Change to Dungeon Alert
- Thread starter Tolero
- Start date
I've tried to think of a way to make this sound nice, but I can't, so I'll apologize in advance..
Do you actually think this will have any effect? Is there someone on the dev team actually saying
"I think the players sprinting through quests and blowing through the end boss will be like "oh no, I need to cast four spells to kill the boss instead of two! I better slow down and kill everything" or " Well my Razorclaw is going to take six seconds to DPS the boss down instead of three..may as well go slow"
It also makes some quests (such as Inferno) even more a challenge to some players, as there are a few quests where you can kill everything you meet, and still get orange/red alert somehow.
And... are you sure this is what's contributing? The reoccurrence of the lag spikes seemed to be right after the Friday hotfix for many of us.
Being a non computer guy i have no idea, but I do know it wouldn't be the first time something in a "new" build accidentally reverted some changes.
Do you actually think this will have any effect? Is there someone on the dev team actually saying
"I think the players sprinting through quests and blowing through the end boss will be like "oh no, I need to cast four spells to kill the boss instead of two! I better slow down and kill everything" or " Well my Razorclaw is going to take six seconds to DPS the boss down instead of three..may as well go slow"
It also makes some quests (such as Inferno) even more a challenge to some players, as there are a few quests where you can kill everything you meet, and still get orange/red alert somehow.
And... are you sure this is what's contributing? The reoccurrence of the lag spikes seemed to be right after the Friday hotfix for many of us.
Being a non computer guy i have no idea, but I do know it wouldn't be the first time something in a "new" build accidentally reverted some changes.
Aelonwy
Well-known member
This^ + this:
Years ago on the suggestions forum I remember discussing "Soul-locked" or "Life-sealed" Doors such that certain doors would only unlock once enough mobs in the area had been slain. This concept could work if there were a counter showing how many or how many more mobs slain were necessary to progress.
eshadowbringer
Well-known member
Adding more FREE travel guides to the most offending areas would help solve some of the slayer area issues!
Aelonwy
Well-known member
Yes please. Feywild definitely needed a couple, one to the snowy zone and one to the fairy village at the very least.
Saltmarsh has a nice relatively safe path across the marsh not too far from most entrances but a teleport to the shrine with druid grove would have been nice similar to the PdK encampment you can teleport to in King's Forest.
Willsave20
Member
I think one of the major issues here is that there are many different playstyles; a rogue's stealth ability to sneak past mobs would essentially be rendered useless in solo scenarios. The game right now is "realistic" in terms of D&D 3.5e, giving the player the freedom to move from one area to another without needing to encounter any mobs. Locking doors and objectives based on mob count is always something that I dislike, as its unrealistic unless under some sort of magical enchantment by a caster. Making mobs take more preventative measures at an increased rate, such as a creature ringing a warning gong or locking a door can help. Mob positioning is also a problem in this game as large groups are unreasonably clustered together, making them all react to the player at the same time/pace and in the same way.
MisterVan
Active member
Am I understanding correctly that this change is immediate on Live, and not being previewed on Lamannia?
I understand the direction, but it sounds like a band-aid 'fix' for the real problem which seems to be enemy AI and pathing. I recall A Sharn Welcome was updated a year ago to require killing the mobs in the bear room with the lever, because if the 5-6 mobs in that room were left alive, they would cause a tremendous amount of lag after players advanced further into the dungeon.
This change primarily makes me nervous because of how many encounters in this game can trigger dungeon alert due to sheer mob density and spawn rate, not because players are rushing too quickly. It feels bad to have a game mechanic punishing you through no action on your part.
Nonetheless, if it helps the lag problem, maybe it will be worth it. I'm just skeptical that it's the right solution.
I understand the direction, but it sounds like a band-aid 'fix' for the real problem which seems to be enemy AI and pathing. I recall A Sharn Welcome was updated a year ago to require killing the mobs in the bear room with the lever, because if the 5-6 mobs in that room were left alive, they would cause a tremendous amount of lag after players advanced further into the dungeon.
This change primarily makes me nervous because of how many encounters in this game can trigger dungeon alert due to sheer mob density and spawn rate, not because players are rushing too quickly. It feels bad to have a game mechanic punishing you through no action on your part.
Nonetheless, if it helps the lag problem, maybe it will be worth it. I'm just skeptical that it's the right solution.
Qeistalan
Well-known member
Sounds like devs are suggesting the best option would be to remove the players from the game environment, then no more DA, resulting in a reduction of lag. Problem solved!
Better idea: Stop Putting Mobs in quests. Lag doesn't come from players, it comes from mobs.
0 mobs = 0 lag, guaranteed.
While I like the idea, I think a better solution would be that as dungeon alert goes up, the time to open the doors doubles starting at YELLOW DA.
So at Green, the doors open at the current speed. At yellow, to represent the enemies knowing about your presence, the doors take twice the time to open to simulate blocking them, etc. At Orange, it is again doubled to represent the enemies making better preparations. At Red, you double the time again to represent the enemies devoting 100% of their efforts to stop and/or slow you down.
Now, you can still zerg, but you will need to protect the person(s) opening the door if you want to proceed further with a higher dungeon alert and not have the door opening reset.
Heck, I'd go a step further and every dungeon alert level above Green would double trap damage, double the time it takes to disarm them and would also introduce random "web-type" traps to slow the party down.....but that may be a tad much.
somenewnoob
Well-known member
I have no more facepalms to give. More garbage solutions.
Actually how about an alternative idea.
Rather than punish players for playing the game, reward them for killing mobs. Not by XP (doing a quest in two minutes for 50K XP is better than doing it in 4 for 75K) but add a system where it adds to your chance of gaining named loot (or something) if you kill all the mobs.
Not in a stupid "I have to spend 20 minutes hunting down every mob in the dungeon" way but something like finishing the quest without DA, or achieving Conquest gives you a couple percentage higher chance of named items.
Rather than punish players for playing the game, reward them for killing mobs. Not by XP (doing a quest in two minutes for 50K XP is better than doing it in 4 for 75K) but add a system where it adds to your chance of gaining named loot (or something) if you kill all the mobs.
Not in a stupid "I have to spend 20 minutes hunting down every mob in the dungeon" way but something like finishing the quest without DA, or achieving Conquest gives you a couple percentage higher chance of named items.
Willsave20
Member
While both of these ideas are unique, a Dungeon Alert lore wise has to do with the creatures throughout the dungeon being aware of your presence, so increasing damage or making doors take longer to open seems a bit harsh and unrealistic. Giving some monsters trapmaking or stealth skills could allow a dungeon alert to cause some mobs to stealth/hide or set a trap in preparation of a player's arrival. A dungeon alert system in an MMORPG should only affect the mobs throughout the dungeon/area, not the players or environment.
StegoJR
New member
I would probably have to disagree here... The zerging quest is over in less than a minute usually, and the instance is erased... However, adding in a bunch of calculations to not only keep track of DA, but also buff each mob separately for each level of DA, and making the red names and such buffed even further... Is a HUGE resource hog. you're also talking about stopping the way a ton of players like to play, and alienating your player base to such extent, is an outrageously bad idea. And this isn't even going into the alerts caused by what is just bad AI to begin with, like Reapers grabbing entire fields of enemies through doors and such.... I would say getting rid of DA, and all the calculations for it, and just making mobs lose aggro a bit faster, would not only be better for the player base, but also LOADS better than adding more calculations just to nerf players further
Tolero
DDO Producer
Re: Landscapes - We did do some work to reduce how much the monsters care about you when you're cruising through a landscape. We are however still going to need to do some more adjustments in several as there's some areas that are still just A Lot even when you're trying to stick to the main roads.
Re: Dungeons where alert spikes high through no fault of your own - The downside of hand made content is it takes us significant time to catch all the places where this happens, and the adjustments tend to need to be by hand. And change based on player play patterns (a dungeon that may not have been a problem for a decade suddenly becomes one when someone discovers a new way to play it or has a class ability that didn't exist back when the quest was made, etc). We've been going through making a punch list of content that needs minion pruning, though some pruning had already been happening. And we're also working on further tuning what DA functionality does so that it isn't whacking you on the head when you hit those intermittent burst spikes and is more focused on addressing situations of chronically staying at the high end unnecessarily. It's going to be an iterative process ultimately.
Re: Change how the game handles its AI or change other deep code level stuff - This is also on the table after some of the stuff we've seen in the data from the weekend, but touches parts of the game that are difficult to work with and take longer to safely manipulate.
Re: Dungeons where alert spikes high through no fault of your own - The downside of hand made content is it takes us significant time to catch all the places where this happens, and the adjustments tend to need to be by hand. And change based on player play patterns (a dungeon that may not have been a problem for a decade suddenly becomes one when someone discovers a new way to play it or has a class ability that didn't exist back when the quest was made, etc). We've been going through making a punch list of content that needs minion pruning, though some pruning had already been happening. And we're also working on further tuning what DA functionality does so that it isn't whacking you on the head when you hit those intermittent burst spikes and is more focused on addressing situations of chronically staying at the high end unnecessarily. It's going to be an iterative process ultimately.
Re: Change how the game handles its AI or change other deep code level stuff - This is also on the table after some of the stuff we've seen in the data from the weekend, but touches parts of the game that are difficult to work with and take longer to safely manipulate.