Professions Tasks incorrectly auto-canceling

nunya

Problem
Level 70 crafting and gathering tasks auto-cancel when the delivery box is full

Description
If you have crafting and/or gathering tasks in progress, and they are of mixed levels, then when the delivery box gets full and all tasks are in a completed state awaiting pick-up, one of the level 70 tasks will completely cancel rather than automatically restarting. Each time the delivery box gets full like this where all tasks are completed and the result is awaiting pick-up, then one level 70 task will cancel instead of restarting.

Example
You've got these Jewelcrafting tasks running: Raw Gold Ingot, Slate Whetstone, Gold Needle. You also have these Gathering tasks running: Gold Sand, Slate, and Crate of Astral Diamonds. The "Gold Needle" task and the "Crate of Astral Diamonds" task are both level 70. The rest of the tasks are level 68 or 69 (varies). You don't empty the delivery box for 24 hours. When you finally do, all the tasks are completed and the results are awaiting pick-up. When you empty the delivery box, all the level 68 and 69 tasks will automatically restart. However, either "Gold Needle" or "Crate of Astral Diamonds" will not; instead, it will be canceled and you'll have to order the artisan to perform the task again.

Let's assume that "Crate of Astral Diamonds" is the task that canceled and did not restart. Let's also assume you just can't be bothered to go to the Workshop to restart that task. Now, you ignore the delivery box for another day, which causes it to be completely full with all tasks completed and the results awaiting pick-up. When you collect the deliveries, once again all of the level 68 and 69 tasks will have restarted. However, "Gold Needle" being a level 70 task will be canceled. So you'll have only these tasks in progress: Raw Gold Ingot, Slate Whetstone, Gold Sand, and Slate. Even if you let the delivery box get completely full again, all of these tasks will automatically restart.

How to Reproduce
Start two level 70 tasks that take the same amount of time to complete. Use artisans that have matching speed modifiers so that these tasks will complete at the same time. Order the artisans to perform the task as many times as possible.

In the last 10 minutes before those tasks will complete, start a low level task (below level 15 is best) that you can repeatedly complete using morale. Order the artisan to perform the task as many times as possible. Tasks that require only 5 morale to instantly complete are the best choices.

NOTE: It is critical that you start the task as normal because completing it using morale will put all the results into the delivery box. If you do not start the task first, then all the results will go directly to your inventory.

Once started, use morale to complete the low level task until the delivery box is full. Wait for the two level 70 tasks to complete. Once they are complete and the delivery boxes slots are full with results awaiting pick-up, empty the delivery box. Notice that your low level task has restarted as has one of the level 70 tasks, while the other level 70 task has not restarted.

Expected Behaviour
I expect that all tasks will automatically restart once the delivery box has been emptied, and that none of the tasks will cancel.

celthil

And here I thought it was just me miscounting the number of times a task has completed. I have only recently, as in about when CTA event started, noticed this happening. My task wasn't a creation task but was crate of astral diamonds that kept cancelling.

lowjohn

I've seen this same behaviour on non-70 tasks. In particular, I've noticed it repeatedly on a character who was Gathering both Well Water (level 2) and Sweetgale (level 33) and a couple of one-off times on other combinations. In every case I've noticed it, there was one task that repeats much faster than the other, and the longer-cycle task would get cancelled instead of restarted.

My naive thought would be that tasks that start when the box is almost full check to see if they should prepare to be delayed, while tasks started when the box is empty do not. Since the box fills from zero to max with fast tasks in the time it takes the slow task to finish once, it's not EXPECTING to have to go on hold and just dies.

Anyway. I hadn't found good repro steps before, thanks for that.

nunya

@lowjohn You know, it could be the difference in task lengths. That's a possibility. I've mainly seen it when I'm gathering or making something that takes 10 minutes and also either gathering or making something that takes 3 hours. My workaround, for now, is to do only long tasks or only short tasks and not mix them.

mdarkangel

Never paid much attention to it until I saw this post, but something isn't working properly.

When placing the order it states: "Orders will end if the delivery box is full, required materials are missing, or the commission cannot be paid." That leads me to believe all orders should cancel when the delivery is full (all orders in a completed state). Clearly, that is not how it works, as orders are restarted once there is room in the delivery box. Personally, I have never had this issue with level 70 tasks not restarting, let alone any level task. And no, I don't empty the box every couple hours, during the week it only gets emptied once per day, and with only a level 3 Workshop it is always filled to capacity when I do empty it.

At least they got it to a point where orders go "on delay" until there is room, instead of what we had at launch where there would be a backlog of orders that needed to be collected.

nunya

mdarkangel#4696 said:

At least they got it to a point where orders go "on delay" until there is room, instead of what we had at launch where there would be a backlog of orders that needed to be collected.

I agree with this. Professions were unusable for me when they first released this update because of that very issue.

lowjohn

mdarkangel#4696 said:

At least they got it to a point where orders go "on delay" until there is room, instead of what we had at launch where there would be a backlog of orders that needed to be collected.

Ugh, no, that fix was the WORST. As long as you stood at the box collecting stuff, you got all the results no matter HOW LONG it had been since you signed in? That was the best thing. If you wanted to stop collecting early, just let the box fill.

And of course they killed it, because it was super-good and broken, like how you could generate hundreds of gold per day out of nothing with Nettles.

(To be fair, it probably needed to die. For me personally, I lost out. So grrrr.)