Print Page | Close Window

Tourney End Date

Printed From: Illyriad
Category: The World
Forum Name: Tournament VIII - The Ruby Jubilee
Forum Description: 8th Tournament - Details, progress, reports & awards
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=5592
Printed Date: 28 Mar 2024 at 15:23
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com


Topic: Tourney End Date
Posted By: Canesrule
Subject: Tourney End Date
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 09:26
Here is my question. The tourney was supposed to end on Fri 23 May at 23:59. Tournaments usually run for 4 weeks and this end time would have been just a couple off minutes short of the 4 weeks. The end date was changed yesterday and a day added. The tourney is 22 days 8 hrs old as I write, this can be seen by the time squares have been occupied, yet the rankings are only up to Day 20. So today when the rankings are posted they will be for Day 21 where they should be for Day 22. Just what has got the Devs confused. Where did they lose a day. In order for this to be a 4 week tourney or 28 days it would appear that there should be 5 days 16 hrs left. Could the Devs please clarify this for me. I trust my reasoning to be correct but there again I am a flawed human and thus prone to err.



Replies:
Posted By: Daefis
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 16:11
this has confused me as well and made calculating some squares a bit trickier... feels like moving goalposts

-------------
http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/37796" rel="nofollow">


Posted By: Count Rupert
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 18:42
Not sure I see where the problem is.  What tournaments usually run is no guarantee all tournaments will run that length.  Given this was in celebration of the King's Jubilee, it would not have surprised me if the tournament had been set to last 25 days.  The post announcing the tournament clearly states the start of the tournament being 00:01 April 26th and ending at 23:59 May 24th.  So I don't see where there is a day being added here.  The info pages all show the same end date (23:59 May 24) they have since I've been looking at them.  The calculations I made last week still hold true which they shouldn't if a day was added when you say it was.   


Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 20:57
Count Rupert. The end date was changed yesterday. I have a screenshot of the Tournament page showing an end date of 23:59 Fri May 23rd. This was changed yesterday and the new date has added a day to the tourney. How can this be possible. As Daefis said it is moving the goal posts.


Posted By: Count Rupert
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 22:08
I admit to not spending that much time on that particular page, I spend my time on the individual region pages.  However how do you explain the announcement for the tournament having the dates as from 00:01 April 26th through 23:59 May 24th if this was changed only yesterday?  


Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 18 May 2014 at 22:24
Do you mean the forum announcement? There was some confusion earlier about how the prizes were to be awarded and this post was modified. It was when the modification was made that the end date of Sat at 23:59 first appeared. The tournament page link was not modified at that time and has remained the same since the beginning of the tourney until yesterday when it was changed to match the modified Date. Obviously the one that has not been modified until yesterday would seem to be the correct one and the one in the modified post incorrect.


Posted By: Count Rupert
Date Posted: 19 May 2014 at 02:06
How can you say that the date before it was modified yesterday is correct and the modified date in the forum post is incorrect?  Clearly those running the tournament would know when they want the tournament to start and stop which is presumably why the forum post was edited to correct the error.  The forum post details the rules of the tournament which the date modified or otherwise is part of.  Everything else is informational and should reflect the rules as detailed in the forum post.  Apparently in this instance they didn't which is why they were modified yesterday.  So if as you suggest the date was modified in forum post, it was done no later than May 7th (the last time the post was edited), not yesterday.  The problem is there is no good solution.  Obviously you want it back to what you see as the original date because you've based your alliance strategy off it but others can make the same case for keeping as it is right now because they based their strategy on the forum post which are the rules.  Which should carry more weight.  I think you'll find that changing the date is not practical.  The evidence seems to suggest it most likely the date was coded wrong from that intended and they're stuck with it which is why they modified the forum post to reflect the new reality.  It seems to me if they could have easily changed the date, they would have back on the 7th rather than modify the forum post and be in the position they are now regarding the problem yesterday.


Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 19 May 2014 at 12:01
and there is the rub. The dates were modified.


Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 19 May 2014 at 12:05
i must mention that not every player has a forum account so they will have based their end date as the one shown in the Tournament Link in game.


Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 19 May 2014 at 13:25
Hi everyone,

Just to be clear, the end date of the tournament has been fixed in the code - and on the official tournament rules thread as midnight Saturday - since the tournament began.

For one reason or another, it was mistakenly presented as a day earlier on the ingame tournament page, and has now been brought inline with the official rules post on the forum.

Of course, many apologies for the tournament page snafu, but it was always correct on the official rules post.

Regards,

SC


Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 19 May 2014 at 18:42
Thanks SC. It is a bit off putting to have been looking at the in game tournament link and sending troops based on the time indicated there. I am sure I am not the only one that has used that time as the official end time. Well what can one do. Split the difference and have the tourney end at 11:59 on Sat. lol


Posted By: Finwë Aldaríon
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 08:17
Is it only me or the tourney region attacking page has stopped recording the attacks a day before (like set at the wrong end date?).

Last attack recorded in Middle Kingdom is on 23 May at 23.58.05 by mCrow .. I attacked and hold the square on the 24th, but there is no record of it!

Unfortunately, I deleted the reports before I saw the bug :(


-------------




Posted By: Twist
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 10:19
all squares have stopped reporting battles at midnight last night  23:59:59, 23/05/14

not one square has a battle listed afterwards... 

I had several hits on Turalia from 04:04 to 04:45, all system mails are still in mailbox.... yet nothing listed on the tourney page


Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 10:27
It would appear that the coding supports my original point about the end date.


Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 13:20
It appears that the tournament casualties/battle outcomes stopped recording at midnight Friday.  

However, the "possession" totals (ie who is in possession of a square) is continuing to record accurately, so the ultimate outcome of each square (and overall alliance winners) is correct - it's just that we don't get combat and casualty stats for the last 24hrs.  Apologies for this, but it's pretty immaterial, and we'll try and backload the last 24hrs of stats for those who are interested.

Regards,

SC


Posted By: Twist
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 14:57
very interested, if possible.... no chance of my alliance winning anything, but the position we did achieve I view as a success considering this was our alliance's tourney debut :)

added to us being one of the most peaceful alliances, I'm proud of all our members and how we performed in this tournament.... if we climbed yet another placed before the deadline, I'd consider that in itself as a victory




Posted By: Rhino70
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 15:56
I don't see it as immaterial. It would be nice to see other players loses and stats when your not on the square. It would be nice to have one tourney in this game that doesn't have any bugs or issues with it. It seems you pass it off as immaterial because you can't or won't fix the issue. I for one am getting a bit tired of these types of situations in this game. Bugs and player issues not getting addressed or passed off as oh well sorry, lets move on. Nothing to see here.


Posted By: Evae
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 18:32
I am in complete agreement with Twist and Rhino, this is hardly immaterial information to those of us who are involved.  This is my first tourney, Night Squires is a training alliance.  There is much maneuvering and strategy that goes into the final hours of this tournament.  It would be VERY useful to our players and me to be able to evaluate the final 24 hours of action.


Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 19:18
Evae, if you are fighting on a square, don't you have battle reports?

I don't see this as a big deal. It's a minor glitch, although this sort of thing should be thoroughly tested BEFORE deployment.


Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 20:56
Participants do, indeed, have battle reports - with a lot more information in them than the tournament summary page.  

The tournament page summary was simply a nice way of presenting all that information to all players and to allow those not participating in the tournament to at least experience it vicariously; however, I certainly recall when we first introduced the tournament stats page many people were up in arms about us "making their strategies public", and "making scouts irrelevant" - and we received many petitions to remove the information.  

Now we clearly have the reverse.  Next time we'll save everyone (including ourselves) the headache of having things accessible and transparent - and simply make the next tournament entirely information-less in public, until we announce the winner at the end.  This would also have the side effect of encouraging participants to share information (and possibly mis-information), and might lead to some much more interesting diplomatic strategies at the meta-level as well as from a micro-scouting perspective.

For the avoidance of doubt, this lack of the last 24hrs of information hasn't changed *anything* in the tournament whatsoever. The armies that were arriving and fighting have arrived and fought, and if you were involved in the battle, you'd have much more informative and informational stats in your mailbox.  As I said earlier, I'll try and backfill the information, so don't worry - you can still use it for training purposes.

I'd also point out that everything was working entirely, before deployment, and for the first 28 days of the tournament.  Time is, of course, the factor here - and it's hard to test time in advance.

Regards,

SC



Posted By: Evae
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 21:12
Well, no need to get huffy about it.  Things were working, they ceased to work - from my perspective as a participant in my first Illy tournament.  One gets battle reports WHILE one has troops on the square, when one's armies are distroyed, one ceases to get reports.  If one is trying to keep track of actions on the disputed sq it is nice to have the information.  If the devs wish to make new rules for future tourneys, that is certainly their prerogative as is evidently their decision to shake up the tourney in play by making some of the parameters shift during the duration.

Cheers!



Posted By: Cuchullain
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 21:19
GM SC

Please don't!

When you're in a big military alliance with loads of troops to throw at the square it's great. When you are a small training alliance hoping to take a square and relying on the information you have, i.e. last battle report and the stats from the square, it is really important.

I have had the pleasure of winning a square with some of the most brilliant and determined trainees I have had the enjoyment of teaching, we were blind for the last 24 hours but fortunately we won.


Thank you and all the others for sorting this out! It has been too long and our members have loved every minute of it.

Please can we get back to having these bi-annually.

Thanks

Cuch


Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 21:50
@SC: for a test sim, I might run 4 days. That should catch both beginning, middle, and end glitches.

I find the fighting summary to be mostly useful. It's really the force summary that's useful for occupiers.


Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 21:51
Originally posted by Evae Evae wrote:

Well, no need to get huffy about it.  

Huffiness doesn't come into it!  I'm just pointing out that we should probably be focusing on fixing bugs *before* putting new functionality, reports and whatnot into the game, which often just ends up biting us in the behind, as it has done here (albeit a very, very minor bite of little-to-no consequence.  Call it a "nip" if you like !)

Originally posted by Evae Evae wrote:

... as is evidently their decision to shake up the tourney in play by making some of the parameters shift during the duration.

If you're referring to the tournament end date - as I've already explained, no parameters changed.

There was a single digit date typo on the tournament page - but the official tournament rules page always had the correct date on it.  Amending a typo is not the same as changing the rules of a tournament.  The rules stayed the same throughout, as posted on the rules post on the rules thread in the tournament forum.

Regards,

SC


Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 24 May 2014 at 23:26
I do hope you're not serious about reconsidering posting tournament status in future tournaments.  As you noted, many people enjoy "watching" the tournament squares at least as much as participating in the tournament itself.

I hope that you were just using hyperbole to make a point -- as perhaps were some others in this thread.  I think most Illyrians are willing to tolerate the occasional snafu in the name of more fun for everyone.


Posted By: lethargic0N3
Date Posted: 25 May 2014 at 00:13
Originally posted by GM Stormcrow GM Stormcrow wrote:

Huffiness doesn't come into it!  I'm just pointing out that we should probably be focusing on fixing bugs *before* putting new functionality, reports and whatnot into the game


Something the community has been pointing out for years...


Posted By: Daefis
Date Posted: 25 May 2014 at 00:53
I don't understand how a tournament that was a simple paste and repeat of one that worked before didn't work this time... really feels like a step backwards.
I do appreciate that the dev's priorities are elsewhere these days but the lack of interest here is a bit sad.


-------------
http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/37796" rel="nofollow">


Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 25 May 2014 at 01:49
Originally posted by Daefis Daefis wrote:

I don't understand how a tournament that was a simple paste and repeat of one that worked before didn't work this time... really feels like a step backwards.
I do appreciate that the dev's priorities are elsewhere these days but the lack of interest here is a bit sad.

To try and explain.

In the 5 man-days of work it took to get this tournament together (please don't think it's a "simple paste and repeat" - you have literally no idea of what you're talking about)...

... when the specific dates were typed in by a member of the dev team, in two of the 15 code modules involved (modules from recording military outcomes; to suspending diplomatic relationships on specific squares on the map; to suspending alliance quitting / kicking when a player is on the tournament square; to monitoring changes in ultimate possession of tournament squares by battle, by diplo messenger, by expiring occupation orders; to displaying past combats on the website; to etc etc etc)....

... during this fairly massive undertaking, one of the dev team unfortunately pressed the number 4 instead of the number 5 on his keyboard, to produce the number "24" (of May) instead of the number "25" (of May).

Nothing to do with lack of interest, and nothing to do with other priorities - simply a typo that was carried across from the tournament end date on the ingame tournament page, further onto the "combat logging" code.

We do, of course, sincerely, honestly and humbly apologise; we are - shocking to admit - human, and we, too, make mistakes.  

Obviously, according to many of the petitions we've received, we clearly deliberately rigged the tournament in favour of [insert name of alliance that narrowly beat us here].  I especially enjoy the petitions accusing us of lying about changing the tournament end date, even when the rules post is clearly available on third party websites outside of our control, with datestamps in April. 

I enjoy tournaments, and I hope other people do.  And yes - like you all - I wish we could have an entirely bug-free tournament.  But if the only bug in this tournament is that combats on the very last day of 29 days of fighting weren't displayed in realtime on the tournament page... then I rather think that's a success, myself - and I'm genuinely sad if you think that running a large tournament with a minor error on the last day is actually a symptom of our neglect.  It's not.  It was a typo; nothing more and nothing less.

Regards,

SC


Posted By: Mr Damage
Date Posted: 25 May 2014 at 06:20
FYI Stormcrow, not all battle reports came through properly after the board stopped updating. I had 1 maybe 2 reports that gave me no results, no casualties either way and yet I cleared a sq. Arran was the sq. And it was right after 23:59hrs I think. I am not complaing, just thought it was useful infirmation.


Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 25 May 2014 at 07:40
Originally posted by Mr Damage Mr Damage wrote:

FYI Stormcrow, not all battle reports came through properly after the board stopped updating. I had 1 maybe 2 reports that gave me no results, no casualties either way and yet I cleared a sq. Arran was the sq. And it was right after 23:59hrs I think. I am not complaing, just thought it was useful infirmation.

That is very useful information, Mr D - tyvm.

If you can add more info (maybe on a petition if it's private stuff) with details such as your army name, city sent from, arrival time etc I can seek it out.

I think there may be some sort of "overflow" error whereby if the combat report email gets too large (or if a single variable in it hits an undealt-with NULL value)... then it simply doesn't send, and I'd love to track this one down; although it's rare, you're not the first to report this hapenning.  

If my hypothesis is valid, it's most likely to manifest when there are tons of defenders on a square, with lots of armies, divisions, commanders and mixed troops.  And one of the bloodiest squares on the culmination day of a tournament is probably an ideal candidate for this analysis! Smile

So all info you can impart (either here or in a petition) would be super-useful to track this one down.

Many thanks in advance,

SC

EDIT: I should quickly add that this is in no way related to the cessation of combat report logging on the last day; it's unrelated - but it's an outstanding bug due to "maximum participant force sizing" that I think might apply here.


Posted By: Mr Damage
Date Posted: 25 May 2014 at 11:07
Shall look for the report(s) and post them here or in petition(hope I didn't delete). 

It is either this report or one immediately before it (which I may have deleted). I am positive the sq was occupied, I stated so on GC at the time as I was online and people were talking about the casualties not updating. The other report stated Victorious battle against...........and listed no casualties for either side.
 

Sent By:System
Received By:Mr Damage [G!]
Date:24 May 2014 02:20
Attackers arrive, unopposed, at this location.

Heavily wooded terrain spells difficulty for ranged units and cavalry. Infantry units find they have a large advantage here.

Like the attackers, these thick forests do not provide much assistance for anyone except your footsoldiers, who take great pleasure in the extra cover afforded to them.

Attackers:Unit:Quantity:Casualties:Survivors:
Commander: KnightKnights Knight1Damaged for 0, 600 health remains.
Troops:Knights Knights515505155


Defenders:Unit:Quantity:Casualties:Survivors:




Print Page | Close Window

Forum Software by Web Wiz Forums® version 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Copyright ©2001-2019 Web Wiz Ltd. - https://www.webwiz.net