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Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 3:11 am
by Mithni
heya Telonians,

remember, you had to start rising diplos about 2 hours before every raid, as you wanted to rise them all and as you were one of the lvl50 diplomats and had to do it for all the others in the force, that couldn't diplo or just didn't want to diplo?

What about inserting diplomacy the way it was intended first: You loose the buffs when you leave the zone.

First of all those buffs were a big performance problem. Soe tried and put some buffs on the same timer to reduce the number of buffs you could get, but it would be easier to just make them go away as soon as you rift to somewhere else...
Maybe it might be necessary to change the buffs a bit then to something you really need for the bosses of every zone, but that shouldn't be a biggie...

I loved diplo, liked to read the dialogues, but I didn't like the diplo grind you had to do

greetings, Mith

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 3:29 am
by Kilsin
The lag was actually generated by the server using calculations to work out regens/hp/mana etc. strip the buffs during death and certain boss mechanics (IWG in original form) stripping buffs from many players at once, while the chunks themselves can get laggy, it is usually due to having more players in the chunk, whether you realise it or not, somewhere off in a corner somewhere could be 24 players with extras sitting out and 10+ buff bot boxers all buffing each other ready to go and smack a raid mob.

To you it would just feel like lag spikes and stuttering with no one in sight but invisibly the server is having a mini meltdown trying to calculate all the buffs on every single player in the chunk.

If there were 100 players in chunk with self buffs/casted buffs and 100 players in a different chunk with just full civic buffs they would lag around the same amount due to the calculation going on constantly to know what it regening, what is adding HP/Mana/End, mitigation, Armour Class, attribute points and for how long, it checks every second if I remember correctly.

If you mix all those buffs together, then yeah, it's gonna get a bit messy, which is why most raid leaders, myself included, split buffs up and send healers off first if they need to summon, then tanks or dps and send smaller groups of players to different chunks to minimise this.

So civic buffs can cause lag but they are not the sole reason for it, it is the poor optimisation of the server itself and the way it handles calculations, that is how it has been explained to me anyway, maybe someone else with more knowledge can jump in and explain it better.

Basically though, the Devs said civic diplo buffs were fine, it was the calculations server side and the mobs killing them/stripping them from 24+ players that caused the lag. Some of the class buffs like Disciple area wide healing were nightmares to calculate and eventually got nerfed to save on server calculations and reduce lag.

Also if you were peacefully standing in Khal either Crafting, Banking or admiring the view and 24+ raiders rifted into grab civics, the whole chunk lags because of the sudden influx of players and multiple extra calculations, which can cause crashes.

Some would argue that civic buffs are over powered but in defense of that, back when the level cap was 50 and we only had gear/weapons up to APW, the civics actually made the difference between killing a mob and wiping for a lot of the fights.

I would rather they stayed as they were personally and the game instead, was rebalanced back to the good old days of challenging content and diplo buffs being almost required (which gave diplomats some much needed love, being wanted all the time).

Removing EEs and all the new itemisation changes will go along way to reducing lag too

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 5:27 am
by Mithni
[quote](which gave diplomats some much needed love, being wanted all the time)[/quote]
Sure people liked diplomats... but as not everyone helped rising civics, it - somehow - felt like being exploited

Well, when I was still active in game, I did a lot of content...
So: Bridge of Destiny or Vi'rak >> meant rising civics for about 2 hours
Mo: Sister Trials >> meant rising civics for about 1 hour
Tu: PoTa Stuff >> meant rising civics for about 1 hour
Wed: Overland Raid >> meant rising civics for about 2 hours
Thu: helping ally guild with griffon questline >> meant rising civics for about 2 hours
Fri: Co-Leader for ally guild beginners raid >> meant rising civics for about 2 hours
Sat: Progression Raid >> meant rising civics for about 2 hours

so that were 12 hours of civic rising a week... it exhausted people that helped on that

If you would leave the buffs when you leave the zone, diplomats would still get the needed love, as they would still rise needed buffs (with the difference, that the number of buffs would be smaller... you would just have to adjust the buffs)

greetings, Mith

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 7:03 am
by Kilsin
Mithni, that sounds like a guild/group problem to me more than anything, not a diplo issue.

I had no issues with leading Reverence raids every week for 3-4 years, we would have regular helpers in Reverence and from other guilds, including PUG players not guilded. I think it just comes down to managing the players involved, if you got such little help and that forced you to personally diplo for 12 hrs a week, I would've stopped putting civics up until the people who were not helping, got the message and chipped in, that is just laziness

I understand your concern but I really think it is unfairly putting the blame onto the Diplo sphere, instead of the diplomats pushing the civics (or lack of in your case).

At level 55 no one should need civics for anything, they are just a bonus to add to the already overpowered players, what I was suggesting was keep diplo civics as they have always been and fix the real problem, the game balance giving players too much power. Then civics will be no issue and needed again to actually beat content, making diplo more appealing to everyone.

If anyone was to take the world wide civics pushing away, the Diplo sphere would suffer greatly, especially on an emulator with a very small population and one that intends to bring challenge back into the game.

It promotes player interaction too, diplomats used to get offered tips to push city civics up for crafters, adventurers and even lower level diplomats with low presence. I would love to see that happen again on a small but loyal emu server where everyone starts back at level 1 and rebuilds together

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 3:24 pm
by Xinux
[quote]it checks every second if I remember correctly.[/quote]

Some of the buffs do check every second which is just stupid imo once you send the buff and value there is no reason to keep checking it until either the client removes the buff or the server removes it. When the timer run's out the client sends a packet to the server saying hey my timer ran out at that point the server should just send the removal packet and send the new stats based off the values at that point.

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 6:34 pm
by falloutdc
But what if let's say the client decides to never send this packet kinda crazy i know but doing it every second is stupid i noticed this on my isle of dawn neglace

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 8:01 pm
by Koralith
[quote="falloutdc"]But what if let's say the client decides to never send this packet kinda crazy i know but doing it every second is stupid i noticed this on my isle of dawn neglace[/quote]

Even if the client doesn't send it, it wouldn't be too tough for the server to check it on chunk at the very least.

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 9:13 pm
by Kilsin
[quote="Xinux"][quote]it checks every second if I remember correctly.[/quote]

Some of the buffs do check every second which is just stupid imo once you send the buff and value there is no reason to keep checking it until either the client removes the buff or the server removes it. When the timer run's out the client sends a packet to the server saying hey my timer ran out at that point the server should just send the removal packet and send the new stats based off the values at that point.[/quote]

I am certainly no expert on this matter but that was the assumption I made as well from just a common sense point of view.

Would they free up the server a bit and reduce lag, if the calculations were cut back a bit to 5-10 seconds (or even longer) for the ones that were considered more long term buffs? (read: 30 min to 3 hour buffs).

I am sure the short term buffs like 5-60 second ones would need small regular tick calculations but the longer ones surely not?

Anything to free up the server and the lag would be a huge bonus in my opinion.

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 10:30 pm
by Dinjoc
Civic diplos seemed to pulse/refresh every 3-5 seconds from what I noticed client side whenever I'd click one off.

I think limiting the availability of actual civics wouldn't be too bad as long as there are several chunks designated that they worked in (i.e. Khal buffs work in Khal, Qa Riverbank, and Ksaravi Gulch, but nowhere else). Not sure how well that would work since that would mean some sort of buff check on rifting/chunking plus the stripping. One possible benefit though is that some buffs could be added to other cities that they aren't normally available in (like how Tawar would need a couple more civics so that all the crafting buffs could go up there). This would help keep the civics useful and eliminate pushing raid buffs. Additionally, this could help make diplos more viable in many cities and maybe even create a need for some new levers altogether (I know Tar Janashir had some levers that weren't accessible and didn't have a buff, would be cool to retool them for a real use).

However as a trade off to raiding guilds, some kind of guild hall parleys could be incorporated to create guild wide buffs like the GH trophies. This would still give high level diplomats something to push for raids (though not as a 2 hour endeavor like before), wouldn't impact the entire population (or as large a portion of the population at any rate), the buffs can last longer to minimize refreshing parley levers and prolong raid times without causing conflict between raiders and the crafters and lowbie diplomats, plus a quest line or something can be put in along with a small grind factor (for an expendable or something) to obtain the ability to do these GH parleys and be able to access them. Plus this could help minimize the number of buffs so as to provide benefit to the guild without overpowering them by as much and could get rid of some of those laggier ones that do recheck constantly.

Just a thought.

Re: Diplo buffs

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 11:10 pm
by Kilsin
[quote="Dinjoc"]Civic diplos seemed to pulse/refresh every 3-5 seconds from what I noticed client side whenever I'd click one off.

I think limiting the availability of actual civics wouldn't be too bad as long as there are several chunks designated that they worked in (i.e. Khal buffs work in Khal, Qa Riverbank, and Ksaravi Gulch, but nowhere else). Not sure how well that would work since that would mean some sort of buff check on rifting/chunking plus the stripping. One possible benefit though is that some buffs could be added to other cities that they aren't normally available in (like how Tawar would need a couple more civics so that all the crafting buffs could go up there). This would help keep the civics useful and eliminate pushing raid buffs. Additionally, this could help make diplos more viable in many cities and maybe even create a need for some new levers altogether (I know Tar Janashir had some levers that weren't accessible and didn't have a buff, would be cool to retool them for a real use).

However as a trade off to raiding guilds, some kind of guild hall parleys could be incorporated to create guild wide buffs like the GH trophies. This would still give high level diplomats something to push for raids (though not as a 2 hour endeavor like before), wouldn't impact the entire population (or as large a portion of the population at any rate), the buffs can last longer to minimize refreshing parley levers and prolong raid times without causing conflict between raiders and the crafters and lowbie diplomats, plus a quest line or something can be put in along with a small grind factor (for an expendable or something) to obtain the ability to do these GH parleys and be able to access them. Plus this could help minimize the number of buffs so as to provide benefit to the guild without overpowering them by as much and could get rid of some of those laggier ones that do recheck constantly.

Just a thought.[/quote]

I really like those idea's Dinjoc, I think that would work well for raiding guilds certainly and as a guild/raid leader, thinking back over all those years of pushing buffs, an extended GH buff would've been very nice!

I am not seeing it working very well for PUG raids/groups though or the rest of the community, which is why I am a little hesitant to take away the buffs for everyone to freely use without having something viable to replace them with.

It was a community driven thing back in the good old days, even non raiders would help push civics up, since everyone who visited the chunk got to benefit, plus seeing as how the emulator will be most likely going back to VGs original roots, the game was a lot more challenging and not very solo friendly back in those days, which I think is a good thing personally because it promotes grouping and socialising in an MMO but these buffs would help to relieve some of that pain, especially since the playerbase will be very small and more close knit, taking away that player interaction/community buff sharing vibe may not be the right answer.

Having that freedom to push a couple of buffs up to help you solo when there wasn't any groups around, was sometimes the difference between continuing to play or logging off for a lot of players, as not everyone could box or had alts. I would hate to see VG emulator die off like the official game because this was not taken into consideration again.