Player warning: Crowd Limiting System coming up

[Hierus]

I think this is not solution what they want, imagine a weaker guild who tries stand vs way better equipped guild... there is no chance. I am sure this game have to handle down mass pvp acts, in any standing.

This is not answer for that problem. AO's graphic engine makes nice graphic but it is simple junk in speed relations.

3 types of lag exist, graphic lag from engine, network lag, and server lag. Server should never lag - in AO i am sure server side is not very good makes alot of headache.

Graphic engine should have options to make lowered quality pcitures, and need a revamp imo.

It is a poor act blamin computers, i have a high-end mahcine as well, and i did mass pvp alot in eq (played on pvp server), and we called 2 secs lag is very bad there with 60-70 people in zone.

Well .. booster pack will be released soon month or so, and FC just realized mass pvp simple couldnt handle by now, so they try to say this what that did. What can we do .... not much. Waiting on expansion with new engine ... or find another game.

[_____________firedup]

If you plan to limit player density during wars, then the choice of who stays and who goes should be made , somehow, by the parties involved and not by a random algorithm. Not sure what it would involve, but perhaps each side should be required to maintain a tactical center in which information on player load and abilities is presented to team tacticians who then are required to make real time decisions on team members and their location. Kinda like what happens in real wars. There could be strategies which are developed in advance of attacks and which are implemented during the battle. If this makes sense:

Notum tower attacked. Attack wave is determined in advanced and placed in position by the guild tactician. Defense is mounted in similar way. As the battle evolves troops are mustered in and out as required and as mandated by system constraints. Of course this would require that there is a designated guild tactician on at all times, otherwise system assigns tactical responsibility to highest ranking guild member at the time of the attack. (for example).

Just some thoughts

Point, I guess is that in order to implement something like this fairly it will require input from the affected players.

[______________Zaryia]

Ok , let me see if i get this right?

My guild (for example purposes) has 200 ppl..
Defending our base. Attacking team comes in with 5 lv 200 jobe implanted uber twinks and 195 members of my guild get zoned out to another area?? Is that what they are saying?? or am i just reading that wrong? The only way that could even come close to helping is if they take Lv into consideration.. and then you still have the ppl that have been lv 74 since 2 weeks after beta, or lv 25 for 8 month because that is the lowest lv they could get the ncu recompiler to hold the 80 buffs it took to get there armor on...
I dont like this in either situation. I have been on several TARA raids just to get screen shots, and a few other static quests for curiosity. If it wasnt for a helpfull engy with becan warp i would NEVER have gotten my nelbs cloak. He went out of his way to join a team and fight 4 omni guards just to becan me to the entrance of Steps.

I am not one of these " N.A.S.A. computer T1 P4 3.5mhz 1gig Ram" ppl, BUT i do not believe that most/majority of the "lag" problem is our systems. I have played AO on other systems, and yes at work on a T1 and noticed little if no differance than at home. This "updated zone gas" IS going to cause ALOT more problems than i think it could ever HOPE to solve. I forsee the /petition cant get to mission because a fight is near by...

NOW THAT would piss me off.....

I am 2 months from having to renew my account, if this thing takes place like most of us are seeing,, i am changing to a per month payment so i can cancel right away.....
Enough ppl will stop playing because they CANT play for lack of player space in the area that they want to go in.

[_________Lilbreather]

Has the funcom team ever thought of changing the game engine to include a prioritised system for loading textures. I think we all agree textures are the problem, and that ping is not. Maybe the information being sent to computers to describe the items and status of a player could be packeted better to decrease actual lag but graphics handling seems to be the problem.

When a player first zones into an area what is wrong with them seeing placeholder textures of a 1x1 white pic. Seriously if I had the option to play like that always I would at times. After this initial zone details of players would stream to the graphics card not get kicked to it all at once... Suppose a data stream cap for loading of these types of asthetic items. And important data such as who is hitting my character and who I am hitting should be prioritised w/o a datastream cap.... if I don't ever get to see pretty textures but live and then after a fight start to get the pretty graphics so be it... I lived, but the other way around is where being annoyed at the game comes from.

As for the idea of capping the number of players in a zone or even fighting area/radius I say a big NO. If I was to be protecting my guild's tower and 100 lvl 200 characters from another guild came storming in I'd think to myself "holy crap".... and then "that was cool as all hell" PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T LIMIT PLAYERS PER AREA Just use any method to make the players visible and attackable without being graphic intensive till the datastream gives a break for such things to be loaded.

P.S. If anyone knows a method of replacing AO textures all with the same referenced 1x1 texture let me know
I'd rather see a white set of polys hittin me in real time than an awesome graphic 1fps and being dead before my keyboard responds to commands.

Feel free to e-mail burns, suggestions and even the before mentioned method to my attention at lung@nyc.rr.com .... I'll be killin that addy in a few weeks anyways. (I won't read replies here)

[Bionitrous]

No, you misunderstood. It all depends on the limit for the area around your towers. Let's say the limit is 100. In your example, only 95 could get near your tower. The rest would be pushed away. If you had 50 defending and 200 came, then it would be 50 vs. 50. Of course the attackers would have an easier time bringing fresh meat as they'd have them queued to attack in swarms. If you had 60 defending and 200 came, it would still remain 50/50. You'd have 10 sent back to your home base.

I really hope they can work this out. I really look forward to fair long lasting battles.

In your instance, if you had 50 people defending and 200 came and all were allowed to attack, I think I just wouldn't buy the booster. No use even putting up a tower.

I hope to high heavens, that the battles are something like 25 on 25. That sounds like a reasonable and exciting battle with an endurable amount of lag.

Originally posted by Killallomni
Ok , let me see if i get this right?

My guild (for example purposes) has 200 ppl..
Defending our base. Attacking team comes in with 5 lv 200 jobe implanted uber twinks and 195 members of my guild get zoned out to another area?? Is that what they are saying?? or am i just reading that wrong? The only way that could even come close to helping is if they take Lv into consideration.. and then you still have the ppl that have been lv 74 since 2 weeks after beta, or lv 25 for 8 month because that is the lowest lv they could get the ncu recompiler to hold the 80 buffs it took to get there armor on...
I dont like this in either situation. I have been on several TARA raids just to get screen shots, and a few other static quests for curiosity. If it wasnt for a helpfull engy with becan warp i would NEVER have gotten my nelbs cloak. He went out of his way to join a team and fight 4 omni guards just to becan me to the entrance of Steps.

I am not one of these " N.A.S.A. computer T1 P4 3.5mhz 1gig Ram" ppl, BUT i do not believe that most/majority of the "lag" problem is our systems. I have played AO on other systems, and yes at work on a T1 and noticed little if no differance than at home. This "updated zone gas" IS going to cause ALOT more problems than i think it could ever HOPE to solve. I forsee the /petition cant get to mission because a fight is near by...

NOW THAT would piss me off.....

I am 2 months from having to renew my account, if this thing takes place like most of us are seeing,, i am changing to a per month payment so i can cancel right away.....
Enough ppl will stop playing because they CANT play for lack of player space in the area that they want to go in.

[______________Trasey]

I think now.... would be a good time to allows us to move to RK-2 and make an RK-3. I'd be happy to move if my guild started a chapter on RK-2 or an RK-3.


I'd rather have the option, than to get stuck in a shop due to a zone being too "Full"

Just my 2 cents

[__________Soulmartyr]

Ok, the theory may be sound, but it's only that, theory.

I definitely did not like the whole "pointing fingers" at low-end computer owners. I have a high-end system. My average ping is about 67. I still experience lag though. Even when my ping is around 80, massive lag occurs occasionaly that can't be associated with my system, since I can do a full blown virus scan of my whole HD and still maintain a 73 ping without lag or other gameplay performance issues.

Funcom, listen up you silly goofballs. Do some research, invest in some better rack systems with hot-swappable components and redundant capabilities, and of course, spend some more time on these patches (aka gameplay sabotage). A good place to start is to make sure ALL of your servers are running on a multiprocessor based system, of course, at this point in the game, if you have a multiprocessor system but the software wasn't originally designed to use it, I guess we're all SOL.

Perhaps instead of implementing a "crowd" control system, how about an alternative. A typical day in Omni-1 Trade (or from AO Chat) consists of people running scripts listing all the stuff they're selling, while they hang out by the grid terminal/bank area (ashtray, keyboard for chat folks). This is what FPS players call camping (amongst other things ).

Here's the solution:
Impliment player commerce terminals. The terminal will allow someone, with items to sell, to place them in a terminal and set a price for each item they submit. For every day they have an item to sell in the terminal, the seller pays a small handling fee to Omni-1, the Clans, etc. After that, a potential buyer may access the terminal, look through some different categories so they don't have a couple hundred items to search through, select the category, select a sub-category, then select the item they like and purchase it. The credits are automatically transferred to the seller and that's it. No more campers in Omni-1 Trade or AO Chat running scripts.

It would be a good idea to remove the ability to advertise/run scripts from outside the game through the AO Chat. I mean, is the person really playing if they aren't logged into the world? Is waiting for a response in AO Chat, then logging in for 2 minutes while it is convenient, then logging out and returning to a chat window that's not "in-game" really role-playing? It's like a demented version of pop-up ads for AO. Sure, you can just not "show" those messages, but the servers still have to queue up those scripted sale items and transmit them with all the other packets even if they aren't shown.

My 2 cents, hopefully, they'll collect some interest.

-Crimsus (WHAT'S THAT PRETZEL DOING?!!!)

[_____________firedup]

If towers are meant to be permanent fixtures requiring 24/7 defending and maintenance, then this will naturally favor the development of massive, international guild structures to support them: ergo greater probability for large wars. If towers are meant to be temporary, operating within the range of a typical login session, then the guild structures dont have to be so massive and things get a bit simpler.

Promote smaller guilds. Make it more expensive to maintain larger guilds. That should help.

[____________Lordcack]

I like the idea. I think that anything that brings balance and more tactics into the game isn't a bad thing. I see that there will be problems with it, but what in this genre doesn't come with problems. The thing is it is an issue that needs addressed. It's a small price to pay to play the game and no matter what everyone thinks it is a small price to pay. I get sooooooo tired of hearing people complain and whine.....wha! wha! my class is unbalanced......wha! wha! this new level limit sucks......just play. If you don't like it you can go enjoy a very, very uneventfaul and lifeless adventure in Norrath......cause from where I'm standing I would rather play this game that is managed quite well than a game that doesn't need managed because it has NO OPTIONS (i.e. Everquest). Also, who ever mentioned getting no lag in EQ.....thats because it only has like 2,000 people per server and the graphics are junkie....at best. You people need to take the hardware involved into consideration. Of course I am speeking to a rather self serving group of players (that goes for ALL MMORPG players not just AO) not including myself of course :-)

[____________Lordcack]

I personally think.......and this may fringe on changing my last thought......that players can help deal with this problem. The players should be able to restrain themselves. I mean this should involve tactics not just overwhelming with numbers. Its people like this who take the heart and soul of the game and smash it under there shody role playing skills. Politics, Tactics, Plots, and scemes...this game is no simple hack and slash (i.e. Everquest......not to repeat myself)...thats what makes this game so interesting and if that idea doesnt work its the players fault. I mean think about it. The whole genre is unbalanced so we as players need to work out these issues.

As far as the questions of low-end/hi-end..I have a lower end system and a 56 k connections...so i know about the isses....but I know it comes with the territory....I have been playing MMORPG's since the beginning of the genre so I just know its gonna be there.

So lets just put up and shut up.....there are plenty of other games to play if you dont like it.....besides if some of you whinney people quit playing then that will free up some server space for those of us who can deal with things like adults.....

[Stabdude]

... obviously needs an upgrade. We haven't heard anything from the beta testers of Notum Wars (presumably because of an NDA in place) - but Gaute does say that the GFX engine (or Resource Manager) has been improved.

The "lag" most people experience has little or nothing to do with network lag. This is AO's resource manager loading tons of textures from the hard-drive, since there seems to be little or no predictive pre-loading like this:

(Playfield Server) : This guy is moving towards an area with 50 different players in it - he's gonna be there in about 35 seconds with his current RunSpeed. Here are their texture-codes:...

(Resource Manager) : Okay - lets start loading their textures - ONE AT A TIME, ONE SECOND EACH).

(Player) : Moves slightly to the left of the current path

(Resource Manager) : Okay, dropping 15 textures which will no longer be visible - freeing up memory.

(Server) : Listen, these two guys will be in players path instead in 20 seconds.

(Resource Manager) : Okay, start preloading of those players textures...

etc.

Instead, what happens, is that the client "suddenly" stumbles upon players - and THEN loads their textures from disk, all of them at one time (lets say for 30 players) - which is BOUND to create hard-disk trashing - and hence the percieved "lag".

Ofcourse, especially on computers with IDE hard drives, this is going to deprioritize other tasks, including the TCP/IP stack, which will then suffer, and perceived "ping" will go down, even though the network connection is clean and good.

I bet that the development team is very aware of these problems, and that they are working diligently to solve them. And, I make this sound extremely easy, but ofcourse it isn't. This takes a ton of coding, lots of testing, and some pretty advanced algorithms. It also needs to be encrypted in some way so that some stupid hacker-tool can't predict what monsters you're going to meet in about 50 seconds

[_Bonk_]

Well I hope they really give this whole plan some more thought and if they need to they should hire some people to help them come up with a real solution and optimize their code to such an extent where measure such as described above would only be initated rarely.

If the whole portal storm thing happens rarely then I think people won't mind that much but if it's common and it affects many people there will be a lot of unhappy campers.

I ordered the booster and I was pretty excited about it until I read this article describing this so called solution that really doesn't solve the problem. AO's engine reminds me of the space shuttle which is old tech pushed way beyond it's specs and ready to explode at any moment.

[Gridfan]

AO is a HEAVY game engine, serverwise and clientwise.
And dont compare SWG peeps. not directly at least.
SWG is built from the ground up with a crownd system.
A loosesly quote from one of the devs there is:
"We dont care if the characters in SWG look like sticlk figures as long as that frame rate is kept up high and smooth"

Thats gonna be a bummer huh? I mean, that would suck imo.


I think AO is pushing the technology on a whole.
Yes low-end sysystems (like mine) dont handle it well.
With AO up I cant do much else on my my machine at same time.
(try doing a radio show :P takes like seconds sometimesa for buttons to respond :P or switch windows.

A highend system should have a nice amount of power left even when running AO. Then there is networking. If FC ditched all modem peeps they could do more over the network to us. But about half the peeps in AO are on modems so thats a no go for sure.

It seems that AO has caught up to technology in general (in the MMORPG or MMOPG, or MOPG or whatever area)

Btw! The crowd limiting, you do have a radius of 80 clicks/meters around you.

You wont be left out of the action.
What will happen is if you walk into a area with the max ppl limit withing your "circle" then you are moved slightly.

In other words you may be unable to get in the center of it all etc.
But you'll still face like 20-30 people in YOUR vincinity.

Imagine a chessboard.

Put a piece in the middle of it. use a chalk to draw a circle ressembling 80 meters/clicks around your piece.
Now say there cant be more than 30 pieces within that circle.
Now draw more circles around your circle (and slightly overlapping)
In fact draw a circle like that for ALL the chess pieces.

Yep. lets say you and a friend go into battle. he is 2 meters to your west.

He cant see the people to your far east, and you cant see the people to his far west. but you both will see most of the same pepple around you.

Another interesting thing is. if you take down a enemy you will be able to move closer to the huge lump of 30 people having a hand to hand thing near a tower etc.

I sure as hell hope this is how they plan to do it.
Any other way would indeed leave people "outside"...

I'm not that good with gfx stuff, not to mention i got no program installed to do that right now :P

But could someone that know what I mean draw up a simple example of the circles and crowd thing? (and then cross our fingers that THAT is how the Crowd Control will work when implemented)

Point is this system would allow say 200-300 (if the servers can handle it) people in the area were the towers actually are and then spread out around them in lumps/lines etc etc.

Point is if you looked at the battle from above (and could see everyone) you would see a bunch of people near the main tower.
People around the support towers/guard towers etc etc.
You would see clusters of people away from the towers.
(maybe personal towers someone just put up etc)

And betwee these clusters of people would be smaller groups or just induviduals or 2-3 peeps all over the place between thse large clusters/lumps of people.

This is the way "large" battles happen currently (as long as servers dont crash).
And hopefully this will be the same way after the Crowd Control thing is in. only to each induvidual things will seem less laggy,
and hopefully clientside LD etc will be mostly of the past as far as crowded areas go.

Oh another thing. in HUUUGE battles youll see from my previous post that theis crowd control thing wont really affect you. It might enhance and unconciously bring more strategy into it.

What I do worry about is small battles were the people of both sides together is right at the limit of the crowd control kicking in.
Then (I may be wrong and they got something planned for that as well)
people may be "left out" because there simple isnt enough people to varrant a spread out battle. So it will be interesting to see how the actual threshold part of the crowd control will work.

That is actually what most people here is whining about and I agree with that.

A tiny battle wont really trigger the crowd control.
In huuge battles the crowd control will improve the battle.
It's the grey area between a small (no need for crowd control)
and a large (a need for crowd control) battle/crowd that has me worried.

But if the crowd control is relative to you rather than the area itself.
Then the "grey area" isnt a issue either. you may not be able
attack/see the guy 80m on the other side of the crowd.
But then again he would be out of battle range/attack range anyway
and no threat.

If FC have assumed/planned what I just did (if not take notes Funcom dammit :P Then this might actually work out nicely...

[Hierus]

Gridfan, you are wrong. You assume attackers and defenders are with same force in gear as well. What about of one side isnt ? I can tell you, they not have chance to win, the weaker side. Weaks need numbers to win, and they cant get it in this crowd control system. That is my problem.

And calling AO as heavy engined game on clientside ann serverside is funny and naive, their servers sucks bad. For your info, AO has half of WHOLE players (online and not online) as Everquest as only _online_ players at same time. Yes, in EQ more then 100000 players online, and whole eq far not laggy as AO. AO need some update on serverside ( for example using mainframes instead intel PCs), but no, so enjoy your crowd system, when a far better equiped attacker horde whipe with you the floor.

[___________Tyrathect]

Another posability would be to hold a vote on a "default dress" for all the races and keep those fully loaded all the time. If you encounter a memory problem it would just use the default for that character, that takes care of the memory problem but not the poly count. For that you could just use the grid tryangles to show players, or dynamicly remove animations to keep a good FPS.

It would be nice to set the limit to the highest end systems and then just use what I described above for lower end systems. Its important not to limit player interaction unless absolutly nessesory. If things get out of hand for even high end systems then use the method described in the artical, but try and keep the limits as high as posable. I for one don't mind seeing a few "defaults" running around if I am in the middle of a battle. The only thing that conserns me is who to heal, attack and what the battle plan is. Even if you can't tell what equipment some one has it matters little. After all, how many people actualy look to see what NPCs have? Heck, you could even use a radious system to load only the closest people to you, making far off people just "defaults", if you wana see what they have, move closer...

Anyway, I just wanted to bring my idia to the table. If anyone likes this idia please say so. It could help make things fair to both low and high end players.

[Argentus]

If these towers provide the amount of defensive power I believe they will, it will take a much higher Attacker/Defender ratio than 50/50 to pry the defenders out of their hole! Anyone familiar with mitilary tactics can tell you that. The system they propose will end up in the defenders winning nearly all the time. Board gamers know that to attack a well defended area takes around an 8:1 ratio.

The game designers are going to have to break out their old tabletop games and relearn the Art of Gaming War. That is, of course, if they are old enough to even have played a tabletop war game.

An engineer in this case could be considered a vehicle for an Air Drop. Why not create a device that can temporarily stop engineers from using beacon. Taht could be considered offensive Air Support. NT\s are the long range are the artillery, ...the analogies go to each calss. Notum Wars could be more like a war game if the designers would think like that. If they did, we would be pushed to develop actual tactics and strategies,i.e. AO would become more like a game than a chat room with something to do with your friends.

[_Bonk_]

So now that the game is nearly ready to be released and I assume this new fangled system has been tested I think it would be helpful to know just what are the limits before people start getting portalled out of the area. How many per zone?

I hope they tell us rather than make us figure it out for ourselves because smart people here will do it practically immediately anyway.

[___________Katerchen]

Dear Funcom people, dear AO players,

As I want to be constructive as I love this game and want it to succeed, I'll divide this very long article into five subchapters:
I) Why the hell do I write this?
II) Bugs to be fixed
III) Suggestions to improve performance (especially on client)
IV) Balance Issues (continued in part 2)
V) Conceptual Issues (continued in part 2)

I hope the following will be helpful to make AO more fun again.

I) Why the hell do I write this?

I am a GUI and systems programmer, so please excuse if I sometimes speak quite technically, even if I tried to express all technical stuff in a manner that everybody can understand.

I originally didn't intend to comment on the things going on here, I'd prefer only to play for leisure.

But the last days of playing were quite frustrating.
I don't want to whine, but you might be curious what made me stopping playing now to write this, even though I planned to enjoy a long playing evening.

After the last client-side patch the overall program performance has been substantially decreased. I don't know the reason, but it might either be due to debugging or workaround code or due to the modifications of the graphics engine (as mentioned in the patch description). This leads to very bad frame rates when apparently loading new picture elements after zoning, turning, entering new rooms etc.

The introduction of NPC pets appears not to be well balanced yet, this still needs fine-tuning.
Let me explain. The thing that actually made me stop playing because of frustration was that it made it effectively impossible to do solo missions with a sufficient success chance. I died 5 times due to two problems/unbalances due to summoned pets, rendering many hours aof playing effortless by eventually losing any gained experience. After this I was simply fed up. See more below in the suggestions chapter.

And then there was the article by Gaute Godager regarding the upcoming CL system.

Before I discuss it in more detail, let me tell what I saw on RK-3 the day before the usage of beacon warp to bring people to Camelot has been forbidden.

A group of Omnis was going for Tarasque and the pvp zone in the castle.
Some time after they worried how to get their team to Camelot, some had the idea to make a "teleporting team" only for transporting Omnis to the castle. The principle was easy: Engineer in castle, helper in Omni-Ent, the helper invited people, the engineer warped them to camelot, and then they left team for others to be warped after them.
This eventually led to massive crowding, after warping a quite large part of the Omnis being online into the castle and Tara's dungeon. Many people got LD, people entering the zone by feet were unable to do anything useful when the frame rate went far below 1.


I hink this incident was the final trigger for some of the latest developments.

The recent patch mayhem and the CL system discussion together make me really worry where Funcom is going.
It looks to me as if they had no plan what to do, and were in a more or less helpless situation.

This bugged and apparently not balance-tested patch opens up some questions:

Did Funcom not test this sufficiently? I can't believe. It seems more probably to me that something pressed them to make the unfinihed patches, maybe some investor relations? Or was it an internal short-circuit of Gaute? Does Gaute really know the true maturity state of the code? Or is he be lied at by programmers he pressed too much to finish the patch on a fixed day? Questions over questions.

But these are not really questions we customers should have to ask. So let's go on to the next section.

II) Bugs to be fixed

Not all of the listed here are real bugs, in fact many of them can be considered as design flaws.

- "In-Fight-Bug"
Description: One of the more annoying bugs. Almost every AO player already experienced it, it disturbs most after using teleporters.
Solution: Have all monsters clear the aggro flag after using a teleporter. This behaviour would be the most "realistic", as everyone would expect. I have heard that Funcom is of the opinion that the behaviour called by the players "the in-fight-bug" is the intended way things should go. Funcom, rethink please.

-Door Bug
In fact, it's a design flaw. Doors are treated as opaque (not transparent) when calculating what item was being clicked at, even if they are open (graphically transparent, i.e. the area behind is visible).
That is, if you are standing in front of an open door and want to select the mob that is attacking you from the other side of the open door, you (almost) always get the door as target.
This behaviour is unnatural, it could easily be fixed by applying the same transparency calculation when doing the frame display calculations.
However... if it is really true that AO's engine is unable to do the calculations which objects are being obscured by others itself, and leaves these calculations to the video card GPU, as it is hinted by some posters in this forum, then a performance overhaul of the engine is overdue.
This could include adding some cache structures, for example. Such cache memory management would be extremely helpful to avoid excessive disk accesses and to reduce OS swapping. Also the results of the door transparency calculation of the display calculation could be cached for the case that the user clicks onto an object behind the door.

-"Out-of-Range" bug
Very similar to the door bug. Mob with direct line-of-sight to the player is falsely determined as "out of range" because of slight height differences or small things lying between player and mob, resulting player being defenseless against such mobs attacking him until finding a point on same altitude and unobstructed space from where the engine allows him to attack.

It is mostly caused by
a) Mob either standing on slightly higher or lower ground, i.e. different altitude
b) Small things (especially globes, stones and rocks) that lie between player and mob. Not long ago tables in mission rooms caused the same effect. The fact that this got fixed shows that FC is aware of this problem.

The solution of the "out-of-range" bug would be the same with the solution of the door bug above.

-The "Teammate-Is-Invisible"-Bug
This bug is less a bug than a desynch problem. Sometimes teammates cannot be seen even if standing beneath each other. This is a frequent bug in missions, caused by the clients not getting updated correctly about the positions of the team mates.
Even though this bug is easily to work around by walking out of the other's vicinity zone (i.e. until the display of the team mates in the team window disappears) and back in to enforce a resynch, it should be a priority to Funcom.
The solution is extremely simple. Introduce a checksum consisting of the coordinates of the team members in the mission. If a client gets out of synch, then the server can initiate a respective client update.

-The "Didn't get Mission" bug
Sometimes nothing happens after clicking "accept" on the mission terminal, the player does not get the selected mission. This is particularly annoying if somebody was taking the tedious manual approach to find missions with rewards that are needed for upgrading the own character.
Yes, many people do this without clicksaver, many dont even know of clicksaver.
So please don't take this bug easy, FC. Searching for a matching mission is tedious, and losing the time invested due to this stupid bug is annoying.
So, FC, please fix this. It might mean to intoduce some client/server negotiations to ensure that a mission accept request does not get dropped. Shouldn't bee too hard to implement.

O.K. These were the bugs with the biggest annoyance factor.
They should be Funcom's highest priority.


III) Suggestions to improve performance (especially on client)

Now my 2 cents on improving runtime performance.

-First of all, please introduce an client option like "Display all chars in faction/profession uniform", that displays people only in uniform outfits. Maybe blue for Omni, red for clan and grey for Neuts. I'd like very much when the uniform would also indicate the profession, this would make a hinting displaying of weapons unnecessary.
The beneficiary effect of this would be pushing up the frame rates, the more, the lower the client's system is.

For my part, I would prefer an overcrowding system in the form of enforced display of uniform faction/profession when reaching a predetermined threshold of players in an area.

Anyway, I probably would have activated such an option most of the time. I simply dont care much for the clothes and looks of the other players. Instead I am annoyed by low frame rates, so
...
My suggestion also would be a scalable solution, where the user can decide himself how much texture loading lag he is willing to accept. Gaute's approach isn't.

After implementing a such solution, Funcom would gain more time and reduce the pressure to overhaul their graphics engine.

This overhaul of the graphics engine should be Funcom's priority.
I will not go into depth here, this topic has been discussed by several others quite detailed.
This would consist of many steps, the most important of them would be to implement an effective Memory Garbage collection. (i.e. cleaning up unused memory instead of piling up an ever-growing chunk of trashed swap memory). It is completely sick how long the garbage cleanup after a longer AO playing session takes.
Easy solition approach: Implement some caching texture memory lookup management structure with the elements being not used for the longest time being deleted first when physical memory gets low. This would drastically reduce texture load freezes and also help avoid excess swapping.
It is mad that the game loads meshes, textures etc from HD again and again even though they are already in memory. Apparently, currently the Windows HDD cache is the only caching structure in effect here :/

These two things would be quite simple to implement, and would really make a performance boost.
This again could help Funcom to bridge the time until they got their engine adequately optimized, or even make a new one.

(cont'd)

[___________Katerchen]

IV) Balance Issues

First of all... AO claims to be a pvp game...
it's quite suicidal to introduce expansions like "Notum Wars" before balancing out the different professions/classes in pvp terms...
This game lives from the multitude of professions. But the professions are far away from having halfway balanced chances in pvp combat.
What might be the consequence? Professions being bad in pvp due to missing inter-class-pvp balancing will be less attractive. Thus the "weaker" professions will become even less attractive. As the time passes, they will be played less and less. But imagine a monoculture of a few professions, while weaker professions, like bureaucrats, for example, might become very rare...

I don't think that is what Funcom wants.

O.K. I think many people will agree with me that this has to be balanced somewhat more than now before the release of "Notum Wars".

It is a must, failure to do so might be catastrophic to the long-term success of AO.

And it should be not too difficult to evaluate and implement appropriate inter-class pvp balance rules/formulae. Really, there is no excuse for not doing so.

Gaute, to solve this, here is my suggestion:
Collect up a team, either or both of experienced pvp beta testers and players. Let them evaluate a fair concept in which way pvp damage should be modified. This could consist in damage or critical chance modifications, or in modified nano effects in pvp combat. The motto should be: Every profession has a chance to survive pvp combat against any other profession in the same level.
This does not mean "equal chances", but as long as you often can tell who will win simply after being told what profession both duelists are, there will be less motivation to play "weak" professions.
Instead it should be the way that wits and skill decides the outcome of a pvp fight more than only the ql and quality of the equipment.
Thinking this way, a viable approach could also consist of non-linear damage recalculations (reductions) in pvp. Then simply grossly uberequipping one's char will no longer guarantee victory, as higher damage output would be reduced more than lower damage output, and this also could be even fine-tuned depending on the class/profession.


And then... with the recent patch a new balance problem...
The new balance issues with the NPC pets are well known. They also pose a problem what could be considered as a bug, but let me explain this later.

To me, it was "enough" after my NT, lvl 82, was killed the 5th time in some hours, again losing all exp, because being confronted by a bunch of big slayerdroids after encountering some pairs of engineer mob in soloing ql 90 missions.
The situations were severed by the "door bug" (described above) making targeting the aggressive mobs/pets difficult.
And then there a phenomenon, which is a design flaw, comes in. As people and NPC can overlap themselves on a coordinate position, you cannot click-select an entity that "engulfs" you this way.
But slayerdroids are very big, and cave mission rooms are small - it is almost impossible to click-select a slayerdroid pet in many cave dungeon rooms. So it can kill you easily before you are able to pull it out to a larger room so you can select it.
Anyway, what really pissed me off and let me stop playing and write this article, was, when the NT opened a door and saw a cross-shaped room with 2 engineer NPC in it. Then the first of them jumped at the NT, while she calmed him. And then two more engineers jumped in from the long cross-shaped room... and 4 big slayerdroids running to the poor little NT in its small room "engulfing" her...

I don't whine, but i find this quite a bit off-balance, at least as compared to the pre-patch state.

It is only a game, i want to to enjoy it and not be frustrated by uncalculable death-and-lose-exp-etc-situations like this.

Suggestions:
-Limit the number of allowable newly spawned NPC pets in a given area, maybe depending also on the team size.
-Reduce the pet's ql generally, but (NPC level x 0.7) might not be the ideal formula. Maybe either this formula or at least the lowest "green" level to the average team player level, whatever is higher. Or such.
It is simply not acceptable to sometimes being confronted by no-survival-possible-situations at random like the described ones, when the NPC pet(s) got randomly a far higher level of the player/the mission.
Again, it is a game only, it should be fun and no tedious challenge for hardcore overtwinkers.

-Reduce the size of the higher level NPC pets so that they become click-targetable in small mission rooms. This should be very easy by changing their display size factor. It would avoid some frustration and also enhance the graphic impression (a slayerdroid from inside in a small mission room does not look impressive at all :P)

I think this would make the NPC pets far more enjoyable.

V) Conceptual Issues

Hmmm... "Content"...

Diagnosis: Desperately missing :/

This is so sad, the game lacks the vividity it's great storyline suggests.

My impression is that Funcom hopes that the expansions will do a miracle and add some "content".
Let's hope, that they make it!

But i fear, that they are acting short-sighted.
This bugged and badly balanced patch should not have been done!

Anyway, as I like the game and would like to help to fill it with "life", with "vividity", so here my suggestions:

Install an event planning team, that should do the following functions:
a) Planning, preparing and supervising minor and major events, these might be
-storyline related events (political conflict)
-event-related (catastrophic event, non-political)
-profession related (profession-specific alternating dungeons) or
-season-related (Halloween etc)
b) Planning and designing event specific reward items (as a materialistic motivation to join the
events)
These should always have some special abilities like the Brock, Nodda and Bobic quest rewards, because these make these quests attractive even for higher level players.
c) Collect ideas for events, and observe the situation on the different servers, to be able to plan and launch events this way, that as many people as possible learn of them and have opportunity to participate


And now to "Notum Wars"...

I know too little about it, but a few thoughts:
Can it be guaranteed that also smaller guilds will still have fun? It sounds like as smaller organizations could be pressed to fusion to survive... maybe this is not what players want to pay for...
Hope this has been thought of and cared for by Funcom in a way that is enjoyable for all sides
I hope Funcom also thinks of all possible abuses that could lead to frustration on the attacked guild's side, by "spamming" attacks etc, as other posters mentioned.

Not an easy job...

A last thing I'd like to ask you:
Please (!) implement a pvp enable/disable flagging like in Neocron. And abolish the stupid "suppression gas" system outside the cities.
When with pvp enable/disable flag (to avoid backstabbing, perhaps only settable in town or with a time delay to warn nearby people), there is no need for suppression gas zones. Anyway, there still could be some mayhem zones left, but no quest area should be mayhem zone.
This in turn would be far more "realistic", by allowing potential duels everywhere where claner and omnis meet in the wilderness, as it should be and also is being suggested by the storyline...
I don't think that anybody would protest against this solution - please implement it ASAP!

Please, Funcom, DO something very soon!

At the moment I must tell, Auno (see www.auno.org) is right... the current state of the game after this patch is so depressing, that I lost the motivation to continue playing...
Really, Funcom, please get your act together, either I might follow him with suspending my subscription :(

O.K. Gaute - I have replied to what you asked and I hope to have helped with my detailed answer, even if you probably expected to read other things than those.

I hope you'll do the right thing(s) now :)

Yours
Katerchen

P.S.: Please also read the articles of Solstyce, Soulmartyr and firedup and all the others I missed, they make good suggestions!

[xyberviri]

The problem with the high lag in most areas is that 50+ people sit just outside of all the zone entrances/exits