2000 Aborted quest limit per day

[Johnny B. Goode]

I'm not one for arguing by analogy because the analogy tends to become the focus*, but in a comparison of CF to some random.trasnport.mode, wouldn't the equai of Abort cap be distance cap?

First, it's not CF but RQ looping that is being analogized. And speed is more relevant than distance because RQ looping increases the speed at which your city can progress in relation to "walking". You can still go the same distance, it just takes longer to get there.

 

[Snownothere]

A suggestion, instead of a hard cap at 2000 aborted quests, test having a captcha at every 500 aborted quests to slow down the suspected bots. Another suggestion would be if keeping the cap at 2000, get rid of the separate clicks on birthday quest for supplies and coin.

 

[Emberguard]

No indication if CMT is seeing this, no indication that if they are they will pass the unrest on to the devs.

They are keeping an eye on it and passing on any constructive feedback. I asked them about this when the thread first popped up and have been keeping in touch with them on the matter.

 

[hajiboy]

I disagree with the 2K abort limit. Active players in my guild run into the 2K limit all the time. Next thing you know, Inno will stop allowing you to contribute to GBs after you've made so many contributions, because players are making too many FPs with a high level Arc.

Is the 2K limit based on the number of clicks since 24 hrs ago in your city or is it within a certain timeframe, like 12 am to 11:59 pm server time?

How do you know how close you've come to the limit? I certainly would like to know if I am near, so I can wrap things up before I hit the limit, instead of in the middle of an RQ loop. Inno should at least have a counter in the RQ window.

 

[RazorbackPirate]

On the UK server the explanation for the RQ limit was given as in response to an issue with server loading. Perfectly plausible to my technical mind (30+ years designing computer software) and Inno are quite justified to take steps to prevent server overloading.

This is the part I see very few addressing. Most every argument on why and how the current limit should be removed or modified, fails to do anything to prevent server overloading.

It also sounds like some folks are very inefficient in the way they execute their RQs. Aborting everything but one for a while, then everything but another one for a while. My strategy has always been to have two I'm completing in the slots, then do a UBQ every time it passes by. If I were in an age that had more RQs I could complete, I would endeavor to complete all I could each time around. Simple time management from my end, I hate clicking abort.

Someone earlier suggested localizing the abort process, a possible solution I thought about myself. It's an alternate to the long asked for requests to either allow users to choose which RQs they want in rotation, and repeating the last quest completed until aborted. The last two have been suggested multiple times and submitted to Inno at least once.

I'm sure if laymen can think up these possible solutions, Inno did too. Two of them have been in the suggestion pile for years. Yet they didn't deal with this any of those ways. While they solve the problem of server overload, they don't solve the problem of unlimited coins and supplies, a coy but accurate way to describe the other issue Inno stated was at the root of this change.

We all know that unlimited coins and supplies means unlimited goods and FPs. I've heard many arguments why unlimited goods and FPs are good for the player, I've yet to hear anyone opine on how it's good for the game. Even without the data Inno sees, I can't imagine unlimited anything is good for the game.

I think 2000 aborts is a bit draconian. Too harsh a solution for an issue entirely caused by Inno. I know there will be some that no number will satisfy, but something higher. 2000 aborts, when translated to actual RQ completions is entirely too low. How about one of the above solutions to prevent server overload, then 1000 completions?

 

[Algona]

They are keeping an eye on it and passing on any constructive feedback. I asked them about this when the thread first popped up and have been keeping in touch with them on the matter.

Outstanding. It's nice to know they talk to someone and read the forum.

First, it's not CF but RQ looping that is being analogized. And speed is more relevant than distance because RQ looping increases the speed at which your city can progress in relation to "walking". You can still go the same distance, it just takes longer to get there.

Thanks for helping demonstrate my point:

the analogy tends to become the focus

 

[Agent327]

A suggestion, instead of a hard cap at 2000 aborted quests, test having a captcha at every 500 aborted quests to slow down the suspected bots. Another suggestion would be if keeping the cap at 2000, get rid of the separate clicks on birthday quest for supplies and coin.

What suspected bots? Where did they say they suspect the use of bots?

 

[Kranyar the Mysterious]

Is the 2K limit based on the number of clicks since 24 hrs ago in your city or is it within a certain timeframe, like 12 am to 11:59 pm server time?

24 hours, resets at midnight server time.

How do you know how close you've come to the limit? I certainly would like to know if I am near, so I can wrap things up before I hit the limit, instead of in the middle of an RQ loop. Inno should at least have a counter in the RQ window.

You don't. There is no way to know ahead of time unless you keep track yourself.

 

[timrwild]

Someone earlier suggested localizing the abort process, a possible solution I thought about myself. It's an alternate to the long asked for requests to either allow users to choose which RQs they want in rotation, and repeating the last quest completed until aborted. The last two have been suggested multiple times and submitted to Inno at least once.

This would solve much of the problem. If another big part of the issue is the UBP, where you hit up the server once for coins and again for supplies, add the option to "pay all" for different quests. Other quests like the daily quests have multiple steps where you have to pay different things. I understand some quests where you can pay one item right away but still need to collect another resource, especially for newer players, but even just to make the UX better, a "pay all" button would be very welcome. That would remove one of the three server tasks for that quest, a savings of up to 33% (not actually 33% since the server still has to interact with both coins and supplies) for the UBP alone, which seems to be the main quest that people are looping over and over again.

Those are two easy solutions that would cut down tons of server time for Inno.
1. Make aborted quests a local task and not hit up the server for those actions.
2. Add a "pay all" button for the UBP.

Where I'm at in Industrial, there are 5 quests to loop through to get back to the UBP. That's 5 server contacts, plus "pay coins," "pay supplies," and collecting the reward. That's 8 total server interactions, and with two changes it can be dropped to 2 interactions. Pay Coins/Supplies, and Collect Reward. Everything else is done locally. That's up to 75% savings in server costs for people who are just looping the UBP, let alone all the other quests that people skip over on their daily collections. If you're collecting coins/supplies, it would be close to 83% savings. Even if they still refuse to up the limit on questing, continuing to do things the way they currently are (needlessly burning through server resources) is absolute insanity.

 

[RazorbackPirate]

But then what's the answer to exploit of unlimited coins and supplies, the other issue Inno is looking to fix with the cap?

 

[Coach Zuck]

First of all, the way many things are coded in FOE is crap. There's no way around that. RQs are the most obvious place, but it shows up tons of other places as well. Every time you abort a quest, it hits up Inno servers. Has anyone asked why? There's a very short list of RQs in each era. We all know them very well. Sometimes when my internet is slow, it takes 10-15 seconds for the next quest to show up after I abort one. Sometimes I have to reload the entire game to get a second RQ to show up after aborting one. That's absolutely insane. The game knows what quests come next. When you abort a quest, just show the next one. There's absolutely no reason to hit up Inno servers. One you interact with a quest, fine, hit up Inno servers to take away coins/supplies, whatever. I don't care. But when I'm skipping over the same 5 quests over and over, there's no way that should be taxing servers anywhere. That one change would have a significant impact on server load. All those operations that are trivial, push them to the client side. It's that easy. (To be clear, I'm not complaining about slow internet speeds. I'm saying there are game elements that ping the server when there is no reason to do so.)

Lets give this guy a frikken medal. Because we all know they're the most valuable resource in the game and a worthy reward.

 

[timrwild]

Lets give this guy a frikken medal

Why thank you, kind sir. I most certainly don't have 18 million other medals stashed away for safe keeping.

 

[timrwild]

But then what's the answer to exploit of unlimited coins and supplies, the other issue Inno is looking to fix with the cap?

As I noted, even if they keep the cap on aborted quests, it would save tons of server resources for Inno right off the bat. Secondly, I don't think we've heard officially that the sole reason is to keep people from exploiting coins/supplies. (Again, that would help this conversation greatly if they would just say what the reason is.) In the post from last month, they mentioned an impact on servers. They need to save server resources, and they decided that going after people people who "exploit" quests (features they put in the game for us to use) is the most convenient option. That's the best reason we can come up with until Inno quits hiding and makes an actual statement about it.

 

[RazorbackPirate]

As I noted, even if they keep the cap on aborted quests, it would save tons of server resources for Inno right off the bat. Secondly, I don't think we've heard officially that the sole reason is to keep people from exploiting coins/supplies. (Again, that would help this conversation greatly if they would just say what the reason is.) In the post from last month, they mentioned an impact on servers. They need to save server resources, and they decided that going after people people who "exploit" quests (features they put in the game for us to use) is the most convenient option. That's the best reason we can come up with until Inno quits hiding and makes an actual statement about it.

They mentioned both. The exploit of unlimited coins and supplies and the impact that has on the server. Two separate issues, inextricably linked.

 

[golddog128]

This is just an awful limit to impose on players. How bout a compromise of 4k or 6k? 2k aborts allowed?! Wow just wow, let us filter the useless quests ... this is absolutely crazy it is our fault inno put a bunch of useless quests that must be aborted, let us pick which ones we get!!

 

[Emberguard]

How is using a normal feature of the game abuse?

Disclaimer: Anything in this post will be said as a player and has no reflection whatsoever on how Inno views Recurring Quests

Personally I could see an argument for it if someone is skipping all quests purely to get to recurring quests, not to just skip the side quests that the player wouldn't be able to do within a reasonable amount of time. Recurring quests only ever appear when you've run out of quests to do and should currently have more quests available then is showing. Which to me indicates recurring quests are meant to be a temporary intermediary function, not the main function of quests as your sole focus. If you manually went through every quest you could instead of skipping them it'd take a lot longer to get through the quests to then be able to do recurring quests.

While I could imagine a response to that going "well if that's the problem why not just remove abort from side quests?", I wouldn't want side quests to have the abort function removed on that basis. Reason being if it were done you may end up losing access to recurring quests altogether as some quests are incredibly difficult (like "have X population available" as an exact number) or would require you to age up if you followed through with that particular side quest at your current progress.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

No there has been no evidence provided that Inno did this for bots just posts by people making that conclusion on what is no evidence. Inno's post didn't mention bots so you don't get to decide that was their main motivation just because you say so.

 

[Tannerite2]

No there has been no evidence provided that Inno did this for bots just posts by people making that conclusion on what is no evidence. Inno's post didn't mention bots so you don't get to decide that was their main motivation just because you say so.

So Inno just decided to get rid of a style of gameplay that's been around for years? And they don't care about people using macros?

 

[Emberguard]

Inno hasn't stated anything publicly in regards to what applies to this specific change and what doesn't. So it's a bit of a moot point on why the change was done unless you're trying to address how the changes effect a particular concern or how better to address the change from that perspective

 

[RazorbackPirate]

So Inno just decided to get rid of a style of gameplay that's been around for years? And they don't care about people using macros?

Not even close to accurate. But I love the flame fanning.