Use System Messages to announce Maintenance

[Risen Malchiah]

For the third time now, I was in the middle of writing a lengthy message in-game only for it to be interrupted by the server going down. (Once I was in the middle of a fight.)

PLEASE use some sort of announcement system, whether it be a message (like when Support responds to an open ticket) or a 5-minute warning in chat, or a simple notification to let users know they have a few minutes to finish what they're doing. Perhaps also make the exclamation points for a server message a different color as well to catch our attention.

This communication between the game and the players is vital. Thank you!

 

[DeletedUser3507]

Yes sorely needed....

 

[SoggyShorts]

@Risen Malchiah
It's nowhere near a solution, but I always use notepad, then copy paste. I've been burned too many times by a server crash to write long emails in game now.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

Worse, getting the message your email cannot contain xxx and then your entire email is gone
You dont get a chance to modify it, just 15 min of typing gone

 

[DeletedUser2824]

Yeah, I type everything out in Word first because of that. All in all, I think there needs to be a better messaging system implemented all together. Definitely a real copy & paste feature, a way to archive important letters, a way to pin certain messages for the fellowship to view, to name a few. The fellowship chat feature may be better than nothing, but is very limited. Most people are having to go off sight to do any real chatting and sharing, but that is it's own problem, as some people don't use certain social media sights, so finding one place where everyone can gather is a pain. Why should we have to go off-sight to begin with anyway?

 

[SoggyShorts]

Why should we have to go off-sight to begin with anyway?

I pay $10 a month to host a site for my FS. That is exactly $10 more than I spend on the game itself. How much sense does that make?
I remember games having a better chat and message system nearly 20 years ago.

 

[Sir Squirrel]

Yeah I agree the chat and messaging features were in need of an upgrade the day the game came out, and now are so old there is no coder still around that knows how to work on them.

 

[DeletedUser2824]

Hey, thanks guys! Your likes just gave me enough to get another trophy. I now have the deceptive title of well-known member.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

@CrazyWizard I'm assuming you're referring to when the game senses a message containing a URL to someone outside the fellowship? That's the only time I've encountered that. It may have even been to your site actually.

I know the message system needs a drastic overhaul and that's been suggested here on the forums before as well. I was just frustrated and posted this thread while waiting for the server maintenance to be done. This would be something simple to implement compared to overhauling the entire messaging part of the game.

 

[Deleted User - 1178646]

or anything that looks like its refering to a link, very annoying and pointles.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Bumping this because it just happened again.

Maintenance without warning while in the middle of moving stuff around. Fortunately, I just finished a battle a few minutes prior to this or I'd be even more annoyed.

A simple notification or chat msg with a 5 min warning would suffice.

 

[DeletedUser9049]

Yes. This is really needed. I wish we had some kind of "save draft" thing on our in-game messages like we have here on the forums.

 

[mucksterme]

Bumping this because it just happened again.

Maintenance without warning while in the middle of moving stuff around. Fortunately, I just finished a battle a few minutes prior to this or I'd be even more annoyed.

A simple notification or chat msg with a 5 min warning would suffice.

Yes
and to be clear, in the chat box not the message cue
because chat can be seen from the world map

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Every time this happens, I come back to this thread.

The server just went down for the 1.35 update and I needed like 2 seconds to queue up some troops before going to sleep. An in-game message announcing the server was being reset in X minutes would have made me move a little quicker and saved me from having to wait. I don't know how long this will take.

 

[DeletedUser9469]

I pay $10 a month to host a site for my FS. That is exactly $10 more than I spend on the game itself. How much sense does that make?
I remember games having a better chat and message system nearly 20 years ago.

There is actually a very easy solution already in place... They just need to set it up... We are using it right now... It would be very easy for them to set up an automatic forum for Fellowships that runs a query to find out which fellowship you are in and then direct you to the right forum list. I am sure they have something set up like this for Mods and such.

It is ridiculous that anyone should have to spend money to host their fellowship when a system is already in place that is not being utilized. It is also ridiculous that anyone who wants to have a fellowship forum is unable to do so without going off site (I mean technically we already go off site to access the forums here, but at least it is linked).

 

[Nixster]

@Risen Malchiah
It's nowhere near a solution, but I always use notepad, then copy paste. I've been burned too many times by a server crash to write long emails in game now.

How do you do that? I keep a growth chart for our fellowship but it wont let me copy and paste into a "circular" message. I just lost 15 mintes of work by hitting the wrong button and came here to see if this was an issue for anyone else.

 

[SoggyShorts]

How do you do that? I keep a growth chart for our fellowship but it wont let me copy and paste into a "circular" message. I just lost 15 mintes of work by hitting the wrong button and came here to see if this was an issue for anyone else.

type up your message in notepad,
Ctrl-A
Ctrl-C
open circular message in game
click in body of message
Ctrl-V

If that's not working, something is wrong

 

[Risen Malchiah]

And to copy text *from* an in-game message, right click on the message. Select settings and then select cancel. The text will then be highlighted and you can use Ctrl-C to grab the text. (In Chrome, for some reason, you must first drag the mouse across the text as if you were highlighting it even though it doesnt appear to be until you do the other steps.)

As a side note, it appears that the next patch of the game will give us an icon to open a window with server messages. Perhaps they will include maintenance info.