Zezo forum:

Post by sailorjerry | 2018-05-05 | 19:37:57

I have been having problems with my boats. I guess it started after a few emails about the ranking system. I still don't get it at all. It is the most bios manipulated system.
This started after the emails.I first noticed it in the second leg. I made a few mistakes that cost me 10 of thousands of boats but some how I would reel them back in. So I get to the finish line with a 10,000 rating and all these lower numbered boats sailed by and finished. Not until the boats in the 10,000 ranking started to finish my boat started moving again and finished. WTF was that I sent another email got the same bull crap excuse.Ever leg I sit at the finish line and wait until the same ranking shows up .
I'm doing the Nice race. the first half of the first lap was great then it went to same crap. I tried to round the mark O hell no.

46 Comments

Post by sailorjerry | 2018-05-05 | 21:22:56

I f someone could explain the ranking system and why my boat sat in one spot this morning for three and a half hours while I watched boat after boat sail by me no exaggeration. Why yesterday it took an hour to get around mark 6 and mark 6 would not let me pass threw it at all? Is this my computer or is it the game?

Post by UR2L8 | 2018-05-07 | 22:37:47

No, VR don't manipulate the boats (that would be bad for business).

You probably had the wrong sail (maybe you had activated auto-sail, and thought it was still active? It only lasts 12 hours).
I doubt you were grounded, since you say the boat started to move (by itself I presume?)

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-07 | 22:47:56

are you a sailor Jerry? If you sail at a fixed heading and the wind turns so it becomes headwind, in the game your speed will drop to 0 untill the wind turns and your boats starts to move slowly.

In real live, your boat will go backwards when trying to sail straight against the wind

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-06 | 07:12:22

grounded?
TWA = 0? ?
Gen or spi sail whil sailing upwind

Post by sailorjerry | 2018-05-12 | 13:22:43

Urrus Maritimus I may be a rookie at this. I have been sailing on the water as well as on land for 50 years. I am not exaggerating when I say one spot for three hours. Or when I get to the finish line and wait until the same ranking number of boats show up at that time I start moving again and finish.I have 8 gigs of ram plenty of memory I still get the webgl error. Is the problem my computer or the game?

Post by zezo | 2018-05-12 | 14:42:00

In theory they can manipulate the boats, but so far nobody has caught them doing it.

The WebGL seems to be limited at 4G ram (at least on Linux) so more physical RAM is not going to help (this machine has 16G and the game UI still crashes nightly)

Post by Inicio | 2018-05-12 | 15:41:19

I was stopped in the middle of the sea, without ground below or in the neighborhoods for more than half an hour.
Then the boat started to move forward without any action on my part.
Grounded without ground.

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-12 | 16:20:37

aha, you must have run into a whale :p

Post by sailorjerry | 2018-05-15 | 23:38:47

You funny Ursus Maritimus you should be on Johnny Carson.

Post by sailorjerry | 2018-05-13 | 22:23:52

Your a funny man Ursus Maritimus you should be on Johnny Carson. Zezo do you have anything running other than the game? Do you know of a fix for the webgl problem? I have sent a few emails to the games help center. I might have pissed someone off. Would that give reason to mess with my boat? Thank you for the info. I also want to thank Your Mom SA, and Tessa94 for your pointers and giving me Zezo..

Post by zezo | 2018-05-14 | 07:54:36

It's a server that happens to sit below my desk in the living room and I use ti to play the game. It also does number-crunching for the router and hosts a database for another project.

But I had to upgrade the GPU from 8600 to 1030 to reduce the thermal load. And it will probably pay for itself in reduced electricity bills in a year ;-)

Post by Penny G | 2018-05-15 | 20:56:42

In the last VOR race my boat stopped moving for about an hour approx 80 miles out of Newport. I didn't see it because by the time I got back to my phone the boat was moving normally....

I had urgent messages from concerned players who saw me sitting at zero knots. I wasn't doing all that well........ I dropped from around 460th to about 950th.....so around 500 places.

Did I bother contacting VR? No. Pissed me off because I pay for this, but I'm not going to waste my time.

Post by Stormbringer | 2018-05-22 | 06:25:15

In the VOR I'm currently watching a very well known boat sail right past me, within a couple of miles. According to the VR UI map he has about 0.0 to 0.1 knots more wind speed than I have.

Clicking on his boat however shows 0.3 to 0.5 more knots of wind speed, and up to .7 more knots of boat speed.

I realize that the UI only represents the server data, but seems like this anomaly should work itself out after a while. This has been going on for at least 2 hours.

The dashboard shows his stats consistent with his info card, which are not the conditions shown on the UI map.

Anyone?

Post by YourMomSA | 2018-05-22 | 12:53:26

If you're talking about VOR, we're sailing into an increasing wind, so my guess is that the usual anomaly is carrying itself forward. I assume everyone is aware of this FAQ, which is what I'm referring to as "the usual anomaly"...

https://virtualregatta.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115001502274-Why-is-the-boat-next-to-me-faster-than-my-own-boat-

But daaaammnn... Stormbringer... You're 4 miles ahead of me, so that very well known boat must not be me. I'm having trouble finding anyone actually ahead of you. It looks like Toppen is parallel to you... He's in a bit more wind and the wind is at a bit of a different angle. FWIW, VR is currently showing you as being 0.5 kts faster than him (on my screen).

That anomaly pisses me off because it makes people paranoid. I get pinged with messages every day or two in the game from people asking me why I'm going faster than them, etc. Sometimes accusing me of cheating. I have to keep referring people over and over again to the above FAQ.

Regarding this thread overall...

- I really doubt VR ever manipulates boats. There are plenty of issues in the games with bugs, etc, and they've made some questionable design decisions (like the whole card game thing), and they often don't communicate well... but all of those are a completely different from taking direct action in a manner that would intentionally undermine the integrity of the game. I don't think they'd do that. If they have an issue with you, they'd tell you and remove you from a game or ban you altogether. And I think it takes some pretty serious conflict and/or they need to catch you trying to cheat or something for that to happen.

- I do believe it's true that some boats have suddenly stopped for no evident reason. Enough different people have reported it that it must be happening. But I think it's a bug, not a malicious act by VR.

Post by Stormbringer | 2018-05-22 | 14:26:00

It was Toppen, I was clear ahead of him 12 hours ago and he motored right past me before we turned north. He had the same TWA as me and 0.1 knots more of breeze.

Thanks for the link, but I don't think that explains it. The wind speeds he was showing were much stronger than anything else in the vicinity. If the explanation was a lag in the display we would be talking hours not minutes.

I do tend to agree though that it wouldn't be malicious on the part of VR. Still frustrating.

Oh and it's more like 5 miles Mom ;)

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-22 | 15:25:23

best place to see boatspeeds is in VR Dashboard. definitely not in the game UI as almost anything there ;)

Post by YourMomSA | 2018-05-22 | 15:33:19

You are correct, but I decided to never install the dashboard. As awesome as it is, I'd lose my last shreds of sanity if I had it.

Post by toxcct | 2018-05-22 | 16:29:47

Do you use polars at least ? :)

Post by YourMomSA | 2018-05-22 | 16:48:37

I look at Zezo's polars and take notes about whatever I need to know for the next few hours. I'm obsessive about avoiding unnecessary sailchanges, etc. Your polars are very impressive, but like the dashboard, they're more than I can handle while still doing justice to my job and family.

I suppose everyone is weird in their own way. In my case, I'm weird in that I analyze certain things in ridiculous detail. So I need to avoid overloading my inputs or I'll lose my mind (and job, etc). After a point, therefore, my virtual racing becomes more of an art than a science.

Similarly, I don't have a compass on my real boat. It's lake sailing, so I always have visual indicators if I'm taking a header, etc. I prefer to sail by feel. I find that if I have a compass aboard, I spend too much attention on the numbers and not enough on speed, boat-to-boat tactics, overall strategy, etc.

Post by zezo | 2018-05-22 | 16:58:00

Amen to that, brother ;-)

Sail changes are probably the thing to look in the game.

I don't bother to do the exact math most of the time and also overuse auto sails. It shows in my ranking, but then I have a job and a family and a bit of other real life too.

Post by Stormbringer | 2018-05-22 | 20:34:56

Dashboard had the same higher wind and boat speeds that showed up when clicking the boat as opposed to the lower wind speed shown on the VR map.

*In response to Ursus' comment above*

Post by zezo | 2018-05-25 | 10:08:35

What we can say is that they can and do manipulate the route after the start.

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-25 | 20:14:19

I suspect them of informing their compatriotes of the imminent change. they were the first to deviate from the white line and now they are in the top 10 (and slowly loosing pace)

what a terrible company for such a great game

Post by YourMomSA | 2018-05-25 | 20:56:29

A user (cervantes) figured it out using the same method as Cvetan, an hour or two before we got to buoy 4, and posted it in the VR forum. The forum was mostly in French, so English-speaking users don't spend much time in there.

When I saw half the leaders going that way, I decided to check the VR forum. When I saw that, I freaked out and send Cvetan an in-game message (which I usually don't do much because I'm sure he gets a lot of that). He immediately looked into it, but that took some time of course. As soon as he informed me, I posted here while he updated the router, and the message got passed along, etc.

I don't think VR is actively trying to hurt non-French users or any individual boats. But I do think that sometimes the French have an advantage by virtue of being more active in the VR forums in French. There are probably also some users who figured it out on their own.

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-25 | 23:06:30

I think VR is not aware that there are some small area's on this planet where people don't speak french ;)

Post by sailorjerry | 2018-05-26 | 01:12:55

First off I need to apologize to Your Mom SA for loosing my mind at mark yesterday, I think it was sleep deprivation. Anyways I'm on my way to finishing the Mini and as usually I don't listen and got behind. My ranking is far from the top 10 that you all are accustom to but IO will get my turn trust me. I was just passed by a group of boats with a lessor ranking than mine with exception to the few with a higher ranking than mine. Must I say they were all the same nationality. = I have to admit VR has been consistent

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2018-05-26 | 00:57:53

Another weird anomaly. scgsalo was 3nm ahead of me after 45 mins at the start and our tracks were identical except his started 3nm into the race. According to my leaderboard this didn't "work itself out" until he started going the "wrong" way. Anyone else notice that?

Post by YourMomSA | 2018-05-26 | 01:20:00

That's a bug. The pilot boat jumped out ahead of the fleet and he was simply a late starter, which plunked him down at the pilot boat ahead of everyone. The last time it happened was months ago. Clipper leg 2 or 3 I think. I thought it had been fixed and was surprised to see it happen again. Fortunately, it was just the one boat and he was passed anyway.

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2018-05-26 | 05:15:53

Yeah, thought that must be it. I'm a programmer, all code has bugs! VR support just tried to fob me off with a link to the page about the vagaries of the ranking though :-(

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-26 | 06:03:55

all codes have bugs, but some code have more bugs than others

~George Orwell, codefarm

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2018-05-26 | 11:56:03

I like to think that if there are oddities/bugs in the calculations that slow/speed up boats that that is more like reality anyway - maybe not 3hrs stopped in one place though like sailerjerry!

I was happy to see the dashboard has an aground flag - having run aground at the end of the Sydney Hobart I know you can't tell from your boatspeed! Had a frustrating 15 mins at start of AG2R not sure if my boat was aground or not updating - although would the dashboard aground flag not update either if I was not getting updates for my boat?

Post by zezo | 2018-05-26 | 13:56:17

The server does not update boat position when aground. It waits for your command. Then the client lies to you because it moves the boat on screen before the server does.

In general you have to point your boat in the right direction and then wait few minutes to make sure it has moved actually. It's visible in the dashboard if you use it - position update with non-zero vC.

The only zero speed situation that comes to my mind is sailing with very wrong sail. Not necessarily at TWA 0. Can also be upwind with spinnaker.

Post by mak08 | 2018-05-26 | 16:08:50

Regarding your last question, the dashboard doesn't have any information that the UI doesn't have. If the server does not send updates or if you're otherwise disconnected, the dashboard will not update.

The start is always critical (nowadays with VR3 less so than with the previous game version VR2) because the VR servers may get overloaded and stop sending updates (and, worse yet, they may stop receiving commands). Be sure to set a fast and reasonably safe course at the start, and then relax.

Post by YourMomSA | 2018-05-26 | 18:53:29

The "relax" part is an incredibly important element of doing well overall in this. I'm not #1 by being the best the game has seen. I'm #1 because others who were better than me quit and/or reduced their participation. I'm good enough to contend consistently, but there have been and are still plenty of users who if they take a race seriously will usually beat me. Part of the key to getting to #1 is accepting the way VR operates, recognizing situations that are likely to produce issues so that you can pay attention to how it plays out (ie, whether or not to turn right and leave Oleron to port), and then not going ballistic and/or quitting the game when those things inevitably happen. It's a hobby. The competitive players invest a lot of time, effort, emotion, and money into it. It's natural to be angry when VR's actions clearly disrespect that time, effort, emotion, and money. I've been very angry plenty of times. I could easily itemize at least a dozen right now, and probably 20 if I thought about it for a while, and I've only been playing for three years. So that's roughly once every 2 months on average that something happens that will anger a serious player.

The best advice I can offer is to accept that's how it's going to be, or quit. Your anger won't achieve changes, and there's no point in investing time, money, and emotion into a hobby that WILL make you angry. Most other hobbies are healthier anyway.

Reaching #1 has its disadvantages, by the way. Most importantly, you suddenly feel like you need to enter every race and perform well every time. It's exhausting and having VOR and Clipper simultaneously is burning me out. You also get to a point where you aren't excited about a 20th place finish anymore, while you get pinged by 30-100 messages a day from new users who want advice. Even a 6th place finish can feel disappointing if a familiar Aussie edges you by 5 seconds. It also makes it harder to just finally go ahead and quit. Mangina has recently declared his intentions, and I believe Toppen/Ventus Mare and Marcusbelgicus also intend to quit after VOR and Clipper. I think a few other top boats will be quitting too. These guys are all friends and/or familiar competitors for me, so I'm quite sad to see them going, but I don't have a problem at all with their decisions. There is a very good chance that after they all go, I'll decide I'm not having enough fun anymore and quit also.

The thing is... That's probably a good thing in the long run. If the top 10 never changes because of boats with years of historical points built up, it will get tiresome for the newer contenders. I'm too addicted to declare an intent to quit now, but I think it's on the horizon, not too far away.

Regarding the concept that it's poor business to mis-handle the things that are making us so angry... I've done enough races to have a reasonable idea of how many paying customers enter each race. It varies, but I think it's something like 20 times as many users as are racing seriously enough to contend for the win, read these forums, notice and care about something like the Oleron mistake, etc. So if VR is able to do things that draw more of those users into the game, that has a much higher profit margin than investing a lot of work into perfecting the details that anger the minority of users who take the game exceptionally seriously.

Bottom line... (1) I don't think they ever do anything with malicious intent, but I definitely think there are plenty of bugs and mistakes that could feel that way to the user. (2) Their communication with users is persistently poor. That isn't likely to change. (3) It's best to accept that and live with it or quit. I think their goal is volume of short-term users rather than repetition of repeat users, and if I'm right, then there's no value in getting agitated about the failure to handle the details as well as the most serious users would like. Don't get me wrong... These things upset me too and I'd like to see them handled better... But I've simply learned that I need to accept it as-is or quit.

I'd like to see Cvetan get to #1, though. That would be great fun.

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2018-05-27 | 05:44:59

Amazing attitude, good advice for life too I would say :-)

This is a game, there are rules and the way things work, written and unwritten, intentional and unintentional and you only upset yourself if you let them annoy you! Trouble is you invest so much in playing the game it's hard not too get annoyed.

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2018-05-27 | 05:40:01

Yes, thought so. Exactly the lesson I learnt at the AG2R start! Having read the help pages I was aware there could be issues at the start but didn't think it could be so bad as to not see a position update for 15 mins. Now I'm wiser :-)

Post by sailorjerry | 2018-05-26 | 18:56:54

I Will someone explain how I am getting passed by boats doing less kts than I am? They come from behind and motor pass me. I am doing 18.5 kts on average they are a kt slower some more . I am understanding it's a game but at least play far. The bugs have wings.

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2018-05-27 | 05:48:29

I'm no expert but you do see weird things. I just saw a boat apparently only doing 7kts when it should have been doing 15 - didn't actually seem to be the case and they had not just tacked or gybed (although maybe they did accidentally) so I would not take the reports of other boats info too seriously. They might be passing you because they just switched to a faster angle?

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-27 | 16:40:38

probably during a penalty at 50% speed

Post by zezo | 2018-05-27 | 20:21:52

Yep. The penalties are visible from a third party point of view. Just not for your own boat.

Post by MidnightFoiler | 2018-05-28 | 04:02:28

When does this happen? Sail change? Wasn't aware this had penalties like tacking/gybing ... just found another thread about it.

Post by Stormbringer | 2018-05-27 | 21:14:24

There's a delay between the server data and the UI, see my post above. Sometimes that delay may seem like the fix is in, but I think it is really just a matter of the computational limits of the servers, both in maintaining actual race data and also again displaying it in the UI.

Take Mom's advice and accept it, treat it as a game or hobby, when it's no longer fun then quit.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2018-05-29 | 20:40:59

My contribution to this post....
I don't think VR is manipulating the boats, but yes I do think the bugs and some features of VR do have an impact on the final ranking.
Bugs have frustrated a lot of players, including me. But at the end I have concluded that you have to accept them and try to find in which circumstances they happen and try to avoid those situations (- but was not that successful on the finish of the last VOR... ).
What definively decided me to leave this game is the shit communication/feedback you receive when you ask a question and the fact that you cannot trust the final ranking with the way VR is moving the boats today. I asked to VR to give me an explanation on why I have been ahead of Sideshow for the last 2 hours on leg 8 of the VOR but the final result was the reverse, but clearly stating that I was not questionning the final result, but asking the reason of this behavior. I won't list here the pack of stupid answers I got, it is absolutement unbelievable, nobody can be so stupid, unless he is doing that on purpose...
So my personal conclusion on this : the precision of the game is not high enough to discriminate the boats that are too close to each other, because all the boats do not move at the same time. So your final result will be dictated by when the server is going to move your boat across the finish line vs the boats that are close to yours. This is not an issue if there is a big difference in time between boats, but when the results are close, there is a part of lotery in this game. I hope I am wrong, but all observations I have done are pointing to the same conclusion.
This game is similar to a situation where a referee whould have to chronometer a 100 m in the olympic game, but with an old chronometer of the 19th centery.....who would be interested to watch such a race?

Post by mak08 | 2018-05-29 | 21:27:26

The question is probably moot knowing you're one of the top players, but did you have confirmation (from Sideshow in this case) that you were ahead of him, or did you observe the situation from a third account?
It seems to me that the problem of outdated opponent's positions is even bigger in VR3 as it was in VR2. If you have been consistently ahead of Sideshow as seen from a neutral observer, that would indeed be most frustrating.

Post by marcusbelgicus | 2018-05-29 | 22:46:14

We exchanged a few MP with Sideshow and both of us were surprised by the result. That was also confirmed by other players. Anyway, I am fine with the final result, this is really not the most important. What I want to know is the rules of the game. There was a strange situation with the ranking on that finish, I have asked for a explanation, I expect to get an answer precise enough about the rules, not something like 'you did not win because you did not cross the line the first (and this is definitively one of the answer I got). Every player wants to get an equal chance of success to score well, and certainly not based on a lotery that will decide which boat is moving first to cross the finish line.

Post by Ursus Maritimus | 2018-05-30 | 09:58:55

Same here, I'm especially pissed of by the inconsistent application of the white line (gestapo) rule. In Ultimed you had to follow it exactly and in Mini you could do whatever you want.

For finishing, I would assume they interpolate between the last two positions (before and after finish) to get to the arrival time in seconds (and why not milliseconds). Ranking is never reliable to the 0.01 nm because you never know who had the last server update. We all know that sometimes you jump in ranking up and down because you did or just did not have your location update. And ranking is based on the DTF based on distances to these hush-hush gates.

support tickets are usually answered with copy/paste answer that demonstrate one thing: they did not read your message and most certainly did not try to understand the underlying question or need. I think Jessica is a bot.

Poor (= no) communication to their customers is the main frustration of all of. How difficult can it be to add the oleron gate and send an in-game message about that the bridge route is now also allowed.

Hope they feel the pain of loosing considerable revenue from you guys stepping out and realise that listening to the customer voice must be first priority. Otherwise they will for sure go out of business sooner or later.

Secondly, all VR employees should be racing one boat all the time, half of them NMS, half of them full pack. Than we will see finally the playability of the game improve. at present that really sucks, because it is impossible to accurately steer your boat manually.

Enough said, I'm still around but the fun to wake up several times a night to improve you position is going away. Glad I'm not a paying player and unless VR improves dramatically, that won't change.

Fair winds to ya all.