Hey Lynnabel - please fix!

[TDarkchylde]

(re: orc boots) Done.

Thank you, you are awesome and that was seriously annoying the hell out of me.

[Dayko_DAllen]

I find myself in this situation constantly. Either enemies will notice me through walls, and then the spells they shoot off go through the wall, or all of the enemies rush me at once. It of course isnt as much of a problem in the q's where certain milestones spawn enemy mobs, but for example, I was running the bloody crypt and as soon as i got in one of the subdivisions for the torches, all of the enemies on that section of the dungeon swarmed me, Lucky I was a warlock with web , but this has happened to me in numerous quests, and I just find it hard to see how one would play an assassin in a situation where enemies are noticing you from across the map.

[QuantumFX]

Could you fix the lava in the fire and ice portion of Tempest Spine? If your soul stone drops in, you can't jump out to get a raise.

[Aelonwy]

You might notice that if you are DCing due to lag your timers continue to count down. When you have major lag, you can't trust the current timer status, because there is no "update" from the server, and you are simply seeing a counter on your end. I wouldn't call this a bug myself.

The thing is the icon continued to count down in quest when I reconnected. At the very least it should be considered a visual bug. I did log in that character after lunch today and the icon displayed 56+ mins then I entered a quest just to check and it remained the same. So behind the screen everything is fine but when I DCed and then relogged into the game I was very upset to see a MAJOR SLAYER BOOST icon counting down in quest.

Point being I didn't notice anything fishy while I was DCing, it was afterward when I re-entered the game that the slayer boost icon was displaying incorrectly that it was and had been counting down in quest. People are not going to react pleasantly to such store bought boosts behaving counter to their description (counting down in quests) even if its just a display issue, especially if they are not even aware that there could be such a weird display issue. I had never seen such an issue before myself and I can only express my relief that it was a display issue and that I did not feel compelled to deal with CS which is apparently very busy with much larger issues.

[nokowi]

I find myself in this situation constantly. Either enemies will notice me through walls, and then the spells they shoot off go through the wall, or all of the enemies rush me at once. It of course isnt as much of a problem in the q's where certain milestones spawn enemy mobs, but for example, I was running the bloody crypt and as soon as i got in one of the subdivisions for the torches, all of the enemies on that section of the dungeon swarmed me, Lucky I was a warlock with web , but this has happened to me in numerous quests, and I just find it hard to see how one would play an assassin in a situation where enemies are noticing you from across the map.

I myself will put up with a few instances of mass swarming, or the lessen version of everyone in a room, if it occurs when I actually fail a stealth roll, or get taken out of stealth by something attacking me, or me bumping a mob, or a random arrow hitting me, or leaving stealth to interact with an object, or many of the other ways players get removed from stealth. I won't play if it happens through no failure of the player, or makes it impossible to play a stealth melee toon (making running into the room out of stealth superior to using stealth). A working stealth mechanic already has the costs of provoking that huge swarm you mentioned, while only having single target damage. All we ask for is a working stealth mechanic.

If a player in a group runs into the room second, no stealth mechanics are actually ever used. If mob has agro on something, no stealth check is ever made. The confusion comes from both ranged assassins (experiencing less of the issues), and melee assassins that play clean up duty, not realizing that a stealth check was never made when they are not the first to enter a room. Stealth is certainly fine if you never use it -> these players should really learn to run into the room second out of stealth, as the results are the same. Stealth happens when you enter rooms before anyone else, and try to take actions ahead of the party.

[zehnvhex]

It doesn't need to be like it used to be. Everything does not work fine now.

I'm not saying stealth in and of itself is working fine Nok. Stealth play is obviously in a really bad spot. What I mean is you can get by as assassin rogue because it's not like you're up a creek without a paddle once the entire dungeon is aggro on you. I was still able to complete quests on R1 on mine.

It's just not as fun/sneaky as it used to be and I'm guessing Lynn just didn't play a rogue ever prior to the recent changes. She has nothing to compare it to so her only perception is, "I don't see what the problem is, it looks fine to me."

[Lynnabel]

I'm not saying stealth in and of itself is working fine Nok. Stealth play is obviously in a really bad spot. What I mean is you can get by as assassin rogue because it's not like you're up a creek without a paddle once the entire dungeon is aggro on you. I was still able to complete quests on R1 on mine.

It's just not as fun/sneaky as it used to be and I'm guessing Lynn just didn't play a rogue ever prior to the recent changes. She has nothing to compare it to so her only perception is, "I don't see what the problem is, it looks fine to me."

That was my fourth life as a rogue. Please try not to make assumptions about me and my playstyle, I hate having to "prove myself" and it adds an unnecessary wedge between my interactions with the community as a developer. I want the best for DDO, nothing else.

[Gratch]

Has QA/Devs played "In the Belly of the Beast" on elite recently? Despite killing everything before the Arena fight and during the arena fight, most of the waves of mobs (drow, then drider, then drow battlemasters) spiked DA to red alert within 5s of releasing each waves. There were also some of the crowd up above active casting things - as well is blur/invis'ed/unfightable mobs on the arena floor. Something isn't quite right with that scripting or mob wave sizing with that quest.

[Lynnabel]

Has QA/Devs played "In the Belly of the Beast" on elite recently? Despite killing everything before the Arena fight and during the arena fight, most of the waves of mobs (drow, then drider, then drow battlemasters) spiked DA to red alert within 5s of releasing each waves. There were also some of the crowd up above active casting things - as well is blur/invis'ed/unfightable mobs on the arena floor. Something isn't quite right with that scripting or mob wave sizing with that quest.

It's entirely possible some extra mobs are aggroing when that quest stage is set. I'll take a look. Does it happen every time?

[Ebondevil]

Has QA/Devs played "In the Belly of the Beast" on elite recently? Despite killing everything before the Arena fight and during the arena fight, most of the waves of mobs (drow, then drider, then drow battlemasters) spiked DA to red alert within 5s of releasing each waves. There were also some of the crowd up above active casting things - as well is blur/invis'ed/unfightable mobs on the arena floor. Something isn't quite right with that scripting or mob wave sizing with that quest.

If you have someone sitting up top side (even if they are in a safe place), and not down in the arena when the fight starts, then all the mobs in the viewing gallery aggro and it goes Red DA Instantly.

[Grace_ana]

Well, its been 7+ months since U33.2 and here you telling us everything is fine, despite very detailed posts to the contrary, and prior dev responses that they would like to look into it if they have time (many months ago).

The assassins that post on the forums are largely letting their toons gather dust - spend a few minutes in the rogue threads if you have doubts.

Some of the confusion is that ranged assassin is still mostly functional (less affected by broken agro mechanics), but melee is completely broken (it's functionally better to not use stealth than to use it).

Actions speak louder than words, and the actions say SSG doesn't care enough to do something about it. The words say "we might get around to it", with no update for months, and the actions say "we simply don't care".

I'd like to have my toon back, even if someone is picking their way through content at 1/10th the pace of everyone else by ranging toons one at a time - it's a totally inefficient play style, and one mostly used by casual players. It's hardly an issue worth breaking entirely unrelated play style over, especially one that is as unique as stealth play.

My main is a pure assassin, and I almost never play her anymore. Like, once in the past six months or so. Stealth and aggro are so broken it's no longer fun, and I LOVED my assassin. The details have already been described in numerous threads, so I see no need to rehash here. And yes, hide and move silently scores are very high for her.

[nokowi]

My main is a pure assassin, and I almost never play her anymore. Like, once in the past six months or so. Stealth and aggro are so broken it's no longer fun, and I LOVED my assassin. The details have already been described in numerous threads, so I see no need to rehash here. And yes, hide and move silently scores are very high for her.

It's disappointing to see an SSG employee make such comments, and defend them because they have 4 rogue lives. With bravery bonus, players frequently level to 30 without learning builds. I am a 3x completionist, and I knew enough on the PC to let others that truly understand builds lead the discussions about builds I had only played 3 times. I usually spent my time listening and asking questions for clarity rather than telling those that played a build many more times.

Given the complaints from people who actually play the build throughout many agro changes, we can judge an SSG employee by the accuracy of their comments. Being completely unaware of any issues, telling us everything is fine, and making gross misstatements, such as it being about not being able to grab mobs one at a time shows a huge misunderstanding. I heard nothing about understanding melee assassin or playing at the front of the party in those 4 lives, which I will infer means an inability to decipher the comments made by those that use stealth.

If devs truly want feedback, here is some:

1) If you don't want to be judged, LISTEN to your players instead of telling us about your self described causal experience.

2) Melee assassin is BROKEN as defined by those that understand stealth and agro. Players are not going to pay for a 12 month VIP when you leave their characters broken for 7+ months. They are not going to resubscribe once they let their subscription lapse, because you have shown them directly that you are perfectly willing to not even look at or fix what you broke in that same amount of time.

3) Have the decency to quickly fix what you broke instead of turning players away from the game. DDO needs more unique play styles, not less. If one employee can enjoy assassin as a self-defined casual player, that doesn't mean it is fine for those that enjoy skill and challenge. Melee Assassin was supposed to be an end-game build, where it is worth your time to find gear and gain past lives. As it is now, it is nothing like this.

4) Lynnabel was doing a fantastic job this thread, right up to the point where they told much more experienced players they were wrong, without the depth of understanding to do so. I suggest not describing your casual experiences and instead listening to your players, particularly those with the biggest depth of knowledge to give you useful feedback.

[HastyPudding]

I got a rather strange bug, so not sure if you can help with it.

I've been grinding out some racial past lives with guildies. We did Tomb of the Tormented last night (as we have done every life so far). The problem is if the wight spirit twisters (wight casters) are a champion and they cast the spell crushing despair, the spell goes off multiple times, causes a big lag spike, and deals a tremendous amount of damage (due to added champion damage + magic damage for each cast). This is the only quest I've had this kind of trouble in, so far that I can remember.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

I've seen quite a few people here and elsewhere talking about this. That specific change was actually a reversion to our previous shared aggro system. It is working as intended that you can no longer pull mobs by simply standing outside of their aggro range and hitting them one at a time. Monsters thematically will absolutely notice that you are shooting their friend with arrows :P

I think you misunderstand. It's not the 'shared' aggro that's the problem, per se. I get that hitting a single mob in a group will aggro the group. BUT it should NOT aggro a completely *separate* group that is farther away. In other words, if I hit mob A located at position zero, his buddy (B) at position 30-ft is aggro'd (along with "B1", "B2", "B3"...) - I get that - but there are occasions when hitting A triggers B (as it should), but then mob C, which is located at 30-ft from B or 60-ft from A is also aggro'd (presumably because B triggers C, which IMO should not be the case, as C is in a different group from A). And D at 30-ft from C, which is 60-ft from B, which is 90-ft from A is also aggro'd. Etc. That's the 'cascading effect' that sometimes happens. At least, it's the best explanation I can come up with for what I have observed.

Yes, this is the problem I have with the new aggro. I don't mind that everybody around the guy you plink gets mad at you. It's when they call everyone in the NEXT room... who calls everyone in the NEXT room, and so on and so forth. I was running Cabal once and plunked a guy, and it very quickly scaled the DA up to red... and just as quickly scaled down as stuff went too far away and got the white circle of I-don't-care-anymore and went back to start. Cleared out everything that didn't, had a bit of a breather, then started again when I got to the first mobs that had gotten bored and wandered off.

2. I wanna shoot a projectile NEAR a mob, and have it wake up, and come look for me. I don't want it to ignore it. I don't want EVERY mob on the continent of Khorvaire to come to me either.

Yes please, I miss being able to draw stuff away like that.

3. Spiders/animals telling the entire world where we are. Sure, they have life sense, tremor sense, but they talk to every mob everywhere? They direct like a hound dog? I can see mobs following a spider/dog, not getting mental telepathy from it like an Ohio class submarine radar array.

Similarly, anything with true seeing. You're invised, even if somebody is shouting "There's somebody over there!" and pointing vigorously, the other mobs shouldn't know EXACTLY where you are. Cranked-up awareness, sure, but charging directly to you, even if you move, even if you move out of LOS from the guy with TS? No.[/QUOTE]

[Stoner81]

I pulled the above in WGU tonight in a regular chest but yet the crafting machine says it's not craftable (i.e I can't disjunct it to make it ready for crafting on). It's not a named item since it's lootgen so it should be craftable.

Thank you.

Stoner81.

[JonD]

The Quest Journal entry for "Harbinger of Madness: Making the Monsters" has "</rgb>" visible in the description, as well as a backslash at the start of the last sentence.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

I pulled the above in WGU tonight in a regular chest but yet the crafting machine says it's not craftable (i.e I can't disjunct it to make it ready for crafting on). It's not a named item since it's lootgen so it should be craftable.

Thank you.

Stoner81.

WAI now, none of the "wondrous items" (which the compasses count as) are craftable anymore, because people found ways to make high-level stuff at ML1 on them. Which really sucks for the compasses because they were the best source for craftable trinkets. They kept referring to them as "special items" from Stormhorns and Wheloon end reward lists, but I believe they can technically drop from anywhere.

Also, wow, I didn't even know they could come with slots. Now that would've made a heck of a craftable trinket!

[zehnvhex]

It's entirely possible some extra mobs are aggroing when that quest stage is set. I'll take a look. Does it happen every time?

The DA spiking happens in a lot of quests with large pulls. Happens almost all the time with the battlemaster stage of Belly especially since you have like, 30 of them spawn at once. Honestly with how this zone is set up it would make more sense just to turn red alert off entirely (if that's even possible?)

Personally I only have stands mobs agro if someone isn't in the arena because they arrived ~slightly~ late (are in the first area when I trigger the fight). Don't seem to have any issue if they zone in once it starts though.

[zehnvhex]

That was my fourth life as a rogue. Please try not to make assumptions about me and my playstyle, I hate having to "prove myself" and it adds an unnecessary wedge between my interactions with the community as a developer. I want the best for DDO, nothing else.

It's an educated guess based on your comments. You say that stealth play is working fine despite numerous people saying otherwise. Search AI has been broken for months now and it seems that archers especially now have homing arrows and will 100% break stealth unless you juke them. You can no longer evade mobs and essentially 'reset' aggro. I mean the other assumptions I could make are far less kind but you strike me as not the oblivious type so I'm more inclined to believe you just haven't experienced the stealth play we're talking about.

I mean, I don't doubt that you've played rogues before. I've also been playing them for 11 years now and stealth has gone through many changes over the years. It's just not fun anymore. Partially because of far too many forced encounters, partially because of aggro linking, partially because stealth isn't working like it used to and so on.

Telling us otherwise and then saying if we don't just accept your answer you're going to stop posting is not the kind of community interaction we want.

We love what you're doing with the fixes, everybody agrees. You won't find anyone that appreciates what you're doing more then people like me who have been harping for -ages- to get all these small things fixed. u36 is shaping up to be one of the best updates in DDO history thanks to you. I mean you could release it with -just- the stuff you've posted in this thread and I would be happy as a clam.

But blocking people or telling people that they're not allowed to try to figure out where you're coming from or you'll stop posting sours it incredibly and makes me not want to be involved either. I'd prefer to keep playing DDO. I'm absolutely in love with almost every quest Torc/Steel have had their hands on. But I'm also not above telling Torc that RSO is an absolute pile because I expect better from him.

The same goes with you. We love what you're doing but that doesn't mean we're not going to tell you that you're wrong about stealth.

[Qezuzu]

I've seen quite a few people here and elsewhere talking about this. That specific change was actually a reversion to our previous shared aggro system. It is working as intended that you can no longer pull mobs by simply standing outside of their aggro range and hitting them one at a time. Monsters thematically will absolutely notice that you are shooting their friend with arrows :P



My last life was a pure assassin rogue and I had no trouble at all working either solo or in a group. I had some rough spots before 12 and Assassinate (Execute is so great O_O) but after 12 and up through 30 it was quite fun and rewarding. I did put points into both hide and move silently, though, so your mileage may vary if you neglect one or the other.

What specifically is wrong with aggro as it stands?

I'll tell you of the three bugs I know of regarding stealth.

Personal made-up terms used in this write-up:
aggro: mob knows where a player is, and is also targeting them specifically over other players (red-eye appears if the player is invis or sneaking)
soft-aggro: swinging-at-the-air 'searching behavior,' mob knew the location of a player, but then lost them. Their search is centered around the last location they knew the player was at, NOT the player (no red-eye)

I use these terms particularly so be sure you know I'm using a strict definition when I say aggro and soft-aggro.

My understanding of the aggro mechanics as it concerns sneaking players is that a mob that successfully aggro's a sneaking player alerts everything around it, however those alerted mobs CANNOT aggro on a player ("red-eye") unless they can successfully find the player themselves. Mobs alerted through shared aggro do not know the location of the player, they are simply made aware of a location where a player was seen, and thus soft-aggro. Furthermore, they cannot be alerted to new locations sneaking player has moved to by a mob that has aggro, unless they have given up searching, which takes 30 seconds.

---

The first and most minor bug: archer mobs that have only soft-aggroed can make 100% accurate shots at a player whose location they do not know. 0:06 in this video, where a mob gets soft-aggro on me through shared aggro and accurately fires a shot, which missed, even thought I rapidly sneaked away from the location they "saw" me at. If it hit, everything would have been able to aggro on me, and in a less controlled situation this would spell disaster for the sneaking player.

---

Second bug: mobs alerted of a sneaking player through shared aggro ignore party members they can see. Video example. As I explained before, mobs do NOT know where a sneaking player is, they are simply told where a player was; they should immediately aggro on any player they successfully found themselves, it doesn't make sense that they would search for a single player when there could be as many as five other perfectly good targets in front of them. Not only that, they will spend the entire thirty seconds looking for that single sneaking player as though they were the only player in that dungeon. This is not only frustrating, it has exploit applications where large numbers of mobs can be made to waste their time looking for a sneaking player as they get picked off one by one by the rest of the group.

---

The third bug is completely WAI but it severely detracts from my enjoyment of the game, so I think it's a bug anyway. This is reapers having tremorsense. In reaper, if you sneak ahead you risk being the first player a reaper sees, and thus the first player that everything around the reaper will soft-aggro on. This seems reasonable, "just don't sneak ahead" you can say, but consider the practical applications of sneaking:
-building Measure the Foe stacks, satisfy stance requirement for Assassinate
-scouting ahead, which would actually be valuable in reaper if you wished to note champions and reapers
-moving to a more aggressive, flanking position prior to the start of combat
-move to attack dangerous mobs that keep their distance (casters) before combat starts
-being ahead of the rest of party but avoiding aggro, which again lets you be more aggressive by being able to attack earlier
-laying spell traps prior to combat to web/blind mobs
-save the party resources, effort by pulling a lever or completing whatever objective is guarded by mobs that do not need to be killed (very D&D scenario, snatch a key under the enemy's noses while the rest of the party waits)

Of these, only the first "tactic" really functions in reaper. In fact, if you do not have Assassinate, there is not really a reason to use sneak at all unless you're just confident there isn't a Reaper around the corner. In reaper, the only surefire way to avoid aggro while sneaking is to hang back, but doesn't hanging back on its own also allow you to avoid aggro? I guess it can help with the bug where mobs will aggro on the player furthest away from them..

Sneak does absolutely have cheese potential which is why I think there should be some difficulty in using it reaper, but as it stands it's just been completely gutted and players attempting to use the play style in reaper are simply punished for trying. I think it's better to have reapers have very high spot and listen scores, so that using it demands good gear, much like a DC caster who can make a reaper quest more trivial to complete than any sneaker could ever hope to.

---

There are many more refinements you can give the system but these are the three biggest things, and fixing them would really revive stealth as a playstyle in DDO, whose following has pretty much died off since the aggro mechanic changes and reaper. I personally played as a Rogue for most of my time in DDO, after abandoning my first character a couple months in I made an Assassin who, through many lives in for the last seven years, has been my main character and has been an Assassin or an Acrobat for 95% of her existence.

But now I've more or less abandoned the class simply because it's just plainly not fun to use anymore, it feels like a generic melee class now. My former main character has been pretty much been mothballed as I focus on my DC caster.

Also please, please, PLEASE tell your co-workers to stop making quests with every door and lever being locked-unless-you-kill-literally-everything.