Code Update: 3/4/19
Posted on March 03, 2019As many of our higher-ID users are aware, new Quests currently take a long time to assign, particularly when there's a new NPC being introduced. This is because of the way the current feature is designed. As a very basic summary, the server has a clock on it, and when the clock strikes a certain time, it makes one huge list of every single Quest for every single User that has to update. The problem is that if it gets too many lists to run through, aka more than 7 or so, it will just keel over and give up, reset itself, and go along pretending nothing happened. This is why we've had a couple times where the server simply stopped assigning Daily Quests to people during the Event, particularly because the Event and non-Event Quests counted as different "lists".
When it became clear this would be a recurring problem, we started working on an alternate method of assigning Quests. We've added a new server dedicated solely to running the Quest assignments, and this server has 7 special little 'worker robots' on it. Seems appropriate for our current Event exploration, no? :)
Again, this is a very basic summary, but the idea behind this new method is that whenever any user visits the site, 1 little robot turns on and asks, "Do you need ANY Quests?" If yes, that robot gives you your Quests right then and there. So up to 7 users can be receiving their Quests (of any type) at the same time, and any additional users will get noticed by the robots and put into a queue for the next available robot to handle. This means that if you refresh exactly on the Quest page, you may not immediately see your Quests, but should receive them as soon as one little robot boots up or gets to you in the queue!
I tried to add a small yellow "Please come back for quests in 1 minute!" message to the Quest page but cannot get it to work 100% of the time because the robots are so fast at starting their work, and the message only happens if you end up in the queue while all 7 robots are busy. If you happen to catch a robot while it's booting up, for example, you likely won't see the message. I'm a little concerned that this may add some slight confusion - users wondering "Where are my Quests? It's been over an hour/day!" when they just need to wait 20-60 seconds. Any suggestions for how to handle this are very welcome! Please feel free to comment in this thread with any ideas.
Now that I've got explanations out of the way, let's get to the major request with this update: I need some volunteers! Anyone willing to test out this 'worker server' method can find a new checkbox in the Settings page, at the bottom of the Profile tab. Those of you with higher user IDs will likely find this method helps you receive Quests much faster than before! Our goal is to eventually shift all Quest assignments to this method once it has been thoroughly tested, but for the time being it is entirely opt-in. To keep all bugs related specifically to this update in one place, please report your experiences to THIS Technical Support thread rather than making new ones.
Thank you all again for helping make Tattered Weave the best it can be!
