Devs: Can we talk about removing Dungeon Alert

[GentlemanAndAScholar]

This has a been a pain point since it was first announced and tested for Mod9. While I understand the motivation of not wanting players to zerg through a dungeon without killing stuff on the way, there are quests that DA just doesn't make any sense because these quests have mechanics that cannot be avoided. Coalescence Chamber being the number one in the list, IMO. It's already an aggravating quest with all the Mario-jumpy required, add DA that goes from nothing to red several times in the quest with no player interaction, like waves of bats, the ambush, etc. You can literally kill every single mob as you go along and then out of nowhere: Red skull, Harried, enemies buffed, etc. I've seen it happening on "kill x number of such" type of quests. Supposedly was an anti-zerg measure, but when the system fails when there's literally no zerging involved but by the quest mechanics/design, I think it's time to take another look at the system. Yes I'm sure "we're all uber and we running on red skulls is the only way to roll", but that doesn't justify, IMO, the fact that we need to put up with a flawed anti-zerg system that actually penalizes the players for doing what they're supposed to (killing mobs as they go, etc.).

[Tunst]

needless to say..

bats cant talk.

[Captain_Wizbang]

/signed

Keeping scaling I can see, but the DA thing could go bye-bye asap.

[bruha118]

/signed

Down with DA!!

[Qzipoun]

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

[SupTyr]

imo the da system should take the cr of the mobs into account. so a swarm of bats which have a lower cr doesn't raise the da to red suddenly.

[dkyle]

Eh... outside of the places where it's blatantly broken (Bastion, Coal Chamber), it's just one more challenge to overcome that makes the game more interesting. I wouldn't say it's ideal as it is, but I think it's better than not having it. Ideal would be better AI and hit detection on moving targets, but that's a tall order to fill.

[Xionanx]

Considering the level of outcry that occurred when it was added and the distinct LACK of a dev response to it then, I rate the likelyhood of DA being removed slim to none.

You will be hard pressed to find anyone who plays the game at the "vet" level who thinks it was a good addition or added anything worthwhile to the experience. I would love to see it removed, just not gonna hold my breathe for it.

[Ugumagre]

I will wait until Memnir or Mr. Cow say something to agree with them

I just have no idea if DA is good or bad. Really, no joking.

[Cyr]

In case anyone here has forgotten my many rants about DA...

/signed

[Hellllboy]

DA is bad-and appears to be getting worse. Some quests are completely unplayable as a result of the solution they put in place to make our game more "playable"...so fix it some other way.

/signed

[Cetus]

I don't like being told how to run my quests. Versatilite and aggressive playstyles are fun for me, DA was always an enormous nuisance- nowhere near challenging.

According to the devs, they confirmed that DA reduced lag (If my memory serves right), but having a hundred scorps and bats each contribute as much to alert as if they were 100 devils is plainly a broken mechanic.

anyway, as if this will mean anything,

/signed

[AmatsukaIncarnate]

I don't like DA in situations like that where its unavoidable.

I get that Turbine doesn't want people simply just running through a quest (which I still think should NOT be allowed...) but when DA is unavoidable for no good reason, it is very annoying...

[Qzipoun]

imo the da system should take the cr of the mobs into account. so a swarm of bats which have a lower cr doesn't raise the da to red suddenly.

CR isn't the issue. Dungeon Alert is a 'blanket system' applied to all quests equally. Quests are individually 'hand-designed'... why should a game-wide system be implemented over them I have no idea :/

(And that's without discussing the actual issues with the system itself...)

[gloopygloop]

If Dungeon Alert actually did reduce lag in any meaningful way, then I'd have a lot less problem with it.

Since it doesn't reduce lag in any meaningful way, then I'll have to just stick to my opinion that it is a needless annoyance that only exists to aggrivate players who have melee characters.

[Xenostrata]

DA was implemented to reduce the number of active AIs in an instance, thereby reducing the amount of lag that they caused. I wasn't here to notice the difference, but have heard that it made some amount of change to overall laginess.

However, lag in areas where having impeded movement will NOT reduce the number of active AIs (Schemes of the Enemy end fight, Devil Assault, and other one-room battles) SHOULD have DA removed since it is doing nothing there to reduce lag, just annoy players.

[Gorbadoc]

DA was implemented to reduce the number of active AIs in an instance, thereby reducing the amount of lag that they caused. I wasn't here to notice the difference, but have heard that it made some amount of change to overall laginess.

If memory serves, it wasn't just a problem of AIs in an instance; it was AIs on a server. I could rush past monster after monster in Splinterskull Fortress without any noticeable change in game lag. Yet, when DA was implemented, server-wide lag seemed to decrease during peak hours.

My suspicion is that, when *I* rushed past monsters, I was using above-average server resources, but this was still just a few drops in the bucket. When *everyone* rushed past monsters, those drops added up, and the servers had trouble handling so many AIs per player.


For what it's worth, I kind of like how the devs tried to take advantage of DA in the end fight of Schemes of the Enemy. The dogs are pretty obviously meant to jack up DA; they're so easy to avoid, your only incentive to fight them is to keep DA down so you can hurt the cannon faster.

[~econner1]

/signed

I hate the DA. If I have 1000 monsters chasing me, I will be running faster, not slower.

[Cetus]

/signed

I hate the DA. If I have 1000 monsters chasing me, I will be running faster, not slower.

haha thats great!

+1 to you sir

[Chai]

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