I have a few problems regarding logs. first, i have 2 friends that uploaded some Zurvan logs last night that i was a part of and while they appear for me if i go to their numbers then look at the party comp, i appear. but when i go to MY page none of the parses even appear on them. for some reason, it’s not showing up on my page but will show up as i was there before. like there’s a disconnect somewhere.
The other problem, is that there are 2 characters with my name on other servers. i’m on Siren, but i have a friend i was running with on Jenova last night. Turns out, there’s a character with my name on his server and all my zurvan parses for that one went to the jenova character, who isn’t me. i have a low level alt with my name on Adamantoise that has my nidhogg scores.
Basically my actual character ran Zurvan a bunch of times yesterday and my scores from my Sargatanas friends aren’t appearing for me at all, and my scores from my jenova friend went to some other person.
How can i get all my scores on my actual account, and how can i avoid all this in the future?
You don’t. All this cross-server PF stuff has basically destroyed my ability to figure out servers, and there’s really no solution that I’ve been able to come up with.
Ha, i wonder if it’d be better if i just upload myself then. I assumed that would be the issue, just wanted to be sure there wasn’t anything i could do!
I do check against Lodestone. The problem is when the name exists on multiple servers I have no way of knowing what server to use. Everything is complicated further by the fact that people over time transfer around and leave a trail of the same name across multiple servers. Those old logs have to work too, etc.
It’s a nightmare. I don’t really have a good solution. Giving people the ability to correct the log is where I’d like to go, but I don’t know how to allow editing permission of that in a way that won’t be subject to trolling.
I have a pretty good solution, I think?
Cross server parties show people’s server name in party chat prior to entering the instance (I checked it’s in the logs).
So just make fflogs uploader watch for that and remember people’s server names for later during instances.
Anybody who spoke prior to entering the instance has a known correct server, the rest can be guessed with your current rules (which are pretty unreliable as people are noticing).
It’s not 100% since somebody may not say anything prior to queueing into the instance, but it’s way better than things are today. And people who know they are often attributed to the wrong server can be sure to avoid the problem by just saying Hello.
As far as log corrections go, you might have a default opt-in to correction that can be disabled for claimed characters to avoid trolling. But I think the suggestion I outlined may make such a feature this much less necessary.
I think the main problem arises when the following conditions are met:
(1) Player uploads to personal logs
(2) Player has not connected to their character on Lodestone
Under these circumstances, I literally have no speculative server that I can start with.
I’m convinced that this is the cause of most issues. I do also agree that if I can see the server name in chat lines that I should use that as well. I would need logs with examples in order to add support for that.
I can think of a couple of options to solve the “no speculative server to start with” issue:
(a) Make the user pick a server rather than a region when uploading to FFLogs. This would give every personal log a “server” starting point.
or
(b) Require that the logger have claimed their characters in order for the report to be ranked at all.
Both of these approaches would be subject to trolling though, e.g., people deliberately picking the wrong server to duplicate ranks etc. and/or creating characters.
I could do a deeper dive into Lodestone and actually look at leveled jobs. If I did that, I could probably get the server detection right more of the time by knowing the person doesn’t have the job leveled. I’m not sure if all job levels are present on Lodestone or not though.
I’m not sure self-uploaded logs are the only or biggest problem.
What I see often is the character being associated wrong for people in the party other than the uploader.
For example, I am on Jenova and when I play with people on Gilgamesh then one of them uploads a log it likes to associate the log with a level 7 thm with my name on Gilgamesh. So fflogs speculated the server of the uploader correctly but then got it wrong for others in the party.
(Can you explain what should happen if I then upload/export a log of the same encounter myself? In one case it seemed that I caused the run to stop being attributed to the gilga thm, but in others it’s stuck and won’t stop showing there even while also showing on the correct character.)
Maybe you should implement more strict rules for players other than the uploader.
If the log tells you the server, use that. (*)
If the name exists on multiple servers inspect their profiles in depth to determine eligibility from job levels.
If multiple characters are eligible, ignore this player; only logs uploaded directly by that player will be counted.
(*) Party chat for yourself and people on your own server does not contain the server name. This is irritating because I’m not sure you can tell the difference between that and chat inside an instance where server names are never shown (thanks, SE ). Tracking context for this seems like a hassle, especially since ACT can be started late…
Back to your thoughts about finding the uploader.
It seems relatively benign to require uploaders claim their own characters. But suppose you had the same character name on two servers, both level 60 and claimed, what then? Being able to tell fflogs the specific character might be nice later.
Preventing abuse seems hard and I wouldn’t want to list all the ways to troll.
Are we talking about changes that makes it worse, though?
Maybe it’s worth a quick short term fix? Even imperfect it might reduce the spreading mess: If your own name is ambiguous the character must be claimed and log uploaded by you; otherwise any ambiguous players in logs are ignored.
You can shrink the number of ambiguous cases as time and ideas allow later.
For the server name in chat thing, I can send logs of some cross server party & instances if you haven’t gotten any yet.
For character eligibility checking, you can actually use information on lodestone’s main search results page sometimes without having to crawl deeper. It shows their current class level so if it happens to be one that is a pre-req for the needed job (like level 60 thaum or level 15 archer for blm) you can exclude that result without any further checking. Also any character that has no grand company listed in the search results can be excluded, which seems really nice to cut out tons of abandoned characters with no deep crawling.
Just trying to work this out, in terms of control flow. It seems like the concept of “speculative server” has basically been shredded, i.e., there’s no longer a point in making any assumptions at all about what server anybody is on. Even when people upload runs to their static or FC, they can have people from any server in the logs.
So stepping back and imagining that I throw all that out, what could a new model look like?
(1) Establish a speculative server
(a) Use the uploaded server if uploaded to a FC/static on a specific realm
(b) Use a claimed character with matching name if that can be determined.
(2) (NEW STEP) Check already-validated characters on FFLogs.
(a) See if the character exists on the speculative server. If it does exist, check Lodestone job information to see if the character has the job leveled to 60.
(b) If still no match, check all characters with the name to see if they have the job leveled.
OPEN ISSUE: How do I avoid rechecking characters over and over that don’t have the job leveled. It’s possible they could have leveled it since my last check.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Only check Lodestone job levels occasionally, e.g., once per week or so.
(3) If still no match, do a Lodestone search to find characters with the name:
Repeat (2)(a)-(b) for every front page match.
One issue with adding step (2) is how to pick up realm transfers… it might be that I can only do step (2) for a validated character on the speculative server.
A little confused since you mention the speculative server concept is broken, then your steps still talk about using it. >_>
I think the new step you’re describing would work to avoid wrong associations to ineligible characters, which is an improvement. Initially, you might not even do this automatically – provide a check-eligibility button somewhere that users can click when they notice a problem. Characters deemed ineligible stay that way until somebody clicks it again (I’d hide them from search results to clean things up too).
This manual check alone would solve a lot of the complaints I’ve heard of, including my own.
Some extra thoughts that may or may not be useful …
[details=You might be able to rescue the concept of speculative server a bit using the cross-server party chat hints.]
(1) Establish a speculative server
(a) Was ACT running prior to entering instance? No> give up
(b) Is this a cross server party? No> use the uploader’s server
(b) Is there chat from the player? No> give up
(c1) Is there a server name listed in that player’s chat? Yes> use that server
(c2) Is there a server name listed in that player’s chat? No> use the uploader’s server. (*)
(d) Did we see this person join the party with a cross-server mark? Yes> cannot be on the uploader’s server
(e) Did we see this person join the party without a cross-server mark? Yes> use uploader’s server
(*) You can’t trust the No case unless you see a message like “Your party leader has registered the party for duty” following it. Otherwise it may be chat from inside the duty where servers are never shown. This may be the same as (1a).
You could end up with little or no hints depending on when the uploader joined and when they started ACT.
But at least (c1) seems like no effort information.[/details]
[details=This is lookup steps I was imagining with no speculative server stuff.]
(1) If a character is claimed by the uploader, then done.
(?) If you have the 5a hint, then done.
(2) If the name is unique on all servers, then done.
(3) Perform eligibility checking (levels/gc) to eliminate characters.
(4) If a single eligible character remains, then done.
(5) Use hints to disambiguate remainder
(a) Cross-server party chat server name stuff
(b) Claimed character in the same FC/static as the uploader (maybe this is too fuzzy?)
To avoid hammering lodestone, refresh information about a name when it appears in an uploaded log no more than once a week but also provide the check-eligibility button to ask for it now.
I’m not sure how you handle a newly-eligible character that causes a name to become ambiguous. Logs uploaded involving this player before the name is refreshed would get associated with the previously-unambiguous player and I don’t know how it would get straightened out later.[/details]
). Tracking context for this seems like a hassle, especially since ACT can be started late…
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