[VC] Game Stability Fixes, TGIF Edition. 2/24

KANO/APPS players, we recognize the past couple months have been rather bumpy with outages that have been out of our control along with some oversights. We are starting to put process in place to ensure the quality that players have come to expect from KANO/APPS. As we grow our team we must change the way we have pushed code in the past. We are putting process into place that allows us to directly hear from our players (Ideas board for example) and have been steadily working on producing fixes and changes that directly result from Ideas suggestions. I also wanted to take this opportunity to let the community know we'll be making changes to the forum structure that will benefit you more (dedicated support area) and a community blog. The blog will be for developer updates so you can see exactly what we at KANO/APPS are doing on a weekly basis to improve the games you love. This is an exciting time! Thanks for your patience and continued support.

To that end, here are some changes made by development this week...

• Misc back-end changes made for efficiency and game speed.
• hi5 Transfer plan and development in preparation for release next week.
• Informational email sent to all hi5 players we have emails for.
• New home page limited item display (increased height by 95px)
• Moved bounty cost increase from cache to persistent storage, next cache failure will not reset bounty cost.
• [VC] World boss schedule bug with Nidhogg Dragon. We will be looking to apply fixes / credits for those impacted next week.
• Cache server failure Feb 23, we are investigating cause, we may have to perform an upgrade to servers but are hoping that we can do that after we get rival list info over to persistent storage as to not impact players.
• FB Credits disabled inside the native Facebook mobile app.
• New Social Feed filters for (Top Squad / Inner Circle / Familia) Yours and Theirs
• Inbox - long links/text were pushing the [reply] [delete] buttons off screen. These links/text now wraps

Today, we have rolled out a change that was a long time in the making, partially aimed at improving stability but also to stabilize game balance and achieve feature parity with other games in the space.
We have removed the ability to “sell all” on empires. There are a few reasons for this change, selling properties can dramatically drop a players’ bounty and have many negative effects including…

• Intentional, rapid over bountying situations which was brought to light in VC this week. A player may be killed and placed on the bounty list again but players still attack using an expired bounty attack link from the previous bounty. This brought out a race condition that we have not seen before that auto-froze some players.
• Reducing bounty cost intentional to help other players get the “hitlist xxx “ achievements.
• Should a situation arise where there is malicious, unauthorized access to another players’ account, there have been cases where some players have had mass sell-offs due to this. This is a top support issue, difficult to deal with and resolve.
• This feature was slated to be removed in 2010 but due to the complexities involved it had been tabled as it’s not a feature used very often. We have since picked it up and finished this removal.

Selling properties is by far the least recurring action in the game today, but as always, if players have feedback on this change, please post in the Ideas board. If someone else posts it first please do not duplicate efforts. Vote up in support or comment on the idea.

It was important that we get this feature in before the weekend to avoid anymore mass sell-offs causing auto-freezing on players that try to pick up the large bounty. In light of recent stability issues we hope this will be welcome news for all.

 

Deltan
some are good some not so good the making of the limited item display looks great but has messed up the home page as now we can no longer scroll down the page and still see our game info ie health as the pics are now to big so we have to scroll down the page now

the now sell of empire needs to come back its our empire our in come we should be able to use it whenever we want to , all the other games i play on facebook still have the buy and sell options

 

Originally posted by my in a thread pertaining LCN...I am lost in this forum...sorry!


WTH!!!

Uptil now it's been capitalism all the way...and now it's communism, all of a sudden!!!

It's MY properties and I should be allowed to buy and sell them as I please!!! PERIOD!!!

(Are you to put a limit on how much real money is allowed to spend also? I do not think so!)

GET A GRIP!

There are several situations where you might want to sell off properties. One reason is the chance to "go out with a bang"...sending a final message to the players that for a long period of time have been your opponents...this is the main reason I am opposed of taking this ability away.

 

Sell Button

I agree with Peter. We bought our fake empire with our fake coin and should have the opportunity to sell said fake Empire. But, as soon as this ability is restored I am selling all and bountying til I run out of money. Them I am leaving the game. So please restore as soon as possible. As an incentive you will not have to put up with my witty comments anymore.

 

THIS COMPLETE BS! and hiding this change amongst of bunch of other crap is another all time low for Kano.


Multiple repeat bounties have happened from the very beginning of the games and have never been an issue.

Selling off properties have many legitimate purposes which have been employed since the beginning of these games...to take it away now is completely unfair to all players . New players will never be able to employ these strategies that everyone else has enjoyed all this time and veteran players who have made regular use of this feature...just got the rug pulled out from under them.

Who cares if players are using it to get achievements....its part of the game and players have been doing it forever....to take it away now cheats the newest of players out of doing the same everyone else had the opportunity to do. If u guys r going to use this as an excuse....i would imagine that were in for a lot more changes ...eh? because there r many ways to work your system for diff achievements


If someone gave a player access to their account ...and then that player gets mad and sells off property...THEN SO BE IT....GIVING SOMEONE ACCESS TO THEIR ACCOUNT IS ILLEGAL ANYWAYS AND THEY DESERVE WHAT THEY GET. Besides...just as Kano has said many times in the past....players should photo shoot their inventories and empire in case of such an event.


Lets get real here...the overwhelming majority has offered negative feedback to u removing this option......or let me guess....the mythical overwhelming silent majority who only writes in to support are in favor of this? How convenient once again.

R u sure that u didnt remove this option because long time players that have amassed huge fortunes and astronomical amounts of empire r leaving your games in droves and u dont want them selling everything off and transferring it via the hit list basically empowering another players account essentially for free...cant have that now can we? THATS WHAT THE LOTTERY IS FOR! Imbalance is a bad thing....unless Kano gets to make a buck off it that is. Players that have amassed this empire through length of time played or real monies spent ....deserve to do with them as they wish. ANYBODY THAT THINKS FOR ONE SECOND THAT KANO IS ALL ABOUT ITS PLAYERS NEED TO HAVE THEIR HEADS EXAMINED............ONCE AGAIN PLAYERS WHO HAVE GIVEN KANO MORE THAN ANYONE GET THE SHAFT....if players want to leave the game let em go out with a bang and a lil dignity!

 

Yeah...that seemed to work out fine, did it not?! Of course, I am referring to crash which just occurred.

What's next? Should you perhaps take away the possibility to buy property as well?

 

http://forums.kanoapps.com/showthread.php?6372-Allow-us-to-sell-property-8.9 Please vote

 

Ok logged in earlier to another unplanned maintenance, my stalker rival who has so far attacked me over 14,000 times is now showing as having zero attacks against me and should I wish to use the limited amount of counters that can be put on him, I have to pay top whack again in gold to do so. For the 2nd time in as many days - once ok then it's understandable but for the 2nd time in 48 hours...........? :0(