Showing Posts For Spork.2375:
What’s their knownlist size set to? I can only assume that it’s 1000-1200. It should be somewhere around 1500-1750 (considering some sit behind you). The problem is that many times, they’ll simply ignore a target being attacked by you (with staff) at the edge of the 1200 range.
If it’s not a knownlist issue, then it’s just poor AI. But I hope it’s just a simple fix like this. Should be applied to all other minions as well (pets, etc).
Personal NPCs like the golem banker shouldn’t be broadcast to all players, just the owner. If other players can’t use it there’s no reason to broadcast it to them.
Just wasteful to send it when it’s a very cheap check in the loop of what npcs to broadcast. If npc is private npc and playerid != ownerid, don’t broadcast it to that player.
Make sure not to kitten it up by making things like turrets or pets or minions not broadcasting. Probably easiest to have private npc flag by default be false then by hand in the npc data you set it to true for the ones you absolutely know for sure are private npcs.
What other skills go on full CD when interrupted?
This one is probably very easy. If you’re on Vista, Win7, or Win8, it’s very possible that it’s Windows TDR ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff570088%28v=vs.85%29.aspx ). Personally, I feel that it’s the worst thing MS has done for gaming. The detection routines are WAY too aggressive. And Anet can not probably suggest this to you as it would make them liable for any problems that rose from it (I’ve been disabling it since MS implemented it and have had no adverse issues).
Basically you want to set TdrLevel to 0. By default it is 3. Look at the registry keys section of the link I sent you. Make sure to restart after making the change. Aside from that, without knowing more about your system, not much I can suggest. But overly aggressive TDR is typically the culprit of black screens.
I should mention that when I used to get black screens in games, then disabled Tdr, suddenly the games were 100% playable. No crashes, no black screens, no weird stutters.
Opening BLTC starts the awesomiumprocess, it’s basically an executable which allows for web content to be shown in game (the bltc is web content). There are a number of reasons that lag can happen.
Try seeing if there are multiple running instances of awesomiumprocess, if there are, kill them all then reopen.
The cheating has been there for a long time, Anet does nothing against it, there is no way to detect cheaters, that is why more and more are opting for cheats.
Don’t say uninformed things like that please. There are plenty of server side validations that Anet is missing. Movement checks that monitor distance traveled vs speed vs skills/items used in the last x seconds (to accommodate portals, blast jumps, etc). A lot of debugging and live monitoring would be needed before they were put in so they catch as few false positives as possible. But it’s totally doable.
From what I’ve read, no endurance server side checks. Can’t validate because I’m not risking getting banned by loading up a cheat program.
If they aren’t controlling cooldowns for things like downed skills server side (they don’t have to broadcast to client, just have the server keep track of them and deny if a player attempts to use while it’s in cooldown serverside), then that’s another failure and sounds like what happened with this guy and how the warrior got up so fast.
Noclip can be tracked by having the server flag characters that repeatedly go through geodata bounds. No automatic ban but a GM can follow them and verify cheating is happening.
There’s lots of other ways that don’t add overhead to cpu time on the server that they seem to be missing as well.
Thief – Steal should not be usable if you have no target. This should only apply to the initial skill, not the gained random ones.
Mesmer – Shatter skills should not be usable if you have no illusions active.
Mesmer – Mantra cast times need to be fixed when under the effect of quickness. The animation/timer bar doesn’t represent the actual cast time.
Fix mining animations for all characters. For example, if mining a node takes 3 seconds, then at the end of 1 second you should get an item, end of second 2, get an item, then at the end of the final, get an item. Right now it does that then continues to animate and mine for almost a fourth. Any player can simply move to cancel it early. It’s minor but it’s annoying, more so over time. Sync it up, don’t half kitten it and leave it like this.
There are reports (and I’ve seen videos) of infinite dodge hacks. Is there really no server side checking for endurance?? You don’t have to do any network updates for it, just prevent the dodge if endurance isn’t enough. So at least server side, they didn’t evade and they didn’t get that movement. Rubberband them back to their initial point.
Double clicking an item that is already equiped should unequip it.
WvW – Commanders should be of a certain rank in WvW before their tag shows up for anyone outside their party and guild. What rank that is can be left up to a very angry community.
WvW – Each keep/camp/outpost/etc has a colored circle indicating who owns it. When you hover over it you get a tooltip saying “color TYPE of structure” or “Under Attack”. These are the most useless tooltips ever. Obviously we can see the color, we know what structure it is and it’s obvious if it’s under atack by a visual indicator. Instead, have it read “name of server that owns it NAME of structure”. So for example “Fort Aspenwood – Stonemist Castle”. Why? It serves as a reminder of who is what color and it serves to help players quickly identify areas by a simple hover over on the minimap.
Items that do not despawn correctly (either they die and still show hp left but are dead and/or they die but do not despawn right away) – Grawl Effigy; Frost Totem; Veteran Jade Maw Tentacle; Dragon Effigy;
Items that DO despawn correctly (find what’s different between these and the above, and you’ve found what’s breaking them) – Inquest Prison Core; Inquest Turret (found underwater near Judgement Waypoint in Mt. Maelstrom); Krait Turret;
AI – Target priority is bad in some cases. Constantly enemy npcs will go after my bone fiend while it’s in the back of the group with full health. They frequently ignore targets nearby with less health % (notice I said % and not hp, ai shouldn’t be running hp value checks but rather % of total, so if there’s an injured target which would make for an easier kill nearby, they should be a higher priority) which would be easier kills. If there is a light armor user who is really hurt and in the back of a group, maybe npcs should prioritize that person as that’s an easy kill. Now keeping your hp up is more important.
AI – Ranged minions/pets/npcs needs to make an attempt to move out of negative aoe fields. They should continue to fire on their target if possible, strafe style. It would be far more complicated to do for melee types without breaking their attack each move so that’s why the suggestion was limited to ranged.
AI – Aggro can be improved and made to feel a bit more immersive by using a faux field of vision method. Instead of using “is player inside aggro radius”, use directional checks. If player is in front of npc within a 120 degree cone, then aggro radius is 100%, else aggro radius is 25-50% of norm (ie the player must get closer than normal to trigger aggro if not in that 120 degree sight cone). I know this isn’t a stealth or sneak style game and this change isn’t meant to make it one. This is just a small thing that adds to the immersiveness. “Oh look, if I walk up on an npc from behind then I can get closer before I take aggro.”
When moving an item between storage containers (from inventory to bank) via double clicking, if it is a stackable item (ie. Candy Corn), loop through the destination container’s contents and if a stack is found matching that item and is not full, add item to the stack INSTEAD of how it currently does which is looks for an empty space and puts it in the empty space.
Add something that shows distance to current target. Cheating programs already do this and so it’s yet another disadvantage for normal players and underwater it’s REALLY needed as we don’t have a first person perspective so it’s hard to gauge distance.
Anticheat/bot/etc:
- GW2 should ignore commands/input if it’s not the active window. It’s a simple way to make it harder to automate gameplay. Currently, it does not do this. There’s zero reason for it to accept non-mouse input when it’s not the active window.
- Afk kick should be variable based on server/map population. If the server isn’t full, nor is the map the character is on, no afk kick or set it to a very high timer (1+ hour). If the map is full, 10 min afk kick or something similarly reasonable. If the server is full, well you get the idea. Discuss that internally like you do. A side benefit of this is that it pads out population for your PR team to brag about and for server connection window showing which servers have the highest populations. And it makes places seem less empty. Even if there are afkers there, it’s still other players and it reminds people “yeah, people are here”.
Optimization:
- GW2 should go into a low cpu/gpu usage mode while in the background (ie. not the active window). Possibly include it as an option. No reason to run full blast if not active.
Bugs, immersiveness, and whatnot:
- Night time doesn’t feel like night time. Shadows are too strong and it needs to be darker. I’m not talking pitch black, but often I don’t even realize it’s night because it looks practically the same.
- Walls and gates should not present the option to interact with them (for repair) if they’re not damaged.
- When using select nearest target in wvw, walls and gates should NEVER take priority over enemy players. Regardless of distance of either.
- There are objects that can be interacted with (gear icon) that are directly related to a heart and no other quest. If the heart is completed, remove the ability to let players interact with those objects (client simply doesn’t present the gear option). This makes the world more immersive because there aren’t all these useless things laying about. They become part of the scenery. Plus it’s a nice reminder that “hey, you don’t need to use this anymore”.
- Buff/heal aoes should always prioritize the caster in the target loop regardless of the caster’s position to center. So if I cast time warp on 20 people and I’m inside the bubble on the edge, I should still get the buff as I’m owner of the aoe skill. Many times I’ve dropped a time warp in a large group and not gotten the quickness while in it.
- Minis should not be selectable. No reason for it. Mouse over and see owner info and name of mini, sure. But clicking should click through it to any object behind it.
- Minis need a slot on character equipment page. Double clicking a mini moves it to the mini equip slot. If a player wants to show it, they hit the checkbox on it (akin to mask and shoulders).
- Burning should spread to other players who come in contact with whatever is burning. So if one player who is burning touches 3 players who aren’t, they burn as well for the duration of the burn that was on the initial player at time of contact (ie. initial player takes 20s burn, runs to non burning player and touches them with 15s left, non burn player will now burn for 15s).
- /assist (short = /ass) command which if your target is a friendly player, will change your target to their target.
- /target (short = /tar) name/partial name command which well… is obvious.
- Memory resident buffs like charged mantras or the precision/power/condition buffs from sigils should persist 5 minutes after disconnect. Do not punish people for getting disconnected or for having to restart to use the broker and needing to restart because it’s not loading, again. So instead of purge on disconnect, store them for 5 minutes and if the player reconnects within that time, they retain it.
- Items linked in chat, when right clicked, should have an option of “Wiki” which basically does the same thing as typing /wiki (item name).
(edited by Spork.2375)
But then anet can’t sell you transmutation stones!
The aggro system makes sense. If it can’t go for intended target and there’s a valid target it can get, go for valid reachable target. And if someone dies, a mob should check for nearby valid targets before returning home.
Basically, I may not be able to kill you, so I’ll kill your friend instead.
Forgot…
WvW:
- Limit the ability to rally to something like twice in a 60 second period.
- If a player is dead, don’t send packet info for enemy players to the dead person. They shouldn’t have a tactical advantage by having a dead person laying somewhere reporting on movements. You save bandwidth this way AND a player can’t modify the client/client’s memory space to cheat and see what’s going on.
Edit: If you do this, you’ll have to refresh the dead player’s knownlist if they get revived. Otherwise anyone within that radius will be invisible to them.
(edited by Spork.2375)
Skills:
- Non-buff/non-heal aoes should have no max target limit. Instead you should have 100% damage at the center of the aoe, tapering off to 25% at the edge (or 50%, or 33%, or whatever % makes it not insane, but no less than 1% at edge). So basically an aoe with a 600 radius with a character standing at 300 in it would take 62.5% of the intended damage 100%-((char_distance_from_center/aoe_radius)x(100-min_edge_damage_percent)). You’re already running a loop to check for valid targets in the area AND you’re running a check to see who is positioned closest to center and affect those only. So you’re not costing much more overhead to run the formula to modify damage % based on distance from center. Performance isn’t an excuse here. Random hit aoes like meteor whatever would need to be modified to work in this, either not taking a damage reduction or getting a damage increase to compensate for lack of consistent hits in the center.
- If a skill or passive has a cooldown, it NEEDS to be listed in the tooltip. This shouldn’t be guess work for players. Mark of blood on dodge roll for example; no cooldown listed. New players are going to guess why it only works sometimes and still won’t understand why the cooldown is longer than the staff skill. Especially after playing a thief and dropping caltrops all the time with no cd. The game shouldn’t make you guess. Everything should be clear on a passive, a skill, etc.
- On that subject, skills like Portal Entre which have a limited duration in which to cast and use them should have visible timers AND range indicators for when they won’t work. The use part is fine, sort of, a little buff shows up. But not for how long until the entry portal poofs. And there’s NO mention that it has a range limit, but it does. Again, clarity in tooltips and skill information. Don’t make players guess.
- Elites are boring, long cooldowns for what feels like little reward. You know it, other players have complained. Get it looked into. Even if all you do is allow elites AND regulars in that slot, it’ll be a vast improvement over having a skill slot which is rarely used and niche utility at best.
- Things like marks (traps?) which override themselves should clearly state in their tooltip “Only one mark/trap/whatever named insert skill name can be active at once by a single player.” Again, little clarity for new players so they’re not going, “what the hell?”
Other:
- Load times are awful; even with a pcie SSD. You’re dynamically loading parts of a map when you could just cache it. I’ve got 16Gb of ram. The game almost never goes north of 2.5gb. It’s LAA enabled and I’m on a 64bit system. Please, give us a launch command parameter that tells the game to cache the entire map, textures, etc. Let it load objects, players, skins dynamically, I’m FINE with that. But I shouldn’t get a load window when I port around in the same map. Max out that available 4Gb you have access to. I can take it. Unfortunately I can’t see which files exactly gw2 is pulling from the dat dynamically to tell you how to do this better. But I know you guys have the tools and can run the game uncompressed. You know what’s being hit all the time as players move about and what you can cache. Right?
- Lack of customization… c’mon, admit it. End game is barbie’s fashion show. Everyone wants to look rad while they’re killing, right? So why limit stuff to town clothes? Who even uses town clothes? I’d love a quaggan hat instead of a boring spiked helm or whatever. Plus, you’d sell more transmuation stones! Win/win situation if I ever saw one.
Gameplay:
- Not a single champ or boss I’ve seen gets rid of debuffs on themselves. Why? How boring.
- Kind of disappointed that vit, toughness, and healing are pretty much useless stats. At least that’s how it feels. I know you’re trying to stay away from the holy trinity. More power to you for that. But they shouldn’t be as useless as they are. Suggestions to fix them? I haven’t researched it enough to offer some knowledgable fix. Just venting.
I know I’ve not played as long as most people suggesting. But a lot of my frustrations with GW2 come from me going, “well why isn’t this working like I thought it would? Oh that’s how it works? Well why the hell didn’t the game/tooltip say so?! Why is it even like that?” In fact, the majority of my dislike comes from those moments where things are just not made clear to players.
While I’m no arenanet or done anything on their scale, I’ve done my work in a few mmos. Some of the things I’ve seen are just lazy. Others, I can’t explain why they are how they are and from what I’ve read, the devs never explain it either.
Right to the meat and potatoes…
Logic (I know we’re in a fantasy world but that’s no reason to ignore obvious logic issues):
- Burning should end on swimming and those already swimming should be immune to burning.
- Burning should end if chilled. Chilled should end if burned.
- Undead should be immune to poison.
- Ice monsters should be immune to chill. The icebrood included. I mean c’mon, they’re minions of Jormag, the ICE DRAGON. Fire monsters should be immune to fire, earth immune to bleed, air immune to… weakness?
UI:
- No item hotkey box(es). There are items that people want to use in battle. Why are you forcing them to bring up the inventory to find them? This is bad design. The fact that WoW is still kicking every MMO’s kitten in UI customization is sad. It’s been almost a decade and other mmos aren’t coming close to what Blizzard did with lua.
- The achievement window is bad. If I expand my achievements, or anything in the upper right, it should STAY expanded unless I collapse it. Events and other things shouldn’t repeatedly collapse it. Just give us an option, “Auto Show Events and Achievements – Locked/Manual”. Bam, everyone’s happy.
- Target of target. I’d really like to know who that boss is targetting. Is it me? Is it the person next to me? I DON’T KNOW! But here comes a big kitten boulder.
- We need an option to prevent selecting other players in pve. It’s so, so fun to click a champ surrounded by people and even though your mouse was on the champ, you grabbed a player, not the champ. Great, because I have so many uses for selecting players in pve. Take it one step further… disable selecting of FRIENDLY players. Now it’s useful in wvw as well. Just include this in the options menu.
- Fix the BLTC window. Awesomium does have a command that allows you to delete the cache (after doing more reading, the command can’t be used while the webcore is running which I assume doesn’t end until the game ends. I dunno, but you know your kitten is broke, fix it), I’ve never used this in any game I’ve worked on so I’m not an expert. There has to be a way to get it to stop from loading blank pages after seemingly random events. This is your portal to your money maker, why would you leave it this broke?
- Gems purchasing for gold should tell us when it loads how much 100 gems cost right that moment. I’ve got 5.36 for 100, and on the screen to trade gold for gems, I see no indication of that value. Another one of those things where you leave players guessing.
- Friendly players on minimap outside of pvp areas. It’d be nice. It’s just a client thing. You’re not sending any extra info since they’re already in my knownlist.
- Crafting window. Let’s say I want to make a cinnamon pinwheel. I have my pile of cin and sugar but no dough. But I have the ingredients to make dough. Give me that little + symbol indicating that I can just tap that to get myself a ball of dough so I don’t have to scroll through my recipes or type it in the search box and make it that way. Just like you do with discovery window when there aren’t enough count of a certain mat to discover something new.
Cont…