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Plea from a Programmer: The Server Problem


Xaufin

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This is an open letter to the dev team. I believe @Gizmo is the head programmer.


First, I work professionally in Unity Engine and I think 3DX is impressive. Good job on the game and it has lots of cool features. 

I am a programmer, and I imagine there are a dozen others playing the game as well. A lot of us are tech literate and will understand if we're told the specifics of your server problem. We can probably help parse it into layman's terms if PR isn't your strength (brief jokes from the Art Lead aren't quite enough). Even if the problem is simply poor planning and unanticipated volume, people will understand as long as there is an end in sight. But we need details and better communication.

This is my list of questions:

  1. How big is your team? How many full-time programmers, artists, and designers are working on the game?
  2. Are your servers and architecture your own or are you using a third-party solution such as Photon?
  3. Is the problem based on capacity of the servers (quantity) or is it a quality issue with the programming?
  4. What is the specific problem?
  5. What is the specific new solution?
  6. Can the new solution be implemented immediately? if not, tell us why not. (for example, increased third-party server capacity won't take effect til your next billing cycle)

Many of us sympathize with your work and recognize that the team is small, but this is a class A bug at the least. Without connectivity, you do not have a product. We need clear answers and estimates while this is being resolved.

If your networking was middleware and something you were simply paying for, volume wouldn't be an issue because you could just buy more server space. So I'm assuming you're using something more proprietary and less field tested. If this is the case, do you have a full-time server engineer? If not, I'd recommend you hire one or switch to a middleware solution. 

We appreciate answers and transparency. Good luck.
Xaufin

Edited by Xaufin
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You forgot about something pretty important, and they won't answer that (and it's totally fine), but how much money do they make with the game ?

We pay something like 9$ each month (which is less, because all the people being there for a long time wait for the christmas offer to pay half the price).

So let's imagine they made 6$ per player. When i connect, most of the time there is something like 500 people connected, considering timezones varies and such, my guess is that there is ~2000 actives players. I might be wrong, but well. It's just a general idea.  That made something like 12 000 $ per month. Depending of where they are, you can almost divide this by two with taxes and once you removed the server cost, it doesn't let that much money.

If they want to hire more people, they need more money. The community isn't that big, so unless they rise the price, they aren't going to hire more people.

 

Again no serious business is going to give you detailed explanation about why the game is crashed. We are users, not investors, and the people around here are toxics and get crazy really easily. They are a small team as stated, the dev should work on the server and not spend time to communicate on the forum. They would need a community manager to do that, and again, he have to be paid.

 

I don't think at all they are that unprofessionnal. They have choice to made. Their game is running from around 8 years and have been improved a lot, no matter what some trolls might like to say. A lot of others companies have failed and had to stop. Running a business is not just about the technical stuff.

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1 hour ago, Xaufin said:

This is an open letter to the dev team. I believe @Gizmo is the head programmer.


First, I work professionally in Unity Engine and I think 3DX is impressive. Good job on the game and it has lots of cool features. 

I am a programmer, and I imagine there are a dozen others playing the game as well. A lot of us are tech literate and will understand if we're told the specifics of your server problem. We can probably help parse it into layman's terms if PR isn't your strength (brief jokes from the Art Lead aren't quite enough). Even if the problem is simply poor planning and unanticipated volume, people will understand as long as there is an end in sight. But we need details and better communication.

This is my list of questions:

  1. How big is your team? How many full-time programmers, artists, and designers are working on the game?
  2. Are your servers and architecture your own or are you using a third-party solution such as Photon?
  3. Is the problem based on capacity of the servers (quantity) or is it a quality issue with the programming?
  4. What is the specific problem?
  5. What is the specific new solution?
  6. Can the new solution be implemented immediately? if not, tell us why not. (for example, increased third-party server capacity won't take effect til your next billing cycle)

Many of us sympathize with your work and recognize that the team is small, but this is a class A bug at the least. Without connectivity, you do not have a product. We need clear answers and estimates while this is being resolved.

If your networking was middleware and something you were simply paying for, volume wouldn't be an issue because you could just buy more server space. So I'm assuming you're using something more proprietary and less field tested. If this is the case, do you have a full-time server engineer? If not, I'd recommend you hire one or switch to a middleware solution. 

We appreciate answers and transparency. Good luck.
Xaufin

They are running game into oblivion....they just want $$$$ now--so sad--

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A self-respecting server must have a staff, communication with users, development, and be able to calm users and please them because they are the ones who keep you alive, especially if you are paying, and not cheap.
Here it is all very "amateur" sorry but profit, zero development .. because ahead we are realistic in all this time what has been seen? nothing important, and remember that we have to pay for 6 hairs 3 poses each patch, bug and instability, and this in what? 8 years of up game ?. Staff? 2 people without communication.
I understand the difficulty in keeping a server, but so it is not fair to us users who pay. Why do you pay in the end? the server and some hair or pose, but important and innovative things nothing, in addition to instability and very obvious bugs. There are free games, or at least paid games but with a team, development staff and they respond to every problem and inventiveness of the users.

No users = no money = bankruptcy and closure, it's not difficult to understand. And if you continue like this it will soon come to an end.
Then do I have to shut up? and don't test because otherwise I hurt the server? Congratulations to those who criticize me .. sorry but open your eyes, instead of thinking only about a pussy or a cock, but think about money and make your own reasons if you want the good of the server, because a community is not just cock or pussy, but to be united and improve together, fight to be better.

Having said that, sorry for my words but I had to.. now criticize me, insult me, block me or ban me for saying what I think.

Edited by Lҽʋιɳα
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1 hour ago, GottaGo said:

You forgot about something pretty important, and they won't answer that (and it's totally fine), but how much money do they make with the game ?

We pay something like 9$ each month (which is less, because all the people being there for a long time wait for the christmas offer to pay half the price).

So let's imagine they made 6$ per player. When i connect, most of the time there is something like 500 people connected, considering timezones varies and such, my guess is that there is ~2000 actives players. I might be wrong, but well. It's just a general idea.  That made something like 12 000 $ per month. Depending of where they are, you can almost divide this by two with taxes and once you removed the server cost, it doesn't let that much money.

If they want to hire more people, they need more money. The community isn't that big, so unless they rise the price, they aren't going to hire more people.

 

Again no serious business is going to give you detailed explanation about why the game is crashed. We are users, not investors, and the people around here are toxics and get crazy really easily. They are a small team as stated, the dev should work on the server and not spend time to communicate on the forum. They would need a community manager to do that, and again, he have to be paid.

 

I don't think at all they are that unprofessionnal. They have choice to made. Their game is running from around 8 years and have been improved a lot, no matter what some trolls might like to say. A lot of others companies have failed and had to stop. Running a business is not just about the technical stuff.

As someone who been here longer than most of you (6 years) you are wrong on numbers. Where did you pulled out a 9$ each month, from the Corona sale?
As long as I remember the game at least in Europe is priced at around 20 to 27 Euro per month  depending on country (due to tax) that roughly translates to 23 - 30 $.

I understand at the moment there is heaviest sale there ever been on the game lasting past 2 months which is basically result of Corona and their initiative to fit with big companies who all offered some discounts or bonuses in online games.
There is also a heavy sale each year from around mid December to mid January for a year of subscription.  There was no other sale as far as I am aware.

Majority of new players are not joining during a month over Christmas, not to mention a new player tries a game for a month and not buying a year asap to get discount. As well I know tons of older people who still pay by a month. So majority is still likely on a month sub which is around 20$ before Corona. This is also standard in most online games. Most people pay by month to try then leave, new join etc etc. People paying for year are usually a minority as it's sum of money most aren't willing to pay upfront. 

They do not need a manager to communicate. They are small company with very few members and communicating issues can be done easily. I insist you look at 2 indie games - Rimworld and Stardew Valley. While it's true these games made millions, Stardew is done by single person and he keeps responding on twitter, on reddit and so on.

So no it's not hard to communicate. They refused to, In fact you should be happy they are giving you any info at all because from around 2016 to end of 2019 there was basically a radio silence with update once every 3 to 9 months. I seen a lot. For example their stance for user content, in past it took them months to communicate if we send them some poses, collars and so on and they still refused to add things to game regardless of quality. So the development over past several months changed a lot. From discord introduction to monthly, sometimes even weekly updates. Back then many speculated they only do this as a side job.

You can speculate how much they make from game all you want, you don't know size of their staff, they only ever posted something several years ago a single picture about their staff. servers are cheap as f these days. You don't know where they live (pressumably somewhere in russia) where the living standard is much lower than US or Western EU meaning for same cash you can buy a lot more. Not even mentioning gold. Gold wasn't always free and during first 2 to 3 years you had to buy it and many did. Not to mention we know there are several people with 4 to 8k gifts, they aren't getting that from daily flow.

As for them not doing anything you can obviously seen they are trying some (pretty desperate if you ask me) measures for example the last patch introduced 2 things - User room update limit and Friends online status limit (both once per 10 seconds, instead of instantly) to lighten the load on the server.

Most likely the server finally crapped due to spaghetti code they have or awful hardware or both. It's very likely they were / are waiting for corona pandemic to end so the load on the server lightens up as people go back to work and streets but as the corona outbreak is still happening even coming back up here in west it didn't worked out so well . Seems like enough players stayed over and server finally crapped out.

 

Edited by Riela
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19 minutes ago, Riela said:

As someone who been here longer than most of you (6 years) you are wrong on numbers. Where did you pulled out a 9$ each month, from the Corona sale?
As long as I remember the game at least in Europe is priced at around 20 to 27 Euro per month  depending on country (due to tax) that roughly translates to 23 - 30 $.

I understand at the moment there is heaviest sale there ever been on the game lasting past 2 months which is basically result of Corona and their initiative to fit with big companies who all offered some discounts or bonuses in online games.
There is also a heavy sale each year from around mid December to mid January for a year of subscription.  There was no other sale as far as I am aware.

Majority of new players are not joining during a month over Christmas, not to mention a new player tries a game for a month and not buying a year asap to get discount. As well I know tons of older people who still pay by a month. So majority is still likely on a month sub which is around 20$ before Corona. This is also standard in most online games. Most people pay by month to try then leave, new join etc etc. People paying for year are usually a minority as it's sum of money most aren't willing upfront. 

They do not need a manager to communicate. They are small company with very few members and communicating issues can be done easily. I insist you look at 2 indie games - Rimworld and Stardew Valley. While it's true these games made millions, Stardew is done by single person and he keeps responding on twitter, on reddit and so on.

So no it's not hard to communicate. They refused to, In fact you should be happy they are giving you any info at all because from around 2016 to end of 2019 there was basically a radio silence with update once every 3 to 9 months. I seen a lot. For example their stance for user content, in past it took them months to communicate if we send them some poses, collars and so on and they still refused to add things to game regardless of quality. So the development over past several months changed a lot. From discord introduction to monthly, sometimes even weekly updates. Back then many speculated they only do this as a side job.

You can speculate how much they make from game all you want, you don't know size of their staff, they only ever posted something several years ago a single picture about their staff. servers are cheap as f these days. You don't know where they live (pressumably somewhere in russia) where the living standard is much lower than US or Western EU meaning for same cash you can buy a lot more. Not even mentioning gold. Gold wasn't always free and during first 2 to 3 years you had to buy it and many did. Not to mention we know there are several people with 4 to 8k gifts, they aren't getting that from daily flow.

As for them not doing anything you can obviously seen they are trying some (pretty desperate if you ask me) measures for example the last patch introduced 2 things - User room update limited added as well Friends online status limit added (both once per 10 seconds, instead of instantly) to lighten the load on the server.

Most likely the server finally crapped due to spaghetti code they have or awful hardware or both. It's very likely they were / are waiting for corona pandemic to end so the load on the server lightens up as well with people back in work and out in streets but as the corona outbreak is still happening even coming back up here in west it didn't worked or well enough players stayed over and server finally crapped out.

 

Remember when it took them around 3 - 4 years to get an actual color palette in the game?

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18 minutes ago, thatdudemike said:

Remember when it took them around 3 - 4 years to get an actual color palette in the game?

I actually remember it took them around 2 years to implement a private message from friendlist. Back then you had to write an gift to a person to meet at some location just to open chat if you didn't had them added outside of the game or on forums. (mind you a paid gift as there was no free xgold at the time). I think 5 gifts were like 3 euro in xgold back then?

I bet most people know don't know that.

Edited due to being tired as f.

Edited by Riela
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1 hour ago, GottaGo said:

We pay something like 9$ each month (which is less, because all the people being there for a long time wait for the christmas offer to pay half the price).

So let's imagine they made 6$ per player. When i connect, most of the time there is something like 500 people connected, considering timezones varies and such, my guess is that there is ~2000 actives players. I might be wrong, but well. It's just a general idea.  That made something like 12 000 $ per month. Depending of where they are, you can almost divide this by two with taxes and once you removed the server cost, it doesn't let that much money.

Your numbers worth virtually nothing. It's nothing more than a guess, you have no real statistics and probably no one here has it aside of devs. 

You have no idea about percentage of players paying yearly/monthly, about percentage of players using Christmas offer, about percentage of new/old players. It can be 6$/month in average or 12 $/month average or anything else.

About online numbers – you can only count the number of players in open rooms. Btw, before the DDoS attack, when corona sale were already in effect – I once counted the amount of people including ALL open rooms and it was somewhere between 1000 and 1500. It was on Saturday or Friday evening but still. And it was only open rooms. Many people play this game only couple evening per week. Some having second accounts. You can't know how much active account the game really have. I think it's something about 10.000, but again – this number also worth nothing, I don't have any actual statistics. Just as you are. It's all are worthless speculations. 

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To be honest, I never seen it this bad, ever. Since been playing 4 yrs. 

Gizmo & Lisa you need support, this can not go on like it is.

Ask for it. Have you tried Dual server link, to take off the load ?

How long to the community need to wait for this to get fixed.

Get a solid plan together, structure, support from other. people are willing to help and support, Don't turn you back on any support.

 

 

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Bitch Bitch Bitch.... Server goes down and everyone loses their minds!!!

For those saying they are leaving the game to find another... GOOD LUCK!!!  Good luck finding any other virtual world with the quality this has. I've been on others and updates??? NEVER!!!!! Every other Virtual World is cheesy compared to 3DX and the closest thing to this game isn't even close to 3dx. And the drama there is UNBELIEVABLE where there is 0 drama in here except from a few morons that love to cause it and World Chat.

I've been here a year and a half and have been to all the other Virtual Worlds and I still LOVE IT even with the crashes and who cares about responses when I know they are working hard on the problem at hand.  

Not worth it to stick around???  Where else do you get this quality that is all inclusive for just above $4.17 a month when you pay for the year? So GO!!! Get Lost!!! See Ya!! wouldn't wanna be ya out there paying 20-30 dollars a month plus paying for poses, clothes layouts(rooms) and everyone else that charges fees. Go open up a club and spend over 4k a year when it's all free right here with quality that surpasses any other world like this on the net. In fact I pay 30 dollars a month for special VIP to be able to do more in another game but have spent thousands and thousands of dollars over the years just for clothes and avatars, and all I got from there is pure drama. So, have fun looking for anything better!!!

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I really don't understand the problem is happening, but it starts to be a bit too much.

First. It's incredible the window for maintenance is about weekend. I'm not a developer but System Administrator focused in Bigdata Environment. And it's totally forbidden to make any change in the time of high use of the platform.

If you have problems with peaks there're so many solutions to solve this, just have to rethink your architecture. I already offered my help. And I don't wanna have a single $. I just want this to work, and I'm open to try to give support in the infraestructure part for free to solve the problem, if the problem comes from here. As the person who opened the ticked said, we just wanna help to keep enjoying the game.

There're so many chances to make this work Did you think about using a solution based in Kubernetes for rescaling the servers depending of the high traffic? What kind of solution is provided right now? A couple of servers attatching the users by zones?

This cannot keep like this. You need help, it's obviouos when the problem is not being solved but getting bigger along the last month. Sorry for saying, but it looks like this.

@NakedNikki And answering to your message. You are wrong, there're good games where you can invest 40-50€ in a year and having fun. SL is an example. Personally I prefer this game, but for playing to this game it has to work. Something it's not doing right now. And this is what we are talking about.

A perfect game that crashes everyday is not a perfect game anymore. Great in the good moments. But this game is based on sex.

Normally the people here comes to go to a club to listen music with some DJ, or for fucking.

a) A people prepare a whole session, put their effort decorating the room and when they open it crashes
b) They are fucking and it crashes and they got horny having to continue with pornhub after paying a subscription

I think both possibilities are not acceptable.

Regards

Edited by laurita_peque
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They should be grateful for your offer, but sometimes people are pretty stubborn and keep hanging in their own mistakes, a neutral "eye" can probably workout in a good way.

I am here since may 27, and did not see anything else (several times per day) reconnecting 10 -15 times, and all of a sudden many with me poofed again. I've been on several games the past 8 - 10 years and never saw anything like this happen, of course there "can" be a crash or defect server, in those cases it takes a few hours to have it back and running again.

I am afraid that many peeps will go search for other games like this, and especially in the weekend is not nice to see this happen, I like to hangout and play with my friends, thats the reason I went into this game.

Hopefully they will accept your help and we do ALL hope, that its back asap and smoothly running, this is for now a crying shame ! 

Jenny

 

 

Edited by Jenny Lakeland
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3 hours ago, NakedNikki said:

Bitch Bitch Bitch.... Server goes down and everyone loses their minds!!!

For those saying they are leaving the game to find another... GOOD LUCK!!!  Good luck finding any other virtual world with the quality this has. I've been on others and updates??? NEVER!!!!! Every other Virtual World is cheesy compared to 3DX and the closest thing to this game isn't even close to 3dx. And the drama there is UNBELIEVABLE where there is 0 drama in here except from a few morons that love to cause it and World Chat.

I've been here a year and a half and have been to all the other Virtual Worlds and I still LOVE IT even with the crashes and who cares about responses when I know they are working hard on the problem at hand.  

Not worth it to stick around???  Where else do you get this quality that is all inclusive for just above $4.17 a month when you pay for the year? So GO!!! Get Lost!!! See Ya!! wouldn't wanna be ya out there paying 20-30 dollars a month plus paying for poses, clothes layouts(rooms) and everyone else that charges fees. Go open up a club and spend over 4k a year when it's all free right here with quality that surpasses any other world like this on the net. In fact I pay 30 dollars a month for special VIP to be able to do more in another game but have spent thousands and thousands of dollars over the years just for clothes and avatars, and all I got from there is pure drama. So, have fun looking for anything better!!!

Totally Agree !  ..well said lol

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Just want to add my 5 cents to this topic. I unable to play the game I paid for a month already, because they made something with their servers after first DDoS and now I always getting disconnected. All I get from the support is advice to use VPN. Should I pay for VPN now to play the game I paid for?

The support and customer service in this game are awful. Devs mostly choose to keep silence instead of sharing what's really going on. And no, it doesn't require a lot of time to share this info. You telling, that they have not much money, they have little team, but what they really did to grow their game, grow the player base to get the money, to get bigger team?

You will say "so why you playing it, why paying money, just leave". And you will be right about that. But unfortunately, there still no such games, which could offer the same experience as this one. So while they have the monopoly, nothing will change. And only when they will get real rival, the game will die, or evolve.

 

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6 minutes ago, laurita_peque said:

@pretty Yes, like 1 month ago. So if the server is still vulnerable 1 month later there're something to fix. Don't you think so?

This is from another forum thread.....

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

<…>

Advanced persistent DoS

An advanced persistent DoS (APDoS) is associated with an advanced persistent threat and requires specialised DDoS mitigation.[26] These attacks can persist for weeks; the longest continuous period noted so far lasted 38 days. This attack involved approximately 50+ petabits (50,000+ terabits) of malicious traffic.[27]

Attackers in this scenario may tactically switch between several targets to create a diversion to evade defensive DDoS countermeasures but all the while eventually concentrating the main thrust of the attack onto a single victim. In this scenario, attackers with continuous access to several very powerful network resources are capable of sustaining a prolonged campaign generating enormous levels of un-amplified DDoS traffic.

APDoS attacks are characterised by:

  • advanced reconnaissance (pre-attack OSINT and extensive decoyed scanning crafted to evade detection over long periods)
  • tactical execution (attack with both primary and secondary victims but focus is on primary)
  • explicit motivation (a calculated end game/goal target)
  • large computing capacity (access to substantial computer power and network bandwidth)
  • simultaneous multi-threaded OSI layer attacks (sophisticated tools operating at layers 3 through 7)
  • persistence over extended periods (combining all the above into a concerted, well managed attack across a range of targets).[28]
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Thanks

I don't need to check the wikipedia to know how a DDOS works. I already sent a private message to Lisa with some opinions about some kind of workaround to protect the server, that's not ideal, but could work for the future. I guess they can have some other better ideas.

Obviously this is another thread (Claps for you for knowing that much). And it doesn't change the thing that we know they already attacked us. And that's make probably that 3d will be an objective in the future again. The thing is, the server should have been protected already. It wasn't. It's a fact.

Regards

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