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.
Hey Tolero
I've played around with these changes now and... well...
I will change my play patterns after these changes. In that I've just uninstalled the game. First time in a long while I've been going that far, I can't even remember the last time I was this disappointed in you.
I've been pissed at the devs for a long time now, almost two years of constant nerfs, constant anti-player ********, constantly working on the wrong problems, constantly blaming players for lag instead of taking the responsibility for your own code. First it was warlocks, then it was doublestrike, then some other players get their share of the blame...
That pathfinding code is old code some of you wrote, ain't it? If the code is that "hard to work with" it needs to be replaced. Instead you blame players for solving the game in the most optimal way.... that just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. You do not blame customers for problems you caused yourself. That is just.. vile.
And then there is the fact that you have no clue, no direction, in which you want the game to evolve. You just slap on bandaid after bandaid, hoping some will stick, but making things worse patch after patch.
This is just the latest of a lot of those situations, but here is an example. You want us to kill mob packs, so your pathfinding code does not screw server performance, aye? At
the VERY SAME TIME
you nerf AoE (caster) damage wherever you can get away with it. Do you even know how we play your game?
Let me tell you what I (and everyone I play with regularly) do if I cannot one-shot a pack. I ignore it. I run past it. Because no pack is worth more then one spell
. Get that into your head. The players won't change. They find a title where stuff works like that. Either you adapt your game to fit or you loose a large chunk of your endgame player base. Because the endgame in this title literally was reduced to "do not ever let go of W, hit sprint boost whenever you can and ignore everything you can". BY YOU!
Because this game is the literal definition of an everlasting grind. You CANNOT slow down or you FALL BEHIND the curve of you constantly increasing the difficulty AND player power. But almost all of that player power is locked behind.. grind. So you gotta keep grinding and you gotta do it at the literal maximum speed there is.
Trying to end that behavior is literally ending your game. DDO does not have ANYTHING ELSE worthwhile to do in it.
This is your wake up call.