Discussion: Prepare for the Praetorian Invasion on the live servers!

All I can ask the Praetorians after the beating is "you're what hurts?"

Who were be fighting tonight on Virtue? Lag or the Praetorians? Like everyone said above, the lag was really bad with powers taking one to five mins. to fire off or you fall over dead from some attacks after standing still for a long time due to lag. Ughh not fun.

Sounds like it's time to jump onto Virtue and see what's happening

Okay, once I came back and went to Atlas 2... I had a lot of fun. The lag had died down with people scattered around more. There's just this really hellish first hump of lag.

My experience of the event:

Log in to a toon who happened to be in Talos at a time when, if the admin message was any indication, everything was happening. The room he's in loads up with a big 'Lost Connection to Mapserver' message in the middle of the screen. Various channels kvetching about the lag. Then I get disconnected, declare 'screw it' and go get a bite to eat.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill No AT/powerset, AFAIC, is "undesirable." Give me a halfway competent player - or at least one willing to listen and go with the rest of the team - and we're good.

The lag wasn't too bad in Atlas Park, but it got quite extreme in Warburg - plus, it seemss that you can attack the rest of your league in Warburg, except for the ones on your actual team in the league - not sure if that's a mistake or intentional - but it made it quite wild there

I just hope everyone with command was drunk. That's the only explanation for such a sloppy invasion. I mean, had each Praetorian general worked together, bringing their own honour guard through, striking at targets with strategic value. Imagine the damage! Instead they all worked independently without aiding each other, leaving themselves vulnerable to opposition. I really hope Tyrant chews them all apart.

::Cough::
I got to the first Atlas Park fight to see a Goliath War Walker lagging out as he walked, I could move fine. THIS was an NPC who had lag issues. Its clear the system was incapable of handling this much. Is there a way to reinforce a server/zone so it can deal with these events better? I suspect the answer is no, considering if this DID happen the event weeks would have better planning and the only lag would come from client side limitations. This is mostly in comparison to EVE Online, where a "system(zone)" can be reinforced with additional servers sharing the burden, reducing this server-side lag people experience.
Clear direction and escalation: The invasion, as I stated before felt more like a food fight. We could have done with escalating bad guys, and heinous AV HP buffs. I think I blinked and missed a couple of the Praetorians. When you got to 50% of the AV's health, a new AV could have busted in and brought backup, after all its an invasion, not a play date.
Secondly, the announcements, with multiple zones and locations being invaded there were proclamations of Praetorians appearing, which lacked information on which instance and sometimes zone was under attack. People logging in may have seen a few notifications with little context, making the event frustrating if they could participate at all.

I really want these invasions to be fun, but they just feel a little soggy. The challenge is no more than a Rikti invasion, spam what you can and probably aim through a League Leader. City saved, drinks in The D, waiting for a sense of accomplishment.

I found Union to be a little laggy, but nothing moreso than 5second power lag which I could cope with. I would have loved to join Virtue, as Freedom will be just too maddening, to see a top-end population invasion but it was in the middle of the night for me.

Was it just overall lagging effects: warping, power lag, unresponsiveness or was it crashes from trying to load the magnitude of the sitatuon?

I had Union on Ultra Mode during Invasion and didn't have too much trouble, I did crash once but that was in tandem with taking a screenshot (possible bug?) at the time.

Where would be the next best server to check out a big invasion, population-wise, excluding Freedom - no disrespect.

Fury

I logged into Virtue around 8 Eastern in Cap. Summoned pets, took about couple of minutes for them to start showing after the UI showed the power went off. Instead of about a minute to power up, train pets and what not took over 3 songs on the radio, so call it 6 -9 minutes.

Took a long while to get out of the university to go outside. Started yelping for a team, got on one and hit follow mode flight to head for the leader.
A minute or so (length of a parody ad) flight kicked in and I had my toon go to flight pose, a lil later started moving.

Saw a group of folks on my league ahead, wondered what they were doing. Once I got into my power range for twilight grasp the war walker appeared. Although I could see the buildings and players for quite some distance looked like foe visibility was quite limited for range. I would say the range was definitely shorter than the distance of the fateweaver and 'The Big Atom'.

About 2 songs later my boys caught up with me, took a shot at the war walker, and proceeded to go on coffee break. The War walker was complaining about nausea about the portal with some other folks, so took it in good form. a minute later he used some blue plasma on someone.

That was pretty much the whole hour I spent, close book, shoot; watch war walker twitch; maybe the walker shoots at something or not, get book-repeat. The fight with Bobcat, well I had her aiming recticle locked, but I never actually saw her even though she was in range for void judgement to hit. Same for Black Swan on the roof of uni, targetable foes, but totally invisible, slower than stop motion animation.

I've been on many mothership raids, and many hami raids-this was like I've never seen before. Honestly, I know the devs are wild about mega team building and event binding, but yannow? this isn't fun.

The lag seemed to really spike up later in the night. It'd been bad at first, then a handful of us moved to Atlas 2, which had a fairly light population so lag was minor. But then I think other people got word that Atlas 2 wasn't so bad, so we suddenly got about a dozen or twenty new people coming in that shot up the lag, and they started forming leagues... which just brought new lag. I think. The leagues do seem to contribute to lag.

In Atlas 2, we were facing multiple copies of all the big Praetorians. So at one point, I was fighting Bobcat, Bobcat, Neuron, Neuron, and a Goliath. All Giant Monsters. Another time, I spotted at least four Black Swans on City Hall, as well as multiple Battle Maidens, etc. Wonky, but fun.

I think in retrospect what would've helped a lot is pre-forming the zone shards so people can spread out a bit, and maybe getting the portals up before the attacks so people spread out through the zones instead of all rushing to one point. The initial crush of everyone running to Talos or where ever just smashes everything. If you can get people spread out enough to all the zones, and get people spread out within the zones, it's alright. Also, too many Giant Monsters at once can cause issues.

Maybe I was lucky in finding a relatively lightly populated area with a bunch of friends. I do think that's the key to enjoying this: find an area that's not crowded with swarms of players and where players spread out. The fighting in Atlas 2 stretched from City Hall to the sewer entrance.

On the balance, once the lag died down and I calmed down, I had fun. Being with a bunch of friends (it seemed like a good bulk of the people in Atlas 2 for a while were SG or coalition-mates) made it enjoyable and compensated for the bursts of lag.

I do hope the devs got some good data on how to improve the systems from this, and learned more about event running. I still think the zombie and Rikti attacks were a good system for this all though.

My evening consisted of lag, more lag, rubberbanding, some more lag, and game crash. Followed by a relog, trying to find the invasion again, lag, more lag, and another crash. Not a kill, not a salavge, recipe, or enhancement drop. Nothing. I wasn't feeling well last night and I'm still not today, but I felt the best thing to do was quit before I felt the compulsion to ragequit and post something nasty on the boards. Lucky thing is that I wasn't dissapointed and last night went pretty much as I expected.

I am not having part anymore of these zone events that make the game unplayable.

I think sometimes the Devs go for the big glitzy shiny and should remember it should be playable before it is cutting edge and pretty.

Well, I have to say, because of the lag, last night was the first time I had seen one of the trams standing still EVER! Also, at one point I just had to chuckle seeing my toon, after hitting the hospital, sliding along the floor like she was still dead. Oh, one thing I wasn't really happy about was having to wait upwards of a full minute everytime I headed to the hospital before I could leave the rez tube.

I'll pop in to see how things are on Justice tonight in about 20 minutes. But I'm really waiting for Friday night so I can get Teen in on the fun.

Why are battle taking place in zones not accessible to all characters. I do not have high level characters on all servers, but would like to participate on the days I am able. Any reason invasions can't occur in zones accessible to all?

I have to concur. Mind you, after we finished up in St. Martel, the league pretty much broke up. So I took my (now) level 12 alt back to Port Oakes, leveled her up, kitted her out, and then went to Pocket D to have some fun.

Friday night will be the best fun for me, as my 50 is on Liberty.

Oh, and I have to say, the lag-fest wasn't as bad on Justice as on Virtue the night before - but that may be because I was doing this one redside.

Silly question, I know, but since I can't make it either to the invasion this week-end or the big shinding on the 27th, I got a quick question : is that mysterious badge awarded for going to BOTH, only the one on the 27th, or on the 27th with a supposed future chance to get it again? I'm getting lost in the threads here, can someone clarify? Much thanks.

You only need to log in on the 27th and from what I understand, it will be rewarded if a certain number of players are all logged on at the same time to test the server load limit.

So, you need to log in to freedom server during the even on the 27th and stay logged in until they reach the goal they have set.... sorry, I forget what the goal number is.

2500 Just log in and go in a mission and just camp in the door, that is what alot of people are gonna do just to get the badge.

You don't want to see it all in Ultra Mode spectacularity?!

It's butayful.

Fury