Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[D-molisher]

... Obviously there are a lot of things that can be discarded during a lag spike that will help ease the spike... Combat log text, damage display, effects calls (someone else lands an on hit effect or spell that has a visible effect, then the server has to tell every client to display X effect at X, Y, Z location)... no one NEEDS to see a fireball land in the correct location during bad lag, chances are the delay from lag will keep it from being relevant to the player anyway so just don't even try to send it...

Nice one sir +1.

Some of it might be the need for information like combat log for all players and simmilar.
So far i kind of like the proposed idea, but will have to try it to see how it influence my tempest splashes.

[Monkey_Archer]

Thanks for the massive amount of feedback all.

We're currently thinking of adjusting the numbers to:

	Doublestrike	Bonus	Main hand	Off hand
No feats	0	20%	100%		20%
TWF		0	+20%	100%		40%
ITWF		0	+20%	100%		60%
GTWF		0	+20%	100%		80%
STWF		0	+20%	100%		100%
Tempest I	0	+10%	100%		90%
Tempest II	0	+10%	100%		100% 
Tempest III	+5%*	0	105%		100%
Wind IV		+10%	0	110%		80%
Zeal		+10%	0	110%		80%
Alacrity	+10%	0	110%		80%

* Only when wielding two weapons.

This set switches Wind Stance and Tempest III to doublestrike bonuses, increases the benefits of the TWF feat chain, and adds an additional feat for high BAB characters.

All of the bottom rows assume that the person has GTWF, except for the STWF row.

An alternate chart had the TWF not giving a bonus to off-hand proc rate, but increasing each tier to 25% - so it would have been 25%/25%/50%/75%/100%

Ok, i like that chart alot better. 80% offhand vs the 100% we have now translates into only a 8-10% dps nerf (which is tolerable IMO). Adding in STWF effectively makes the average TWF identical to what it is now, but with added cost.

I know this thread is mainly focused on TWF and unarmed, but its really hard to ignore the nerf to glancing blows. If STWF is introuced, making this nerf effectively 0% (aka not a nerf at all) how is this supposed to address the "extreme dominance" of TWF (as you put it) when the only style that gets nerfed hard would be THF?


Secondary issue, (maybe im not understanding properly) Does a double strike have a chance to proc an offhand attack? Effecitvely increasing the offhand chance by 10% as well?
From the charts it looks like all the 10% allacrity bonuses are getting nerfed by 10% (not applying to offhand) which would reduce fighter/paladin/monk dps by 4-5% while leaving non alacrity based classes like rogues and barbarians (excluding the barb capstone) untouched.

[SteeleTrueheart]

Overall I don't mind this change. I will roll with it. Just 2 things:

1. Can I get the official wording of the feat Superior Two Weapon Fighting.

2. Can I get a lesser reincarnation bound to character token for every melee character I have. (OK so I wont need it on every character, so if you have the ability to select, how about any character that has GTWF currently)

[ieatogres]

If you're also trying to equalise the playing field re TWF (which is secondary to fixing DPS lag), I'd prefer a boost to other styles, rather than a nerf on TWF.

And make the game easier than what it has already become?

[bobbryan2]

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!

Not to contradict you... but the players have known about the causes of DPS lag since Mod 6. As everyone started making their greensteels, and watching them all play out against Harry showed us new lag that we could reproduce.

Everything you said is true about many types of lag not living past the hardware upgrades.... but you guys have known about DPS lag since we have...

[manfredshw]

have you guys consider this?

After this change,
how about the monk ki regenerate rate?
Without the offhand attack. We lost ki regen rate. And potentially lost dps here.

You have already nerfed monk ki strike at the cost of 8 7 6 5.
What about to bring it back to 5 5 5 5?

[GottDDO]

This is a twf nerf plain and simple......

In short this is a complete nerf...explain it anyway you want but if it looks like sh**, smells like sh**, chances are it is sh**!!!

So here is my 2 cents....fix your problems without nerfing MY builds please!

The Bycher~

Souless/Xbow/Valice/Tazzor/Vampir/Spectyr/Xindao/Richgirl

Sniff sniff.

[Riggs]

Oh yeah, and more proof that Sos, and epic sos is game breaking even more now even more than the khopesh being giving x3 crits was before.

It keeps getting said that "We will not go back and change loot"....but those 2 weapons basically have broken most of the game, and these changes will make thf better - and epic sos was already better than everything else in the game - so its going to get magnified even more.

So - nurf something in the game and make people cry? Or continue breaking the game further and shattering it even more. "Either you have an epic Sos or your not a dps character"

Weapons and classes need a lot more balance work at the same time as this.

So exactly what is the difference between nurfing a single massively overpowered weapon - that people have ground for and leveled up characters for...and nurfing a fighting style, that people have ground out x2 as many weapons for, costs more in feats and stats, and have leveled up characters as?

Yes fix lag, sure lower off hand attacks if it helps - but nurf the other stuff too, AND lower the super inflated monster hp that was added after adding in the massive over powered dps in the first place.

[GottDDO]

that would bring it more back to pnp, id prefer this version (even the fact that you considered what i suggested is awesome )

I'd prefer if you gave a negative 5 to-hit on each consecutive off-hand attack.

[manfredshw]

And how about the 4 stances?

Wind4 has better chance for offhand attack, then better ki regen?
Or sun4 has better ki regen rate but low offhand attack?

I don't know which stance is better for ki regen.

Will you revamp all the 4 stances for better features?

[Calebro]

have you guys consider this?

After this change,
how about the monk ki regenerate rate?
Without the offhand attack. We lost ki regen rate. And potentially lost dps here.

You have already nerfed monk ki strike at the cost of 8 7 6 5.
What about to bring it back to 5 5 5 5?

In the lower levels you'll actually be gaining ki faster.
In the highest levels you'll be gaining ki at ~90% of what you did previously.

Previously with only TWF you attack twice, then once, once, once ~ averaging to 5 points of ki (assuming 1pt per strike)
Now you'll attack at 100%/40%, 100%/40%, 100%/40%, 100%/40% ~ averaging to 5.6

So at the lower levels, this will help monks, and at the highest levels you usually gain ki fast enough so that it doesn't matter.

[GottDDO]

So once again the vicious circle begins.....one playstyle is being nerfed because another feels that their play style is weak in comparison.

Quests will now take longer to complete because TWF won't be as effective....but the THF can walk away bragging that thier kill count is higher than it used to be.

/facepalm

Anyone that claims that TWF isn't superior dps to THF is either an idiot or a liar. Oops. What happened to your "look at me" text?

[KillEveryone]

I couldn't read all 54 pages, not sure if you are still looking at this feedback but this is my 2cp...

Not really into this particular idea. I have to add points into DEX and eat a tome to get my DEX at 17 for all feats, but in a THF build I just max STR and CON and I'm good to go. I think as a TWF you give up some so that you can take the other road of fighting style and I think that some return should be given for the investment. This just means that I won't even bother with my TWF fighter anymore since there wouldn't be any real point to that style.

Another note on lag...

I haven't run ToD, DQ, SoS, Titan so I can't comment on those.
I have done VoN and I don't expierence lag.
I have done VoD and I don't expierence lag.
I have done Hound and I don't expierence lag.
I have done Revers Fate and I don't expierence lag.
I don't expierence lag on regular 6 man quests at any level or difficulty.

I have done Tempest spine and I get lag when fighting all those trash mobs but not when we fight Sorjek.

Shroud, now that quest is full of lag but not just when fighting.
Part 1, I get lots of lag when we are going to the chests after beating all the portals but not when we are beating on the portals.
Part 2, I get lag when everything is dead and the crystal is broken and we are heading to the chests and also when we are beating down the trash mobs.
Part 3, I don't get lag.
Part 4, well that is just a lag fest when the blades come in but I don't have much trouble with beating on Harry before the blades so much. Was recently on a run where part 4 was a 3 rounder and we still had a lot of lag. Another recent run we had a wipe on part 4 where the clerics were lagging and heals didn't get through. Even if we had survived, part 4 would have been a 2 rounder. I'm fairly sure that the lag in these 2 runs was not from DPS.
Part 5 I usually don't have a lag problem until Harry dies then things get a little laggy.
I will expierence lag with either my Bard which gets in the melee but also with my Wizard which stays out of the gank pile.
I tend to expierence way more lag in the afternoon to around midnight so my lag expierence will vary.

I have had some fairly lag free(none in part 1 and little in part 2) Shroud runs but those tend to be during midnight to mid-morning EST. That time frame also tends to have less people on at once.

I do appriciate that you are trying to address an issue that has been brought up(it does show that you listen) but I don't think this is the best way to go about it and I think that you will be hitting many people that probably don't actually expierence any DPS lag. So far, to me at least, the lag problem is only a few quests but not a wide spread problem.

[GottDDO]

Please don't bring back STWF. This would penalize classes which are very short on feats, especially DW melee clerics/FvS, which already need to splash fighter levels to have even some metamagic with all the twf required.

Bring back STWF. A class that can heal itself and cast blade barrier shouldn't be as good at melee as a real melee class.

[GottDDO]

Why do such a complicated fix, when all combat could be slowed just a little to fix everything.

Say it just one more time, and maybe it will happen.

[GottDDO]

It seems we have evolved an interesting sub-thread comparing TWF and THF and ways to make these balanced in respect to each other. Something many feel, it seems, should be done.

Let me say one thing. Balancing THF and TWF is a matter so important we should not have this done as a side effect of 'fixing lag'. As the 'lag' fixing will be a main concern here, and the resulting twf/thf rebalancing deserves a fix on its own. Which may not be possible in the future, as this may break 'the fix' it'll be reliant on!

I don't care if it's a smokescreen or not. This is something that needs to happen, and if this is the context in which it needs to be brought forward, then so be it.

And I'm not dead...

[Riggs]

The size of the change necessary isn't within the scope of changes that we'd be able to make in the time frames we've got. No conspiracy.

Edit: There's also many, many posts in this thread that I haven't replied directly to.

So...someone posted what sounds like a good idea to reduce calculations...'1 roll to rule them all', rather than 10 different rolls..and its too late to make that kind of change?

So like someone said about SoS feedback on Lam before - by the time it reached there it was too late to make changes, as many people instantly pointed out epic Sos was far mroe 'epic' than anything else in the game....and it just stayed right in there.

So these changes will get posted to the server, and it is already too late to offer other ideas?

As other people have already said...if the servers cannot handle the calculations now, but apparently reducing twf attacks by the 25% number people are saying will...I mean seriously - chips can handle millions of calculations a second and 25% less is going to make a difference?

It is pretty hard NOT to ask about the quality of the servers at that point isnt it?

And side note - many people playing, and posting, are programmers and engineers in their own right...why not open up the discussion BEFORE it is too late to make changes? I mean...really.

[bandyman1]

I don't care if it's a smokescreen or not. This is something that needs to happen in my opinion, which really doesn't mean **** to those who don't feel the same way, and if this is the context in which it needs to be brought forward, then so be it.

And I'm not dead...

Fixed.

[Riggs]

If only adding another server to the pile would solve all our problems! Wow, genius. Why hasn't anyone ever thought of that? We'll just buy a thousand more servers and throw them on the pile. It won't cost anything to put them up, maintain them, power them, support them etc.

The things that can affect performance are: system software (unix/windows/misc), DBMS software, Game software,
hardware, network, etc.

All the servers on the world won't solve many performance issues.

Also: I'm not sure why most people assume that epic SoS will never get fixed.

Maybe because khopesh never got fixed after 4 years?

re servers - ever heard of companies that handle larger traffic...with bigger server farms?

[Sebastrd]

I get the sense that this change to TWF is a done deal, but I'd like to go on record as being wholly against it. A handful of high level quests is not a good reason to nerf and ability for the other 99% of game content.

The proposed fix for the physics checking is a great idea, especially if it will have a significant effect on DPS lag. Replacing alacrity with double strike is also a great idea, as it amounts to approximately the same effect. If double strike allows all of the alacrity effects to stack, that's even better.

However, changing the way TWF works is infuriating. That's a major reduction in the effectiveness of existing characters, and entire builds are predicated on TWF working as is. I realize that changes like this are not uncommon among MMOs, and even the current incarnation of DDO is a long way from what it was originally; but DDO is supposed to be a cut above.