Hamidon Raid having more TF characteristics

Given that a Hami raid involves a lot more players than an ordinary TF, might there be a problem with attrition cutting down the numbers of people in the raid? Occasionally players have to go eat, get called to do something they forgot, have the cat sick up on their laptop, etc. Players who leave won't be able to be replaced, which would lengthen the duration of the raid, which would lead to more people having to leave, ending up with the raid spiralling into failure due to low numbers. Annoying, if there are people outside the Hive ready and willing to join in.

I guess it would help if players could choose to quit the raid, and that opened up a slot for someone new to enter the Hive. However, it's still a problem if people simply log out and don't quit, or have their net connection go down and can't get back on. (I don't think it's possible to kick someone from a TF-style team if they're not logged in, right?)

Hmm...since a zone-wide TF setup would probably require all-new code anyway, it might be better to ask for some kind of a timer on place-holding for teams, instead? If someone leaves, their account is flagged as having 'reserved' a place in the Hive, for some length of time (5 or 10 min?). If they don't relog a toon in that time, then the flag is lost and someone else can enter the zone in their place?

I don't know. It all sounds a bit complicated. Is losing places on Hami raids a big issue? (Over here in Euro land, it's more a case of not getting enough people together to run a raid at all :-)

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

There was some commentary from Castle a while back about designing the Hamidon Raid. Part of it came down to the fact that it is balanced around a 50 person raid group. If the zone limit were increased then Hami would need to be buffed to accommodate that. This would also make it harder to get a raid going.

Its a good observation, but, (giggles) I said the zone would lock after the Hami is spawned; thus you and the organizers have plenty of time to form teams and switch alts around before going monster killing to spawn the Hami.

Normally, my experience in Champions, is that players do come to stay the entire event, not much issue with leaving to go eat lunch, etc. The most common issue is a DC for whatever reason and not being able to get back, because someone waiting outside took one's place. At times, it has been a key leader, and they can't get back.

I read a post if you leave to eat, for example, you should quit the team, so then that slot could open for a new player to enter the zone. That is a good idea, the only catch is the player's integrity in doing so. But maybe the team lead, could simply kick and fix that.

I proposed a way, not the way. The essential objective of this post is mainly to inform that an injustice does occur with this event, and that something should be done to prevent it.

Hugs

Sue

Except that you're simply saying that they should solve the problem without addressing the fact that the solution generates a number of other problems in solving the initial problem.

As someone that has actually lead raids of all kinds throughout the years, it's my experience that you almost never actually have everyone when you're ready to get started. Most people that are willing to raid won't even think about even heading to the Hive until Hami has already been spawned (at least on Freedom).

As someone that has lost out on HOs by disconnecting in the middle of a capped raid, I can empathize with you and agree that it would be nice if there were some way to avoid losing your spot from a DC. As someone that has actually led raids and noticed a number of people taking up spots but not doing anything (i.e. leechers) or simply trolling the raid, I can agree that it would be nice if there were some way to kick people that aren't contributing to or are inhibiting the raid out of the zone. The problem is that you can't let someone save their spot if they dc because then the leechers would simply zone in for the Hami spawn and then dc themselves, and, no matter if they came back in time, they'd still be taking up a spot.

The current system isn't perfect, but it works well enough.

Capes, wings, and trenchcoats create two sources of slowdown. First, there is the amount of time necessary to transmit the fact that the player actually has such a costume element. This is trivial. Second, there is the amount of processing power on the client-side that it takes to render those items. This can only affect individual players based on the speed of their system and can almost always be remedied on their end by reducing their client detail sliders in theory. It is not the primary source of overal raid-lag.

The primary source of raid-lag - the lag that actually seems to be causing time to slow down in the zone and everyone's clients to get extremely jumpy regardless of computer horsepower - is the fact that so many things are so close together that the game servers start spending a lot of time with bounds and collision checking. Every PBAoE has to be checked against every target in the area. The players have to be checked against Hamidon's aura. If players accidentally left PBAoEs on like invincibility those have to be checked against every target in range, including all the players (invincibility isn't affected by other players, but the game doesn't know that until it checks them one at a time). Its basically the density of entities and all the checks that have to happen from every power to every entity that ends up slowing the game engine down.

When you reach a critical point where it takes more than one server tick to calculate what's supposed to happen within the time alloted to one server tick, time effectively slows down. Powers take longer to recharge, because the game is ticking them slower. Powers take longer to activate, because the game is checking for power activation less frequently. This is difficult to address without making the entire core combat engine more efficient in how it processes just about everything.

Or: theoretically you could dedicate special hardware just to run the raid, and try to devote enough to allow more players. I'm not sure how technically feasible that might be, though.