Kyronix - Please respond on the Treasures of Fey

keven2002

@Kyronix - Wondering if you could speak on the current climate of the Destard event (I'm hoping you see this before too many people just repeat everything in other posts)? It's been a week now since the "fix" was put in place and I feel that it largely has not worked as everything is the same as it was day 1 with the only exception being that the honest active player with 1 account trying to get drops is now essentially penalized. 

My experience is primarily from my home shard of ATL. If you visit any of the 4 major static spawn points (1 is just NW of the original "pile" from level 1 entrance / 2 are just E of level 2 entrance / 1 is right as you enter level 3) you will see the issue. Additionally because there are so many people in the same area (or maybe just a handful of the same people with a dozen accounts) it's still a lagfest.

The spawn is too slow and too close to the stacks of archers/thrower so that literally everything spawning is dead literally as soon as it spawns. That means an honest player just looking to get some drops either needs to work level 2 which by midday will become overrun with paragons (people don't bother killing the paragon shadow wyrms) or they need to run around aimlessly on level 1 looking for a single target to kill (even then you are competing with others doing the same). None of these options are fun. I know I'm not alone as I've seen several other people say the same and I'm not counting the people that say every event isn't fun... I'm counting the ones that typically do not post negatively. 

So my request of you is to speak on what the current issues are with Destard. Here are some of the questions I've yet to see an answer to:

• Why can't we return to a similar state as day 1 when there was enough stuff for literally everyone to get drops but decrease the drop rate? 
• Why can't we have more randomized spawn points (ie why don't feys spawn level 1 in the middle or east? If randomization is the issue then why can't there be more respawn in the spots they do spawn in the very back of level 1 (which seems to be the most random spawn point in the dungeon)? 
• Why can't the drop rate be increased for those moving around or in areas of the dungeon NOT at the static spawn point (ie mobs on level 2 have a higher drop rate)?
• Why can't there be a cap put on the paragons (ie no more than 2 or 3 paragons on level 2)? The only thing the paragons are hurting is the honest player looking for action; the stacks of toons literally kill anything that spawns in under 10 seconds (including shadow wyrms).
• Why not throw this event in Hythloth so we have another avenue of drops from a dungeon that has already been proven to work?

I'd imagine the team has probably thought through all of these but we haven't heard if they are still an option or even possible and if not possible what prevents it? In the event the above might be too much additional coding or work... the biggest question many people have would be:

• With the overpopulation of ATL specifically, why can't we have Fel Destard opened up? Keep everything the same (same static points etc) and just drop it in Destard. I'm fine with the bots trying to setup a pile at the static points with PKs able to kill them. Anyone who doesn't like the idea of PKs can stay in Tram.

Hopefully you will not see this as someone just complaining something sucks and will see that I'm offering many solutions in an attempt for your team to pick the one that best suits the masses.

Thank you.

McDougle

It seems too have something to do with walls or a room like area's all the spawn seems to be generating from the walls so the large open area we all envision full of spawn is empty. Why they can't just take one of the spawn area's and place it in middle idk. Maybe place a wall in center of large area?? 

keven2002

I'd like to leave the answering to @Kyronix as he should be able to address each bullet. Answers from anyone that isn't a Dev is just speculation and we have like 3-4 threads full of that.

Arroth_Thaiel

So, I took a few minutes and ran through Destard (Pacific) to see what was going on. I will say upfront that I have not played this event at all. I haven't collected a single drop. All of the talk about the way the spawn was working interested me.

So, here is what I found.


I found five locations of mixed Fey and "Treasures of..." and six locations with spawn marked "Treasures of ...", but no Fey.
The location on level 1 to the north of the main room is light "Treasures of..." spawn, the other five are not.

Last night, the two Fey spawns heading to the stairs down to level 2 were occupied by 5 to 10 characters each. Surprisingly I didn't see any auto-follow bot groups. I was expecting to, I've seen them before on Pacific, but I was only back and forth a few times and probably just got a lucky window.

This morning there were four or five people waiting outside the dungeon. I was the only person in the dungeon. All spawn locations were available.


--
So, I'm not understanding how the spawn works, or maybe I'm not understanding the complaints with the spawn. If you kill stuff in the areas I've marked with yellow above, everything is still tagged "Treasures of...", there are still paragons, and you get drops, but it doesn't respawn as rapidly?

If you kill enough "Treasures of..." mobs in those yellow areas, will Fey begin to spawn there?

If the Fey spawn is covered in bots, why not just move somewhere else? This is of course Pacific. On Atl are all the Fey spawn locations bot swarms?

Is there some fixation on killing just the Fey for some reason?

Someone else posted that on their shard level 1 Fey spawns were dominated, but no-one was on level 2 and level 2 was too hard to work. That doesn't seem to me like a problem with the spawn, just that the spawn wasn't in the easiest area. Why not just move to one of the yellow areas where Fey doesn't spawn?

Again, I realize this is Pacific not Atl, but I would suspect most of the shards are more like Pac than Atl population wise and Pac may therefore be more representative of the general experience than Atl.

Is some of this an issue specific to Atl due to the population?

From the dev's perspective, this event may be functioning entirely differently than from the perspective of posters on the forums, and the dev's may feel no need to respond.

--
Also, someone on Pac has begun luring swamp spawn up to the Destard entrance to kill quest takers and people waiting at the entrance. The spawn will loot uninsured eggs/drops from the corpses of those killed. An interesting and provocative way to obtain drops. Fly safe commanders: o7.

dvvid

@Arroth_Thaiel see these images https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/75174/#Comment_75174

this is all day and all night on ATL. That is only 2 of the 4 or 5 areas that look exactly like that. Mobs are dead the immediate moment they spawn because of the scripter hordes. It’s basically a drop generating machine. 

If you want to ignore these areas, there is insufferable lag where you take a few steps, stop, take a few steps and so on. 

I’m happy other shards can enjoy the event but ATL is an immense disappointment. 

Arroth_Thaiel

@dvvid

Ah ok, gotcha. I've been following the threads and seen the images. I didn't realize the lag extended to other areas, making moving to a non-dominated spawn irrelevant, at least on Atl.

Sorry to hear the experience on Atl is as bad as it is. 

Pawain

Start in the water ele area with drakes. Kill that stuff. Go to the spawn area kill that stuff. Go to the other ele area kill all.  Now go back to the start. Do this twice and there is nothing but 2 things to kill with repeated trips.

Just because there is spawn there when you look, does not mean anyone can get drops there. That's 3/4 of the dungeon that 1 player can do and get 2 drops an hour. Not a good event 

Arroth_Thaiel

@Pawain

I had no idea the spawn was so slow in some of those areas.

--

For general reference, the water ele spawn at the lake in SE Destard level 1 is about 55 seconds per elemental...

...spawns a maximum of eight elementals, and nothing else.

I can see why the spawn distribution is causing problems.

Pawain

Yes and kyronix said we were supposed to have near instant respawn in these events.

If those areas had constant spawn that could support 3 or 4 players, that would help.

Archangel

Pawain said:

Yes and kyronix said we were supposed to have near instant respawn in these events.

One could almost be forced to conclude that some people say n'importe quoi...

Seth

@Arroth_Thaiel
re.
From the dev's perspective, this event may be functioning entirely differently than from the perspective of posters on the forums, and the dev's may feel no need to respond.

I think Dev need to respond especially when the event is not functioning as expected from players point of view. If not, I can't see when we need them more.

Mariah

Please note, several posts that had derailed the intended topic have been removed. This thread is intended to discuss the distribution and density of the event's spawn.

It is not intended to discuss the properties of the available rewards from it.

Thank you.

Seth

Sigh, there only needs to be one more post in this thread - a response from Dev.

Seth

These are the 2 contrasting areas of the Trammel Destard Dungeon for 2022 event.

McDougle

Seth said:

These are the 2 contrasting areas of the Trammel Destard Dungeon for 2022 event.

I'm telling you it's something to do with walls 

Seth

McDougle said:

Seth said:

These are the 2 contrasting areas of the Trammel Destard Dungeon for 2022 event.

I'm telling you it's something to do with walls 

They need to move this to another dungeon if they can't spread the spawn in destard.

McDougle

Seth said:

McDougle said:

Seth said:

These are the 2 contrasting areas of the Trammel Destard Dungeon for 2022 event.

I'm telling you it's something to do with walls 

They need to move this to another dungeon if they can't spread the spawn in destard.

If they put a little mage tower right where you are it might be able to generate spawn 

Arroth_Thaiel

Seth, not all shards are like Atlantic.

This is not to diminish what's happening on Atlantic. For the players there, this event clearly has problems. I'm sorry Atlantic players are having this much of a negative experience.

Your screenshots reproduced on Pacific:



That's this morning. I just ran the entire dungeon. There are 5 people waiting outside, 2 people on floor 1, and 2 auto-follow sampires on floor 3. That's it. 

Even during primetime last night when the "pile" was actually going, there were about 7-10 accounts there, about four or five more in the main dungeon (which had far, far more spawn than it does now...so something in the spawn engine must be working correctly), and 2 on floor three. I stayed for an hour and ran the entire dungeon multiple times just to check the spawns.


--
This is looking more and more like a population issue, on Atlantic specifically.

As this event lasts another 2 months, it seems unlikely these issues will continue on most shards other than Atlantic.

If you're going to give Kyronix feedback, it might be best to ask if there is anything they can do for Atlantic specifically (or other shards where spawn isn't sufficient). Saying the entire event is not working is misleading, as the event is seemingly working on Pac, and Pacific's population is probably more like other shard's populations than Atlantic's population is.

Maybe they should just implement the Fountain code, but for dragons, in the main dungeon on Atl.

McDougle

Arroth_Thaiel said:

Seth, not all shards are like Atlantic.

This is not to diminish what's happening on Atlantic. For the players there, this event clearly has problems. I'm sorry Atlantic players are having this much of a negative experience.

Your screenshots reproduced on Pacific:



That's this morning. I just ran the entire dungeon. There are 5 people waiting outside, 2 people on floor 1, and 2 auto-follow sampires on floor 3. That's it. 

Even during primetime last night when the "pile" was actually going, there were about 7-10 accounts there, about four or five more in the main dungeon (which had far, far more spawn than it does now...so something in the spawn engine must be working correctly), and 2 on floor three. I stayed for an hour and ran the entire dungeon multiple times just to check the spawns.


--
This is looking more and more like a population issue, on Atlantic specifically.

As this event lasts another 2 months, it seems unlikely these issues will continue on most shards other than Atlantic.

If you're going to give Kyronix feedback, it might be best to ask if there is anything they can do for Atlantic specifically (or other shards where spawn isn't sufficient). Saying the entire event is not working is misleading, as the event is seemingly working on Pac, and Pacific's population is probably more like other shard's populations than Atlantic's population is.

Maybe they should just implement the Fountain code, but for dragons, in the main dungeon on Atl.


The reason it's empty is because of the spawn being broken...

Arroth_Thaiel

McDougle, you play on Pacific, you go walk into Destard and then come back and post when you've cleared the Dungeon and there isn't anything more for you to kill and you can keep the Dungeon's spawn generator at bay. I'll bet you can't even keep the main room clear.

Sounds like you might be able to on Atlantic though eh?

McDougle

I do play there and I see it empty. we did manage to get a grinder going for a little last night. But when I see more people outside turning in eggs then inside hunting it's a problem...

Pawain

@Arroth_Thaiel I agree with your assessment. On LS the small pile is doable by anyone when there are no summons. 

It's kinda boring to me after a while.  Ill go bring in some paras from the Dragon pit. They die in a few seconds.

The drop rate for  me is not high. 4 per hour while at the mini pile with my Archer who has both slayer bows. It feels like I am killing a lot of things. I play around the edge of the pile. But drops just not happening for me.

I would prefer to be able to travel the dungeon and get drops at a rate like the other dungeon events.

But LS has a lot more players at prime time than in your picture. There's always 10 or more outside. And last night which is not a busy night there were 15 inside.

Others were doing eggs. Grabby was calling out in chat about where not to gather in Fel. 

Seth

Arroth_Thaiel said:

Seth, not all shards are like Atlantic.

This is not to diminish what's happening on Atlantic. For the players there, this event clearly has problems. I'm sorry Atlantic players are having this much of a negative experience.

Your screenshots reproduced on Pacific:



That's this morning. I just ran the entire dungeon. There are 5 people waiting outside, 2 people on floor 1, and 2 auto-follow sampires on floor 3. That's it. 

Even during primetime last night when the "pile" was actually going, there were about 7-10 accounts there, about four or five more in the main dungeon (which had far, far more spawn than it does now...so something in the spawn engine must be working correctly), and 2 on floor three. I stayed for an hour and ran the entire dungeon multiple times just to check the spawns.


--
This is looking more and more like a population issue, on Atlantic specifically.

As this event lasts another 2 months, it seems unlikely these issues will continue on most shards other than Atlantic.

If you're going to give Kyronix feedback, it might be best to ask if there is anything they can do for Atlantic specifically (or other shards where spawn isn't sufficient). Saying the entire event is not working is misleading, as the event is seemingly working on Pac, and Pacific's population is probably more like other shard's populations than Atlantic's population is.

Maybe they should just implement the Fountain code, but for dragons, in the main dungeon on Atl.

Atlantic just went down, hopefully it will be fixed after rebooting.

Pawain

@Seth read your signature.  

Seth

Pawain said:

@ Seth read your signature.  

  

Pawain

I decided to go in on LS today.  No one was on the first floor.  I killed stuff for about an hour, got 1 drop.  Using Archer Bard.  I guess my warrior would have been better but the things are not close together for WW.

I think the difference from the last dungeons are:  Even when no one is there, there is not as much stuff to kill/time.  If any of the other dungeons were empty, I would have made a killing on drops.
Not enough very weak stuff and not enough bulk. All the others had easy kills in bulk somewhere in the dungeon.

The most obvious sign that something is not right is I WAS THE ONLY ONE IN THE DUNGEON ON A WEEKEND.  Especially an early weekend. Lots of players were on, I goofed off, chatted and did armor trades for an hour before going in.  Weekends are not the busiest times on LS but a group event with no one there is not the LS normal.

Seth

Pawain said:

I decided to go in on LS today.  No one was on the first floor.  I killed stuff for about an hour, got 1 drop.  Using Archer Bard.  I guess my warrior would have been better but the things are not close together for WW.

I think the difference from the last dungeons are:  Even when no one is there, there is not as much stuff to kill/time.  If any of the other dungeons were empty, I would have made a killing on drops.
Not enough very weak stuff and not enough bulk. All the others had easy kills in bulk somewhere in the dungeon.

The most obvious sign that something is not right is I WAS THE ONLY ONE IN THE DUNGEON ON A WEEKEND.  Especially an early weekend. Lots of players were on, I goofed off, chatted and did armor trades for an hour before going in.  Weekends are not the busiest times on LS but a group event with no one there is not the LS normal.

I did a test earlier and it seems the Fey mobs drop more than the original inhabitants like the dragons. That was on Formosa so I am not sure about others. It's hard to test on Atlantic because once they pop they are killed.

keven2002

@Kyronix - Can you please respond to my original post? It's been over a week since the "fix" which has almost unanimously viewed as unsuccessful and there hasn't been any further communication regarding it. I really do want to participate in this event, as I'm sure a large amount of others do, but it is not fun the way it currently is (specifically on ATL).

One other possible solution to also implement would be to remove the ability of EJ accounts to receive drops. These players/bots should not be allowed to "cash in" on this event when they aren't paying a subscription.

Thank you.

McDougle

keven2002 said:

@ Kyronix - Can you please respond to my original post? It's been over a week since the "fix" which has almost unanimously viewed as unsuccessful and there hasn't been any further communication regarding it. I really do want to participate in this event, as I'm sure a large amount of others do, but it is not fun the way it currently is (specifically on ATL).

One other possible solution to also implement would be to remove the ability of EJ accounts to receive drops. These players/bots should not be allowed to "cash in" on this event when they aren't paying a subscription.

Thank you.

@keven2002 i hope at this point you've realized there is not going to be any reply such a slap in the face of the customer base...

Pawain

He replied to keven already when he complained about the hole and Atlantic lag. Kyronix fixed it so why does he need to come hold your hand?

He told you he can not make more spawn areas in Destard.

I guess he feels that someone who is here and is complaining  24/7 is smart enough to go read what was already said.  It's his last 2 comments if you need more hand holding.

McDougle

Pawain said:

He replied to keven already when he complained about the hole and Atlantic lag. Kyronix fixed it so why does he need to come hold your hand?

He told you he can not make more spawn areas in Destard.

I guess he feels that someone who is here and is complaining  24/7 is smart enough to go read what was already said.  It's his last 2 comments if you need more hand holding.

Thanks for clarifying in such a professional manner