Intermittent Vendor UI Bug

intrinsical

I have been observing a serious Vendor UI bug that has been causing me to buy the wrong item from vendors. For myself this bug triggers most frequently when I am buying from Commodities Broker Fhoss in ESD and from my own Replicator, but I presume it is also happening on other vendors as seem they share a similar user interface.

Sidenote: This bug is intermittent and I cannot consistently replicate it, but I have observed that it happens more frequently when I am purchasing something immediately after logging into STO. Hopefully that's a useful clue for the UI devs to figure out what's wrong.


Steps to replicate (intermittently occurs 1 in 30-50 attempts, possibly just after logging in):
1. Press "I" to open Inventory.
2. Press the "Replicator" button to bring up the Replicator vendor.
3. Scroll down and select "Self Sealing Stem Bolts". (The bug usually happens when I'm buying stem bolts for personal reputation projects, but I've also observed it happening for all items)
4. Click the "Replicate" button to bring up the modal Buy dialog. By modal, I mean the rest of the screen is darkened and the player should only be able to interact with the Buy dialog.
5. The buy dialog should ask "How many Self Sealing Stem Bolts?". Select a quantity to purchase (optional step, I am not certain if this contributes to the bug)

Intermittent Bug occurs here: I am not touching the mouse or keyboard, but suddenly the item I have selected to purchase gets unselected and the item below it gets selected. Eg, if I had selected "Self Sealing Stem Bolts", "Industrial Replicators" will be selected without me touching the UI. The Buy dialog itself is still asking "How many Self Sealing Stem Bolts?". If the bug happens at this stage, the player still has a chance to click "Cancel" and reselect the correct item to purchase if they noticed the change.

However.... this bug can also happen during step 6 below, after I have clicked the "OK" button. In the split-second before the purchased item appears in my inventory, I have seen Self Sealing Stem Bolts get changed to Industrial Replicators and Industrial Replicators appear in my inventory. (This may indicate some sort of lag-related/race-condition issue)

6. Click "OK". What should happen next is that energy credits should get deducted, and Self Sealing Stem Bolts should appear in my inventory. Instead, I see Industrial Replicators appear in my inventory.
7. Close the Replicator window (I am adding this step because I have never observed the bug happening on a 2nd purchase, so during testing please re-open the Replicator/Vendor window before doing further tests)

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On a related note (and possibly separate UI bug), I have noticed that I can still use my mousewheel to scroll up and down through the contents in the Replicator window while in steps 4 & 5 when the modal Buy dialog has popped up and the rest of the screen is darkened.

zeuxidemus001

So anyways I know they aren't going to give me the Romulan Engine I did a project for that gave me a Reman one but I did put in a bug report. I am just hoping they will learn to refund what was put into it or exchange the engine out which I know they won't do but here is to hoping they will learn.

snovern

I'm going to take a "stab" at a potential reason for this bug so please lick a somewhat large block of salt as you read....

I've noticed that the game takes a bit of time (on the order of seconds to a few minutes) after logging in (where you can move your character/ship around) to fully register all of your Chef/Bartender BOffs and Fleet affiliations. To see this, next time you log in, open your replicator window, and you may see the following:
1) Assuming you are in a fleet:
-- a) You won't see Embassy Provisions in your replicator list
-- b) You will see Embassy Provisions in your replicator list, but it is grayed out
-- c) You will be able to buy Embassy Provisions, but the price is not discounted by your Starbase Fabricator level
2) Assuming you have Chef/Bartender BOffs that provide "extra" replicator permissions
-- a) You won't see the extra items
-- b) You will see the extra item/s, but it/they are grayed out
3) I've also seen items "disappear" from the replicator list after having the replicator UI open for a bit. Meaning, I open the replicator, see an item that is grayed out, then the item is removed from the replicator list. (No clue why this happens.)

After waiting seconds to minutes, the window may/may not automatically update to show the right items/prices/availability to buy.

The second half of the reasoning is UI related. The game seems to keeps track of the selection index, not the selected item. If you have a UI open where the 3rd item in the list is highlighted, and for some reason a "new" second item appears, the highlight will still be on the 3rd item in the updated list (the updated 3rd item being the old 2nd item). Similarly, if the 2nd item disappears while you are highlighting the 3rd item, the highlight will still be on the 3rd item in the updated list (the updated 3rd item being the old 4th item).

Getting to the point, this phenomena could result in the bug as described above. For example:
1) You open the replicator list
2) Some "extra" item is in your replicator list before the Stem Bolts
3) You double-click Stem Bolts or click Stem Bolts & the Buy button
4) Extra item disappears from your replicator list
5) Replicators take the place of the Stem Bolts (as far as the list index goes)
6) You finish buying the "Stem Bolts" at index [x] of the replicator list
7) Game references what item is actually at index [x] of the replicator list and finds Replicators
8) You get Replicators.

Anyway... just a theory based on my experience with in-game behavior. This would also explain why you only experience the problem in your first purchase. By the time you make your second purchase, the game has "caught up" with fully registering the details of your character.

If you are still reading, you can also see the "index memory" behavior when moving through dialogue chains. Click the [n]th item in a dialogue, and if another dialogue UI immediately appears, the [n]th item in that new dialogue will be highlighted by default (if the new dialogue has less than [n] items, the last item will be highlighted).

thlaylierah

This game has a recurring "hiccup" every few minutes or so.

Attempting to do anything such as receiving a reward, putting items in the Bank, putting things on the Exchange, will fail during this "hiccup"

I believe it is deeply imbeded in the base code of how this game runs so will never be fixed.

Best they can do is throw more resources at it to speed through them.

It increases in duration proportionally to the server load.

mightybobcnc

I just ended up with 15 Antigens instead of Industrial Energy Cells because of this bug.

distantworlds

This has happened repeatedly to me, too. I believe the issue is a much more serious UI issue across the board. In many cases, a UI window will not be updated for a few seconds. The UI loads with it's local data, then a few seconds later with server data, most likely. This happens to me constantly when training boffs. I'll pull them up and immediately start pressing the arrow to train, then it will magically reset back to zero and force me to do it again.

When this vendor bug happens, if you watch very closely, the list of items on sale will change. It'll move items up or down one. When purchasing, you're not buying "stembolts", you're buying "item #15 from the list". But because the server just updated the client, item #15 is no longer stembolts, and you just bought a load of something you didn't want.