What you see - and what you get part 2

I've borrowed the title from a previous post as I have had the same problem that ksinori posted about (I hope you don't mind ksinori). I even have the same person from support replying. I have quite a strong view about how BB are handling this but up until now didn't really think I could comment without experiencing it myself.

To summarise - I did set out to use a block on the last camp on Traitors. General 1, attacking the leader camp, did not appear so I told General 2, my blocking general, to retreat. I looked at General 1 and it stated that he was waiting for orders so I could not tell him to retreat as well. Then, I was notified that General 1 was attacking the camp that would have been blocked - I did not get a notification that he had been intercepted. This time support have come straight out and blamed the issue on blocks saying that "there is a chance the game will do strange things" when using them. There has been no attempt to blame lag though.

I've had an exchange of views with support and I would be interested if anyone can see any flaws in the following argument that I have used:

1. The game has been designed to allow more than one general at a time to attack - if this was not the case then the option to attack would be disabled if another general was already attacking.
2. The game allows attacks on more than one camp at a time and for more than one attack to be made on a single camp at the same time - again this must be the intended design or the options to attack the same or another camp would be disabled.
3. The game is designed so that a general can be intercepted by another camp if they pass through their zone of influence and will issue a notification to the player if this occurs.
4. The game is designed so that the player can make their general retreat so long as the general is not in the process of fighting a camp.
5. The game is designed to tell the player the current status of the general.

These are all parts of the game's design so any combination of them occurring in the game must be catered for.

As far as the game code is concerned, all I did was send one general to attack one camp and a second general to attack another - as set out in my first two points the game is designed to allow this.

With this in mind, when my general was intercepted by another camp the game should have notified me of this, even if another general is moving or attacking, as this how it has been designed but it did not - this is the first bug.

The game also gave me the wrong information about the status of the general - the fact that another general had been sent on an attack should not have affected this, since this is again how the game has been designed. This is the second bug, which prevented me from telling my general to retreat.

Thanks to anyone who spends the time reading this

I don't think the engine they are using is very well suited for carrying out multiple tasks at the same time, even the building queue stops working properly when the servers are being laggy :(

Most of these kind of problems would go away if the lag was dealt with.

Thanks Kotugo. I do believe that this issue is caused by lag, though that too would be BB's fault and not mine. However they haven't suggested that lag is the culprit and in all three replies to me have doggedly stuck to the same line - that blocks are not supported.

I have now raised one more point to Support to try and strengthen my case - the fact that a camp's zone of influence is deactivated when it is fighting must have been included by design. This implies that BB wanted to allow another general to be able to pass by a camp without being intercepted so long as it crossed through the zone during the fight - why else would it be included? If BB did not want to allow blocks they could easily bring in a patch to change it so that the zone always stayed active and if they can't introduce this patch then it has to be supported as part of the game by default.

However, what really annoys me is that their replies have all been the same - a stock reply saying blocks are not part of the design and so are not supported, and they have not addressed any of the points I have raised. This issue has nothing to do with blocks, even if that was what I was attempting at the time. If I sent two generals off to attack at the same time, in completely unrelated attacks (i.e. not a block) and realised that I hadn't assigned the right set of troops to one general but could not then issue a retreat then what would BB blame this on? It should not matter which camps I am attacking...

The "Blocks are not supported" - is just as foolish as all the other excuses from BB support.

The dev guys invented adventures so we should be blocking.

Proof: Non-leader camps and traps disappear when you take out a leader-camp.

I sincerely doubt that the BB-support guy have ever played the game. He-he...

Support have actually said they are not developers and so are not able to say whether my points are correct or not, so they clearly have never played the game!

What they do say is that they have been told by developers that blocks are not to be supported, so if Support thinks you have used a block they will just blame that. Given they have admitted to not knowing anything about how the game works, how can they correctly determine if a block is used? This means that players who haven't even tried to block can get stung by this if they get the wrong person in the Support team looking at their ticket.

You are absolutely correct that the block has nothing to do with the fact that you sent out a general, but could not retreat him. I do this all the time in e.g. stealing from the rich, when I send regular generals to take down watchtowers while my veteran is fighting elsewhere. If I then noticed that my veteran would be carrying cavalry to a camp where sir Robin would wipe them out, I would need to be able to retreat him. In this scenario there is no blocking involved, yet the actions I take are basically the same as in your case.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ksinori

The "Blocks are not supported" - is just as foolish as all the other excuses from BB support.

The dev guys invented adventures so we should be blocking.

Proof: Non-leader camps and traps disappear when you take out a leader-camp.

I sincerely doubt that the BB-support guy have ever played the game. He-he...

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Actually, some of them have, and know the frustration when things don't work out the way one would hope.
However, blocks are a kind of exploit, that we the players discovered for ourselves, they were never 'designed into the game'.
Using them is a risk, and when they work, they are brilliant.
Sadly, the big issue here is lag, and it really needs to be addressed urgently.
Not only are blocks failing, but normal recalls are also getting dodgy, and the lag is throwing up even more problems.
So please, direct your comments at the real problem here, server lag.
Support are here to help us, whether they are players or not, the Devs on the other hand are well aware of the problems, and I don't know whether they are struggling to put these right, or if other factors are coming into play here.

Hello PenguinStare,

Thank you for your feedback.

I will go ahead and close this topic as this is not encouraging a constructive debate.

I have sent you an PM.

BB_Dantesama