Change to Dungeon Alert

[Verran]

Could be evil and...

• Completion with yellow alert, no bravery bonus.
• Completion with orange alert, no bravery bonus and no first time bonus.
• Completion with red alert, no bravery bonus, no first time bonus, no named items, and no tokens of 12.

That should cut down on a lot of zerging. Probably need some end fights adjusted.

I'd even go one step further:
Completion of these changes: No players left to play the game, thus no lag!
This would finally solve the problem!

PS:
Or, you know, they could make a game that works. Either way.

 

[Batman]

I feel that the real conflict right now is between players who want to get through all their past lives as fast as possible vs. players who want to play the game normally.

No dev in the universe is going to be able to cater to both players in one single game. I think we're at an impasse.

 

[Peated Problems]

Fundamentally I don't think you understand how the game works for the players. You don't INTEND for it to be "how fast can you kill 20 enemies", but frankly the game has boiled down to that. You don't want it to change, but you don't realise that's already the reality.

Sorcerer? Not OP because it has good single target damage - lol, it doesn't - but rather because it's effective at wiping groups. You've designed the game in such a way killing minions as fast as possible IS the game. When new players ask how they can handle reaper, the answer is "more dps". Not more defence - it won't do much - but more dps.

You've pushed melee into the corner of "literally can't survive being hit 4 times"... and how do they get out? CC and dps faster so things die before they do.

 

[Lotoc]

I do not think there is going to be one fix for this issue but I think 2 things that would show immediate results with the smallest amount of effort would be:
1. Limit DA to levels of the Dungeon (normal +4 like reaper) - this would eliminate the issue for "above-level" people doing favor runs. the DA here is pretty useless and has little to no impact on higher-level characters, but this would remove their added DA resource consumption from the equation.
2. Remove DA from wilderness areas entirely - this was fine back in the day when everyone was walking everywhere, but it is too easy to pop on your mount and outrun stuff, the mobs eventually reset so this mechanic is no longer a factor in wilderness zones and it is merely an annoyance to get hit and dismounted, nothing more.

I think the resource consumption caused by these two examples would be the easiest to eliminate from the equation and may even bring the consumption down to a manageable or negligent amount of the overall LAG issue. If not it at least reduces the impact range of any DA changes that will be made in the future.

<personal request>
Personally I zerg a lot of the event quests, so if you could do me a solid and remove it from events, that would be appreciated as well.
</personal request>

DA isn't what causes the resource issues, DA exists because the behavior of aggroing everything causes too many contradicting calculations in pathing AI for monsters which puts undue strain on the server - DA exists to deter and punish player behavior detrimental to game performance and getting rid of it would just make everything worse.

 

[Justfungus]

The funny thing is, I really don't care if a player zergs ... you do you.
But apparently, it causes lag. So I would say, eliminate the alert system
all together. Maybe add some kind of 'endurance' functionality. Sort of like
mana but it recharges quickly if your not fighting and or running around (at the same time,
doing one or the other should not drain you too fast).
Run out and you get fatigued just like a barbarian. It goes away, just like
a barbarian version. If your not subject to fatigue ... then it has no effect on you.

 

[Verran]

Greetings!

As we look at our lag metrics since our changes last week, we have seen that one unfortunate side effect is that the player behavior of evoking high Dungeon Alert levels by moving quickly through dungeons has spiked, and that behavior is contributing to a different form of lag (the conditions that cause dungeon alert cause lag).

We have made an adjustment this morning to make this behavior less rewarding. All red named boss monsters will be buffed if you encounter them while dungeon alert is active. The buff is gentle for green and yellow, and gets more severe at higher dungeon alert levels. This means that players will have an easier time if they defeat minions before tackling red named bosses if dungeon alert is active.

(As an aside, bosses always got buffed with dungeon alert, but we have leaned more heavily into this. Bosses will take much longer to kill at higher levels of dungeon alert, so kill those minions!)

We will be looking further into modifying content that tends to provoke Dungeon Alert, and change Dungeon Alert to discourage play patterns that provoke the highest levels of Dungeon Alert for long periods of time.

Hey Tolero

I've played around with these changes now and... well...
I will change my play patterns after these changes. In that I've just uninstalled the game. First time in a long while I've been going that far, I can't even remember the last time I was this disappointed in you.

I've been pissed at the devs for a long time now, almost two years of constant nerfs, constant anti-player ********, constantly working on the wrong problems, constantly blaming players for lag instead of taking the responsibility for your own code. First it was warlocks, then it was doublestrike, then some other players get their share of the blame...

That pathfinding code is old code some of you wrote, ain't it? If the code is that "hard to work with" it needs to be replaced. Instead you blame players for solving the game in the most optimal way.... that just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. You do not blame customers for problems you caused yourself. That is just.. vile.

And then there is the fact that you have no clue, no direction, in which you want the game to evolve. You just slap on bandaid after bandaid, hoping some will stick, but making things worse patch after patch.

This is just the latest of a lot of those situations, but here is an example. You want us to kill mob packs, so your pathfinding code does not screw server performance, aye? At the VERY SAME TIME you nerf AoE (caster) damage wherever you can get away with it. Do you even know how we play your game?

Let me tell you what I (and everyone I play with regularly) do if I cannot one-shot a pack. I ignore it. I run past it. Because no pack is worth more then one spell. Get that into your head. The players won't change. They find a title where stuff works like that. Either you adapt your game to fit or you loose a large chunk of your endgame player base. Because the endgame in this title literally was reduced to "do not ever let go of W, hit sprint boost whenever you can and ignore everything you can". BY YOU!

Because this game is the literal definition of an everlasting grind. You CANNOT slow down or you FALL BEHIND the curve of you constantly increasing the difficulty AND player power. But almost all of that player power is locked behind.. grind. So you gotta keep grinding and you gotta do it at the literal maximum speed there is.

Trying to end that behavior is literally ending your game. DDO does not have ANYTHING ELSE worthwhile to do in it.
This is your wake up call.

 

[Silverfox]

Greetings!

As we look at our lag metrics since our changes last week, we have seen that one unfortunate side effect is that the player behavior of evoking high Dungeon Alert levels by moving quickly through dungeons has spiked, and that behavior is contributing to a different form of lag (the conditions that cause dungeon alert cause lag).

We have made an adjustment this morning to make this behavior less rewarding. All red named boss monsters will be buffed if you encounter them while dungeon alert is active. The buff is gentle for green and yellow, and gets more severe at higher dungeon alert levels. This means that players will have an easier time if they defeat minions before tackling red named bosses if dungeon alert is active.

(As an aside, bosses always got buffed with dungeon alert, but we have leaned more heavily into this. Bosses will take much longer to kill at higher levels of dungeon alert, so kill those minions!)

We will be looking further into modifying content that tends to provoke Dungeon Alert, and change Dungeon Alert to discourage play patterns that provoke the highest levels of Dungeon Alert for long periods of time.

If you are really interested in encouraging players to avoid Dungeon Alerts perhaps decreasing player damage output by reducing melee, ranged, spell power, and critical damage multipliers, etc... , you could also start causing damage and removing spell points to players dependent up DA status and time the alert has been active so the longer and higher the DA goes up the more damage that is applied to the player and the more spell points they lose.

 

[SuperEVbully]

Greetings!

As we look at our lag metrics since our changes last week, we have seen that one unfortunate side effect is that the player behavior of evoking high Dungeon Alert levels by moving quickly through dungeons has spiked, and that behavior is contributing to a different form of lag (the conditions that cause dungeon alert cause lag).

We have made an adjustment this morning to make this behavior less rewarding. All red named boss monsters will be buffed if you encounter them while dungeon alert is active. The buff is gentle for green and yellow, and gets more severe at higher dungeon alert levels. This means that players will have an easier time if they defeat minions before tackling red named bosses if dungeon alert is active.

(As an aside, bosses always got buffed with dungeon alert, but we have leaned more heavily into this. Bosses will take much longer to kill at higher levels of dungeon alert, so kill those minions!)

We will be looking further into modifying content that tends to provoke Dungeon Alert, and change Dungeon Alert to discourage play patterns that provoke the highest levels of Dungeon Alert for long periods of time.

Sigh here we go again with another nerf for the sake of the never ending ability to fix their own game ............getting old fast

 

[Natashaelle]

2. Remove DA from wilderness areas entirely - this was fine back in the day when everyone was walking everywhere, but it is too easy to pop on your mount and outrun stuff, the mobs eventually reset so this mechanic is no longer a factor in wilderness zones and it is merely an annoyance to get hit and dismounted, nothing more.

Mob rubberbanding already mitigates that to a good degree -- except in those few landscape areas like the Vale where mobs do not rubberband.

 

[Natashaelle]

I feel that the real conflict right now is between players who want to get through all their past lives as fast as possible vs. players who want to play the game normally.

No dev in the universe is going to be able to cater to both players in one single game. I think we're at an impasse.

I typically like to solo slow play through everything, but I'm perfectly happy to join a zerging high reaper PUG too.

This isn't an existential conflict between opposites, these playstyles blend into each other, and there are players who like both.

Though truth be told, most high reaper zerg groups seem to blast through all of the mobs anyway.

 

[Svirfneblin]

Still laggy today, ran Druids, High Road, and Wheloon all R1. Are the new D.A. settings on?

If you want to slow down zerging, when Yellow or Red Alerts trigger, have all the mobs throw Sticky Bombs! And all mages cast Hold Person.

 

[Zaszgul]

Ah great, now people think 100% of all lag is caused by zerging/DA. No wonder there are so many heavily punitive ideas in here.

 

[Eoin]

I'd even go one step further:
Completion of these changes: No players left to play the game, thus no lag!
This would finally solve the problem!

PS:
Or, you know, they could make a game that works. Either way.

It's all about finding that perfect balance of lag. Definitely don't want to completely solve the lag issue. Players would just change their complaints to something else that you might not be able to perpetually keep working on fixing.

PS:
They could just add a speed run check box to the quest difficulty selector. If checked, start with 10 kills and all trash mobs removed. Then players could just run to the boss battle and collect their rxp.

 

[Xgya]

I do not think there is going to be one fix for this issue but I think 2 things that would show immediate results with the smallest amount of effort would be:
1. Limit DA to levels of the Dungeon (normal +4 like reaper) - this would eliminate the issue for "above-level" people doing favor runs. the DA here is pretty useless and has little to no impact on higher-level characters, but this would remove their added DA resource consumption from the equation.

A lot of people fail to see the dungeon alert itself is almost costless - it's a single buff to mobs that are already active.
What IS costly is increasing the number of active mobs. Dungeon alert exists to discourage players from activating too many mobs at once, but is deemed no longer sufficient disincentive to do so.

SSG is looking for ways to make it so players are less likely to aggro many mobs at once. The solution you're presenting doesn't help with that.

 

[Eme]

zerging can be fun, too.
Would rather see fewer mobs but with more interesting and challenging AI than a bunch of bland stuff to kill to avoid a generic buff on a boss

 

[Onyxia2016]

Zerging was never a design concept when the game development started years ago. This is something that came about later in the games life.
Therefore it is not a game design problem. It is in fact a problem we players introduced. Now I am not 100% sure it is the sole cause of the lag. I suspect it is multiple factors having an cumulative effect.

As for the zerging there are three main reasons for this.

1. Favor grinding which only requires quest completion.
2. XP pots ticking down so you go fast in order to get through many quests on the same pot.
3. Wilderness running to get to quests

The DA system was designed to be a penalty but if you are way over leveled it is not much of a threat.
If the DA is to once again be something you avoid triggering then the penalty has to be adjusted to match the current situation.
Since speed is the reason for causing the DA then that has to be what is affected. An increasing speed penalty with each DA level is the only way I foresee DA's to get there fearsome reputation back. Note: this would be a movement speed debuff and not affect attack speed.
I would think this could be turned on and tested for a week or two to see it is helps with lag.

This is not a nerf, this is adapting the DA system to a situation that did not exist originally so it once again has the same chilling effect.

I have always lived by the saying "To each their own." but this only applies if what is being done does not affect me and mine. If something is being done by a player that affects the entire server then that has to be addressed. I am sure if you are work on a raid boss that is challenging for you and I am doing something to lag the server, resulting in the death of your entire group, you would want something done to stop me from ruining your game play.

 

[Nimueh]

This is a simple 2 Step Solution:

#1 and most important: Please, please, please convert all current XP pots into "per quest completion" and not timed. You have no idea how much positive change this one simple change can make. (i.e. more support for new players due to less zerging, less lag, more groups on the LFM)

#2 +25% XP bonus for no dungeon alerts. Bump up the XP bonus for kills.

#1 No. Don't turn my 6 hour pot into a 10, 20 or even 30 quest completion pot. I can run more than 30 quests in 1 hour and it would also make favor farming and alternative quest routes inefficient and therefore never run. Unless they make it like 60 or 100 quests/pot this is a horrible suggestion.

#2 No LOL, Increase exp by at least 50% ***for*** killing things, not for not getting Dungeon Alert - Are these ideas designed to make grouping nonexistent and toxic towards new players?

 

[Batman]

In our continued effort to reduce lag and other performance issues for our players, a new feature for quests and adventure areas has been introduced called “Dungeon Alert”. This new system will notify adventurers when they have alerted too many enemies at once in their quest; if they press on without managing this aggro, the danger and difficulty of their enemies increases.

Our research into player feedback on performance issues found that having a great quantity of monsters chasing players through a dungeon was contributing to a poor experience for everyone in the form of what is called “lag”. Hitching, rubberbanding, or other irregular game behavior could ruin a night of questing for not only the group being attacked by the monsters, but also fellow server mates in other parts of Xen’drik! Something had to be done, but finding a resolution that was still satisfying for game play was needed. Simply forcing players to kill every monster wouldn’t do – it was too punishing to our sneaking and/or spell casting experts. Causing monsters to leash helped in some areas, but created new problems in others when a monster leashed at an inopportune time, resetting their hit points and making double the work for heroes. Simply pulling monsters out of quests was not only a time consuming process for quest makers, but could turn once challenging encounters into harmless nature walks. So we took a lesson from our favorite stories of action and adventure, and the Dungeon Alert system was born!

^^^Back in 2009

I find it highly ironic that DA was created in order to STOP LAG and performance issues and now is the cause of said LAG.

Can anyone here guess why?

If you guessed power creep, you are correct! DA is no longer a deterrent to Zerging like it may have once been.

-Tolero,

The problem you have here is that the game does everything in it's power to incentivize finishing a quest as soon as humanly possible. It's all about time, time, and time.

Couple that with the fact that DA is just ignorable by a large portion of the pbase (especially power gamers) and voila you have the mess we're in now.

If you don't want to band-aid this, you need to slow the TR train down by adding incentives to 'going normal'. In DDO, there are two main 'carrots' either XP (which is time-valued) or loot(which is more a direct power boost and much more random).

I propose that lower the Dungeon Alert level & more optional objectives complete etc. that the end chest loot get's a +% boost to getting a named drop and +% that named drop will have mythic/reaper bonuses attached. In in-game terms think of it that if the players DA the monsters are alerted and they will start taking their valuables out of chests to hide/safe-keep elsewhere.

 

[you may call me.....Tim]

I believe the assumption that this caused by players zerging through dungeons without killing mobs is kind of misleading. Of course i am sure this happens sometimes (mostly when groups split up to cover multiple objectives, but nowhere frequent enough to be causing the lag we are experiencing. But do you know what happens all the time that produces this behavior ? Getting to quests in Wilderness areas, especially since mounts have been introduced.
1. Korthos - most people who do these quests, try to finish them as fast as possible, that entails pulling out mount and racing from quest entrance to quest entrance without stopping to kill mobs.
2. Cerulian Hills quests - same thing
3. Saltmarsh quests - same thing
4. Waterworks - no mounts but people can just run to quest entrance
5. Three Barrel Cove -mount up and run to quests
6. Searing heights - they can port you in from House D quest giver but not to the actual quest entrance, just the zone entrance.
7. Borderlands - mount up and run to quests
8. Tangleroot -oddly not affected as much because once at the quest area you can run all quests with only seeing 4 or 5 mobs between quests.
9. Isle of Dead -mount up and run to quests
10. Red Fens -mount up and run to quests
11. SorrowDusk -mount up and run to quests, and run 5 miles through mobs to keep advancing questline(brilliant idea)
12. Feywild
13. Barovia -- oddly not affected as much because you get ported directly to the quests (please give this person a raise)
14. Sands of Menechtarun - Epic quests here are great xp but a good distance through lower level mobs.
15. Orchard of the macabre -

I could go and on and list pretty much every wilderness area in the game, but I hope you get the point here. Other than Barovia, the ability to just reach the quests in these zones is generating the behavior and on a much larger scale than a group splitting up stuff in a single dungeon or a high level guy running through for favor. Maybe put some portal npcs in to allow people to port to the quest or allow questgiver to port the player to the quest. There are many ways to address this issue or at least alleviate the severity and frequency of occurrence without going down a side path that again will have no impact on the Lag.

So the proposed solution around the DA penalties or end boss buffs is really immaterial in the above examples and is really only going to impact the players who are responsible for 10% or less of the behavior.

 

[Onyxia2016]

I like the hiding their treasures. Lets expand this to also promoting the lowly kobold to chief and wishing him luck as the big boss runs out the back, denying you the kill.