Orange flowers are missing from vines...

zbkolde

Just in case anyone else used them in their foundries and hasn't noticed, the orange flowers are missing from the vines. The item is "Wall Vines 01", and the description still says "A wall of vines with flowers."

I also posted this in the "Bugs Reports" forum.
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?348761-Orange-flowers-missing

These are screenshots taken in Protector's Enclave:

From April 29th:



From June 14th:

almostcool

The horror!

kamaliicious

almostcool wrote: »

The horror!

Well, the description does say there are flowers. And there could be quests where you have to go collect these flowers or something.

zbkolde

In all seriousness, here's the thing...

These flowery vines on walls set off a "pretty" tone, a positive vibe. This is a decorated, well-kept, delicate, "happy place" type of atmosphere. Some foundries use a lot of them (not to mention Protector's Enclave). So if your foundry setting is supposed to have a good vibe, these were a good asset.

Without the flowers, they are drab, and set a negative, run-down, abandoned, ruined, or haunted type of vibe. The complete opposite of the flowers. There are other vines that don't have flowers already.

I ran my foundry the other night and noticed right away that something didn't look right on the shadowy side of my house. The flowers added color and life, and now the vines make it look un-kept. Not saying it's thee most important issue in the game right now, just saying it does make a bit of a difference in setting up atmosphere. Mostly i posted this to alert any authors who may have used them, to let them know their atmosphere has been changed.

lovepeas

I miss the pretty flowers.

zbkolde

lovepeas wrote: »

I miss the pretty flowers.

Me too. Just ran a foundry that had a garden with these flowerless vines all around it. Made me sad.

saerrael

zbkolde wrote: »

In all seriousness, here's the thing...

These flowery vines on walls set off a "pretty" tone, a positive vibe. This is a decorated, well-kept, delicate, "happy place" type of atmosphere. Some foundries use a lot of them (not to mention Protector's Enclave). So if your foundry setting is supposed to have a good vibe, these were a good asset.

Without the flowers, they are drab, and set a negative, run-down, abandoned, ruined, or haunted type of vibe. The complete opposite of the flowers. There are other vines that don't have flowers already.

I ran my foundry the other night and noticed right away that something didn't look right on the shadowy side of my house. The flowers added color and life, and now the vines make it look un-kept. Not saying it's thee most important issue in the game right now, just saying it does make a bit of a difference in setting up atmosphere. Mostly i posted this to alert any authors who may have used them, to let them know their atmosphere has been changed.

This. I use these specific vines in certain places that need a bit of colour and/ or whimsy. I do hope they look into this and get the flowers back where they are supposed to go.

zahinder

I hope they add versions with and without flowers.

zbkolde

I wonder if maybe they temporarily disabled the flowers for the portal events? Then we'll get them back after launch? Here's hoping.

zbkolde

The orange flowers are still missing.

zahinder wrote: »

I hope they add versions with and without flowers.

There are several vines to use, called Tall Ivy, that are the same vines without flowers. There was only one with the flowers.

apocrs1980

There were a lot of actual graphical changes done to almost every asset in PE, this was to help optimize the zone and prevent fps loss, unfortunately any copies of these assets used in the foundry suffered the same fate, some look awesome now like crypt tiles sets and pieces and the flower patch 1, whilst others look actually quite awful like Ruined rug.
Would have been nice to see the new graphical changed assets as a separate asset in the foundry however, doing so they would have had to completely rebuild PE and you can't do that to a game that is already launched :P

zbkolde

apocrs1980 wrote: »

There were a lot of actual graphical changes done to almost every asset in PE, this was to help optimize the zone and prevent fps loss, unfortunately any copies of these assets used in the foundry suffered the same fate, ...

*sniffle*

zbkolde

apocrs1980 wrote: »

There were a lot of actual graphical changes done to almost every asset in PE, this was to help optimize the zone and prevent fps loss, unfortunately any copies of these assets used in the foundry suffered the same fate, some look awesome now like crypt tiles sets and pieces and the flower patch 1, whilst others look actually quite awful like Ruined rug.
...

This has been haunting me for the past couple of days, as i've spent hours and hours tediously decorating a home interior map. The idea that our assets are tied to the devs', and they might change them for their purposes. What if they make that table a little smaller? I'll have books and maps floating in the air next to it. What if they make a bookshelf a little shorter, then i'll have books and bottles stuck in random spaces that aren't aligned with the shelves. What if they make the exterior house detail that i used a little smaller or a little more/less square, my windows will be floating around aimlessly. I don't want to sound all paranoid, but if it happened to a few things already, as they continue to develop and make adjustments to the game, it will easily happen again. Is it too difficult for them to duplicate an existing asset and make their adjustments to the new copy on their end and use that, without ninja-changing the details used in hundreds of authors' work?

redneckronin

I quite like this "bug", it allowed me to use the vines as substitutes for river weed.

All The Best

zbkolde

redneckronin wrote: »

I quite like this "bug", it allowed me to use the vines as substitutes for river weed.

All The Best

There are several options of different sizes and shapes of the same vines without flowers already, called "Tall Ivy." It's the exact same vines, just without flowers. There was only one that had the flowers.

eskarine

I am a little disappointed by this as well. I have a nature shrine-thingy in my new quest on which I stacked dozens of those flowery vines, and now it looks kinda sad and old, lol.

zovya

Maybe the flowers are no longer in bloom.

zbkolde

What if they change other things though? It's not just about the flowers.

zbkolde wrote: »

apocrs1980 wrote: »

There were a lot of actual graphical changes done to almost every asset in PE, this was to help optimize the zone and prevent fps loss, unfortunately any copies of these assets used in the foundry suffered the same fate, some look awesome now like crypt tiles sets and pieces and the flower patch 1, whilst others look actually quite awful like Ruined rug.
...

This has been haunting me for the past couple of days, as i've spent hours and hours tediously decorating a home interior map. The idea that our assets are tied to the devs', and they might change them for their purposes. What if they make that table a little smaller? I'll have books and maps floating in the air next to it. What if they make a bookshelf a little shorter, then i'll have books and bottles stuck in random spaces that aren't aligned with the shelves. What if they make the exterior house detail that i used a little smaller or a little more/less square, my windows will be floating around aimlessly. I don't want to sound all paranoid, but if it happened to a few things already, as they continue to develop and make adjustments to the game, it will easily happen again. Is it too difficult for them to duplicate an existing asset and make their adjustments to the new copy on their end and use that, without ninja-changing the details used in hundreds of authors' work?

apocrs1980

zbkolde wrote: »

What if they change other things though? It's not just about the flowers.

They most likely will not change the actual size of assets, only the skins associated with it if it's proving to cause too much draw and slowing people frames per second.
I have never had a case where they made an asset a different size.
On another note, you can bunch up and change the orientation values of the flower patch 01 asset to achieve a similar effect of encroaching flower bushes.
I am sure they will add these assets back in, it's just that drastic changes had to be made to speed up the heavily populated areas.

zovya

So then I'm wondering why this change was necessary. Supposed to be a dev joke, or what?

xhrit

Good thing no one uses these assets that were changed in quests that are featured, because featured quests can't be edited any more...

zbkolde

apocrs1980 wrote: »

...
On another note, you can bunch up and change the orientation values of the flower patch 01 asset to achieve a similar effect of encroaching flower bushes.
...

Thank you for the idea, it worked pretty well.

zbkolde

Erm... they're back... sorta. Took this screenshot today, same spot as the others.



Now if only we could see if this changed our quests again.

Confirmed: The item "Wall Vines 01" has been changed to this. It looks nice, really. But, it's something that may need adjustments. Although, my entire map is covered with huge trees, it's not playable at all, so the flowers on the side of my house are the least of my worries.

leinahtanwc

Well, I used the ivy vines as decorations for a decrepit dungeon and I tweaked them individually to maximize the effect. Then along comes the patch and BOOM! My entire ivy covered crypt is a flower crypt... Is there a way to remove these flowers by chance?

zbkolde

leinahtanwc wrote: »

Well, I used the ivy vines as decorations for a decrepit dungeon and I tweaked them individually to maximize the effect. Then along comes the patch and BOOM! My entire ivy covered crypt is a flower crypt... Is there a way to remove these flowers by chance?

Before, there was a collection of the same exact vines without flowers, called "Tall Ivy." I don't know if they changed those vines or not though. The leaves on these flowered vines are different now. I'd have to go back in and look for the others to see if they were also changed. But yes, there were several other flowerless vines available before.

saerrael

zbkolde wrote: »

Before, there was a collection of the same exact vines without flowers, called "Tall Ivy." I don't know if they changed those vines or not though. The leaves on these flowered vines are different now. I'd have to go back in and look for the others to see if they were also changed. But yes, there were several other flowerless vines available before.

I'm using a lot of ivy in one of my quests, and I think just about all of the vines have flowers now aside the ones that did before they vanished.
Only wall vines and the gazebo ones had flowers.

zbkolde

saerrael wrote: »

I'm using a lot of ivy in one of my quests, and I think just about all of the vines have flowers now aside the ones that did before they vanished.
Only wall vines and the gazebo ones had flowers.

Well, that's just as uncool as taking them away. We should have both.

zahinder

I really wish they'd stop changing stuff rather than simply adding stuff.
It's... not conducive to good foundry management.

I imagine the problem is that the assets are being altered at the game level by people who don't give two spits about Foundry and are doing it based on what will look good in the base game.

saerrael

zbkolde wrote: »

Well, that's just as uncool as taking them away. We should have both.

Yeah, I just checked in the Foundry for the assets, and it seems every last ivy has flowers >.< Darn..
Much agreed on that we should have both.

zahinder wrote: »

I really wish they'd stop changing stuff rather than simply adding stuff.
It's... not conducive to good foundry management.

I imagine the problem is that the assets are being altered at the game level by people who don't give two spits about Foundry and are doing it based on what will look good in the base game.

I don't know, but certainly am finding more assets that have been changed. *shakes his head* Good thing I was already planning on redesigning my Tribulations cave, as it's currently exceptionally blue instead of 'just right'.

mllebean

I agree with zahinder. The Foundry was marketed as central to what makes this game (an otherwise run of the mill MMO, in my opinion) special. To be honest, it's pretty much the only reason I'm still logging in on a regular basis. My quest is far from the most successful or most popular, but I put hours of honest effort into it (hand placing thousands of bits of decor) and have had some really positive responses. It truly disappoints me to think that at any time a random patch could render it either unpolished or unplayable. (Which is where I currently find myself as the great tree spawn of 2013 has totally wrecked one of my maps.)

If Cryptic were serious about the Foundry, archiving previous states of quests and backward compatibility of any changes would be top priorities.

I gave Cryptic pretty generous benefit of the doubt during the "open beta" phase, but things should be getting better by now, not worse. Between these latest design changes, the outrageous profanity filter changes, and constant lagging and crashes (in the Foundry especially), the game is getting REALLY hard to love.

eldarth

*triple facepalm*

This deflower/flower vines, a thousand new twisted trees in the forest looping map, and the list goes on.

And for release notes, what do we get?
"There are some new elven assets, and some new clusters."

What we NEED is THIS: New Feywild Assets

How embarrassing must it be to...

1. Have users generate (waste hours on) detailed release notes (Change Management software...hello?)
2. KEEP changing existing, IN USE, assets breaking backward compatibility. Again. And Again.
3. Go live with bugs (nightmare boxes) reported nearly a week before go-live. Again. And Again.

Perhaps, if only they had any public/internet/deployment experience...

• 2004 - City of Heroes
• 2005 - City of Villains
• 2009 - Champions Online
• 2010 - Star Trek Online