ISP switch currently a bust, Twitch streams are currently up in the air

The attempt to switch to CenturyLink for the time being has been unsuccessful, the technician not only leaving before the order had been completed, but the modem currently is getting no connection to the internet after recycling the power on it. Until the order is completed, it looks like I'm still stuck with Xfinity. Using the connection I still have with Xfinity, I spoke to 2 representatives to get this matter resolved over the phone for close to 1 hour & 36 minutes, looks like CenturyLink is still incapable of being able to tell who is supposed to fix what & they are still bouncing customers around like ping pong balls (this is what originally got me to switch from them back in 2014)...

I still don't know where this is going or when I'm going to have a stable internet connection with a new ISP, ultimately it's looking better to just remove the boost option from my Xfinity bill & eat the lower speeds with higher costs if CenturyLink can't get their shit in order... Most of my day today has already been wasted with what CenturyLink has been dragging out & the installation technician leaving with the statement of, "That's on you" when I stated we needed to figure out why the modem wouldn't work with my router (attempting to put the modem into bridge mode, which made the administration interface inaccessible & an internet connection completely lost after recycling the power).

Currently the status of streams regarding my Twitch channel are up in the air as I'm not certain where the status of my ISP is going, temporary or not, I can't get anything affordable that is dependable & this is killing my ability to do anything online worthwhile... I'll give another update when I know better where this is going, but I currently don't have anything concrete, I may end up abandoning this switch & just lowering my speed with Xfinity to get the bill down a bit or actually considering going with a satellite provider as a temporary solution until I have something dependable to switch to...

Bug report & feedback to Epic Games

On 2/27/2020, I started to get fed up with changed made to make Fortnite StW more like BR & because I needed to file a bug report anyways, I made a very detailed Feedback message to Epic Games regarding all the changes they are making to make StW more enjoyable for BR player, but as a result, are pushing away StW players that don't care for BR.  This feedback message was as follows:

After the interface rehash, I've noticed that the tracking function has become near useless due to removal of the overlays that show mat availability for whatever is being tracked; the only thing "tracking" a schematic does at this point is pins it at the top of that section when you have your inventory visible.  I always wanted to see this function updated to allow tracking of mats for crafted down versions of that schematic, but seeing as this overlay has been removed, I'm going to assume this function is going to be retired anyways...

I was one of the original Fortnite players, never a fan of BR, only sticking to StW.  Every change that is made to StW to make it more like BR only makes me lose further interest in the mode that I stick to.  One might say I am biased against BR, which wouldn't be too far from the truth; harassment from a single BR streamer rallying others to join him on his retaliation movement to a report filed against him in StW (with evidence video) on 2/19/2018 targeting any online profile of mine he can find for over 2 years would do that to anybody (and that bugger is still able to access BR today, despite my attempts to make his aimbotting activity over multiple games more visible, especially in Battle Royale; Twitch even "rewarded" his poor behavior with a Partner status).  The more StW is made to be like BR, the less enjoyment I get from it & I may eventually stop playing Fortnite entirely if it goes much further.

I know that BR has a higher priority than StW does & much of what StW players say will go unheard, so as long as this trend continues, StW players will continue to stop playing the game (most of the larger StW streamers I followed for StW have already stopped playing the game or play it very minimally) & I may be following suit in the near future as long as StW continued to take functions & visual perspectives from BR, a mode I will never be able to get into because any possibility of enjoying it has been ruined by a single individual & those he recruited to do his bidding...  Sooner or later the only people that will be left playing StW will be the BR players & they only care about the V-Bucks they can take from that mode to purchase BR skins, is this really what StW needs to be degraded to, a V-Buck farm for BR players?

In all honesty, I don't see this as making any difference other than maybe seeing a change in that now dysfunctional tracking function, the rest of it will likely get ignored, I would be more expecting to find myself on the receiving end of a ban for speaking my mind (that would be the end of all Epic Games purchased for me in the foreseeable future if that happened, a full boycott along with any other game that use the Unreal Engine, an engine developed by Epic Games, where they receive royalties from companies for using it in their games).  I don't expect anything will happen, but I will certainly give an update on this blog if something does come out of it (or further publications on my personal site if it does turn into a full boycott).

The purpose in making this statement public is so that it doesn't go unheard, even if Epic Games chooses to ignore it & the outcome is more personally unfavorable than beneficial to pure StW players (if "pure" can even be used at this point, StW has already been tainted by BR mechanics & it just gets worse over time), at least what was said will still be heard to those with open minds & others that have also had the same discrepancies against changes to make StW more like BR.

On 2/25/2019, I was made aware of a situation with StreamElements that resulted in a rollback of account data back to Nov. 4th, 2019:

Hello,

We are writing to inform you about a recent issue we had with our loyalty system and the steps we are taking to remedy the situation.

On Monday, one of our loyalty databases maintained by a 3rd party vendor was accidentally deleted from their server along with the related backups. The database held all of our recent customer loyalty program data. As a result, systems which rely on this program--such as giveaways, contests, stream store, watchtime, and media request with loyalty points--were disabled.

Because we were able to identify the issue, we have re-enabled the loyalty program today. Since the vendor informed us that they are unable to restore the lost data, we are using our own offsite backups from November of 2019 to reflect data captured up until that month. We realize this is not ideal, but it is the only option we currently have. If you prefer to opt-out of using the older data we restored, simply use the reset button on your leaderboard.

We apologize for the impact this has on your channel and community and will be putting in additional safeguards to ensure this doesn’t happen again. If you have any additional questions please come by our Discord.

There is very little I can do regarding watchtime & points gained from watching, point bonuses on the other hand, I have the ability to go through past logs & restore point bonuses for follows, raids, hosts & cheers.  These logs include the following:

• Patreon income logs
• Dasbhoard logs restored to StreamElements through Twitch API
• Local IRC logs on my computer

With these I should be able to restore all bonuses to people who deserved them & remove points from those that have had point wipes as a result of breaking he rules of the channel.

Commands & auto-responses will likely also need to be re-written, that will take additional time before another stream can be done & some of those commands may not came back if I can't remember what they were.  Regarding the Fortnite commands, this are still disabled anyways, still waiting to be reimbursed on traps that I got ripped off for as a result of the AFK-kick on 2/12/2020 (which in all honesty, probably won't happen), there won't be any more streams of this game on my Twitch channel until these are reimbursed (solo runs are still being streamed over my Discord channel however).

Changes in ISP may effect streaming quality/frequency

Recently I switched my phone to another provider & found out afterwards that by removing my phone from my current internet service provider, this was NOT going to save me any money (only dropping it about $4 per month, meaning I was actually paying more between the 2 services).  I decided to leave this for a month to at least get the prorated refund from overpaying the bill last month, but when I go my new bill from XFINITY, it became clear that the damage was far worse than originally expected, I not only didn't get the prorated refund I was promised on the next bill, the monthly price was also jacked up almost $20 more per month that originally quoted.

On 2/24/2020, it was decided that I needed to switch my ISP ASAP, the changes are already in motion & it doesn't fare well with my gaming habits or ability to stream to Twitch, so this may effect how often I'm able to stream to Twitch, what quality I am able to stream at or could just negate my ability to stream at all (this will be determined when I attempt to stream over this ISP for the first time).

This is what's currently know regarding the changes that are being made:

• Downloads are going to take a LOT longer to download (when gaming is concerned, this means patches & new games), so that's going to effect frequency of streams (once I'm able to get back to streaming, health issues have been the main hindrance of regular streams for roughly 2 months now).
• The upload rate is going to a mere 2 mbps upload rate (I had 10 mbps with the other ISP that I'm now switching from), so this might effect the quality of streams or possibly effect my ability to stream at all if I have to drop upload bitrate on video encoding too far to be able to meet what the upload bandwidth is capable of.

Currently I don't know what is going to come out of the monthly data cap, that will likely be the determining factor as to whether I can stream at all, if not needing a quality downgrade to still remain functional under the lowered upload rate.  I was told it was unlimited (later they changed that statement to give an actual variable), provided it at least gives me 500 GBs over a month, I may still be able to stay within this restriction while streaming, however only time will tell...

Eventually I want to switch to Google Fiber, but currently this is not available in my area, I have put myself on a mailing list to let me know when it does become available.  This will give me a much higher upload rate & a definite increase in download rate from what I'm going to be stuck with with this new ISP, but until then, I'll will be confined to new limitations with this new ISP until I am able to get a decent ISP in my area.

Taking break from Fortnite due to technical issues (AFK auto-kick malfunction)

At first I thought AFK kicking in Fortnite was a good idea, however I found out today that it's not all that it's cracked up to be, especially when it ends up kicking somebody who was not AFK the entire mission that they got booted from.  In this mission, you are going to see that I was active the entire time, however after I started putting some traps on the defenses, the AFK prompted popped up stating that I was AFK.  This was my first time seeing it & I wasn't certain what I needed to do to get it to disappear, especially seeing as I wasn't AFKing to begin with, but as you can see at the end of the video, I got AFK booted regardless of the fact I was active the entire time & I was none to happy without being ripped off from completing my dailies a second time (the first time this mission was failed), didn't get any rewards at all & wasted the traps I put into the defenses.  Originally I was going to call it quits after I got my dailies completed, but because I got fucked over on this mission, I decided I was going to call it quits after I took a second attempt at helping a viewer complete his Twine SSD10 & not even bother with completing the daily.

Twitch version
Higher quality with Twitch chat to the side

Twitch version embed broken due to API change, have not managed to get it fixed yet

YouTube version
Lower quaility with moderated commenting allowed

Because of what you see here, I've decided to call it quits with Fortnite until the new events start, I'll just be soloing missions until then & streaming of Fortnite on my channel (opting to stream other games) will be dead until there's actually something I need help with to complete.

With the upcoming surgery, it was already determined that I may not be streaming Fortnite at all during the recovery period (expected to be at least a month, however console games might be possible), this particular incident is likely going to increase that period of time that was already anticipated, seeing as technical issues like this is one of the things that really puts the nail in the coffin of where this game is going...

Going over the video again, this is what was

UPDATE:  I decided to contact Epic Games about this the following day with the following statement through their Feedback function in the game:

On 2/12/2020, I got idle-kicked when I was not idle & the video located at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/550968818 proves this, I had a number of viewers during this stream that I had gained from a raid from sakis2011's channel (one of the 3 channels that helped me get affiliate as being a Fortnite streamer on Twitch with their raids).  Obviously I was not amused with not only getting ripped off on my traps, but I also got negated reward from the mission & completion of my final daily.  I ended the stream early because of this (only running one final mission for a viewer that requested help on his SSD), then called it quits & got this video highlighted from the stream.  I have informed my viewers that I will be taking a break from Fortnite for a while, perhaps only soloing missions until the next seasonal StW events & not while streaming) in a blog post that can be located at http://twitch-wondergamer.blogspot.com/2020/02/taking-break-from-fortnite-due-to.html , perhaps the only thing that is going to even make me considering stream Fortnite again (Save the World, I don't mess with Battle Royale) is if I get compensated for the losses I incurred during this mission (which I doubt will happen, so what it comes down to it you've probably lost your publicity you're getting from my channel on this game as a result of this malfunction of what was meant to deal with individuals that I run into daily).  My Twitch channel will currently trigger showing this video in chat if the !break command is used, I'm going to start streaming other games regularly rather than Fortnite because this malfunction has all but destroyed my interest in the game unless compensated for my losses (the missions rewards, the loss of V-Bucks were the daily completed & the traps put into the defense before I got booted) as a result of what you see at the end of this video.  The time on the right shows the exact time in Mountain Time, matchmaking done through US West servers.

Obviously I don't expect to get anything positive out of this, but I've made it clear that my interest in Fortnite has been all but destroyed as a result of this malfunction in their game & while not specifically stated in the feedback left over the game, I am going to be limiting any activity in the game from this point forward, streaming of StW pretty well being negated from my channel at least until the new seasonal events start & any streaming will only be done if the power levels are high enough that I don't feel I can solo them.  Of course I will still be recording them if I'm playing multiplayer at all, so videos could still show up on my YouTube channel (nothing positive, most videos I have published are of people that deserve to get kicked by this function, unlike what happened to me during this video), but no more streaming of Fortnite until I see something done to compensate for this malfunction & that likely means I will be avoiding any other games that would require a purchase of an Epic Games title in the future also (haven't decided whether I'm going to include games that use the Unreal Engine yet, but if they decide to ban my account or go after my channels rather than compensate for the game's error, a full public boycott including games that use their engine is definite, as would be the same result with another big name gaming/toy company that went after my YouTube channel).

UPDATE:  Going over the video again, this is what was lost in traps & I at the very least want these back (or the mats that were lost to craft them):

• 6 Broadsides (Lv. 40)
• 1 Wall Dynamo (Lv. 40)
• 4 Gas Traps (Lv. 50)
• 10 Wall Darts (Lv. 40)
• 2 Wall Spikes (Lv. 50)

This amounts to the following crafting mats being lost because of the AFK-kick:

• 4 Carved Twine
• 8 Oxidized Mineral Powder
• 35 Sleek Mechanical Parts
• 30 Peaky Twine
• 12 Char-Black Mineral Powder
• 1 Battery
• 4 Bacon
• 4 Duct Tape
• 28 Fiberous Herbs
• 55 Nuts 'n' Bolts
• 154 Planks

UPDATE:  Another StW streamer (who helped with getting the videos in this post sent to Epic Games & determined the reason for the idle-kick was that trap placement was not considered as a valid activity to prevent it from happening, which could rotationally result in improvements in the system in the future) decided to reimburse me on the traps that I got ripped off for...almost 200 times over.  This was more than I was asking for, he stated that he was cleaning out inventory however, so even though I felt a bit bad about it, I accepted what I was offered (if I do get AFK-kicked again, I don't really have much reason to complain about it, I could be AFK-kicked 100 more times & I probably would have still come out ahead).  This will get me streaming Fortnite again, I will however be leaving this post & the videos behind as a reminder of how this was an incorrect classification & hope that it gets fixed/improved in the future.

Follower-only chat enabled

Due to harassment in the follow-up stream yesterday, chat is once again set to follower-only mode.  Because this happened over 2 accounts, the minimum you'll need to be following is 10 minutes in the next stream, then dropped down to just a flat follower restriction in the stream after that (provided there isn't any more harassment during this period).  Note that there was one other account that was created (literally only minutes old) & followed just before I ended the stream, which appears to have been created to continue the harassment through ban-evasion of the original individual that started this, this account didn't get the chance to follow-through with it however because I increased the follow minimum from 0 minutes to 10 before he got a chance to continue through that account; had he gotten the chance to continue through the 3rd account, the minimum would have been 30 minutes in the next stream & taken an additional day of streaming before this restriction gets fully disabled (again, that's dependent on whether there is further harassment beyond what has already happened).

Twitch version
(better quality)

Twitch version embed broken due to API change, have not managed to get it fixed yet

YouTube version


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