Is it possible/worthwile to remake an avatar on Arkaida?

Yeah, I was not expecting them to allow the avatar name of someone else to be re-used. That would not be handy.
But luckily it was my own, so I'm glad that's sorted.


And I know I'm posting while I said I wouldn't, unless I bumped into another newbie problem.
Well, guess what? I'm stuck again...

Still in the infamous dropship, clicking the various windows to leave. In the end the screen starts to blur, as if you're about to be teleported.
But instead of really leaving, the screen goes back into focus, and I get the message:
"Could not execute. "Please try again."

I've tried numerous times, also tried re-logging and leaving the room, completely restarting the client loader and even a repair; but every time it fails with the same message.

So unfortunately I'm stuck again. I'm sorry but before I bother support again; has anyone an idea what to do?
Do I have some setting wrong? (All planets have been downloaded 100%)
Any suggestions are welcome!

 

I would run back through the mothership... did you talk to all the NPCs?

 

What do you mean run back trough the mothership?
There are only 3 floors, an the dropship is on the bottom floor. There is no way to get off the mothership but going on the dropship to Arkadia. And yeah, I ran all around, but only met 1 captain, who told me to go to the dropship.
So I thought maybe I did something technical wrong.

Ew, I must be uber noob... :huh:

 

Hi May. It should not matter even if you run directly to the drop ship to exit, there is no other requirements to leave the start room.
The "Could not execute" message means something went wrong somewhere in moving your avatar down to the planet on the back end. It might be something to do with support changing your avatar name while you are in the start room that caused some issue in the DB. It might also be that the server you wore supposed to go down to in the drop ship experienced some kind off issue while you wore going down.

Support should be able to move your avatar down to the planet but might place your avatar @ a location away from the new player start due to the tools placement accuracy not being 100%. If that is the case I'm sure someone will be willing to fly you over to the NPE start. When there the mission chain should automatically start once you get close to the drop ships.

 

May,

Once you manage to get down to planet, if you are not in the new player start area, (30300, 18000). Add me to your FL (Kikki KJ Jikki) and I'll come find you to give you a lift.

It shouldn't be this hard to get started in EU

Regards,
KikkiJikki

 

Ahh, thank you so much!
I really didn't get it: tried of course running again and again trough the whole mothership to see if I missed something.
Nothing but the lone captain, and the huge green arrow pointing to the drop ship.
So in the end I just went to sleep.

I'll write to support again to ask a drop down to the planet.
Thank you for your clear explanation (again)!

Hehe yeah, last night I was starting to think: "I know this game has a steep learning curve, but is it really this hard??"
Because I've never had to write support before even leaving the start room. But well, there's a first for everything.
Who knows, maybe the rest of the game will feel easier now (I know, a lil' wishful thinking).

So thank you for helping a fumbling newbie out with your offer, hopefully I wont end up on the other side of the planet.
It's reassuring to know that once I'm planet side I'll have a back up plan in case that does happen.

 

An update! Got my hopes up when I received an answer from support:

Too bad that all my downloads are 100%, oh well.
Back to writing another message to support, maybe better luck this time: fingers crossed!

Meanwhile it is September...

 

Thanks for the response.

Sorry, my last post might not have been very clear.
I meant to say that all content has already been downloaded 100% since I installed EU, almost 1,5 month ago.
And yes, it's a huge chunk, but hey, I've had plenty of time to download.

More to the point, I've been trying to escape the start room repeatedly for six days now, so presumably any start-up data or server issue would have been past by now.

I've written to support again, although the trend for me so far is:
new support case = answer in one day, update of existing support case = roughly a week for an answer.
(Of course it does make sense practically, from their point of view.)
Is this coincidence? Or is it standard, and it would be smarter / is expected to open a new support case if it is a pressing matter?

Oh well, nothing to do but wait; in the mean time I'm fighting boredom by playing other games.
Actually found a great new game I had never heard of before, so there's a positive side to everything.

 

Mindark has notoriously bad/slow support. In my experience, sometimes they do a great job, they're knowledgeable and fast, other times you get a clueless support person who is utterly useless and just cuts and pastes without reading or understanding what you wrote. I'm not sure what their setup is, I don't even know what country they're in but I'd like to see a complete overhaul of the support system. It's not helpful that it says "Arkadia Support", as if you're actually getting a member of Arkadia Studios, when you're not. All support is Mindark Support.

 

Yeah, when I received their first email and saw the sender was 'Arkadia', I was pleasantly surprised. As I thought it would be MA; which unfortunately turned out to be true after all. While it is probably logical technically, it was still slightly disappointing after the initial impression.

And what I understood from the various forums, support is now setup in Mexico? Although I didn't read anywhere that support was any better before that move. So for all I care they could be based on the moon: as long as the overall quality would go up.
But as much as we (and I guess a lot of other customers also) would like to see an improvement /overhaul of the support system, I'm hazarding it's a type of "when pigs fly" situation.
After all, support seems to be a closing post for a lot of companies, so nothing earth shattering here.

Meanwhile I'll just wait...

 

It will be interesting to know if what you encounter is unique to you due to having a previous account / name conflict of some sort, or if this is encountered by many other newbies but we don't hear about it, as newbies usually don't have accounts here early on / give up if it does not seem to work properly when they are first trying out the game.

 

May are you still stuck in the start room ?
Let me know so I can followup and find out why its taking so long.

 

It doesn't sound like the same issues that come up frequently so I imagine it has to do with the name change. But of course you never know unless MA figures out what the issue is (and tells us).

 

Yup, sadly still stuck-er than stuck.
I don't know if this is long in MA terms, but it sure does feel long.


Basically, a friend told me to join his server, because it's kinda been like Murphy's law for me in EU.
And unfortunately I didn't have a lot of solid arguments to give him.
The universe might have a point after all.

@ the-unknown and Neil: I don't think that this particular problem is something that newbies encounter a lot.
However, I can easily imagine that for somebody younger and more impatient, the slowness / the support in itself would have had them choose another game weeks ago.
Average reactions I've read have people bristling after a few hours, angry after a few days, and after a few weeks they have already forgotten that game existed.
So yeah, that might not be very helpful in retaining new players.

/end playing the smallest violin.

 

I will make some fire under support for you May.

 

My apologies for the super delayed response.
As a rl situation occurred, gaming was the last thing on my mind.
Yesterday morning was the first time I could entertain that thought again.
Figuring it had been so long, I was hopeful that I would be able to play.

Heh, "server under maintenance"... yes, I managed to choose the VU update as entry point.
What can I say: I have a huge talent for picking the wrong time.
So after waiting with everybody else for the update (and the 32 bit issues, no available server found, deleting 52 files in repair) I finally could log in today.
Success! Or wait, no... still received the "Could not execute. "Please try again." pop-up.

Chris, thank you very much for poking support for me. it did result in them sending me a response.
I have no idea which one, but I'm hoping it is the personal answer, and not the copy/paste one that arrived 13 minutes later.
Whichever one it was; it was fast, so clearly you used a blowtorch?

Unfortunately from there on it is up to support again, and from what I'm reading they can't see anything wrong with the start room.
Which is correct, that's not where the problem lies (at least not before the VU update).
And I'm probably doing something wrong and should try again "fruit on bottom, hope on top".
Have there been people in the past who managed to cheat with this kind of move? I can't imagine another reason why they would be so reluctant to dump my avatar on Arkadia.
(Meanwhile I still received an 'inactivity' email: slightly ironic.)

Still, I understand that with the massive amount of cases they are receiving now with the new VU problems,
there will be little to no chance for me to get this fixed any time soon.
So I've given up on playing this game for now; clearly it is not for me.
Besides, I play games for fun: not to add to my 'trials and tribulations'.

A big thank you anyway to all who tried to help me: the community and Arkadia Studios are definitely the redeeming features,
and the reason I won't say 'never'.
Maybe I'll try again next year. :surrender:

 

Yes, you picked the worst time to try and log in. The problems you're experiencing now are because of the update. Everyone's experiencing problems with servers disconnecting frequently. This was a big update, they redid a lot of the infrastructure (hardware and software) so some server problems were kind of expected. They've already fixed a number of bugs in the initial launch and there should be a patch soon which fixes the server instability issues. I would try logging in again after the patch.

 

As you suggested, I tried again after the patch. Unfortunately it stubbornly gave the same result: "Could not execute. "Please try again."

I'm well aware this is the wrong time, but the whole VU thing doesn't seem to have a direct influence on my (particular) problem (besides the initial struggles I had to get the game to work).
And please don't get me wrong; this is not a rage quit. I'm just tired of trying, plus I understand that realistically at the moment support will have a ton of cases to answer that take precedent over a stuck noob. So I'll just back off.
With my rl situation as it is now; I want my present gaming time to be enjoyable without added hassle.

Besides, when something easy is so unnecessarily hard, it starts to give off the feeling: maybe this isn't for me.
Have you ever had something happening in your life, that afterwards made you think; "Why did I do that?" "There were plenty of signs telling me to stop. I could have stepped out on numerous occasions. and yet I still continued on, just because I wanted to. While in the end it really did turn out to be a bad idea for me after all."
So maybe it's the universe trying to protect me from my addictive nature.
View attachment 8089

In any case, thanks for the optimism, it's more encouraging than the anger rolling off other forums.
As I said, I might try again next year; it's only a couple of months away.
I gathered my account will stay alive for that period for sure, so no harm done.

Thanks for all the help everyone, and bye bye (for now). View attachment 8090

 

I just re-read your post more carefully... Support suggested that if you continue to get the error, reply and ask them to move you down to Arkadia. Did you do this?