Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

by Rebecca1208
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Original Post

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

★★★ Novice

So, does EA just, like, not care about this?

Message 21 of 29 (1,308 Views)

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

Community Manager (retired)

Hello @abc731123136 

 

Sorry to hear you have encountered this issue. How often does this happens? Give us more information about this problem, and we will do our best to help you.

 

Cheers,

Archi

Archi.png
Message 22 of 29 (1,300 Views)

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

EA Staff
@Rebecca1208 , can you provide me a concise set of steps to reproduce this? The Sporum no longer exists and archive.org doesn't want to cooperate. Sharple's description on page 2 tries hard, but it includes what looks like a lot of extra information that is not directly applicable to solving the problem. I'd like to make sure I'm looking at the most concise version of the repro steps and symptoms as possible.
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Message 23 of 29 (1,131 Views)

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

★★★ Novice

@MaxisJoeThere isn't really any "reproducing" the frozen plays bug. It's a constant thing, not a triggered issue. The way to "reproduce" it is to look at any Adventure made recently. You can probably play the Adventure and afterward see that the plays is still zero, I suppose.

Message 24 of 29 (1,103 Views)

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

EA Staff
@garskuther64 Thanks for the clarification.
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Message 25 of 29 (1,098 Views)

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

★ Novice

Would be amazing if this bug finally got fixed after the many years it has been effecting the game.

Message 26 of 29 (1,086 Views)

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

[ Edited ]
★★★★ Novice

@MaxisJoeWhile I am not qualified tech-wise to explain the problem in-depth, I can explain what it is we players are observing, how it used to work for us, and why it's an issue.

As @garskuther64 has said, this is a retroactive constant issue across the entirety of the Spore website, both on the Sporepedia and in-game for players, and has been the case since 2013 and effects, quite literally, all adventures on the website, new and old.

 

Should it help I've attached an image of what it looks like to us, from the Sporepedia website.

Zero Plays Adventure Cards.png 

( 1 ) is the key problem and what we believe to be the root of it all. When a player plays an adventure, whether or not they succeed, failed or restart, it should just tick up once, counting as a valid play. This in turn calculates the values for ( 2 ) and ( 3 ) where ( 2 ) determines the difficulty based on the ratio of successes to failures/restarts, which then calculates a suitable reward of points given to winners in ( 3 ). Due to the plays counter not ticking and not calculating difficulty and points, it means that every adventure created from 2013 up until now only awards the standard "15" points, which is a huge detriment to anyone trying to level their captains (playable avatars). The absolute maximum an adventure should award (based on calculated difficulty) is 100. It's also worth mentioning from a social/community standpoint that an adventure having 0 plays makes it undesirable to play, and a lot of authors lose out.

 

Everything to do with adventures also rewards "sporepoints" to players and authors/creators, such as getting the best timer on the leaderboard (the leaderboard timers work, but not their associated rewards, potentially due to the root problem of the plays counter failing). Sporepoints not properly distributing is also effecting the ability to earn achievements, such as the Mad Skills achievement. This again effects in-game players as well as the website.

 

As far as how to reproduce this - Well, it can be as simple as I make an adventure, I ask a friend to play it for me, they succeed or fail, but their play(s) will not register and it looks like my adventure hasn't been touched by any players, and thus also prevents it from calculating the difficulty or reward.

 


I do apologise if my explanation seems somewhat patronising, but since Spore is quite old and this problem has been around for a while, I wanted to explain it fully so that any staff unfamiliar with the game can understand what exactly (from us player perspectives) is going on and hopefully find a solution. This has been a huge bother and we're eager to see it solved!

Message 27 of 29 (957 Views)

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

★★★★ Novice

(apologies if this is duplicated, I think my previous post was marked as spam - I've deleted the links)

 

@MaxisJoeWhile I am not qualified tech-wise to explain the problem in-depth, I can explain what it is we players are observing, how it used to work for us, and why it's an issue.

As @garskuther64 has said, this is a retroactive constant issue across the entirety of the Spore website, both on the Sporepedia and in-game for players, and has been the case since 2013 and effects, quite literally, all adventures on the website, new and old.

 

Should it help I've attached an image of what it looks like to us, from the Sporepedia website.

Zero Plays Adventure Cards.png 

( 1 ) is the key problem and what we believe to be the root of it all. When a player plays an adventure, whether or not they succeed, failed or restart, it should just tick up once, counting as a valid play. This in turn calculates the values for ( 2 ) and ( 3 ) where ( 2 ) determines the difficulty based on the ratio of successes to failures/restarts, which then calculates a suitable reward of points given to winners in ( 3 ). Due to the plays counter not ticking and not calculating difficulty and points, it means that every adventure created from 2013 up until now only awards the standard "15" points, which is a huge detriment to anyone trying to level their captains (playable avatars). The absolute maximum an adventure should award (based on calculated difficulty) is 100. It's also worth mentioning from a social/community standpoint that an adventure having 0 plays makes it undesirable to play, and a lot of authors lose out.

 

Everything to do with adventures also rewards "sporepoints" to players and authors/creators, such as getting the best timer on the leaderboard (the leaderboard timers work, but not their associated rewards, potentially due to the root problem of the plays counter failing). Sporepoints not properly distributing is also effecting the ability to earn achievements, such as the "Mad Skills" achievement. This again effects in-game players as well as the website.

 

As far as how to reproduce this - Well, it can be as simple as I make an adventure, I ask a friend to play it for me, they succeed or fail, but their play(s) will not register and it looks like my adventure hasn't been touched by any players, and thus also prevents it from calculating the difficulty or reward.

 


I do apologise if my explanation seems somewhat patronising, but since Spore is quite old and this problem has been around for a while, I wanted to explain it fully so that any staff unfamiliar with the game can understand what exactly (from us player perspectives) is going on and hopefully find a solution. This has been a huge bother and we're eager to see it solved!

Message 28 of 29 (1,059 Views)

Re: Adventure 0 Play Bug.

EA Staff
@Rebecca1208 Thanks for the very excellent write-up.

I'd like to set expectations appropriately - I can't make any promises about if/when this will get addressed. The most anyone should infer from our exchange is that the issue has been raised and, when time allows, we'll investigate it.

Thanks again for raising the issue and the excellent write-up.
--
I am an employee of EA.

Please do not send me private messages unless I ask you to. I promise that you will get help faster in the public forum. Thank you.
Message 29 of 29 (2,540 Views)