Why does every holiday have horrible servers???

[cantankerous--]

Man, every time you guys take a day off the servers plain suck. That's all I got. Just letting you know.

Signed: Disgruntled guy who keeps buying all your tables on multiple devices and wants to be able to access online gameplay and leaderboards without having to wait for minutes each time to access anything.

[grenadier]

Servers seem broken again. No tournament access.

If you can't get someone to work holidays, how about at least scheduling a daily automated reboot?

[jkp0317]

Weekends, Holidays, nights would likely be high traffic periods on their servers. You would think we could get increased focus during these times. Added things like android, steam sales where they are generating more revenue would get even more attention. Poor server performance for hours on end is not great customer service.

[wildhagen]

And again everything seems to be down.

Would be nice if we could play for at least 1 day without extreme slowness or complete unavailability....

Why do we pay for this game if we can't use it during a lot of days?

[OU7CAS7]

Yeah, I have to say that I'm not particularly impressed with this either. Either showing "No scores found" (when there should be), or messages about maintenance or loss of Internet connection.

At first I thought it was my Internet connection, as my Wifi connection would often drop out to our modem 12 metres away. Recently, I went and bought a wireless repeater / range extender, which fixed the drop out problem with websites. However, it doesn't seem to have done much to fix the issue with accessing scores in Pinball FX3. Which leads me to the conclusion that it isn't my Internet connection, but Zen's servers.

Zen could probably benefit from optimising their database queries from and to each client. I will admit that I tend to alternate between checking my own rank / score, and checking other people's. But I don't always need to see everyone else's scores and ranks.

At the moment, the rank / score viewing mechanism alternates between "Friends" -> "My Score" -> "Overall" lists. Clicking / pressing the list type button again changes back to "Friends", and so on. So, what if you just wanted to switch between the "My Score" list and "Friends" list, but didn't want to see the "Overall" list? Currently, since you can't simply skip over the "Overall" list, the game would still send a query to the server to ask for the "Overall" list, even if it isn't what you wanted. Multiply this by the number of players trying to access rank / score data at the same time in a similar fashion, and you get slow, laggy servers. Performance wise, it's a poor design choice, plain and simple.

The better method would be to let players choose the exact list type that they wanted to view, right off the bat. It may not improve the situation by much, but at least the servers wouldn't be so tied down with so many unnecessary queries to the server database.

Also, caching the results (temporarily storing them) would also go a long way, as there would be far less queries being made to the server. Why ask the server for a fresh list every time the user requests it? Why not instead have recently cached score and rank information that would be available at the instant a player requests it? It obviously wouldn't provide the absolute latest rank and score information available across the board at an instant, but this wouldn't be as important for the normal single players modes, as it might otherwise be for "Matchup" or "Tournaments" modes. Having said this, a timeout value could be set for the cache to retain the data it retrieved in the first place, before getting a fresh list. Say, 5 minutes for "Matchup" and "Tournaments" modes, and 30 minutes for everything else. Note that this doesn't have to mean that if you set a new highscore and want to see your name with the new rank and score, that you should have to wait for it to come up. Rather, an exception could be made in that instance, and the cache cleared with a fresh update on the list, resetting the timer for the next normal refresh if you fail to improve your score.

[rmaultra]

Honestly, I thought that my Wi-Fi was not working New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. I called my cable provider and set up an appointment for today January 3 for them to come out and take care of the problem because I could not get matchups to work tournaments or classic scores to load with Zen's server. My son told me that the cable TV provider that provides our Wi-Fi was not the source of the problem he went to the Zen forums and sure enough people were complaining about the servers not working. This has happened in past holidays whereby you are really looking forward to your time off and playing pinball and you can't do it because the company that you bought the pinball from haven't fed the hamsters that are running the wheel that keeps the server up and running. I simply do not understand the customer service aspect of this company and how they treat their clients. Does the CEO of the company do you think monitor things or is just callous as to how their company markets themselves or provides a really good quality product to those who have bought their product bugs and all. Don't get me started on the upgrades that they did to the Williams Bally tables to make them allegedly more playable.

[tfhfony]

Well, I am glad that they at least took this questions seriously and have promissed to do something about it....

Oh wait... that was sarcasm! It's just with these cases where the "community managers" tend to ignore certain threads....

[grenadier]

I had slow load times on tournaments earlier today, and now the servers are reporting down for maintenance. Some consistency would be nice here. If you're not going to police the leaderboards for cheaters, the least you can do is keep the servers online.

[cantankerous--]

I had slow load times on tournaments earlier today, and now the servers are reporting down for maintenance. Some consistency would be nice here. If you're not going to police the leaderboards for cheaters, the least you can do is keep the servers online.

They are slow now, but functioning.

[cantankerous--]

Servers not working again.................well, on Nintendo Star Wars, I haven't checked my ps4, but assume it will be unresponsive as well.

[cantankerous--]

I mean, is today secretary appreciation day or something? Usually I only see outages on holidays or weekends or sporadic weekdays................oh, nevermind, I get it, it must be one of those days

[ZREXMike]

I mean, is today secretary appreciation day or something? Usually I only see outages on holidays or weekends or sporadic weekdays................oh, nevermind, I get it, it must be one of those days

thanks, thought it was me, is not.

[wildhagen]

I have the same issue via Steam. Quite annoying, this seems to happen more frequently lately...

Why is Zen not doing anything about this problem, which is happening for the last few months?

[ZREXMike]

I have the same issue via Steam. Quite annoying, this seems to happen more frequently lately...

Why is Zen not doing anything about this problem, which is happening for the last few months?

back up 2day.

[grenadier]

And problems again today. Sluggish or not response when navigating tournaments. Took multiple retries to even bring up the list of tourneys.

Zen, you need to fix this. Aside from FX3 being sold on the promise of community and competition, which is tough to have with servers not working, this is going to hurt your DLC sales. No one wants to put money into a game that doesn't work on a regular basis.

[cantankerous--]

And problems again today. Sluggish or not response when navigating tournaments. Took multiple retries to even bring up the list of tourneys.

Zen, you need to fix this. Aside from FX3 being sold on the promise of community and competition, which is tough to have with servers not working, this is going to hurt your DLC sales. No one wants to put money into a game that doesn't work on a regular basis.

Zen seems to have done some fiddling with the servers as access is not entirely shut down, but still extremely labored, but now, even with occasional access my level (xp) is 0 when it was once 20'ish? Can't remember, but certainly not 0 and after completing a tournament you might have to wait 10 minutes or more for the score to upload. I think the next set of tables they pimp Ima wait until they fix the servers.

[ZREXMike]

And problems again today. Sluggish or not response when navigating tournaments. Took multiple retries to even bring up the list of tourneys.

Zen, you need to fix this. Aside from FX3 being sold on the promise of community and competition, which is tough to have with servers not working, this is going to hurt your DLC sales. No one wants to put money into a game that doesn't work on a regular basis.

oh well, ya gets what ya pay for...oh wait, not 2day.

[Linne_Zen]

We are really sorry for the inconvenience! We have since worked on our stability issues so hopefully this will not repeat. Thank you very much for your patience guys!

[cantankerous--]

Just saying,..........................saturday afternoon it stopped working, and didn't work once since. Not once.

[DCLXVI]

Maybe it's because lot of a people are beeing secluded in europe atm ?

I saw a lot of online gaming services had outages due to increased usage.

[cantankerous--]

Maybe it's because lot of a people are beeing secluded in europe atm ?

I saw a lot of online gaming services had outages due to increased usage.

This is a pre corona post, but ya, for sure now outages might be understandable.

[DCLXVI]

This is a pre corona post,

That depends on which country you live in.

But I feel you, it seems to be a recurrent problem.

[cantankerous--]

That depends on which country you live in.

But I feel you, it seems to be a recurrent problem.

For some reason Zen now has like 5 tournaments running. I kind of thought it was cause of the corona and lots being locked down, but surprisingly it is not happening on nintendo switch star wars for some reason, but to be honest, with the various, issues that game has, and their reluctance to address them, I think they just made a few bucks off of an easy release, you know carting something that they had already in their library, and didn't really check it well beforehand, and now with the prospect of paying money to fix it, they are reluctant and are now just leaving it to die, sadly, because I love it.

[grenadier]

Guys this is pretty basic. You sold FX3 on the basis of tournaments and competition. That can't happen if your servers are down half the time. I'd maybe accept coronavirus as an excuse, but you've been having this issue since late last year. Time to step up and fix the damn thing.

[Linne_Zen]

Unfortunately, these server errors occurred more these days than we would have wanted, and we are aware of that, we are gearing up to make these go away. We apologize for this error and thank you very much for your patience in this matter.

[cantankerous--]

Unfortunately, these server errors occurred more these days than we would have wanted, and we are aware of that, we are gearing up to make these go away. We apologize for this error and thank you very much for your patience in this matter.

When you're sitting there refreshing for hours, that oftentimes turns into days, frequently during the weekend, when you are not at work, and really want to play............................all you have is patience Linne. It's a frustrating, often times curse inducing kind of patience that has been thrust upon us, against our will actually. You guys have long known the servers to be an issue, much in the same way as the countless bugs and bogus scores on the leaderboards that I have reported on multiple systems that still exist, or parts of games, that should be functional, like the survival challenge and extra balls and turning on or off these options while setting up a tournament in Nintendo Star Wars. This too has also been reported on multiple occasions on your various social media accounts, to which, at least twice a response of we will investigate the matter was given......................Im still wondering if the investigation concluded the same things that I found on my first day of owning the game, given I have played Zen pinball for over 10 years now and am rather familiar with how it should function.

[OO1OO1OO]

Since there are no new tables right now to buy, and you are even giving some of the older ones away for free, I just bought the complete package of operencia... Hopefully you can invest a bit in the pinball servers....

[M!chel]

Last weekend was the worst.
Ever since the game has changed it's name, at least on my pc. It's now called: Practice FX3

[cantankerous--]

Down again. One would think, you would have something in place to alert your tech guys to a server being down and not just have to be told by the users on social media, but seemingly this is actually what happens.

[OO1OO1OO]

One would think, you would have something in place to alert your tech guys to a server being down and not just have to be told by the users on social media, but seemingly this is actually what happens.

One very easy and reliable solution for you, duty techs of ZEN:

1. Scroll to the top of this thread.
2. Find "Thread tools" in the grey bar
3. Click on "Subscribe to this thread"
4. On Notification Type select "Instant notification by email"

We would be more than happy to assist you to recognize server failures.

Hint: "It's weekend! The servers are down again!"

[cantankerous--]

One very easy and reliable solution for you, duty techs of ZEN:

1. Scroll to the top of this thread.
2. Find "Thread tools" in the grey bar
3. Click on "Subscribe to this thread"
4. On Notification Type select "Instant notification by email"

We would be more than happy to assist you to recognize server failures.

Hint: "It's weekend! The servers are down again!"

^^^^^^^^^^^

What he said.

[grenadier]

May 9, 2020, and the servers are down....again. And have been since yesterday evening.

Seriously, how hard is it to have someone check them once a day or so? It's not like they don't need to be checked. More often than not, they need some attention.

[cantankerous--]

May 9, 2020, and the servers are down....again. And have been since yesterday evening.

Seriously, how hard is it to have someone check them once a day or so? It's not like they don't need to be checked. More often than not, they need some attention.

It's expected of us to add in to it the HORRIBLE CORONA VIRUS and expect that that is the be all to end all answer for a problem that has been going on long before the virus.

[KingCat78]

They got the Williams/Bally license from FarSight, so that includes the leaderboard problems as well

[OU7CAS7]

I have sent the following message to Zen via email. If they respond to me via email, I'll post their response here in this thread.

Dear Zen,

I am concerned about the future of Pinball FX3. I noticed that customers of Pinball Fx3 are becoming agitated, and in some cases angry about the apparent lack of server capacity for the game. This includes issues such as not being able to access high scores on leaderboards, not being able to play in the game's tournaments section, and not being able to access the pinball tables that they paid for.

I don't consider myself to be an expert in game design, but I have tried building my own game in Unity for several years, and also have many years of experience designing and building websites and programs for Windows operating systems. So, I can understand how difficult it can be to build a game and solve programming related issues, and thus can at least understand these kinds of issues from both sides. Supporting a game across multiple platforms is certainly not an easy thing to do.

I have made a couple of suggestions on the Zen forum board about how the game's code could be improved with respect to server utilisation. My post, and many other customers' posts regarding the server issues that the game has, are at the following address on your forum board:

https://forum.zenstudios.com/showthr...l=1#post139138

There were two rather brief responses from "Linne_Zen" in the thread above. It was about 2 months between those posts. First, posts from Zen staff should be a bit more frequent, at least once per month, to show that Zen cares and that Zen staff are actively working to get the problem(s) fixed. Second, it would be a good idea to be upfront with people with respect to the root cause of any issues that arise. This doesn't mean providing specifics on affected code modules, but rather explaining the situation in more detail. Finally, it would be good to provide some form of time frame within which you expect that the problem(s) will likely be fixed. That way, your customers are more likely to return, rather than forget about or give up on playing Pinball FX3.

I understand that the viral pandemic is likely to complicate things with respect to fixing these issues. However, it must also be understood by Zen that people are stuck at home more so than ever before, and therefore your customers are much more likely to play (or at least try to play) Pinball FX3. So, it actually becomes more important than ever during this time, that such problems are fixed within a reasonable period of time. Otherwise, your customers will probably buy and play games from other games vendors, and forget about Zen altogether.

Also, it is one thing to provide discounts to tables, but a completely different thing to address bugs in games. Few people will want to take advantage of discounts for games that don't work properly.

Let your customers know that you are listening to their concerns, and that you will enact upon them accordingly. This will help to restore confidence in your customers, and keep them reasonably happy.

Thanks for reading.

Kind Regards,

- Tristan Bailey (aka OUTCAST)

[sui99]

Well formulated; I hope you get a response.

I myself am way too tilted at the moment to post anything constructive. Everytime I sit down to post another bug, I have to delete my post cause it turned into a childish rage...

I love the game and appreciate the developers talent for amazing table design. But support, communication and client stability are more than lackluster and makes it hard to remain "a fan of the company". Which is a shame, really.

[darky1986]

After 4 months not playing I picked up the wire and started again.
Oh man , I really rocked out that back to to future table!
Couldn't wait to see if I beated my friends highscores, and guess what... the highscores din't load just like it din't load 4 months ago.

Really... I'm getting so tired, so frustrated and so angry at the same time.
You guys keep saying: we are aware of the server problems and looking into it.
But month after month, week after week every weekend this happens again.

I bought all your DLC, and si still really love it.
But I'm really doubting about buying dlc in future from you guys.

Plz,you guys are loosing costumers... wake up!
even on steam its raining complaints
https://steamcommunity.com/app/44212...2086107025770/

[OU7CAS7]

Email received from Bence Banszki, Community Representative of Zen Studios:

Hi Tristanlbailey,

Thanks for contacting us and for explaining this problem in detail to us!
​
There is constant communication regarding the server problems at us and it reached the highest levels of the company so we are aware of the problem and we are gearing up to make these go away. Also, I am collecting the user feedbacks and ideas, and forward it to the developers.

Hopefully, we can improve the quality of the servers, thank you for your patience in this matter.

Best regards,
Bence Banszki
Community Representative
Zen Studios

[grenadier]

Email received from Bence Banszki, Community Representative of Zen Studios:

Scroll up, and you'll see similar statements in April...and February. It's past time to get this out of the discussion stage and actually do something.

[wildhagen]

And the servers are down AGAIN. Zen doesn't care anymore about this game, obviously, by refusing to fix thjs problem which is going on for more than 1 year....

They got their money from the customers, so why should they care. That seems to be how Zen is thinking...

[OO1OO1OO]

During the last weeks it's getting worse.
Now also a lot of problems during normal working days...

[overall_fanatic]

After paused playing Pinball FX3 on PS4 for a few month I bought some Table Packs "on sale" - now I must find out that there are big problems with the connection to the servers - PSN works fine, my internet has no problems, no other game on PS4 have problems.

This sucks a lot when you score great and nothing will happen & recognized because i'm "offline" for Zen. Every time on the last 3 days I habe these problems here in Germany so what's going on there?

I paid so much money & support since the begining with ZP1 fpr all tables - but now it seems Zen Studios are not interessted in their own Pinball Game?

I also must find out that there are no new tables after all this months! Not even announced?

[ZREXMike]

oh well, they say you get what you pay for...oh wait, not today, or any weekend.

not willing to pay somebody to mind the servers on the weekends and holidays, it is not hard to see this. i don't play all that much anymore, but when i do it seems this is happening. i have many, many Zen tables, it is a shame this kinda cheesey crap is going on. i mean, i could see if it was a small independent, but is the leading video pinball company, surely someone could be paid a small hourly rate to mind the servers. they could take turns between the employees, the janitor could be trained to hit the switch to get it back going.

jeez...

edit: this is a "we got your money sucka, piss off" type thing.

reminds me of American products like food, etc., they have gradually shrunk the package, and reduced the amount of stuff in them that makes for the good taste, like salt on chips (which they have made thinner as well) and sugar on candy, etc. American companies are out to squeeze all the profit out of things that they can, while making sure you get as little as they can possibly give you for your money.

jeez...

[ZREXMike]

okay, been working good, let's see what happens this weekend.

[Linne_Zen]

We are continuously working on the stability of the servers, hopefully, we can establish a comfortable gaming experience as soon as possible! We apologize for this error and the inconvenience it caused.

[ZREXMike]

We are continuously working on the stability of the servers, hopefully, we can establish a comfortable gaming experience as soon as possible! We apologize for this error and the inconvenience it caused.

no, you are just too cheap to pay someone to mind the servers on weekends, which makes your last post a lie, sorry. sorry you have to lie, i mean.

people pay good money to relax and enjoy some digital pinball on weekends, not be treated like idiots by companies that have the attitude "we got yer money, sucka, piss off".

[grenadier]

We are continuously working on the stability of the servers, hopefully, we can establish a comfortable gaming experience as soon as possible! We apologize for this error and the inconvenience it caused.

We've been getting variations on this answer for over 6 months. It's well past time you find a way to resolve this on a permanent basis, instead of "working on it" indefinitely. If you're really working on it, it's time to FINISH the fix, or find someone who can.

[grenadier]

Servers are acting up again, and have been since yesterday based on threads on a Facebook group I'm in.

If you can't nail down the problem, can you at least have someone check on them once or twice a day?