Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[Kaldais]

ugh, wack too many responses already TLR

Speaking as an experienced DM, when dealing with only one enemy, (like a dragon) In P&P I would:

Ask the Players to roll their Initiative.

Inform the players of the monsters AC/DR/MR etc (could be passed to client side?)

then going in order, top to bottom, the players (client side?) would tell me how much damage they did in their round.

Then I as the DM (server side) would process that info, and on the dragons turn issue out the dragons changes/attacks/damage/actions/whatever...

granted, DDO isn't P&P, isn't done in turns/rounds yadda yadda... also I'm not a programmer (other than some basic) in any way...


but it seams to me:

Client says: attack on
server: attempts to roll dice and apply effects (that's a lot of numbers... what RND# are you using? could you make a machine that only rolls numbers? then the game servers could just sample from it (when needed) instead of rolling it themselves? cause a server just rolling d2/d4/d6/d8/d12/d20/d100/d? could do that all day)

how i used to do it P&P

Player: rolls dice works out damage and effects sends to server
Server: takes it and then responds

end effect: huge combats go by easy with out waiting for the rolling of mountains of dice, and since every character has a set amounts of attacks per second...

alot of us are running pretty wikkid machines on the client side, i don't see why not off loading some of the load to the client wont work (other than lag from the ISP side but that's changing)

Personally, I run a duo core and the other core and more than half my RAM isn't doing anything, and my wifes quad core with way more RAM is barely clicking over. total bandwidth use from here (both running DDO and a server on top of it) is only topping out at 10% of 5Mbips down and 3/4Mbips up...

personally i think sharing more of the load on the client side might help... Its all known values set down by you...

granted, that does expose you to packet shaping on the client side, but you could always stick in a one time encryption key (for packets) on every log in...

gone are the years where the server was king. most of us are running machines that used to be servers back in the day.

(granted, im not a programmer, but I am a 11 year system admin, and co-op computing is new)


as i see it...

if the crunching numbers is the problem... then build a machine that just does that then wire that in. granted, that's a probably a huge rewire of code... but link that number generator with the rest of the farm with OC and let it run...


Server: !needD20? (call#1,call#2,call#3)
numergen(x): !#!

that's how i would do it. **** the rewrite. (just don't forget to have a back up machine generating numbers, and a back up of that, and a back up of that...) last thing you want to say to a customer is "oh wait, the only thing doing this job has crashed..."

bad idea, very prun to clientside Steamhacks. IE, client sent false information to the server.

[Aesop]

gah... 2 replys and I'm already 2 pages back... WE'll never get noticed this way

[Drakos]

I didn't read all responses, but I think I catched all Dev-Responses, but what I'm still wondering: Does this mean, that attackbonus on offhandweapons is irrelevant now? Since only Mainhand is rolled, I could use +1 weapons in offhand and have the same chance to land the attack, as long as Mainhand is +5?

No they confirmed that all atttacks, even the proced double-tap and ohh=hand, have seperate to-hit rolls.

[Zeruell]

If anyone will leave over this NGE:ish move, just come back in around three years - the game will be balanced back again and you can carry on where you left. I wonder if rangers will be the first class they bring back up from the cellar this time around as well? Probably - Turbine are just not very imaginative in their auto-dafés.

I have to be sure -- did you just compare this TWF debacle to End of Evangelion? Because that would be simultaneously depressing and hilarious, for reasons that I can't immediately put into words. Lemme see about dropping you a +1...

[Crazyfruit]

Why not just have raid bosses debuff attack speed?

There's a ton of other more creative solutions you guys could've done for battles than removing a lot of fun people have playing their characters.

Some of my friends are now hoping update 5 is delayed for months

[sirdanile]

My initial thoughts:

currently you get an offhand attack on all main hand attacks with gtwf, reducing them down to 55% for everyone is kindve on the low side imo, maybe 70% for everyone and change the numbers so you can't hit 100 through a combination of tempest + monk stances.

Double strike - awesome mechanic I can see it working out well as a replacement to attack speed and opens up a pathway to upgrade the ranged combat feats "manyshot" to a stance, just off the top of my head 90% chance to shoot a second arrow, 60% chance from that for a third, 40% chance for a fourth, no chance for a fifth. This also would be a lovely addition to the more combat oriented paladins, clerics, favored souls, barbarians... it seems like a great mechanic, the potential for this is awesome.

More thoughts to come.

[Samadhi]

One sidenote while I am still catching up:

Announcing these changes on the same day that you also announced +5 hears of wood that are available this weekend and this weekend only is 100% the lamest marketing ploy I have ever seen. Just wow. I am willing to consider any change that makes this game playable again, I miss the three years I played with minimal lag, but this is beyond absurd on the part of someone within the company, and will not be a decision I will be forgetting.

[Yajerman01]

//Thinks Eladrin a brave soul for even trying to solve a problem that effects all players, while incuring the wrath of the ubergamer tiny population of self-important specials...

Im gonna chime in on this statement. Its not self-important to realize that a character you have heavily vested in is going to be nerfed (potentially) so much so that by respecting your character into say a THF would make more sense in the overall DPS perspective, saving feats, and increasing other attributes. Its foolish not to otherwise.

The problem that would lie therein is the ingredients vested since you cannot move or transfer the items to a character who could benefit from said items. or make a better suited item.

Turbine wont institute deconstruct because if they did, that would mean alot of people would might stay around or potentially come back to the game and make DDO more profitable - its just too simple of a concept for them to grasp.

Ambiguous concotions about perception of a few is what drives Turbine's motor.

It is a doom factor for some who have spent most of their MMO life vesting to cull the perfext TWF only for it to get slapped int he face by the nerf gods.

Self important - or self preservation I ask you sir.

[Tolero]

gah... 2 replys and I'm already 2 pages back... WE'll never get noticed this way

You'd be surprised. Culling threads is hard but rewarding work ^^

[Vynnt]

If speed of attacks is a problem, how about this instead.

1. leave speed mechanics exactly how it is now
2. slow down all melee by 20%
3. reduce mob hp by 20% to compensate

A side effect, spell damage will be more effective but meh. This is fair to all builds, twf, thf, monks, ranger splashed, and everything.

[Cyr]

Double strike - awesome mechanic I can see it working out well as a replacement to attack speed and opens up a pathway to upgrade the ranged combat feats "manyshot" to a stance, just off the top of my head 90% chance to shoot a second arrow, 60% chance from that for a third, 40% chance for a fourth, no chance for a fifth. This also would be a lovely addition to the more combat oriented paladins, clerics, favored souls, barbarians... it seems like a great mechanic, the potential for this is awesome.

This is an excellent idea and deserves to be highlighted. In a day with some really depressing news this idea really made me proud of some of our players and wonder why they are not plumed for ideas more often.

[Khurse]

If 18/1/1's were so much more survivable... then why are there so many WF THF barbarians that are the main tanks in TOD, VOD, etc?

Dunno, I've mostly seen intimitanks do it.
Only time I've seen a barb try to tank TOD didn't go so well. 9Could have been the Barb though,as I said, only have seen it once)

If TWF is so gimped, and this gimpness comes at the need to farm 2x the greensteel.
Why do so many people use TWF greensteel?

[bobbryan2]

I would propose a small exception.

When in sneak mode, there should be a 100% chance of offhand attacks. Additionally, you should keep the collision check for the offhand for attacks made in sneak mode.

These weren't causing DPS lag in the first place, but rather were useful for assassinations and sneak attacks.

[Luis_Velderve]

Insted of nerfing twf DPS to decrease server load because those calculations are bad we should have one attack roll per turn and if you hit lets have a global damage roll!!!! Two rolls insted of 6!!! very simplistic and serverwise.

OR

Lets turn DDO to a 2D amine like game , reducing 3D graphical calculations and all related to it.


(venting out)

[Angelus_dead]

estimated damage output over time for the two styles should be extremely close to each other if we go this route.

I wonder about the details of the TWF and THF styles under consideration there:
1. Is the TWF guy considered to be khopesh or rapier? All THF people are greataxe or falchion, but TWF characters may have a big difference in critical power.
2. Is the THF guy using his declared attack animation, or breaking it for more swings?

TWF has some advantages too, such as an increased number of magical item slots available for customization (since we don't currently put more treasure effects on two handed weapons), and potentially more versatility.

Yes, but that's more a theoretical advantage. Given the loot that exists in DDO currently those factors provide hardly any benefit (even if we pretend epic two-handers didn't have ultra crits).

The best case for TWF's double slots being a real benefit is if you want +4 Insight AC on greensteel, but can still take Acid/Shocking Burst on the other weapon. That's a fairly small bonus, especially given the low value of AC at present.

We'll be looking at the effects on Lamannia to determine if there should be changes made. It's quite possible that the numbers will shift.

On Lamannia it will be pretty hard to test the changes, because there is no practical way a TWF character can be converted to the THF equivalent for experimentation. There isn't a button to move dex into str, swap three feats, and replace every weapon. The results of Lamannia testing will mostly be totally predictable: people with TWF characters will report a moderate drop in offensive effectiveness against monsters. We know that'll happen, unless there's a major implementation error by a programmer.

The interesting question is how much the reduced effectiveness (along with the higher cost) reduces the attractiveness of playing TWF characters, but a short-term test on a special server can't answer that. It would take months to get observations relating to the effort of equipping characters.

[Aerendil]

One of the major issues that we’ve been working on is the dps lag problem in high level content (especially raid content). We’re attacking this problem from many angles, and since some of the changes we’re considering will have significant impact on many characters, we’re interested in your feedback before it goes to Lamannia or live. We're trying to aggressively attack the issues that cause these lag problems and are interested in feedback regarding how aggressively we should be attempting to tackle them.

My post is a bit more technical than I normally write for public consumption, but I want to make the issues and the reasons we’re considering these changes extremely clear.

Some people may have noticed that problems occur most often when there are many monks or two weapon fighting characters that are loaded with many on-hit effects attacking en masse. These characters currently perform many attacks very quickly, and each attack is pretty heavy performance-wise. Rather than attack the problem by changing common heavy-load equipment, we’ve already taken some steps to optimize the way we perform attacks, and are considering the following changes to reduce overall performance loads:

Important tidbit above bolded...
Now, just out of curiosity, wouldn't the solution to this simply be to remove some of the on-hit effects?

From what I gather, there are a number of issues here (correct me if I'm wrong):
- TWF granting X number of extra attacks (I forget the exact number, but it's more than the PNP grants isn't it?)
- various forms of haste speeding these attacks up (tempest, wind stance, zeal, weapon alacrity, madstone, haste spell/potions, etc.)
- each hit requiring multiple damage rolls (base + burst + burst + various others. It's not uncommon on a Monk with twin ToD rings, for example, to see half a dozen effects).

Rather than nerf the % chance per off-hand attack, why not simply reduce the # of attacks in a chain, lower haste values a bit further (if need be), and re-evaluate all of the items (aka greensteel) with quadrillions of extra effects.

/shrug

*edit* couple of further things to add:
- as many of the haste boosts in DDO aren't core (i.e. wind stance, zeal, weapon alacrity, madstone, even tempest haste - none exist in PnP do they?), wouldn't it make sense to lower these somewhat? Given that 99.9999% of groups will be perma-hasted, does it make sense to further double our speed of attacks with all these forms of haste?
- if you reduce the # of off-hand attacks for TWF, but then introduce double attacks, would there not still be a large number of die rolls being determined? It seems as though you're proposing something to reduce lag, but then introducing something that may very well add some lag back into it. No?

[Jay203]

i think of all the classes, Rangers have the least amount of right to whine about TwF line is very costly
after all, they got the full line for free while bypassing the requirements as well as the full set of Archery feats

BLEH~

[Boromirs]

[Improvements to TWF]

1.) Tandem Attack - You attack with both weapons at the same time at one exact spot once during your attack chain. If your main hand hits your off hand hits as well automatically, if your main hand crits your off hand crits.

2.) Independent Feat Usage - Any feat dealing with a weapon can be used on a per weapon basis. If you are using stunning blow with your main hand you can immediately make another stunning blow attempt with your off hand (without pause), meanwhile your main hand will recieve cooldown and (after your off hand is used) your off hand will recieve cooldown.

3.)Decreasing DR/AC for continuous attacks - The longer you are attacking 1 creature the more you will wear down it's AC/DR/defenses gradually, although mind you you could kill it long before you wear down any of it's defenses especially on trash mobs.

4.) Cascading Increase to Proc Rate - The longer you are continuously attacking with TWF the incrementally higher the proc rate % will become. The longer you are not in combat attacking the faster your proc rate will fall to normal levels.

5.) TWF synchronization - The longer you are in combat attacking the more and more your two weapons become in sync with each other. This will increase the number of tandem attacks and will also gain simultaneous proc occurences. Meaning if one proc goes off the proc on your other weapon will also go off, automatically.

[Khurse]

I wonder about the details of the TWF and THF styles under consideration there:




On Lamannia it will be pretty hard to test the changes, because there is no practical way a TWF character can be converted to the THF equivalent for experimentation. .

This

Unless multiple reincarnation tokens are provided, and that still won't solve most gear issues.

[bobbryan2]

This

Unless multiple reincarnation tokens are provided, and that still won't solve most gear issues.

Not to mention gear issues on live servers... I somehow doubt that greensteel deconstruction has been waiting till now.