Beltalowda
New member
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Games that complete/resolve within the Steam weekly maintenance window (~30 min, beginning at 5 PM CST).Clearly the server was still up during this time frame, but the statistics and match recording servers apparently were not.
If this is going to be how it is at launch, then you need to add SOMETHING to address this because, as a player, this is an unacceptable product behavior.
NOTE: This problem also exists when there is unplanned maintenance.
USER STORY
As a Deadlock player I just joined a match where, after we won our lane and rotated, the enemy team rotated with four players and knocked down our lane guardian from 100% to 0% in less than 30 seconds (once they assembled) because the matchmaking stacked heavy fire rate and pusher heroes on the other team (Seven, Infernus, Warden, Mo & Krill, Paradox, Wraith) against our team (Sinclair, Yamato, Lash, Bebop, I don't remember the other two tbh).We lost a lane and their Warden rotated to Green pushing us back to Guardian, but they were unable to get Troopers there, with the lack of Warden pressure in his vacated lane we took that Guardian and those players rotated to Green. After a protracted and large team fight, we eventually took Green Guardian but also lost Yellow in the process.
Their Infernus was already fed at this point with 7 kills and their Warden had 6 I think. About 25 min into the game we were pretty behind, by about 30k Souls, but we actually organized and began playing as a team, and systematically took down their Guardians and then their Walkers, claimed the Soul Urn, and after a near team wipe for the Urn + a Base Guardian attempt the enemy team took out Mid Boss.
As the first Mid Boss engagement audio cue sounded I had about 10 seconds left on my respawn timer as Sinclair.
I respawned and high tailed it to Mid Boss using Zip Line Speed Boost on Broadway getting to the stairwells just as they defeated it.
I waited 3 seconds, peeking down the holes in the ceilings then dove and cast Rabbit as I fell and began charging my Heavy Melee.
Their Paradox was standing on the Rejuvenation Crystal and Parried right as the Rabbit cast went off and my Heavy Melee attack was parried.
Thankfully I had purchased Superior Duration earlier and was able to get off a second Heavy Melee just as their entire team came out of Rabbit and one of their other players around the periphery that wasn't caught in my cast Heavy Melee'd, but mine connected first, claiming the Rejuvenation buff for my team.
Pandaemonium ensued, and my team rejoiced as I cast Cold Front and aimed my Spectral Assistant towards the stairs, their entire team on my tail.
I survived after being shot with a quick charge Kinetic Carbine, mantled up the railings up top, cast Heroic Aura active and barely made it out alive.
This was a turning point for us and we went on to systematically pick apart their defenses and win the match.
I bought Debuff Remover to even stand a chance against Infernus' way overpowered burn passive build up and provided the initiation my team was missing from the outset of the game based on the poor matchmaking team compositions we were given.
Winning this game felt really good.
However, seeing that I couldn't commend my teammates or the enemy team, or follow up and add these teammates or enemies as friends, or even see the replay, game stats, and that it was as if the match didn't even exist was a HUGE let down.
As a player this feels awful.
PLAYER IMPACT
Completing a game only to find that it DOESN'T EXIST is infuriating, this is especially true when:- Games can last 30 min to an hour
- You lose lane but make a comeback as your team learns to pull together
- You actually win that game
IDEAL SOLUTION (PREFERRED)
- Display an in-game message that match history data and statistics will be delayed due to maintenance or outage.
- Servers that are pending shut down for weekly or unplanned maintenance while games are pending resolution need to log their data SOMEWHERE for later ingestion and processing. If you have to, use a 3rd party service or allow the server instances to write to a know location. Each match already has a unique identifier, so each physical server should be able to easily maintain these data. This is how POP/SMTP email servers work and there's no technically limiting reason this can't be done for Steam games running on Steam servers in general. Even if you are using Azure or AWS, this can be done, their services essentially never go down.
- When the game networks/services come back up, part of the start up process needs to be ingesting these match data that were saved.
- Network bandwidth and disk/cloud storage space can be conserved by compressing the replay files using 7z. In testing on my largest replay file, I was seeing a 45% reduction in file size. This is likely due to the fact that these replay files have a lot of repetitive data, and it appears that they are using the same protobuf format as dota2 replays.
POOR SOLUTIONS
- Display an in-game message letting players know that the game will not be scores and that they can leave without a penalty, then DO NOT PENALIZE THEM.
- Display an in-game message that shows up before or during the weekly maintenance downtime letting players entering the queue that the game results may not be recorded if it resolves during the maintenance window.
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