Ringwar post mortem - post thoughts here

[Pan]

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=208856

135 people from a variety of guilds. People played very well and followed instructions well.

My takeaways:

1. Giants seemed hard to stop - even when engaged they kept moving for a good while.

1a. That prevented focused DPS - because DPS kept breaking off to stop those who kept moving even when engaged.

2. Falling under the world STILL a significant problem. Moregan helped tons and fixed stuff quickly. Not worth trying that event without staff present, though.

3. Should have sent the dwarves in sooner. Don't think that would have affected the outcome, though.

4. Will assign names to groups and send groups to spots by name.

5. Must ensure that EVERYONE knows the spawn spots (and their names) for quicker reaction.
--------

Lots of stuff went right, I think. The cooperation was amazing. I really hope those who were there representing their guilds got a lot of good takeaways. That's a tough event on this server...and the first try is necessarily rough.

-----

Bottom line...if you cannot stop the giants with melee...even before they get to the river...it's gonna be a hard event to win.

[Swish]

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=208856

135 people from a variety of guilds. People played very well and followed instructions well.

My takeaways:

1. Giants seemed hard to stop - even when engaged they kept moving for a good while.

1a. That prevented focused DPS - because DPS kept breaking off to stop those who kept moving even when engaged.

2. Falling under the world STILL a significant problem. Moregan helped tons and fixed stuff quickly. Not worth trying that event without staff present, though.

3. Should have sent the dwarves in sooner. Don't think that would have affected the outcome, though.

4. Will assign names to groups and send groups to spots by name.

5. Must ensure that EVERYONE knows the spawn spots (and their names) for quicker reaction.
--------

Lots of stuff went right, I think. The cooperation was amazing. I really hope those who were there representing their guilds got a lot of good takeaways. That's a tough event on this server...and the first try is necessarily rough.

-----

Bottom line...if you cannot stop the giants with melee...even before they get to the river...it's gonna be a hard event to win.

Good feedback.

4. Will assign names to groups and send groups to spots by name.

Can I sponsor a team name for blue plat? :D

[Itap]

I felt you ran the event very well, my group knew where to go whenever there was a pop. Between the giants not stopping when aggrod and root breaking within seconds, I couldn't see us stopping that wave once it got close to thurg.

Should the coldain archers engage the giants when they got close? Because that didn't happen at all.

[-Catherin-]

The group we had as the final line of defense at the dwarves were unnecessary. Once the giants get to that point they are already running and its hard coming back from that. They should be further out and/or assisting the other teams at all times.

[bktroost]

Rooting V.S. Snaring V.S. Highsun is in question.
Wave three was virtually unsnarable some were saying, but they may have not been 60. Root was landing far more often, but was insta breaking in a lot of cases because mobs were engaged all over the place--due to already engaged runners.


Dwarves not assisting.
It just wasn't happening. Archers were not helping, the dwarf wall was not assisting as should.

Pops and Double Pops.
Okay so Wave one had only single pops. Wave two had some double pops happening which caused certain areas to get overrun. My suggestion is to have two groups at each camp and when once camp is clear send a "leashed" group to assist as special forces until their side pops again. For camps like west and river it would make sense to send a single group to go dps at the double popped river.

MA and Recover Tanks.
The tanks were all very busy maintaining runners. On third wave I recommend having ONE tank be the assist tank and ALL dps work to assist that one. When mobs are all at 50% they are summoning and we are not being effective. If we always bring third wave to the dwarf wall (and they actually assist) then we can have that MA tank focus the dps groups.


Datapoint: Nothing enraged. Spearmen have like 30k hp and summon. Do not engage spearmen unless all dps at that camp is on it. We discovered with 2 full groups you can kill one spearmen before the first wave pop.

[Pan]

The group we had as the final line of defense at the dwarves were unnecessary. Once the giants get to that point they are already running and its hard coming back from that. They should be further out and/or assisting the other teams at all times.

Yep. Once they hit about neg 2500 (or farther north), 0 it's game over. Should have left a rez crew there for random rezzes (1 cleric and maybe 1 dps to protect) and had fuller coverage on spires and west.

[bktroost]

Yep. Once they hit about neg 2500 (or farther north), 0 it's game over. Should have left a rez crew there for random rezzes (1 cleric and maybe 1 dps to protect) and had fuller coverage on spires and west.

Is there no way to do the event from near dwarves? They are supposed to provide a lot of dps.

[Pan]

I chose to let the dwarves engage au naturale until the end (3rd wave). Trouble is, sometimes they did, but more often they ignored the giants walking thru them. I don't think we needed them in the first 2 waves. Could have been more proactive on the 3rd, tho.

[bktroost]

I chose to let the dwarves engage au naturale until the end (3rd wave). Trouble is, sometimes they did, but more often they ignored the giants walking thru them. I don't think we needed them in the first 2 waves. Could have been more proactive on the 3rd, tho.

With 156 people no (that was the peak attendance).

I just wonder what happens on Ring_War_205 when people are less inclined to leave their seb camps and Velks camps when some random guy send thems a tell that the ring war starts in an hour or so.

Forum searching indicates that it IS possible with 5 groups of 60 but really needs about 75. We had more than twice that and pretty much just met the challenge on wave 2.

Considering outside metrics is all.

[Pan]

For the record, Moregan told me that we'd missed 1x mini-wave entirely.

That's not the case. Have a look at this map:
http://www.steveprutz.com/eq/atlas/great_divide_ring_war_atlasmod.jpg

First spawn was at location 2 marked on the map. We were dealing with that.

Second (3rd, really, because 2nd was at spires) popped before we were 30pct into first, broke through (and couldn't be stopped with melee) and went north northwest and then east. That was the one that finished us.

We didn't miss that wave. We just couldn't get it to stop with melee.

[Nuggie]

that map is slightly inaccurate in that 8 spawn at spawn location #5(spires). not 6. atleast on P99.

[Sorn]

Did anyone have trouble with desyncing in the zone?

[Pan]

that map is slightly inaccurate in that 8 spawn at spawn location #5. not 6. atleast on P99.

The way I understand the map (and from what I remember from live) the formations don't necessarily line up with the spawn locations. I think it's random what can pop where. But I might be misremembering. I didn't see the numbers on the map and associated with the formations as being 1:1 - but rather that the formations were just examples of what the spawns could look like - anywhere.

[dafier]

I've not done this in beta, but I did do it on live.

The success we had, from what I remember was NOT to ever touch or engage the giant spearmen.

From what I read, it looks like people were in range of them or engaging. Excuse me if I miss read.

Anyway, there are only 3 or 4 locations in which you need multiple groups. Virtual lines are drawn in which Tanks stand out front in order to engage the giants. NEVER move past the tanks/invisible lines.

Pets, like mage and necro can off tank some adds (chain pets if needed) for CC purpose.

As far as I remember they only hit for 200s on the 3rd wave. So if you are lucky to have 3 or 4 mage pets on 1 of the adds, it should be OK until the tanks/groups can focus it down.

All of this is great information. And, the number one thing I think would help this to be a success other than fixing the giants falling through the earth is making sure all Coldain attack as they should.

[Pan]

I've not done this in beta, but I did do it on live.

The success we had, from what I remember was NOT to ever touch or engage the giant spearmen.

The spearmen were a non factor. I've seen it done both ways. With the force we had, I wanted to get them out of the equation early. They summon if you get too close - and we had pets loose following people running around. So we popped them during the first wave without consequence.

If we were trying it with 30 people and a crack force, we'd give them a wide berth. As it was, I'm glad we knocked them out early.

Pets, like mage and necro can off tank some adds (chain pets if needed) for CC purpose.

Yeah, the pets were useful today. But they didn't work well as CC b/c the giants kept moving even when engaged a lot of the time. It's really strange. Sometimes they stopped. Sometimes they didn't. And it didn't seem to matter where on the map they were (read how close they were either to Thurg or their spawn point).

It's like they were disinterested. And I swear the dwarves were on giant faction half the time - or at least uninterested in defending their city.

[Daldaen]

Yea the largest issue I had was the Giants not stopping when properly engaged and having to spend half my time worrying about getting the Giants that fell under the world handled.

If they could fix both of those issues it would be grand, but I believe they are both rather annoying ones to code. That fall through the world bug has existed for a long time on P99.

[bktroost]

Sure but they HAD to intentionally code that bit about giants ignoring people. Mobs naturally prioritize hate. Why wouldn't they just trigger rushing to thurg as a mob on their hate list. It doesn't generate aggro, but if there is nothing else on the hate list they will run towards it.

It looked like they were spamming that trigger to the top of the hate list in waves or cued on when they are initially engaged to pulse to the top every X seconds. It seems like a lot more coding to do what it is CURRENTLY doing.

But of course it depends on how they have it coded. All I'm saying is that it seems rather intentional.

[Sorn]

Sure but they HAD to intentionally code that bit about giants ignoring people. Mobs naturally prioritize hate. Why wouldn't they just trigger rushing to thurg as a mob on their hate list. It doesn't generate aggro, but if there is nothing else on the hate list they will run towards it.

It looked like they were spamming that trigger to the top of the hate list in waves or cued on when they are initially engaged to pulse to the top every X seconds. It seems like a lot more coding to do what it is CURRENTLY doing.

But of course it depends on how they have it coded. All I'm saying is that it seems rather intentional.

In defense of the devs, code is extremely counter-intuitive just because it's so logical and conflicts in formulas can produce unexpected results. Add to that the fact that several people have had their hands in it, all with different styles of coding, and 90% of debugging is just finding the problem spot in the pages and pages of code in the first place...it probably wasn't intentional.

I'm thinking what's really happening with the code is that the behavior of the giants (running to a trigger point when they have no one in arm's reach to attack) is actually unique in the game, and in programming that, something about it is conflicting with the standard behavior of mobs (stopping when they don't have anyone to kill and then pathing wherever). It's possible the devs had to do the giants from scratch and the lack of consistency is the issue.

The behavior is similar to the orc runner in BBM, but I'm sure there are differences. The orc runner will jump off its path to attack. In a chaotic ring war I'm sure there's a lot of conflict in the code, which is why we have so many problems. It'll take a lot of tests to figure it out since there were really only a few tests on beta for this event.

[Kender]

on live we used to have a couple of dedicated spearmen groups who killed them all as early as possible just so they werent and issue

[Haynar]

Found two issues that can cause mobs to fall below world. Were they the problem? Dunno. Hope they patch soon.

H

[Pan]

Found two issues that can cause mobs to fall below world. Were they the problem? Dunno. Hope they patch soon.

H

How about the inability to stop the mobs as they're moving. When they're actively engaged, they should not continue to keep moving toward thurg. On live I remember being able to tie up several at once with melee until help arrived. That was not possible today.

Thanks for the potential fixes to the under-the-world problem.

[Haynar]

How about the inability to stop the mobs as they're moving. When they're actively engaged, they should not continue to keep moving toward thurg. On live I remember being able to tie up several at once with melee until help arrived. That was not possible today.
Actively engaged, with person at top of hate list, in melee range?

[Pan]

Actively engaged, with person at top of hate list, in melee range?

Yep...seems like hate wipes (even in melee range - when I was actively popping them) and they turn and continue toward thurg. Or even when you've hit them a number of times, they don't engage you but keep moving.

The problem, on live if I remember properly (third wave especially) was keeping those healed who were keeping the giants on ice - from moving - while you focused the dps on them one at a time.

The problem here was getting the giants to realize that they were engaged initially - and to hold still after they were engaged. All of the DPS had to constantly break off and grab those who already had someone on 'em.

That's a very different mechanic and question and problem.

[Arteker]

Actively engaged, with person at top of hate list, in melee range?

i stoped in his track 2 veterans (paladin) just by running up to them droping agro in both and even when i pulled out(no heals) they would summon up, was saved though by shaman slows and a omni cleric who healed me .

imo worked well the problem seems people was to much spread and trying to tank and spank em in the normal way wich never realy worked in the classic ring.

the same way u could not kite the waves away while u finished one by one . yes u can highsun em, wih worked in live , but it would not stop em from coming back . and killing u if u along the path.


abif failure aswell in the ring war was the poor use of the coldain troops. by own decision or mistakes they where not used to help.

aswell in some cases the coldain would not in dozing the nearby riffs.

[jaybone]

Zerg

[bktroost]

i stoped in his track 2 veterans (paladin) just by running up to them droping agro in both and even when i pulled out(no heals) they would summon up, was saved though by shaman slows and a omni cleric who healed me .

imo worked well the problem seems people was to much spread and trying to tank and spank em in the normal way wich never realy worked in the classic ring.

the same way u could not kite the waves away while u finished one by one . yes u can highsun em, wih worked in live , but it would not stop em from coming back . and killing u if u along the path.


abif failure aswell in the ring war was the poor use of the coldain troops. by own decision or mistakes they where not used to help.

aswell in some cases the coldain would not in dozing the nearby riffs.

This is not accurate for every case. Were there some cases where mobs stayed the entire fight? Yes, otherwise we would have been destroyed by the first wave.

We are talking about roughly 20% of the mobs, particularly in the last wave, that would completely ignore being engaged. Anyone who frapsed for any length of time during the third wave will have ample footage of this occuring on multiple occurrences. 20% is by no means an exaggeration.

[Culkasi]

This is not accurate for every case. Were there some cases where mobs stayed the entire fight? Yes, otherwise we would have been destroyed by the first wave.

We are talking about roughly 20% of the mobs, particularly in the last wave, that would completely ignore being engaged. Anyone who frapsed for any length of time during the third wave will have ample footage of this occuring on multiple occurrences. 20% is by no means an exaggeration.

It seemed to be predominantly an issue in the 3rd wave from where I was (guarding Thurgadin) - when I/we engaged the giants, they wouldn't stop, they just kept running towards Thurgadin

[bktroost]

It seemed to be predominantly an issue in the 3rd wave from where I was (guarding Thurgadin) - when I/we engaged the giants, they wouldn't stop, they just kept running towards Thurgadin

I'll also mention that it seems to have been more prevalent the closer they got to Thurg. In wave 3 the giants ran more than any other wave, but art their spawn points they We're static during fights more often than when they got to the dwarf archers.

[Stormfists]

Final wave was bugged -30 people running after a giant who, when engaged should stop... Instead they warped 30M ahead of those people chasing and vastly outpaced sow.

Dwarfs didn't engage too.

[Detoxx]

Haven't read thread so not sure if this was brought up but...is a ring war failure supposed to spawn Dain? Cause it did.

[Haynar]

Haven't read thread so not sure if this was brought up but...is a ring war failure supposed to spawn Dain? Cause it did.
Not supposed to. So currently a bug.

[Pan]

Final wave was bugged -30 people running after a giant who, when engaged should stop... Instead they warped 30M ahead of those people chasing and vastly outpaced sow.

Dwarfs didn't engage too.

All true.

As it is (without some tuning), I don't think it's winnable irrespective of tactics and execution.

[nilbog]

Which dwarves didn't engage, when, and under what circumstances?

[Sallan]

Which dwarves didn't engage, when, and under what circumstances?

I was commanding zrelik so I didn't move out too far to see them. But the ones I noticed were Korgin and his crossbow men, just west of the dual huts center of the river just before thurg. Only after I called certain hero's to come they appeared to be attacking (but somewhat buggy since the giants were also warping'ish).

I would say the dwarfs in general were just standing around looking pretty

[nilbog]

I was commanding zrelik so I didn't move out too far to see them. But the ones I noticed were Korgin and his crossbow men, just west of the dual huts center of the river just before thurg.

Kargin and his men are permarooted. They have the same faction as the other dwarves, and should range attack giants within range. However, the giants probably won't stop to engage them unless they are in melee range.

Is this what you experienced, or something different?

[Sallan]

That looks right for kargin and his men at least. The giants were a few feat away from them but they didn't engage the dwarfs or vice versa (but them being perma rooted explains the dwarfs physical engagement). I can't say I noticed the crossbowmen ranging either but I could have easily missed it

[Itap]

Kargin and his men are permarooted. They have the same faction as the other dwarves, and should range attack giants within range. However, the giants probably won't stop to engage them unless they are in melee range.

Is this what you experienced, or something different?

The bowmen did not range attack at all, I watched a pack of giants walk right through them unharmed

[bktroost]

Kargin and his men are permarooted. They have the same faction as the other dwarves, and should range attack giants within range. However, the giants probably won't stop to engage them unless they are in melee range.

Is this what you experienced, or something different?

I dragged 3 giants within about 100 range of the archers and even took one within melee range and they sat still And lifeless the entire time.

[ppdanny]

In waves 1 and 2, I was able to land root a lot more than I was able to on wave 3. Even with Malo on wave 3 root would break almost instantly 5 times in a row. In waves 1 and 2, the only time mobs were engaged is when they were rooted. When root wore off, they could be seen to keep making their way towards Thurgadin. If a mob wasn't rooted - it didn't agro, period. (Giants).

Highsun would return giants to spawn point, but was also make them start running instead of just walking towards Thurgadin.

[Alunova]

The bowmen did not range attack at all, I watched a pack of giants walk right through them unharmed

They may have been targeting an out of range giant from another group that was not dead yet?

[Itap]

They may have been targeting an out of range giant from another group that was not dead yet?

I don't think so. I saw no attack animation from them, and saw no damage from them in logs. Can anyone else confirm?