Regarding ESP Colors and Duplications
Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2014 6:29 am
BLUF: You could potentially have your ESP color changed to Gray if you are on the below list. It will take some time to sort through the data and update it. But for now, you should be aware that multiple people have those colors. The espcolor command is temporarily disabled until we finish sorting through this.
The following colors are affected by this change: amethyst, ash-gray, cardinal-red, celestial-blue, dark-chocolate, fiery-orange, fiery-red, forest-green, frosty-blue, ghost-white, imperial-blue, indigo, jet, magenta, night-blue, onyx, pearl, silver-gray, snow, twilight-gray, yellow
We've recently discovered a problem that was allowing players to pick ESP colors that should have already been claimed by someone else. Without going into too much detail, we maintain a database containing statistical tracking information (including ESP Colors) for each character. When you generate a list of available ESP colors or try to assign a color, it first queries this database to ensure that it isn't already in use.
Unfortunately, it looks like for at least the past 25 days, if not longer, new characters have not been properly added to the table. That particular issue has since been resolved, but we're presented with a problem now, as we'll have to revert some people to Gray.
We've identified and flagged the 250+ characters that were not saved to the database properly, so we can differentiate them from the ones that were already in the database. If a character was flagged for not being in the database properly and had a color, they will keep their color over the person that was already in the database, since they wouldn't have been able to pick it if the person that was already there had the color first.
If two people who were not in the database previously share a color, the one with the lower ID number will keep that color, as there is no telling what their last access date was.
Example:
Bob was created before the database bug and last played 10/1/2014. His ESP color has been changed to Gray because he has not played recently.
Fred is a new player that started playing mid November
Sam is also a new player starting playing mid November, after Sam
Bob used to use the color Neon-Pink. He got reverted to Gray for inactivity, Fred came in and saw Neon Pink on the list and thought it was awesome, so he picked it for himself. Sam creates a new character a couple weeks later, and also sees it on the list, since Fred isn't in the database. Bob comes back and sees that he's Gray again, and doesn't see that Fred or Sam have Neon-Pink, since neither of them are in the database, so he picks it too.
We now have the following:
Character 1: Bob Neon-Pink
Character 2: Fred Neon-Pink (New Import after the database fix)
Character 3: Sam Neon-Pink (New Import after the database fix)
In a situation like this, Fred would get to keep Neon-Pink and Bob and Sam would be reverted to Gray, since Fred has a lower ID number than Sam, but must have picked it before Bob did, since he wouldn't have been able to pick it if Bob had it first.
The following colors are affected by this change: amethyst, ash-gray, cardinal-red, celestial-blue, dark-chocolate, fiery-orange, fiery-red, forest-green, frosty-blue, ghost-white, imperial-blue, indigo, jet, magenta, night-blue, onyx, pearl, silver-gray, snow, twilight-gray, yellow
We've recently discovered a problem that was allowing players to pick ESP colors that should have already been claimed by someone else. Without going into too much detail, we maintain a database containing statistical tracking information (including ESP Colors) for each character. When you generate a list of available ESP colors or try to assign a color, it first queries this database to ensure that it isn't already in use.
Unfortunately, it looks like for at least the past 25 days, if not longer, new characters have not been properly added to the table. That particular issue has since been resolved, but we're presented with a problem now, as we'll have to revert some people to Gray.
We've identified and flagged the 250+ characters that were not saved to the database properly, so we can differentiate them from the ones that were already in the database. If a character was flagged for not being in the database properly and had a color, they will keep their color over the person that was already in the database, since they wouldn't have been able to pick it if the person that was already there had the color first.
If two people who were not in the database previously share a color, the one with the lower ID number will keep that color, as there is no telling what their last access date was.
Example:
Bob was created before the database bug and last played 10/1/2014. His ESP color has been changed to Gray because he has not played recently.
Fred is a new player that started playing mid November
Sam is also a new player starting playing mid November, after Sam
Bob used to use the color Neon-Pink. He got reverted to Gray for inactivity, Fred came in and saw Neon Pink on the list and thought it was awesome, so he picked it for himself. Sam creates a new character a couple weeks later, and also sees it on the list, since Fred isn't in the database. Bob comes back and sees that he's Gray again, and doesn't see that Fred or Sam have Neon-Pink, since neither of them are in the database, so he picks it too.
We now have the following:
Character 1: Bob Neon-Pink
Character 2: Fred Neon-Pink (New Import after the database fix)
Character 3: Sam Neon-Pink (New Import after the database fix)
In a situation like this, Fred would get to keep Neon-Pink and Bob and Sam would be reverted to Gray, since Fred has a lower ID number than Sam, but must have picked it before Bob did, since he wouldn't have been able to pick it if Bob had it first.