Chapter 9.2 Divided Loyalties all black in solo instance

[OldMadeOfLions]

also some of the decisions you made for the world (still not forgiven you for the rope over wall into Caras Galadhon)

And it's funny, isn't it? The rope only exists because I was told players needed a way inside Caras Galadhon so they wouldn't have to finish the Epic at the time or grind rep to get inside. Much like Gundabad, my position was that you should have to do the story-related stuff to get inside -- but I was overruled. I get it. I never use the rope into Caras Galadhon myself.

MoL

[LagunaD2]

The thing is when most of us are talking of packets and the internet we are referring to TCP/IP. A protocol that makes sure all the data is coherent and will keep asking until everything is cushty. We are using UDP for comms and it's down to the server and client to organise the data coherently. If it's not handling things when under stress then it's not doing the job it needs to do. But you can't run a game like lotro on TCP/IP, then it would be a slideshow.

I can only guess it's needs an expert to go through that ancient UDP code. The problem would be that it needs to receive something to act on it and if nothing is received nothing is done. That issues becomes prevalent under load you'd have to take steps to spread that load by increasing all factors involved in that process: Processors and Bandwidth would be my guess.

The game client displays the rate of packet loss, and it very rarely differs from zero.

Again, I can't see how random internet packet loss (unless it's close to 100%) can account for something that happens reproducibly at different times and places all over the world.

[Braer]

The game client displays the rate of packet loss, and it very rarely differs from zero.

Again, I can't see how random internet packet loss (unless it's close to 100%) can account for something that happens reproducibly at different times and places all over the world.

The in-game tool is reporting packet losses as experienced by your client. At least, maybe, as you load into game from an SSD install (as in quickly) it will often show a packet loss briefly but it really isn't the internet "packet loss" it's your client being too busy completing the load process, helps if you have an old duff PC. If you want to simulate client "packet loss" then start an upload of a video to youtube and login to the game and it will report losses. But not really, you are just strangling your own bandwidth, nothing to do with the wider internet. When everything comes to a standstill in game and you see the icon go yellow but it indicates zero packet loss it's telling you your client is functioning fine but is no longer hearing from the servers. Ofc it will show losses when communications continue but other issues are at play at the time. As far as we know the server stopped talking to our client for some reason and no one seems capable of investigating how and why or using funds to un-throttle them.

And you are right all the waste of dev time in second guessing when things might go wrong as they are building quests and thousands of players getting Teed off with "unplayable" peak playtime because someone, somewhere laid down the law of how it's to be.

[Zoroasterax]

Now you've done it: you've gotten me started on one of my favorite subjects that I can't stop talking about, once I've started!

We have a lot of tools that we use to make LOTRO: there's a quest editor that content designers use to write and structure quests, and there's a worldbuilder tool that lets us place things directly in the world; there's a place for writing strings and there are applications for producing and fine-tuning the landscape. We use all these (and more!) to make LOTRO -- couldn't do it without them!

But it's always people that make the game. Nothing happens without someone to operate the machines. And that operation comes in the form of hundreds (or thousands, really) of decisions, some large and some small. Every step of the way, someone is making a choice: 'should I do it this way, or this way? Or maybe this way?' Those choices are informed by training, and experience, and sometimes we get them right and sometimes we get them wrong: most recently, and famously, my belief that it wouldn't be a big deal to require people to complete LoD 1-4 before starting 5.1 seems to have been the wrong one (expect a fix in the next patch). But someone had to decide to do it that way, and when the results of that decision go live we then see how people react. In that case: not well! And that's fine: nothing bruised but my self-esteem.

But it wasn't the quest tool that chose to do it that way. Similarly, the worldbuilding tool that we use to construct these instances only does what we tell it to do, and for this quest it's doing exactly what it thinks it should: when the player arrives in this location, tell the blackout to fade up, tell Gorgar to say his line on the other side of the rocks, and advance to the next stage of the quest. For much of the past year, every time I or QA looked at this quest, it did exactly as it was supposed to. "Looks good to me!" we all said. But it turns out Gundabad is pretty popular, and sometimes when players land in the space, some or all of those messages don't go where they're supposed to. Maybe the blackout doesn't go away; maybe Gorgar doesn't say his line; maybe the quest doesn't advance: it's that most frustrating of experiences for a game designer, where the design, which worked flawlessly for months, suddenly doesn't.

It's at about this point that I think a lot of players are saying "Well, you should have expected it to be like this." To some extent we do, but at some level we have to trust that the game is going to listen to our commands. We can't tell the engine to do everything twice, just in case! Instead, when something like this happens, most of us do what I do: get really frustrated, get really sad, and then pick ourselves up and come up with some way to rework the unexpectedly inconsistent sequence.

But back to your question:



It's not the tools that need levelling up here, because as far as they know everything here is fine: they don't know the signals are getting lost in the internet. What's actually been levelled up in this case is me, because by looking at this situation, I now know I can't entirely trust that when the player arrives in a new space the things I expect to happen will happen, so I need to account for that in future designs. I have something of a reputation around here of distrusting anything that broke for me once, and now this sort of arrival setup gets filed in that bin. Since it's the people that make the games, it's the people that learn from the problems, and have to work to prevent them in the future. So that's been my weekend!

I'm hopeful the various backups and failsafes I've added will make this a smoother experience when they arrive in the next patch. I say this a lot, but I think it bears repeating: for as frustrating as this sort of thing is for players, it's at least 10x as frustrating for the folk who've spent the last year pouring their hearts and souls into it. Trust me on that one.

MoL

Just played through this on a second character on Evernight (where lag is common ) and had no issues. Thanks for an enjoyable epic questline!

[gripply]

Now you've done it: you've gotten me started on one of my favorite subjects that I can't stop talking about, once I've started!

We have a lot of tools that we use to make LOTRO: there's a quest editor that content designers use to write and structure quests, and there's a worldbuilder tool that lets us place things directly in the world; there's a place for writing strings and there are applications for producing and fine-tuning the landscape. We use all these (and more!) to make LOTRO -- couldn't do it without them!

But it's always people that make the game. Nothing happens without someone to operate the machines. And that operation comes in the form of hundreds (or thousands, really) of decisions, some large and some small. Every step of the way, someone is making a choice: 'should I do it this way, or this way? Or maybe this way?' Those choices are informed by training, and experience, and sometimes we get them right and sometimes we get them wrong: most recently, and famously, my belief that it wouldn't be a big deal to require people to complete LoD 1-4 before starting 5.1 seems to have been the wrong one (expect a fix in the next patch). But someone had to decide to do it that way, and when the results of that decision go live we then see how people react. In that case: not well! And that's fine: nothing bruised but my self-esteem.

But it wasn't the quest tool that chose to do it that way. Similarly, the worldbuilding tool that we use to construct these instances only does what we tell it to do, and for this quest it's doing exactly what it thinks it should: when the player arrives in this location, tell the blackout to fade up, tell Gorgar to say his line on the other side of the rocks, and advance to the next stage of the quest. For much of the past year, every time I or QA looked at this quest, it did exactly as it was supposed to. "Looks good to me!" we all said. But it turns out Gundabad is pretty popular, and sometimes when players land in the space, some or all of those messages don't go where they're supposed to. Maybe the blackout doesn't go away; maybe Gorgar doesn't say his line; maybe the quest doesn't advance: it's that most frustrating of experiences for a game designer, where the design, which worked flawlessly for months, suddenly doesn't.

It's at about this point that I think a lot of players are saying "Well, you should have expected it to be like this." To some extent we do, but at some level we have to trust that the game is going to listen to our commands. We can't tell the engine to do everything twice, just in case! Instead, when something like this happens, most of us do what I do: get really frustrated, get really sad, and then pick ourselves up and come up with some way to rework the unexpectedly inconsistent sequence.

But back to your question:



It's not the tools that need levelling up here, because as far as they know everything here is fine: they don't know the signals are getting lost in the internet. What's actually been levelled up in this case is me, because by looking at this situation, I now know I can't entirely trust that when the player arrives in a new space the things I expect to happen will happen, so I need to account for that in future designs. I have something of a reputation around here of distrusting anything that broke for me once, and now this sort of arrival setup gets filed in that bin. Since it's the people that make the games, it's the people that learn from the problems, and have to work to prevent them in the future. So that's been my weekend!

I'm hopeful the various backups and failsafes I've added will make this a smoother experience when they arrive in the next patch. I say this a lot, but I think it bears repeating: for as frustrating as this sort of thing is for players, it's at least 10x as frustrating for the folk who've spent the last year pouring their hearts and souls into it. Trust me on that one.

MoL

I'm relieved to hear that the arrival activating objects are now distrusted. It's incredibly disorienting and in an environment where I'm thinking, is this a bug? It's double disorienting, as a player.

After trying this four times, I'm going to reboot and see if that helps, if not then I hope it's in the next patch meaning tomorrow. Thank you for working on it.

While I have your attention, the base of Drearspire is floating in midair and not in a good way. That walkway is pretty steep, and the feet of the building are not touching the ground. Or I suppose you could turn it into Morrolan's Castle Black.... oops wrong lore. :P

[gripply]

I did manage to finish this. I carefully walked in straight lines toward every goal and took my time to let things "appear."

However, the trick really seemed to be to fully reboot my computer.

Afterward I knew it had worked because as soon as I was in the chamber with the hammer, Gorgar's voice appeared behind the rock. That hadn't happened before.

My guess is, Gorgar was not spawning and somehow him not spawning caused the rest of the things to not spawn either. In previous tries, the NPC really wasn't there because one time the door wasn't clickable either, then the door was clickable another time. But at no time did I get in my chat box or as an "overhead callout" the voice of Gorgar.

Thank you for the fix tomorrow. I just wanted to add that in case it was the NPCs bugging it.