should all arcs go on "hold" after patches?
By
Amberyl,
Posted on: 2009-05-06 10:04 in Mission Architect
Or, if NCNC was doing QA properly, it would be caught in testing. I imagine it would be trivial to import the top 50 or 100 arcs into their internal testing enviroment, and simply check to see if they are unplayable with the new patch. I don't mean play through each one, but simply try to enter each arc. If there is a broken map or mob under the new patch in an arc that is working on Live, then you know there's a problem and you can track it down.
Most go inactive because something used in that MA Mission (a map or animation) was removed from the editor choices.
JF the Devs would list those removals IN the patch notes (they don't need to state a reason, just that Map/Anim X is removed); then authors would know what they might have to 'fix' and just do it when they have a chance.
No. No. No. No.
First, every mission holder having to "edit" and "resub" their arc would be a tremendous load on the MA. Talk about lag, and that is assuming that you haven't encouraged them to make changes by making them do this.
Second, this is punitive in nature for an arbitrary reason.
Third, what about Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame? They can't edit and resub, to do so they lose DC and HOF and then have to petition a GM for reapproval. Congratulations, you've just created workload for the GMs. That alone guarantees they will never do this.
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No. No. No. No.
First, every mission holder having to "edit" and "resub" their arc would be a tremendous load on the MA. Talk about lag, and that is assuming that you haven't encouraged them to make changes by making them do this.
Second, this is punitive in nature for an arbitrary reason.
Third, what about Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame? They can't edit and resub, to do so they lose DC and HOF and then have to petition a GM for reapproval. Congratulations, you've just created workload for the GMs. That alone guarantees they will never do this.
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From what I have seen lately they don't work anyway so whats the BFD? 
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No. No. No. No.
First, every mission holder having to "edit" and "resub" their arc would be a tremendous load on the MA. Talk about lag, and that is assuming that you haven't encouraged them to make changes by making them do this.
Second, this is punitive in nature for an arbitrary reason.
Third, what about Dev's Choice and Hall of Fame? They can't edit and resub, to do so they lose DC and HOF and then have to petition a GM for reapproval. Congratulations, you've just created workload for the GMs. That alone guarantees they will never do this.
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From what I have seen lately they don't work anyway so whats the BFD?
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Good point. What are the creators supposed to do? Petition to have their HoF/Dev Choice fixed for them by a GM?
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Good point. What are the creators supposed to do? Petition to have their HoF/Dev Choice fixed for them by a GM?
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Those are supposed to be protected from invalidation by patches. I'm not really sure how they can guarantee this, but that's what pohsyb said in beta.
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
Well, it ain't working.
DC and HoF arcs are broken by the patch?
Sheesh...
And for a while things were cold,
They were scared down in their holes
The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines
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DC and HoF arcs are broken by the patch?
Sheesh...
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I just checked and there are no HoF arcs broken by the patch!
(Because... there are no HoF arcs. )
My published arc isn't broken either, so I would prefer that it not be put on hold.
By "broken" here, I only see people refering to the "unplayable" arcs. What about all of the arcs that are "broken" because the changes to powersets suddenly made their custom critters as assininely difficult to defeat as understanding what the hell has kept devs from hiring someone who knows something about "Usability studies and public relations" is to the common player.
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By "broken" here, I only see people refering to the "unplayable" arcs. What about all of the arcs that are "broken" because the changes to powersets suddenly made their custom critters as assininely difficult to defeat as understanding what the hell has kept devs from hiring someone who knows something about "Usability studies and public relations" is to the common player.
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Two of my three published arcs no longer worked after the patch. One was easily fixed, but the other was very messed up. The Captured (Energy Field) change didn't work, and for some reason one of the allies simply refused to use the right animation even though it was set to the same value as all the other allies. Changing to a different animation worked, so it wasn't the toggle problem.
This is going to be a problem with every patch. Hundreds of arcs will be broken every time they make any change to anything used in MA missions. Unfortunately, the only way they can avoid this is to stop fixing things.
When it was just their missions they could do enough QA to make sure everything was okay. But with thousands of MA arcs that will be impossible. They cannot possibly test them all.
What they can do is make it more obvious what's going on. When you click PLAY on an invalid arc it looks like it works, but you don't actually start the arc. The system should tell the player that the arc is invalid, and then notify the author of the problem.
The invalidated arcs should then be "grayed out" or otherwise be made inactive.
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What they can do is make it more obvious what's going on. When you click PLAY on an invalid arc it looks like it works, but you don't actually start the arc. The system should tell the player that the arc is invalid, and then notify the author of the problem.
The invalidated arcs should then be "grayed out" or otherwise be made inactive.
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Amen to this. Notification and greying would be better than everything on hold.
Live arcs: 517377 and 517381
Virtue: Quickshot. Swiftwind. Aliuneidis. Gizmodeus. Dasher. Fiver. Inuit Acer. Daniel Darke. Cerebral Flame. El Halcon.
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We could also really use an "arc fix" tool. The "captured" animation is a perfect example. Writing a tool to do offline fixing of the story files is readily within player capabilities (just as much so as the compression tool), but it'd really be preferable if it were part of the existing client.
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What they can do is make it more obvious what's going on. When you click PLAY on an invalid arc it looks like it works, but you don't actually start the arc. The system should tell the player that the arc is invalid, and then notify the author of the problem.
The invalidated arcs should then be "grayed out" or otherwise be made inactive.
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Amen to this. Notification and greying would be better than everything on hold.
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I agree - if they could determine which ones were invalid this would be much better
I am wondering if all published MA arcs should be put in a hold status after patches. Not unpublished - but made unplayable.
The author would have to go back in, edit and save the mission to make sure there are no errors. That way we wouldn't have unplayable missions in the play list.
As an added "bonus", if an author does not care enough to edit and republish their missions, it goes out of the list. So it would help clean out the mission list.
Editing and republishing an arc takes very little time if it isn't broken - and is necessary if it is.
But if there are a lot of patches it might be annoying - if you forget and your arc is not available.