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New Neighborly Help tab

Sir Derf

Adept
Love it. Several suggestions...

  1. A small tweak to your wording. While there is nothing wrong with your headline text in the new tab, "xxx needs your help in their city yyy", when your initial suggested city name is "PlayerName's City", this produces "PlayerName needs your help in their city PlayerName's City". Could you detect if the city is named "xxx's City" and change the wording in this case to "PlayerName needs your help in PlayerName's City".
  2. I'm not sure what was happening, but as I progressed through all my neighbors, the delay for the removal of the window with the help options increased as I went along. I have 39 screens full of neighbors out to the 19th ring, and by the end it was taking 4 seconds for that window to leave, significantly impacting the rate at which I could give neighborly help. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of the number of finished neighbors, or of being on the 30+ screen, or of being in the 17+ ring, but if you could find and improve whatever is causing this gradually increasing delay in the process of giving NH through this interface, we would all appreciate it.
  3. Add the ability to tag some neighbors as Favorites.
  4. Show neighbors currently online.
  5. Suggested Filters or Sort by Options
    1. Show only Favorite Neighbors.
    2. Show only currently online neighbors.
    3. Show only NH available with reciprocating NH bonus.
    4. Show only neighbors with particular Ancient Wonder available to be donated.
    5. Show only neighbors with Ancient Wonders with less than x KP left to complete.
    6. Show only neighbors who have donated to my Ancient Wonders in the past.
 
Jake65

Jake65

Mentor
Sir Derf said:
Love it. Several suggestions...

  1. I'm not sure what was happening, but as I progressed through all my neighbors, the delay for the removal of the window with the help options increased as I went along. I have 39 screens full of neighbors out to the 19th ring, and by the end it was taking 4 seconds for that window to leave, significantly impacting the rate at which I could give neighborly help. I'm not sure if this is a consequence of the number of finished neighbors, or of being on the 30+ screen, or of being in the 17+ ring, but if you could find and improve whatever is causing this gradually increasing delay in the process of giving NH through this interface, we would all appreciate it.
Click to expand...

I also noticed the "slowdown" effect. I've experienced the same during the FA when collecting +100 2-minute productions.
I figured it was just my computer memory getting bogged down. (or a subtle hint to stop brewing so much beer :) )
 

Sir Derf

Adept
So today, as a test, I ran through NH for all my neighbors in reverse, starting on the last screen, the 19th ring. Speedy process at first, gradually slowing down as I NHed more and more people, this time moving to earlier and earlier screens, spiraling inward from the 19th ring into my nearest neighbors. The delay was annoying by the time I was half way through, seriously annoying at 3/4, and up to nine seconds by the time I reached the final page.
 

Sir Derf

Adept
I like the new NH supporting Neighbors tab in the provinces window on the map. However, I have seen an issue that I feel needs to be addressed, as I don't think that it was intended behavior.

I have 39 screens worth of neighbors (about 350), out to the 19th ring. I have now used the new interface to provide Neighborly Help to all my neighbors, and have noticed that the time for the NH options window (the window that displays the 1-3 options to supply NH to) to dismiss grows gradually longer the more NHs I perform. Today, by the time I got to the last screen of NH, it took about 9 seconds for the window to dismiss and my ability to interact with the interface to return.

The first time I gave NH, I progressed from screen 1 to screen 39, from the inner ring to the outer ring. Today, I gave NH from screen 39 to screen 1, from the outer ring to the inner ring.

This gradually increasing delay makes it harder and harder to continue to provide NH to the entire map. I don't think this is intentional. Please investigate and correct.

Thank you.
 
Herodite

Herodite

Forum mod extraordinaire
Elvenar Team
Hi @Sir Derf I've merged the threads just to keep this all in one place!! I'll speak to the Team to see if they are aware and come back to you.

With regards to the Suggestions i'll pass them across!

Bear with me about the delay!

Kind Regards

Herodite :)
 

Sir Derf

Adept
Sorry for forking, but I felt this individual issue needed especial mentioning as a bug, separate from the Quality-of-Life improvements that the rest of my post mentioned.
 
Herodite

Herodite

Forum mod extraordinaire
Elvenar Team
It's fine! I just prefer that any subsequent comments are all kept in one place so there's no duplicate discussions! :)

Now, I have raised the question and it seems that this isn't technically a "bug", but due to the larger amount of data. It seems to be typical behaviour given the new feature. Now whether this can be improved with a future update we cannot be sure. But the team are aware of it.

I think the best thing to do in this situation is wait for the next update. As you know, in addition to any obvious corrections/new features, there are also UI updates which will hopefully include the functionality of this new feature.

Kind Regards

Herodite.
 

Sir Derf

Adept
Polite response, meant not for you @Herodite as the middle person, but to the developers. Please don't read as angry, I'm trying to give constructive criticism.


Thank you for the response. And I realize that you have to say something. I'm personally somewhere in the neighborhood (no pun intended) of underwhelmed/disappointed/mildly unhappy with your choice of the phrase "typical behavior". What do you expect a user to think when this is how you describe this experience? Personally, I would have been much happier if that single sentence had been omitted in your response.

"Typical Experience" meaning "this is the experience the typical player has"? meaning "It's not just you... You're not alone... most people see the same thing..."? That doesn't make me feel better.

"Typical Experience" meaning "this is normal behavior for a game interface"? No, it's not. No one expects increasing delays as they repeat a task, especially progressing from the unnoticeable to a 9 second delay. There are other points in the game interface where I can perform a series of repetitive tasks and I generally don't notice them taking longer and longer.

"Typical Experience" meaning "we meant it to operate this way"? No you didn't.

"Typical Experience" meaning "this is what happens when we code it this way", well then, code it differently.

If I thought this was "typical behavior", then I wouldn't be mentioning this in feedback.


I like the idea of this feature. I don't like the execution of this feature. This is not how it should be. This is not how a player would want it to be, This is not how you should have made it. This is not how should want it to be.

This should have been noticed in internal testing. This should have been reported by players on the Beta server and fixed before going onto the live servers, if not fixed for them first.

Please figure out how to remove whatever looping or recursive behavior is taking place across all provinces which includes an individually short (25 ms?), but collectively long (9 seconds for 350x) task. Eliminate it. Streamline it. Change it so it works only on the current 9 items in the current page instead of the entire 350-item list. Change it so it works only on the currently effected item.

Thank you.
 

Sir Derf

Adept
Browser
World Map View
Show Provinces Overview icon on the lower middle (looks like a honeycomb)
New Third Tab, "Neighbors"
 
SkyRider99

SkyRider99

Adept
Sir Derf said:
This should have been noticed in internal testing. This should have been reported by players on the Beta server and fixed before going onto the live servers, if not fixed for them first.
Click to expand...
Herodite said:
...this isn't technically a "bug", but due to the larger amount of data.
Click to expand...
Production data is typically (!) much larger than the amount of data available for testing. The final operations and performance don't reveal themselves until implementation into the live system.

Now that we finally have the feature that many players have been asking for, I think we need to be more understanding of the technical glitches that have been unintentionally introduced.

The issue could probably be resolved by returning to the old system and the 10 page notifications. :cool:
 

Sir Derf

Adept
  1. I'll admit at mid-Chapter 17 I'm slightly over-scouted compared to their expected benchmarks, but I'm just over that required to unlock Chapter 19. They darn well better have tested to make sure that their system works through required levels. And even if they didn't pay attention to the performance at this level, there most definitely are players in Beta with this level of scouting. It should have been noticed.
  2. It's not a "bug" as in it flat out fails to work. Neither is it a well-functioning system. Yes, 350 is a number that is larger than, say, 100. It is not a number beyond what they game players would expect a player to have. I do not accept this as an acceptable issue or level for understanding.
  3. I am willing to understand that, when first implemented, it was not initially understood that it would behave like this. My willingness gradually decreases as we go from "they didn't notice before putting in Beta" to "they noticed but didn't change before putting in Beta" to "Beta didn't notice" to "Beta noticed and they didn't roll out a change to Beta" to "Beta noticed and they made no changes before sending it on to the Live servers."
  4. This shouldn't have anything to do with the increased size of notifications. My system sending out the 350th individual notification to the 350th different user upon performing the 350th Neighborly Help shouldn't make dismissing the 350th occurrence of the "what form of neighborly help do you want to give" window take 350x limes longer. No, there is something at the local end that, after every NH is given, runs through all 350 available provinces, and takes a longer time to process a completed and counting down province than an available province.
  5. I thought I was upset earlier at 9 second delays. I'm now even more upset. In my process of visiting 350 Provinces, that's 350*350 = 122,500 individual tests, eventually half of those (61,250) do something that eats a minor amount of time. I notice it towards the end, as individual pauses took up to 9 seconds, so each completed province adds about 25 ms of delay. The aggregate amount of delay? (61,250 * 25 ms) = 1,531,250 ms, 1,531.25 s, 25.5 minutes! Hey Inno... Fix this problem and remove nearly half an hour of time-waste in this new, time-saving feature you've introduced.
 

Sir Derf

Adept
Continuing to post here as it's a larger than single update issue...

So, yesterday I NHed with the new browser interface for 10/39 pages and reported that the growing delay appeared to still be there despite the program update. I then switched to the mobile app to NH all but 5 provinces, then switched back to the browser interface. When I NHed the last 5 provinces, I did not see a delay.

Today, I tried a few other experiments.

I NHed for 19/39 pages on the browser, and yes, the gradual delay is still present. At that point, it had grown to about 3 seconds.
  • I dismissed the Provinces window, reopened the Provinces window, and continuing NH still had 3 second delays.
  • I dismissed the Provinces window, switched to city view, switched back to Map view, opened the Provinces window, and continuing NH still had 3 second delays.
  • I dismissed the Provinces window and exited Elvenar (back to the choose your city screen), rechoose my city (so I never had to relog in, switch to Map view, open the Provinces window, and when I continue NH, no delays!
I NH for 19 more pages, and the delays grow back to about 3 seconds.
  • I hit the browser "Reload Page" button, switch to Map view, open the Provinces window, and when I continue NH, no delays!
Now, not having tried this in the previous Elvenar version when this interface with its gradually growing delay was introduced, I can't be sure that this is a change or if ithis is part of the original implementation. And, this does not forgive INNO for introducing this flaw, nor does this resolve INNO of the need to fix this flaw. There is obviously something inefficient but not unavoidable in the current implementation. If a reload is able to continue NHs without built-up delays, then there is nothing inherent in the interface or server-side that is causing it.

Please INNO, fix this. We should not have to repeatedly reload your game in order to effectively use a feature of the game.
 

Sir Derf

Adept
And, to the original post, I'll add one more suggested addition...

  • A button to advance to the list to the first city with available Neighborly Help.
Useful generically when you have 350+ neighbors.
Useful when you have to periodically reload the game in the middle of NHing all 350+ cities.
 
Jake65

Jake65

Mentor
@Sir Derf there's a thread about trader freezing where someone mentions they feel it could be 'caused' by lots of clicking.
I placed 200 marble manus today and the builder screen took progressively longer to load.
All sounds related in a way.
 
Herodite

Herodite

Forum mod extraordinaire
Elvenar Team
Miss me?! I know you did... :D

The Team are aware of these delay issues. Best thing I can say right now is please bear with them! I've no answers to give at the moment, BUT they are definitely aware :)

Kind Regards

Herodite.
 

Sir Derf

Adept
Thank you for the feedback. Politely, but them being aware is Stage 1. They are aware of many, many things.

Stage 2 is them working on fixing it.
Stage 3 is them testing the fix.
Stage 4 is them releasing a fix.

Waiting on Stage 4...
 
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