Guild Wars 2

There have been a number of discussions about mob respawn rates, and I wanted to post a suggestion I’d made in a different forum here in the suggestions forum. The original post is here.

The suggestion revolved around the thought that a simple timer for determining if a particular mob should respawn is probably not the best method. Here’s the text of the suggestion:

Clearly some form of respawn is required in a non-instanced world, however the 95-120 second range of a simple timer means that small groups or solo players will fight three or four enemies near each other and the first enemy will be respawned before the last one is defeated. This is especially true if one of the mobs is veteran or high HP and takes longer to defeat.

What I wanted to suggest for a possible future enhancement is some additional logic to make the respawn determination a bit more sophisticated. The suggestion involves every mob having a “respawn range”. For enemies out in the open, this range would be fairly large and in all directions. For enemies in a cave or tunnel, the range would be limited to the directions the cave or tunnel extends to.

Whenever a mob is defeated, a check would be made to see all Players that are within that mob’s respawn range. For 95-120 seconds, things operate as they normally would. However at the end of the time, a check should be made to see if any new Players have entered that mob’s respawn range. If new players are within range, (and the normal timer is expired), then have the mob respawn. If new players are not within respawn range, then the mob should not respawn. At such a point as any new player enters respawn range, then the mob would respawn.

This would greatly help solo or group players to take down tough foes or larger groups of foes without the first enemies respawning while the fight is still going on.

It also should not have a negative impact on other Players exploring the world since if another Player has cleared the area ahead of them, as soon as the second Player enters respawn range which would be at least as far or farther than visual range for most areas, the mobs would respawn and the Player would enjoy a normal gaming experience.

Another example where this would help is for example if a solo player enters a cave, kills the mobs at the entrance, kills the mobs in the cave, and collects a skill point or whatever was needed in the cave, under today’s logic the mobs at the cave’s entrance would have already respawned by the time the Player was moving back out of the cave. This gets old pretty quickly. Under the suggested logic, as long as no new Player had entered respawn range of the cave yet, the mobs at the entrance would still be defeated.

But what happens to the player who cleared a path and then stopped to pick up loot, heal, or switch skills, when a new player comes along and foos up his day?

People berate each other enough already; I can’t imagine the obscenities to be spouted when someone gets a bunch of mobs spawned on them just because another player was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was a good thought, though.

That is no different than today’s simple timer respawn though. In other words, with today’s algorithm, the mob would respawn in 95-120 seconds no matter if new players were around or not, so to use your words, the first player’s day is foosed up. With a dynamic respawn range detection, the mob could still respawn in the 95-120 second range if new players were around, but with new players around the problem of aggressive respawn is somewhat mitigated anyway. Another way to look at it is that dynamic respawn could only make things better for explorers. For example if you clear a path to a skill point and no one joins you, the path will still be clear on your way out and no junk mobs would have respawned while you whittled down the veteran or champion. However if new players joined you after the 95-120 timer was done and early mobs respawned, it’s less of a problem than it is today because you’re no longer alone.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

As I’ve mentioned in another thread, what if a player camps on top of an event boss or other unique spawn to prevent them from appearing?

I think you’re misunderstanding his proposition.

This doesn’t prevent anything from spawning just because some player is standing there.

The idea is that they don’t spawn unless a new player enters the area.

The “abuse” you mention wouldn’t have any effect. The mob would still spawn when a new player entered the area. The only way to exploit that would be to repeatedly leave and return to the same area, but that would only result in the creatures respawning as they do now. I suppose players could prevent spawns by intentionally avoiding an area, but again, that only results in the same situation we currently have.

With a dynamic respawn algorithm, a player wouldn’t be able to prevent spawns like that. Walking through the steps it would look something like this:
1. Players A and B kill a boss
2. Upon death, the boss checks which Player(s) are within its respawn range
3. The boss’ normal respawn timer starts counting down (95-120 seconds)
4. At the end of the normal timer, a check is made – have any new players entered the boss’ respawn range that weren’t seen in step #2?
a. If yes, the boss respawns
b. If no, the boss does not respawn
c. Also if the checked players have left the area of respawn range, the boss respawns

So how would this look for a second player entering the area looking for the boss? If the original players have just killed it (within the normal respawn timer) the boss would be dead, just as it is today. However if the new player enters the area (respawn range) after the normal timer was expired, the boss would respawn.

Under this logic, the newly arriving players enjoy the event or fight as expected, however if no new players are around anyway, small groups or solo players don’t have to worry about aggressive respawns, especially in enclosed areas.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If they passed through and were not in range when the timer hit 0, the creature would not respawn.

Correct, however the “should I respawn?” question isn’t asked just once. During the normal timer (95-120 seconds) countdown, new players could indeed pass through the respawn range and they wouldn’t trigger a respawn because the normal timer is still in effect.
At the end of the normal timer a check for new players would be made. If none were in range, no respawn occurs. However as soon as a new player enters respawn range (and the timer is expired) then respawn occurs. The respawn range would by necessity be fairly large, possibly at or beyond normal visual range for open areas, and following pathing logic for caves, tunnels, etc.

I’d like to suggest a few second animation. As I understood it this animation was originally intended to cause the respawn rate to be more manageable by the players. It would basically consist of the Risen crawling out of the ground, or flying creatures flying in from a couple of yards instead of just popping up suddenly. During the initial animation phase the creatures would not aggro initially until they reached their leash position. Dredge digging out of the ground, Risen Eagles flying in from the sky, River Drakes coming out from the plants in a nearby water supply….all would affectively slow the aggro time down so a player say like a Wily Engineer could get out of the immediate area before the animation was complete instead of having 5 things show up at once and be chased continuously across the entire map because of there being never ending mobs to run into along the way.

The other method would require too many resources but I think mine would remove some of the frustration folks feel from being in Orr.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

So, the game would constantly check for nearby players from the moment the respawn timer expired? If you have to do this for every monster, it would be extremely taxing to the servers. (Plus the added overhead of storing player IDs any time a creature dies, so you have a list to check against.)

Could a trigger system work instead of a constant check? The boss would span if both requires are met of: 1- A new player enters the designated area. 2- A certain amount of time as passed since its last death.

You might achieve a satisfactory result with~

When monster dies, count the absolute number of players within about 1.5x its aggro range centered on its spawn point (not where it died). One check only.

If that number is 2 or more, start (current) respawn timer A
If that number is 0 or 1, start (newly introduced, longer) respawn timer B

If I’m in a good duo we can anhilate pretty much anything the map throws at us now. Its soloing dense areas that gets tedious or overwhelming. That dichotomy is particularly true for support or tanky characters, who wonderfully compliment the ubiquitous DPS partner, but when facing stuff alone face little risk but also very low kill rates.

My experience is there are TONS of locations where there is a second layer of critters “held in reserve”. You kill what you see in the area intially and the is a spawn (NOT a respawn) of a new critter almost on top of where you were fighting. If you kill that, you get the remaining time before the intial critter completes is 2m cooldown. The second layer of critters is also on its cooldown though, ready to spring out litterally the second the primary resident is down a second time.

If people aren’t successfully killing the reserves (either dead or running), they won’t see that after the second wave is down the area is quiet for a brief period.

Orr IS particularly bad for this behavior.

The concept of the modified timer makes sense to me. It’s akin to the boss scaling, except this would be scaling respawn to the player density.
For more fine-tuning, add a “half-life” check to re-assess player density. Or use map metrics if ANet has it on hand to apply modifiers per patch/update to this respawn timer for say really desolate areas.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“A new player enters the designated area” is the same thing as a constant check. I’m not sure how to explain what I mean, but it’s not a one-time thing.

How does scaling work for dynamic events?

Why there is an issue with “blocking” event? Is there a possibility just check to repawn timer vs player in area number? Something like :
There is one player in area killing particular mob.
n sec later – if there is still 1 player in area /it doesn’t matter if the same/ – do not respawn, if not increase counter
2n sec later – if there is change in player numbers in area – spawn if not – increase counter.
If counter > (parameter) and time for respawn – spawn.
In that case the soloing is possible and also there is no way to block an event for longer than parameter * n secs.
It also decrease drop for “stationary” bots.

Signet of Forums.4397:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“A new player enters the designated area” is the same thing as a constant check. I’m not sure how to explain what I mean, but it’s not a one-time thing.

How does scaling work for dynamic events?

I was wondering the same thing. Would it be so hard to make spawn rates scale, like it happens for dynamic events?

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“A new player enters the designated area” is the same thing as a constant check. I’m not sure how to explain what I mean, but it’s not a one-time thing. A note on tigirius’ suggestion—it’s something we’ve been trying to do, but it’s not automatic and does require some hand-scripting so we haven’t done it everywhere yet. During the story steps, for example, we often have an enemy ignore combat while it appears, then aggro normally once it’s completed its animation. (Undead spawning in a cloud of putrescence, enemies leaping out of trees, etc.)

Killing an enemy and then watching it pop right back in while you’re just a few feet away fighting his neighbor is something that I see a lot on certain maps, and it’s annoying having to kill the same enemy several times when you’re just trying to get past that area in order to reach a certain destination.

So why not code standard enemies to not respawn at all if any player is nearby but exclude certain event and world bosses from that code? This prevents what I described above while also preventing players from being able to grief others by deliberately blocking certain enemies from respawning.

Please consider – the amount of server power they are willing to expend on an event may be a couple orders of magnitude higher that what they can permit for every single individual mob on the entire map.

Comparing what can be done in one case at a time and what would need to be done in hundreds if not thousands of cases simultneously may not be directly helpful.

The solution has to work on a budget, and the more shoestring that budget, the more likely it can be implemented.

So – maybe just increase timer to 5 minutes or more shall be enough? If the specific place is without any mob for few minutes – I’m ok with that. At least I’ll see that there is someone else in area. Cheap solution – (if there is just one timer). And as mostly players are overflowning LA for fractals – the others areas are not visited.

pdfrod.1948:

Signet of Forums.4397:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“A new player enters the designated area” is the same thing as a constant check. I’m not sure how to explain what I mean, but it’s not a one-time thing.

How does scaling work for dynamic events?

I was wondering the same thing. Would it be so hard to make spawn rates scale, like it happens for dynamic events?

It can be handled by a trigger. Also take note there are hundreds of events in the whole world and hundreds of thousands enemies.

was neat to see a dev answer questions and return back to respond to the people who responded to his for a more through q and a session.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“A new player enters the designated area” is the same thing as a constant check.

Good point about the server resources. I suppose you could mitigate that somewhat by putting the “should I respawn?” check on a timer itself, like 10 seconds or something. The longer you make that “check” timer the less server resources you use, but the tradeoff is that it makes the overall respawn algorithm less dynamic and opens more windows of opportunity for new players to miss a chance to trigger a necessary respawn.

pdfrod.1948:

I was wondering the same thing. Would it be so hard to make spawn rates scale, like it happens for dynamic events?

Indeed – if event difficulty can dynamically scale to the amount of players in the area, it follows that somehow respawn rate should be able to adjust to the amount of players in the area as well.

Rei Hino.5961:

was neat to see a dev answer questions and return back to respond to the people who responded to his for a more through q and a session.

Agreed! Jeffrey, even if ideas like we’re discussing here never make it into the product, I must say thank you for taking the time to discuss the ideas with the community as you’ve been doing. Talking through ideas and their pros and cons and letting the community know you’re interested in their ideas is great!

Cheap solution: add 4 minutes globally to re-spawn timers and let us play.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

“A new player enters the designated area” is the same thing as a constant check. I’m not sure how to explain what I mean, but it’s not a one-time thing. A note on tigirius’ suggestion—it’s something we’ve been trying to do, but it’s not automatic and does require some hand-scripting so we haven’t done it everywhere yet. During the story steps, for example, we often have an enemy ignore combat while it appears, then aggro normally once it’s completed its animation. (Undead spawning in a cloud of putrescence, enemies leaping out of trees, etc.)

Doesn’t the infrastructure for such a check already exist, being used for dynamic event scaling?
At least increase the global respawn timer from its current value to 120-180s and add a 10s second aggro delay so it’s possible to move away from a respawning mob before it aggros. That will probably aleady make a huge difference. You can still keep the local respawn rate higher in areas where killing mobs is required to complete a quest, although there are other ways to complete it most of the time anyway.
Also review the placement of mobs, there are some areas where there’s no space to safely recover after fighting your way through (felt like that in the devourer area in the north of Iron March yesterday).
I often feel mob placement is optimized for melee players (say: warriors), while for example a mesmer that needs to kite and has an uncontrollable AoE like Illusionary Berserker as a primary source of DPS will have serious problems. Clones attacking the nearest (yellow) mob adds to the problem, especially with clones generated on dodge.
I don’t know about other classes, but I guess for example hunter pets or any other creatures may cause those problems too.

As I understand it …

Problem: The respawn time of hostile creatures in confined spaces is too short for solo or small expedition parties to reach their objective and return without having the risk of being overwhelmed by the newly ‘risen’ dead.

Solution (as proposed by Orion): Only have creatures respawn when the existing 95-120 second timer expires & a new player enters that creature’s zone of activation.

- – - -

As many have pointed out, this would lead to excessive server load since it would have to constantly query the system and decide if a ‘new’ player has entered each creature’s activation zone.

An alternative solution is to flip the problem around … instead of waiting for a ‘new’ player to enter the activation zone; have the timer increased by the number of active players who participated in the creatures death.

For example of a respawn delay equation …

spawn delay time = minimum delay + ( delta delay / number of players at death)

Therefore, with a solo adventurer, the spawn delay time is a maximum — and each additional player reduces the spawn delay accordingly.

As for the impact on the server resources … the number of players (or at least the identity of those players) involved in the creature’s death is already known since it is required for determining whom receives experience/treasure from the kill.

Other thoughts?

Maybe another way of managing spawns would be to use more destructible spawn points like Breeders and Burrows that are used in dungeons like Ascalonian Catacombs.

Allowing players to temporarily destroy mob spawn points would make clearing areas that are designed to be cleared more manageable, and by adding a delay before the mobs began spawning from the newly spawned destructible spawn points it would offer a better indication of when the area was about to respawn mobs possibly making the experience seem more logical and less frustrating.

Jeff, when you say that the game would have to constantly keep checking if a player enters an area instead of a trigger going off, is that how events work too? Like an event that requires a certain amount of people in the area to start or when you get close enough to an event that it tells you in the corner of the screen? Because that’s the type of thing I was talking about.

If it does work that way (constantly checking all players for all events), then that does seem quite server intensive. Would there be another way to go about it? Like: Only if X happens does Z happen.

One way to reduce overhead on this system would be something like this:

- Each mob, or group of mobs, is assigned a volume in the game world. Could be a specific area around those mobs, or simply the same volumes that are already used to determine if a player is in-range of a PoI/waypoint/revealing a map section
- Whenever a player enters this volume, trigger an event telling the mobs tied to it that a player has entered the region
- Whenever a player leaves the volume, do the same for a player leaving the region

Those combined would reduce the server overhead by only needing to check when a player takes a certain action; it’s unlikely that it would be a massive overhead. You could also take it a step further, and have the enter/leave events simply add/remove seconds from the respawn timer, which would have the nifty effect of a player entering an area directly causing the mobs to respawn.

This would only make a large overhead if an area has a large number of active players repeatedly crossing boundary lines for these invisible respawn volumes, so maybe deactivate it for WvWvW (the only place I can see that causing an issue)

I would love to see something like this at work. And if no new players ever enter the monster doesn’t need to spawn (tree falls and no ones around to hear it…).

But it would be definately more taxing on the server
Instead of just using a clock. you’d have a clock and a check for every person in the area every x amount of time. The larger x is the less strain, but the less responsive and accurate. Making it based on a raw number of players though instead of specific ones would reduce overhead and be accurate.

In explaining and thinking about it though. This whole thing would essentially be the same as making every mob or set of mobs function like a DE scales. Just without the GUI and karma reward.

I was going to post a code example of how this would work, but I’m not sure how many would appreciate it.

Current spawns: Imagine sitting in a hotel lobby. Look at the clock. Whenever the second hand hits zero clap.
Suggested spawns:
Hotel lobby, again. But now:
{Write down how many people are in the room. Determine if it’s more people than the previous second. If it is write down the word true. }
{repeat another 59 times}
Clap when the second hand strikes 0, if, and only if, you’ve written down true since the last time you clapped.

See the difference? And even in this example if you had the same number of people or more leave during the same second others entered your count wouldn’t go up and you wouldn’t clap at the right time.

Not to mention it wouldn’t even be that simple, I assume Anet programmers like to have millions of different objects, functions, variables, and even comments for ease of use/readability.

EDIT: I also wanted to point out this would slow down players who spawn camp to farm. And almost completely stop bots who stand in one place killing the same mob all day. At very least they, or someone else, would have to leave & re-enter the “lobby” to have something spawn. (and the size/bounds of the “lobby” they’d have to figure out first)

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

We wouldn’t want to do a very long timer (like 5m for all respawns) since it is an MMO, and it wouldn’t be fun to show up late to the party and find out another group has cleared out an entire heart or other area already.

I’m sorry to see this kind of fast-food approach – and I wonder if you actually have played the game recently. I play on the Tarnished Coast US server and am up to level 50 . I have never seen more than a group of 4 roaming around and that is rare. Large groups are only at specific places waiting for big group events. Solo players are the norm when wandering, or sometimes a team of 2-3 maximum.

If not 5 minutes, how about 3 minutes, pretty please? It should be an easy fix?

What is wrong with waiting a few minutes if people want to clear an area by themselves? In most cases people will be glad someone else has done some of the work, you know?

I continuously encounter this issue. Several areas with skill points or heart quest objectives are no-go for solo players. Roaming the map has become something I avoid , and I tend to spend a lot of coins on fast travel. I am more likely to teleport out of an area as soon as I’ve done what I was there to do , than explore for hidden stuff ( which there is). Others do the same and it’s easy to find yourself suddenly alone and surrounded. Even some platforming bits are not worth it because of re-spawning mobs.

If this game didn’t have so much good stuff I wouldn’t be bothering here, you know. . .
You have some amazing talent there and I do want to go beyond my current 25% world completion… As it is , the only way that would be fun in PvE is if I’m always playing with a party who want to go tho the same places , and that is unrealistic for most of us.

I’m pretty happy that a developer is on the forums talking about an idea unlike most companies.

Thanks arenanet

While we’re on the subject of enemy mob respawns, I still haven’t been able to find the Shadow Behemoth in Queensdale active yet on the Northern Shiverpeaks, Anvil Rock or the Isle of Janthir Servers.

Quiznos.4296:

I would love to see something like this at work. And if no new players ever enter the monster doesn’t need to spawn (tree falls and no ones around to hear it…).

This would also cause leveling to be much slower. The bonus exp from a kill can be significantly higher than the base.

how about just have the key stone points (nodes,skill point, puzzle, etc ) To have a check. Such as IF x number of player are near this point then adjust timer base on that. such as 1 player = 10 minute spawn time And make it only start the coutdown spawn if entire Squad of enemies dies. You already have it in the coding for big boss events chest. such as near skill points let say there is 6 aggroable on the same platform. if hit one of the member of the squad then aggro all 6 at once. check if all 6 dies then start timer. and you can add a new code to allow enemies who are left alive in the squad revive his member.

Khisanth.2948:

Quiznos.4296:

I would love to see something like this at work. And if no new players ever enter the monster doesn’t need to spawn (tree falls and no ones around to hear it…).

This would also cause leveling to be much slower. The bonus exp from a kill can be significantly higher than the base.

Didn’t think of that…

I don’t think the spawn rate is an issue in the majority of places. I play on an European server from the US so I usually end up soloing most things. On the other hand waiting 5 minutes per respawn when trying to kill things for a heart? No thanks. This game needs fewer things that try to waste my time not more.

Orr has too many enemies that seems to use some sort of CC as their auto attack. As if the default amount of CC on them wasn’t bad enough, the presence of certain Acolytes can give every risen in the area a chance to immobilize on hit.

I was in Frostgorge Sound the other day and saw someone getting overwhelmed by 3 Dredge and a Dredge mining suit. I charged in but was just too late to save them, so I was left fighting the four mobs myself. I managed to kill them (Guardian, if I’d been on my Ele there wouldn’t have been a chance), and since they’d been clumped together they all died within a few seconds of each other.

I run over and start rezing the guy, and didn’t get more than 30% of the bar filled before all four of them respawned on top of me, forcing me to fight the entire pack again just to rez the guy. Once that group was down I was barely able to finish rezing him before the group repawned yet again. Now the second respawn was a bit longer, as I was able to get the other 2/3rds of the bar filled, but even that was too short, I should have had enough time to rez him and move on into the cave to the next group and be outside agro range for that one before it spawned again. And the first respawn? Ridiculous that I wasn’t even given a chance to rez a single player before respawn.

It may not be a problem in majority of places, but there are a ton of places, and plenty of them have serious respawn issues. And part of the problem is that they’ll agro and start attacking before they spawn (What I mean by that is they will spawn having already agro’d and will be running up to you as they fade into being), this makes it so much worse, since by the time you realize that was a bad place to stand/try to rez someone it’s too late, you’re in combat, possibly knocked down/dazed/Immobilized.

Edit: And yes, some of the higher mobs were given way too much CC. I understand the higher areas are supposed to be harder, but that’s just a cheap way of achieving that.

Well…I’m a guild wars 1 fan and loving guild wars 2 so far…but have to mention the spawn rate can really work against having fun in this game, even when playing with a friend we find that sometimes we can’t even stop to look at inventory because of the respawn…this tends to give us a feeling of having to rush things…sometimes this is good, but at times it can be really frustrating…

Well that being said and knowing in advance that this is a very delicate area in a mmo my suggestion is the following…don’t micromanage every death in game and don’t macro manage timers…divide the map in grids, prioritize the sections of the grids where respawn is more important…for example ominous caves, enemy camps…in that zones every x seconds run a check for the number of players in the zone and the number of alive enemies, then based on this data and the danger level of the zone readjust the spawn timer…

This will have an overload in the server sure, but I believe that around 80 to 90% of the zones can maintain the current timer implementation…only the more critical zones (perhaps identifiable by less players, we tend to avoid this zones…unless we are in a party), need to be checked…this seems like a low tech compromise that could lead to very nice results…

If something isn´t clear please contact me I’ll be more than happy to contribute to this game