Remove broken AE arcs from Search tool

Greyhame · 05-12-2009 02:04 PM

Please. 'Cause I'm having trouble finding arcs that actually work.

BBQ_Pork · 05-12-2009 02:15 PM

Agreed.
No sense in cluttering things up.
Also: remove the double-posting of arcs. No sense getting listed twice just because the author double-tapped the button.

Fleeting Whisper · 05-12-2009 02:51 PM

Please. While working on my column for the Scoop, I had 4 straight pages of MArcs that wouldn't even start.

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt

Greyhame · 05-14-2009 01:12 PM

Bump, 'case this problem is not going away.

Infatum · 05-14-2009 02:16 PM

This one is kind of a "duh", but yeah I really hope they add this soon. I15 is supposed to have a bunch of improvements to MA so here's hoping.

Infatum on Virtueverse

Arcanaville · 05-14-2009 02:21 PM

Its supposed to, but it isn't for some reason. I'm not sure why, and I'm not even sure if every player is seeing the same thing. I reported one instance to pohsyb and he said he couldn't reproduce it. But I then reproduced it the next day.

In beta a feature was added where if an arc refused to start, it would be automatically flagged to drop out of search. It was working at one point. Sometime into live, it seems to have stopped working, or at least stopped working consistently. Pohsyb did tell me that apparently post-live the code was changed so that it required more than one failure to start on the mapservers, because they were getting glitches where arcs were being invalidated without being broken. But the number is supposed to be something small, like three or five failures in a row, something like that. I've hammered arcs ten times in a row and not had them drop out of search, so its not that.

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)

Red Valkyrja · 05-14-2009 03:12 PM

Arcana, could it be that it's registering hits from the same account as only one hit? What if five or six other accounts tried to access the same broken MArc?

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

Folonius · 05-14-2009 03:51 PM

How about if you report the arc so they get banned ... It's what I do to arcs that don't work (ie old rikti comm officer maps)

Arcanaville · 05-14-2009 04:49 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Arcana, could it be that it's registering hits from the same account as only one hit? What if five or six other accounts tried to access the same broken MArc?

[/ QUOTE ]

I suppose that's possible. Its not the sort of thing that can trivially crop up as a bug, though, so that sort of behavior would probably have to be on purpose, or at least something close to on-purpose. I think its possible but unlikely that they are tracking literally every single player that tries to start the arc, but perhaps the problem is related to a single account trying the same arc repeatedly. Perhaps trying the same arc from two alternating accounts might be enough.

Something else does bother me a bit about this theory, though, and that is there seem to be a significant number of players trying to run unrated arcs. Some of those arcs are unrated specifically because they can't be run (or at least, that was true the last time I checked). I would think that random chance would have a lot of arcs "on the edge" when someone like me comes along and tries to run it, and I should have been able to push one or two over the trigger. But that didn't seem to happen when I was testing.

However, I'll try tonight or tomorrow to see what happens when I use multiple accounts to try to flag an arc invalid.

Oh, and on the subject of using the reporting button: I'm of the opinion that the reporting button is intended to report content violations. I myself personally would not use that button for any other reason, although that's strictly my personal preference. I'm not advocating either way in this case.

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)

Fleeting Whisper · 05-15-2009 01:05 PM

[ QUOTE ]
How about if you report the arc so they get banned ... It's what I do to arcs that don't work (ie old rikti comm officer maps)

[/ QUOTE ]If the arc doesn't start at all, you can't even report it.

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt

Memphis_Bill · 05-15-2009 02:11 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How about if you report the arc so they get banned ... It's what I do to arcs that don't work (ie old rikti comm officer maps)

[/ QUOTE ]If the arc doesn't start at all, you can't even report it.

[/ QUOTE ]

And why would you want the arc banned if, say, a map is removed because it's bugged? That is not a banning offense. That is a broken arc. Period.

Reason to not have them removed:
You can tell the person that "Hey, I tried to start your arc and it didn't work, might want to check it after this last patch."

See my Guides and Tutorials

boardthug · 05-15-2009 02:31 PM

"Something else does bother me a bit about this theory, though, and that is there seem to be a significant number of players trying to run unrated arcs."

Well, yes. Me, for one. My normal sort is by reverse date order on anything I haven't run, with short and very short arcs filtered out. I try to run arcs that haven't been rated yet, on the theory the author probably wouldn't mind having some feedback.

And, no, they don't always get feedback. Quite a few of them not only haven't been rated, they haven't even been finished by their authors. If it's actually a finished arc the author almost always gets my bug report, along with appropriate congratulations for their efforts.

Fleeting Whisper · 05-15-2009 02:49 PM

[ QUOTE ]
My normal sort is by reverse date order on anything I haven't run

[/ QUOTE ]In fact, this is how I pick arcs for my "Diamond in the Rough" segment. I play unrated arcs from oldest to newest until I find something that I like.

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt

boardthug · 05-15-2009 03:44 PM

Oh. Umm, sorry for the thread-jack. And yes, I've hit that same bug and now you have me trying to remember if it's come up on the missions I reverse sort, or if it's mostly been when I go for keywords.

Arcanaville · 05-18-2009 10:37 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Perhaps trying the same arc from two alternating accounts might be enough.

[/ QUOTE ]

My testing shows that this doesn't seem to work. Regardless of whether the launch attempts come from the same account or more than one account, some invalid arcs never start, and never drop out of search either. Not sure why. I'm pretty sure there's a bug of some kind in here, but I'm not sure what the bug is exactly.

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)

HelinCarnate · 05-19-2009 01:58 AM

I was under the understanding that the banned arcs would be unable to be unpublished so they would take up a slot.

Arcanaville · 05-19-2009 02:05 AM

[ QUOTE ]
I was under the understanding that the banned arcs would be unable to be unpublished so they would take up a slot.

[/ QUOTE ]

We're not talking about banned arcs but rather arcs that get broken for some reason or other, usually because a patch has invalidated the arc and made it unrunable. When that occurs, the MA is supposed to tag that arc as "unsearchable" when a player tries to play it and the arc fails to start, so that other players don't keep running into the same broken arc. That feature was added back in beta. However, it doesn't appear to be working in all cases, as there are broken arcs on the MA now that aren't (so far as we know) banned, but fail to start and therefore can't be run. Yet, they aren't dropping out of search so players still see them and can still try (and fail) to start them.

[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]

In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)