Friday with Means - June 4th, 2010 - IIBAWDKW
It Is Broken And We Don't Know Why
This is typical of a Thursday/Friday. The item used to instantly resolve "some" of the daily missions when they are deleted to get directly to the 18 hour timer is different from the version currently on the Live dimensions. Mondays and Tuesday are generally "We know why it is broken" days of the week where we do our best to fix it. This particular item has been great today as we have traced through the build process to try and find out "why" it is different (after figuring out why it doesn't work) and not finding any empirical evidence of any kind to justify the problem. This is what one of our legendary coders "Enno" used to refer to as "WTF". Thank the Redeemed that Macrosun is here to help us figure it out.
Needless to say:
"Some daily missions will still require you to return to the agency to start the timer."
We are going to attempt another build shortly and we are hoping for different results. Not very scientific...but here we are.
On a positive note:
Thanks to everyone who provided us with information to help us track down the "stuck in sneak" issue that is currently associated with SA and AS attacks from sneak. Astralsky on D1 finally helped me get a perfect test-case together for this issue last night and a fix for this is currently being deployed to TestLive. Again the hope is for this issue to be gone in the next version which is tentatively scheduled for next week.
Also in next week's theoretical version:
- Making those missions actually resolve themselves so you do not have to return to the agency.
- Increased drop rate on LE Alien Mission Biomaterial and decreased "level range" on Boss Drops. ie: a level 250 Boss should always drop Biomaterial close to level 250.
- Significant nerfstick treatment to LE Alien Mission nasty Aliens to make it easier to survive at all levels.
- Changes to longer version Composite Nanos to make them more accessible to everyone.
- More Daily mission tweaks.
Other news:
The Alien daily missions are coming along well and so is the "open" pvp area that will serve as a kind of "waiting room" for the Battlestations. Both soon I hope. We are also going to start making the Birthday Items for this year next week...a sneak preview of which will be on AOUniverse before they are released.
Sorry I don't have any new heads this week.
Have a great weekend and wish us luck!