Then and Now on Lamannia!

[Tolero]

We're interested in hearing some comparisons with changes made to the DA system on Lamannia vs how it behaves on the live servers! Please include in your feedback:

• The name of the quest
• The area of the quest that was a problem on live (if multiple places, start with the earliest point) - locs are helpful!
• When playing the quest on Lamannia, did you experience improvement in the alert levels? No change? Worse?

We are particularly interested in hearing Lamannia experiences on the following quests: Bastion of Power, Escort the Expedition (Threnal East), Hold For Reinforcements (Threnal East), and Coalescence Chamber

[Stanley_Nicholas]

I would have thought this was well known by now, but I keep seeing Turbine posts saying the cause of DA spikes in Bastion is mysterious. Well for those of us who have played the quest many times on the live servers, I see it happen in one and only one circumstance, and it has nothing to do with the "non-enemy" demons as you get toward the end of the quest. It happens more often during the earlier parts of the quest.

Bastion has a lot of rooms with closed gates and grated floors that you can see through. If you happen to be in one of the rooms adjacent to such a gate or, more often/severely when you are in a room directly below a grated floor, the enemies in the adjacent room or in the room above see you and aggro all at once, in addition to whatever you are fighting in the room you are actually in. This causes DA to spike from nonexistent or green up to orange or red.

[Maetrim]

I would test this in Lamania, but as I cant get it to install* I will have to describe what happens in live and hope someone can replicate it. (I copied all my characters without a problem)

My issue is with the Twilight Forge quest. As soon as anyone exits the purple tunnel every single mob in the "factory floor" agro on the party. This pops you straight to Red Dungeon alert which can take a good 10 minutes to clear by killing all the mobs there.


* If your interested my install issue is this:
I had the beta Lamania installed.
I tried to install the new over the top but this would throw up hundreds of exception dialogs that I would have to cancel through.
So I went into the Lamania folder and clicked the incorret uninstall program (I wasn't thinking) which cleaned the install program? (from memory - several weeks ago now)
The official uninstall for Lamania no longer worked.
I deleted the entire Lamania folder and content from my PC
Tried the lamania setup program. All I get is a warning from my firewll that its trying to access a DNS. I say ok, then nothing happens after. No donload manager at all. Stuck at this point.
I have also tired removing any Lamania reg keys from HKCU and HKLM to no effect. Wah!

[Tolero]

I would have thought this was well known by now, but I keep seeing Turbine posts saying the cause of DA spikes in Bastion is mysterious. Well for those of us who have played the quest many times on the live servers, I see it happen in one and only one circumstance, and it has nothing to do with the "non-enemy" demons as you get toward the end of the quest. It happens more often during the earlier parts of the quest.

Bastion has a lot of rooms with closed gates and grated floors that you can see through. If you happen to be in one of the rooms adjacent to such a gate or, more often/severely when you are in a room directly below a grated floor, the enemies in the adjacent room or in the room above see you and aggro all at once, in addition to whatever you are fighting in the room you are actually in. This causes DA to spike from nonexistent or green up to orange or red.

Bastion is not mysterious. There are a few sections in it where there are monsters who are treated as a "friend of player" ... and "friends of players" and "everything else waiting off-stag in the dungeon" were not playing nice together, causing the alert levels to freak out. Aggro through walls is a possible secondary candidate, but not the only.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

Bastion is not mysterious. There are a few sections in it where there are monsters who are treated as a "friend of player" ... and "friends of players" and "everything else waiting off-stag in the dungeon" were not playing nice together, causing the alert levels to freak out. Aggro through walls is a possible secondary candidate, but not the only.

If you say so - maybe others have experienced what you're describing. I, however, have only experienced the situation I described, on a very regular basis, and have never seen DA spikes when the "friend of player" demons were active.

[Tolero]

If you say so - maybe others have experienced what you're describing. I, however, have only experienced the situation I described, on a very regular basis, and have never seen DA spikes when the "friend of player" demons were active.

The problem is you didn't have to even be near them for it to be happening in some cases. It was like a lil drama playing out off stage oO

[Stanley_Nicholas]

The problem is you didn't have to even be near them for it to be happening in some cases. It was like a lil drama playing out off stage oO

Interesting. So they can cause DA spikes even when the party is still in the first or second part of the quest? Well then perhaps that is a part of what I have seen, though if so it happens under quite predictable circumstances. I'm not sure why those friendly demons would only start causing DA right when the group in a different part of the dungeon gets aggro of the room one floor above them.

[Tolero]

Interesting. So they can cause DA spikes even when the party is still in the first or second part of the quest? Well then perhaps that is a part of what I have seen, though if so it happens under quite predictable circumstances. I'm not sure why those friendly demons would only start causing DA right when the group in a different part of the dungeon gets aggro of the room one floor above them.

Part of the problem was the off-stage guys being able to see a loooooooot further than they were supposed to, and not liking what they saw heh.

[Tolero]

I should clarify... this doesn't mean that through-the-wall style aggro *couldn't* still be happening, which is why I'm interested in hearing comparisons. Sometimes the configuration of a dungeon could cause the problem to manifest in a way that makes it tough for the end-user to know how it is really happening. Thus times when I get reports where people are convinced it's "those mobs over there on that platform!!" when it's actually stuff happening in the background that they can't even see that is unrelated. It just so happens when they see the problem manifest it is in that spot. That's natural because you can only go by what you can "see"

[DagazUlf]

My experience is identical to Stanley_Nicholas.

[Kale_Hagan]

Part of the problem was the off-stage guys being able to see a loooooooot further than they were supposed to, and not liking what they saw heh.

They could see loot way off that they didn't like? Hmm. Simple solution, up the loot level...

[Karranor]

Did this just get changed? Mid week last week (1/20 or 1/21) I was grabbing casual XP out there and was in Bastion. The DA freaked out BAD and I was just a few rooms in. Specifically I went into the archer area (Right, Right, Left) and it went to orange with only a couple mobs I could see/agroed on me.

I was looking for the portal switch, which seems to have moved. I think it is (Right, Right, Straight) now. I THINK this early part stays the same. However, I will try to remember to check it tonight to see what happens.

PS: In one section of the wall I could hear an spider one the other side spitting at me. So I know at least that was agroed through a wall.

[Stanley_Nicholas]

Sure, that makes sense. I don't know what's going on behind the scenes. But when I see DA spike, it's almost always when I'm fighting in a room with a grate on the ceiling, and the mobs in the room above see me and aggro. Tieflings up there will try to range me unsuccessfully through the grate, and any devils will simply port through the floor and start attacking as normal. Whether this somehow causes or exacerbates unwanted devil vs. demon aggro, I have no way of knowing. But those are practically always the local circumstances of the group when a DA spike hits.

[Osharan_Tregarth]

Here's one scenario on live that would be worth investigating on Lammania. I haven't seen anyone bring it up yet.

so..

Say, for example, that you are running through a quest(Like Coal Chamber). You periodically get a green alert, and kill a couple of mobs to bring it back down, but there are still plenty of mobs left alive behind you. At some point, the original mobs time out, and stop adding to the alert level, but you still keep aggroing more and killing enough of them to drop down the alert level.

At some point during the quest, if you end up not killing enough mobs behind you, you will end up at the point where ANY mobs added into the equation take you instantly to red alert.

What I'm hypothesizing, is that the old mobs who "timed out" enough to not cause an alert anymore are all being counted at once when new mobs get added in. This is what spikes us from nothing to red/orange/yellow alerts all at once with the addition of only half a dozen new mobs. And then when you kill those half a dozen new mobs the alert dies back all the way down again.

[Junts]

Part of the problem was the off-stage guys being able to see a loooooooot further than they were supposed to, and not liking what they saw heh.

In my experience all Bastion DA spikes are caused by this:

While the individual tiefling spawns are done per-bell ringer dude, the first time the bell is rung anywhere on the first two floors, all the portals appear in all the rooms. The problem with this occurs when a party evades several bells with irresistable dances and consequently is halfway into the first floor when the first bell is rung. All the portals appear, including in the rooms that they had 'cleared'. The 'off stage' mobs in those rooms immediately and instantly aggro to the players, usually leading to a dozen or so barbazu teleporting in on top of the player from the upper level and from rooms the players believe are completely clear behind them. These barbazu continually respawn from these portals nad continue to teleport to the players even if the players are nowhere near their portal, because all the barbazu on that first level seem to be instinctively aware of the location of the players regardless of distance once they've passed through their individual room. The mobs in rooms people have yet to visit will not do this, and consequently the DA problem is smallest for groups that power smash the instance from the getgo, and worse for groups that try to stealth it by killing the alarm-ringer tieflings and make it most of the way through the zone before messing one up .. as they'll easily have an instant visit from 20 or more barbazu as soon as the alarm is rung.

I got a new HD and still need to reinstall the Lamannia client so I can't test this, but hopefully someone else can for you.

I should add that this is also what causes the mobs from the above level to aggro, because when the barbazu spawn at portals in their rooms and teleport out, it 'wakes up' all the monsters in that room to the presence of the party even though they cannot reach or see them personally.

[Shade]

Tried all of Threnal East and it seemed fine.

If I zerged in part 2, DA still slowed me down. But if I killed thru it, there were no spikes above green, so no major issues.

Threnal 3 wasn't a instant yellow/orange. Big spawns if some lingered spiked it to green, but I think a group killing thru it fast should avoid any yellow. Personally I think since this type of dungeon absolutley cannot be zerged anyways, DA should simply be disabled.

I purposely tried to get it to red and had like 5 spawns at once by constantly CC'ing everything with energy drain + flesh to stone on my lvl20 sorc.. It was actually ultra difficult to do that and keep coyle alive at the same tiem, as soon as I'd get 4 mobs stoned, the first one would heroic surge out. Nearly died several times gettig it up. I couldn't get it about orange without dying... So I was forced to kill everything. Stupid heroic surge nonsense.

Bugs: - After the quest complets, 1 more wave of monster spawn. For revenge I let that wave kill Coyle. The quest doesn't fail at that point tho since it's complete heh.

- Green Dungeon alert still has an effect, especially on red named.. It should not.

[Bosco]

We're interested in hearing some comparisons with changes made to the DA system on Lamannia vs how it behaves on the live servers! Please include in your feedback:

• The name of the quest
• The area of the quest that was a problem on live (if multiple places, start with the earliest point) - locs are helpful!
• When playing the quest on Lamannia, did you experience improvement in the alert levels? No change? Worse?

We are particularly interested in hearing Lamannia experiences on the following quests: Bastion of Power, Escort the Expedition (Threnal East), Hold For Reinforcements (Threnal East), and Coalescence Chamber

I know you consider zerging as a lead reason for creating lag. Perhaps they should also focus in on other areas. Data feedback seems to be creating lag as well. Turning off all the message feedback while fighting in raids has brought down personal lag as well. Then there is the issue of the spell Master's Touch which creates small to very long lag spikes when either cast or debuffed.

[Karranor]

Ran Bastion again last night (2/27) and it was much better. I did not get any strange DA and they were not agroing around corners or from behind walls as far as I could tell. So I wondered around a bit to see if I could agro things through walls as was happening before. No luck, they seemed to do pretty good with not agroing at a distance. In fact, they seemed to be oblivious until you came right up on them.

Once I was convinced it was better I tried to get that DA alert up. It acted much as you would expect not reaching the higher levels until I had a good train following me. It died off quickly as I killed so that is good.

It seems it is better from initial tests in this game.

However, has anyone tested this with another party member in another part of the quest generating DA? I have noticed this is also a problem as it seems to go up fast, which can further pigeon hole the group into running a quest a certain way. You need to reconsider splitting up in teams to tackle different objectives as your total agro goes towards DA and you can get quickly overwhelmed.

On another DA note, has the DA problem with people dying and not clearing the DA? Coal is a perfect example where someone will fall and have to run back up. They get mobbed and die. However, they jacked up the DA to red and not it is stuck there. They can even recall out and the DA stays the same.

Anyway, I know it is here to stay and it does seem to be a bit better. For whatever 30 minutes in Bastion by myself can test...