Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[Daehawk]

Will this fix the massive lag spikes everyone gets when running to the shrine/chests in Shroud after everything's dead? Still want to know what causes that. The DPS is long over, something else has to be causing it.

It's a part of DPS lag. It's the servers catching up.

If you TWF Chaosblades like my rogue does at the moment in Part 1 you can tell how bad the DPS lag is. Next time I'm in there I might fraps it to show you.

But basically this is what happens. You can see the +1 Repairs scrolling across the screen at a normal pace. But then once I move away from the portal they rapidly scroll the screen till I get over to another portal and start hitting it. Once at the next portal it will go back to scrolling at a normal pace and stacks up the ones that didn't show before I'd assume. Since after all the portals are done the +1's sometimes spam all the way to the chest and once I open it.

[xt851231]

Wind Stance not being optimal for every fighting style isn't bad. We're considering doing something with Water Stance to make it a preferable staff stance, though Sun Stance's strength boost could also be appealing.

But what makes this game great is the flexiblity of the choice you can make. these changes just reduced the play style that you can choose from. compare to the d&d..it's already reduced of the options that you can make of multi-class from the potential great loss of enchancement. Now..these moves will just reduce it further. i can accept reduce dps. i can accept the change of how the combat is doing. but the only thing that i can't accept is the loss of the soul of this game.and a much fixed play style is definitly not what attracted me into this game.

[twoton]

Face it what the real story behind all of this is the fact that monks are now to uber and they need to nerf them and this is how they are going to do it instead of fixing code.

[Tolero]

Just a reminder to make sure that feedback is kept in the forum guidelines. (most everyone is doing a great job, and only a few tempers have flared beyond the appropriate point, so keep it up!)

I wanted to take a moment to respond to two comments expressed in the thread. Dungeon Alert, and hardware.

We've already given DDO major upgrades to servers and datacenter, so continued "upgrade your hardware" comments are not contributing to the discussion in a productive manner.

I've also seen "Dungeon Alert didn't fix lag" comments. I'd like to take a moment to walk down feedback memory lane - there was a point in time which every day that I interacted with community I could find scores of lag complaints from users at all levels of the game. The comments would be on the forums in multiple threads, in posts responding to unrelated topics, in facebook comments, twitter comments, in the chat channels, in guild chats, exit surveys, off-site chats, new player comments.... There was definitely something "up" so Tarrant and I aggregated this issue constantly to the team. Performance studies were conducted many a late night targeting the worst culprit. This was discussed at length in the Dungeon Alert initial announcement.

Fast forward to the post-DA/new hardware DDO world, and the constant hum of lag comments became a drought... we'd still see comments here and there, but it had significantly nose dived, and tended to come up the most in the forums. We kept our eye on it when we saw comments crop up. Aggregation denotes that the comments are coming from the higher level, more experienced players in the higher level content. Generally speaking, newer players - where a bulk of the population currently is - are not yet skilled enough with character builds nor are they often high enough to be playing in the content where the complaints come from. They also are not as "engaged" as older players, and don't hit the forums as often as their veteran counterparts. So again, another wave of investigations focusing on these areas, bringing us to the current discussion.

Do keep providing feedback, assessing Eladrin's proposed changes, but I'd like to ask that "hardware" and "dungeon alert doom" comments subside, as they derail the discussion and are not helping the developers to further their work and investigations. Thanks for your participation everyone!

[IronClan]

Couldn't agree more...another huge mistake of making this game F2P.....anyone with an internet connection can play this game now. Not saying that's a bad thing, but if people playing on prehistoric machines are borking everyone else's play perhaps this should be addressed before a massive combat nerf.

This and what you quoted are completely and utterly untrue, and do not reflect the reality of how client server networking functions... You two are describing peer to peer networking and no major multiplayer game has used anything that laughable since the early 90's.

Please don't perpetuate absurd misconceptions.

[Daehawk]

*snip snip*

Tolero shouldn't you be sleeping in your soft bed by now? It's midnight there. Yeah I saw the cube came through was thinking who was up out there this late at night.

[twoton]

please sign if you DON'T want TWF nerfed

[Tolero]

Tolero shouldn't you be sleeping in your soft bed by now? It's midnight there. Yeah I saw the cube came through was thinking who was up out there this late at night.

Bah, sleep is for those who aren't keeping an eye on the premium account issues I figure I can kill two birds with one stone aggregating in here since I'm up anyway.

[Sirslapemsack]

ill sign, but its gonna happen regardless of what the paying customers want.

[Aashrym]

One kind of nerf is the proxy nerf, where the alternatives to an option are made more powerful. The option itself has not directly changed, but its relative position has weakened due to other things getting stronger.

For example, the introduction of TOD rings with Holy Burst was a proxy nerf for Monk builds using Kama or Quarterstaff. Likewise, adding an STWF ability which is only affordable to Fighters or Tempests is a proxy nerf to all other dual-wielding builds.


They already have a variety of benefits, and now they're getting more. The important question is if a TWF Fighter deserve to have his relative DPS increased compared to a TWF Rogue.

Oh, sure... I agree with ya and then you point out a flaw which boils down to power creep.

I can't disagree with the relative standing between classes on that argument because it's definitely a valid opinion and I see your point. I just think fighters or tempest rangers should be better than other dual wielders. Difference of opinion.

[Cyr]

snip

Tolero I must say that commenting in length with your arguments over specific things mentioned in thread and then saying that it is not productive to comment is a lot like saying "I'm going to state Turbine's position on this, but don't comment about it because it's off limits"

I hope that you notice this might rub people the wrong way.

[arminius]

Ok ok, we did complain about the lag in a few raids.

Now we see the consequences. We realize that our complaining was a mistake. We take it all back.

Does that make it all better? We promise we'll be good. Really, we will this time, we promise. Will that make you stop hurting us? We'd really like you to just stop. Please?

[eonfreon]

Just a reminder to make sure that feedback is kept in the forum guidelines. (most everyone is doing a great job, and only a few tempers have flared beyond the appropriate point, so keep it up!)

I wanted to take a moment to respond to two comments expressed in the thread. Dungeon Alert, and hardware.

We've already given DDO major upgrades to servers and datacenter, so continued "upgrade your hardware" comments are not contributing to the discussion in a productive manner.

Tolero, surely you realize that the majority of the anger is not the proposed lag fix, but rather the inclusion of a TWF nerf in it.
There is absolutely no need for a reduction of chances of hitting with the offhand attack simply because the offhand attack would be piggybacking off the main hand for collision checks.
Mobs are just not that good at ducking and weaving in combat. I've seldom missed a collision check on my offhand when I connected with my main hand. Far, far seldom then under the proposed changes.

And on top of that, the developers do propose a way to get back to 100% but at an increased cost which can break many builds, including pure builds for crying out loud, and don't give us any idea of what the real cost will be besides the obvious Feat cost.

And "doublestrikes"? Really? Especially at 10%? So you're changing a 100% chance at more attacks to 10% chance of another attack?
That's also hard to swallow.

[vVAnjilaVv]

Wow...looking back at this whole thing...all the stuff that has been said to each other, probably all the negative rep that has been dished out...over something that has not even happened yet is......what a DISAPPOINTMENT.......this is how we react to things yet we call ourselves the most evolved dominant speices on the plant.....all I have to say to that is....







HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.


That truely is humorous, and over a freakin' video game too.

I admit to, take back and apologize for some of the things I have said.....in the end this will work or it won't...Turbine will have to make it a somewhat appealing change to keep players or the game will die...so there will be resolution either way.

Let's just enjoy what we have now and help the change become suitable, in the end we are the ones paying...so we have the final choice...unless you choose to be mindless drones and tolerate things you do not want...then to you I will say goodbye...whether I stay or fly.

[kingfisher]

i dont understand why everytime you try to fix something the players have lose out. i know that its your game and all, but we are your customers right? why should any change made to improve the game automatically lessen the game too? This change (ie nerf) is not going to end well.

also, it seems clear that the biggest winner in this change is turbine, who will make a big ol pile a money from all the respecs and such from those that stick around. that's greedy.

[Tolero]

Tolero, surely you realize that the majority of the anger is not the proposed lag fix, but rather the inclusion of a TWF nerf in it.

I don't mind discussion about the TWF changes, sorry if that was not clear. There has been (and continues to be) a lot of good discussion around that, and I'd like for that to continue. It's just not as helpful to us when we're trying to go through the feedback when it starts getting derailed with "fix the hardware" "no you fix your computer" "no you fix YOUR computer!" scuffles =/

[IronClan]

They did.

Yep here's the relivant quote for anyone who glossed over it:

"I won’t hide that these proposed changes do reduce the effectiveness of off-hand attacks, which reduces the two weapon fighting style’s extreme dominance over two handed fighting."

Pretty black and white they know that TWF is overpowered and they intend to do something about it...

I think the double strike system looks worse on paper than Dungeon alert simply because it veers so far off D&D... At least with DA you could (if inclined to do so) imagine a scenario where an irritated DM tells his players "okay well if you're just going to run past everything, the Hobgoblins you left behind are sending up an alert to prepare the entire dungeon for you..." Hell he wouldn't even say that... just meet the party with an ambush around the next corner full of buffed, well prepared "elite guards" and let the first couple rounds of "surprise initiative" with "prepared defense" pole arm damage (pikes set against a charge) make them sweat it out.

[Tarnoc]

So i read this as THF doesnt lag in say the shroud....


B.S. ive been in full barb groups with so much dps lag you cant move while you try and run from part 1 to part 5......

this really has nothing to do with weapon attacks....

the dps lag has to do with procs

and well i can think of dozens of top geared THF barbs with a handful of proc gaurds that are just as much lag machines as any TWF.....and notice that typically its barbs who can have the open slots to have all those gaurd items as most TWF will need them for other stats or wat not .....

guess were all making 18base str 18 base con barbs and dump stat were ever and dont forget to make them wf ....and well kill all the clerics and make wf wizzys and sorcs to just heal everything...and we can just burn out thier servers and force them to realize that maybe it has nothing to do with TWF

[DragonKiller]

I wanted to take a moment to respond to two comments expressed in the thread. Dungeon Alert, and hardware.

*snip* *snip*

T - I would just like to say, that have you ever thought that... maybe just maybe... people have gotten used to that pain? I rarely quest in any quest, any instance, any place where someone isn't lagging. And it's almost ALWAYS the entire party. So it's not just one person's system. I will grant you I can only tell you what I have seen personally, but from that observation DA hasn't solved anything. Yet here we have a Turbine employee telling us "It solved lot's of problems, because no one is complaining about it to us." Sorry if I don't completely believe this. I know several guldies that have stopped playing because they got tired of the lag, and not just DPS lag.

Because I continue on a daily to see non-DPS lag, and still see Turbine touting how great DA is, even though I think if you read through this tread you will see a lot of people seem to disagree with the fact that it fixed lag, you guys still say "it's gotten a lot better". I'm guessing you will also be telling us "DPS Lag is a lot better" after these changes, even if we disagree.

So my original question still remains. If this makes it onto live servers, and your customers say that it didn't fix (or make a major dent in) the lag, is Turbine willing to back out the change? Or are we getting this in some form or fashion no matter what we say, and it will always be part of the game?

[Daehawk]

Bah, sleep is for those who aren't keeping an eye on the premium account issues I figure I can kill two birds with one stone aggregating in here since I'm up anyway.

Ah gotcha. Heh good luck with that situation. Hopefully it comes to a resolution soon.

------------

One thing I was thinking about while I was remembering the spamming of numbers scrolling on the screen.

Eladrin do you think allowing more than one set of numbers to appear on the screen would be helpful? Like a change to the UI design a bit to free up less of the spamming that happens after combat. If the numbers were allowed to appear faster than they would leave faster.


Something like.(Old SS I took for Keeper, just Photoshop on some UI stuff in like 1 minute.)



Red being Inbound Damage at you.
Green being Inbound Healing to you.
Purple being Outbound damage done by you.

Instead of having Red and Green as one scroll and Purple as another, this would allow more things to appear on the screen. Not sure how it would effect the servers, but it would allow the servers to display the numbers faster in the feedback section and wouldn't have to store them while it scroll spams.