending data updates from your device to the server. You win a battle in the arena, that data is sent to the server. Next time you go to the Arena, the server is checked to see where you are up to (I'm guessing at the timing here, but theoretically). If the update never got to the server from your last win because of a comms issue between your device and the "cloud" you will face the same dragon again because that is all the server knows about.

I live alone, so I have NO problems on my wi-fi - but when there were four kids living in this house, often I couldn't even watch a video on my computer because they had hogged all the bandwidth. Your router may be wired to your internet provider's equipment, but the wi-fi isn't. There can also be interference from other wi-fi in the building if you live in a flat or apartment. We have this problem at my work where there is a LOT of different wi-fi networks in the building.

Now let's look at the phone. Definitely not a wired connection. Data services can be flaky at the best of times. Travelling on a train for example - often the train passes through areas where the signal is very poor (no close cell towers, for example). In tunnels there is nothing. Where my sister lives in the country, to make a mobile phone call I literally had to stand in the middle of the road. Data services? Not a hope!

When it comes to Dragon Story I never do anything that is important when I don't trust the connectivity from my end. Sure, I'll collect coins or visit neighbours when on the train (in areas I know are OK), but I don't battle or breed. When there is no Tales/World Event I might plant or collect crops, but not during events when a "missed" action can be a major pain in the you-know-where.

I've only had one situation where I "lost" an action - a breeding pair disappeared from the Breeding Den, something that was actually in my favour at the time.

Technology IS great and we all use it. We play games using it. But how often have you not received a text message until the next day? Or can't make a phone call because the signal is bad? We all KNOW the technology is not 100% reliable - if we chose to play ON-LINE games on mobile devices, we have to accept that sometimes our device will, for whatever reason, lose connectivity and our progress updates won't reach the server. Yes, partial updates can happen too, I won't go into the technical details, that would bore everyone silly, but trust me, it happens.

That's life in the digital world.

SUPERB ! sincerely hope that MANY players read and get benefited from this ! ������ to my NBR !

[DeeDe99]

SUPERB ! sincerely hope that MANY players read and get benefited from this ! ������ to my NBR !

Thank you so much Sam!

[pernmagic]

SUPERB ! sincerely hope that MANY players read and get benefited from this ! ������ to my NBR !

Well written and explained and full of sense ..... Well done :)

[DeeDe99]

Thanks Pern!

[JMThrive]

Hi Everyone,

I see a lot of frustration here and elsewhere about people losing their progress.

" Won in the arena, but when I went back, same round of the tournament"
"Put two dragons on the nest, when I went back they were gone"

That sort of thing.

We all need to remember we are playing over either our telco's data service or wi-fi at home.

Let's look at wi-fi first. Your router has a limited "pipe" to allow data traffic through. If you share that router with other people in your house (teenage kids, for example!!) you will find your communication to and from the internet is often compromised. Those kids might be playing a more bandwidth hungry game which has a higher priority setting and YOUR traffic gets bumped.

Sometimes there can be momentary outages - perhaps not perceptible if watching a video or catch-up TV because videos and TV buffers (downloads a little ahead) so if there is a blip in the connection, you don't notice it. However, with an on-line game such as Dragon Story, you are sending data updates from your device to the server. You win a battle in the arena, that data is sent to the server. Next time you go to the Arena, the server is checked to see where you are up to (I'm guessing at the timing here, but theoretically). If the update never got to the server from your last win because of a comms issue between your device and the "cloud" you will face the same dragon again because that is all the server knows about.

I live alone, so I have NO problems on my wi-fi - but when there were four kids living in this house, often I couldn't even watch a video on my computer because they had hogged all the bandwidth. Your router may be wired to your internet provider's equipment, but the wi-fi isn't. There can also be interference from other wi-fi in the building if you live in a flat or apartment. We have this problem at my work where there is a LOT of different wi-fi networks in the building.

Now let's look at the phone. Definitely not a wired connection. Data services can be flaky at the best of times. Travelling on a train for example - often the train passes through areas where the signal is very poor (no close cell towers, for example). In tunnels there is nothing. Where my sister lives in the country, to make a mobile phone call I literally had to stand in the middle of the road. Data services? Not a hope!

When it comes to Dragon Story I never do anything that is important when I don't trust the connectivity from my end. Sure, I'll collect coins or visit neighbours when on the train (in areas I know are OK), but I don't battle or breed. When there is no Tales/World Event I might plant or collect crops, but not during events when a "missed" action can be a major pain in the you-know-where.

I've only had one situation where I "lost" an action - a breeding pair disappeared from the Breeding Den, something that was actually in my favour at the time.

Technology IS great and we all use it. We play games using it. But how often have you not received a text message until the next day? Or can't make a phone call because the signal is bad? We all KNOW the technology is not 100% reliable - if we chose to play ON-LINE games on mobile devices, we have to accept that sometimes our device will, for whatever reason, lose connectivity and our progress updates won't reach the server. Yes, partial updates can happen too, I won't go into the technical details, that would bore everyone silly, but trust me, it happens.

That's life in the digital world.

I have experienced this issue and it is not network related. The issue is that the information is sent from the device to the games servers and the the game servers do not process it correctly. It is an issue with the game server not the network. The message to the server should be synchronous, i.e. before the game continues it should receive a confirmation from the game server that the update was processed successfully. If the device doesn't receive that response it should try to resubmit. What is happening the device is sending the update, the game server is not processing it successfully and the device reverts to a previous state prior to the update. Dragon Story takes forever to load, crashed 3 or 4 times a day while I am playing it. I plant crops or breed dragons, quit with no issues only to come back in and find those actions have been lost. I don't have this issue on other games I play only Dragon Story.

[DeeDe99]

I have experienced this issue and it is not network related. The issue is that the information is sent from the device to the games servers and the the game servers do not process it correctly. It is an issue with the game server not the network. The message to the server should be synchronous, i.e. before the game continues it should receive a confirmation from the game server that the update was processed successfully. If the device doesn't receive that response it should try to resubmit. What is happening the device is sending the update, the game server is not processing it successfully and the device reverts to a previous state prior to the update. Dragon Story takes forever to load, crashed 3 or 4 times a day while I am playing it. I plant crops or breed dragons, quit with no issues only to come back in and find those actions have been lost. I don't have this issue on other games I play only Dragon Story.

JMT, I can't visit neighbours on levels over 100 because the app crashes on my iPad. Neighbours under 100, no problem at all. While memory management may have been designed better for small mobile devices without 8Gb RAM, clearly primarily this is a device issue - not enough grunt to handle the graphics.

In a commercial data processing client/server system, I agree - the app should wait for confirmation of a sent update. But you and I both know that is not foolproof and there is data loss when Comms fail. That's why many of us have jobs in the real world, after all! Fixing the database afterwards when a transaction has updated half the tables only.

I've worked in the field for many years. This is a game, not an airline flight management system. I don't expect the backend to be as sophisticated as a commercial production system and even those, as stated, have issues when there are Comms failures.

I'm not saying the Dragon Story design is perfect, no system is. I am saying a lot of the issues are at the players' end. Storm 8 can't cater for every connection failure out there, the cost would be prohibitive from an ROI perspective.

Newer games are likely using newer platforms too. How long as DS been out? At least 3 years? Many changes in the technologies in 3 years.

If is were the backend and not Comms, every player would have the same problems all the time, yet that isn't the case. You and I have different experiences, just the two of us, without taking any others into consideration.

[Jewelnan]

Thank 4 the explanations guys.cleared a lot of stuff up. Doesn't seem to explain why I buy food or whatever and the food disappears along with the coins. Unless your suggesting that the outage happens only between order and purchase. Sounds unlikely,or am I messing up some other way?

[TwiWoods]

Any time I want to make sure my progress is saved, I go to the social tab and wait for the community islands to list. This way, I know that my game has communicated with the server to pull up a current list and save my current progress. I then go back 'home' and then leave the game. Only once has my game 'reset' while I was doing this and progress been lost.

My game does crash frequently while visiting neighbors and I have to go revisit to get the eggs.

[Anaboe]

It's a combination.

The app DS is obviously not perfectly written: there are (a lot) of errors in the code. Furthermore, there are a lot of errors server-side.

Yes, it COULD be that there are user-side-issues, but, let's be honest: they CAN be fixed server-side. It is possible for S8 to give us the minimum-requirements of the devices we want to play on. Even better, S8 CAN make it impossible to play on certain devices.

They simply don't do that, because it would limit their user-base.

But they keep saying "your device is too old". Well, a 1-year old (then newly bought) Apple isn't nowhere "too old".

Furthermore, I live in Holland, and my husband is an computer-engineer. That means we do have a very, very stable and fast internet connection, both on ping-times as on up- and downloadspeed (we're amongst the fastest speeds in the world). Still, it's only DS (and other S8 games) re-sync, loose connection, etc. etc. But it's not on our side: I can still stream video and do everything I want, without hickups ever.

And while other apps very, very rarely crash, requires DS that I reboot my whole device atleast twice a week. For after a few days, it starts to crash multiple times a day, usually after entering a mine - thus loosing a bomb, but not getting any pieces, because serverwise, it did notice that I spent a bomb entering, but due to the crash, it didn't notice I got pieces... I really don't know how many bombs I've lost this way. And yes, I even lost a 44h White-Diamond breed due to a re-sync issue... While being at home, having my trusted and stable home-network.

So yes, while there is a little chance it's user-side, it is for sure also S8-side. And S8 is able to do something about it, but just won't.

Look, I understand it, from S8's point of view. They're a company, they're in it for the money, and they are free to make their own choices between quality and saving money. And I still like the game, even after 3-4 years, I have almost 450 unique dragons, and feel nowhere like quiting (even tho I once lost 1,000 gold in a gold-trap).

But please don't say it's user-side. Because it's not.

Atleast not the full 100%. And a great part of the userside-faults, could be prevented by S8.

[19sparkles96]

I've been playing on iPad mini 1 (A5 processor) and my wife on iPod (5th gen). In FFS I'm level 45 with over 4,000,000 XP and 74 habitats. We've both had terrible issues with crashes (usually during mining,arghh) and lagginess over the past 6 months. Both are updated to IOS 9.0.2 with memory cleared often. I have Charter Cable "60 mbps" service which gets flaky in evening so I will switch to my Verizon 4G LTE hotspot. Since I upgraded us both to the new iPad Mini 4 (A8X processor with motion coprocessor & more RAM) we are in BLISS! Everything runs fast and as smooth as butter. This iPad was built with multitasking in mind.I am able to run both Fantasy Story and Dragon Story at the same time and seamlessly switch between the two. I timed myself, and with both DS & FFS running, in DS I was able to collect tips from all 143 habitats in 56 seconds. I started playing originally on Samsung Galaxy Nexus (1ghz dual core processor & 1 GB ram) and DS was very laggy. On my new LG G4 (6 core processor & 3GB ram) DS also plays smoothly (though my phone gets warm). To enjoy these games at higher levels I recommend upgrading your device to similar levels.

[DeeDe99]

Thank you for those device comparisons, 19sparkles96.

I had an experience the other day which is merely further evidence of my original post.

Out of normal practice for me, I did risk breeding while at work - i.e. not on my trusted super fast cable at home. I quite clearly lost internet connection and when I went back into DS the breed commencement had been lost, there were no dragons on the breeding den. The message had not been sent from my device to the server due to the loss of Comms at my end. Precisely why I don't usually do this stuff when out and about on a mobile.

There is no way S8 can be held responsible for that, to try to do so would be completely unrealistic. They have no control over the reliability of a telco half a world away.

[DeeDe99]

Jewelnan, it is probably not you messing up, but depending on how the data packets are "built" it would be technically possible for the Comms to drop between packets at a point where the coin reduction registers but not the food increment. Depending on your particular connection, it could also be possible for the Comms drop to happen at the same point each time if it is a data volume issue.

Sorry for the late reply: I'm a bit time bankrupt at the moment!

[DeeDe99]

It's a combination.....

At Least not the full 100%. And a great part of the userside-faults, could be prevented by S8.

Anaboe, I've been in the IT industry a very long time. While I agree the app isn't perfect (there are issues with the gold gifting, for example) I disagree that S8 could prevent user side communications issues. That is a technically unrealistic expectation.

Not to mention, players are constantly asking for more "stuff" like the additional land, then expect to be able to keep playing on the same devices - often already struggling with RAM and/or graphics resource requirements.

Technology has limitations and we need to be realistic.