Next content patch?

Look at many questions… The game explains so little, that without the forum and wiki, most wouldnt know what they are even doing.

And lets not start with outdated tooltips and all that stuff…

I agree that the game needs some serious work when it comes to explaining things without forcing players to reference the forums and wiki.

I’m generally supportive of the idea that learning through experimentation is good in a game, but sometimes CE takes it to the extreme.

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I think this concern is grossly exaggerated especially without seeing some metrics. How much will it hit server performance? 10%? 25%? or like 1 to 2%? Got any metrics?

A lot of folks already build big castles and fortresses with plenty of space that will already accommodate these changes. They might just have to move things around a bit in existing floor space. That is what we plan to do. The only problem we are having now is fitting things into our cave bases. Someone is going to lose a bedroom :stuck_out_tongue:

They have already done this. Go watch the live streams!!!

Oh, boy. The foundations again. Yes, the foundations have an effect on server performance. Mostly it’s calculations for the stability graph and the claim. But there’s no reason for that code to run frequently. It should happen at the server boot and whenever there’s a change (i.e. building pieces are placed or removed).

Even if the impact was more significant than that, if you look at the screenshots in the developer stream recap, you can compare the differences in the footprint. Even if you decide to expand your base horizontally, instead of vertically, I doubt that the increase in the surface area will make a significant impact on the server performance.

So this whole “but think of the server performance!” argument really needs to be substantiated, instead of tossed around like it’s some kind of gospel.

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IIRC foundations aren’t as bad as they used to be, performance wise. Back when i started playing there was this rule in our server about not using too many foundations because it would kill the server, then months later the game had an update addressing it.

And since we are talking about performance, the real troublemakers are things that constantly update, because they perform actions every second (or tick). That stands for animal pens, beehives, fishing traps (does that ring a bell?), wheel of pain. These need to send information to the server all the time, telling it that this object (fish, thrall, honey) is now 53% instead of 52%.

I came to learn this from someone knowledgeable about modding that was also running a 70 player server smoothly.

We could very well be wrong, but it makes complete sense for me

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Um, can you source that? Because, 1) that’s not how it should work at all, and 2) the information I’ve seen claims the opposite of that.

It makes no sense for the client to send the crafting progress updates to the server. The server should be the authority on the state of the game – unless you like having your game be easily exploitable – and the client should update its state based on what the server says. There are things that client should send to the server, but all of them involve player’s own actions (e.g. the player executed a heavy attack with the war axe and the client thinks it hit a skeleton).

So it’s the server that should be sending the client updates on the progress of fish, honey or thrall. And even then, it makes no sense to make it send an update each tick. If you’re in the area, the client can do the ticks on its own and receive an occasional update from the server, correcting any discrepancies. Here’s a fun experiment that allows you to see that behavior in action: put a yellow lotus potion in your pet’s inventory, watch its decay timer, wait for it to reach 0, notice that it hasn’t gone poof, take it out of your pet’s inventory and watch the decay timer reset itself to a value that’s a second or so lower than it was when you put it into your pet.

And if nobody is in the area of the crafting station, ideally it shouldn’t even be ticking. Instead, it can simply memorize where it was when it was “put to sleep” and at what time that happened. Then, when it’s reactivated by players’ presence, it can execute its “catch-up logic”: calculate the time that passed while it was “sleeping” and produce the correct results.

Not that any of this means that foundations are a big problem, because they generally aren’t :wink:

This sounds terrible to say, but there is no source. Someone else explained it to me this way, when talking about why my server had crappy performance with average players, even with a decent rig.

Like I said, might very well be incorrect, but at the time it made perfect sense and after getting less of these benchers performance seemingly increased. Might be coincidence with something else :confused:

Talking about AI LOD, does it mean that instead of calculating the progress every single time it pauses everything when there is no one around, and calculates what should be it progress when someone comes nearby?

If that’s the case, what if you had people within render distance of said benches most of time, would it make a difference? From reading your link, seems like a good thing for single player sessions or lower populated servers, I don’t quite understand how it works when there is a higher player density or if that’s even relevant given our 30-70 player cap.
I’m really interested in learning more about it now

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That’s how it’s supposed to work. Although the AI LOD wiki page says that, in practice, it doesn’t stop completely and still runs “a few ticks of crafting here and there”.

Yes, although I still wouldn’t expect it to send a whole bunch of updates from server to client on every tick. Bear in mind that I’m not saying it doesn’t send them, I just wouldn’t expect it to send them, based on my limited experience in game dev industry. Disclaimer: it was only 2 years and the studio I was at used a completely different engine.

Note that some of what’s on AI LOD page applies to more than just crafting stations. The human NPCs, monsters, and followers also get deactivated when there’s nobody around and reactivated when someone comes near. The decay timer on buildings works the same – that’s why you’ll sometimes ride into an area where a base decayed (past its 24h of abandonment) and see it go “poof” before your eyes.

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I see, thats really cool. This seems a lot like how idle games deal with offline progress. You usually get a message saying things like “you were offline for X hours! In the meantime, you generated Y resouces”. It doesn’t run game all the time to process that, i assume it simply calculates how much you should have within that set time.

That makes sense. I imagine that when we usually see T Posing NPCs suddently take their correct animation also has to do with that, then.

Thank you for clarifying about this, even if you aren not exactly experienced with this specific game/engine its still a lot of useful info that i would never learn about otherwise. Will be checking out more about AI LOD!

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100% agree.

There was a time when specific thralls meant something. Remember when the only way to get white and black dye was a purge alchemist? Then some jackash decided to put in the witch doctor that can do it that has a significantly higher spawn rate.

Now? Heck, now thralls will be insignificant.

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There is 4 attributes extra to gain on a armor with a t4 instead of t1 , i would very much like to have them, not insignificant in my world.

And how would you have reacted if the update went live , and all your placed benches , with all your T4 thralls and the materials in it just have lost stability - because not existing anymore - just after update went live , and your log shows you all those lootbags decaying ?

be cautious when you ask for something …

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Thralls are now insignificant? Oh really… You being hyperbolic or are you just that uninformed?

But even your comment is not as bad as one I saw today on the steam forums. Some guy said he was throwing all his weapons and armor in a dismantling bench as it was cheaper to do that instead of repairing them. That after this patch it is too expensive to do repairs. I mentioned repair kits and the amount of vitriol I received was… “insert the worst thing you can think of.”

Wow…

Just wow…

Funcom I really do feel for you guys. A large segment of your players will never be pleased with anything you do.

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Im going to do some crafting and more in depth testing today. But so far from building the new stations and looking at cost/savings Ive seen some things I dont like. Sure, it could be just me, but Im sure others think this way as well.

Unless Im missing something I dont see the recipe for legendary weapon repair kits from the purge blacksmiths.

1/2 of all the new stations that are geared towards “efficency” are actually more expensive to craft the item. Adding a T4 thrall, or purge thrall saves you nothing. Sure we get the odd new recipe from purge thralls, and I am glad to finally be able to craft legendary armor repair kits, but until I do some testing to see the new stats, so far there is no need to find and hunt rare T4 thralls.

Bombs are cheaper to make in the old improved cauldron then in one of the new Giants Cauldron, but cheaper in the other (cant recall the name) . Adding a T4 thrall does ZERO to the cost/savings of items inside these benches. The same is said for the alchemy stations, adding T4 thalls does nothing to your cost/savings. So the question again, why use T4’s on these stations? (Kind of like when they added the witch doctors to the game which could craft white and black dye. There was a time when finding a purge alchemist was rare, and the reward was being among the few on a server that could dye things white and black. Useless now when they can all do it)

Things like shaped wood Ive noticed, there is zero savings using a T4 thrall. One of the new benches is a 5:1 ratio and the other is 10:1. No change with thrall.

Im going to hop in and test on some armor and weapons, which I think is where a person will see the difference in using a T4 for some added stats. Ill compare to using no thrall, and to old flawless weapons.

Do you see where Im going with my statement of “T4 thralls are useless now”? There was a time when the time spent finding T4’s could be offset by the savings in time and resources farmed after you start using them. Now? Heck, build the new station and dont even put a thrall on it. To me, this is a step in the direction of removing the need for thralls (higher end). Its almost like removing a key component of the game…it was always about finding better thralls to use to make your operation more efficient and streamlined.

Note, Ive seen actions like this before too, in another game that was bought out by a Chinese company. In that game there was two main components to the game that made that game extremely unique - farming resources of different quality (16 resources with 1000 different qualities) and equipment crafting (you could use high end components and low end to really min/max stats on a piece of gear to really fine tune your character the way you wanted to play. It was the perfect design). Once the Chinese company bought it, both the farming and crafting was removed and replaced with weapon drops from bosses and missions. Hint: look at the RNG of Siptah, and I see scary similarities. I hope Im wrong.

Edit: legendary weapon repair kits are in the tinkerers bench with a purge thrall.

Edit 2: Weapon crafting results: Flawless Warhammer with master kit - 59 damage, 41 armor pen . Best hammer after changes with same kit - 67 damage, 40 armor pen. Without using a thrall the best I can make with the master kit is - 55 damage, 38 armor pen. So from using a T4 blacksmith we gain 8 damage and lose 1 armor pen, without using a thrall we lose 4 damage and 3 armor pen. In the heat of a pvp fight, those values are so close together they would not be noticed.

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Do you mean weight, armor value, durability and crafting cost?

Depending on your game mode (pvp vs pve), for me in pvp only two of those are important. Weight and armor value. My old armors I traded durability to reduce the weight, since we could only modify the armor once, and after the dodge roll changes came in, every armor set was heavy armor so that value was usually pretty high as well.

Before the roll changes, there was value in using light armor, and even medium depending on the weapon loadout you used. Not any more.

Pull up, thread. Deleted a bunch of replies. Please avoid personal attacks and other “bait” replies such as making light of current events IRL.

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“to build new” is to hard to understand? No one said, remove the old ones.

Maybe… dont like the current CM. Was really happy with last years one.

And thats not personal… So I dont dislike the person. Its just the atmosphere and all the other things around it.

Edit: Oh, i saw Alex is back. Heck yeah, then I will watch it.

Says who? You? You have that knowledge from where? Fucnom told you? Otherwisel I dont care about that.
I saw what that one guy did to that PvE server I play… Playing was fine all the time. FPS is now a lag fest, because of his insane bases (which are 90% arena foundations)

Also alone from the pictures of the thread, I see that you need more space for basically NOTHING NEW.
But then Funcom wants to add thrall-limit, because “server performance”? But creating bigger stations for nothing new, is improving server performance or what?

These magical benches…

The exact same logic applies to your claim. Did Funcom tell you that using a few more foundations will have a significant impact on the server performance?

And, of course, it’s definitely the foundations. It can’t be the pets or thralls he has, or the chests, or anything else. It’s definitely the foundations because you said so. Or because Funcom told you.

And they still haven’t enabled it, which is really frustrating to those of us who play on servers bogged down by unlimited pets and thralls.