I dont understand what the devs consider fun

[aristarchus1000]

Can't they make some mobs not trigger dungeon alert? For example, i am pretty sure that you can aggro the skellie archers in wiz king without adding to your dungeon alert...

Why don't they just do that for these massive spawn fights?

[Qhualor]

i was in stormcleave outpost yesterday and the first mob i fought was the kobolds to the right after you enter the quest. DA went green.

i think DA is borked if something scripted causes it because ive noticed that as well in other quests.

[munificence]

I think what the devs consider fun is making players babysit an NPC, then having a mechanic where if her "shield" dies, a Hand can come and drag her back to the beginning of the dungeon, forcing someone to make a 10 minute run to retriever her while everyone waits.

That's what it seems like to me the devs consider fun.

[quickgrif]

The goal wasn't to slow them down. The goal was to make them turn around and kill stuff every so often so the servers wouldn't get overloaded with CPU computations.

Before DA, people would run through the dungeons and kill NOTHING but the end boss... After DA, people (casters mostly) would still run through the dungeons, but at least they would stop every once in a while, and kill a mass of mobs.

In that respect, DA is a resounding success. It accomplished its goals perfectly.

Yes yes I know why they did it, but to be honest it still does not slow down the caster

much or at all at times which was the reason for the lag. The lag coming from so many

mobs being active could have

been a chance for Turbine to clean the code up and find a way to enhance the AI as to

not have mobs sit there and throw daggers at a wall after the players are well past.... but

we have what we have and they are not going to fix it, I don't know why we bother

discussing it when the devs are not going to change jack on it.

To OP bug report it every time it happens. DA should not be triggered by an encounter

alone.

[fco-karatekid]

I think that many can agree this this is the problem with Dungeon Alert. It is a global policy that has been applied to a full collection of quests, each of them with individual and dynamic encounter types.

If they could change Dungeon alert to include some kind of EncounterMobNumberThreshold, and then specify that threshold in each quest (or in key spawn/problem areas in each quest), that might do a lot to address people's complaints about it.

Example: lets say for simplicity's sake DA goes off to a new level every 10 mobs. DA goes green in every quest once the 11th mob is aggro'd. If you have a special ambush at the beginning of a quest with 15 mobs, then the EncounterMobNumberThreshold is set to 15. This would prevent DA green going off until the 16th mob was aggro'd. System resource intensive zerging is still controlled while not punishing the singular encounter. If someone ran passed the ambush in calculated risk/zerd, the DA would catch up immediately by going to yellow on the 21st mob (6 more beyond the initial ambush).

Building some kind of intelligence into this for randomly/automatically spawning/summoning mobs would also be helpful.

And for the other person attacking my reading comprehension... I read just fine, thanks. What you wrote read fairly authoritative to me as if you were speaking in defense of DA. Glad that you were instead voicing opinion on how it ought to work rather than stating how you know it to presently work.

This precisely... House of Death Undone last night - solo with hire, first time through. Got to servants quarters and OPENED A DOOR> STANDING STILL IN THE DOORWAY. DA Green, then Yellow, then harried. The mechanic needs to be tweaked in places where Turbine, NOT THE PLAYER, trigger DA.

EDIT: and what's with the 2% harried upon ANY SINGLE MOB seeing you?

[MrkGrismer]

If the real reason for Dungeon Alert was too many mob AIs being active lagging the server they could have (should have even) simply put a timeout on the mob AI such that it if is unable to damage/hit a PC within a set period (5 mins or so) that it goes back to inactive (basically 'whiteballs' and then turns off, after a brief check to see if any PC is in LOS). THAT would have taken care of the issue without the collateral damage DA causes.

[Missing_Minds]

Yes yes I know why they did it, but to be honest it still does not slow down the caster much or at all at times which was the reason for the lag.

The lag coming from so many mobs being active could have been a chance for Turbine to clean the code up and find a way to enhance the AI as to not have mobs sit there and throw daggers at a wall after the players are well past.... but we have what we have and they are not going to fix it, I don't know why we bother discussing it when the devs are not going to change jack on it.

2 things.

1) You forgot, they also nerfed charming. You have to dominate to have a mob follow you now. This "army" was one way that was causing lag as well.
2) They didn't create their own AI since about Mod 3. They have a licensed where upon they can only tweak. They have stated they have reached about the limit of what the AI can do. Because it is licensed there isn't a whole lot they can do to the code directly, so legally, they can't do jack. Not until they find a new AI they could use and work on the integration of it.

[quickgrif]

2 things.

1) You forgot, they also nerfed charming. You have to dominate to have a mob follow you now. This "army" was one way that was causing lag as well.
2) They didn't create their own AI since about Mod 3. They have a licensed where upon they can only tweak. They have stated they have reached about the limit of what the AI can do. Because it is licensed there isn't a whole lot they can do to the code directly, so legally, they can't do jack. Not until they find a new AI they could use and work on the integration of it.

Hmm got a link for number 2 kind of curious.

[Thrudh]

If the real reason for Dungeon Alert was too many mob AIs being active lagging the server they could have (should have even) simply put a timeout on the mob AI such that it if is unable to damage/hit a PC within a set period (5 mins or so) that it goes back to inactive (basically 'whiteballs' and then turns off, after a brief check to see if any PC is in LOS). THAT would have taken care of the issue without the collateral damage DA causes.

And then most everyone would learn to run past every single mob.

Which would make the game worse.

[the613]

OP, what makes you think the devs consider fun at all?

[MrkGrismer]

And then most everyone would learn to run past every single mob.

Which would make the game worse.

Why would that make the game worse?

You still have to kill X number of mobs to open Door Y, you still have to defeat bosses to get their chests, you still have to complete quest objectives. There used to be a time where sneaking past all the mobs unnoticed was a valid way of completing a quest. Now you can only do that in certain quests and only if your idea of fun is Metal Gear Solid: Virtual Training (or whatever the heck the model for the Blockade Buster quest is... is it even possible to stealth that quest?)

[Kinerd]

I've seen at least two posts where people said they ENJOYED Caught in the Web. Four now if you count the two posts in this thread. I've seen about half a dozen others who have rated Caught in the Web as 'OK but I don't see running it much.'

Aha, but I said "near enough" to universal derision. The question is whether CitW is poorly made, not so poorly made that literally everyone hates it. You've found 4 people out of what, a hundred? Two hundred? I stand by my point.

The goal wasn't to slow them down. The goal was to make them turn around and kill stuff every so often so the servers wouldn't get overloaded with CPU computations.

I agree that this is what the devs said... but it is absolute **** (and I have no doubt they rolled their eyes as they typed it). They could just as easily have changed whatever computation non-DA has to regular DA without introducing the obnoxious harry and boss power up mechanisms, and it would have been more conducive to their goals! You can't add new mechanics and have less computation. Voodoo computer science, if you will.

This is on top of the fact that Turbine obviously and clearly does not care nearly as much about lag as other concerns, including but not limited to new content. I'm not saying this is morally repulsive (for the moment), I'm just saying it is what it is, and therefore we shouldn't facilely buy into their trotting out lag remediation as an excuse for X change.

You would think with a new pack they'd ramp up the XP to encourage people to buy it.

Honestly, I am not surprised when a new pack has atrocious XP, because I ascribe to the position that the highest levels of Turbine do not have a firm grasp on XP or for that matter anything else in the game. It is easy to look at the outright bait and switch of the update 12 challenges and say "aha! Turbine pumped the XP to make sales, then nerfed the pants off it when they had saturated the market, the wily devils!", but there are just too many releases of poor to terrible XP. It's not a lack of intelligence, they just don't care to know.

In a way this is comforting because it removes malice from the equation, but obviously it is also extremely discomforting to know without any doubt that the people in charge of this game are completely indifferent to it.

[Singular]

The goal wasn't to slow them down. The goal was to make them turn around and kill stuff every so often so the servers wouldn't get overloaded with CPU computations.

Before DA, people would run through the dungeons and kill NOTHING but the end boss... After DA, people (casters mostly) would still run through the dungeons, but at least they would stop every once in a while, and kill a mass of mobs.

In that respect, DA is a resounding success. It accomplished its goals perfectly.

Is that how DS reduces lag?!? By forcing people to remove the extra equations from the server???

Crazy! Why not just turn their computations down to "pause," or some such thing, when PCs are out of range?

[Singular]

I think what the devs consider fun is making players babysit an NPC, then having a mechanic where if her "shield" dies, a Hand can come and drag her back to the beginning of the dungeon, forcing someone to make a 10 minute run to retriever her while everyone waits.

That's what it seems like to me the devs consider fun.

Probably Devs enjoy programming. And pizza, I would guess. Beer and pizza.

[Missing_Minds]

Hmm got a link for number 2 kind of curious.

not any more. it was posted quite a bit back.... but I think within the last year or so. I could be wrong.

Probably Devs enjoy programming. And pizza, I would guess. Beer and pizza.

You forgot bacon and pastries.

[the613]

the devs probably enjoy watching us play this lag filled game, dealing with ****ing idiots and (from what I hear) bad customer support. I would too if I was in their shoes, it's hilarious we stay on and actually pay money when there are other games with better graphics, less lag, and every update doesn't screw over the players. Honestly, the only reason I stick with this game is the community is much better then that of most MMOs. See the healer complain threads? If we would all moved to a different game, those would be 1000x worse after a week. Us, not liking the passive role, and the games old community berating us and yelling at us to "just shut up and hjeels us!"

I personally stay because this community is 1000x better then most other MMOs, and in my mind, the community makes the game. If I thought their was a decent MMO out there with as good a community, I would swap in an instant.

[Uska]

Another example of this I can think of is the red named medusa near the end of The Lord of Stone. Along with the aforementioned disco balls she tosses out some magical poison that does 1000-1400 damage to you in one shot. I don't know any level 17-20s with enough hit points to stand up to that.

I wasn't soloing either, she wiped our full group. Not sure what kind of fun that is supposed to be.

Your kidding never had a wipe against her seen her kill some that were prepared but it did use to be easier with poiosn immunity but drink a poison pot right before you attack her it lasts long enough to kill her as she goes done rather quickly

[arkonas]

Another example of this I can think of is the red named medusa near the end of The Lord of Stone. Along with the aforementioned disco balls she tosses out some magical poison that does 1000-1400 damage to you in one shot. I don't know any level 17-20s with enough hit points to stand up to that.

I wasn't soloing either, she wiped our full group. Not sure what kind of fun that is supposed to be.

wait your complaining about poison? you can just drink a pot to avoid that damage. Why you would let it get there i dont know. you have 60 seconds to remove it. I want trouble or spells i cant deal with. I dont want to steam roll over everything. if you cant handle it dont do elite. get better items. better saves etc.

[Jingwei]

The lethal medusa poison has a different icon that regular poison, at take around 1 minute to go off. You can watch the timer on the debuff bar, and drink a remove poison potion before the timer gets all the way down.

[bartharok]

Methinks a lor of the ones complaining about the game would be unhappy even if they could start the toon at 25 with all the gear in the game. As soon as they bumped into anything they couldnt breeze through they would complain about the devs being stupid, and if they couldnt get customer support to help them breeze through everything again in 5 mins then the support would be bad.

I think what the devs would consider to be fun would be to be able to make any bit of work without having the forum flooded with complaints