Mind Forever Burning

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My arc grew also.

I never published it on test. But I tested it on the test server. It's fine there. On live, nope.

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UPDATE:

After slashing and burning to get the arc below the limit, I STILL cannot publish it. Or test it. There are no errors showing. It's under the size limit. Can't play it at all.

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When I got the file just below 100%, I could test from within the MA interface but not publish; by deleting more stuff (as a test only, as the story doesn't make sense without those details) to get it down around 99%, it became publishable. So I think it's a matter of the limits not being set consistently between the edit-validator and the publish-validator.

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Well, I trimmed my arc down to 99.7% by removing some details and shortening text... and I still can't publish my mission. I can test from within the editor, but from the outside page, publish and test are both grayed out.

This is incredibly frustrating. The arc works fine on Test.

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I had that happen. After doing a copy/paste on every text field and then comparing the .storyarc file with the original, I found that there were a couple dialog boxes that were saved from Test using an older format from a few patches back. They finally got updated to the new format and the arc was publishable on live.

The issue was in a description box for a Hostage. It's supposed to be quote-contained now but it was in the file all nbsp; limited.

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Not only did I already do that (a few patches back), the exact same story arc file is publishable on Test but not on Live. I don't think that's a matter of having old data in the file - something in the software is different between Test and Live even though it's not supposed to be.

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This is a guess, but it might have to do with the different filesystem settings.

Some filesystems use different "minimum sizes" for a block of data. So, (using made-up numbers for easy math) imagine you had a 9kb file:

- if you had that file on a system that allocated things in 3kb blocks, it'd use 3 blocks (9kb)
- if you moved that file onto a disk that used 4kb blocks, it'd have to use 3 blocks too (12kb) because it wouldn't fit in 2(8kb) to store it. To software that checks the size of a file, it might appear that the file had grown a whopping 3kb.

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No, the arc size determination is relative to the objects in memory, not as they are placed onto the disk. Someone did some testing in beta to verify this. Also, in my case both Test and Live installations are on the same physical media, so even if that were a factor, it wouldn't explain the problems we're seeing.

I'd like to recommend keeping the discussion in a single thread, please

How do complaints get cleared? When you edit and republish? Never?

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Should be able to drag it over...

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Oh, for some reason I thought you couldn't do that until the window was un-maximized.

Oh, as of a few weeks ago, the best way to spend tickets blueside if you just wanted inf was to buy Platinum directly and sell it. I don't expect that tactic to be viable for long, though, as people figure it out and Platinum drops in price.

At this point, I don't think anyone really knows. Of the recipe rolls you mentioned I wouldn't rule out any of them as being reasonable choices. I don't know if any of the non-recipe rolls are worth taking, but they might be.

More info in this thread.

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I have had arcs that increased in size after publication. "Lawyers of Ghastly Horror", ID in my signature, is published and playable but not editable, because opening it in the editor puts it over the limit.

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Did you change any of the custom groups the arc uses (if any) between publish and your attempt to edit? I realize the answer is probably 'no', but I have done that and, as a result, the published arc goes over the size limit if I open it in the editor (of course, if you play the published arc, the custom group stays the way it was before you made the change).

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Ah, right - there is a very subtle behavior at work here. When you edit a published arc, it uses the mission as configured when you published. But - and this is a big but, maybe a BUT - missions always absorb changes made to critter and group files by rereading them from your local files when you edit. The story arc file won't actually be different until you re-save or re-publish, but the changes are absorbed immediately.

That's not what happened to me or the OP, though. I copied all the files over together.

<qr>

I hadn't heard any reports of this in beta. Weird, you'd think someone would have noticed that. Maybe it's specific to AR?

I have an Ice/ lieutenant in one of my factions, and my mission author is a Dom, so you'd think I would notice if it was still throwing Ice attacks at me after I'd held it during testing.

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Yes, how about a MA inbox. It would make email useful for once.

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Seems like a good idea to me, a separate e-mail inbox for MA feedback.

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Email is character specific though, while MA feedback is supposed to be author-global.

Myself, I'd like to see a "feedback" button on the MA interface itself, which pops up a separate window where feedback appears. The "complaint" system in MA already does this, for those of you (hopefully most) who haven't had the pleasure of someone reporting your arc.

Um, of course, if an inch is cut off on the right, that widget will be offscreen.

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Since I14 was live i thought they got rid of all the bugs

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See my known issues list.

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I have had arcs that increased in size after publication. "Lawyers of Ghastly Horror", ID in my signature, is published and playable but not editable, because opening it in the editor puts it over the limit.

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How big was it prior to publication and how big is it when you click "edit"? Also was this edited and published entirely on Live or is it a migrated DC arc?

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Well, I trimmed my arc down to 99.7% by removing some details and shortening text... and I still can't publish my mission. I can test from within the editor, but from the outside page, publish and test are both grayed out.

This is incredibly frustrating. The arc works fine on Test.

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I'm down to 99.47%, still no dice. I know that I can delete one more detail and make the arc publishable - I made the change temporarily just to see what would happen - but there are no more optional details in the story arc; everything left has to be there.

I've done everything I can do to this short of a complete rewrite. I even renamed all the ambushes with single-letter names (since the player never sees them anyway).

Well, I trimmed my arc down to 99.7% by removing some details and shortening text... and I still can't publish my mission. I can test from within the editor, but from the outside page, publish and test are both grayed out.

This is incredibly frustrating. The arc works fine on Test.

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OK here is my problem. I copied my files over to Live but they don't seem to come up when I use the MA. They Show up when I open the file folders. All the arcs and baddies are there, but I get nothing when I try to use them.
WHat fundamental and probabbly obvious step did I miss here.

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I can think of two things: one, you somehow put them in the wrong folder (do you have more than one install folder?), or two, you have search parameters enabled when you switch over to the "My Creations" tab. For example, I had been searching for items with no ratings, and when I left that enabled for "My Creations" nothing showed up... which is weird and not really desirable, but at least understandable once you know what's going on.

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Apollinaris,

When did you last play your mission on test?

The limitations for size were adjusted during beta, so you may be bumping against those parameters.

Ex

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Let's see, the last time I actually played the arc was on 4/1/09. However I can go ahead onto the test server right now and open up my arc and it will show me a file size of 98.13%. I assume I could launch and play the arc, put I haven't actually tried it yet.

Addendum: I went on onto test server just now (6:03 Eastern Time today), logged onto the training room server, and launched and successfully played two copies of my mission, the version Published on the test server (Arc# 12193) and played the local copy of this same arc I have on my hard drive in test most. Both arcs played without difficulty on the test server. The local file on the hard drive is the identical file that was copied over to my live CoH folder to transfer the mission to the live servers.


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I'm having the same issue with "The Ghost in the Machine". It shows as 98.4% on Test, but when I copy the file to live, it claims the file is 100.8%. I can provide the file on request. The file as saved from the MA editor shows no differences with what I load into it, so I don't think it's the old &nbsp problem, though I suppose it could be related.

Very frustrating, and but even more disturbing, because it means there's a difference in behavior between test and live. How did that happen? I wonder if there are other problems that crept in or fixes that got reverted.

Having already gone through these shenanigans three times on Test, I'm a little too burned out to trace through it all tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

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Otherwise you won't have the latest and greatest as your 'local' version.

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*bangs his head* Oh darn... Wish I had known that, but thanks for the answer.

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You can still recover, you know - the mission arcs are still there on the Test Server. Load up Test, copy down latest version of arc, copy that from test install to live install, republish.

Anything that can solo AVs in regular PvE play should do fine: brutes, scrappers, many MM and controller builds.

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See this is where people that have not done the testing I have kinda make me laugh. Yeah, if you don't know what you are doing with merits, tickets etc.. you can lose out, but if you do you can make out BIGTIME.

I have a ton of purples in my SG bins and enough cash to drop two full sets on the two toons that will need them at 50. I really have no problem getting purples at all. YMMV.

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It's not you or I that I'm worried about, really. It's the impact on the market of lots of naive decisions made across thousands of players. The markets were hit hard enough by merits as it is, I'd rather not see them dry up completely.

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I've seen a lot people claiming that you you get the same "real" rewards from this kind of misison as from a Dev's Choice arc; I thought I read differently back in the early days of open beta, so I thought I'd just go test it rather than try to figure out who said what when in the dev logs .

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That's what I thought as well, but it turns out I remembered wrong (this is directly from the I14 FAQ):

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5. Can you talk more about Dev Choice vs. Hall of Fame?
[*] The Hall of Fame is where the best player rated content goes. To get to this rank you need to have over a 1000 votes with an average of 5 stars (we round up). Getting into the Hall of Fame changes your standing in the mission browser, moving it further up the queue.
[*] Becoming a Dev Choice story happens when one of us (the developers) sees content that we feel best represents what Architect can be, good story and fun gameplay. Getting into Dev Choice actually elevates you beyond Hall of Fame and gives your mission the same sort of rewards and drops you would get outside of Architect. The only difference being that you get a ticket bonus at the end of a mission as opposed to an experience bonus.
[*] We also have a third tier of stories which we will talk about at a later date.

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Honestly, I prefer tickets to random loot. It gives a measure of control over the rewards that you don't get with ordinary missions.

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Yep.

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There is the downside that you can't generate purples, but yeah, other than that, tickets are better if you use them intelligently. My only concern is that people won't use them intelligently, or possibly at all, and it'll turn out to be enough rope to hang yourself.

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Got another one for you -- Faces in the custom critter editor have their scale sliders reset every time you open them up to make changes, even if it's just changes to powersets. Kind of a pain.

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Argh, really? That is pretty bad - it's essentially data loss. If I were NCNC I'd hold up the release to get that fixed, but maybe I'm a perfectionist.

OP updated to here. I may need to reformat the OP to break issues into groups.