Api: Nightfalls' (et al) manifest displayProperties.name is just "Nightfall"

[VeraxonHD]

When using the manifest to get the name of a Nightfall, the [hash].displayProperties.name is just simply "Nightfall" which isn't very useful! Unless I'm missing a patch note, can we get this fixed please? Else, the only way to find the nightfall name is comparing the description!
Thanks.

[ArkahnX]

This matches in game, as the nightfall is called "nightfall" with the description providing details of which strike

[VeraxonHD]

So, there's no way of finding the actual name of the nightfall anymore? That's highly irritating.
EDIT: In-game, the nightfall names are still visible on the selection screen, so I'm not sure how this matches in game.

[vthornheart-bng]

The history of this is an interesting one - the game designers have gone back and forth over the years with naming Nightfall more specifically in the data we can get at. Essentially, the Activity definitions we return are the actual game data for activities themselves. They can be associated with other entities - which is where things like the selection screen get that information - but sometimes the API cannot access that additional data, or we theoretically could but it would require a significant investment to do so.

We had this same problem in Destiny 1, where Nightfalls ended up with generic names in this Activity content, and both our app and 3rd party developers had a poor experience with showing nightfall data as a result.

I will look into the possibility of getting additional data that we could use to give us all a better title for Nightfalls, but I can't make promises that we'll be able to prioritize that over other work unfortunately. If its's something we can get at without too much manual maintenance going forward, I'll try to see it done!

[ArkahnX]

For reference @vthornheart-bng this weeks nightfall milestone hash is 2853331463 with activities 3108813009, 936308438, 3145298904

In the director, the selected activity shows up as

NIGHTFALL
Prison of Elders

However there is a "difficulty selector" UI button that provides options to the three different nightfalls, and shows them by name and power

WARDEN OF NOTHING 540
A GARDEN WORLD 540
THE ARMS DEALER 540

In the API, there is none of these strikes at 540 power, by name at least. only strikes at 500 (1360385767), 400 (1360385764), and 300 (1360385765) which matches how the new strike playlist works

So it looks like the reference between the name and nightfall exists, but hopefully its not scripted and unable to bring to light

[vthornheart-bng]

Indeed, that's a question that I have to do more digging into. I've never seen those strings that the game is showing in the content that we can access. I'm going to have to find out where those are and what sort of relationships we might be able to use to trace them back to their Activity definitions. Whether those exist in a content-driven form vs. a scripted form will most likely be the determinant between whether we'll return them in the API or not.

[vthornheart-bng]

Oooh, I see something interesting - yeah, we've got the data! Let me see what I can do to get that back for you all. I need to look at how consistent this data is coming back/how often it's useful to determine whether this selection screen title is worth having as its own property vs. having it override our displayProperties' name field.

[vthornheart-bng]

Okay, so after taking a closer look at some of these strings, I'm going to return them as their own set of properties so you can choose when and whether to use them. In some situations, they provide information that's very different from the activity's title: for instance, playlist activities return the required level as a string in the title for these selection screens. I'll return both to you, and in doing so let you choose the circumstances in which you choose to use one versus the other.

[vthornheart-bng]

TFS 708558

[vthornheart-bng]

Will come in on 9/18, it was pleasantly accessible in ways that it wasn't in D1!

[ArkahnX]

It'd be nice if there was an easy list you could use to see all of the new changes coming in each major expansion so you could have some idea of what the designers changed without having to find out from us!

[vthornheart-bng]

Aye, I'd love that as well. I think it comes down to the communications problem of having hundreds of people working on a single game (and focusing on/thinking about the way their changes affect the game itself rather than whether changes might affect the API), along with the problem that generic content structures can be used in new and novel ways without it being apparent to someone using the data downstream.

[ArkahnX]

As is, stuff gets missed in the player facing patch notes. So many moving parts!

[vthornheart-bng]

Player facing patch notes won't cover things like "we're changing where we're sourcing strings for activities when they're shown in a selection screen" for example.

[VeraxonHD]

Oh shit, nice one @vthornheart-bng you're my favourite, but don't tell the others. Thanks for seeing to this, it was doing my nut 👍

[vthornheart-bng]

<3 Glad to be of help! Sometimes working on the API feels a little like playing whack-a-mole, and unfortunately you guys get screwed when I miss one of said moles. :) I appreciate your patience and understanding!

[VeraxonHD]

No worries, and thanks. I'm just glad this means I can (easily) carry on with my coursework lol

[vthornheart-bng]

Okay, one last idea. How about, if the selection screen's version of the title isn't in the display properties' string already, I will append it to the end of the string with a colon so you don't have to do any appending logic... and then I'll add an "originalDisplayProperties" field as well so you can choose which of the three variants you want to use.

[floatingatoll]

Can you show us a single complete example?

On Sep 11, 2018, at 13:35, Vendal Thornheart [e-mail] wrote:

Okay, one last idea. How about, if the selection screen's version of the title isn't in the display properties' string already, I will append it to the end of the string with a colon so you don't have to do any appending logic... and then I'll add an "originalDisplayProperties" field as well so you can choose which of the three variants you want to use.

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[VeraxonHD]

Okay, one last idea. How about, if the selection screen's version of the title isn't in the display properties' string already, I will append it to the end of the string with a colon so you don't have to do any appending logic... and then I'll add an "originalDisplayProperties" field as well so you can choose which of the three variants you want to use.

So, like, Nightfall: Tree of Probabilities? As well as the two available separately that could definitely be useful!

[vthornheart-bng]

Aye! That's what I'm going to roll with there. So in this example I'll be returning you:

displayProperties.name = "Nightfall: Tree of Probabilities"
originalDisplayProperties.name = "Nightfall"
selectionDisplayProperties.name = "Tree of Probabilities"

[VeraxonHD]

Aye, sounds good to me!

[ttgmpsn]

By the looks of it, this might fix #628 , too? :)

[vthornheart-bng]

Good call!