Can we get a comment from the Devs on when the NPC for the raid/group missions are expected to be back in game and working properly. The fact that this was working fine for months and then gets broken in the ways it did are beyond strange (10mil damage = win on Ralaifin, pathing beyond fubar for Generals). Please don't let this turn into this year's CactusGate. This should have been a 1 week fix tops.
We don't have an ETA. Whenever we can get the problems with the premature success fixed internally and pushed out to Live servers.
It's not about the damage, we did 0 damage to it last time we saw it, it just despawned on engage for us. But the weirdest thing is that the devs can't seem to reproduce it. @Prathun: come watch some guild do it on a live server?
Prathun, I appreciate the fast response, as it looks like this is high priority. And please look if the pathing on Generals got changed or affected somehow. For weeks, we fought them up at tower 5 / bridge after the initial move away from Aalishai gates. For weeks we never had issues with pathing. The first time we did it after the patch issue, their pathing was unexplainable. I know several have complained about the zone pathing prior, but to go from what we had (no issues) to latest makes it feel like something broke or corrupted. (Zone matrix or mob model size?)
We quit doing Generals for a while now due to the pathing and emote timing. We've been seeing things like a "get to the flames" emote *AFTER* the failure for getting the flames message. Some serious script lag going on.
MS has reported the exploit. The NPC was removed and for some reason returned....while still exploitable. We have sacrificed 2 raid chests per week due to this. Please take the NPC down until a fix is live. I see many others with lesser morals doing this as a group for raid muhbis and coin if left unchecked.
In testing, are you using one dev generated toon or are you using more? I'm just throwing it out if you're using one character to test, you may need a few or several to duplicate the bug.
Prathun, can you please consider increasing the flag drop from Estianti until the NPC is returned as we will be losing 2/3rds of the flags from this tier with the NPC being unavailable, or increase the flags from these 2 raids once they are returned. Or you could reduce the number of flags required for T3. Not concerned with coins, just getting enough flags for T3. BTW pathing for us has not changed for General and emotes are working correctly, got the movement achieve last week, but messed it up with heights this week, our fault not the games. This is on AB
Mabey a dev can answer this. Will pathing degrade due to load on the instancing server that an instance is running on. Odd how some people see no changes and on some servers these guys run all over.
There seems to be a relation between pathing issues and instance lag, i.e. when everybody's spells start casting with a delay, the boss gets a few % lower than he should before triggering the next phase, etc. That is also when I've seen inexplicable bad pathing in Empyr and Mearatas. In fact, we've had the Mearatas boss run away repeatedly in a 'laggy' dz, and then after dropping that dz and getting a new one it would magically fix both the casting lag and the pathing bugs.
This is kind of what I'm getting at. Do they have several servers that handle instances for the whole game, if an instance spins up on a server that is at close to full load do we see odd behavior; scripts run slow, pathing goes to , and spells cast with a delay. Some times you get a instance server with very low load and things work well. Now can anyone comment on this scenario. Do certain game worlds all instance to the same servers so perhaps Drainal and Selos, both servers with heavy populations, share an instance server. This is why some servers see such poor performance and others don't have the same problems. In prime time how close are the instancing servers to full compacity?
Coin: hoarded or spent Flags: collected or destroyed Achievements: breathed a sigh of relief for not having to do some of the silly ones Loot: equipped or rotted Day 1: Rumour going around this is broken. Not many details going around, just anecdotes from other guilds. Might as well give it a shot and see what's going on - maybe it's lag, maybe they found an exploit, maybe it's a lie, maybe it's actually broken. Oh, actually broken. Neat. Off to the Generals then. Day 7: Raid time again. Empyr? I heard the NPC is down. It isn't? Neat, they must've patched it. Let's run it. Nope! Still broken. I guess we go on to the Generals again. Removing the NPC seems to have been the bandaid for Cactus, and seemed to be applied again to Empyr. Can't fault a guild that is able to beat the raid for a bug they have no control over (vs an exploit such as using the incorrect trigger item to spawn a lesser mob, a la Cactus). On the other hand, if you go in there with a group knowing full well that you can "win" it by just engaging, that's clearly an exploit. This is not.
We cannot change key drops without the exact same type of patch that would let us hotfix another attempted fix to the bug. So if it came to that, we would just try the next attempt at bug fix. I say attempt... because we have tried everything players said they are doing, and still cannot duplicate it ourselves. We believe players, but, still can't duplicate it. So we are making changes on blind guesses at where there may be issues. And "watching" players do it doesn't help us debug it, so while we appreciate offers of this, it doesn't get us the information we need. I still don't have an answer on when/if we will attempt another hotfix.