Hardcore Hound bugged out and killed me. AVOID WATER

[Vordax]

<REDACTED>
I stand by my statement in that I will not play hardcore again until the fix the bug and bring my character back to life.

If enough people take this stand, the powers that be will mea culpa and bring the characters back.

You can spit in one hand and wish with the other, guess which will fill first?

I have lost characters to lag and a falling damage bug, if you die you die. No matter how many people complain and whine, this will not happen.

[losian2]

Perhaps they should add "or the stupidity and gross incompetence of our programmers".

I stand by my statement in that I will not play hardcore again until the fix the bug and bring my character back to life.

If enough people take this stand, the powers that be will mea culpa and bring the characters back.

Enough people won't, or shouldn't - it sucks, yes, but it's very plainly laid out. If you're this upset by it then hardcore maybe isn't for you - it's why I don't play it and haven't in several other games. It's simply not fun for me for these exact kind of reasons and I know better (Looking at you Path of Exile.)

Plus, you have to be realistic about this - EVERY instance is a case-by-case basis and would require a not-insignificant amount of customer service time to investigate, assuming they even have the tools to do so.. PLUS you then have the swathe of people that were at fault but don't want to start over and bug CS and hope for a freebie and such and it's exactly why they set the policy they did from the get go.

[balvix]

https://www.ddo.com/news/ddo-hardcore-league

Directly from the FAQ (I even bolded and underlined the pertinent part):

What happens when you die in the Hardcore League?
You are immediately sent to the Land of Lost Souls, and can no longer play that character on the Hardcore server.

There is no exception made for the cause of death, whether it be in combat, falling, an Internet outage, playing the last section of The Shroud, or for any other reason. There is no way to interrupt this process by being raised from the dead and certain abilities that promise to save you from death will not function (such as Death Pact). When you die, you will lose your spot on the leaderboards for that character, but you will not lose access to any Milestones that you may have earned with that particular character. You will be able to chat, move around, emote, and manage your guild, but beware...there is no escape from death ...

The faq is not a solid place to look for info, I usually look at the one stickied that was posted by Cordovan and it has inaccurate information on this season still.

[Mand_OLin]

Enough people won't, or shouldn't - it sucks, yes, but it's very plainly laid out. If you're this upset by it then hardcore maybe isn't for you - it's why I don't play it and haven't in several other games. It's simply not fun for me for these exact kind of reasons and I know better (Looking at you Path of Exile.)

Plus, you have to be realistic about this - EVERY instance is a case-by-case basis and would require a not-insignificant amount of customer service time to investigate, assuming they even have the tools to do so.. PLUS you then have the swathe of people that were at fault but don't want to start over and bug CS and hope for a freebie and such and it's exactly why they set the policy they did from the get go.

Solution:
- Issue a general statement that dead characters in Land of Lost Souls will be resurrected after the bugs are fixed... give everybody a freebee as a gesture of goodwill for creating such a mind-numbingly stupid situation.
- Fix the bugs
- Res every character currently sitting in Land of Lost Souls.

That said, I am not holding my breath... and perhaps you are correct that hardcore is not for me. I actually do not expect to have my characters killed because of the developers ignorance and ineptness. When my character dies due to my failings or the failings of a teammate, I am perfectly fine with taking the blame.

Given the apparent acceptance of character deaths, maybe the best solution is for the developers to do nothing... let the bug continue for the season. Why fix what is clearly a great method of separating the wheat from the chaff? and alienating a good percentage of the player population in the process.

[Kayze]

Solution:
- Issue a general statement that dead characters in Land of Lost Souls will be resurrected after the bugs are fixed... give everybody a freebee as a gesture of goodwill for creating such a mind-numbingly stupid situation.
- Fix the bugs
- Res every character currently sitting in Land of Lost Souls.

That said, I am not holding my breath... and perhaps you are correct that hardcore is not for me. I actually do not expect to have my characters killed because of the developers ignorance and ineptness. When my character dies due to my failings or the failings of a teammate, I am perfectly fine with taking the blame.

Given the apparent acceptance of character deaths, maybe the best solution is for the developers to do nothing... let the bug continue for the season. Why fix what is clearly a great method of separating the wheat from the chaff? and alienating a good percentage of the player population in the process.

Your character is not leaving the Land of Lost Souls.

Move on.

[Steelstar]

Hello! We are actively looking into this issue. It appears to be caused by a very old failsafe system meant to handle monsters falling too far that makes a few baseline assumptions about monsters that are not accurate in the current game. We're working on a fix! Additionally, we're looking at adding some effect cooldowns to make sure that if any other similar situations are floating out there, you can't get stacks of the DOT and vulnerability much faster than the normal rate.

We don't have an ETA for fixes yet, but we will keep you all posted as that develops!

(P.S. Before anyone asks, we're also looking into Hounds not becoming attackable on spawning, no updates there yet.)

As a followup to my post from this morning: We are working on a patch meant to address several Hardcore-related bugs, including (but not necessarily limited to):

• Hounds falling infinitely in water
• Hounds stacking DOT/Vulnerability effects more quickly than intended (usually because they're falling infinitely in water)
• Hounds getting stuck in an unattackable state
• Hounds stacking DOT/Vulnerability effects while IN an unattackable state

We still do not have an exact ETA on this patch, but targeting "as soon as we can" and we'll keep people updated as the timing details are narrowed down. Thank you for your patience!

[Mand_OLin]

Your character is not leaving the Land of Lost Souls.

Move on.

I have.

[KoobTheProud]

I have. Not trying again and doing a chargeback on moneys spent on my character that died to the bug.

Don't charge back on anything DDO Store related. Your CC handler might actually do the charge back and in that situation you are likely to get the account perma-banned.

This is just a PSA on things that are known from the past but have not happened recently.

[ekaterina]

Since they said that if you died to a bug the character would stay dead - there is no basis whatever for a legitimate chargeback. An illegitimate one ...could have consequences so unless you are leaving the game - not a good idea.

[Mand_OLin]

Don't charge back on anything DDO Store related. Your CC handler might actually do the charge back and in that situation you are likely to get the account perma-banned.

This is just a PSA on things that are known from the past but have not happened recently.

Perhaps... but what SSG does not need to do, is shoot themselves in the foot by banning players (especially those who pay to play). It is not as if the game is bursting with new blood. Every paying player who leaves is a little bit less money rolling into the coffers. Keep that up and eventually, at some point, the developers are going to need to dust off their résumés. For the few days I did play hardcore I found perhaps 25% of the players were VIPs. I frequently had to open quests on elite because nobody else in the group was able to... because they were free to play. Ban-away, but eventually they will be banning themselves out of a job.

[balvix]

I have. Not trying again and doing a chargeback on moneys spent on my character that died to the bug.

This probably wont end well. Just accept the death, keep the toon in the land of lost souls, and move him to your main server. You haven't lost anything at all, its just on a toon that needs to be put on the main server before you can access goods that have been purchased.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

Thank you to the devs for looking into the issues with bugging out hounds; I know many many good players killed to this; they lost a lot of time; we all know playing on hardcore that it is meant to be a challenge, but bugging out doom reaper strength mobs are a bit too much rng to be adequately planned for. Yes some groups will have good luck and succeed. But many will have bad luck and die for no good reason.

At the core we are talking about an event that by design makes a lot of money, similar to a concert or movie opening, you want your audience to feel welcome and to have, for their money, a good time. But if you have your bouncers randomly facepunching patrons, and in this metaphor the bouncers are the wonky coded doom reaper hounds - it sends a bad message

after all, anyone who understands risks and hazards and the difference between the two will know that presently, unfixed, the game hazards are much too risky to invest in tomes, pots, and other goodies for characters that can indiscriminately be facepunched to oblivion due to a bug.

[Mand_OLin]

Thank you to the devs for looking into the issues with bugging out hounds; I know many many good players killed to this; they lost a lot of time; we all know playing on hardcore that it is meant to be a challenge, but bugging out doom reaper strength mobs are a bit too much rng to be adequately planned for. Yes some groups will have good luck and succeed. But many will have bad luck and die for no good reason.

At the core we are talking about an event that by design makes a lot of money, similar to a concert or movie opening, you want your audience to feel welcome and to have, for their money, a good time. But if you have your bouncers randomly facepunching patrons, and in this metaphor the bouncers are the wonky coded doom reaper hounds - it sends a bad message

after all, anyone who understands risks and hazards and the difference between the two will know that presently, unfixed, the game hazards are much too risky to invest in tomes, pots, and other goodies for characters that can indiscriminately be facepunched to oblivion due to a bug.

Sadly, many of us DID invest in these things... only to be, as you so aptly put it, "facepunched into oblivion".

[Kayze]

Sadly, many of us DID invest in these things... only to be, as you so aptly put it, "facepunched into oblivion".

Playing hardcore and not being okay with stupid deaths will only lead to heartbreak.

[Stead_man]

Playing hardcore and not being okay with stupid deaths will only lead to heartbreak.

Agreed. Stupid deaths can be funny, like getting too big for your britches and trying to run R5 with 3 people, or being too close to the massive explosive barrel on the Lordsmarch chain.

Programmers rushing out an unfinished mechanic that bugs and instakills you is beyond stupid though.

[Mand_OLin]

Playing hardcore and not being okay with stupid deaths will only lead to heartbreak.

Stupid death I am okay with... my first death was due to a moron of a player (Hotdevil, if memory serves) and I take full responsibility - I did not have to join the LFM and did not have to actively participate in the quest. However, a death due to the negligence / incompetence / short-sightedness of the programmers / developers is another matter altogether!

I believe I already mentioned this is my first hardcore season, but I am a (reasonably) seasoned player with 12+ years in the game. Perhaps I am not a good fit for hardcore. But I genuinely enjoyed playing it, I loved the server being replete with players & LFMs. The hounds are tough, but not outside the bounds of good teamwork. However, the game creating an environment where the ONLY chance of survival is recognizing the issue and quitting the game client before you die is INEXCUSABLE!

Consider a PnP game where you have slowly and meticulously worked your way up to level 7, only to have the DM wipe the entire party without offering any way to survive and requiring you to roll up a new character. I am sure we would all be happy and appreciative of the opportunity presented us. Perhaps we would even thank the DM and offer to buy coffee and doughnuts to express our gratitude.

[SiliconScout]

sorry link to announcement has been posted several times.

[SiliconScout]

I have. Not trying again and doing a chargeback on moneys spent on my character that died to the bug.

careful with that if they delivered the product it could be considered fraud if they dispute it, that could cost you your card and a whole lot of headache.

[Aelonwy]

As a followup to my post from this morning: We are working on a patch meant to address several Hardcore-related bugs, including (but not necessarily limited to):

• Hounds falling infinitely in water
• Hounds stacking DOT/Vulnerability effects more quickly than intended (usually because they're falling infinitely in water)
• Hounds getting stuck in an unattackable state
• Hounds stacking DOT/Vulnerability effects while IN an unattackable state

We still do not have an exact ETA on this patch, but targeting "as soon as we can" and we'll keep people updated as the timing details are narrowed down. Thank you for your patience!

Thank you Steel this is the sort of response I was hoping for, thank you for reasserting my faith in the game.

[jskinner937]

Thanks, and I would add when you are jumping from place to place up high (e.g., a small problem) it's the same issue.

I would suggest a fairly quick fix to have the permadot work like fear reaper where if the dog spawns wrong (yellow or where you can't even see it) it doesn't start the dot until you are in range. I think there might be quest-specific issues that are difficult to address fully in one patch, but putting a range on a dot would solve most of the issues immediately.

The lack of range also seems problematic in cases where the party needs to split up by design not to have a range on the dot (thinking one of necro 2 quests here, spinner of shadow, crucible).



So I went into hardcore minutes after it opened and in borderlands I could already see several people took level 5 which used to be the max level to run level 1 quests - presumably with daily dice to get there so fast. Now I didn't do this, but I do feel the level 2 lockout could have been communicated so people didn't waste astral shards like this.

The hound I have no issue with - bugs happen and I feel my death to a hound dot was out of my control and sucks but at the same time I applaud the devs for trying something new even if not everything is working as they intended. I appreciate them responding early Monday to acknowledge the issue.

I saw 3 hounds bug out yellow giving debuff/dot - not sure if I am doing something that makes it more likely, bad luck or the same thing others experience. But literally at level 5 the only option to live is a rod of teleport from ddo store unless you get out the front door fast. Teleport scroll isn't available until level 7 and has a rather high umd for most first lifers.

Dragonmark of Passage
Hotbar a pack teleport item

At 5min intervals maybe avoid jump spots/water/narrow halls. I also tell my party to stay clear walls when the howl comes and don’t run around. If you have the mark just shield block.

The hound bug definitely should be corrected, but there certainly is ways to mitigate the potential for a death.