Candy Corn Gobbler change bugged? Or unadvertised limit on buff purchases?

[Sobx.1758]

2 minutes ago, Sunyavadin.7962 said:

My point was that people have been calling for such a change for years, but Anet have stuck to their guns on how it was originally conceived. It was intended to work a certain way based on that reasoning, even if the reasoning was flawed, so persuading them to change it based on how stuff actually plays out in fact about how the ingame economy functions is unlikely to convince them.

Recently anet moved with the qol changes (because it's not just gobblers), I find the attempt to claim that it shouldn't happen "because anet doesn't like facts and logic" (or w/e) to be pure nonsense.

Anyways, one could hope Rubi can pass it over and come back with some information about it.

Edited March 20 by Sobx.1758
typo

[Sunyavadin.7962]

3 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Recently anet moved with the qol changes (beause it's not just gobblers), I find the attempt to claim that it shouldn't happen "because anet doesn't like facts and logic" (or w/e) to be pure nonsense.

Anyways, one could hope Rubi can pass it over and come back with some information about it.

I'm pretty sure this is the most of a compromise position we can expect from Anet on it for a foreseeable while, or they'd have taken it further with this very change. The ability to buy it in bulk without the long timeout, but retaining the randomisation, and not being able to select a buff deliberately. The only way I see them changing that is if the bug it's currently experiencing proves insurmountable any other way.

Edited March 20 by Sunyavadin.7962

[Sobx.1758]

5 minutes ago, Sunyavadin.7962 said:

I'm pretty sure this is the most of a compromise position we can expect from Anet on it. The ability to buy it in bulk without the long timeout, but retaining the randomisation, and not being able to select a buff deliberately. The only way I see them changing that is if the bug it's currently experiencing proves insurmountable any other way.

At current state, considering what was written in the previous posts, I can only repeat the question you still didn't address (unless I missed it): what purpose exactly does that randomness have?
And I'm pretty sure you'd write exactly the same thing when it was proposed to change the "last weeks version" into "todays version" (because it was intended to just sit around with clickers spamming away at it, right?)

Edited March 20 by Sobx.1758

[Sunyavadin.7962]

6 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

At current state, considering what was written in the previous posts, I can only repeat the question you still didn't address (unless I missed it): what purpose exactly does that randomness have?
And I'm pretty sure you'd write exactly the same thing when it was proposed to change the "last weeks version" into "todays version" (because it was intended to just sit around with clickers spamming away at it, right?)

As I said, it took a decade of people asking for QOL changes to it, making all sorts of suggestions which ranged from simply removing the timeout between clicks as far as removing the randomness, and after that decade of feedback, we got what we literally just got. That indicates how far they were willing to go at this point in changing it from its original functionality. Bringing it in line with the other ones which work this way and don't have an arbitrary limit between clicks (and possibly breaking some of the logic in doing so, so we shall see where that goes) but not fundamentally changing it to be similar to items with a discrete set of choices. If they were currently in a spot where they were willing to go along with those years of the same suggestions, they'd have made that change this patch. They didn't.

Edited March 20 by Sunyavadin.7962

[Sobx.1758]

8 minutes ago, Sunyavadin.7962 said:

As I said, it took a decade of people asking for QOL changes to it, making all sorts of suggestions which ranged from simply removing the timeout between clicks as far as removing the randomness, and after that decade fo feedback, we go what we literally just got. That indicates how far they were willing to go at this point in changing it from its original functionality. Bringing it in line with the other ones which work this way and don't have an arbitrary limit between clicks (and possibly breaking some of the logic in doing so, so we shall see where that goes) but not fundamentally changing it to be similar to items with a discrete set of choices. If they were currently in a spot where they were willing to go along with those years of the same suggestions, they'd have made that change this patch. They didn't.

Doubt this is anything that actually involved "a decade of people asking for it". At this point I doubt you're accidentally avoiding the question that was asked here again, so I'll take it as being unable to come up with the reason for keeping that element of randomness.

But, again, I'm mostly expecting the idea to be passed over and maybe for anet to let us know whether it's even an option or not. They could look into it while they're, you know, looking into it anyways to check for the potential bug and fix it.

Edited March 20 by Sobx.1758

[Vegeta.2563]

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

I've been talking with some of our designers about this. Any change is unintentional and they are looking into it to see if something is happening that shouldn't be. 

It was roughly around 2000 candy corn that would generate 24 hours of XP booster with the old candy corn gobbler.  Now that takes 6000 with the new one.  I think where it messed up is that it didn't take in account for the cost of candy corn per use, or something that was related in 3's, because it takes 3 times the amount to reach the same number of stacked booster timer.

[Sunyavadin.7962]

21 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Doubt this is anything that actually involved "a decade of people asking for it". At this point I doubt you're accidentally avoiding the question that was asked here again, so I'll take it as being unable to come up with the reason for keeping that element of randomness.

But, again, I'm mostly expecting the idea to be passed over and maybe for anet to let us know whether it's even an option or not.

If they had ten years of feedback saying "how about suggestions A, B, C, and D for item X" and they eventually gave us a patch which updated item X to have features C and D because those features were in line with the design philosophy of subsequent items Y and Z in the same category, then they had reasons, however good or bad those reasons might be, for not making the other changes. We the players only get to know those reasons if the devs choose to tell us. That's just how it works, the devs have an idea of how they want things to work, and they make changes in line with that philosophy, sometimes in line with the feedback and sometimes not. When there's a suggestion that's come up a bunch of times and they don't change things in line with it, but change it instead in other ways, then it's a pretty clear indicator they don't want that change. "Working as intended" is one of the heaviest pieces of design inertia, particularly when accompanied by a policy of "If it ain't broke".

Edited March 20 by Sunyavadin.7962

[Sjentra.3409]

3 minutes ago, Vegeta.2563 said:

It was roughly around 2000 candy corn that would generate 24 hours of XP booster with the old candy corn gobbler.  Now that takes 6000 with the new one.  I think where it messed up is that it didn't take in account for the cost of candy corn per use, or something that was related in 3's, because it takes 3 times the amount to reach the same number of stacked booster timer.

That wouldn't surprise me; they had the same issue when they introduce auto-research; where if the recipe produce more than 1 item you'd only get notes as if it produced one.

[Sunyavadin.7962]

4 minutes ago, Vegeta.2563 said:

It was roughly around 2000 candy corn that would generate 24 hours of XP booster with the old candy corn gobbler.  Now that takes 6000 with the new one.  I think where it messed up is that it didn't take in account for the cost of candy corn per use, or something that was related in 3's, because it takes 3 times the amount to reach the same number of stacked booster timer.

This is why I wonder if the switch in how it applies the boosts has messed with some of the internal logic of how it's randomised.

[Cronos.6532]

2 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

I've been talking with some of our designers about this. Any change is unintentional and they are looking into it to see if something is happening that shouldn't be. 

Also the PvE-only buffs roll in WvW, meaning the buff chance is less in WvW because those rolls are wasted

[Vegeta.2563]

5 hours ago, Sunyavadin.7962 said:

This is why I wonder if the switch in how it applies the boosts has messed with some of the internal logic of how it's randomised.

The band-aid solution would just be to reduce the cost to 1 piece of candy corn, and it would equal the old candy corn gobbler, but I think they'll want to adjust the output itself instead.  Hopefully to match the old gobbler, because if not people will notice and call them out on it.

[DoctorOverlord.8620]

I hope this was unintentional, I was really happy to see the Candy Corn Gobbler updated to be so much more useable.  It would be a shame if a nerf made it not worth using.

[uberduber.7368]

It used to cost me about 100 Candy Corn / Hour.

Was all excited with the change lining up with the WvW Rush event. Hope they fix it soon.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

Good morning! I've got an update from some of our designers:

After extensive checking we identified an issue with the Candy Corn Gobbler - the previous version (before the March 19 update) had a bug causing the Experience Booster effect to occur as an extra double-buff more often than it should have.  

 Additionally, there were a few small probability differences that increased the chance of a non-XP double buff and a typo causing some of the minor buffs to have extended durations in the new version. When all of this was combined it caused total buff durations to appear within standard deviation for large amounts of candy corn used in testing (300+ gobbles) but not for the Experience Booster in short gobbling sessions.  

 We have a fix in the works that will recreate the original results precisely--this time intentionally--while preserving the improved ease of use of the updated item. We're working on getting it to you as soon as possible!

[Vegeta.2563]

23 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Good morning! I've got an update from some of our designers:

After extensive checking we identified an issue with the Candy Corn Gobbler - the previous version (before the March 19 update) had a bug causing the Experience Booster effect to occur as an extra double-buff more often than it should have.  

 Additionally, there were a few small probability differences that increased the chance of a non-XP double buff and a typo causing some of the minor buffs to have extended durations in the new version. When all of this was combined it caused total buff durations to appear within standard deviation for large amounts of candy corn used in testing (300+ gobbles) but not for the Experience Booster in short gobbling sessions.  

 We have a fix in the works that will recreate the original results precisely--this time intentionally--while preserving the improved ease of use of the updated item. We're working on getting it to you as soon as possible!

I was under the impression with the old Candy Corn Gobbler model that you would either get a 7 min booster, or a 15 min booster at random.   Some people were saying that the new model was not providing the 7 min booster when using the blessing.

[Tev.8345]

53 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Good morning! I've got an update from some of our designers:

After extensive checking we identified an issue with the Candy Corn Gobbler - the previous version (before the March 19 update) had a bug causing the Experience Booster effect to occur as an extra double-buff more often than it should have.  

 Additionally, there were a few small probability differences that increased the chance of a non-XP double buff and a typo causing some of the minor buffs to have extended durations in the new version. When all of this was combined it caused total buff durations to appear within standard deviation for large amounts of candy corn used in testing (300+ gobbles) but not for the Experience Booster in short gobbling sessions.  

 We have a fix in the works that will recreate the original results precisely--this time intentionally--while preserving the improved ease of use of the updated item. We're working on getting it to you as soon as possible!

Now that's a great response, thanks you!

[NovaanVerdiano.6174]

2 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

Good morning! I've got an update from some of our designers:

After extensive checking we identified an issue with the Candy Corn Gobbler - the previous version (before the March 19 update) had a bug causing the Experience Booster effect to occur as an extra double-buff more often than it should have.  

 Additionally, there were a few small probability differences that increased the chance of a non-XP double buff and a typo causing some of the minor buffs to have extended durations in the new version. When all of this was combined it caused total buff durations to appear within standard deviation for large amounts of candy corn used in testing (300+ gobbles) but not for the Experience Booster in short gobbling sessions.  

 We have a fix in the works that will recreate the original results precisely--this time intentionally--while preserving the improved ease of use of the updated item. We're working on getting it to you as soon as possible!

Thanks for clearing this up and going in-depth, really loving the way you're handling things lately.

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

This update is live now: 

Grab the latest build and it should be resolved!

[orenwolf.1953]

6 hours ago, NovaanVerdiano.6174 said:

Thanks for clearing this up and going in-depth, really loving the way you're handling things lately.

Seconded @Rubi Bayer.8493 - Can't express enough how much the extra effort you're putting in to provide these sorts of details makes. Thank you!

[DoctorOverlord.8620]

Thanks for adjusting the Gobbler so quick :)  The details behind the cause are also really appreciated! 

Also glad to see the Guild Hall population bug was fixed, we always seemed to get that whenever our small guild would try to meet in the hall lol

Edited March 21 by DoctorOverlord.8620

[Vegeta.2563]

9 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

This update is live now: 

Grab the latest build and it should be resolved!

Now would be an ideal time to get this thing on the gemstore!

[Sunyavadin.7962]

Super interesting to learn the underlying roots of this. I like it when the devs give a detailed insight into the workings like that.

You'd think it'd be wild to think a bug went unnoticed like this for a decade to the point where they had to actually manually recreate it by hand when they updated the item, but actually I've literally seen this before in another MMO I used to work for, where one bug in a piece of legacy code had been untouched for a decade since the game's launch and the current dev team at the time found the bug and fixed it, only to learn that that in the meantime over the multiple dev team turnovers since the game's launch, that piece of code had ended up called by a bunch of unrelated stuff, and suddenly mechanics from three whole expansions were breaking because of the "fix".

 

[Kelly.7019]

PLEASE REMOVE THE EXTRA PANEL FROM [PRINCESS] and all other "gobbler" gizmos.

You added an extra step that is unnecessary. You made it worse!

Now instead of just being deposited directly into my bags when i click on it, a separate panel appears under my other windows that i don't see.

 (other windows being bank and bags inventory takes up my full screen.) so when i assume clicking 5-6 times just adds them to inventory it doesn't and i have to shuffle windows around to see this new panel. it's utterly annoying! Please reverse this change!!!

Edited March 24 by Kelly.7019

[orenwolf.1953]

I'll take an extra panel any day over the frustration I feel when I realize I didn't keep the mats I needed in my inventory so now I have to go to the bank just to use these tools. 🙂

[Kelly.7019]

10 hours ago, orenwolf.1953 said:

I'll take an extra panel any day over the frustration I feel when I realize I didn't keep the mats I needed in my inventory so now I have to go to the bank just to use these tools. 🙂

its as ez as a zip to the guild hall. i keep mine in that bank so it ez pea-z