Combat Log Spam is getting out of hand, needs to be worked on

[Shade]

I thought this debug text was just a leftover of beta, and would be fixed fairly fast.. Here we are months later, and it's still here..
I mean just look at this. This is a pic of my sorcerer logging in to eveningstar. Did not even move or do anything. This is a real picture of how incredibly bad the spam is you get when you log in on a magister sorc. Though it's as equally worse on several other destinies. And bad even when you have none on some characters.
It's not edited at all except to append the log together:


Seems a bit excesive. And this DOES cause lag and slow down the game. If I log in as say Shiradis Champion, which only spams a few lines.. I log in nearly 5 seconds faster. It needs to FULLY culled. Not a single line in there is at all useful to me. I know I'm a magister and a sorcerer savant, I can see that on the bottom of my screen at al times, I dont need to be told a thousand times each time I log in or swap destinies or gear.

Suggested fixes:
Priority One: Remove Descriptions from the combat log once and for all. No one ever wanted these, they never belonged here, and they are so infrequently wrong and innacurate versus the REAL descriptions, that they just cause smassive confusion and unneccesary addition dev work.
-- If some dev somehow disagrees: Well make it an option please. And default it to OFF - Server side off, so it never even sends the client the messages causing the lag.
Descriptions belong exactly where players go to look at them: The enhancement/ED destiny tooltips themselves, not spamming out combat log.

Two:
Eliminate ALL combat log spam upon log in, and swapping destinies. It's only causing lag and making the game look very unpolished.

Three:
Eliminate all combat log spam effect spam upon attacking enemies (Most releveant for Fury of the Wild with injury - it spawms 2-4 lines EVERYTIME you hit, and in a game where you can hit an enemy 200-300+ times per minute, thats pretty exceesive. We know we have injury, we put the points in it, reminding us more times per second then our brain can proceed isn't helpful.)

Four - major overhaul:
Really even in the best of causes, the combat log is an unreadable mess. It simply scrolls too fast and doesn't buffer enough information to even figure out what happend in the shortest of battles. It needs:
- Much larger buffer. Preferably near unlimited. Or at least configurable.
- Condensed. If we have 10 different effects, they could show like this on one line, instead of 10 seperate lines:
You hit Gnoll for 15 Slashing, 5 Fire [3], 3 Force [2], 3 Electric, 8 Bleed, 14 untyped [2] damage.
The [] number indicate it combined the damage from [X] number of effects into one. (Default this cleaner display on, but have an option to list them seperate for testing puroses)
-More filtering options, and ones that work to reduce lag. EG: They disable the server from parsing/sending the data, instead of just having the client still accept it, but not display it.

[herzkos]

never thought i'd say this about one of shade's posts but:

/signed

[Fomori]

/signed

Holy ****, the apocalypse IS coming near... Shade with an extremely awesome idea that isn't biased only toward his characters!!

[Missing_Minds]

I've been grumbling about that for some time.

That and the fact we STILL do not have any exportable chat function because the developers are too **** scared of what we'd do with the data when it is easily parsable.

I still find the fact we have a "kip up" ability funny. I half expect to see an "Oy vey" ability at some point.

[JOTMON]

/agreed.

[Ancient]

Very much signed, and I'd like an export feature too!

[wmdearmond]

I will say signed as well. I totally agree with op on this issue.

[Flavilandile]

It definitely does generate a huge Stop and Go when you switch active Destiny.

Ok, it's not game breaking, but it's just annoying, between the 5/10 seconds of inability to move at login and the 2/5 seconds freeze when you switch destiny.

[Urjak]

/signed

[knockcocker]

Just to add, the D N T spam around Magister/DI was still there when I changed destinies on Lam, regardless of
what the release notes might say.

[JJMC895610]

/signed

[Kawai]

/signed with a big fat +1

[ZeebaNeighba]

/signed

One more unusual idea I would like is a pause/resume feature or something like that, any character with constant and frequent regeneration (my spell singer is the most egregious example I can think of, when like 4 people are all regenerating 2 spell points every 2 seconds each), the combat log will scroll by VERY quickly, making it hard to screenshot until I blow it up and make it big, and even harder copy+paste a line from it. If I go through just one more fight's worth of combat log stuff, it's gone for sure, maybe even before that.

[Shade]

/signed

One more unusual idea I would like is a pause/resume feature or something like that, any character with constant and frequent regeneration (my spell singer is the most egregious example I can think of, when like 4 people are all regenerating 2 spell points every 2 seconds each), the combat log will scroll by VERY quickly, making it hard to screenshot until I blow it up and make it big, and even harder copy+paste a line from it. If I go through just one more fight's worth of combat log stuff, it's gone for sure, maybe even before that.

Yea good idea.

Though on that note, that annoying spam should simply be nuked by orbit. I mean trivial info that you know exactly whats going to happen from the tooltip is pointless. You know it regens a fixed amount of sp, you dont need to see its non variable spam every 2+ seconds. It should simply not show in your log, nor the persons who got it. The sp popping above their head is more then enough, and even that should have an option to disable.
EG:
"Turn off high frequency regeneration overhead info" - Would disable any regen that happens every 2-6 seconds from displaying (including the annoying ding sound effect). (Less frequent regen like healing spring every 20sec would still display, as thats less spammy and thus less annoying).

Really just such a mess. Things that you obviously DO want to see, like very random shiradi damage procs from stay frosti and stay good (which they JUST UPDATED this patch) don't display in the combat log at all.. So you have no idea what damage your doing or if your slowing enemies unless you look very carefully at the vast scrolling overhead numbes.

Personally dislike the spellsong spam so much I purposely tell bards to not cast it on me on my sorc. While i love to blow through spell points, the extreme spam and constant vfx/sfx is too annoying to be worth it. Can only imagine how bad it is for hte bard doing it.

[maddmatt70]

I detest the fury of wild, bard final moment, and LD final moment I always lag for 3 seconds on those before I can do anything both when I start the moment and end the moment. Grr..

[Chaios]

Yes, please overhaul the combat log. Separate into different streams or something. As it is now its about useless.

[Dingleburr]

/signed

Awesome suggestion.

Problem1: Something noteworthy occurs mid-encounter that I don't fully understand. At the end of the encounter, I scroll back to figure out exactly what it was. But I can't because it's overflowed the buffer.

Problem2: Spam creates lag.

[Expalphalog]

Pure brilliance. This might be the best suggestion I've read on these forums.

[DeafeningWhisper]

/Signed

Half my toons have auras of some sort, their combat logs are always useless.

[goodoldxelos]

Reviving this thread, devs need to make the combat log far more professional (exportable/recordable) as well this is pretty common in other mmos.