Change to Dungeon Alert

[Batman]

Also, I bet anything if I were looking at those metrics that Dungeon Alert is happening the vast majority of the time in non-legendary content. That is people just rushing through their next life. AKA, R1 (Korthos -> Epic Sharn)etc.

Reaper point/gear farming is done at Legendary as this is far more efficient and is usually the end goal at cap. Why not spread some of that end-game goodness down to the leveling quests (non legendary quests) and condition it based off NOT triggering DA and doing everything in the quest. Rewards such as Reaper gear can still be crunched and of course Reaper points (make optionals in heroic/epic questing reward Reap XP) will all be valuable (even if they are insta-TRing when they hit cap, since Reaper loot/points can still make their R1 leveling easier).

 

[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.

Last night my boys 16 and 13 each had a few mates over and stayed for supper .........i actually read this post word for word to them to see what avid young gamers thought of this .......they all had the same general answers but the 2 points that really stood out to me as someone with zero gaming knowledge other than ddo for 17 +years .......1 ...that any MODERN game this would be a instant death nail if the boss tried to tell her player base how to play .......2....lol and this 1 kinda hit home ...........ddo is full of bunch of old farts that dont know any better and refuse to let go of a dead horse...............i think they may be right

 

[eshadowbringer]

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.

It has been said many times in this thread but i feel the need to say it again. DA is NOT the problem and has nearly 0 impact on game performance. It is STILL the aggroing of too many mobs and DA is simply the alarm!

 

[Buddha5440]

Last night my boys 16 and 13 each had a few mates over and stayed for supper .........i actually read this post word for word to them to see what avid young gamers thought of this .......they all had the same general answers but the 2 points that really stood out to me as someone with zero gaming knowledge other than ddo for 17 +years .......1 ...that any MODERN game this would be a instant death nail if the boss tried to tell her player base how to play .......2....lol and this 1 kinda hit home ...........ddo is full of bunch of old farts that dont know any better and refuse to let go of a dead horse...............i think they may be right

It has been said many times in this thread but i feel the need to say it again. DA is NOT the problem and has nearly 0 impact on game performance. It is STILL the aggroing of too many mobs and DA is simply the alarm!

I think you both have hit the nail right on the head...

DA is NOT the problem with lag...drawing way too much aggro without dealing with it is the problem.

And DDO is still around because there are a BUNCH of us "old farts" who still remember when it was just D&D, not AD&D or AD&D 2nd Edition or D&D 5.X
We need to remind the younger generations that this (MMO's) all came from old-school things called MUD's, which were, GASP!!!, text-based; also, almost all of the acronyms (IMHO, FWIW, etc.) that are used in texting and whatnot, were created during that era.

 

[Kimbere]

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.

If large numbers of aggro'd mobs are causing performance issues, maybe SSG should stop cramming as many packs of large trash mobs as they can into all the new content? Crazy, right?

Cut the mob counts in half, bump their HPs by 2x and voila, hit on server performance is halved. Obviously, that's an oversimplification, but the general theory holds.

It's basically the age-old quality vs quantity adage. SSG long ago went all in on the quantity side. Look at any of the original content (Korthos, Harbor, etc.) and notice how many fewer mobs there are per pack than in anything they've put out in the last 5 years.

Moving away from the design crutch of using large numbers of weak trash mobs in an attempt (and usually a failed one) to add difficulty to new content would also have the secondary benefit of helping to add some value and relevance back to non-AoE DPS builds while TRing. If an AoE build can 1-2 shot the trash mobs, it makes no difference to them if there's 2 mobs in a room or 10.

Given that, all content designed with large numbers of trash mobs in packs does is actively steer the TR zergers into running nothing but AoE builds and gathering as many mobs together at once as they can, then blowing them up with 1-2 spells, cleaves, etc. On the flip side, it's miserable for builds with little or no AoE dps capability.

It'd be refreshing to have dungeons where 1/3 of the rooms were populated by somewhat challenging rednamed encounters rather than, "Just cleared trash_mob_pack_234234 from dungeon_room_34. Ooooh, here's dungeon_room_35 with trash_mob_pack_234235, let me nuke that and move to room_36...".

Part of the reason people zerg is that the non-cap content is mostly just repetitive clearing of packs of trash mobs in every room until the end. That gets boring fast. By the 10th TR, it's absolutely mind-numbing.

 

[Xgya]

If large numbers of aggro'd mobs are causing performance issues, maybe SSG should stop cramming as many packs of large trash mobs as they can into all the new content? Crazy, right?

Cut the mob counts in half, bump their HPs by 2x and voila, hit on server performance is halved. Obviously, that's an oversimplification, but the general theory holds.

This would work, but in order to make the mobs relevant, it would also require a lot of progress locked behind these mobs dying.

You could keep the current number of mobs and just lock progress as above, and it would also work - red alert doesn't trigger from single rooms, and rooms where alert triggers on its own are considered flawed and some of them did get changed in the past years.
I think it would be boring, but it WOULD work.

The general goal is "make aggroing the entire dungeon without clearing a bad idea". (or, alternatively, make clearing mobs a good idea)
If you halve the number of mobs, people will just aggro twice the rooms (more easily than before, since less mobs will be blocking their path)

People have suggested adding an extra loot chance to Conquest, or boosting Conquest experience to the level not killing mobs is actually less experience gained.
You could also make it so not reaching Aggression just makes it so the chests have no named drops. Zerg nullified for anyone not purely there for the exp.

 

[Fnordian]

The issue with your suggestion is that "DA resource consumption" has basically nothing to do with the game performance degradation taking place. Think of it like a light bulb, the "lag" is the electricity and DA is the light. The light is happening because of the electricity, not the other way around. The Dungeon Alert system is simply a warning system about an issue taking place. The alerting system has no or basically no impact on game performance, but the behavior that causes it to activate does.

While the alerting system itself may have no impact on performance, in and of itself, surely many of the effects of it do?

For example, monsters under DA may move faster (up to 20% according to the wiki). If no DA, you're more likely to outrun the mobs, and after some time the aggro will fade and they will (presumably) no longer be using pathing resources. But if they catch you, all the resources involved in processing the combat (every attack made, every spell cast, all damage that must be calculated, etc.) will be engaged.

Similarly, monsters under DA are tougher. Fighting tougher monster is more likely to result in a longer battle (unless they kill you fast). Surely a longer battle is more resource-intensive than a shorter one?

So while DA serves a purpose to sometimes discourage players from aggroing monsters (since doing so results in lag as they path and chase you, etc.), it also seems logical that (as you may call me.....Tim) suggested in his post, there are situations where it's not going to discourage players from zerging through the dungeon anyway (e.g., high level characters doing a favor run). And as a result it follows that the effects of the buffs on the monsters would increase resource use and lag because you're more likely to be forced into fighting them and fights will take longer.

 

[Buddha5440]

Or you can just kill them or buy an Otto's box and skip most of the quests.

 

[Lotoc]

Man this thread is very interesting
"Going over the speed limit means a higher likelihood to crash."
"So the speed limit causes car crashes. Just remove the speed limit."

 

[DeathTitan]

this will not solve anything.
while leveling at r1 difficulty I will still play with red alert and be able to kill bosses fast.
while at end game I will still play r10 and avoid red alert.
just fix the red alert lag issue somehow.

 

[DeathTitan]

I say that Dungeon Alert should be removed in slayers zones

absolutely yes. I just want to reach quest entrance in many slayer areas and now they want to slow us due to inevitable red alert in slayer areas (We don't even get xp anymore at level 32 from slayers from killing mobs)

 

[Lotoc]

One thing is maybe the lower alert levels (green, yellow) shouldn't expand enemy aggro range so much.
A big reason some quests like ToEE nodes seem to get a bit out of hand is stuff is packed close enough to green alert off of pulling a single group, then that green alert pulls in other nearby groups until it cascades into a red DA.

People are very fixated on DA in slayer areas going from quest to quest but slayer area behavior is I doubt consequential to this issue - for a start the DA change we're seeing is Boss monsters have a bigger buff than before, this is irrelevant to just walking between quests.

Honestly if anything red alert could stand to disable things like Wings/abundant step/misty step etc. much like how alerts disable tumbling, people frequently use these abilities while on red alert to keep rushing despite the masive slow on the harried effect rather than just thinning out the swarm of enemies.

 

[Dendrix Deathblade]

DA in slayer areas, in large part that's lazy players. Click your invis item on zoning in, then mount horse and run. It takes what, 5 seconds to do this. I never get DA in slayer areas. My opinion of players who do cause unnecessary DA involves the word "contempt"

 

[Batman]

What if with each DA level you get a -15% movement penalty?

 

[KylerrTheMajty]

maybe just add buffs +400% dmg for every1 that dont do alert and dont zerg name this buff " princ charming" or "forum paladin" and for every1 who make alert give debuff -50% hp and -1% speed for every pl

all crybaby will be happy


i just dont understand why do you guys want to destroy this game for ppl that like to play fast?
its not our foult you guys are just poor at playing if you want to play slow just play slow i dont join to ppl and dont force them to zerg
its not our foult that ssg change invis that every mob see you , yes that was a think back in days and taught most of old ppl to zerg
its not our foult ssg change aggro system that now if 1 mob see you , then in 1 sec whole room see you


and its just another nail to assassin coffin...

 

[eshadowbringer]

DA in slayer areas, in large part that's lazy players. Click your invis item on zoning in, then mount horse and run. It takes what, 5 seconds to do this. I never get DA in slayer areas. My opinion of players who do cause unnecessary DA involves the word "contempt"

Currently, the discussion about avoiding Dungeon Alert *Aggroing too many mobs* in DDO is limited to a small group of players on the forums. However, until the community as a whole understands the issue and the developers address it in a way that explains why it should be avoided, I cannot fully agree with this stance.

After that happens though .. I 100% agree with you.

It is the responsibility of both the developers and the players to contribute to a healthy game environment.

Consider this analogy: if I lend you my car (or or rent for VIP) and I warn you that it runs fine up to 60 mph but backfires if you go faster. If you decide to drive at 80 mph and experience problems whos fault is that? truly contemptuous and self-entitled will make sure and let me know that I need to get my car fixed!

 

[Batman]

maybe just add buffs +400% dmg for every1 that dont do alert and dont zerg name this buff " princ charming" or "forum paladin" and for every1 who make alert give debuff -50% hp and -1% speed for every pl

all crybaby will be happy


i just dont understand why do you guys want to destroy this game for ppl that like to play fast?
its not our foult you guys are just poor at playing if you want to play slow just play slow i dont join to ppl and dont force them to zerg
its not our foult that ssg change invis that every mob see you , yes that was a think back in days and taught most of old ppl to zerg
its not our foult ssg change aggro system that now if 1 mob see you , then in 1 sec whole room see you


and its just another nail to assassin coffin...

Simple. Because the game was NEVER intended to be played like that. Thus, we are where we are now, LAG.

It would be like saying a game is developed specifically for speedrunners. Thing is most game aren't intended for speedrunners and it won't sell.

Again,

[Dungeon Alert]

Green: -10% Movement Speed

Yellow: -25% Movement Speed, -10% attack speed, 10% spell/ranged failure (static)

Orange:-50% Movement Speed, -20% attack speed, 20% spell/ranged failure(static)

Red: -75% Movement Speed, -33% attack speed, 33% spell/ranged failure(static)

 

[Bjond]

DA really shouldn't be a universal thing. Games that are more particular about mobs behaving "in character" are always more fun; eg. wolves are social and thus when one agros, they all share in that. I'm not really sure critters like mud-men would care what wolves chase, though.

Packs of mixed critters such as in Yester Hill where presumably the Druids are controlling the plants and wolves and such, should loose cohesion when the druids are killed; ie. plants should just give up and roam or root, wolves & spiders snap at each other, etc.. That the entire game is so utterly fixated on killing players is a bit stodgy and stale even for a 2006 game.

One of the most fun agro-mechanisms I've ever seen was in FFXI where undead would "smell blood" and agro from quite far away based on low HP. If someone's HP got low enough, it could pull down an entire zone of undead.

Make it make sense within the context at hand and whatever it does will be cool. Add a meta-game control imposed without any regard for context and it leaves immersion wanting. That DA is causing server issues is an opportunity to replace it with something more fun, more appropriate, and with less server impact, not an irritation needing a quick irksome patch.

 

[Lotoc]

That DA is causing server issues is an opportunity to replace it with something more fun, more appropriate, and with less server impact, not an irritation needing a quick irksome patch.

It has been said over and over again that dungeon alert is not the thing causing the issues, dungeon alert exists to address the behavior causing the issues.

 

[Altra]

Simple. Because the game was NEVER intended to be played like that. Thus, we are where we are now, LAG.

It would be like saying a game is developed specifically for speedrunners. Thing is most game aren't intended for speedrunners and it won't sell.

Again,

[Dungeon Alert]

Green: -10% Movement Speed

Yellow: -25% Movement Speed, -10% attack speed, 10% spell/ranged failure (static)

Orange:-50% Movement Speed, -20% attack speed, 20% spell/ranged failure(static)

Red: -75% Movement Speed, -33% attack speed, 33% spell/ranged failure(static)

Now wait a minute.

I like this, but FIRST, some of the problems above HAVE to be fixed.
There are rooms; TOEE comes to mind; that DA when you barely walk into the room, there are SO many mobs! Or, if you carefully pull 1 mob, there are 12 behind a wall that come with him.

We have to be able to play carefully and not have a DA before you start punishing people for something that's not their fault.