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.
So I put together a analysis of what I see other people dealing with and what I am dealing with. Unfortunately I cannot find the post where someone said taking all their gear off and putting it back on seems to be helping them from getting crit hits, they said even though it shows your stuff on your sheet it is not actually protecting you. They discovered this because of their feather fall augment which stopped working suddenly took the item off and put back on. so I think its happening with fortification deathblock and other attributes of gear and augments/filigrees. The second issue seems that we are getting dungeon alerts where we shouldnt be getting them aka raids and when we havent even triggered it, debuffing us and buffing mobs and bosses. Third is the tremendous lag that folks are experiencing which there is a youtube video at the bottom of this thread that shows what many of us are dealing with in raids and quests. and the fourth issue is the dysnc from what players are seeing at the same time which can make game dynamics very difficult in a raid. Hopefully with all this research and input from the folks in the forum this will help the devs to figure out what is going on but I am definitely gonna try the gear hack.
My fort is 348% 50% Deflection 27% dodge about 30% absorption to all elements 116 prr 76 mrr 96 armor class deflect arrows evasion nine lives and a secondary evasion + feat on my armor. All of my gear is raid gear. I can say without a doubt that yes mobs are way tougher and hit way harder.
We did DOJ, Hunt and dryad last night. Dryad was at 100 corrupt when I managed to complete the last puzzle in time for end fight. We have two great players that have always managed to keep her corruption under 40% and keep uni aggro which they were not able to keep last night but we also had 2 guardian fights that slowed us down a bit. At the end fight we had to dance and the giant was almost dead when we got to fight him again his hit points were up to 50%. We tanked twice in hunt were not seeing souls and there were more than ever before on normal. We always win that raid on normal was first time we tanked since we first tried it out basically. The lag in there was the worst all night but that raid is usually laggy for us generally but last night it was pretty bad. and in DOJ the lag was so bad that after we killed her and were opening the chest the meteor swarm fell and wiped half the group.
Cordovan said: None of the game performance updates made enemies more difficult, although the Dungeon Alert changes could be seen in that light. However, based on this thread, it doesn't sound like folks are talking about a Dungeon Alert issue.
We did have a developer yesterday look into Fortification, Fort Bypass, and enemy Fortification and Bypass, both at the code level and internal server testing, and nothing came up as incorrect or not functioning as it used to prior to recent game updates. So if there's something there, it hasn't been discovered yet.
Calouscaine said: This is just me being curious, but if a dungeon alert is triggered, it buffs enemies and debuffs players in several aspects, correct?
I've noted, and I'll have to double check numbers later, but if 7 or more monsters spot a player/group, even in separate locations in a dungeon, the alert gets triggered and can rapidly advance from green to red. Sometimes, perhaps 25-50% of the time, when you kill all the mobs you can see the alert will stay at green or yellow. This could be due to mobs stuck in walls, floors, and so forth, which I have been seeing a great deal of lately in multiple dungeons.
If the base numbers didn't change, there has to be some other factor which has caused some sort of difficulty increase, yes?
If it isn't some sort of concealment or dodge by pass then I'm not sure what might be causing it. The 59 patch notes only state that multiple systems with to hit, damage, armor, blocking, etc. were fundamentally changed. With just that limited info I can only hazard guesses and try to think of what 'might' be happening.
Rabidfox said: 1) Unicorns in Dryad raid being hard to taunt- not a new issue, I've been in runs long before recent work where they just didn't want to intim correctly and it is quite frustating when that happens
Hunt being extra hard- I've been in runs where there's dysnc between the what server thinks is going on and what players see. Where people call out "souls" but not a single soul shows on my screen; same way there's 2 videos of the same VoD raid (from different perspectives) where one person's video can see a vengeance circle and the other recording doesn't show it at all. I can't say if dysnc like this is worse or not since recent work, I will say that once you're aware of it that you notice it more often (this is a common issue with being aware of any type thing, the brain just starts looking for it).
Arcanaverse said: I have a theory that I think can explain... well... everything. Lag, but not in the way that you think.
If I recall the timeline
Post u59 release, lag vastly improved for like 2 days. Game performance was much better. Then players were dungeon alerting more often reproducing the lag.
So from our side, the lag remains, but I suspect that isn't exactly accurate. The new lag feels different to me. So I think game side lag is still seeing benefits. And with better game performance, monsters are performing better. More accurate hits, more affects being applied, etc...
This is most evident with Dryad and the Demigod.
Pre u59, tanks (including myself) would easily keep the corruption % below 40%. Quite often spending most of the raid at 0-10%. Post u59, the corrupted unicorns are far more active. Less time between teleports (which reset aggro) and near 100% of the time apply a stack of corruption on each hit (pre u59, I'd estimate it was closer to 1/3rd on the same, hard difficulty).
Which would completely explain why even the dev's aren't seeing an issue with the code.
A hole is the fort bypass issue, but since J1NG and dev's haven't been able to replicate. odds are its champs. Specifcially Archeron (t3), Beast Mark (t3), and Infernal Pact (t2) champs. They're notorious for surprisngly high levels of damage due to their fort bypass and even pre u59, they bypass all fortification.
Goldy said: I would like to offer my experience here.
I have specifically noticed "tougher" mobs in Explorer Zones, when you have multiple groups (three or more) of mobs active.
It is almost like the game thinks you are in Dungeon Alert Status, but aren't. Incoming damage which is usually in the single digit and teens explodes to 50, 60, 100s depending on the level of the zone. I can consistently reproduce this, but not every time, I would assume this means there is something else involved here.
Example from Sands
Windlasher Gnoll hit you for 4 points of pierce damage.
Windlasher Gnoll hit you for 76 points of pierce damage
2) Hunt being extra hard- I've been in runs where there's dysnc between the what server thinks is going on and what players see. Where people call out "souls" but not a single soul shows on my screen; same way there's 2 videos of the same VoD raid (from different perspectives) where one person's video can see a vengeance circle and the other recording doesn't show it at all. I can't say if dysnc like this is worse or not since recent work, I will say that once you're aware of it that you notice it more often (this is a common issue with being aware of any type thing, the brain just starts looking for it).
Kroull said: I've been away from home for two months and returned to find that DDO now has a constant lag that makes it very hard to enjoy playing, not just for me but everyone in my household so I know it's not an issue with my computer. Additionally, I can play other MMO games just fine with no lag at all. I'm really not sure how to fix it, so I'm just looking for suggestions.
Here is a youtube video I recorded that shows what I'm dealing with:
Tarinia said: It seems that also on other servers people noticed, that after the update content is (much) harder then before. Till now its not confirmed by the devs, but especially raids and reaper are the main issue at the moment- of course it could be in fact every difficulty range affected.. you should look and present screenshot from situations like above to convince devs to help...
Vryxnr said: This has been noticed by many people, and a larger thread is trying to sus out the actual issue.
Even just doing solo raids on normal, hard, and elite, I've noticed things are doing more damage to me than they used to ever since update 59. I suspect it has to do with the "under the hood" changes to how the game calculates various things to help reduce lag. Either something broke, OR something prior was never working correctly and now it is, the end result is still the same though. Everyone takes slightly more damage now.
