Purges Time Out

[Larathiel]

Game mode: Online official
Type of issue: Bug
Server type: PvE
Region: North America

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Over the last couple weeks, my clan has seen 3 purges seemingly get lost and time-out during the first or second waves. The first two times, it was somewhat understandable since those bases are huge, sprawling affairs amidst uneven terrain (I6 and F7 respectively).

However, last night, on my alt account (which has only a single small & contiguous base in C9) the purge once again timed out during the 1st wave.

In each case, myself and numerous other level 60s [who come to help] scour the surrounding hills, spires, forests, slaughtering everything, crushing any boulders enemies could potentially get stuck in, yet to no avail. In the case of my C9 base, there are only 2 neighbors with tiny fishing spots anywhere nearby, and neither of them had any action either. In the end, this amounts to few (if any) thralls and a colossal waste of time for many players.

Now, the server I’m on (#1502) has been extremely crowded lately and has been crashing each of the past few nights, so perhaps server strain is to blame. But it would be nice if hung purges like this would time out a bit faster or at least proceed to the next wave after the AI gets stuck. Some of us put a lot of work into farming-up purges, and it’s really disheartening to have all that work squandered.

FWIW, these purges where we’ve experienced this have included: Hyenas (I6), Disciples of Jhebbal Sag (F7), and Cimmerian Beast Tamers (C9).

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Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. The more details you provide us with the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:

1. Kill / capture all of the enemies in wave 1 of your purge.
2. Spent 30-45 minutes looking around for stragglers under every rock and tree.
3. Wonder why you hear solitary purge horns every 10 minutes or so with no regrouping or incoming message.
4. After the better part of an hour, receive the message that the purge has been defeated.

[GitchyGirl]

Seems to be happening more and more on 1502, Purges start, then nothing, horn blows like every 10 minutes, nothing, nothing in log. Strange with Purges over the last few days. also noticed that with Frontier, you float again, you die, it take 2 minutes to reload and move. all this stuff was fixed until the last patch.

[SylenThunder]

I find that they are usually undermesh

[Ignasi]

Hey @Larathiel

Is it possible that in that purge there were hyenas? Hyena cubs are known for messing up purge waves by just ignoring all the violence and going on with their lives. It could also be possible they might be stuck somewhere under the geometry. We’re aware of those issues and our team is looking into them.
Apologies for the frustration.

[Larathiel]

@SylenThunder That’s certainly possible, I could have sworn I heard an animal breathing from time-to-time near the fishing pier I have in front of the C9 base, and that base has no pets, nor did anyone else bring pets either (I specifically ask folks not to).

@Ignasi The purges in F7 and I6 definitely contained Hyenas (Disciples of Jhebbal Sag & A Cackle of Hyenas respectively), but the purge in C9 was Cimmerian Beast-Tamers. If the wiki is accurate CBTs contain no Hyenas at all. https://conanexiles.gamepedia.com/Purge_Type:_A_clan_of_Cimmerian_beast-tamers

Thanks for the heads-up about cubs. Now that you mention the baby hyenas, I observed at one Jhebbal Sag purge recently that the regroup was being held up because regular DEER spawn in amongst the more ferocious enemies. However since the does never seem to attack, it was tricking everyone into thinking nothing was happening. This is actually part of the reason I had folks slaughtering everything (even deers & bear cubs) that they could find anywhere around C9.

Personally, I’d leave such passive enemies out or make it so they are not be capable of holding up the purge since they blend in so easily with other docile spawns.

[pinkfluffy]

Hi Larathiel

I can confirm this, was on 1502 server testing a bug (by the way i sent ignasis a dm about it).

I’ve also seen or heard similar purge issues on other servers i’ve been on ( i get around a lot!!). Some are congested and others are not. It’s good though that the devs are aware of it and are looking into it!

[Larathiel]

More #1502 purge weirdness to report. Not sure if the server being over 30 players each night is responsible (tends to struggle when player count is mid-20s, and we’ve seen lots of crashes lately), buuut…

Multiple clans have seen purges where the attacking forces do not spawn on the ground and then march to attack, but instead spawn atop or IN the structures. These are bases that are on the ground — not atop cliffs or otherwise inaccessible.

• One clan’s base in the Mounds, had Silent Legion spawn atop their 2nd-story wheel of pain:
  
  Base starts on the western shore of the lake, and extends thru the water onto that northwestern island.
• One clan’s base at Dragonmouth had 13 waves of Frost Giants spawn on the roof of their log cabin. Cabin was only 2-stories and built right in the middle of a broad, gentle slope, nowhere near any cliffs.
• Last night, a different clan at Circle of Silence had Cimmerian Beast Tamers spawn inside the middle-floors of their tower base. That’s right, mammoths and dragons were appearing not on the ground by the river where its foundations lay, not on the roof, but on the middle floors of their base! We were all amazed that we managed to finish off the White Dragon before it could circumcise one of the towers because it’s tail-slap covered most of the floor.

Additionally, in other areas we are still having purges time-out.

• In L6, on the island with all the large snakes, a clan got a snake purge. My clanmate and I show up somewhat late. By our estimate, it should have been about time for the 2nd wave. However, the leader of that clan informs us it was already defeated. When I question them (they’re a fairly new player) they said that it said, “regrouping”, but that the meter depleted and the second wave never came. While I’m in the middle of explaining that “regrouping” is not the same as “defeated”, my clanmate and I receive the message that we’re going to get purged (see below)!
• So yes, my clan had a rocknose purge just outside the spider cave in F7. The first wave spawned within the curtain walls, was slaughtered, and then said “regrouping” but we never got the countdown timer for the second wave, but the purge meter depleted, and that was it. Meanwhile, the Event Log was an unholy mess:
  
  
  
  As you can see, it shows that there should have been a total of 5 waves, yet we only saw one. Additionally, the last message is for a wave starting that never came. Shortly after this, another clan got their purge warning and we threw up our hands in frustration.

Lastly, following @Ignasi’ theory about my alt account possibly having their purge spawn under the map, I decided to do an experiment…

Since the floor of the base I provided pictures of earlier is all T3 foundations, I decided to make a batch of 20 T1 foundations and see if I could slot them in under the existing floor — after all, the ground there is uneven. In the end, I was able to add 14 sandstone foundations below the Turanian and Black Ice simply by looking straight down and spamming mouse 1 all over the floor. No clue if it was placing these into small gaps between the ground mesh and the base of my original foundations, or if they got placed under-the-mesh, but there you go.

Note that my purge meter on that account is nearly full again, so hopefully will have more feedback come tomorrow.

[Larathiel]

So my alt account’s purge meter filled and it was clear I’d be getting purged tonight. Since there’s only an hour window between when I get off work (5pm) and when purge hours start (6 pm), I rush home and get logged in, turning volume up to max, so I can hear if the purge horn sounds while I’m having dinner.

Having finished eating, I get back to my PC, find that the camera is rotating around my character, and the moment I touch my mouse (thus regaining control), the purge horn sounds and I’ve got only ONE MINUTE left on the countdown! Yes, for some reason, the game decided not to sound the purge warning horn while I was AFK! I’d highly recommend changing that behavior!

Anyway, I quickly run around doing last minute prep (read: getting on Steam voice chat, swapping out thrall weapons for trunches), and I get done just as the first enemies get close enough to get clubbed. Last-second save!

First wave goes down and says “regrouping”, I get a purge taskmaster, all seems right with the world.

Second wave starts, allied players are starting to head my way, but there’s no enemies anywhere. I go scouting around and find that one of the neighbors I’d previously posted has decayed, so there’ no base in about 300-400 meters from me. About the most I see is a couple deer, which I slaughter just-in-case.

As I’m looping back, that’s when I see the antlers of an Elk King protruding from the base of the mountain on the SW side of Riversend. Since I like to be helpful, I start recording, get about 5-10 seconds of footage, and then Conan decides to crash-to-desktop with a Fatal Error. >.<

Restart game, try to get in, and it tells me my ping is too high. First time I have EVER gotten that message. E V E R ! My ping everywhere else is 25-50 in any game I play.

Reboot PC, same message.

Restart router, same message.

All other server in the browser have normal ping times, so I filter by Officials in the #150x range and ALL of the #150x servers (which presumably share the same physical host) are above 160.

While this is going on, my clanmate (whom I’m still on voice with) reports that the server is chugging, and other players are complaining. He also informs me that someone else has called for backup because they have a purge starting, meaning that mine has thus ended.

On my alt account, that makes 3 times in a row and more than 2 weeks worth of time and effort since I moved from New Asagarth to Riversend. If you count my primary character, it’s been 5 or 6 purges that have malfunctioned in 3 different locations.

I really hope that this gets sorted out soon, because the Purge is one of the main reasons I play this game, and it’s certainly the most exciting event we get on PvE servers. I suppose once I can finally get back on my server I’ll start scouting yet another new location for a purge base, because Riversend is clearly flawed beyond hope. A shame too, because it’s such a pretty location.

Also, make the purge horn sound even if the player is AFK! People have biological needs!

NOTE: After about 2-3 hours, I relaunched Conan and the 150x servers were once again pinging normally. Managed to help some friends out with a Frost Giant purge on the ridge north of the Barrow King (NW B11). It went longer than 5 waves, but was challenging and enjoyable. Thankfully everything there spawned on the ground, so in spite of being steeper, perhaps the groundmesh there is less complex than at Riversend. Maybe comparing the two locales would provide some insight.

[Larathiel]

@Ignasi After a shower and a healthy amount of Irish-inspired additives in my evening coffee, I decided to see if I could figure out why purges at Riversend keep glitching out, and discovered something that I found interesting. At this location, there are not one but two groundmeshes present!

Having used UnrealEditor heavily the late 90s to mid-2000s, I had been under the impression that the landforms in this area were a single groundmesh with additional static meshes placed for features like crags, etc. Certainly the smooth transition from the rocky red slopes to the grassy forest floor lacked any give-aways that this wasn’t the case until I loaded up in Single Player and activated Ghost mode.

What I found is that not only do the two meshes converge at this point, but there’s also some extremely severe changes in the heightmap causing highly irregular terrain once you get inside the mountain. I suspect that there may be a walkable surface painted on one of the ground meshes in this area that’s actually protruding inside of the other mesh, and that perhaps a level designer needs to go in and amend which mesh it’s on, but that’s just based on my knowledge from over 10 years ago.

Anyway, combined with my earlier video, I hope this helps to repair at least this one site, if not others…

[awaid]

I play with Larathiel on 1502, we are neighbors at Riversend. Was bored last night so I built where he is then started triggering purges. 3rd purge broke on the 3rd wave just like you can see in his video of the elk poking out. You can see they have plenty to walk around on under the surface. Thought I would just add it to the thread.

[Ignasi]

Thanks @Larathiel and @awaid. That might actually help our team pinpoint the problematic coordinates way faster.

[Larathiel]

Great demonstration of what’s going on, @awaid, thanks for that!

@Ignasi, crossing my fingers that these are helpful.

[pinkfluffy]

Just thought i’d post this if it helps the devs track down them pesky bugs

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/786355365586433555/471599067A36BA79DC8C4FAB0C57221740A7C15E/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/786355365586434010/3DDCCFCC278BA31F3FD2F85850E779F6C57CF218/

If you can’t see the image and chat a player had goats and deer spawn in his purge

[Larathiel]

Yep, had deer hold up a Jhebbal Sag purge at on of our bases in the desert (F7) a couple weeks ago. Silly stuff.

[Ildur]

I’ve seen something similar happening with a clan of Nordheimers last week (western H10), but it was the 4th wave that vanished instead of the 2nd. Left no stone unturned but they were nowhere to be found, and after a while I got the message that the group has been defeated.
I’m on a single-player file though, so either it’s a slightly different bug or it’s not restricted to online servers only.

[pinkfluffy]

sorry forgot to mention the guy that had that purge his base is in g9 region.

[Larathiel]

0 for 4 at the southern tip of Riversend. After failure #3 last week, I’d decided to move my base to Crowngrove and spent a long weekend making a cozy little house on the prairie.

Since I’m aware of the point factors assigned to bases and how they affect purge targeting, I decided to destroy the superstructure of the old base leaving only the foundation so I could still keep a maproom and and wheel of pain for overflow parking during heavy traffic.

Sadly, in spite of spending all my time at the new place and getting it all gussied up, the Cimmerian Beast Tamers wanted to party under the mesh at Riversend again. This time under the trees and grass on the east side of the river.

We were only able to find them due to the sound of them splashing about, and every now and then managed to see the top of someone’s head poke thru. Amazingly, @awaid and I were able to KO a single NPC, a purge alchemist, so it wasn’t a complete loss. Of course, 30 minutes later, they got the same purge just a short distance north (where the terrain isn’t glitched) and captured a whopping 9 T4s.

Anyway, farewell Riversend, you were a scenic location but I’m tired of having my fun buried beneath your issues…

[Jim1]

I did find another situation where purges behave strangely. It has happened twice now, with different results, but the same general problem as stated in the title.

Two times a purge has started close to the server-set end time of a possible purge. Online private server is set to end at 2300 EDT with a purge time of 30 minutes. They both started after 2230 EDT.

I am certainly not dismissing the potential cause of babies and other critters or undermesshing but wanted to add that experience.

Regards

jim