Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[hydra_ex]

Or we could just go back to hex.

I take a five foot step and full attack with full power attack. heh.

Well, many raid bosses are pretty stationary, and its against those that we have the most problem with lag.

Trigger the grid after Harry 5, Horoth or Nyth haven't moved for 20 seconds.

Keep a grid on Velah/Harry 4 since they don't move. Coding that in though might be a nightmare, but it would significantly decrease calculations from checking collisions to simply comparing radii with weapon range.

Or even just set up certain areas for certain weapons around him, and check to see if the players are in that area. That's just a simply statement. The cycling through each area might be inefficient though...

I can dream, can't I?

[Calebro]

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.

1) The newer set of numbers provided are almost equal to what they were before in the long run. Which, I might add, is counter prodocutive to the original intent, which was to nerf TWF to bridge the gap some between TWF and THF. So you've won that battle.

2) Double Strike wil replace Alacrity.
Alacrity allowed a 10% increase in speed, thus raising DPS by 10%
Double Strike allows for a 10% chance on every hit to score a second hit. On average, this will allow for 1 extra stike in 10. That's a 10% increase.
They're the same exact thing, but the new way will reduce lag by requiring less checks.

There's no more need to argue this anymore IMO.

[Eljin]

signed

[eonfreon]

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 =/

I understand but that's Eladrin's fault for couching it ever-so-slightly in a "reduce dps lag" proposal.
Even if he does spell out that the proposed TWF nerf is separate and is done because he considers TWF overpowering, that fact gets lost when a whole new system is implemented it is still "hidden" within a "help dps" concept.
Plus the fact that it can be "bought back" but at an increased and largely nebulous cost.
It is very irritating.
ANd you'll have to pop up here every page to remind people that "upgrade hardware" and "DA didn't get rid of lag".
Look above your very post. Another such post appeared.

So since you wanted feedback:
Get rid of any idea of STWF and move every thing on that chart up by one. Make untrained at 40% and GTWF at 100%.
Leave Zeal, Tempest, Windstance, and Fighter Capstone (and any Alacrity bonuses) as is and abandon the idea of Double Strikes.

[mons]

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!

What will be your stance when say all these nerfs happen and the DPS lag still exists?

[Tolero]

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?

I'm pretty intimately familiar with "tolerance" levels of the community after all this time (even with all the new folks in the mix since F2P launch), and it is definitely not a case of "apathy".

As for seeing non-dps lag, on your end, there is no way for you to know when you experience lag in your quest what the person in another quest is doing that could be causing it. It's the nature of the way instances relate to one another in game. Your waterworks quest could be sharing with an instance of the marketplace, a full shroud run, a partial shroud run, korthos island, someone with a hireling that had a pathing issue in Von2 (which was fixed fortunately in the last update), etc. This is what our performance studies are for. We sit down and study the poor performance, then start parsing the data to see what is being so expensive. Sometimes it's very clear, and sometimes it requires more digging on the part of the teams. To a point, there will always be some moments of lag because there are so many different things that relate to it. It really is like illness - you can't prevent every cold and flu, but you can reduce the likelihood of catching it for better living

[Aashrym]

Removed. This post appears to be in a thread I did not intend.

[zztophat]

Not signed, if it helps lag it helps lag.

[Angelus_dead]

2) Double Strike wil replace Alacrity.
Alacrity allowed a 10% increase in speed, thus raising DPS by 10%
Double Strike allows for a 10% chance on every hit to score a second hit. On average, this will allow for 1 extra stike in 10. That's a 10% increase.
They're the same exact thing, but the new way will reduce lag by requiring less checks.

That equivalence only works for THF or S&B characters. For TWF and ranged it is a nerf, because Doublestrike only applies to the mainhand melee attack.

They could have had doublestrike apply to offhand attacks, but instead seem to have taken it as an opportunity to tilt things a little towards the one-weapon guys.

[Calebro]

That equivalence only works for THF or S&B characters. For TWF and ranged it is a nerf, because Doublestrike only applies to the mainhand melee attack.

They could have had doublestrike apply to offhand attacks, but instead seem to have taken it as an opportunity to tilt things a little towards the one-weapon guys.

Which, as I said, was the original intent. The fact that the numbers got raised means that the battle was won. It wasn't a complete rout of the enemy, but few battles are.

We should be happy with the changes that have been made to the original concept and see how it works out. Just my opinion.

[Cyr]

I'm pretty intimately familiar with "tolerance" levels of the community after all this time (even with all the new folks in the mix since F2P launch), and it is definitely not a case of "apathy".

Maybe the apathy complaint could be turned around to Turbine? I have seen tons of threads complaining about lag and posts complaining about lag. All of these eventually mention DA. A day does not go by in game that I do not hear a lag complaint or DA complaint. For example, yesterday I was rubber banding (full on rubber banding mind you) in the vale. No mobs were active at the time as I was in the water swimming. That was clearly not dps lag.

[eonfreon]

1) The newer set of numbers provided are almost equal to what they were before in the long run. Which, I might add, is counter prodocutive to the original intent, which was to nerf TWF to bridge the gap some between TWF and THF. So you've won that battle.

2) Double Strike wil replace Alacrity.
Alacrity allowed a 10% increase in speed, thus raising DPS by 10%
Double Strike allows for a 10% chance on every hit to score a second hit. On average, this will allow for 1 extra stike in 10. That's a 10% increase.
They're the same exact thing, but the new way will reduce lag by requiring less checks.

There's no more need to argue this anymore IMO.

I don't recall arguing with anyone.
They asked for feedback and I'm giving it.
I will consider the battle "won" when STWF is not required to get to 100% offhand attacks.
Or at least STWF is defined in a way that is "easy enough" to get.

As far as Alacrity; yes I understand that the average is nearly the same, but it could be just as easily achieved by having every 10th attack = 2 main hand attacks.

[Calebro]

I don't recall arguing with anyone.
They asked for feedback and I'm giving it.
I will consider the battle "won" when STWF is not required to get to 100% offhand attacks.
Or at least STWF is defined in a way that is "easy enough" to get.

As far as Alacrity; yes I understand that the average is nearly the same, but it could be just as easily achieved by having every 10th attack = 2 main hand attacks.

The "argument" comment wasn't directed at you specifically, but in a more general sense. As to the STWF, I give you this:

The more I think about it, the more I like STWF being implemented. Rangers essentially get it for free, making them King of TWF (as it should be).
Others now have the option if they devote enough resources (build points and stat raises) to get it.

Few are likely to do this, but the option is there. So Rangers are still TWF kings in most cases, but the extremely rare exception may occur.

[Quijonsith]

I have a question as far as a way to reduce lag altogether. Say you have a rogue backstabbing for 9d6+16. (just an example) instead of the game rolling 9 seperate dice, why not one roll with a floor of 25 in this example. 9d6 gives floor of 9+16=25. Then with max roll of 1d45+25. so basically youd be making one roll with a base giving damage from 25-70. Thats one roll as opposed to 9. similair things could be done accross the board for all classes.

Rolling 9d6 actually has a bell curve to it's results that heavily weighs it closer to average and less often towards max and minimum values while a straight 1d54+25 would be all over the place. Part of the balancing of damage outputs in DnD is that weighted factor of the rolls. The more individual dice are rolled the more consistent and average the results, such as a light monk's healing finisher is 20d4 at 20 I believe, which has much more average and consistent results than rolling 1d76+4. Rolling one die may possibly reduce lag, but it would unbalance the results.

[cdemeritt]

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.

Actually I expect you are afraid to sleep tonight... I just have to wonder if you guys were going "No... Don't make us tell them... please no...."

[archangelspeed]

Eladrin

With this new change are they going to offer STWF as a feat to all clases or will it still be stuck with rangers only?

And with this change in melee proc'ing will we possibly see multishot as a fighting stance and % chance to proc multiple arrows?

-Angel

[eonfreon]

Originally Posted by Calebro View Post

The more I think about it, the more I like STWF being implemented. Rangers essentially get it for free, making them King of TWF (as it should be).
Others now have the option if they devote enough resources (build points and stat raises) to get it.

Few are likely to do this, but the option is there. So Rangers are still TWF kings in most cases, but the extremely rare exception may occur.

LOL
And I give you this:

Leave Zeal, Tempest, Windstance, and Fighter Capstone (and any Alacrity bonuses) as is and abandon the idea of Double Strikes.

[Nevthial]

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 because people are trying to play DDO on non-top end machines. If you play on decent machine ( yes it may cost more than some make in a month) you will sometimes see everyone in your party slow down, sometimes stutter, and then they catch up while you continue to play on practically seamlessly. Turbine knows that not everyone can afford to actually purchase decent top end hardware, so they actually take on more server burden than they have to.

I'll give you an example. Most people playing DDO are playing on machines that can't handle an older game such as Fallout 3 with the graphics cranked up. Yet, they expect no lag while playing DDO with several other machines tied to the same instance as them; and thus sharing practically the same data stream. The end result: Turbine is forced to try to compensate and optimize/minimize data flow in and out. The Shroud ( like many other places) is larger, and thus it takes more data to load to EACH machine, while attempting to synchronize them all.

A few years back, I purchased computers for our guildies. We all had near top end hardware at the time. No lag on high graphics no matter where we went or what our character makeup was, with all of us sharing the same internet connection even, as long as NO ONE else grouped with us. The only lag we used to experience was if it was server wide. Now, three years later, some of us are on different machines and only the lower end ones have real lag/load issues. As I have posted in previous threads, the only way for my wife and I to keep playing how we are used to has been to upgrade at nearly every new Mod introduced. If Turbine raised the minimum requirements for playing, then each client machine could handle a larger portion of the burden than they currrently are and the game would run much , much better overall. They won't/can't do this of course, so I suppose they have decided to trim their data stream by trimming the way certain combat calculations are handled. This has fallen to the fastest combat calculations ( TWF / Monks ) as they are apparently the most prevalent and utilize the highest volume of our client side data flow. It's not much different than the lag some folks get in raids at times from disco balls, cloud spells, ect.

[Calebro]

LOL
And I give you this:

Are there paople here that can HONESTLY say that TWF didn't need a nerf?
Really?

Until ESoS was introduced, TWF was King. The fact that so many builds now use ESoS as a base, and build upon the idea that they'll have it, is cause enough to say that it's overpowered.

That leaves us back where we were before it was introduced. Because it most definitely SHOULD get the bat. That leaves us with TWF as King again. But it still needs a nerf.

This accomplishes that.

Leave Zeal, Tempest, Windstance, and Fighter Capstone (and any Alacrity bonuses) as is and abandon the idea of Double Strikes.

This does not.

Now all we have to do is hit ESoS.

[Kambuk]

The changes they are proposing may help the lag problem but only as a side effect.

Facts:
If someone dissconnects in Epic Von6 white fighting the dragon everyone dies.
If someone dissconnects in part 4 or 5 of the shroud all sorts of wierd thing can happen - i.e. part 4 noone dies when portal is clicked, heals don't go off etc.

These things are not related to DPS lag as far as I have been able to tell.

I have a tempest ranger with dual Min II rapiers, everytime I raid with him everyone gets bad lag heals don't got off etc. But we don't get the everyone dies in von6 or portal wierdness in Shroud part 4.

I have a 2H build rogue with an Epic SoS never have any lag problems unless someone dissconnects.

I play from NZ with a 300ms or so latency I think this combined with the DPS from my ranger is where the real problem is, I think it is something to do with clients timing out or not responding quickly enough to a large amount of data that causes all the problems otherwise if somone dissconnected it would immediatly make the lag better rather than worse....

Easy test:
Get all the devs beating on Velah on epic with 2HF in a room and pull someones network cable out and see what happens. Repeat test with everyone using 2WF se if anything different happens.

Fix that problem 1st and then see if the DPS lag still happens.

Kambuk.