Massive money bug

[pocketbookbrando]

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:

[DAK]

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

[MrOrange]

As I said, I got your point.

[DAK]

[bibi974]

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

[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.

[bibi974]

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

[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.     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.

[MrOrange]

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.

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.

[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.

[pocketbookbrando]

"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.

[MrOrange]

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.

[digifreak]

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.

[SJR]

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).

 

[MrOrange]

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).

 

No, you're absolutely right on that.