Okie, MOB view distances in various zones.. whats the deal with this??!

A while back is when this started to happen on Rubi Ka 1, in quite a few zones, you can only see MOBs when you are practically in their face. They fade in and out of view at a very close range. I have avoided saying anything about this previously since its such an obvious glitch and thought you'd have it fixed by now. It leads to constant adds when you attack non-aggro mobs and a quick death when you run into groups of aggro mobs, from not being able to see them.

Also I know its not just me, my friends and other ppl I have teamed with experienced the same thing, plus, the afflicted zones are generally deserted. Furthermore, I logged on one of my old chars on Rubi Ka 2 and did not experience this problem in the same zones.


Zones where I constantly experience this problem:

Wailing wastes
Clon****
Longest road
Andromeda
There are others but can't remember them offhand.

You hardly ever see anyone in these zones either, is this what you want? half the gameworld deserted?

This is very bad. Zaal is the only char if mine witha yalmaha so its not an issue for him. BUT -

ALL my other characters still have to travel by ground to get to their destinations. This means they should have a full and unobstructed view of the wilderness mobs before they run into them. We all knwo that we can get to missions in these places but the problems that come from an Ancient Gargantula suddenly "fading in" in your face are NOTHING to laugh at and very seriously affect gameplay.

Its not just being able to travel through these zones without dying every 5 mins due to stepping on some 'unseen' aggro mob thats an issue, there are a lot of great hunting areas which are completely FUBAR because of this...

Wailing wastes has giant spiders, scorpiods, the odd vulture and a large settlement of Yuottos and Outtos.

Longest road has lots: Large groups of Lifebleeders and Lifestealers, large groups of Yuottos and Outtos, large groups of Hammer beasts, etc..

Clon**** has the famous(or infamous) spider mine.

Andromeda has lots of good stuff to fight also, wolves, bigcats, spiders, etc..

So since these areas are pretty much deserted by hunting groups, you see places like 20k turning into lag-ridden, overpopulated zones..

Again to reiterate, this is not a problem I experience on Rubi Ka 2, however my friends don't want to play on that 'ghost-town' dimension of servers, so I can't just reroll there(even if i had the inclination, which i don't have much anymore).

What I would like is some official acknowledgement of this 'problem' and the assurance that a 'solution' is being worked on.

I have been on RK-2 for the most of the time and I have never experienced this problem. Today I took my first mission to Clon**** with my new RK-1 char and guess what...I almost threw my comp out the window. MOBs that aggro pop up in attack range. I had 100% View distance and 80m char view.

Please Enno fix this! There's a difference in the server code and I hope you fix it soon.

Funcom won't likely answer you, but here is your answer:

The problem, totally unacknowledged by Funcom, is that most zones in the game are separated up into little minizones which are 40 meters across.

You can see everything in the minizone you're in, plus in all the adjacent minizones, giving you a view range of 40-80 meters, depending on which direction you're facing and where you're standing within your minizone.

However, in some zones, such as 2holes, these minizones are much smaller, perhaps only 20 meters across instead of 40.

This means that depending on where you are in your little minizone and where the mobs are, they can suddenly appear 20 meters away from you as you're walking along, and then instantly attack you.

When this game was first designed and when it first went live, you were able to see everything which was 2 minizones away, instead of just one, which gave you a long view distance, and even in these zones with smaller minizones you didn't have a problem.

But the game's engine choked and sputtered under the weight of having to keep track of everything within 120 meters of you, and in crowded areas people were getting tiny frame rates and constantly grinding hard drives, and so this was fixed by only letting you see what is in the minizones right next to yours.

And so now, in certain zones in the game, you can't see anything that's more than 20-40 meters away from you.

One day, Funcom will eventually admit that this is a problem. As of now, they're still pretending that view range is 40-80 meters everywhere in the game.