ANSWERED:AP egg glitch?

[HeatherMarie]

According to some posts (like here) the AP regular-egg line was at 1HOUR about an hour ago.  They are now at 5d14h. Please PLEASE can we have some kind of response here?? Is this ridiculous amount of time-fluctuation and user-queue behavior an intended thing or is it a bug? If it's a bug it's a pretty dang serious one and it's a bit concerning we haven't gotten any response at all about it. If it's intended then maybe we should make a Suggestion thread to address the issues it's causing. Either way, knowing would be nice!

( @Kaini? Don't really know who else to ping...)

[Kaini]

18 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

According to some posts (like here) the AP regular-egg line was at 1HOUR about an hour ago.  They are now at 5d14h. Please PLEASE can we have some kind of response here?? Is this ridiculous amount of time-fluctuation and user-queue behavior an intended thing or is it a bug? If it's a bug it's a pretty dang serious one and it's a bit concerning we haven't gotten any response at all about it. If it's intended then maybe we should make a Suggestion thread to address the issues it's causing. Either way, knowing would be nice!

( @Kaini? Don't really know who else to ping...)

 

I was there for the 1 hour eggs, and the times that followed were logical?

[Moriaty]

5 minutes ago, Kaini said:

 

I was there for the 1 hour eggs, and the times that followed were logical?

 

The point was that 1 hour eggs in AP shouldn't have happened. It was at 1 hour when it showed up because the owner had other valentine eggs in their queue and their normal eggs are blocked until their valentine eggs are picked up (or until they have less than 12 valentine eggs in their queue, something, I don't remember the number) and many people's normal eggs are dying without ever reaching the front of AP because they bred too many valentine eggs after that and valentine wall is taking forever to go away. It certainly could be logical and intended (that people's normal egg can't show up before their valentine ones get picked up), but either way, someone should tell us whether this is exactly how the mechanism is supposed to work -  a lot of people are freaking out because their eggs will die before the valentine wall finishes...

[LevelsOfViolence]

Don't forget that if anyone who has bred Valentines to the AP picks up an egg from the AP and abandons it again, it pretty much dooms that egg to death since the mechanic counts that egg as 'theirs' too, and adds it to the same limit.

[HeatherMarie]

1 hour ago, Moriaty said:

The point was that 1 hour eggs in AP shouldn't have happened. It was at 1 hour when it showed up because the owner had other valentine eggs in their queue and their normal eggs are blocked until their valentine eggs are picked up (or until they have less than 12 valentine eggs in their queue, something, I don't remember the number) and many people's normal eggs are dying without ever reaching the front of AP because they bred too many valentine eggs after that and valentine wall is taking forever to go away. It certainly could be logical and intended (that people's normal egg can't show up before their valentine ones get picked up), but either way, someone should tell us whether this is exactly how the mechanism is supposed to work -  a lot of people are freaking out because their eggs will die before the valentine wall finishes...

 

This exactly. I don't think any of us expected that *this* is how the 'limiting a single user's egg-shown in AP' would play out during holidays with holidays vs regulars. My understanding is that the AP always shows the lowest-timed eggs, and all the eggs in the 'queue' are higher timed. But that's not what we are seeing here, because of this semi-recent change. Instead what we are seeing is times fluctuating in a huge manner, where regular eggs with much less time than the ones shown just aren't being shown at all because they are 'stuck' behind that user's 'queued' Valentine eggs.  

[purpledragonclaw]

Sorry for my lack of response, I didn't want to add to this discussion without fully understanding the problem. We're trying to find out what's going on!

[Dracaena]

The problem is I am an avid holiday AP hunter, thus it put the two pink sapphires I bred and dropped on the 12th on a death sentence.  They just died behind the wall and the normal eggs showing are at 5 day 12 hours.  I didn't realize that at the time, I probably killed more normal eggs I curiously picked up and put back as well.  Now I don't touch the normal eggs unless I hatch and put in give away thread.  I really hope this isn't intended behavior.

[random_dragon_collector]

I don't remember this being a problem since the extra row started a few events ago.  Is it a problem this year because people used to avoid breeding at event time, and now with the extra row, they figured "what the heck?"  Trying to figure out if it was always this way, or if it's a bug this time around.

[MissK.]

1 hour ago, random_dragon_collector said:

I don't remember this being a problem since the extra row started a few events ago.  Is it a problem this year because people used to avoid breeding at event time, and now with the extra row, they figured "what the heck?"  Trying to figure out if it was always this way, or if it's a bug this time around.

 

I'm also confused about this. It seems like it might not be entirely a new issue, because we used to get random batches of lower time eggs in previous events before and people were confused about it (so this bug would explain that AP behaviour), but I don't think it was ever this bad? Really hope we get word from TJ soon.

[Kaini]

8 hours ago, Moriaty said:

It was at 1 hour when it showed up because the owner had other valentine eggs in their queue and their normal eggs are blocked until their valentine eggs are picked up

 

Yes? This appears to be intended behavior, the measures to keep the AP from being 'walled' by one user. 

[MissK.]

44 minutes ago, Kaini said:

 

Yes? This appears to be intended behavior, the measures to keep the AP from being 'walled' by one user. 

 

It is intended behaviour that having valentine eggs in the queue blocks regular eggs by the same used from appearing (whether bred or reabandoned)? Is that TJ's official stance? If so, then I guess the line of regular eggs was never meant to prevent eggs from dying during the holiday walls, as they are still doing just that, and a new suggestion should be made to change this.

[Confused Cat]

3 minutes ago, MissK. said:

having valentine eggs in the queue

 

And this, "in the queue", is the important (and unexpected) part of the behaviour: it looks like all valentine eggs count as being currently displayed on the AP. So the mechanism prevents (for example) a common egg that has 2 days left from being displayed when its last owner is also the last owner of 12 (or 6? 18? I forgot the number) valentine eggs or hatchlings that are not yet visible on the AP. So no eggs or hatchlings with that "last owner" will be displayed at all, even though the common eggs that person bred and abandoned are already at very low times and should have arrived on the AP a long time ago.

 

Can the mechanism please only limit eggs and hatchlings that are actually being displayed on the AP?

If no valentine eggs with "last owner = me" are visible, common eggs with "last owner = me" should be able to appear in the common egg row.

[purplehaze]

1 hour ago, Kaini said:

 

Yes? This appears to be intended behavior, the measures to keep the AP from being 'walled' by one user. 

Is this word directly from TJ? Or is it just the best guess from you and perhaps other mods?

Because it seems to totally negate the purpose of having that extra line of eggs at the bottom. Unless the purpose of that was just to give people something to hunt if they weren't interested in valentine eggs. But if its purpose was to keep eggs from dying behind the wall then it is failing miserably. It still looks to me like an unintended consequence of the limited number of eggs per breeder that are allowed on the AP at one time.

[HeatherMarie]

What the people above said, yes. I'll add my thought process as well: The AP is generally supposed to show the lowest times of abandoned eggs, ie abandoned eggs with higher times aren't shown yet and abandoned eggs with lower times go to the front. We now have a 'user queue' mechanism that limits how many of a user's eggs are seen at once in the AP. Okay, all good so far. But.... If User A has say 70 v-day eggs in their abandoned-queue (because of grabbing/reabandoning) and also 10 regular-eggs in their abandoned-queue that have *lower times* than their v-day eggs, those regular-eggs are 'stuck' behind their v-day eggs and end up never showing in the AP at all and eventually *dying* because they are stuck behind 'queued' v-day eggs. That doesn't *seem* like a good way to work this mechanism. I'm not sure I'm explaining myself well, but it does seem like this shouldn't be the way it works. 

 

3 hours ago, Confused Cat said:

And this, "in the queue", is the important (and unexpected) part of the behaviour: it looks like all valentine eggs count as being currently displayed on the AP. So the mechanism prevents (for example) a common egg that has 2 days left from being displayed when its last owner is also the last owner of 12 (or 6? 18? I forgot the number) valentine eggs or hatchlings that are not yet visible on the AP. So no eggs or hatchlings with that "last owner" will be displayed at all, even though the common eggs that person bred and abandoned are already at very low times and should have arrived on the AP a long time ago.

 

This is a good summary of what I'm understanding is going on. 

[Moriaty]

5 hours ago, Kaini said:

 

Yes? This appears to be intended behavior, the measures to keep the AP from being 'walled' by one user. 

Well if that's the case I suppose we can turn to the Suggestion section.

 

 

3 hours ago, purplehaze said:

Because it seems to totally negate the purpose of having that extra line of eggs at the bottom. Unless the purpose of that was just to give people something to hunt if they weren't interested in valentine eggs. 

Though I do want to point out, from the original AP update thread, TJ only mentioned holiday eggs getting into the way of hunting for non-event egg; while the suggestion he linked did mention normal eggs dying behind holiday wall he never mentioned egg dying behind the wall being the goal to solve in his post

 

To quote from https://forums.dragcave.net/topic/188457-2021-02-17-abandoned-page-updates/:

Quote

Similarly, event eggs (like the Valentine's eggs that are currently in play) are simultaneously valuable but also can get in the way of hunting for non-event eggs, and will be limited to 24 visible at a time.

24 visible at a time, hence we get a row of normal eggs. He didn't say anything about preventing eggs from dying, just getting in the way of hunting non event eggs

[Kaini]

4 hours ago, purplehaze said:

Is this word directly from TJ? Or is it just the best guess from you and perhaps other mods?

 

Yes, from TJ. It is due to people having too many eggs abandoned, that their eggs are not appearing. Part of the measures to keep walls from forming. If you mass breed your eggs, and they don't show up, that is expected.

 

The extra row of normal eggs is to give the option to hunt normal eggs during the event. The point is not to keep eggs in the AP from dying.

 

So this, via TJ, is currently intended. I would indeed take to suggestions if you think it should change!

[purplehaze]

Thank you, @Kaini, for confirmation. Your earlier post was not clear that it was TJ's word.

[Shadowdrake]

To put things simply:

 

 

1) Regular eggs in a person's queue, no matter how low-time, lose priority to holiday eggs (and hatchies presumably) in the same queue, no matter how high-time.

 

This means if you bred late Valentine eggs or helped the AP by tossing back hatched Valentines, anything regular you bred or picked up and re-abandoned won't show up until your Valentine's queue starts running out of eggs. Unfortunately, your Valentine's queue also can't run out when none of your Valentine eggs are showing, so the regulars are stuck in limbo.

 

 

2) Yes, this has been happening since mid-Halloween. At first it was only noticeable to people who massbred regulars and checked up on them--you can't notice if eggs you never knew about go missing. It only got to a significant point this holiday when the regular AP shot up to 7 day eggs, then vanished entirely for a short time.

 

 

3) The AP did originally reveal the mixed queue by whichever eggs were oldest, though I suspect TJ stealth-changed that because it resulted in the regular/holiday eggs mixing:

 

Spoiler

 <- old glitch

 

 

 

I personally suggest splitting each person's personal queue to Holidays and Regulars as well, showing 12 max for each; it would solve this problem, avoid the past glitch, and still prevent any person's eggs from completely taking over the AP.

 

 

 

21 minutes ago, Kaini said:

Yes, from TJ. It is due to people having too many eggs abandoned, that their eggs are not appearing. Part of the measures to keep walls from forming. If you mass breed your eggs, and they don't show up, that is expected.

 

Given that the last time something like this happened (the AP void where random people's eggs vanished entirely and showed up several days late) TJ eventually showed up to say "yes, it's a glitch, it'll be fixed in a bit" it's a little hard to believe. This is definitely not how the anti-wall measures function when there isn't holidays messing up the queue because at least a portion of people's eggs always show when they get low enough on time, unlike now wherein people's eggs don't show at all for a very significant amount of time.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Shadowdrake

[Confused Cat]

24 minutes ago, Kaini said:

 If you mass breed your eggs, and they don't show up, that is expected.

 

I understand (now) that this is a logical consequence of the way the system is coded. However, from a player perspective I would say it is not intuitively expected that even when someone's holiday eggs/hatchlings are hours or even days away from appearing on the AP (i.e. there are zero of their eggs on the AP), their non-holiday eggs can't appear in the non-holiday row no matter how little time they have left.

 

[Terrafreaky]

Oddly enough, in a way this actually gives heavy breeders more control over the AP.   Let's say I have a bunch of holiday eggs bred.  And that I am bored with whatever is on the non-holiday line in the AP.  All I would have to do is pick those eggs up and drop them back.  * POOF* They will never be seen again!

 

It doesn't matter where they came from, they will die die die because they briefly touched that stupid Freaky scroll and omg i am so sick of that weirdo's effing eggs what is even wrong with that person anyway 😉 

[Dracaena]

13 minutes ago, Terrafreaky said:

Oddly enough, in a way this actually gives heavy breeders more control over the AP.   Let's say I have a bunch of holiday eggs bred.  And that I am bored with whatever is on the non-holiday line in the AP.  All I would have to do is pick those eggs up and drop them back.  * POOF* They will never be seen again!

I was wondering when someone would bring up that can of worms.  Which would shoot up the AP time of the normal egg row giving the compulsive breeders a fit and mass breeding to bring the normal row time back down.  Vicious cycle feed back loop.    Perhaps even cave breaking.  I was wondering how much of that has already gone on when the normal AP row was siting at 6-7 days.

[Terces]

Yeah, someone who has a lot of eggs in the queue can basically keep grabbing and throwing back non-holiday eggs, altering the final row since other users can't grab those eggs once they are touched. It's possible for someone to keep doing that and eliminate every visible non-holiday egg in the AP for a while as you can see.

 

 

It's tough for me to imagine that TJ intended people to be able to do this. We aren't supposed to be able to prevent others from grabbing AP eggs I don't think? I could be wrong, it's just odd. I don't grab any non-holiday stuff during holiday breeding but I know many who do since the AP was changed to allow that. At this time you can only grab eggs that weren't touched by people with too many in the queue, and since that last row is just one row it doesn't take much to radically alter it including making it go bye-bye for a while. It's not a big deal to me personally, as mentioned I only grab holidays when they are available but it seems fussier than need be for anyone wanting to grab non-holidays - especially the much desired low time eggs that are rarely seen despite clearly existing. I'm glad I didn't touched any non-holiday eggs cause I had bred a lot of Valentines to the queue and wouldn't want to cosign some egg to death simply because I touched it...

[Starscream]

I am going to throw my two cents in. What is happening is as intended. We asked if this was the case, and we were told this was the case.

[Kaini]

1 hour ago, Terrafreaky said:

Oddly enough, in a way this actually gives heavy breeders more control over the AP.   Let's say I have a bunch of holiday eggs bred.  And that I am bored with whatever is on the non-holiday line in the AP.  All I would have to do is pick those eggs up and drop them back.  * POOF* They will never be seen again!

 

It doesn't matter where they came from, they will die die die because they briefly touched that stupid Freaky scroll and omg i am so sick of that weirdo's effing eggs what is even wrong with that person anyway 😉 

 

This is a great point and observation and I'll bring it up to TJ. It could have been overlooked, I don't know.

 

On another note, I'm finding myself in all honesty a little upset here by some of the responses, such as

 

Quote

It's tough for me to imagine that TJ intended people to be able to do this

 

Quote

Given that the last time something like this happened (the AP void where random people's eggs vanished entirely and showed up several days late) TJ eventually showed up to say "yes, it's a glitch, it'll be fixed in a bit" it's a little hard to believe.

 

@Terces and @Shadowdrake as if I'm lying or making something up.

 

I basically repeated what TJ told me near verbatim, without violating the NDA for the space he talks to me in. I don't always know what I can and can't share exactly on the fly, and don't want to violate that, but when you all ask me again and again to tell you what TJ is saying and I do, and you don't believe me???

 

That's why you're not getting much communication and why I hesitate to say anything, because I may be wrong later and dogpiled on for that, or just straight up not believed because I'm not TJ, even if I repeat what he said to me.

 

It doesn't make me feel great, if I'm honest. I'm just trying to help.

[Shadowdrake]

Well, there's been past instances of staff asking him one thing and TJ eventually having to double-check and clarify otherwise when dealing with bugs, such as with the harvest dragon bug. I apologize if I sounded passive-aggressive, though, it's just hard for me to take anything without a large grain of salt these days.