Combat Feedback for Update 5.

[xxScoobyDooxx]

There is or was NEVER NO dps lag in Europe ...... We Europeans have never saw a dps lag ever before than in USA . Ask anyone but him and he will tell you the same thing (meaning the person that you quoted ) .

That's perfect information that I am sure Turbine is aware of ..... I'm not saying there was or wasn't lag on Euro servers??? .... Although another European user stated somewhere in this thread they did see lag .... but to be clear ... I am not saying either way ...

I am simply trying to highlight what causes lag generically from a networking perspective and the difference between making code efficient versus rewriting code with less functionality.

I think they know where the issues are. They say there are multiple small issues that can add up to the one big issue that occurs from time to time.

[vVAnjilaVv]

Unlikely... I mean Tempest is supposed to be the supreme twf.

They may make it so you can get close but I would hope that the benefit of tempest wouldn't be negated completely

Aesop

I agree with this this 100%...and I can too...because I have SCS (superior common sense)

NO, NO you cannot nerf my SCS...never!!!!!!

[Borror0]

Honestly I don't think its that complicated.

Fair point. Post the DPS calculation for a S&B, THF and TWF build for both your proposed change and Eladrin's. That would be a good way to tell.

Ummm.... I'm pretty sure the 10% is off, but beyond the actual numbers, this is exactly what twitching does right now.
That's kind of the entire point behind doing it.

*edit:
Unless that was your point

Ya, that was my point. I simply wanted to show how silly and illogical the design of "twitching" is.

The number is voluntarily off because Aesop said "twitching" should be "effective and a benefit without decimating the competition" so I put a number so would be closer to the ballpark she'd be aiming for, rather than the current number (whatever it is).

[xxScoobyDooxx]

I know its off topic but there is NO DPS LAG in Europe or ever was . Don't believe what that guy says ...... ask any other European but him .....
(I posted twice cause i cannot stand people misinforming)

PS. As why there wasn't ever any dps lag in Europe even when we had big population ..the conclusion is yours ........

It's well documented that Internet in Europe is far better than Internet in USA. In Europe most countries have more average bandwidth available per user than USA ISP's. If the servers were the same and the server populations were similar then the differences would be the ISP's Turbine uses in each location.

[Borror0]

Sucks to be a casual player then, I very much enjoy twitching.

I didn't say "twitching" didn't have qualities, because that would be a lie. Its greatest quality is that "twitching" occupies a decent amount of mindspace, preventing long fights such as Shroud part 5 to be boring. However, it would also be a lie to pretend that this goal cannot be met through less flawed methods.

Although it occupies mindspace, it does so with an excessively repetitive mechanism which causes it to be unfun to a great deal of people. That, on top of the fact that "moving back and forth makes you attack faster" is both counterintuitive and goofy (do you not believe most people think "that's stupid" when they hear how twitching works?), is enough to warrant exploring other design spaces such as giving melee characters more active skills instead.

[Bobalopter]

If you're interested in reducing the massive unplayable lag found in higher level areas, particularly shroud, there are many ways to go about it. Examples include using the same collision detection check and attack roll for main and off-hand attacks, using the same damage roll for multiple procs as Omega2K said, or best yet, dedicate more server cycles to high traffic areas, especially the pay to play areas. Extremely low priority areas currently experience virtually zero lag, such as the market and harbor public areas and quests, while the areas being played by your paying customer base is being sorely neglected.
As to your quote "I am actively seeking to avoid making broad changes to existing treasure systems." This may be true, but what you're proposing is broad changes to existing game mechanics which will massively gimp many many builds, and I for one have every intention of quitting DDO (currently VIP) if these changes go ahead without a full refund of the time i've spent levelling to this point on my characters. Spending months playing a game and having your characters rendered semi-useless isn't something that as a paying customer I will tolerate, and I doubt that I'm alone in this view.
If you want to attract players who are willing to pay for the game, don't destroy the progress they've made, and if necessary to fix the massive lag, add more servers to pay to play areas. Anyone who has run shroud on a Tuesday knows there's a HUGE difference between playing then and playing on a Saturday.
Also, another issue to consider is the effective nerf for healers in these proposed changes, since they'll have to heal for a lot longer if 1/2 the dps characters in the game get nerfed hard, because what used to take 1 or 2 rounds in part 4 will routinely take 3-5.
In the end, the lag is a major problem that needs to be fixed, but making massive changes to underlying mechanics to effectively destroy half the characters in the game is a good way to lose half the players playing the game. Having "the best quality free to play game" doesn't cut it when the vast majority of people being impacted are paying to play. Unless your intention is to dissuade people from ever paying for your product, making performance cuts on the paying customers is probably a bad choice.

[parvo]

...what you're proposing is broad changes to existing game mechanics which will massively gimp many many builds, and I for one have every intention of quitting DDO (currently VIP) if these changes go ahead without a full refund of the time i've spent levelling to this point on my characters. Spending months playing a game and having your characters rendered semi-useless isn't something that as a paying customer I will tolerate, and I doubt that I'm alone in this view....

Eladrin, I've been here from shortly after launch. I support any effort you make to reduce lag and balance character vs. environment. I hereby counter Bobalopter's whiny "I quit" post with my own, +1 superior I don't quit post of whiny slaying. I'm pretty sure, if the game is made better, there will be more players.

[bobbryan2]

Eladrin, I've been here from shortly after launch. I support any effort you make to reduce lag and balance character vs. environment. I hereby counter Bobalopter's whiny "I quit" post with my own, +1 superior I don't quit post of whiny slaying. I'm pretty sure, if the game is made better, there will be more players.

You run into DPS lag a lot in the depths of darkness?

[REALb0r3d]

I think what he's saying is... he paid probably alot of money... alot of time.
To make a couple great characters.
That won't be great anymore.
And that sucks.
When this could be solved in other ways that don't.
make characters sub-great.
That people spent alot of money.
And time.
On.

I think he has a right to be mad, but time will tell when live play testing starts.

[Calebro]

Also, another issue to consider is the effective nerf for healers in these proposed changes, since they'll have to heal for a lot longer if 1/2 the dps characters in the game get nerfed hard, because what used to take 1 or 2 rounds in part 4 will routinely take 3-5.

I said it before and I'll say it again. Everyone is being far too dramatic. This is a perfect example.
A 10% decrease in DPS won't cause you to go from 2 rounds to 5 unless there are other issues.

[parvo]

You run into DPS lag a lot in the depths of darkness?

Heaven forbid they ever put +1 into Depths of Darkness. You'll be in there lagging it out with your level 20 FOTM build, ruining an otherwise perfect Dungeons and Dragons experience.

I take it back Eladrin. Don't balance character vs. environment. Just put a button at the beggining of the quest that completes it with maximum reward. That will solve lag.

[R0cksteady]

Still no word on the requirements for STWF?

[REALb0r3d]

I will say one thing, this will make DPS calculation spreadsheets easy peazy.

[Calebro]

Still no word on the requirements for STWF?

Still catching up through the thread, but a few comments:

1) I've been convinced that STWF is not a benefit to the game. Instead of opening up new options, its presence instead would close many.
2) The Barbarian Capstone's alacrity bonus is a bug.

So it probably won't have any requirements.

[bobbryan2]

I said it before and I'll say it again. Everyone is being far too dramatic. This is a perfect example.
A 10% decrease in DPS won't cause you to go from 2 rounds to 5 unless there are other issues.

A nerf of 17-20%, however, will require a kiter in ToD part 2 to kite shadowfiends for 20% longer... and make no mistake... that instance specific lag will still be there.

[Calebro]

A nerf of 17-20%, however, will require a kiter in ToD part 2 to kite shadowfiends for 20% longer... and make no mistake... that instance specific lag will still be there.

I just typed up a response to this, and I realized it came off sounding much harsher than I intended. I couldn't think of a way to say it nicer, so this is all you get.

[emptysands]

Let's expand this one step further for the DPS lag issue. Considering how much memory it takes to store these things it may prove to be an option?? It's an old concept, one I resorted to once on a system that only needed ballpark accuracy, but needed to do some interesting trigonometric calculations and didn't have decimal point arithmetic available to it. Doing the full math was beyond question due to limited CPU cycles available. In the case of applying it to random number generation I don't see how it would alter the end result.

If the internal random number generator is really doing random(6) + random(6) + random(6) for 3d6, you could possibly use... *drum roll* a bunch of lookup tables! If you want a statistically equivalent method to simulate Xd6 (up to 5x or 6x, this will work) Simple mechanism: 1d6 is straightforward. 2d6 would use a lookup table with 36 combination (2,3,3,4,4,4,5,5,5,5,6,6,6,6,6,7,7,7,7,7,7,8,8,8,8 ,8,9,9,9,9,10,10,10,10,11,11,12) (or 1+1,1+2,2+1,1+3,2+2,3+1 etc).

Then access that lookup table with a single random(36) index on it - this time I "rolled a 3", which causes a lookup on the third element in the array, or that second three. Would it be faster? That's up to the developers and the pre-existing behind-the-scenes code. The array would grow to 216 elements for 3d6, over 1296 for 4d6, an array of a whole 7776 bytes for 5d6 and so on. But as I understand a single random lookup of arbitrary size indexing a static array could be far more efficient than 2 or more random(6) operations. You'll get the statistical equivalence with a single random() call. Of course you'll need to allow for all the major combos, but if you limited to 5d6 then statistically adding a pair of 5d6 lookups would do the trick and give statistically equivalent results. Does this make sense? Plus some d4, d8, d10, d12, and maybe even d20 multiples as appropriate could all take the load off the random number generator.

Of course, I don't even know what platforms DDO runs on (but I don't have to care, do I!) Can I have a gold star for nerdiness now please?

One of the other problems with random generation is entropy. Another reason why pre-generation is often used - smooth out the random load peaks.

The other option is dynamic dps/hp scaling. Most lag seems to occur when attacking large fixed HP objects - ie. bosses or portals. Why not dynamically half the number of attack calculations during these periods - just start dup attack 1/4, 2/5, and 3/6 in the default chain and 1/4/7, 2/5/8, 3/6/9 in the tempest III chain.

It's likely the statistical result will be the same over a 2-10 min combat event.

[Borror0]

[...] that instance specific lag will still be there.

You've repeated this so many times already that it's safe to assume that both Eladrin and Tolero at least read it once, if not more. Surely, that will have made them look into it deeper if they didn't already. Repeating yourself again is unnecessary, and bordering on annoying.

[Dentali]

Heaven forbid they ever put +1 into Depths of Darkness. You'll be in there lagging it out with your level 20 FOTM build, ruining an otherwise perfect Dungeons and Dragons experience.

I take it back Eladrin. Don't balance character vs. environment. Just put a button at the beggining of the quest that completes it with maximum reward. That will solve lag.

How do you propose they are going to draw people into a game that just lost a massive amount of players? They already barely draw in any new players as it is.

[bobbryan2]

You've repeated this so many times already that it's safe to assume that both Eladrin and Tolero at least read it once, if not more. Surely, that will have made them look into it deeper if they didn't already. Repeating yourself again is unnecessary, and bordering on annoying.

I could bring up a great many examples to prove that wrong.

DA in Bastion of Power should be sufficient. As that was probably the biggest problematic quest before the DA changes went in, and remains that way.

Big changes go in first.

Changing specific instances comes much later, because it usually gets tacked onto design cycles 2-3 updates away. At least in my experience.