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Well, except I don't know how 'valuable' her time is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

More to the point, she should ignore this guy altogether and stop wasting her valuable time crafting public-relation-disaster emails to non-customers.

Good point, she isn't doing any good with her posts, just causing more damage to their image. I do understand the frustration though since I'm sure they are getting slammed.

Back off track...I guess we never figured out who/how the view counter was tinkered with on the reference thread. We just got to within a thousand or so views in this thread and the reference thread jumped another 3500.

Quote:

Originally Posted by digamma

it's the council of the dark jedi. they are actively working to unbalance the force. Especially JeeberD...his midichloriens are off the scale! *

*where force=board & midicholoriens=posts

Quote:

Originally Posted by digamma

The Dark Council should really look into this. The reference thread started around 55,000 when the thread started and each time this thread has gotten close, it jumped up to some ridiculous number. Someone please put a stop to this madness.

The reference thread was gaining like 70 views everytime i refreshed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevew

The reference thread was gaining like 70 views everytime i refreshed.

i just reloaded the page and the reference thread went from 91,568 to 92,000 and change.

WTF

Well, I just ran a quick test and discovered that anyone immature enough to put in the effort and immature enough to care that much can greatly impact the thread view count.

Dola:

Whoever is doing it went through the trouble of logging out so they can't be discovered. What a dweeb (or dweebs).

That is some rapid fire refreshing or however he/she/they are doing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Dola:

Whoever is doing it went through the trouble of logging out so they can't be discovered. What a dweeb (or dweebs).

Maybe it's a "Deewb"!! :eek:

/hopes that's not too subtle

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Dola:
What a dweeb (or dweebs).

hmmm...SkyDog is trying to tell us something...dweeb rhymes with jeeb...:eek::eek:

edit: typo

It would be a shame if a new version of the reference thread were to appear.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

hmmm...SkyDog is trying to tell us something...dweed rhymes with jeeb...:eek::eek:

That's right dweeb or dweebs. Jeeb or Jeebs?

Well, the good news is that the person or persons responsible certainly are helping our page view count, increasing our leverage with GameSpy to let us keep going wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy over the maximum usage every month. (We usually go over in the first week of every month...)

Can't you check the IP of guests viewing the thread?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Franklinnoble

Can't you check the IP of guests viewing the thread?

Sure...but there are 8 of them (at least there were a moment ago). I don't care enough to do that kind of tracking down. Plus, it's not like it would be good policy to suspend someone for doing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevew

It would be a shame if a new version of the reference thread were to appear.

That would certainly nip the problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevew

It would be a shame if a new version of the reference thread were to appear.

lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevew

It would be a shame if a new version of the reference thread were to appear.

:D

Well, in terms of the "statistical integrity" of the page view count, I'd say that it is forever compromised. I can't say for sure, but I'm about 99.9% certain that this thread has also been artificially enhanced many times.

i think it's the people from Matrix. by increasing the views on the reference thread they make all the fans of this thread want to keep checking back in to pad the view stats. the more people doing this the more "talk" and chatter is maintained over an otherwise horrible game that should have been forgotten the day after it came out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Sure...but there are 8 of them (at least there were a moment ago). I don't care enough to do that kind of tracking down. Plus, it's not like it would be good policy to suspend someone for doing it.

I think it would. Constant refereshing=using up bandwidth for other people=mini DoS on the board.

Way to go Erik, the anti-Jennifer:

RE: Erik - 3/20/2006 9:29:53 PM

Erik Rutins
Administrator

Posts: 7272
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: online

elmerlee,

quote:

ORIGINAL: elmerlee
Thanks for your intelligent response.And you deserve credit for not just deleting this post.Just a couple more points and I will look forward to BUYING THE GAME.

1.There is no demo for Pure-Sim anymore.True or false.

False - you can still get a demo of the 2005 version (one version old) from various sites. There is no demo for the 2005 Gold Edition, which was offered as a free upgrade by Matrix to PureSim 2005 customers. No decision has been made for the future regarding demos or lack of demos for PureSim.

quote:

2.I pay no attention what-so-ever to reviewers.The people on the forums know the game better than anyone.

My point on that was that I did not expect you or anyone else to buy the game in order to have an opinion on it, but I would advise you to realize that you might be less sure of your conclusions realizing that you have not actually played it. You made some comments as fact based on your assessment of some board comments. For customers who have played the game, these comments fit into the context of their play experience, which has been better for some than others. The upshot is that I didn't expect you'd buy the game unless reviews (in general) about it started becoming predominantly positive.

quote:

3.This is the very first game I wanted that I did not buy in the first minutes of release.Why.Because it took 5-7 years to make and I was afraid all those changes would not go smoothly. to be "piss*d" and really sound off.Buy the way - I think demos started something that companies would be better off without.

And, unfortunately, we hit some major bumps on release. I've heard a lot of other people saying things like "why don't they just drop it?", which shocks me. If anyone knows Matrix, they know that "dropping" a product is not our modus operandi. Nor is it David's and he has been putting in very long hours together with us supporting this game for our customers and improving it. While I'm more than willing to take my lumps for the release, I think that there is some consistent feedback after release which indicates we are rapidly addressing issues and heading this game in the right direction.

Our hope is that customers with doubts have an open mind and will revisit M-F in a month or two and take another look at it in six months, a year, etc. We are firm believers in supporting our customers. Keep tabs on our progress - we don't expect people to buy something they are not sure of, but we hope to erase doubts for the fence-sitters over time.

quote:

4.Fix the stats tracking (12 sacks a game etc),the ball starting from the endzone,the lack of variety in kick distances,the inability to complete certain passes,the fumbles & ints,incorrect penalty handling,and a couple minor PDS items and the game will be worth buying.

The tracking of stats in general appears to be fixed, but some specific game stats are still out of whack for one type of football or another. That's not exactly a feature unique to M-F though, but we are continually improving on that. The ball in the endzone was fixed with the first update. Kick and return distances have been improved, but adding more variability to both is an improvement (rather than a fix) that we plan on in the future. Note that short returns, medium returns and touchdown returns are all things I've seen in the post-release builds. Pass completions and coverage are areas we are looking to tweak in the third or fourth update, when we get a chance to take another look at the balance of the various parts of the game. Fumbles and INTs should be pretty much fine with the latest beta update. Penalty handling was overhauled and is much better than it was on release, at this point upgrading it further can wait. The PDS is due for some significant improvements as well in either the third or fourth update and David also plans an overhaul of it down the line.

Regards,

- Erik

_____________________________

Erik Rutins
Director of Product Development and Business Relations

(

At least SOMEONE over there gets it. That's a very different response from the "buy the game NOW or shut up" that J.W. is spewing forth.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

I think it would. Constant refereshing=using up bandwidth for other people=mini DoS on the board.

1. What does DoS mean?
2. You're talking about a well-nigh unpoliceable policy. In order to police it, first off someone would have to notice a thread view count increasing, then go and see who is in the thread (and it doesn't really group them well). In a high-traffic thread such as this one, nothing can be done. There are 18 people viewing this thread as of this moment. What would I do...suspend all 18 of 'em? :p

Denial of Service.. ie, they're using up bandwidth when other people are trying to log on and find it slow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

DoS = Denial of Service.

Basically, flooding a server with empty, useless requests, keeping it unnecessarily busy so that actual users can't reach it at all, or at least get slower response times.

I'm guessing GameSpy wouldn't appreciate the constant, pointless refreshes, either... especially if they ever got wind of what was happening.

So, while it's difficult to police, in a case such as this (with literally THOUSANDS of false views occurring), I think it's worth investigating, and taking action on... lest you piss off our hosts, and frustrate our users who have to sit through slower load times as a result of what is basically a silly read-count game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Franklinnoble

So, while it's difficult to police, in a case such as this (with literally THOUSANDS of false views occurring), I think it's worth investigating, and taking action on... lest you piss off our hosts, and frustrate our users who have to sit through slower load times as a result of what is basically a silly read-count game.

OK. I see what y'all are saying about traffic and the hosts, but I have no idea how to investigate/police. It happened in the reference thread earlier. There's no log of who views a thread, and when it happened, there were 8 people viewing the thread. If anyone has any ideas as to what I can do abou this, feel free to PM 'em to me.

My suspicion is it's Jim - he doesn't want the MF thread to overtake the FOF thread on the game's own messageboard :D

If there's no log, and no way to see the IP of a current "guest" viewer, then I have no idea how to investigate further. I think if it were to become a chronic problem, it would probably set off an alert for the technicians at GameSpy to investigate, but if it hasn't done so already, it's probably not going to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Franklinnoble

Oh, I can see the IP of "guest" viewers, but if there are multiples in the thread, I have no way that I can think of to tell *which* viewer (guest or non-guest) is doing it. Even if there are only two people in a thread, both registered users, I can't think of a way to know which one is doing it.

Heh. I just got a PM. The person confessed and promised not to do it any more. Hopefully we can put this to bed.

Can someone up my post count by 5,000 for being the first person to notice this?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Heh. I just got a PM. The person confessed and promised not to do it any more. Hopefully we can put this to bed.

So it was Jeebs, wasn't it?

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Heh. I just got a PM. The person confessed and promised not to do it any more. Hopefully we can put this to bed.

Yeah... thing is, with that many views, I suspect there may be a second gunman on the grassy knoll...

Or maybe I'm just suffering from acute paranoia. Might be time to get this tinfoil hat refitted.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

So it was Jeebs, wasn't it?

Hah, no. I do remember someone stating somewhere in this thread that he had made the reference page his homepage in order to get it more hits, but I don't know if that's the same person who confessed to SD...

Will this thread make it to 100 pages?

Well, at least he is being upfront, but I am not quite sure why there is such a delay with something like this. It sounds strange that they have to discuss their refund policy with Digitial River to come to some sort of negotiation. I just thought you could just simply edit the text.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik Rutins

A quick update on this. We've had several discussions with Digital River on this today and some key facts have been ascertained. However, we won't have a final answer on some of our questions from their European side until tomorrow. We plan to post again tomorrow, hopefully with a resolution on this. We're working as fast as we can with Digital River to sort this out in a fair way.

Regards,

- Erik

Probably asking how many refunds were given, who was responsible for it and other such fun stuff. I don't see anything bad in it

Quote:

Originally Posted by SirFozzie

Probably asking how many refunds were given, who was responsible for it and other such fun stuff. I don't see anything bad in it

I see what you are saying, but they could discuss that after they fix those web pages. In other words, why are they leaving the false refund information up to be seen by future buyers?

ProbablyProbably that they have to provide 24 hour notice for all changes to the web page?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik Rutkins

21/03/06

A quick update on this. We've had several discussions with Digital River on this today and some key facts have been ascertained. However, we won't have a final answer on some of our questions from their European side until tomorrow. We plan to post again tomorrow, hopefully with a resolution on this. We're working as fast as we can with Digital River to sort this out in a fair way.

Regards,

- Erik

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik Rutkins

22/03/06

Still in discussion with Digital River and hammering out the final details. We will post our statement tomorrow morning regarding the final outcome.

Regards,

- Erik

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik Rutkins

23/03/06

A few minor issues arose with Digital River, but we are close! Look for our announcement early tomorrow morning!

Regards,

- Erik

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik Rutkins

24/03/06

It's all looking good. Issues have been sorted out with Digital River, just waiting for the final version of the statement to be e-mailed, as it appears that our exchange server is having a few problems. Will be posting the final statement tonight.

Regards,

- Erik

Quote:

Originally Posted by Erik Rutkins

27/03/06

Hope you all had a good weekend. It's looking like a release of our statement tomorrow night is certain! See you all then!

Regards,

- Erik

;)

It has to be a contract situation. Otherwise it's beyond Mickey Mouse.

I bet this delays the patch by at least 6 months.

Sounds like the statement's gone gold.

Wow...Erik is trying to douse every fire he can:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1092942
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1092997

Why do I have a feeling that 3rd party utilities may break the game?

Wow...this just in...out of the mouth of Winter himself (sorry I havn't yet figured out the cool cut n paste thing you all do with Matrix posts

Quote:

David Winter

Hi.

Were these CPU vs CPU games or was there a human player involved?

I'm going to talk to Erik to see if I can get a Public BETA section set up. What you're reporting, while valuable to me, is not really support releated because these are still BETA builds and should be considered as such.

Also, I noticed that on the high resolution stadium, the fans are not rendering properly. I've seen this only on video cards that have 64MB of ram or lower, or they share video memory with onboard memory. Am I correct in assuming this is the case with your system?

edit: for format and to add this

So Winter is basically admitting that people are paying 40-50 dollars to Beta test his game? He's saying that the game that he released and even the patches he is releasing are beta-builds??

WOW. just WOW.

okay...actually i just noticed that thread is for a beta release of the next patch that shaggyra is testing. but still...gave me a good laugh before i figured that out

Well that's what makes this whole process funny. Beta builds are the ones you are supposed to test out before they become official. The official patches are supposed to fix things, not introduce more problems for testing. I was so confused as I was reading that thread because he wants to make a new public beta forum to fix the errors created by his beta builds?

at this point he ought to just call a spade a spade and say that the game itself is in public beta and kiss his customer's asses for paying for the privelege of beta testing it.