Discussion: Withstand the Praetorian Surge!

Yeah. I seriously hope this "new tech" is still GOING in as opposed to "in now."

I managed to catch a few minutes here and there. Awful lag. Even well away from an event. (For instance, Virtue - Cap - "They're after the PTS!" OK. Nice sphere... nothing happening. Go FAR away (over by the Crucible.) Try to take on 3 Guards (not Praetorians, just the COT sort, conning yellow to me.) Manage to get a web grenade off, and my cone... then nothing. THey sort of slide around positions here and there. WELL after stuff should have recharged, it isn't.

Don't even get me started on the spot by the train. I think I had a power fire off twice - a tier 1 blast that should have just been going crazy. Oh, but one other power (my rain - not blizzard) - kept reporting that it was doing damage for a good two minutes or more.

Yeah. I shudder to think what your "Try for the highest concurrent!" is going to be like.

Look. I like COH. I wouldn't have been here constantly since Feb 2005 if I didn't. But you guys can't handle a 24 person BAF without chugging that zone, Hami raids, Rikti mothership raids, invasions, etc. have always been painful - so why do you keep on doing more without fixing the underlying issues?

See my Guides and Tutorials

And here's another thing -

You can pretty much forget about any meaningful data mining for this thing if you decide to try and draw us to the PVP zones by having Praetorian Event mobs there. The majority of players who know anything about those zones are going to - RIGHTFULLY - say "to hell with THAT noise!" and stay away.

Listen. You've heard this all before and didn't listen - a thousand times a thousand, so you probably won't HEAR it this time. Many people have beat their heads against this wall. But maybe SOMEONE might get a clue over there. So I'll give it my own try just this once. To wit -

We do not CARE what you do. PVP is DEAD. And YOU killed it! It's not coming back until you rollback the I-13 Changes and/or implement the suggestions made by the old PVP crowd.

Trying to trick inexperienced players into coming into the PVP zones with Praetorians visiting there during the event is not going to make PVP any LESS DEAD. People don't LIKE having their powers cut in half, ESPECIALLY when they're trying to fight full-strength NPCs! It's a waste of time.

If you've got time to futz around in Warburg and Siren's Call, you've MORE than got time to place Praetorians during the event somewhere where they will do more good in stressing the servers. We hate the PVP zones. We hate going there. We WON'T go there in any numbers significant enough for your data-mining. So do NOT bother putting future Event Praetorians in the PVP Zones.

Or perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps I'm looking at this from the wrong end? Based on the neglect and what little attitude any of the players has ever seen, it has seemed for a long time now that the Devs hate PVP and want it to go away. Granted, this game wasn't designed for that in the first place. And it would require a major amount of time and effort to make it work with this system. Kind of like trying to fit a 454 Hemi V8 into a Pinto. It may simply be more trouble than it's worth.

Maybe this is just your way of ensuring that PVP Zones stay dead? To make sure that people don't forget how horrible those zones are? So that you never have to do any work on those zones or that system ever again? I can see the conversation now: "See? Data-mining confirms no one will go there even during a big event that happens there. No point in throwing good money after bad. No need to pay it any more attention."

Maybe in a couple more issues you could just quietly remove the PVP zones from the game entirely. It's not like most people would notice.

If that second scenario is the correct one, then consider it "Mission Accomplished". (golf clap)

i have a offbeat question, we were told that the server list merger would happen before the end of summer, ok fine,if you had done it in June or July, we all would be just as happy or more so,If the new server list merger has ANYTHING to do with the mega LAG we had,and you knew it might happen, why do it just before start of the events?

on a second thought,maybe the DEVS wanted to see how bad the old tech was ,then install/patch/whatever just before the Freedom mega event,and if it handles the event very easily and with no problems . they can have real numbers to support their claims


the above was my tin foil hat thought of the day

I was excited for this -- really, really excited. I didn't know about it until someone mentioned it in game about thirty minutes before it actually started.

"An invasion? Of Praetorians? I get to smash?"

My heart was atwitter. I raced to the boards to read more about it. I was slightly disappointed to learn that it was a THREE HOUR event, but hey, I could always leave and come back if I had to, right?

Oh god no.

It started. My team rushed to Steele to face Nightstar and Siege -- two of the more lame Praetorians (but who were gifted wish shiny, shiny redesigns); I wanted to smash the ever-hideous Chimera -- only to be greeted with red text of doom ("IT'S A TRAP!" -- really? For real?), war walkers simply popping up, and some of the worst lag I've ever experienced in this game. Luckily, most of my attacks consist of me summoning my storm "pets" so I wasn't neutered as horribly as other players. It was still pretty bad, though -- about a four and a half minute recharge for powers that certainly have been reduced to much less than that.

We did learn a valuable lesson throughout the invasion, though -- the lag does not affect any players' ability to type:

"EVERYONE SPREAD OUT! IF WE'RE NOT IN THE SAME AREA WE WON'T GET LAG!!!!1" (Brilliant. You don't even deserve a golfclap for that logic)

"My powers work fine, they just take a long time to recharge. I don't know why they're doing that..."

"SPLIT LEAGUE!!! SPLIT LEAGUE!!!"

"Haha, you people on regular machines must be sucking so hard. I'm on <insert apparently amazing gaming setup here> and there's only a few seconds delay between activation."

"I don't know what killed me or when I was hit or what just happened!"

"y r dere so many ppl here?"

"Can I get a team invite?"
"team full"
"So can I get a LEAGUE invite, then?"
"wuts a league?"

And on and on and on and on...to infinity and beyond, but less cool.

I echo the above posters sentiments. Thanks for trying. Really, it's nice that you want to keep us engaged with new and exciting content. When that content is basically unplayable for ~50% of the players whose machines shriek, melt, and light the surrounding desk/lap/table on fire (perhaps an awful foreshadowing of what might one day happen to the servers if you push them too far :s ), though, well...it's just not good. I won't describe it as unnecessarily sucking the fun out of the game because that's an understatement -- it murders fun, brutally, and with many a hell-inspired torture instrument. After a while, I just got fed up, logged off, and went outside to lay on the lawn.

Edit: "The Praetorians are tunneling up under Talos!" <-- who thought this piece of fail up? Last I'd heard, Praetoria wasn't underneath Talos Island. Praetorian level 20s end up in Talos if they choose blueside, yes, but they come through a portal in a room that is mysteriously housed in the back of a truck. If they're porting underneath Talos (see: the ground), I would seriously hope that they were all just rampaging through the sewers and surging up through manholes. If not, absent the digging machines, they're porting into something solid. If Stargate has taught us anything, it's that using a portal that has the exit blocked by something solid results in something akin to "bugs hitting a windshield."

Some of the most fun I had was during Virtue's Praetorian Surge this Wednesday. I'd like to thank everyone who bore with me while I was RPing in Steel Canyon, and offer up a thank you to everyone for coming together and joining a League - we nearly had 6 full teams at one point, which was a wonderful way to add some additional stress to the test.

Thanks to NCSoft's Corsair for relaying the in character messages as one of Portal Corps' technicians and letting us get into it. Bringing out the zombies with Diabolique and manually shutting them down when she was defeated really added to the whole thing! Seeing all of those AVs spawning right besides the statue in Blyde Square was fantastic, and though the serverside lag was present, the banter and comradery of the event made it easily bearable.

We finally got a chance to pay back Valkyrie and Tyrant for trashing Blyde Square. Poor Dr. Advance was cheering for us from within his bodycast in Steel Canyon's hospital. I'll post some screenshots when I dig through them - it was a great experience. I'm hopeful that we can see more of these sorts of things in the future.

I don't know if the devs want any feedback but I'll post this anyway because it's good. I generally get a lot of lag issues during these big events because I am on the wrong side of the planet but last night was different, my frame rate never went down. I still had to wait a few seconds for my attacks to fire or to move and I also still had the buff and aoe power buttons telling me they were recharged when they weren't but this time I got to look around and see what was going on while I was waiting which was nice.

just had ours on pinnacle, the great and glorious Emperior Cole was victorious in bringing his loving hand to pinnacle, and routing the weak forces of resistance . All Hail Cole.


lag was still there, not as bad as other servers, still several sec delays for the powers to activate, and some standing in place. As we are a less used server, the number of players to fight off the invasion was not enough.

Tomorrow's freedom event should be even more interesting.

Well since I have to work now, the evil me hopes for 2499 peeps to log in, but the lag is for over 9000.

Have fun. wish I didn't have to miss it.

Ok fine you can get 2500+ people on a server for an event, now, figure out how to make it playable. Freedumb was just as bad as virtue, an unplayable slideshow.
These events, hami raids, mothership raids & trials would all be great fun, if not for the server lag. Its about time server upgrades became a priority.

I'll say this for the upgraded servers, it's not as bad as it was on Union or Virtue. It's still unplayable but I can type in the chat window this time.

The server may now be able to hold more people but it can't handle those people and an event.

Agreed. They've just shown that *significant* server upgrades are the most important quality-of-life issue. More important than new powersets, new shinies, or new enemies or arcs...especially if the intent is to bring us more events like this and/or if league play is a priority for high-level content.

Everyone on our Vent server that participated in the event in Atlas Park 2 on Freedom deemed it "not fun" due to the server lag. We all wanted the badge so we showed up, but the lag made it not worth sticking around more than 30 or so minutes.

We got over 4,000 on - it's an all-time CoH record now