There are two things related to this that have been bothering me since I first heard them, from the Fridays at Four VoD just before HCS8 started.
(mainly from 24 minutes through to 25 minutes)
"...some of the... lag reduction caused... a measurable... increase... in some, um, like zerging behavior and dungeon alert behavior that we're still working to resolve. So no one's placing blame on anyone for anything, although it appears... based on sorta what we can see... that the we saw a recent increase in some significant... dungeon alert... style behavior... uh that has been causing problems. Now it's important to remember that dungeon alert does not cause lag, it is simply a warning system that behavior which is causing lag is happening so, you know..."
First: This game incentiveses casters to gather up groups of enemies to take down all at once, by the very nature of casters having AoE attacks and limited resources to use those attacks. Elsewhere in the vod it's mentioned that gathering large groups of enemies is a behavior that is causing problems, but that is literally the strategy for effective caster play and has been for years, because the game systems that is casters (limited resources to cast AoEs), by it's very nature, incentivises casters to do this!
Second: DA is a "warning system that behaviour which is causing lag is happening"... And yet there are many places where DA is unavoidable if you simply play the quest! And I don't mean "like a caster", I mean taking your time, going very slow, killing all enemies the moment they aggro on you without moving on to the next area or group. I'm soloing HCLS8 going very slow and carefully and I STILL SEE DUNGEON ALERTS! Since dungeon alert is a warning system, even a green alert then means "hey, watch it, your behavior is something we've identified as a cause of lag". Even though I'm going slow, not pulling more enemies than what naturally aggro on me from taking one step forwards along a linear thin hallway with no other way to move forwards. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?!
Am I supposed to bluff pull one enemy at a time and never move, so we both just stand there trading blows, until one of us dies, like some of the older, lower quality, and much more "dead" mmo's/games out there, and only ever play like that for the entirety of every quest? I'm pretty sure I'll still get DA doing that, as more than one enemy will still get alerted, especially if I fail the check. Being able to move while in combat is one of DDO's strengths, and yet, it's bad, because if you move while fighting, you might move into more enemies aggro range?
Take Ruins of Berez for example, the open field where your mandatory objective is to clear out packs of enemies. Unless you're in stealth and able to one shot everything without alerting nearby enemies, you're probably going to see some DA. Anyone not just blindly running in without any thoughts, after the first few times, will realize that there aren't so many enemies in this mandatory objective that aggroing more than one at a time is going to be deadly, AND that there are natural choke points right there where you can funnel them in to in order to complete the mandatory objective with greater ease. This is good strategy. This is dynamic and intelligent gameplay. This is good game design, having terrain that players can use to their advantage if they so choose to. This is dungeon alert behavior and is BAD and we need to be incentivesed to stop doing it?! WHAT?!
But as I said, even not doing that, trying to go slow and kill everything without aggroing more than is possible, I still see dungeon alerts, so I ask again, what am I doing wrong? Every time now when I see a DA pop up, I can't help but ask, what did I do wrong? Even when I'm resisting the games inherent incentivisation to gather large groups of enemies to be an efficient player, which has been alluded to be bad lag causing behavior, I still see the warnings (dungeon alert) that I'm doing bad lag causing behavior... WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?!