@brevityis We are currently experimenting with some of the Ghostery settings -- it might be possible to avoid this problem by tweaking them. It will take a bit to test, we will let you know afterward.

Hello all! I have some (sort of) good news.

With all the additional logging we have added, we have been able to narrow down the majority of the problems we are seeing to requests originating from Google Chrome (or Chromium) extensions.

While we can't tell what extension they are coming from from our server logs, we were able to reproduce the random logouts and 400 issues with Ghostery. As far as we can tell, this is not a problem with Chrome as a whole, but actually specific extensions that:

1. Make requests to Flight Rising from a background context, without sending cookies
2. Then use the responses to modify the cookies transmitted to Flight Rising.

So while we know Ghostery will cause problems, it is possible that other extensions have similar issues.

The downside is that because this is a result of extensions behaving incorrectly, this is not an easy thing to fix. It may be possible to reduce the 400 errors, but without major effort, it would still be possible for Ghostery to cause 400s if left to its own devices long enough. We may have to actually rely on Ghostery to fix their extension. We are looking at our options now.

Some notes about what we see Ghostery doing: it appears to be kicking off requests to other pages on Flight Rising, not linked from or related to the current page, apparently while the browser is idle. I am not sure why it is doing this, or how it is choosing the pages to request.

It does seem that way, doesn't it? But here's the thing—if we did that, we'd be placing a long requested and much desired breed design behind premium currency.

Banescale are the start of our 1 head/2 wing/4 limb convention breaking breeds. More are coming and they'll also be accessible outside of the gem marketplace.

@Lahabrea

@ChasingFeathers, they already are. If you've come across any dragons with these names, they were named before the names were banned. Please report them to our Support team through Contact Us. When you do, please include links to the dragons you're reporting.

Good question! Because Ancient Breed #3 is a gem breed, its elemental alignment will not be Nature. @Chrisondra

Does it?

@Glacecakes

As always, please remember to stay on topic! If you have any (non-rule/policy) suggestions, be sure to share them with us in the Suggestions Forum!

It's time for a long overdue Community Update! Today we've got an update for you on our team's status, Ask the Team answers, FRFanArt spotlights, and more!

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Team Update

We want to give you a brief update on Flight Rising’s development status during the covid-19 outbreak here in the States.

Development continues as planned. We did not have to make adjustments to work remotely as we have been doing so from the start. Our team members are taking every precaution to remain safe and healthy. They are following the recommendations and orders from the CDC and their local governments.

We will update you if something happens that could significantly delay game development. We hope that won’t happen but we're discussing and preparing for that possibility. We truly wish you and your loved ones make it through this global crisis safely and in good health.

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Development Stream

Earlier this month we introduced the Development Stream hosted on our official YouTube channel. As the reality of our changed world settled in, we found we wanted to bring some positivity and fun to everyone, ourselves included.

How the stream progresses over time, we don’t know yet. There are multiple possibilities and directions we could take it in. You’ll just have to stay tuned (and if you’re on YouTube, subscribe) to find out!

What you can expect:

• Streams will not run on a set schedule, to allow our team flexibility.
• Streams will be announced on all our social media channels, as well as in the Site Status box on the front page.
• They will generally last around an hour or two.
• If you miss a stream, that’s okay—you’ll be able to watch the streams on our channel after they’ve concluded!
• Sometimes work will be recorded in advance and uploaded to YouTube instead of live-streamed. See: flexibility
• Comments, questions, and feedback about the stream can be posted in the discussion thread found here in Flight Rising Discussion.

Chat and comments on YouTube are currently and will remain disabled for now. We know chat helps viewers interact with the streamer, but it's important to us that our team members have flexibility on when they stream. The goal is to share with you insight on our development process. Disabling chat and comments allows us to focus on that goal, and not moderation.


Ancient Breed #3

We kicked off our Development Streams with the concept work for our next ancient breed! We know many of you want ancient breeds that don’t follow the four limbs, two legs, one head convention. We know that because we told you ancient breeds would break convention. Those dragons are coming, but not for Ancient Breed #3. As this ancient breed will be available in the gem marketplace it will follow a more conventional limb/head configuration. To those of you who want non-conventional ancient breeds—don’t worry, they’re on their way.

Gene scrolls for the breed will still follow the same rules as previous ancient breeds: parallel genes will match the acquisition methods of their modern gene equivalents, and unique genes will be offered via a variety of methods (treasure, gems, gameplay), etc.

The elemental alignment for this breed has not been determined yet. We can tell you that it will be an element that only has one (1) dragon breed associated with it as of the time of this Community Update.

This ancient breed does not have a release date but it will release in 2020* and it is not our anniversary feature.

*It's possible that covid-19 could delay this release but we are doing our best to ensure it does not.

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Ask the Team

Do you have a burning question about Flight Rising lore that hasn't been addressed yet? Are you curious about our development process or philosophy? Maybe you're interested in learning more about the game itself?

If you do, send us a message through Contact Us using the category Ask the Team!

How It Works

1. Navigate to our Contact Us webform.
2. Select the "Ask the Team" category in the dropdown menu.
3. Fill out the required fields, including your question.
4. Submit your completed webform.

You will receive an automated reply confirming receipt of your question. When you use the "Ask the Team" category your question is tagged for the team to review.


Ask the Team Answers

Questions submitted to us through the "Ask the Team" category will be answered in our Community Updates.

Note: While we won't be able to answer every question sent to us, all questions are documented for the Flight Rising team to review, both now and in the future.


As Always

We don't provide estimated release dates, privileged information, or discuss account actions with third-parties.

We understand there may be a preference for the weekly/bi-monthly stickied thread. Our goal with this new format (Contact Us webform category and answers in Community Updates) is to answer more than a small (and rushed) handful of questions at a time.

Now on to your questions!



Pearlcatchers have long come up with creative ways to keep their pearls close, and that definitely includes tools like satchels, slings, and backpacks. The art depicts the dragons physically holding them because the pearls are such a focal importance to the breed and its identity.



We don't have any plans for Shade or corrupted dragons, but unaligned dragon breeds are definitely a possibility! That said, we do want to also focus on getting more of the elements two breeds under their belts.

From our Developer Update introducing the Ancient Breed System:

Many of these archaic creatures were crafted by the gods when they first began to vie for territory. Hastily designed, these creations were needed to carve the land into distinct realms, and remain very different from one another to this day. Not all ancient dragons were created by the elemental gods—others sprang forth from pure coagulated magic, owing no allegiance at all.



Everything but superb was revealed because these little floofs, Superb Gryphlets, went off exploring on their own but now they're back! You can find them right now over at Baldwin's Bubbling Brew, available to alchemists level 25+!

Here's the new list of hint words:

• Goldfish
• Portal
• Fairy
• Landscape

We've gotten a lot better about forward planning and project scoping, which has helped us a great deal in making assurances to our players that we can realistically follow through on. When we started out, we were very new to game development and couldn't be as accurate with our goals. While we still have a lot to improve on, the growth of the team and an evolution of how we plan the site out month-to-month has been really helpful. As for sneak peeks, we'll continue to showcase them in our Developer Updates, so stay tuned!



Actually, come to think of it, no! We haven't given that particular feature an official term. What do you think it should be called?



Good question! As you noted, the site rebuild has to be completed first before we can address any suggestions like themes or dark mode. In the interest of transparency, we should let you know that there are complications with much of the artwork used across the site with regards to dark mode, but it is something we're considering as we move forward.



We don't have any information to share on Coliseum PVP testing at this time. When we have more information on this, we will update the community.



There's no real set pattern, though we do try to take equal elemental representation into account whenever possible.



The art for Scrying Workshop was some of the earliest we created, and a bit before we started thinking about expanding the NPC roster of Flight Rising. So, no, just a random Imperial to showcase how the workshop is used!



Due to regulations, privacy laws, as well as our own Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, we can't make changes to an account or release information based on the word of a third-party. We understand that may sound harsh and we apologize. Losing a loved one is terrible and we are sorry to hear of your loss. While we can't transfer dragons or maintain an individual account, the account will otherwise remain untouched and unchanged. Specifically that no dragons or items will be removed from the account, nor (barring a rule violation) will their account name, dragon names, and anything they've written on the site be changed or removed.



Feel free to tag us! We love seeing your fan art!



Our rule regarding links posted on our site pertain to what you see when following the link. We've given some examples below, but this rule includes but is not limited to these examples:

If "NSFW," aka Not Safe For Work, images or content can be easily viewed when visiting the link, it would be removed from our website.

If "NSFW" art commissions are openly offered when visiting the link, it would be removed from our website.

If explicit directions on how to find or commission "NSFW" art are readily available when visiting the link, it would be removed from our website.

Note: As this is a rules question, per our policy we will not be responding to any follow-up questions in this announcement post.



The beastclans have had to be extremely adaptable to hold their own in the age of the dragonkind. This means that their choices for building homes and communities can vary heavily based on the region or subregion they're living in.



Faes are the smallest breed. Imperials are the longest. Guardians are the heaviest.

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Fan Art Fridays

For our social media communities, we've introduced Fan Art Friday on Twitter, Tumblr, and Deviant Art!


How to Participate

Participation is simple—just add #FRFanArt when you post your Flight Rising fan art!


Why use the hashtag?

Using this hashtag communicates to us that it is okay to reblog, retweet, or even spotlight your work on the Flight Rising website!

The Community Update spotlight consists of a thumbnail that links directly to your fan art and your Flight Rising username.

We only spotlight fan art that doesn't contain profanity, nudity, etc. If your username or the post itself has that, your fan art is not eligible for a spotlight.

While we may not be able to share all posted fan art, using #FRFanArt is also a way to show off your fan art to new people and fellow players when they browse the tag.


Why Social Media?

There are many of our players who don't visit the forums regularly and instead spend their time on various social media platforms. It also means artists can share their art on the platform of their choice and followers can easily find their work.



FRFanArt Friday Spotlight!

Click on the preview to be taken to the artist's post!

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Miscellaneous Notes

April Fools Day

Flight Rising will again be participating in the fun of April Fools day with our own site activities! We feel that, given what's going on in the world, it's especially important that we have the opportunities to laugh and smile. As with past events, we don't aim to deceive anyone, but rather bring a much needed infusion of levity to what is sadly shaping up to be a very rough, serious, and uncertain time for so many.

As far as timing this year, expect things to get started at 6:00 server time (rather than at rollover) as this is when the majority of the development and community teams are working on the website.


400 Error Update

Over the past few weeks a very small number of players have been consistently experiencing 400 errors when trying to access the website. We've been unable to reproduce the issue as of today, making it difficult to diagnose and fix.

We are actively working on identifying the cause, and we are now able to see when it is occurring in our logs. We're in the process of adding more logging so we can figure out why it happens. In the meantime, if you are one of our players experiencing this error, please clear your cookies/browser cache for at least www1.flightrising.com.

We want to get this fixed for you as fast as possible, and thank you for hanging in there with us while we play whack-a-400-error-mole.

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That is it for this update. Thank you for being a part of our community and all our love to you and yours!

We are investigating a possibility that this is related to Chrome's preloading feature, which could possibly be invoked in the URL bar or some other situations. We are adding additional logging to determine if this is the case.

Edit: Logging for this case has been added.

If you want to help, experiment with loading pages via the URL bar in Chrome (typing/autocomplete/history) rather than navigating the site by our sidebar links or bookmarks, to see if that triggers logouts or 400s more often -- this will help contribute to our logging picture.

Hello all, I have a quick update!

We were able to capture some instances of the unexpected logout issue which appears to be related to the 400 issue, and we are a little closer to understanding how these two events are interacting.

In the cases we have been able to inspect closely, it looks like the logouts occur because the browser literally stops sending cookies to our site. However, in these cases the browser appears to still be receiving and processing cookies we send back, which eventually pile up. When they are actually finally sent, an HTTP 400 because of too much cookie data in the request.

It is possible this is caused by antimalware or privacy programs/extensions, but at this point we are investigating whether the SameSite changes in Chrome 80 (and likely other browsers using the same base engine) are possibly causing these logouts. The timing and relation to cookies is suspicious. We will be posting some instructions soon to help determine if this is the case.

@Vark

Did you experience an issue just recently at approximately 10:29 Server Time? And if so what pages were you trying to view & what symptoms did you see?

@Vark @wittykitsune @OverlordPony

When you have trouble what is the first symptom? Do you get a 400 suddenly, or are you suddenly logged out and then only receive the 400 after several page loads?

Thanks for your patience everyone -- we are getting closer.

@clockworkMoose Okay, and to confirm, these were 400s you received, as opposed to just a page where you were logged out?

We are getting closer, thank you (and all the other posters!) for your responses.

@clockworkMoose

Did you experience an unexpected logout or a 400 a little bit ago, between about 17:43 and 17:58 Server Time approximately? We are seeing requests that are arriving at our site with what appears to be zero cookies attached at that time, but no 400 or obvious reason why several requests in a row should have no cookies, which is very curious.

Please continue browsing as normal and reporting anything that may be interesting. We have some additional tracing that may help us isolate exactly where the core issue is happening.

@Kumatora Please see this post: https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/bug/2834780/5#post_42681441

@clockworkMoose

Thanks for your update -- do you know about how many pages can you visit after clearing cookies before you get a 400? It seems like it is happening very rapidly for you.

Okay, we have a tool that will hopefully help us work closer to a solution to this!

Please click this link to visit the Cookie Test Page.



This page displays a few pieces of info:

1. Logged In: So you don't have to screencap the whole page to show login state.
2. Overall Cookie Header Size: As this approaches 7,000+ bytes the chance of a 400 increases.
3. Primary Login Cookie Size: Shows size of primary cookie or "Not Present" if it is not present.
4. Auxiliary Login Cookie Count: Shows how many auxiliary login cookies there are. This should be at most 1, but I expect for many affected players it is larger.

There is also a button:

• Clear Excess Auxiliary Cookies: Clicking this button will attempt to clear auxiliary cookies to reduce your cookie header size and delay an HTTP 400 error.

Here is what I need the people who are experiencing this problem to do:

1. Ensure you are logged in.
2. Copy+paste into your reply what the cookie test page currently displays for you.
3. If your "Auxiliary Login Cookie Count" is greater than 1, click the "Clear Excess Auxiliary Cookies" button and copy+paste into your reply the test page's contents afterwards.
4. Please visit the following URL by copy and pasting it into your browser, NOT clicking it: http://www1.flightrising.com/site/cookie-test (note HTTP not HTTPS!) and copy+paste the test page's contents into your reply.

This will help us narrow down the issue significantly.

Additionally, until we have this fixed permanently, you can visit this page from time to time and click the Clear Excess Auxiliary Cookies button to delay a 400 for longer, or observe the Auxiliary Login Cookie Count to see if you can isolate what activities on the site cause it to increase.

Again, if you are getting 400s and cannot access the site at all, please clear your cookies.

Hello all,

I have an idea of something we might be able to do for you all to help narrow down this problem. We are going to work on it today. More updates will follow when we have something available to test!

Thank you for letting us know. THis has been corrected! It may take up for an hour for the site's backend cache to catch the tooltip up.

Further update: It looks very likely that this is related to a build up of session-related cookies that, in a normal situation, there should only be 1 of at a time. Because these cookies have distinct names and are relatively large, if enough of them pile up, eventually the browser's request to the site becomes so big it hits a limit and you receive a 400.

While we could raise the threshold at which we return a 400 it would not fix the problem alone -- it would just take a little longer to get a 400. The root cause appears to be something losing track of the fact that there is already a good cookie and making an additional one. We have some theories why this might be but at the moment they all involve misbehaving browsers, extensions, or antivirus/antimalware.

Since it appears to have reduced incidence in Incognito mode (which disables extensions by default) and for at least one player with Ghostery disabled (an extension that can modify requests), I strongly recommend players to experiment with turning off extensions and report if they have success. You may need to clear your cookies once even after turning off the extensions, because your already stored cookies might be very close to hitting the limit to get a 400.

@Ahriman
What are you doing right before this happens in Coliseum? Are you navigating to a different part of Coliseum? Or does it pop up mid battle?

Just an update, we believe we are able to reproduce the 400 issue. It seems likely it is a secondary effect of repeatedly losing your login session. Why the session is being lost in these cases is not currently clear.

Are most of you that are experiencing the 400s also experiencing unexpected logouts?

Hello all,

We have a theory as to what is going on. It seems likely that the size of your browser's requests to our servers is bigger than the default limit we accept. In particular it seems likely that this is due to a large quantity of cookies being sent with the request. This seems consistent with peoples' descriptions of it taking a while to happen again after clearing cookies, and not happening as frequently (or at all) in incognito mode, as well as the forced logout (if some layer is dropping the login cookie due to space limits.)

To help us narrow this down -- does this ever occur when the URL does not have a www1 in it? If it happens to you please check the URL in your browser and let me know if it ever happens on a non-www1 page, because that would let us know if we are doing something wrong or if it is cookies from another source (e.g. advertisements.)

Thank you @FallenAngel , that helps us narrow things down a bit!

Hello all,

Sorry for the interruptions you are experiencing, we will start looking into this.

Can someone please provide a screenshot of what this error page looks like when you receive it?

Thanks!

Haha. Frogfeet was actually from several years ago. I misspoke. Dusted off the drawing and made some tweaks to it, but ultimately decided that it didn't really hit the notes for what we are aiming for with this breed. That said, stubby frog dragons are love. :)

Thanks for stopping by the stream. My cat seemed to enjoy the challenge of getting on the desk during the course of it!

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Why a discussion thread and not the channel's chat?

Focus and moderation needs. Our team wants to be able to focus on streaming their work for you and have flexibility on when they stream.

Using the discussion thread also allows us to review your feedback after the stream has concluded without needing to wade through chat logs.


If I miss a stream, can I watch the recording later?

Yup! If a stream happens when you aren't able to watch it you'll be able to follow the stream's link to watch the recording whenever it's convenient for you!

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Previous Streams

• March 17, 2020: Playing with possible concepts for Ancient Breed #3
  The inaugural Flight Rising Developer Stream! The focus for this stream was to freely sketch possible concepts for our third ancient breed.
• March 18, 2020: Concept work on Ancient Breed #3 continues!

Thanks for joining us, everyone!

@Dragonspire, yes.