Friday 19 July 2013

Input Lag



Another boneheaded typo... Another 3 billion down the drain... Except it wasn't a boneheaded typo.

It was input lag.

Ever notice how sometimes it takes forever to update the market? Well when the game is getting laggy like that sometimes the market price entry input box suffers from lag too. You enter a price check the numbers and realize it's missing a digit or 3, so you add the missing digits, double check the numbers and hit enter.

Then it sort of freezes for several seconds, the missing digits appear, the order goes in and you wind up overpaying bigtime.

That's the third time now this has happened to me for amounts in the billions. The first time I wasn't positive about exactly what happened but I thought it was lag so I've been keeping an eye out for it since. The next 2 times I'm absolutely certain about it. I checked the numbers, they were short, I fixed them, double checked the numbers, hit enter, then watched it freeze momentarily and then overpay.

I really wish they'd fix this stupid crap. The best and simplest fix would be making it so when you enter a buy price higher than highest sell order it gets filled from sell orders at the sell order price. And just the opposite for entering low priced sell orders they should be filled at the price of higher priced buy orders.

Then it wouldn't matter if there are a few seconds of input lag.

The way it works now isn't just stupid, unrealistic and annoying, it also rewards cheating bots who reap most of the benefits of such errors since they usually have the lowest sell / highest buy orders and never have to worry about similar input errors themselves, while punishing honest players for not cheating.

No doubt there'll be a bunch of replies insisting I must have imagined it, I'm crazy, I'm just making it up or it's my computer but it's not any of that.

What I'd like to know is if anyone else has noticed the same thing?

7 comments:

  1. Can see how it could happen, but any input lag ive had has dissappeared within my double checking time. Gutted for you though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. o_O

    3 BILLION??
    I hope you petitioned this!
    $%&*!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did but I doubt they'll reimburse me. Still waiting on a reply to the petition.

      Delete
  3. I completely agree that CCP needs to fix this broken ordering system. It makes no sense for it to work the way it currently does.

    I'd actually like to see the market revamped to also allow you to enter a buy order for a large quantity and have it filled by multiple sell orders, similar to the way the stock market works. For example, there are sell 3 orders for trit, 100k at 3 isk, 100k at 4 isk, and 100k at 5 isk. I'd like to be able to put in a buy order for 300k trit at 5 isk and have my order 1/3 of my order filled by each of the 3 sellers at all 3 price points.

    Maybe they could work a market update into the next expansion? There are definitely a lot more features they could add to make it worth while. A man can dream.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually when you consider how much influence griefers have in this game it does make sense... In a warped and twisted way.

      But yeah I hear you. I too would like to see the kind of functionality you describe but I figure it's better to try to get the stupid part addressed first before going for added functionality.

      Who knows maybe someone at CCP will actually read this and do something about it.

      Delete
  4. MoxNix didn't you get a warning saying that you were paying x% over the average price? (I can't recall the exact wording of the warning but I'm sure you know the one I'm talking about.)

    I didn't think you could turn those warnings off. And it also seems that you've paid enough over what the average would be that the warning should have fired.

    Perhaps that's something else you can add to your petition. I'm interested to see how the petition pans out!

    Cheers,
    EM

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Most of the time when those warnings do come up they're wrong... The price is fine but Eve thinks it's a few million percent too high or too low.

      Conversely it seems like the few times when a warning would come in handy, the game figures the price is just fine and says nothing.

      As for how the petition pans out, it's going nowhere. No reimbursement (as I expected) and passing the buck on the issue by telling me to post on the forums. Yeah right!

      On top of that, CCP actually issued a veiled threat over my posting their response here. Apparently one of the clauses in the EULA says:

      "You may not publish private communications from CCP, their agents or representatives or EVE Online volunteers without authorization."

      I'd say something about EULAs and illegal crap but that'd turn into a rant. ;)

      Delete