Dungeon alert and mob saves ?

[Wipey]

I think everybody knows that you get harried, trash mobs are harder to hit ( I think ) and bosses under Red skull are downright impossible to damage with physical attacks but :

I should also be asking if Dungeon Alert is active while testing saving throws. Dungeon Alert, at all levels, increases monster saves (increasing along with Dungeon Alert). There are some places we probably need to make sure Red Alert isn't happening when it should not be, as well.

This is pretty big news to me.
If this has been always true, can we get how much better saves the mobs get with yellow/orange/red skull please ?
Does the difficulty make a difference ?
Or is it gonna be new thing with u 25, or just in Toee ?

[Vargouille]

I think everybody knows that you get harried, trash mobs are harder to hit ( I think ) and bosses under Red skull are downright impossible to damage with physical attacks but :

This is pretty big news to me.
If this has been always true, can we get how much better saves the mobs get with yellow/orange/red skull please ?
Does the difficulty make a difference ?
Or is it gonna be new thing with u 25, or just in Toee ?

It's not new. This has been the case for years, at least (and I think always). I might be giving out more information than has been done in the past, without even consulting others. I'm a loose cannon!

Difficulty doesn't make a difference for the Dungeon Alert, but the monsters will be starting with lower saves to begin with, so they'll still have lower saves on Normal vs. Elite even with Red Alert.

It can be as high as +28 to saves on the highest levels of Dungeon Alert. There are some straight saving throw boosts and some ability score boosts monsters receive with higher Dungeon Alert. It's much, much lower on low levels. Green alert is +4 (or+20%) to saves (+2 to saves and +4 to ability scores).

[Eth]

This is true at least back to pre MotU.

If you ever had someone pull red skull in Epic Chrono for example you couldn't CC anything on a wizard.

[dunklezhan]

If we're talking about DA can I say (and when I say 'say', I mean 'rant like a crazyman') that I really really really hate the way the Underdark Arena goes into DA mode* during the arena fight. Dozens and dozens of mobs at once is quite challenging enough thanks, and if things have got to the point where there are enough mobs to kick off a DA of any degree, the party is simply not doing enough DPS and I assure you will therefore likely be dead soon anyway. Adding DA isn't adding any kind of challenge that makes any sense: DA is supposed to represent the dungeon being 'on alert', but the thing is, right, the thing about an arena is, is that EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW YOU'RE THERE. Making 'alert' rather redundant, no? Why not just give all the mobs elevated saves and to hit if that's what you want, like they'd get with DA? That way we don't have to cope with the crippling slow effects and such. If that's how you are intending to 'add challenge' to that fight, well, mission accomplished I guess but its a completely meta-challenge. You're fighting the game system**, not the mobs at that point.

Anyway, rant off.

I don't mind DA in general, as at least it has an in game rationale of sorts (and I understand its history vis a vis lag). But where the in game situation doesn't make sense, and it's your quest design which might cause lag by having too many mobs, you can't just use DA as a blunt instrument and call it 'challenge'.

*Of course, it may be that this is not intended behaviour in which case I apologise - but I've never seen it mentioned in the release notes/known issues before, and I checked them right around the time we ran it which was probably in the last 6 months or so.


**yes yes. You are anyway. You know what I mean.

[Gratch]

Hey Varg (or any other dev). We've all filed bugs in the past. But when you're adding stuff to Shavarath (Update 26)...

Make sure to do a pass on Bastion of Power. With it's random gates closed and one level on top of the other level and teleporting devils until you kill a portal - that place is the 0 to Red DA just moving into a new room - even when you carefully kill everything as you go. Not sure how you restrict mobs a level down or up from seeing people in the room above or below - and once you get to yellow alert - you almost always get to red alert as all the devils from everywhere else teleport in, but hopefully there's some new tech since that dungeon was created to restrict mob and/or portal-opening vision vertically. Overall - I like the dungeon, but it DOES NOT play well with the dungeon alert system.

[Vargouille]

We have looooooooose and tentative plans to "take a look" at Dungeon Alert. But that's fairly "unscheduled" at this point, just something we want to do. We don't know what that means, so naturally we're hesitant to bring it up as a point of discussion ourselves -- basically, we're not really ready for the discussion. That doesn't mean we're unhappy for you guys to tell us things, but we don't want to setup an expectation that we're going to be able to focus on it (either the discussion or an actual change) in the near future.

If we're talking about DA can I say (and when I say 'say', I mean 'rant like a crazyman') that I really really really hate the way the Underdark Arena goes into DA mode* during the arena fight.

Yeah. This probably shouldn't happen.

Make sure to do a pass on Bastion of Power. With it's random gates closed and one level on top of the other level and teleporting devils until you kill a portal - that place is the 0 to Red DA just moving into a new room

Probably also shouldn't happen!

[Oxarhamar]

We have looooooooose and tentative plans to "take a look" at Dungeon Alert. But that's fairly "unscheduled" at this point, just something we want to do. We don't know what that means, so naturally we're hesitant to bring it up as a point of discussion ourselves -- basically, we're not really ready for the discussion. That doesn't mean we're unhappy for you guys to tell us things, but we don't want to setup an expectation that we're going to be able to focus on it (either the discussion or an actual change) in the near future.



Yeah. This probably shouldn't happen.



Probably also shouldn't happen!

There tons of places in game (mostly them that came after MOTU) that are instant red dungeon alert.

[BD_]

There tons of places in game (mostly them that came after MOTU) that are instant red dungeon alert.

Yes, also splitting mobs like oozes can cause dungeon alert very rapidly...

[cave_diver]

Make sure to do a pass on Bastion of Power. With it's random gates closed and one level on top of the other level and teleporting devils until you kill a portal - that place is the 0 to Red DA just moving into a new room - even when you carefully kill everything as you go. Not sure how you restrict mobs a level down or up from seeing people in the room above or below - and once you get to yellow alert - you almost always get to red alert as all the devils from everywhere else teleport in, but hopefully there's some new tech since that dungeon was created to restrict mob and/or portal-opening vision vertically. Overall - I like the dungeon, but it DOES NOT play well with the dungeon alert system.

Never get alert if you dont jump in rooms and cause portals above to spawn....just sayin...

[brzytki]

From what i remember from the past when i briefly tested it, DA increases fortification as well.

[dunklezhan]

Yeah. This probably shouldn't happen.

in which case I apologise

Sorry!

[redoubt]

We have looooooooose and tentative plans to "take a look" at Dungeon Alert. But that's fairly "unscheduled" at this point, just something we want to do. We don't know what that means, so naturally we're hesitant to bring it up as a point of discussion ourselves -- basically, we're not really ready for the discussion. That doesn't mean we're unhappy for you guys to tell us things, but we don't want to setup an expectation that we're going to be able to focus on it (either the discussion or an actual change) in the near future.



Yeah. This probably shouldn't happen.



Probably also shouldn't happen!

There are plenty of places where DA triggers through no fault of the players, its simply some mechanic within the quest and too many mobs "wake up" and trigger the alert. Having saves go up is a bad penalty. It is bad enough that you get slowed down to a crawl, so much so that you cannot even move into a flanking position, but the save thing just kills anyone who relies on DCs.

What DC caster can cover EE +28 for saves? None. Well I suppose a bard can with fascinate and Coup De Grace, but that's a whole other broken system.

Back to DA. From the turbine side you want us to keep the dungeons clear to help reduce the load on the servers, so you made a big stick to beat us with and named it DA. How about trying a carrot approach? Put in an XP bonus for no DA. Here is one way you could do so:

The bonus starts at xx%. Anytime there is a DA that % goes down.
- green alert loses .5% per second
- yellow alert loses 1% per second
- orange alert loses 2% per second
- red alert loses 4 % per second

Assumptions:
1. Don't worry about reworking dungeons before doing this to prevent spurious DA. Get to them when you can under the normal review.
2. People can still zerg and run till red and then kill or whatever their preferred method is.
3. People who go slower and either use real stealth to not alert mobs or kill it all as they go get rewarded for the extra time spent.
4. The starting % needs to be high enough that the extra time spent not getting DA generates the same xp/min that zerging through red DA and doing more quests does. Or you could make it higher, which would encourage less zerging and less DA, thus less load on the servers.

[dunklezhan]

There are plenty of places where DA triggers through no fault of the players, its simply some mechanic within the quest and too many mobs "wake up" and trigger the alert. Having saves go up is a bad penalty. It is bad enough that you get slowed down to a crawl, so much so that you cannot even move into a flanking position, but the save thing just kills anyone who relies on DCs.

What DC caster can cover EE +28 for saves? None. Well I suppose a bard can with fascinate and Coup De Grace, but that's a whole other broken system.

Frankly I think the slow effect is enough of a penalty on its own. If the point is to stop too much zerging causing lag due to the number of mobs, then drastically Slow-ing the players and applying daze effects whilst not slowing the mobs is honestly enough of a hindrance. I don't really understand how then making the mobs harder to kill at that point by increasing saves is helping anyone to reduce that mob count which is the goal because it reduces lag. If the mobs kill the zergers and all the mobs are still alive, don't you now have live mobs taking up runtime for a while till they reset? Surely better that that players are incentivised and enabled to quickly reduce the mob-count instead? And I really think the slow effect is enough of an incentive if your problem is zergers. I mean, going fast is the point.

[Impaqt]

Yes, also splitting mobs like oozes can cause dungeon alert very rapidly...

Actually, Split oozes count as one mob still.

[BD_]

Actually, Split oozes count as one mob still.

Then there's a bug with them - maybe 3 weeks ago in threnal I had a case (I was solo so couldn't have been anyone else getting agro) where I was killing all the mobs as I went, got to a dead end spot with some sort of ooze or pudding etc, had some bad luck with it splitting and went from no DA to red DA - character didn't move the entire time just stood there attacking/cleaving.

[Robai]

It's not new. This has been the case for years, at least (and I think always). I might be giving out more information than has been done in the past, without even consulting others. I'm a loose cannon!

Difficulty doesn't make a difference for the Dungeon Alert, but the monsters will be starting with lower saves to begin with, so they'll still have lower saves on Normal vs. Elite even with Red Alert.

It can be as high as +28 to saves on the highest levels of Dungeon Alert. There are some straight saving throw boosts and some ability score boosts monsters receive with higher Dungeon Alert. It's much, much lower on low levels. Green alert is +4 (or +20%) to saves (+2 to saves and +4 to ability scores).

+1
Thank you so much for telling this info! (this info wasn't available on wiki before.)


That probably explains why my Wiz failed to instakill mobs in some EE runs in full groups (that's why I have more fun soloing on him).
I mean I thought that scaling changes the DCs of mobs (could you confirm or refute this?).

[Seikojin]

+1
Thank you so much for telling this info! (this info wasn't available on wiki before.)


That probably explains why my Wiz failed to instakill mobs in some EE runs in full groups (that's why I have more fun soloing on him).
I mean I thought that scaling changes the DCs of mobs (could you confirm or refute this?).

If it raises their stats, then yes.

[Silverleafeon]

It's not new. This has been the case for years, at least (and I think always). I might be giving out more information than has been done in the past, without even consulting others. I'm a loose cannon!

Difficulty doesn't make a difference for the Dungeon Alert, but the monsters will be starting with lower saves to begin with, so they'll still have lower saves on Normal vs. Elite even with Red Alert.

It is common knowledge that monster gain various bonuses under dungeon alerts.

Including True Seeing during Red Alerts.

Also Tiamat sometimes casts Time Stop on players during Heavy Red Alerts....

[General_Gronker]

Dungeon Alert, at all levels, increases monster saves (increasing along with Dungeon Alert).

This is one of the many, many reasons Dungeon Alert is a terrible implementation of a halfway decent idea. Dungeon Alert is supposed to represent an increased level of alertness, preparedness, and reaction by the monsters. But it doesn't. Instead, it's nonsensical buffs and a poorly designed slow effect.

None of that stuff should slow characters down, nor should it increase monster saves. That's horrible design and a fundamental misunderstanding of how the game is supposed to work (believe me, we've had several Devs with no idea how the game works or is supposed to).

No, all DA should do is create minor terrain changes (barricades, locked doors that were previously unlocked, etc), and (if appropriate to the creatures) spawn some random traps. Give the monsters a bonus to hit if there are several on one target to represent increased coordination of attacks.

REMOVE DA initiation when dealing with mobs that are unintelligent. Like the bat swarms in Coal Chamber. They aren't coordinating a **** thing. Also, you might look into figuring out how to implement the Swarm from the mother game for some creatures.

But as it currently stands, Dungeon Alert does not do what it is supposed to represent, it occurs when it should not, and it's poorly designed overall.

Remove it, fix it, then put it back in.

[redoubt]

I see the purpose. DA gates mana, to prevent a player from gathering up half the dungeon and prismatic spraying them all down at once. Mana gating allows dungeon difficulty scaling to appropriate levels for players at level. Or just swap to fire wall. No save.

Like many things, DA was put in to reduce server load in hopes of reducing lag.