Node evaluation not updating until objects are selected

I believe there’s an issue with Viewport 2.0 that prevents reevaluation of node graphs in certain situations (particularly with custom nodes), as you found out one of the work arounds is to use the Legacy Viewport, another one I think is to write an animation expression that forces the connection to be evaluated, I haven’t done it myself but I know someone at work who was working with curves and that was the solution he used.