Changes Focused on Boosting Game Performance

[GroundhogDay]

Won't even give feedback since you only answer to the yes men, just know that what i think about your mismanagement of the game cannot be expressed without violating the rules of the echo chamber you call forum.

Oh! And forget any more money from me.

Toodaloo.

[Firebreed]

to blazes with all these complicated solutions. the fix is simple--

introduce cooldowns for all procs. you want procs to happen less? increase the cooldown for said proc. the proc for a particular ability needs to happen more? lessen (or eliminate) the cooldown. that way you can leave everything the way it is now and still reduce resource drain. you only check for proccing on cooldowns that are 0 (or less for some reason, just to make sure items don't get broken at some point and just go into the negative forever and never proc again because some coder screwed up and =0 instead of <=0 somewhere)

also--

maybe make some (or all) procs 100% with cooldowns that are variable instead. then you are just checking for a <=0 variable to proc.

---

Now the procs themselves. I'm going to say something you're not going to like. There are two REAL solutions to this. Everything else is just making your code and the gameplay worse.

Solution 1 is to have a server dedicated to procs. That's all it does. it calculates and spits out the information for all servers and it has NO OTHER JOB. This lessens the load on the older servers, but would require quite a bit of coding on the backend to get the servers to sync with this other server, AND if that server went down, the old servers would need to have the ability to revert to the old style of proccing while the situation is resolved, or all servers would stop functioning at the same time.

Solution 2 is to push the proc calculations client side. You HATE this because you think people will cheat, but you don't have the player's PC do its own calculations. That information is handed to a random client to process every time it is needed. All the server needs to do is ferry the information from client to client. LET THE PLAYERS PCs LIGHTEN THE LOAD.

I think Solution 2 is the best one. Do it.

Very interesting post.

[Zoveride]

I'm not happy how this leaves some of my characters, but I trust they'll work to resolve the issues. If they don't, I'll stop playing those characters or TR them into something that works post-change. If any of these changes or future changes ruin my enjoyment of the game, I'll stop playing the game. I also assume SSG knows this and does their best to NOT ruin the enjoyment of their paying customers where possible.

This + 1. If it ruins the character/build/playstyle, time to just walk away, hopefully they don't ruin it.

[Jinxx]

This proposed change is a massive mistake due to the changes it will have on proc rates - especially non-damaging ones. It seems like you are underestimating how integral these are to the game. I love this game - been here since beta as a VIP. For the first time ever, I (and my 5 other VIP friends/family) will cancel our subscription and leave the game if these changes go live. You definitely have got to address lag but I'm afraid you are making a serious error here when it comes to these procs.

[Thunder-Monkey]

Thank you @devs for taking steps, however bold, to improve game performance.

The game has become largely unenjoyable for myself and others and I hope this change will improve our experience. In this spirit I will temporarily suspend my vitriolic and voluble outbursts directed at yourselves for not fixing your game! (These are heard by no one except my poor fiance who has been driven away from DDO even further than me).

I would rather have dead builds than dead game, so any changes you make that move away from the current embarrassment are good changes, no matter the collateral damage (imho).

TM

[droid327]

This is correct. Effects that are culled by filtration (which includes proc chance) do not meaningfully contribute to the type of lag we're specifically targeting with this change. It is only when an effect actually goes off that it gets added to the queue.

Hmm...so there's no way around it by just changing the way they're calculated, then, the solution has to be a lot fewer procs occurring than they do now...

Well for scalable procs, I think the current solution works, of course. That includes things like applying multiple stacks of stackable debuffs too.
Its the purely boolean ones that are the only problem - things like Paralyze, you either are or you arent.

And I'm guessing the really low chance (~2-5%) ones arent generating enough procs to be a big percent of the problem; with 2 attacks/sec and 100% Dstrike, a 5% proc is only proccing once every 5 seconds, and 2% every 12,5 seconds. Its gotta be the 20% or 50% chance ones like Tendon Slice that are proccing enough to overload the queue.

What if you added an ICD (~1s?) specifically to those type, and ~doubled their general proc chance? That way you'd still have decent uptime percentage and comparable initial time-to-proc, but you'd cap them at 1 proc/sec....which is still fine from the player's POV but saves the server from queueing unnecessary refreshes.

[Hawkwier]

So now I'm reading that SSG may nerf adrenaline because the changes give it a boost?

Whilst at the same time they apparently will do absolutely nothing to offset the reduction in adrenaline regen procs invoked by precisely the same changes.

Completely unacceptable if so - fix both or neither. Fixing only the one that advantages players whilst doing nothing about the other will feel like a real kick in the teeth.

Honestly, if you can't fix the lag this way without so much disruption and one-sided negative impact on those aspects that make the game unique, go back to the drawing board and find another way.

And please try to stop giving the impression you are making things up as you go along here. It doesn't exactly breed confidence you are making these changes in a well-considered, planned or controlled manner. Reading about the adrenaline change at this point seems like it's an afterthought that hasn't been worked through. That's not good enough when you're making such critical and far reaching changes, and when you have an audience of customers who are yet to be convinced that all the pain from these changes will actually make much positive difference to the lag.

Personally I'd like to see an up front commitment from the development team that any applied changes will be fully revoked if it turns out the impact on lag is not found sufficiently significant. I'm generally uncomfortable with these proposed changes and currently, I'm sorry to have to say, the perceived attitude behind them.

[gudal84]

Have met a few people who are very upset about their paralyzing or other proc based builds being nerfs. Idea: Assume the new system will have a formula akin to [num hits]*[damage roll totals].
Couldnt a similar thing be done for proc effects, at least assuming its only interesting to check wether it procs or not (paralyse, holds, etc) as well as stuff with internal cooldowns (max 1 per multihit anyway):
Chance for proc = X
Chance for not proc = 1-X

Chance for at least one proc: (1-(1-x)^[num hits] and then roll that chance instead. 1 roll (plus a simple calculation), so one in queue. Stuff that has low proc chance like the shiradi 7% paralyze would have the exact same chance to go off and same effect.

This could probably be adapted to work for things that make sense if they proc multiple times (like vorpals, certain LGS procs) too, though its too late for me to do the maths on it now. It could probably be done with a constant runtime though, so no queue issues. Maybe not if mob saves are involved though,, not sure.

[gravisrs]

Relating to bow changes - all those doubleshots given for the current Manyshot nerfing, and then you nerf doubleshot itself... I'm speachless

You have so many on-hit abilities (both non-damage and damage ones) nerfed with this particular change that you make most of the the builds to suffer alot from this.

All non-caster on-hit effects being nerfed actually belongs to many types:
- crowd control (paralyze arrows, items with paralyzing, trip, sunder, stat drain weapons, tendon slice)
- dps (ALL EXTRA DAMAGE on weapons/items, smites, EK imbued damage, AA imbue arrows, hell even those rubys you just updated to be cannith equivalent will proc less)
- instakills (vorpals, banishments, smitings, coup de grace, executioner )
- heals (monk gonna be fixed small bit, lifedrinker weapons, feeding weapons, blood of vol deity and other old-style vampirism effects)
- stackable/building moment procs (destruction, elemental vulnerabilities, archery focus, Master Blitz)

You literally nerf all non-casters by the huge amount of doubleshot/doublestrike they have - which on endgame characters is usually big numbers.

[gudal84]

Make the clients calculate more stuff (I really want air jets to be done client side, they are impossible today if u have latency). This will lead to bigger risk of cheats, but pretty sure that can be handled somehow.

[Pandjed]

I'm making some assumption here:

1. The reason why this change is in this preview is because the devs decided that it needs to be tested asap to determine, if the game's performance is improved as they thought it'd be
2. That's also the reason, why several abilities were cut, but not replaced yet, as there wasn't enough time (figuring out direction of the new design, halfway balanced numbers, etc. just takes more time than some ppl may think, and in case it didn't work as they thought, would be time flushed down the toilet)
3. The only reason why they didn't removed DS entirely and replaced it with something else that works better is because of how much time, resource, and nostalgia went into the DS mechanics so far and undoing it, would take too much time, resources, and whining to get through
4. DPS is the easiest to balance and to fix aspect of the game, as CC and the like don't work with hard numbers (at least not in comparable way to DPS)
5. As EDs get a pass this year (at least that's the plan), I expect that there will be little to no changes to them
6. The devs will do what good devs will do and just answer questions about the content of the changes, yet not address player oppinions, statements, wishes, or fears to not falsefy those
7. Most players that spend 50+ hours into the game, knows that it's bonkers and has one of the wackiest game-mechanic designs in history for a serious meant game
8. Each minute tested in Lamannia is more worth than each hour spent in the forum, grinding numbers or indulging in own fears

From what I can tell, the lag during throwing all your resources at raid bosses and doom reapers has been significantly reduced (other sources of lag not, but hey), so I'd say that this is a good direction to look at.

For a P&P player, the whole Doublestrike/Doubleshot thing was strange in the first place, I think the old devs did it to enhance weapon combat, but having more attacks than the animation shows is counter-intuitive in the first place. Just wish for a new name, as multihits and such are now misleading, as you do only hit once.

About the CC-procs, I give the advance of trust to the devs and decide to believe that they will figure something out in the end, that will work or maybe even make CC better with weapon options, now that it's less convoluted. If this happens, then it's actually even better for proc-focused players, because those players only want more hits for more consistency in their builds (just like a trading card player for their tournament deck), so if the devs can design around a more consistent number of attacks, consistency is easier acquired.

[rabidfox]

All non-caster on-hit effects being nerfed actually belongs to many types:
- crowd control (paralyze arrows, items with paralyzing, trip, sunder, stat drain weapons, tendon slice)
- dps (ALL EXTRA DAMAGE on weapons/items, smites, EK imbued damage, AA imbue arrows, hell even those rubys you just updated to be cannith equivalent will proc less)
- instakills (vorpals, banishments, smitings, coup de grace, executioner )
- heals (monk gonna be fixed small bit, lifedrinker weapons, feeding weapons, blood of vol deity and other old-style vampirism effects)
- stackable/building moment procs (destruction, elemental vulnerabilities, archery focus, Master Blitz)

You literally nerf all non-casters by the huge amount of doubleshot/doublestrike they have - which on endgame characters is usually big numbers.

The ones in bold should have their numbers being multiplied by the doublestrike/shot amount based off everything that's been posted. The other stuff the devs still need to find solutions for and hopefully we'll see stuff about that for the next preview build. The stacking procs seem easy enough to fix with multiplying the stacks gained; if they go that route. CC/instakills is where it'll be interesting to see what the devs do to offset the changes to proc rates.

[gudal84]

Relating to bow changes - all those doubleshots given for the current Manyshot nerfing, and then you nerf doubleshot itself... I'm speachless

You have so many on-hit abilities (both non-damage and damage ones) nerfed with this particular change that you make most of the the builds to suffer alot from this.

All non-caster on-hit effects being nerfed actually belongs to many types:
- crowd control (paralyze arrows, items with paralyzing, trip, sunder, stat drain weapons, tendon slice)
- dps (ALL EXTRA DAMAGE on weapons/items, smites, EK imbued damage, AA imbue arrows, hell even those rubys you just updated to be cannith equivalent will proc less)
- instakills (vorpals, banishments, smitings, coup de grace, executioner )
- heals (monk gonna be fixed small bit, lifedrinker weapons, feeding weapons, blood of vol deity and other old-style vampirism effects)
- stackable/building moment procs (destruction, elemental vulnerabilities, archery focus, Master Blitz)

You literally nerf all non-casters by the huge amount of doubleshot/doublestrike they have - which on endgame characters is usually big numbers.

Crowd control: Yes, but could be fixed by my above formula; (1-(1-x)^[num hits]) and roll only once.. With this change its only a problem if tripping twice means tripped for twice as long (sunder, stat drain).
Damage procs: No. They will double procs on a multihit (unless they changed that between OP and page 13). If 10 proc damage on a single hit its 20 proc damage on a doublehit.
Instakills: Sortof. Percentage based yes, but solvable by formula above. Those that have some effect when not working "properly" (like vorpal extra damage when above HP threshold) will still hurt with my formula though.
Heals: No. Havent read anything specific on this but monk lifedrinker, and similar should be same as damage unless they "forget" it. for those effects.. So if u heal one HP from a monks heal on hit ability a doublestrike should heal u 2.
Stackable: Yes. Though they should be able to give those "guaranteed" procs a [stacks applied] = [number of hits] without reducing performance.

[ValariusK]

You know if procs that 'proc' are actually an issue and procs that fail their % chance to proc aren't-- How about this?
Elemental damage procs (as in 10d6) on level 29 weapons are honestly pretty insignificant. What if you adjusted all such procs on all epic weapons to proc only say, 10% of the time and do 10x the damage when they do proc? Would that reduce your event queue filter by 90% from that source of procs? The items would still have the flavor of the proc type but the burden would be reduced.

[Noir]

If after this preview the DEV's have solid data that shows the overall "server frames" is reduced
in the same manner as their internal testing shows then by all means reduce the lag causing elements
that have been identified.

100% of the game population is affected by lag.
Far less then 100% of the game population will be affected by the reduction of non-damaging procs.

To quote Spock. "The needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few, or the one"

The largest amounts of complaints in the past 6 months regarding DDO have been "fix the lag"
It gets mentioned in nearly every update related post and DDO Live Stream chats.
The DEV's are making an honest effort to satisfy those demands and even back it up by telling
us the load percentage reduction their internal testing has shown.

If these changes produce solid data showing that lag is being reduced then please proceed as planned.
The game will just become harder overall and the end result might be that we have to play at a easier difficulty.
I have several characters that will be impacted and yet I am 100% behind these changes if the data proves that lag is reduced.

[rabidfox]

You know if procs that 'proc' are actually an issue and procs that fail their % chance to proc aren't-- How about this?
Elemental damage procs (as in 10d6) on level 29 weapons are honestly pretty insignificant. What if you adjusted all such procs on all epic weapons to proc only say, 10% of the time and do 10x the damage when they do proc? Would that reduce your event queue filter by 90% from that source of procs? The items would still have the flavor of the proc type but the burden would be reduced.

Check out the weekly lunch stream from today. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/978770692 I'm not sure what the timestamp is for it, but when they were testing stuff out for different ways to fix things they actually did that. It reduced the overhead but it made the game play feel wonky (or something roughly like that, can't recall the exact words used). I can see how it would be bad playstyle wise, hit like a wet sponge 90% of time and then 1-shot the other 10% of the time, it would be very weird & not my idea of fun combat.

[ValariusK]

Check out the weekly lunch stream from today. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/978770692 I'm not sure what the timestamp is for it, but when they were testing stuff out for different ways to fix things they actually did that. It reduced the overhead but it made the game play feel wonky (or something roughly like that, can't recall the exact words used). I can see how it would be bad playstyle wise, hit like a wet sponge 90% of time and then 1-shot the other 10% of the time, it would be very weird & not my idea of fun combat.

Well, like that 9d6 piercing proc on Pain or Suffering, forget which. It's insignificant at level 29. It's a wet sponge 100% of the time. With my change, it'd be 90d6 10% of the time, so you might actually notice it.
The same is true of such procs on weapons level 20+. You do so much damage that a non-scaling proc like that is moot. Honestly even just removing all procs like that entirely wouldn't be much of a nerf. But there's a certain...flavor...to having a flaming sword and seeing a number for it's fire damage every now and then, so I was suggesting going to 10% from 100%. And these kind of procs are freaking everywhere and they don't form load bearing structures in people's builds. Cutting them this way probably would be a great move in terms of the load reduced versus user pain.

[Artos_Fabril]

This is correct. Effects that are culled by filtration (which includes proc chance) do not meaningfully contribute to the type of lag we're specifically targeting with this change. It is only when an effect actually goes off that it gets added to the queue.

Perhaps then we can increase the chances of effects landing once they've been placed on the queue by increasing the save DCs or removing them entirely, since we're cutting the number of opportunities to proc the effects in the first place? Increasing the potency of effects that do process automatically would help with this change too. Either by multiplying the number of stacks applied on successful process (vulnerability stacks, for instance) by at least 1+(doublehit/100).

[LurkingVeteran]

Just making the damage text not lag is a huge win - it looks silly. If it can make the game stop lagging in general that would be amazing. That said, this will have some very complicated implications for balance. Normalizing on hit effects between combat styles will make future balancing easier, but it's going to impact a lot of builds in the short term.

I'm somewhat surprised that you don't think strike through is a problem though, and I remember DoD used to be able to visibly cause lag at aome point. These also generate a lot of hit calcs, but I gueas this change will almost cut them in half at least.

[Zretch]

This is what I was thinking, too.

That's a negative. Straight copy from live. Respected into quick draw from vkf and still paused while swapping weapons.