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Author Topic: Preview Weekend In Review - From Mark J  (Read 75126 times)
Morfiend
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on: August 25, 2008, 02:28:38 PM

Found this on warhammeralliance.com

Quote
Folks,

Okay, it was a wild and crazy weekend in WAR and while some of you might be tempted to go all Samurai on us for a couple of the bugs, overall things went very, very well. As long-time readers of my notes now, I won’t do a Nick Winters and we are anything but pathological liars so we’ll always own up when we make a mistake and we made a couple here. So, let’s talk amongst ourselves and have a little chat about the top nine list of the biggest issues and where we stand in regards to them.

(1) Client Crashes – I’ve talked about this as one of the reasons why we didn’t release the NDA until recently. Here’s the current status.
- Just a little too many currently. While we are better off than we were in beta, we must do better still before release.
- A number of players will lower spec machines had more CTDs than higher spec machines.
- Number of fixes already in pipeline. They are working their way through our testing servers and will be pushed to the players once they have been vetted internally.
- Engineering time for CTD issue has remained heavily committed; our top engineers are working on the various issues.

(2) Monster Pathing and AI – Well, what can I say other than not even all of King Tut’s wealth could have made us feel better for messing up on this one. Well, maybe all his wealth. 
- “Yes, that monster seems to be behaving a little oddly”. Monster responsiveness was very sketchy, odd pauses and tethering issues.
- “Oh, was I supposed to go in that direction?” Pathing sometimes wonky - mobs get stuck or go in wrong direction.
- Utter confusion at times as both monsters and pets will engage and disengage seemingly at random
- Internal server optimizations last week broke the pathing/AI. And I mean really, really broke it. This truly was a “Opps, we broke this code” moment for us and we don’t have many of them.
- Going to ensure that this problem is fixed this week. As I said in my first Preview Weekend, this is a major concern for us. Fortunately we have no underwater combat in this game or some of the NPCs may have been appropriately dubbed land sharks.

(3) Pet Responsiveness – With similar issues to Monster Pathing and AI, this was not our finest hour.
- Need to transfer "combat responsiveness" fixes to pets - have pet move immediately on button press.
- “Oh no, Mr. Bill!” Pets suffer from same pathing and lack of response as general monsters. Pets hopping around like they were headed to Del Staters.


(4) Global Cooldown Timers –This seems to be a hot topic for players to talk about. However, things aren’t always as they seem.
- Reality and perception are two different things, Warhammer has a GCD of 1.4s, WoW has 1.5s
- “Ability not ready” messaging needs to be improve, a sound effect if Global Cooldown in effect, maybe more cowbell?
- Need to improve on the feeling of sluggishness of the GCD and UI. Bug with display where our timer shows 2s when it is really 1.4
- The next best thing to a queue is? We will add in better "slop timer" to allow players 0.3s extra to pre-queue a second ability followup.

(5) Better animations
- So much more coming in the next two versions of the client. We are currently incorporating serious amounts of new animations into the game. Hopefully nobody will sneak a coneheads model into the game.
- Look at what my XXXX does now? Over the next month we will address many class-attack specific issues across all 20 careers.
- “U think you can dance?” Nope, but we have added new racial animations for movement, fidgets and redid some emotes.

(6) Texture Blurring
- Textures are currently cached in a manner that results in blurriness on entering a region.
- We will look at adding a client scalar.

(7) Client Performance – This is one of those issues
- Need better scalers on effects, sounds, graphics, etc to help lower end machines (already lots of additions to coders)
- This thing loves memory like Dan Aykroyd loves bass. We have already improved the memory consumption of the client and taken 100M out of current test best.

( Targeting, Camera, etc
- Currently our targeting system differs from many MMOs in terms of our features and how we go about things. We will identify and make a more standard initial setup but allow flexibility.
- Will add additional keybinding selections to allow flexibility

(9) Renown rank gear
- Unfortunately, a new bug (well an old bug we fixed and then managed to break again) which allowed Rank 10 RR 6 players can go to Tier 2 to get better gear and then come back to Tier 1 and own scenarios. We are currently working on a fix.

I hope you enjoyed the Preview Weekend and we thank you for your interest and we hope, patronage of our game.

Guess what folks, that’s the news and I am outta here!

Mark

P.S. The reason for all the Saturday Night Live references was that a poster or two dared me to work a certain phrase into the update. I kinda took that and ran with it.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2008, 12:41:44 PM by Morfiend »
murdoc
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Reply #1 on: August 25, 2008, 03:01:13 PM

Glad to see that getting the armour in Tier 2 and going back to Tier 1 was a bug because you were ridiculously overpowered when you did that.

Have you tried the internet? It's made out of millions of people missing the point of everything and then getting angry about it
tazelbain
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Reply #2 on: August 25, 2008, 03:03:02 PM

> The next best thing to a queue is? We will add in better "slop timer" to allow players 0.3s extra to pre-queue a second ability followup.

Wait, what?

EDIT: Its good assecement of the problems of the game, how much can the get done by 9/18 I don't know.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2008, 03:09:30 PM by tazelbain »

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Reply #3 on: August 25, 2008, 03:11:40 PM

Good that they are looking into crashes. I couldn't keep the client up for more than an hour at a time. Also, the targetting really sucks. Why the hell would I want to target myself unless i'm a healer?

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tazelbain
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Reply #4 on: August 25, 2008, 03:16:58 PM

It went from 2 times an hour to once every 3 outside of Altdorf over the course of 2 weeks.  I am guessing the closed beta didn't have a large variety on video cards.

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Reply #5 on: August 25, 2008, 03:22:45 PM

It went from 2 times an hour to once every 3 outside of Altdorf over the course of 2 weeks.  I am guessing the closed beta didn't have a large variety on video cards.

Nope, they had a limited list.. several cards out there being used by the preview folks probably weren't in the beta.

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Reply #6 on: August 25, 2008, 03:27:27 PM

I never want to see or hear Mark Jacobs use the phrase "underwater combat" ever again.

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bhodikhan
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Reply #7 on: August 25, 2008, 03:53:29 PM

I never want to see or hear Mark Jacobs use the phrase "underwater combat" ever again.

Well how's he gonna add in the 'Master Level' content? I just they don't Atlantis this game.
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Reply #8 on: August 25, 2008, 04:41:46 PM

well that target list definately hits most of the glaring issues i have had.   


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Reply #9 on: August 26, 2008, 08:08:51 AM

I liked the monster pathing, over the course of the weekend I would say about 75-80% of the monsters I fought just stood there staring at me while I cast spells at range.  It was the easiest leveling EVER!

As far as the animations go, I have to say as it stands this game has probably the ugliest animations I've ever seen.  The Zealot was a million times worse than my Squig Herder though, so it may be limited to certain classes.  But man my Zealot casting animations were freakishly bad, like headache inducing bad.

One last thing that just seemed to kill me over the weekend was that even with the totally different than wow 1.4s cooldown and a 2.0s cast spell, whenever I cast my spell and I could see the animation fly out and hit the target and damage appear on the target, I still had some chunk of time where I couldn't cast the next spell.  Even though the 1.4s GCD should have expired during the 2.0s cast time, there still was this weird sluggishness where I couldn't hit the next spell, and I never seemed to really be able to get the timing right.  Perhaps I am too used to WoW, but it just didn't feel nearly as responsive to me because of this little quirk.

Of course now that I think about it, WoW made a change not too long ago so that you no longer needed /stopcasting macros that allowed you to start the next spell at casting time minus server latency, i.e. if you are casting a 2.5 second spell and you have 200 ms latency you can start the next spell at 2.5 - .2 or 2.3 seconds, because the packet will theoretically arrive to the server at the 2.5 second mark and chain the next spell at exactly the right time.  The client used to work in such a way that it wouldn't let you SEND the packet until the entire 2.5 seconds passed (unless you used a /stopcasting macro to fool the client) so that you ended up, with 200 ms latency, having a 2.7s cast time.  It sounds like Mythic is going to implement essentially this same thing, but with a hard coded 300 ms "pre-queue" so that you can send the next command to the server 300 ms before the end of the spell cast, thus you can chain spells together without fear of latency (unless it's over 300 ms of latency). 


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Reply #10 on: August 26, 2008, 08:17:49 AM

I guess I am just not... efficient enough.  But, the whole spellcasting thing has never been more of an issue in WAR than it has been in every other MMo I have played.  After a while I have my powerbars memorized and never have to look at them.  I just use the skills necessary as the time calls for it.  The flow of battle means that I am rarely standing still long enough to "chain" anything anyway.  Perhaps classes with more insta-cast type spells would suffer from this, but my Runepriest has very few issues.
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Reply #11 on: August 26, 2008, 08:59:53 AM

I guess I am just not... efficient enough.  But, the whole spellcasting thing has never been more of an issue in WAR than it has been in every other MMo I have played.  After a while I have my powerbars memorized and never have to look at them.  I just use the skills necessary as the time calls for it.  The flow of battle means that I am rarely standing still long enough to "chain" anything anyway.  Perhaps classes with more insta-cast type spells would suffer from this, but my Runepriest has very few issues.

Yeah I keybind everything and have everything memorized, I don't look at what I'm casting, I just know what will be cast.  There seems to be a little bit of a flash animation at the end of the cast where, even though you're done casting and out of the GCD you can't hit the next key.  That's the part that's annoying the hell out of me, I can't get the timing right, probably because I'm looking at my opponent and not at the spell bar.  In addition I'm used to the feel of WoW, which lets you hit the next spell during that time so that you end up with a chain.  It was a huge issue for me, like "eh, I'm not sure I want to waste time logging into WAR" type issue.

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Reply #12 on: August 26, 2008, 09:07:45 AM

Easily the most horrible thing about WAR.  You can expect bugs to be fixed, classes to be balanced, missing features to be added.  But you can expect anything will be done when you have boneheaded designers who take a philosophical stance against a very necessary function in an online environment.  You basically have to hope someone gets fired so someone else reasonable takes their place.

Unless this "slop timer" is really a .3 second skill queue, but would have Mark just have said that?

Another problem is difference between the animation speed and the GCD.  Many spell animations are longer than 1.4.  So there is a time between when the GCD ends and when the animation ends where your skill bar looks like you can send in another command but you can't.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2008, 09:35:21 AM by tazelbain »

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cevik
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Reply #13 on: August 26, 2008, 09:11:44 AM

Another problem is difference between the animation speed and the GCD.  Many spell animations are longer than 1.4.  So there is a time between when the GCD ends and when the animation ends where you skill looks like you can send in another command but you can't.

I think this must be what was happening to me.  I was done casting, I had spent my 2 seconds standing still doing my nuke, it was time to run and pop a heal on my heal target (which I like the targeting btw, you can have a friendly and a hostile targeted, makes for much easier dpsing and healing at the same time), but for some reason there was some period in there where I had already cast and damaged the target where I just couldn't cast the next spell.  It may be that the client was finishing the animation and returning to the "ready" position and thus not letting me cast.

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Reply #14 on: August 26, 2008, 10:35:38 AM

Yeah, the lack of a spell queue is easily the most frustrating thing about WAR atm, and the 0.3s 'grace period' won't fix it for me.

I'm a european playing on US servers [international guild] and have constant 600+ latency. Yeah, sounds like a barrel of button-mashing fun waiting to happen! :P

edit: I'm sure Aussies feel the same way...


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Reply #15 on: August 26, 2008, 10:45:20 AM

Er...at 600 latency, I'm not sure there is anything Mythic can do to make your experience more enjoyable.  Buy you a house stateside maybe? 

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Reply #16 on: August 26, 2008, 10:47:24 AM

I hope to see the animations etc fixed.  Good thing they have more in store for us.
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Reply #17 on: August 26, 2008, 10:52:37 AM

Er...at 600 latency, I'm not sure there is anything Mythic can do to make your experience more enjoyable.  Buy you a house stateside maybe? 
I dunno... they could, maybe, implement a queuing system like WOW [and probably X more MMOGs]. I'm fine with having to play a caster or healer due to my ping.. heck, I can even accept that my global cooldown is 2 seconds instead of 1.5. I'm not fine with having to constantly mash the keyboard just so I can cast spells 1/2 as fast as someone with zero ping.

And like I said, ask some aussies about their ping to US WOW servers. 500+ is not uncommon.


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Numtini
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Reply #18 on: August 26, 2008, 10:59:36 AM

I played and actually had quite a good time. I did notice the animations were a little sketchy. The spell queue / cooldown warning are really truly irritating. My ping was find and I spent most of the time spamming a key and filling my window with yellow not ready messages.

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Reply #19 on: August 26, 2008, 11:03:42 AM

Regarding the skill queue, why can't they just have an unlimited slop timer? Effectively the same as a one-skill queue.

I'd like to take credit for this incredible bit of design myself, but actually, I just looked at what daoc did.

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Slyfeind
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Reply #20 on: August 26, 2008, 11:05:28 AM

I dunno... they could, maybe, implement a queuing system like WOW [and probably X more MMOGs].

WoW has no queue for abilities. I'm used to "Not Ready Yet" messages because my frost mage has been saying them to me for the past three years.


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Reply #21 on: August 26, 2008, 11:13:01 AM

I dunno... they could, maybe, implement a queuing system like WOW [and probably X more MMOGs].

WoW has no queue for abilities. I'm used to "Not Ready Yet" messages because my frost mage has been saying them to me for the past three years.
There is a queue, but it was implemented relatively recently [2.3], and only for spells with casting times. Cevik explained it a few posts up... it's not a perfect system, but still better than WAR's, imo.


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cevik
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Reply #22 on: August 26, 2008, 11:16:41 AM

I dunno... they could, maybe, implement a queuing system like WOW [and probably X more MMOGs].

WoW has no queue for abilities. I'm used to "Not Ready Yet" messages because my frost mage has been saying them to me for the past three years.

Short answer:  Yes it does, sorta.

Long answer:  It has the exact same queue as what Mark Jacobs is talking about creating above, only with a sliding window instead of the static .3 second window.  The sliding window in WoW's queue is tied to your current latency, so the person with 600 ms latency can queue the next command .6 seconds before the previous command finishes.  I tend to run with a 100 ms latency (worst case) so my queue is always around .1 seconds.

You used to have to emulate this with a macro that did a /stopcasting before every spell (the "best" dpsers always used that macro), but WoW implemented this functionality into the core game as of patch 2.3.  Thus when someone has a high latency they are just as effective as someone with a low latency, because they are able to send the next command in advance so that it will arrive as the current spell finishes.

Before the solution in WoW, a person with a 600 ms ping would, without a /stopcasting macro, take 3.1 seconds to cast a 2.5 second spell, after the fix that person could cast a spell in 2.5 seconds.  The same is true right now for WAR, a person with a 600 ms ping will take 3.1 seconds to cast a 2.5 second spell.  The solution that Mark has proposed above means that a person with a 600 ms ping will take 2.8 seconds to cast a 2.5 second spell, but anyone with a 300 ms ping or lower will be able to cast the spell in exactly 2.5 seconds.

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Reply #23 on: August 26, 2008, 12:15:06 PM

Yeah, pretty sure WoW does exactly what he's talking about, and always has (except it only recently was added for cast times).

You may have noticed that current in WAR if you use an ability really soon after a GCD it will sometimes start to execute and then a moment later stop and say "ability not ready."  Pretty sure that's happening because the GCD is being simulated client-side and starts the moment you press the ability button, so if your latency isn't perfectly consistent, the server might get the second ability message before the GCD has fully expired fro its perspective.

In WoW, this never happens, and yet the GCD is simulated client-side there as well.  So they must be handling the pathological case somehow.  Most likely, the server hangs onto the second ability for the fraction of a second until the GCD expires, and then executes it.  In other words, a .3 second ability queue.

Basically, if they do it right, you probably would never have noticed it if MJ didn't specifically call it out, you'd just be like, "this is smoother."
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Reply #24 on: August 26, 2008, 12:49:22 PM

I would go with the verbal warning. I think that is one of the cutest things in WoW. I still get a little laugh out of my gnome telling me she's not ready yet. The yellow spam on the screen is just way annoying. Even without the queue stuff, it feels like I'm spamming a lot more in War tho. I'm not sure what is going on there with perception.

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Reply #25 on: August 26, 2008, 04:15:10 PM

So EA-Mythic are planning to fix these problems within three weeks, presumably via some sort of...miracle patch?  awesome, for real

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Reply #26 on: August 26, 2008, 04:54:18 PM

So EA-Mythic are planning to fix these problems within three weeks, presumably via some sort of...miracle patch?  awesome, for real

I was hoping someone else noticed this. :)

EDIT: Of course the truly frightening thing from my perspective is that CE beta couldn't start/NDA couldn't be lifted until there was a miracle patch, but then the miracle patch seemed to break a lot of stuff (the mob pathing was HORRENDOUS) and not really fix the critical things (CTD anyone?).  Now there is going to be a new miracle patch to fix all these newly broken things that will go relatively untested (I assume "open" beta will be about 4-5 days, considering then they have to get things ready for the pre-release keys and then release). 
« Last Edit: August 26, 2008, 04:57:37 PM by cevik »

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Reply #27 on: August 26, 2008, 05:07:08 PM

I myself haven't had a chance to give this a go yet, but looking at what the hot topics are for WAR as compared to many other MMO's at this point, that seems like a pretty reasonable list of problems. Reasonable as in not game breaking and actually DO have the potential to be addressed before launch. The CTD's being the exception depending on frequency.

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Reply #28 on: August 26, 2008, 05:10:00 PM

So EA-Mythic are planning to fix these problems within three weeks, presumably via some sort of...miracle patch?  awesome, for real
Nah they'll just reimplment the NDA awesome, for real
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Reply #29 on: August 26, 2008, 05:12:10 PM

The CTD's being the exception depending on frequency.

Oddly enough, CTDs were my biggest issues with DAoC's launch.

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Reply #30 on: August 26, 2008, 05:18:12 PM

CTD's weren't bad for me but the AI pathing was aggravating fo sho.

I wish they had LOTRO's skill queue, I had a good rhythm going with that.
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Reply #31 on: August 26, 2008, 06:43:43 PM

Yeah, pretty sure WoW does exactly what he's talking about, and always has (except it only recently was added for cast times)

Woah, holy crap I never knew that! I thought my timing was just getting better.

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Reply #32 on: August 26, 2008, 08:36:35 PM

I remember DAOC having mob pathing issues.

As long as Jacobs stays this reasonably honest in some kind of public space about the issues they're having, things should be ok. But he doesn't have the best track record on that point, and when he did his whole "we don't really want to be talking to our customers because you're all whiny bitches" thing, that didn't inspire confidence.
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Reply #33 on: August 26, 2008, 09:07:06 PM

Eh, to be fair this isn't really miracle patch material, pretty much just bug fixes and polish.  It's already a pretty solid game, imho.  Performance is good, classes are all fairly fun, plenty of content, etc.
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Reply #34 on: August 26, 2008, 10:22:36 PM

Also, mob pathing was fine until the Preview Weekend patch. Also, the patch did a LOT to fix the CTD issues. Before the preview weekend I was CTD about once every 10 to 20 minutes. During the preview weekend I think I had maybe 2 all weekend, and I played quite a lot.

From seeing how much stuff gets fixed each patch, I have faith that if they say they are working on them, then a real fix will come soon. Unlike AoC patches that have to rank up there with the worst dev confidence ever.
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