QOL Changes on Existing Mobol

[Elysia]

You seem to be asking towards something very specific, but as it is, it's not making sense to me. Can you clarify?

[verne]

Just a thought; is it possible to limit numbers on replicating mobs?
oh - or make it so ! weapon or ethereal mobs can automatically hit ethereal mobs
I gather we haven't had a freeze around this in a while

Is there any point (or way of) staggering when mob movements, checks etc. go off? I believe some zones don't seem to trigger until someone enters the zone or changes something - or do that if no-one enters the zone in an entire pop.

Is there any way to measure how much checks 'after' triggering mobol lags the game? does it achieve anything significant? (the obvious example here is jumping out of cities - oh no you could jump instantly which would allow you to be in cities with impunity,.. the thing is the current checks allow this anyway.. preferencing people with good links or game knowledge. Not quite uninterruptible, but definitely not waiting for the next round to go off.

My draz-speech is a bit rusty but this looks too much fun to not attempt a translation, let me know if I got it or not before an imm answers:

1) Is it possible to make it so that mobs that summon more mobs (such as armored maiden or spirit maiden sw tv) have a set number mobs that they summon. As it currently is, if its already summoned minions, than it is easier for 1 person with the right setup to kill armored maiden than a group of 8 (if you dont kill it fast enough). Limiting things like this to a set number (only allowing it to summon 12 minions for instance before "running out" and not being able to spawn more mobs) would make it more available to all setups, unless the intent is to make that particular one easier to do with channelers/projectiles.

2) If a darkhound and an apparition were to get into combat with each other they would endlessly hit each other and neither would ever die, lagging the game down until reboot. If each incorporeal mob was equipped with a 2h honed weapon this would never be the case (unless they couldn't break each others defense). I don't think this has actually been an issue since the last Morridin hit when a bug let darkhounds attack each other and then more hounds would spawn (see issue #1) until the mud crashed, and is probably more easily fixed by checking if morridin or any mob in his group has a human or LS tag (or whatever the recent partial fix on bryn was) I can't think of any other examples where incorporeals are attacking each other ever, maybe the apparition not being able to break the defense of the ogier north of wb fade is the only thing that might contribute to combat lag for long periods of time.

3) This is likely a coding change and not possible, but it sounds like hes asking if different zones could have different rules for when mobs moved/aggroed etc, to reduce lag. For example if some zones "aggro pulses" were moved to "every 3rd combat round' rather than having every zones aggro pulse at the same time then it would spread out lag and make it less noticeable. As it is, aggro pulse lag is not game-changing but noticeable enough that I sometimes use it as an aggro pulse timer when I first log on or when my tic timer is drastically off.

4) Is it possible to make it so that when a zone is "inactive" (the timer showing that the zone is ready for a repop but nobody has entered the zone) that mobs stop attacking/moving around to save on lag. Its quite possible it already does this or that it would actually add more lag by doing the check to see if a zone is inactive than it would save from the reduced movement, I don't actually know.

5) When jumping out of a city, it first runs a check to see if you are engaged. This check seems to cause signficantly longer lag than other mobol checks (such as handing a scalp to a herald which is an unnoticeable amount of lag. I doubt that imms have a special tool that would allow them to see how much lag this adds and is likely going to be easier to test with the timestamps turned on in adaels logging scripts, a mob stand and 3 people jumping out a gate as often as they can. Note this is a separate issue from the mobol having a delay on it, which it does have as well.

Are those what you meant to ask?

[Draz]

1) dead on / better presentation - although my thought was with respect to the occasional extreme lag on mob pulses that gets steadily worse when we have hundreds of mobs fighting each other.

2) yes. Although lots of ways and some weird freaking coding at times (see the gaidin rescue coding on boarheaded trollocs) that it can and still does occur. Occurred to me afterwards we should just delete ethereal mobs / make them 50% chance not to hit.

3) yes and no. Its what I'm talking about, but what I'm talking about is the setup of zones for when their initial pops start rolling and what these rely on. Definitely something imms can edit.

4) yes

5) kind of - I've always felt that 'laggy' mobol seems to have a noticeable difference to game lag. The instant ones are /always/ instant and nothing seems to affect them or quantity - 'laggy' ones anecdotally I see people complaining about lag when they're being triggered a lot.

[melosa]

Could we have more aliases available please?

[Elysia]

1) dead on / better presentation - although my thought was with respect to the occasional extreme lag on mob pulses that gets steadily worse when we have hundreds of mobs fighting each other.

2) yes. Although lots of ways and some weird freaking coding at times (see the gaidin rescue coding on boarheaded trollocs) that it can and still does occur. Occurred to me afterwards we should just delete ethereal mobs / make them 50% chance not to hit.

3) yes and no. Its what I'm talking about, but what I'm talking about is the setup of zones for when their initial pops start rolling and what these rely on. Definitely something imms can edit.

4) yes

5) kind of - I've always felt that 'laggy' mobol seems to have a noticeable difference to game lag. The instant ones are /always/ instant and nothing seems to affect them or quantity - 'laggy' ones anecdotally I see people complaining about lag when they're being triggered a lot.

The thing is, we have a command to see how many fights are going on, with both mobs and players. Usually there's less than 20 at any given point I've looked and most of those are player vs mob. I think you're wrong about mobs fighting mobs being the primary cause for lag.

Ethereal stuff - coding.

Zones are currently set up as optimally as the mud can wrt initial boot and further repops. There are no further tools for us to use, except making every repop very very long.

Wrt mobol, we're 15 years in optimizing. We've deleted so much mobol. The only way to improve mobol is on the coding side, or start removing features. Which in case of laggy mobol basically equals removing all scouts (bye pk) and stuff that awards qps with a limitation like dailies, heralds, ctf cities. We're at a point where we either have to remove features to optimize, which is going to drive away players, or live with the current restrictions of the game.

[Sklarr]

QoL changes (not mobol):

Could the SH and Dark Fortress flame rooms be made rideable? It's incredibly easy to forget you're riding a shadow in RK, flame somewhere else, and then...be stuck and lose your horse.

[Prykor]

QoL changes (not mobol):

Could the SH and Dark Fortress flame rooms be made rideable? It's incredibly easy to forget you're riding a shadow in RK, flame somewhere else, and then...be stuck and lose your horse.

Adding to this... can the flames at the places that everybody can use be made to be the same as Ruined Keep's flame?
TKD, SH, and Fort's flames seem to be limited to "enter flame" to go to keep, and traveling from TKD to SH means two flame trips instead of "enter flame stronghold" and going there directly. Which makes things a pain if there's a group of of us trying to move via flame.

Also, removing fade/DLs use of the flame to better control traffic would be a beneficial QOL change for us trollocs.

[Feneon]

Fortress is rideable/dism now, Jerioz has some innate protection from being indoors because weather minimally impacts weaves. Unsure if we want to make that change.

Doubt we'll rework the flames.

[Sklarr]

Wondered about that. Can the flame be moved like 3e 3s of DL J?

[Feneon]

added a remort flame 1n of Jerioz that can go back to keep and made that room mountable.