Judgement_Dave

Error with result set pagination.

I just ordered missions by author asc. I have 4 arcs published and I was split over page 2 and page 3.

The order of arcs within author groupings is random, and so

Example 1: the first time I looked I saw the following:

At the bottom of page 2 was the following arc:
--- 1076 The foul-mouthed Handyman!

At the top of page 3 were the following 3 arcs:
--- 1076 The foul-mouthed Handyman!
--- 83744 To Save A Single World
--- 83747 Marketing Opportunity

i.e. 1076 was repeated twice (once on each page) but 3662 was not shown at all.

Example 2: swapping pages again I saw the following:

At the bottom of page 2 was the following arc:
--- 3662 Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh!

At the top of page 3 were the following 3 arcs:
--- 3662 Ee-Ai-Ee-Ai-Oh!
--- 83744 To Save A Single World
--- 1076 The foul-mouthed Handyman!

i.e. This time 3662 was repeated twice (once on each page) but 83747 was not shown at all.


You'll notice that the ordering varies greatly.

I'd suggest throwing an order by either your unique internal arc id or the ingame arc id as the last sort criteria on every search query - these should give a unique ordering that can be paginated properly (without errors due to random ordering within groups).

[ QUOTE ]
So basically a 2 level limit (or 1.99999999) per mission after level 20 (with apologies to JD for breaking his oddball case. Make up your mind man )

[/ QUOTE ]
Actually you don't break my 'oddball case' as you changed to supporting a variation that, IIRC, I made.

The original suggestion was for insisting on trainer visits before xp is earnt. Then someone (your good self iirc)suggested allowing xp to still be earnt for a couple of levels.

I modified this to say that IMO if they did something like this then it was better to put a cap on number of levels earnt per mission. This seems to be what you are now stating (as shown by the words per mission).

This wouldn't break my edge case characters, as they may have dinged 50 woithout training to 45, but they did so in many, many missions. They probably never gained more than 2 or 3 bubbles per mission, and IIRC probably didn't hit 1 whole level per mission even with patrol xp and full teams on TFs (ITF/LGTF).

As it happens 2 levels per mission after level 20 is IMO more than non-PLing can acheive. I've recently been in fire/rad troller and fire/kin corruptor superteams and even they only manage a ding every few missions after level 20.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You all do realise atlas park isnt the ONLY zone in the game right? Im sure not ALL new players stay in just the one zone.

[/ QUOTE ]

No but that's where at least 50% of them are likely to arrive and that's where they get their first impression of the game.

[/ QUOTE ]
At least 50% of new players! Wow!

Where'd you dig up that stat?

I grant that Atlas is probably more common than Galaxy for new players due to coming first in the choice of zones shown to start in.

But that's also forgetting that new players may start off in Mercy.

This only goes for first impressions (i.e. for the 1st time a new player enters the zones) - but I've never seen a breakdown of accounts 1st characters by CoH/CoV.

EDIT - btw I started my 1st character in Galaxy, reasoning that Atlas would be busier as it came first and, being my 1st MMO, I wanted somewhere a bit quieter whilst I made my newb mistakes...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Simple way to stop extreme PLing. Make trainer visits mandatory before you can start earning xp towards your next level. Done.

[/ QUOTE ]

A slight tweak that will prevent this from punishing people like me that can't be bothered to get slots before SO's, Make it you can only hold 1 or 2 levels in the bank, so to speak, before you stop getting xp. Then people don't have to run off the second the ding happens.

[/ QUOTE ]
Not really a satisfactory answer IMO - and if anything like this is done, then the band would need to be larger...

I've had characters ding 5 or 6 levels without training whilst playing normal arcs solo before... I had one of my 50s ding 50 still trained to 44 (iirc) just because I couldn't decide which power to take and my character was playing without any problems so I didn't fret about it. (It was serveral weeks after dinging 50 before I eventually trained).

Maybe edge cases, but so what? This wouldn't really stop PLing or farming but could annoy/irritate some non-PL/farming players.


If they wanted to stop PLing they could place a cap on levels gained per mission - but even then, all that happens is people hit the cap, out & reset. That's what you'd get with mandatory trainer visits anyway...

Atlas and Cap would still be busy for PL/farming as the trainer is nice and close to the AE building.

[ QUOTE ]
I think the devs have probably been a bit taken by suirprise by some of the MA exploits that are being used right now - the beta testing was mostly to make sure the actual MA system worked, so I think most of the testers were looking for bugs rather than exploits.

[/ QUOTE ]
Biggest problems of the beta were:

* 99.9% of 'testers' weren't interested in testing as much as they were in creating their own arcs ready for launch. Having a load of people use something in a normal manner and hopefully report the odd bug is not the same as testing. It plays a part, but you need people to try doing the things they'd never normally do just to test system limits and try breaking things. Most alleged testers were not interested in this at all.

* Many reported exploits were left in for live. Same with bugs - many were reported but left in. Some sort of scheduled release for Easter weekend seemed to take priority over realeasing with a cleaner system.

Biggest problems of live are:

* PL/Farming appears (by virtually all reports) to be far too excessive, and is detracting from the game/MA for many. This is partly due to the problems of beta.

* The devs cannot deal with the issue in a reasonable manner. They keep doing kneejerk atom-bomb-to-crack-a-nut moves that do not stop farming but damage/destroy/invalidate many non-farmers arcs. Their actions so far have not stopped (or even noticeably reduced) farming but they have managed to annoy non-farmers by invalidating/removing many story arcs by virtue of misidentifying them as farms or removing key assets.

Khaine,

Can you increase the size of the comment text entry box please?

And if possible, move to a 2-step comment posting where you can preview/edit comment before posting it, much like these forums.

[ QUOTE ]
Would definately be useful to be able to edit a submission to the mission list. I've made some major changes to my 'Lucy' arc and the details on that entry are now out of date.

[/ QUOTE ]
The author can edit the mission description. When you login and it shows you the listings just for your arcs theres an edit button on the far right (you may need to scroll horizontally to see it - it's normally off the side of my window).

It's reviewers/commentators that can't edit their comments.

[ QUOTE ]
Although it seems something has gone wrong with the login process. At present it is 50/50 if it will let you login.

[/ QUOTE ]
I wonder if this problem is back - just tried 5 times to login and it's not logging in just bouncing back to the home page...

Gratz on your cakeday, Knightly!

Can I report an error - Arctic Princess' arcs no longer redirect to my arcs...

[ QUOTE ]
I knew there was a reason for my habit of always staring in Galaxy

[/ QUOTE ]
It is actually rude (and unheroic) to stare.

To be fair to MaX, I do recall a redname a couple of years back stating pretty much the same - that heroic/villainous wasn't easy mode, but was 'normal' mode and the other difficulties are 'hard' modes for increased difficulty.

I'm not even going to try finding the quote, as I'm pretty certain that both US and EU boards have been given a thorough spring clean since the redname said that - so I'd be very surprised if it 's still kicking about on our boards.

BTW - I guess that means that the devs balance mobs/missions for heroic/villainous.

[ QUOTE ]

When I sort by Author and click on Arctic Princesses Twisted Tales #1 I get JDs Handyman Arc instead.

In fact any of Arctics arcs gives me JDs one instead. I think it's passing the User Id across to view-mission.php rather than the internal Mission Id you use

As per usual I'm using Opera. It only appears to happen when viewing a Sorted list of results.

[/ QUOTE ]
Checked this - Get same issue on order by author.

All other ordering criteria appear fine to me.

And it does appear to be attempting to link using author user_id (supported by the numbers used for the likes of Don Saint who I know registered early...)


Guess you pull back a seperate column/field for use as your unique internal arc id in your query...

Please let it be that and not a seperate display routine dependent upon sort order...

Not sure if I'm reading this correctly...

If you're saying that some mobs are appearing showing the wrong group alignment (in the targetting window under the mob name) then yes - I've had it and I'm sure I remember others mentioning it during beta.

It's damn irritating, but one of the bugs that doesn't really affect gameplay - though I do wonder if some ratings will be marked down for apparently illogical groupings caused purely by this bug.

Can't actually recall if I /bugged that one though...



Of course - I may have misunderstood your post!

notice the following in the OP:
[ QUOTE ]
It's the same effect that can be achieved by unpublishing then publishing again

[/ QUOTE ]
You can already unpublish then publish again to get rid of any unfavourable ratings. i.e. your objections are pretty much pointless as you can effectively do this now.

All a button does is avoid losing the arc id.

As the title says - a button to reset ratings to 0 whilst keeping the arc id the same.

If you've publicised an arc id but got really bad feedback you may have edited the arc but not want to go around everywhere updating arc ids... so just let the rating be reset. It's the same effect that can be achieved by unpublishing then publishing again, but wouldn't chew up another arc id (and possibly other db storage) and necessitate updating arc ids on review sites and threads!

[ QUOTE ]
It is possible to figure out how many votes you were given by using the extra tickets awarded as a tally. If you have 50 tickets awarded you know you got two 5 star ratings and so can take an educated guess at what the third one was.

Of course, in order to do this you have to know how many tickets you have available to claim from the ticket vendor before the mission is rated and the more ratings you recieve the less accurate the guesses on the low starred votes will be.

[/ QUOTE ]
Too imprecise when you have multiple votes and multiple arcs.

And IIRC you get the following:

0 star rating - 0 tickets
1 star rating - 0 tickets
2 star rating - 0 tickets
3 star rating - 15 tickets
4 star rating - 20 tickets
5 star rating - 25 tickets

So what did you get if you have 5 new ratings and 60 tickets?

Was it a 5-star, a 3-star and 3 0-2 stars?
Was it 3 4-star ratings, and two 0-2 stars?
Was it 4 3-star ratings, and a single 0-2 stars?


BTW - I noticed that the arc I rated with 3 stars says 'Good' next to my 3 star rating... so I'm guessing that the devs have attached text descriptions to the star ratings and 3 stars is 'good'.

Anyone know what all the official rating descriptions are?

[ QUOTE ]
Has this issue been acknowledged anywhere? Do the Devs know and if so is anything going to be done about it? Or did I just miss that info?

[/ QUOTE ]
On 14th April I bugged with:

I suspect that MA comments are bugged. Very, very few coming through and seem to all be from EU players. Could be a side-effect of being an EU player, but rate of comments is probably 2 in 100 ratings which is ridiculously low compared to test. As some comments definitely get through it's hard to know for certain though.

So it has been reported...

IMO it would be a good idea to allow reviewers to edit their reviews and for authors to comment against reviews.

Why? I'll tell you why...

* I realised after posting my 1st comment that there was a minor point that I'd wanted to mention but forgot.. wasn't worth a second review but would have been worth adding to the original.

* Part of the feedback process means that arcs may change - an updated review/rating may be better in this case than an additional review leaving the original (now erroneous) review.

* An author may want to question/clarify something raised in a review (e.g. one of my reviews stating it wasn't soloable due to an EB, where my main comeback is that the mob is an EB so can be downgraded to a boss if soloing by playing lowest challenge level).

It's just when people petition the arc (e.g. for inappropriate content), it is not for general feedback.

So it sounds like the person used it wrongly...

If you get enough complaints the arc will be auto-pulled allowing you to edit and republish it.

If it gets enough a second time, then it is withdrawn and you may edit and republish, but then it has to be approved by a GM.

According to info I read recently (think it was in a gamasutra interview/article about MA) the number of complaints needed to autoban is dynamic depending upon the number of plays the arc has - more players needs more complaints to autoban.

In beta, I had an arc banned for testing (I actively encouraged complaints) and it seemed to take about 5 complaints to get banned when everyone was banning. Presumably if you've had many hundreds of players then the threshold probably raises to the tens of complaints...

BTW - IIRC the Gamasutra (?) article also seemed to imply that complaints and bans are looked at on an account level as well... so, IMO, if you get many false complaints it may be worth pre-emptively asking GMs if they can be removed.

I'm in almost the same situation, my banned-in-beta arc had one person complain when it went live (and no longer wants complaints!) who obviously clicked the complain/petition button but never entered a comment. I've not bothered chasing that up, but since there have been a few hundred other players and no other complaints I'm hoping it doesn't count for anything against my account!

[ QUOTE ]
And I already posted it on CoG

[/ QUOTE ]
I know - and hopefully people will start using it more for reviews/comments!

I've only just started playing a few arcs after creation time... but I aim to post comments there for arcs included on the site.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Spook

[/ QUOTE ]

Huh. I have never, ever heard the word used in that sense. That has to be a very narrow use.

[/ QUOTE ]
The profanity filter is ridiculous, but it does help to read a decent amount of US fiction if you want to try understanding some of it's ridiculous inclusions.

Anyone want to try starting the word 'blaster' as a derogatory term for a person of Bolivian descent just so we can see what CoX does when it has to filter the word?



Bolivian purely for example... I've no real opinion on Bolivia or it's people!

[ QUOTE ]
After 2 people had rated it, it was 5 stars, one of those people was Blue Rabbit who gave feedback and pointed out a couple of spelling errors, which are now sorted.

I got to check it now......3 ratings....now 3 stars!...and no bloody feedback!

Now, if this is based on averages, I reckon that has to be at least a 1 or 2 star rating to get 3 after 3 ratings.

[/ QUOTE ]
First - the maths:
A 3 star rating after 3 ratings means a total of between 7 and 9 (so the mean rating is between c. 2.333 to 3.0).

A 5 star rating after 2 ratings meant a total of between 9 and 10 (so the mean was 4.5 or 5).

You went from 9 or 10 to between 7 and 9 in one extra rating.

So either:
- the 3rd rating was a 0 star rating, a 1 star wouldn't do it, which would seem like grief voting if something hokey wasn't going on with the 1st 2 votes...
or
- one of the 1st two ratings rerated to lower their rating, in which case all bets are off.

Yes - you can rerate. So someone may have rated a 5 then played more arcs and realised that they'd been too generous and come back and rerated it a 3 or something...


Secondly - comments...
We know that cross zone comments (i.e. US<->EU) are not working - so it could have been a US player who did comment but the bugs meant you didn't get the comment.

Sadly I wouldn't reckon that th e devs will look upon this as a priority since it only affects cross zone and so US<->US comments, which will make up the bulk of comments, are fine...

In fact I wouldn't be surprised if, if they did anything, they removed comments entirely until they might be working and put back in...

nope - not still bitter about Prisoners at all.

BTW cross zone comments and length/clarity of comments are 2 more reasons why I'd recommend people using City of Guides...

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The last 1-5 run I did, I realized it wasn't too hard to actually do it within 14 days all alone with my two accounts.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're doing something seriously wrong if that's the case...

[/ QUOTE ]
It usually takes you longer, MA???

[/ QUOTE ]

To do Level ONE to FIVE?

[/ QUOTE ]
You just said that they're doing something wrong... not that they were taking too long a time - so it was obvious, given the thread is about farming, that you thought 1 to 5 in 2 weeks was evil farming and so too quick...

Ok - maybe only obvious to me... but that's still obvious!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The last 1-5 run I did, I realized it wasn't too hard to actually do it within 14 days all alone with my two accounts.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're doing something seriously wrong if that's the case...

[/ QUOTE ]
It usually takes you longer, MA???