Devs: Can we talk about removing Dungeon Alert

[Thrudh]

Arbitrary game mechanic is arbitrary, and not in the spirit of D&D.

I'd like to point out that I agree with this. Even though I come across as defending DA, I don't really like it.

Remove it please

And replace it with what? Give us a better mechanic that will force people to kill monsters... You want every quest refitted with doors or force barriers that won't open until a certain number of bad guys are killed? I suppose that's a possible (but ugly solution).

DA is just another part of the game at this point. If you kill everything, in 98% of the quests you'll never even see it. If you kill most things, you can still run by the more annoying encounters and not have any issues with DA (maybe a short green alert).

DA is an ugly arbitrary mechanic... I agree..

It's also trivially easy to work around.

[Thrudh]

And the WF Titan pre-raid... maze area purple side, what a pain in the ****ing ass!

Yes, that and Bastion and New Invasion really need to be looked at.

[Thrudh]

I think maybe a better thing, that would be relatively easy, would be to give monsters a speed boost, and a reach boost, when DA goes up, so that running away doesn't prevent being attacked. This would be a sort of workaround for the lousy AI that has trouble hitting targets that are running away.

That's not a bad idea...

[PumpkinSpiced]

I am getting harried just thinking about DA. Hate it........hate it...........hate it.

I've been playing since 2006 and have seen many changes throughout this game, and I think dungeon alert was one of the more unnecessary changes that were made. Supposed to reduce lag? Hah. Lag might be worse now than it ever was, what next, 7 people raids because 12 causes too much lag? Hehe. I know we'll never see a retro-DDO, but it would be nice.

[Devonian]

Arbitrary game mechanic is arbitrary, and not in the spirit of D&D. Remove it please.

Speaking as a D&D DM who has unwisely allowed a few huge sprawling combats with dozens of critters to track. Its wholly in keeping with the spirit of D&D

[protokon]

Speaking as a D&D DM who has unwisely allowed a few huge sprawling combats with dozens of critters to track. Its wholly in keeping with the spirit of D&D

That's beside the point. let's look at two primary type of players into a dungeon and see how it affects each of them:

Last night I ran fleshmaker's laboratory with my caster. I ran past everything and anything, pulling levers before I could get interrupted and going straight through the quest. very shortly I see the little icon pop up near my buffs, changing colors fast - soon it becomes red, and instead of getting annoying I just grin. I turn around, see all the clumsy golems in one little group, turn on maximize and empower and throw a firewall with a few delayed blast fireballs. dungeon alert now gone. If anything, that helped me conserve SP because I took out an efficient amount of mobs at the same time.

Now imagine the same instance with a melee. He does the same thing as a caster, but now he turns around and sees a horde of flesh golems and realizes he just became harried, even though nothing touched him. now they catch up to him, all have a boost to their AC, and hes flailing trying to get them off of him just to get pounded into the group because he can't get away.

I understand dungeon alert was primarily designed for the 2nd scenario - overwhelm a player and penalizing them for having so many mobs not killed. But what about the first scenario? casters are already considered overpowered compared to melees, but they can literally dance around dungeon alert as if it wasn't there.

DA as it is can only be described as broken and imbalanced in more than one way. personally I think we need to get rid of it entirely, but I have no idea what we could replace it with.

[Xionanx]

I would replace it with a kobold dancing in the middle of your screen, singing "Staying Alive!"

[nebogloee]

Depending on the layout - Bastion can be very painful with DA. One time our whole party had to move all the way through the first floor harried - took forever and more importantly NOT FUN. Worst part was the DA was at red after the second room - we had somehow aggro'd 20 some tieflings above us. (was running with a fvs - the aura might have made this run particularly bad imo)

[EpiKagEMO]

/signed

just a pain dealing with the noobs that zerg and die. though i guess its better to do it myself, no?

[deliph]

/signed..sort of

I like the DA..why shouldnt mobs mates hear them screaming and dying.....but the harried rubbish just makes no sence and is more irratating than a kobold with hicups!

[Jendrak]

While I truly hate DA I have to give credit where credit is due. While it was not completely responsible, it was a part of the solution for the insane lag that used to plague this game. Ohhhh and before the "but it's still laggy" comments come pouring in I'm talking about serious freaking stuff not the minor stuff we have now. Now, that being said I think the system needs to be re-worked for quests that have huge spawns (bastion and coal come to mind) that give the player no other option but to cause red alert.

My suggestion would be to have DA work on a % of total mobs in quest and not a flat number system like it has now. This should take care of the problems we are seeing and at the same time assure that people are actually clearing the mobs as the original system intended.

[ferrite]

Why was DA introduced? To discourage, but not prevent, zerging quests. That's an important distinction, as you CAN still zerg but at a price. But the real question that needs asked is this: Why do players feel the need to zerg quests to begin with? The answer is... drumroll..

--> The Quest is Boring <--

There. I said it. In violation of whatever gaming sacrament was placed on that pedestal, never to be spoken of except in hush-hush tone. Oh the shame.

Bleh. Players zerg quests because the quest is boring. Simple as that. Make an interesting quest, and players will no longer feel the need to zerg it. Heck they might even enjoy it. Yes stranger things have happened.

One of the best quests in the game IMHO is Partycrashers, involving a mix of combat, social interaction, planning (well not really, but still), good storyline, good narration, some slight humor, relatively decent music, a strong but not ridiculously OP boss fight optional for the level, etc. I've ran this at least a dozen times with different groups and different toons, and have yet to find a group that wants to zerg it, or is able to. This is a well designed, well thought out quest.

A few other quests are noteworthy: Acute Delirium for an interesting story and concept, The Sane Asylum for its unique way of presenting a challenging but not too difficult maze, and Tomb of the Tormented. But most of the others are regrettably either kill this or retrieve this item or solve this annoying puzzle, or survive this assault.

On a positive note the quality of quests do seem to be getting much better as the game matures. Oh and just kidding about the Tomb of the Tormented.. just wanted to check if you were still awake

[mutantbee]

Funny little DA story.

With my new Artificer and dog I have made DA happen spontaneously by attacking oozes.

Dog runs into room full of oozes, starts attacking (thus splitting them) and then I open up with the repeater, splitting them more. BOOM! DA! One time I even became harried for a few seconds before we killed enough. I think I had dozens of little ooze fragments going.

Good times. woot.

[grgurius]

I think maybe a better thing, that would be relatively easy, would be to give monsters a speed boost, and a reach boost, when DA goes up, so that running away doesn't prevent being attacked. This would be a sort of workaround for the lousy AI that has trouble hitting targets that are running away.

Dunno about this, running away should always be a viable option.

[MRH]

I actually like DA and do agree with the posts on certain quests that it gets out of hand.

ok, so if you planned on doing the quest..... lets say as an analogy, a quest where you had to infiltrate a base and recover an item from a room say thats near the end of the quest.

So would you
1 : just barge in the complex and run by all the guards on your way to end room ?
or
2 : take your time through the hallways and eliminate whatever you encountered on your way to end room?

well doing it #1 way , you will soon have the whole complex on High Alert

doing #2 way, you can eliminate what you come across so they don't Alert the rest of the complex.

I do think they should tweak it a bit, but don't think they should remove it.

If they did then all you would see are ppl just zergin ,pulling everything to middle or end of quest then bam FW BB etc and quest is finished..... thats not fun. And if casters can do that so easily now even with DA, then maybe DA needs to disable casters casting ability for a short time or something.

The intention of DA is fine, just needs tweaking

[Yan_PL]

Why was DA introduced? To discourage, but not prevent, zerging quests. That's an important distinction, as you CAN still zerg but at a price.

DA discourages from doing quests with multiple-layer structure of unpreventable aggro, from splitting group into sub-groups to do certain tasks.

Since DA first came out, there's been a lot of changes. One of which is notable is that ALL damage started to be amplified by precentages. Getting harried for no reason, or for getting hit by arrow? no. Arrow hitting for 150% of damage because of Red DA? Challenging, but not really annoying. I'd say it's discouraging, but letting you deal with it.

Partycrashers handle the zergrush problem by putting up indestructible barriers untill you kil some mobs. You can't zerg those.

Problem with DA is that it became less dangerous than annoying. Other problem is, that it often does not work properly.
If main reason for DA was to keep low number of AI needing to be run by server, there should be a better way to reduce that number than forcing players to kill everything. For example, lowering attention span, or reducing aggro follow range of mobs, based on damage the mob actually taken - if you hurt something badly it would either run away, or pursue you, then lose aggro and reset. This way, server get less mobs to worry about.

[noinfo]

Remove grazing hits too while you're at it. Both abominations were added together...

Now that is the perfect word for both Abomination

[waterboytkd]

That's beside the point. let's look at two primary type of players into a dungeon and see how it affects each of them:

Last night I ran fleshmaker's laboratory with my caster. I ran past everything and anything, pulling levers before I could get interrupted and going straight through the quest. very shortly I see the little icon pop up near my buffs, changing colors fast - soon it becomes red, and instead of getting annoying I just grin. I turn around, see all the clumsy golems in one little group, turn on maximize and empower and throw a firewall with a few delayed blast fireballs. dungeon alert now gone. If anything, that helped me conserve SP because I took out an efficient amount of mobs at the same time.

Now imagine the same instance with a melee. He does the same thing as a caster, but now he turns around and sees a horde of flesh golems and realizes he just became harried, even though nothing touched him. now they catch up to him, all have a boost to their AC, and hes flailing trying to get them off of him just to get pounded into the group because he can't get away.

I understand dungeon alert was primarily designed for the 2nd scenario - overwhelm a player and penalizing them for having so many mobs not killed. But what about the first scenario? casters are already considered overpowered compared to melees, but they can literally dance around dungeon alert as if it wasn't there.

DA as it is can only be described as broken and imbalanced in more than one way. personally I think we need to get rid of it entirely, but I have no idea what we could replace it with.

This. DA hurts melees. Casters are largely undisturbed by it. That's bad.

I think maybe a better thing, that would be relatively easy, would be to give monsters a speed boost, and a reach boost, when DA goes up, so that running away doesn't prevent being attacked. This would be a sort of workaround for the lousy AI that has trouble hitting targets that are running away.

I like this. It hurts everyone equally, and when I'm running my melee and the zerging caster racks up red DA, I wouldn't necessarily just die to the first group of mobs I come across because I can't hit them and they can't miss me.

[AMDarkwolf]

i'd change DA to be a little more complicated than it is now, but work the same.
Basically the way it works now, is somehow, if 10 bats at the bottom of an endless pit know about you, somehow that trio of ogres in the forest outside 'notice' you. This is fail in every way.

Alert should only 'alert' the mobs within the range of the mobs who 'notice' the player, no more. This is why its stupid for dungeons like bastion, where somehow mobs can see you though 2foot thick floors and walls.

Wish the dev's would do something, but I know, like so many others do, that very little of what the 'player' says goes into consideration when they design new 'features'

Actually I think they should just give all casters unlimited mana, a special FOM vs DA, and call it a day. :P

[Cogdoc]

This. DA hurts melees. Casters are largely undisturbed by it. That's bad.

Dear Waterboy,

I just want to point out in reaction to your quoted statement, that casters are greatly endangered by reducing their movement, even more than a melee. Although they retain their spellcasting effectiveness, a caster will always be more squishy than a melee, thus depending on mobility and dodging incoming attacks more to survive. I think it puts them into the same bucket with melee in terms of DA, or if not the same, not far away.

Cogdoc