Change to Dungeon Alert

[Svirfneblin]

Pathing. Are we absolutely SURE that mob pathing causes all this laggy lag lag? Its not anything else? Nothing else?

 

[calouscaine]

Pathing. Are we absolutely SURE that mob pathing causes all this laggy lag lag? Its not anything else? Nothing else?

That's what we're being told. Well, that and I guess players playing the game.

 

[Stabitha]

Remember when they nerfed 2 weapon fighting and blamed it on lag ? Just admit your game engine is broken and this is where we at instead of the continued lies and guessing what you "THINK" it is.
You realize the majority of people would be fine if you just left the game alone and worked on fixing your customer service instead of continually tweaking and breaking the game we, the customers PAY for

 

[Fnordian]

SUGGESTION: Add a substantial XP Speed Bonus for players who strive to complete quests quickly and don't end up killing most of the mobs.
If Dungeon Alert is triggered they lose some or all of the bonus, depending on alert level:
Green -25%
Yellow -50%
Orange -75%
Red -100%

 

[Rub-A-Dub-Dub]

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.

Maybe you guys can look at the poor coding of the pathing changes when you all collectively decided that stealthing your way through a dungeon, pulling mobs one by one, and taking 36 minutes per completion, was too much...

 

[calouscaine]

I don't think it's pathing. Ran the peaks raid tonight with twiggy and tons of fun in it, you know, the two lovely red dragons. The whole raid was a red alert the whole time, it was a log lag fest due to the alert, not to mention the slow debuffs on the entire party and the buffs on the trash mobs and bosses. This is absolutely the worst system ever put into place. Where you can't even do a raid or dungeon in some cases without the game turning into a 5 frame/sec lag fest.

 

[Buddha5440]

Everyone should remember that they are playing a 16 year old game that can be played on an Athlon XP CPU with 2GB RAM and DX 9. The coding is ancient and, without a total overhaul, these things will always continue as they add new stuff (added by new (generation 4.0?) coders. The only conceivable way to do this is to scrap the current coding and rework the entire game. This is not going to happen.

 

[calouscaine]

Everyone should remember that they are playing a 16 year old game that can be played on an Athlon XP CPU with 2GB RAM and DX 9. The coding is ancient and, without a total overhaul, these things will always continue as they add new stuff (added by new (generation 4.0?) coders. The only conceivable way to do this is to scrap the current coding and rework the entire game. This is not going to happen.

Yeah, I imagine the original coding is c+, could be wrong, there's never any confirmation on that. But that could be used and updated to rebuild everything in ur5. . .but it would be a massive undertaking.

 

[Phoenicis]

Yeah, I imagine the original coding is c+, could be wrong, there's never any confirmation on that. But that could be used and updated to rebuild everything in ur5. . .but it would be a massive undertaking.

The original code was a custom engine developed by Turbine specifically for DDO.

 

[calouscaine]

The original code was a custom engine developed by Turbine specifically for DDO.

The engine and coding language aren't the same thing. . .c+ is a coding language, the more commonly used one at the time DDO initially came out. I rather doubt that they hand wrote their own computer language not based on existing coding language of the time.

For example, UR5 can use c#, c+, c++, java, and some other coding languages. Heck, if you know it, you can even work in some binary code with all of it.

 

[Buddha5440]

The issue isn't the coding language...it's the generation of programmers working on it. Even though c+/c++ are programming languages, the way they are used differs from each programmer/coder to another (call it slang, or dialect, or fingerprint, or signature, or whatever). It's like trying to explain to an American what a 'Lift' is while they are trying to explain to a European what an 'Elevator' is...same thing but with different dialect/slang.

The same thing goes with coding...people writing code 16 years ago used different 'slang' than those coding now (even if it's the same coding language), so if you are looking to add something to old code you are likely to misunderstand it.

That's how they find 'Black Hats' and convince them to become 'White Hats' (rather than go to prison)... they figure out their personal signature in the code.

Trying to fix issues in code you did not write is a painful and time-consuming act. The only way to FIX a lot of the issues with DDO is to remake it.

 

[Buddha5440]

The engine and coding language aren't the same thing. . .c+ is a coding language, the more commonly used one at the time DDO initially came out. I rather doubt that they hand wrote their own computer language not based on existing coding language of the time.

For example, UR5 can use c#, c+, c++, java, and some other coding languages. Heck, if you know it, you can even work in some binary code with all of it.

Agree 100%

The "engine" is completely different than the "coding".

 

[calouscaine]

The issue isn't the coding language...it's the generation of programmers working on it. Even though c+/c++ are programming languages, the way they are used differs from each programmer/coder to another (call it slang, or dialect, or fingerprint, or signature, or whatever). It's like trying to explain to an American what a 'Lift' is while they are trying to explain to a European what an 'Elevator' is...same thing but with different dialect/slang.

The same thing goes with coding...people writing code 16 years ago used different 'slang' than those coding now (even if it's the same coding language), so if you are looking to add something to old code you are likely to misunderstand it.

That's how they find 'Black Hats' and convince them to become 'White Hats' (rather than go to prison)... they figure out their personal signature in the code.

Trying to fix issues in code you did not write is a painful and time-consuming act. The only way to FIX a lot of the issues with DDO is to remake it.

I completely agree with you. It's one reason when I use to code game worlds that I kept meticulous notes on my work and put instructions in the coding uncommented for anyone who might need to mess with it in the future.
But going at it with out a through write up would be an absolute nightmare, especially with a game of this size.
That aside, the last few classes I took . . .about three or so years ago I think it was, they weren't even teaching actual coding anymore, only visual scripting, which is. . .well, lazy and lacks the ability to resolve complicated issues.

 

[TroggyTrog]

I'm just tossing out my 2 cents here, as I have only glossed through the thread. Have the devs ever tried to just turn off the Dungeon Alert feature for a day and gathered data and experiences on that? I'm just concerned that blaming mob pathing during DA might not be the underlying problem. What if it's the mob buffs and debuff applications (from green to yellow to orange to red, and back and forth) that could be the issue or part of the issue? Can DA even be toggled off easily on a server to test? It should be worth gathering some data on, to see. DA was introduced back when the server and client side all had much weaker/older tech and hardware. Maybe it was a band aid fix that might be part of the problem with lag now, rather than the solution it was introduced to be. It just seems to me when mobs get several buffs in a moment, then those buffs are removed in another moment, there's a spike in lag when I'm in an instance, kind of like the lag you see happen when buffs are dispelled on your character quickly or when gathering up as a party to receive several buffs in a hurry. Anyway, just my 2 cents. Thanks

 

[JaynChar2019]

I don't think it's pathing. Ran the peaks raid tonight with twiggy and tons of fun in it, you know, the two lovely red dragons. The whole raid was a red alert the whole time, it was a log lag fest due to the alert, not to mention the slow debuffs on the entire party and the buffs on the trash mobs and bosses. This is absolutely the worst system ever put into place. Where you can't even do a raid or dungeon in some cases without the game turning into a 5 frame/sec lag fest.

I agree the raids are definitely getting weird but it seems to happen randomly. I don't think that DA should apply to these because they are already the hardest content in the game and for newcomers to ddo who have never raided before and want to try, this is just gonna turn them off.

 

[RocknRolla]

I assume you already have done this... Maybe many times. But it might be worth doing one more playthrough of Borderlands 3 multiplayer, and then consider... Is the problem really too many entities?

 

[calouscaine]

I assume you already have done this... Maybe many times. But it might be worth doing one more playthrough of Borderlands 3 multiplayer, and then consider... Is the problem really too many entities?

I'll pass, can't stand the graphics of borderlands, and thus refuse to play it.

 

[Cordovan]

Pathing. Are we absolutely SURE that mob pathing causes all this laggy lag lag? Its not anything else? Nothing else?

We have never claimed that a singular source of lag is the cause of all sources of lag, but yes, pathing-related lag is caused by pathing-related issues.

 

[Kaish'Talan]

Why not have monsters loose agro after a while or when they no longer loose line of sight?
There is nothing more annoying then have a monster run to you and know exactly where you are even if hidden, with no line of sight and a few room away from him... That cause lag and it is not very realistic.

 

[Kipp]

Why not have monsters loose agro after a while or when they no longer loose line of sight?
There is nothing more annoying then have a monster run to you and know exactly where you are even if hidden, with no line of sight and a few room away from him... That cause lag and it is not very realistic.

I think maybe the problem with that would be that the final result would be people running to bosses and just aoeing whatever hadn't reset, its largely why in MMOs in general, stuff in dungeons doesn't lose aggro.