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Post by FunkySwerve on Jul 24, 2006 14:40:39 GMT
We tried long respawns of encounters like Moad, Lolth, etc. The main obstacle is a critical bug in the engine that made them respawn every 45 minutes instead of every three hours, in defiance of the times entered for respawn. Booting campers from the area when they relog is another issue, but a less complex one. Funky
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Post by fusa on Jul 24, 2006 20:03:02 GMT
If moad, lolth etc were set to respawn after a set time could it be possible the there would be no drop if one of the players in the group already killed the boss once before the last reset on the current server?
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Post by FunkySwerve on Jul 25, 2006 1:58:56 GMT
That's a great idea, and doable! Only problem is getting a long respawn time that works. Should be doable, however. Maybe not this update...it'd also require a check to see what you've killed this update, for forgetful types or overnnight stretches with no reset. There are a few other complexities, like porting out campers and relocking stuff, but with the 'killed this reset ' variable they should be surmountable. Any further input on this is most welcome! Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Jul 25, 2006 2:01:02 GMT
Also if someone wanted to whip up a new list of nonrespawning bosses I wouldn't hold it against em. Funky
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Post by fusa on Jul 25, 2006 3:50:38 GMT
Lolth, Immortal, MOAD, Dach, Sssys, Dusty, and Overmind...if sssysrak, beholders and illithiads are set to respawn the key holders would need to be to, same for closing the doors, etc, if thats possible, else we'd have easy runs after the 1st group in. Also what does the sphinx/glasdir timer use to respeak/respawn? Could that be used?
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Post by Ironfang on Jul 25, 2006 12:37:12 GMT
How does implementing this reduce lag? I am sure it must just don't know how. Also as far as having these quests respawn it hasn't been much of an issue in past finding something to do, especially now with multiple servers.
What about a scheduled reboot before peak times? I guess that would lead to people setting their alarm clocks to run to Dachy daily.
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Post by Yomi on Jul 25, 2006 19:47:49 GMT
Regarding the idea of respawning quests. First, with the update to 3 servers, and now with 4 (!!) servers available, there is probably less need -- though it seems they reboot less often! I like the idea of "no drop if someone already did this quest this reset", but I'd like to suggest that it use a Lolth-Xul like system of preventing these people from entering the area with the party. I'm foreseeing this conversation: "Wow, that was four hours of hell, but here comes our DB loot... WTF?! Where is everything? Argh! One of our people forgot that they did this last night and there hasn't been a reset!". Ouch for party, ouch for player who's now blacklisted because they didn't know or forgot.
As for resets, an idea from my vague MUD memories would be a "voting" system. For instance, have a particular zone off of town, where if more than 90% of the current occupants are present, it initiates a reset (but disabled if there's already been a reset in the last 3 hours). That pretty much guarantees you won't get a player-initiated reset in the busy times, but could fairly easily get one if, for instance, all 5 people on in the early morning want to do a run that isn't available. Change the % (or N-1 of N players) and disable time to whatever suits.
Re large parties, I'm torn. I find some enjoyment from the sheer chaos of giant parties, even though it's rarely efficient (for the players or the engine). But it sounds like this would be a big lag cutter, especially for runs like Lolth which seem to generate lots of lag. Consider fiddling with either loot or xp combinations, favoring parties of 4-8 perhaps. If, say, the Lolth run resulted in a level 29 or 35 rare item if and only if there were 4-8 people and at least one member got the tag, that would highly encourage that behavior. Pick some of the more obvious runs for this sort of thing, and you don't have to have the level 5's explaining why someone has to leave the party.
Regarding item merchants, realize I do not understand the specific lag causes so am just throwing out an idea. If the number of items offered has an impact (i.e. creating 200 items on open makes more lag than creating 100 items), perhaps a new "Obscure Items" merchant could be created that held a lot of the less popular items. This would be easier if there was logging on what items actually were bought over a month's period. Consider the number of times one would visit that merchant vs. the regular merchants -- once every few logins (at most) vs. ten per login for the regular ones.
I also understand chests are big lag causes, particularly the bank chests. Really too bad, as I like them. Maybe lower the max number of items in the transfer chest from 50 to 30, making it more obviously a transfer chest and not a storage chest. A timer could be added (ala GS/smite timer) to prevent them from opening more than once every 2 minutes, though it might cause people to not understand and sit idle in the vault. But it would reduce lag caused by repeatedly opening and closing the chest instead of working to get it done in one pass -- which means less overall server lag.
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Post by versengeteriks on Jul 25, 2006 20:07:16 GMT
With the bank chests, why not set up the transfer chests on a different map? currently with the teller and two areas for the chests we get lag causing a few chest errors now and again.
if individual transfer/storage chest rooms were on there very own pocket dimension (like legendary level zone, Paralell pocket zone, encumbria). This could prevent some issues. Plus if u are able to reset individual zones as we are talking about earlier, u could have the zone reset on exit. maybe even set these zones up like the encumbria area with a hard ass'd merchant, or sell chest like the wyrm.
u could even have the entry system set like the LL zone, so that only one person could enter at one time.
trix
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Post by jillybean on Jul 25, 2006 20:07:42 GMT
I am also torn on this issue. The items posted about large parties and lag make a lot of sense. It seems to me, as it was explained, that reducing the party size could reduce lag.
However, there have been several times where I log on (especially early/late) where the only party across all servers in my level range already has 8; and I am the unlucky #9. (I know this isn't implemented yet, but I still consider it).
I also like to help out my friends (especially 1st timers) with lolth/immo runs. These parties usually get large and if it was limited to 8, those of us who are immo, but just want to be there for the "big moment", would be forced to leave.
On the flip side - I have been in large lolth groups where we decide that the amount of people we have is enough (and the lag is horrendous) so we don't invite new members. This is usually greeted with hurt feelings and anger from those left out. In this case, a set limit would help.
In the end, I like the idea of optimizing the group to get the highest experience bonus with 8 members. This would allow groups to have more members if desired, but encourages splitting into smaller groups when possible. At down times it would allow those 1 or 2 extra people to find groups; and at peak times it would keep lag down without forcing the issue.
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Post by hfb on Jul 25, 2006 21:41:04 GMT
Greetings,
An "on death of baddie in question" auto-teleportation to a "through the looking glass" map might also help with campers/farmers. That is, if on the death of Dachy, the whole party is ported to an exact (mostly exact) duplicate of the Shadow Prison and there is no way back to the place where the actual fighting took place, then no camping can happen. Could be similar to the porting to the abyss from the sages (i.e. all in area x go to place y). Fighting happens in on one map and corpse and loot drops on the duplicate room.
This could also be coupled with the entry not allowed function similar to the Xul tag or the Beholders status bit.
My apologies for lack of clarity--brain is mush--I hope the idea made it through: think Matrix and a cat walks by twice...
Cheers,
The Dancer
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Post by FunkySwerve on Jul 25, 2006 22:55:03 GMT
Regarding the idea of respawning quests. First, with the update to 3 servers, and now with 4 (!!) servers available, there is probably less need -- though it seems they reboot less often! I like the idea of "no drop if someone already did this quest this reset", but I'd like to suggest that it use a Lolth-Xul like system of preventing these people from entering the area with the party. They will be prevented from reentering the area, yes, though I won't go into specifics, this won't be an issue. We can't reset from within the mod, is the conventional wisdom. Such resets use the LoadModule function and do not clear meory leaks, the major reason for a reset. I did however put out a couple feelers about whether this might be possible to do via our database. No items are created onopen. That would cause an immense lag spike. [/quote] No, they aren't. Creating items can be, but 50 isn't so bad, and it's localized, not constant. With the bank chests, why not set up the transfer chests on a different map? Because it wouldn't affect anything. No, we don't. The number of items in the area is completely irrelevant to chest function, in any case. No, it couldn't. All areas on the server already 'reset' on exit. NPCs are spawned out, stray items are despawned, monsters are destroyed, and so on. If they weren't the server would crawl. Hopefully that will clear up a few rumors. Funky
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Post by chainlink on Jul 26, 2006 14:38:02 GMT
I have no idea whether this is correct but does mass spawning the farm have a big effect on lag as all the Taro drop items and quite often people kill all of them before picking up the large quantities of stuff lying around (and not bothering with any thunderstones)? I'm guessing the despawn on exit clears this up but quite often people hang around in the first area for quite a while until they are hard enough to move on.
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Post by fusa on Jul 26, 2006 19:40:56 GMT
Mass spawning anywhere with lots of creatues affects lag greatly. It usually clears up when the area is exited. I think the immortal run areas also creatues lag, probably because of custom ai of the creatues there.
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Post by chainlink on Jul 27, 2006 11:52:30 GMT
Would it be better if one out of each group of Taro dropped a bag rather than all of them dropping stuff? I passed through there on my way to the lake last night and although there was a party there there were bags strewn all over the screen I can't imagine this helps the lag situation.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Jul 27, 2006 15:08:13 GMT
It's negligible compared to the ai involved, but it does have a small impact, yes. That's why we have the area cleaner scripts. Funky
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