Airline Mogul => Bugs => Topic started by: travismb99 on December 17, 2007, 09:42:32 am
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: travismb99 on December 17, 2007, 09:42:32 am
Uhhh... I've somehow ended up with a sum of money that I should not have.
DOP: €5,575,213 Airline Cash: €1,525,348,526 Airline Value: €1,280,768,876 Average Loadfactor: 98.80% Date: 12 Jun 1955
My balance sheet says my monthly profit should be $114m - which means... uh, there's no way on Earth I should have $1.5 billion cash on hand! :lol: :shock:
And how would my value be less than my cash-on-hand? :P
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: Air Elbonia on December 17, 2007, 09:50:11 am
damnit. i think i accidently gave everyone 1.5b when i wasn't trying to.
oh well. merry Christmas all. have 1.5 billion on the house.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: pseudoswede on December 17, 2007, 10:13:25 am
Woohoo! I'm heading to the strip clubs!
Wait...only virtual money. Boo. :(
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: travismb99 on December 17, 2007, 10:20:18 am
The virtual aircraft manufacturers, airport managers and aircraft brokers are the ones who will be heading to the virtual strip clubs :D
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: AndyC on December 17, 2007, 11:44:39 am
Christ - shall I spend away or will I get into trouble when you pull the plug on the 1.5B? :shock:
lol.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: suntoucher on December 17, 2007, 11:59:25 am
Plug isn't to be pulled, read AE's post.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: dktc on December 17, 2007, 12:42:38 pm
Quote from: "Air Elbonia"
damnit. i think i accidently gave everyone 1.5b when i wasn't trying to.
oh well. merry Christmas all. have 1.5 billion on the house.
Once again, Will is handing out money :lol:
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: Jps on December 17, 2007, 12:43:17 pm
Jps reports another bug. My 1.5B is gone. :cry:
ID 5000
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: MrOrange on December 17, 2007, 12:48:42 pm
Did you look under your desk?
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: Jps on December 17, 2007, 12:55:11 pm
<Air_Elbonia> better then me taking more then 1.5b <Jps> from only my account? <Air_Elbonia> yeah.
:cry:
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: pocketbookbrando on December 17, 2007, 03:17:05 pm
Ugh, I wanted to get to that point by work not through a game error. There are also plenty of people who haven't earned this much. Can we please look at a way of remedying this? It sort of makes all of the hard work I've put into this over the weekend seem worthless.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: DAK on December 17, 2007, 03:21:46 pm
Not only that, all the new people starting now have no hope in h*ll catching up, they are immediately 1.5bn behind
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: pocketbookbrando on December 17, 2007, 03:29:58 pm
Mysteriously, all of the gates at airports above 2.5M passengers on my continent are now taken. Do you guys take database backups? The only real way to fix this is to roll back to how things were supposed to be before this mistake was made. Otherwise, the game is kind of cooked.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: MrOrange on December 17, 2007, 03:30:47 pm
This is weird, people are complaining because they got free cash :? I get your point though. If you don't want it, I'm sure an admin can subtract the money from your account.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: jameswyhk on December 17, 2007, 03:37:28 pm
Should this be called "Green Bonus"? :P
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: pocketbookbrando on December 17, 2007, 03:50:35 pm
It's not weird at all. People are playing a game because they get to simulate what an airline might be like. You spend time making realistic routes, real planes, real statistics and then suddenly someone magical gives every airline in the world, no matter how good, bad, active or inactive 1.5B$. I spent many hours making an airline that was profitable and growing. It seems now that I could have sat back and just waited for someone to incorrectly doll out money by mistake.
This will now lead to routes where few people care how profitable they are.
Already there are NO GATES left. At least in North America anyways.
While you have given me $1.5B, you have also done so to my competitors.
The point is not only that I don't want the $1.5B, but that I don't want anyone to have the $1.5B. I've signed up, followed the rules and spent time learning a game and finding routes and finally had my airline making enough money for things to be interesting. That has all been ruined by poor programming/administration.
Taking the money away from me does not solve the problem. Everyone else now has $1.5B to expand into my routes and fly a Constellation between A and B for $1. This is totally unrealistic.
Also, someone mentioned new people. When I started there were people who had airlines anywhere from $1M on up in value. Now they're competing against billionaires across the board.
Whoever made this mistake should be rushing to fix it. Not saying, oops, you can just keep the money. :oops:
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: DAK on December 17, 2007, 03:53:57 pm
I will be first then; Admin please deduct 1.5bn from my account and credit the smallest airline with my 1.5bn please
Dak 7488
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: MrOrange on December 17, 2007, 04:18:18 pm
As I said, I got your point.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: DAK on December 17, 2007, 04:19:19 pm
:lol:
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: bibi974 on December 17, 2007, 04:54:09 pm
Stop complaining, will you?
Even in real life luck can smile to you; I know you won't get $1.5B just out of magic but still... And anyway everyone got their $1.5B so it's not realistic maybe but it is not unfair Concerniing new players, well the game is already hyperoversaturrated so they might just as well wait for the next round.
I don't know how you say that in English but errare humanum est (making mistake human is humane) so stop blaming the administration
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: SJR on December 17, 2007, 05:26:56 pm
Think of it like this. -Will that cash help you and every other airline. Yes it will be useful for expansion -Has it been unfairly given. No everyone got it
and if you see it as magically appearing imagine you sold another company and put the money into the airline (its not hard to do)
Yes i do see your point but if you use your imagination it really isnt that hard, besides some airlines have already spent that money and if it was taken away even some of the larger companies may have debt for a while. I mean i am fairly average sized but if you took that 1.5 billion away i would be left 500,000 in debt and it would take me three days at least to recover.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: bibi974 on December 17, 2007, 05:29:58 pm
Quote from: "SJR"
Think of it like this. -Will that cash help you and every other airline. Yes it will be useful for expansion -Has it been unfairly given. No everyone got it
and if you see it as magically appearing imagine you sold another company and put the money into the airline (its not hard to do)
Yes i do see your point but if you use your imagination it really isnt that hard, besides some airlines have already spent that money and if it was taken away even some of the larger companies may have debt for a while. I mean i am fairly average sized but if you took that 1.5 billion away i would be left 500,000 in debt and it would take me three days at least to recover.
you made my point clear, thanks
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: pocketbookbrando on December 17, 2007, 06:26:00 pm
"Stop complaining, will you?
Even in real life luck can smile to you; I know you won't get $1.5B just out of magic but still... And anyway everyone got their $1.5B so it's not realistic maybe but it is not unfair Concerniing new players, well the game is already hyperoversaturrated so they might just as well wait for the next round.
I don't know how you say that in English but errare humanum est (making mistake human is humane) so stop blaming the administration"
I have a pretty valid point. That round, as it existed, is now over. I wasted quote a bit of time dealing with that competetive landscape. The game is entirely changed now. Someone giving say a trillion dollars in investment to my competitors does rather play poorly for my prospects.
That's a great resolution. Wait until the last round. Perhaps that should be on the front page of the game site. If the round didn't just start, you might as well wait 4 months for it to reset.
I quite fully understand that to err is human. I have worked and do work with information systems all of the time. Programming changes have to be tested before they are put in place and things such as changing system settings for one user have to very carefully be done or else the entire game is impacted. Were this someone at Blizzard or Sony making this mistake, they'd probably be at home creating an account on Monster right now. People do make mistakes, even big ones, but they should be willing to put the work forward to remedy the mistakes.
This should have been taken care or RIGHT AWAY. A backup of the database should have been restored. Taking the money back now that every gate in existence has been taken is really not the point. The game has been irrevocably changed by someone who made a mistake, but there has been NO effort to right that mistake. I have every right to blame the administration. Nowhere in the wiki, the game site, forums, etc, is it that said that massive amounts of capital will be given to the entire game base at random.
I was quite happy working up to the point where I'd get my company to $1B. I was quite happy with hitting $40M in 3 days. The sad thing now that is milestone is meaningless and enjoyment of growing the business to get there is gone.
"and if you see it as magically appearing imagine you sold another company and put the money into the airline (its not hard to do) "
Yes, it's normal in aviation for $30M companies to sell a $1.5B company and invest the entire amount into the aviation industry. This was common in 1955. :roll: What is even more common is for every airline in the entire world to do this at the same time. It's common for global capital flows to inject the current dollar value of $14 Trillion into one industry. In case you're counting, that's close to 2x the entire GDP of the United States.
Fixing the game instead of doing nothing might be a good idea.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: MrOrange on December 17, 2007, 06:45:45 pm
Most players will argue that the round stopped already in 1953, when most gates were taken and most routes served. Yet it didn't. Neither did the round stop now. It changed considerably, true, but it didn't stop. If you don't want the money, play as if it isn't there. Forget about it. Treat it as a major screw-up by some of your accountants, and have an admin delete it. If you want the money, use it and do something fun with it. As long as you don't scrap planes just to annoy other people, I don't care. Your competitors get richer as well, and I'm pretty sure most of them will take the money and keep their mouths shut. So you've just found yourself a new challenge.
@Database Restore: You have absolutely no idea how angry some people will get if they find their airline kicked back a few weeks. They'd much rather take the 1.5 billion.
Quote
Nowhere in the wiki, the game site, forums, etc, is it that said that massive amounts of capital will be given to the entire game base at random.
... the reason for which is quite obvious. Mistakes happen, and in this particular case, it's not so much about who made which mistake, it's more about who deals with it in which way. That's not just the administrators, that's the players as well. The mistake has been made, and there's no way to turn back time without making people even more angry.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: Pacific on December 17, 2007, 07:11:11 pm
This incident has exposed a weakness for AM. If people are going to be even more angry when time is rolled back, it has to mean the last backup of the game is quite old.
It seems Air Elbonia only realised the mistake after someone posted here, which may mean hours have passed, thus simply taking away the money was not a solution.
I just hope lessons will be learnt.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: pocketbookbrando on December 17, 2007, 07:22:35 pm
"If you don't want the money, play as if it isn't there. Forget about it. Treat it as a major screw-up by some of your accountants, and have an admin delete it. If you want the money, use it and do something fun with it. As long as you don't scrap planes just to annoy other people, I don't care. Your competitors get richer as well, and I'm pretty sure most of them will take the money and keep their mouths shut. So you've just found yourself a new challenge."
That would be great. Now if you can convince every other player to do the same, we might have a game again. Otherwise, the advise is really of no significance. Following it would mean that my competition just got 2 TRILLION in investment out of nowhere.
"@Database Restore: You have absolutely no idea how angry some people will get if they find their airline kicked back a few weeks. They'd much rather take the 1.5 billion."
Your backup strategy is to back things up every few weeks? Ever think of what would happen if say you had two drive failures before you rebuilt the array that the server was running, had an electrical surge wipe out your database server or a fire at the house/data center where the database server is stored? What would you do if the database was corrupted somehow. I realize this might be all new to you guys, but you should have nightly jobs to backup the database and hourly jobs to backup the logs. Restoring from a database copy should not cause weeks of lost data. You should be able to restore to a specific point in time very easily. I know that a site that doesn't charge anything doesn't require five 9's of uptime, but a backup strategy of creating a backup every two weeks is the same as none at all.
I certainly hope that you take away access to the administration for whoever created this mess. I hope you also work to come up with ways of dealing with this should it happen again. Given that there is no real resolution for this, you guys should look at restarting the game again a little earlier rather than later. It's the only way to clean things up.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: MrOrange on December 17, 2007, 07:27:03 pm
Quote from: "Pacific"
This incident has exposed a weakness for AM. If people are going to be even more angry when time is rolled back, it has to mean the last backup of the game is quite old.
It seems Air Elbonia only realised the mistake after someone posted here, which may mean hours have passed, thus simply taking away the money was not a solution.
I just hope lessons will be learnt.
I don't know how old the last database backup is. I do know that, no matter how far you go back, people will always complain. More than if you just give them the money. Take the money away and even more people will be angry.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: digifreak on December 17, 2007, 07:41:31 pm
And don't forget that Airline Mogul is still in BETA and sometimes errors like this happen! We have to live with them and move on.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: SJR on December 17, 2007, 07:46:57 pm
Okay you have a fair point in saying that 1.5 billion companies were uncommon in 1955 and that not all airlines would sell at the same time. I said to imagine besides which not everything else about the 1950's round is accurate. For example: - Alliances did not exist - Planes were a lot cheaper than they are - Some of the airports didnt exist (i.e. Osaka Kansai)
and i am sure there are other things to list. The point is this is a game and unfortunately mistakes can happen. If you want you can always play a game like Airlines 6 where the other airlines are all automated and mistakes are less likely. Its not an online game and it isnt free but when you get a game that is (like this one) you have to accept that mistakes are more likely to happen. No offence to the admins but they are running AM in there free time as far as i am aware (correct me if i am wrong please).
:D
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: MrOrange on December 17, 2007, 07:50:17 pm
Quote from: "SJR"
No offence to the admins but they are running AM in there free time as far as i am aware (correct me if i am wrong please).
:D
No, you're absolutely right on that.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: bibi974 on December 18, 2007, 02:18:49 pm
Quote from: "pocketbookbrando"
"Stop complaining, will you?
Even in real life luck can smile to you; I know you won't get $1.5B just out of magic but still... And anyway everyone got their $1.5B so it's not realistic maybe but it is not unfair Concerniing new players, well the game is already hyperoversaturrated so they might just as well wait for the next round.
I don't know how you say that in English but errare humanum est (making mistake human is humane) so stop blaming the administration"
I have a pretty valid point. That round, as it existed, is now over. I wasted quote a bit of time dealing with that competetive landscape. The game is entirely changed now. Someone giving say a trillion dollars in investment to my competitors does rather play poorly for my prospects.
That's a great resolution. Wait until the last round. Perhaps that should be on the front page of the game site. If the round didn't just start, you might as well wait 4 months for it to reset.
I quite fully understand that to err is human. I have worked and do work with information systems all of the time. Programming changes have to be tested before they are put in place and things such as changing system settings for one user have to very carefully be done or else the entire game is impacted. Were this someone at Blizzard or Sony making this mistake, they'd probably be at home creating an account on Monster right now. People do make mistakes, even big ones, but they should be willing to put the work forward to remedy the mistakes.
This should have been taken care or RIGHT AWAY. A backup of the database should have been restored. Taking the money back now that every gate in existence has been taken is really not the point. The game has been irrevocably changed by someone who made a mistake, but there has been NO effort to right that mistake. I have every right to blame the administration. Nowhere in the wiki, the game site, forums, etc, is it that said that massive amounts of capital will be given to the entire game base at random.
I was quite happy working up to the point where I'd get my company to $1B. I was quite happy with hitting $40M in 3 days. The sad thing now that is milestone is meaningless and enjoyment of growing the business to get there is gone.
"and if you see it as magically appearing imagine you sold another company and put the money into the airline (its not hard to do) "
Yes, it's normal in aviation for $30M companies to sell a $1.5B company and invest the entire amount into the aviation industry. This was common in 1955. :roll: What is even more common is for every airline in the entire world to do this at the same time. It's common for global capital flows to inject the current dollar value of $14 Trillion into one industry. In case you're counting, that's close to 2x the entire GDP of the United States.
Fixing the game instead of doing nothing might be a good idea.
If you are not satisfied with the game anymore, you can just leave it. As said before, the game is free, still in BETA means it s unfinished and certainly faulty on some points. Do with it or leave since that kind of error is likely to strike again. that's the way it is... you cannot benefit from the game and be exempted of any mistake at the same time. If you want the game to change, you ll have to accept that kind of mistake.
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: Air Elbonia on December 18, 2007, 02:55:36 pm
Quote from: "pocketbookbrando"
Fixing the game instead of doing nothing might be a good idea.
By the time I realized my error, [Yes, my error, not a bug or code error], enough airlines had already started heavily spending the cash. to pull the money at that point not only would have driven a lot of small airlines into substantial debt which would have taken them a long time to get out of, it would have offered these opportunists a significant advantage over their peer airlines who had not been online for the time the cash was sitting out [as they would not have an equal opportunity to use their X million dollars to order a substantial quantity of super connies/etc]. It was too late for me to pull the money, so i left it. Yes, it's a bad... bad thing to hand out billions in cash at random, but it was a mistake.
To pull a backup up would surely frustrate those who had created routes, changed gates, bought/sold used aircraft within the hour or so before i became aware of the mistake. To pull the money would be unfair to those who weren't online at the time, and would drive those who were steeply into debt for a few weeks. To leave the money was the best option i could see at the time. Had i caught it fast enough, the money would have disappeared as fast as it appeared.
Fixing the game, whenever there is a significant or worthwhile bug found, is always my top priority over any other addition/modification. I do my best to take this aspect of my job here as seriously as i can. If you really want my access pulled.... too bad. I've got far more important things to work on to make AM better then to sit around on my laurels because i made a mistake. [Besides, Stephen would panic if he didn't have me around anymore. :P ]
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: iranair777 on December 18, 2007, 09:53:12 pm
I cannot believe that people are complaining due to a large sum being handed out to everyone, i at first didnt want to point it out (:p), but now that i see everyones got it i dont care
and secondly, and chance you could have given the sum earlier on, cause i had a large order for which i didnt have enough more for :p
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: Wibblebutt on December 18, 2007, 10:11:54 pm
I have to agree in part with pocketbookbrando, that the 1.5b has completely ruined the game. It was fun building up my airline and competing against others, which now just seems a waste of time. I can't be bothered with the rest of this round now and look forward to the reset.
But at the same time I realise that this game is still under BETA testing and thus can't expect a polished product. We are all in effect acting as testers of the game until such a time as it's no longer a BETA version.
Carry on..
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: Trans Nevada Airways on December 19, 2007, 02:49:18 am
Quote from: "iranair777"
I cannot believe that people are complaining due to a large sum being handed out to everyone
I know! :lol:
(Yay First post!)
Title: Massive money bug
Post by: SeaBlue Pacific Air on December 19, 2007, 03:33:16 am
I think we have the right to complain if we actually PAID to play this game. Give the admins some credit. Yes, it ruined my game but let's not forget that they're just doing all those tests to make AM more enjoyable in the future.