[Phinny] Zone desyncs across VoA

Something's causing several of the VoA-era zones to lag frequently, making some zones periodically unplayable. Devs may want to look into this, especially considering the new server launching in a similar era in a few months. It's possibly related to this ability: https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=30744

Hello? yes, i am here for the salt

"This nerf will only take five minutes of changing 1 to 0 in the coding, let's change EQ even more and remove the fun" - RandomDev. I'm actually hoping we get a few more patches where the majority of changes are focused on TLP so Live players finally flip their . You can clearly see their frustration in the test/patch notes thread with the current trend. Maybe it's time development takes a step back from changing old content/mechanics over and over.

I don't have anything personal against Swarm Kiting in particular. If they just somehow could fix the huge lag it causes in zones.

I'm guessing the huge amount of mobs calculating paths at the same time is the big issue here. Dunno if it can be coded/processed more efficient.

Yup, just use an instance or old content, although excessive instances are probably why we see so many server crashes now. But no, need to swarm in current content, open world, early expansion, and lag up zones for everyone. People need their innate regen rank 56 for playing Simon Says on raids apparently. Hope they've worked up their language skill too!

Honestly pretty much all the VoA zones are lagging to hell without a single bard kiting even one mob in them, I have seen mobs & Mercs rubber-banding the entire day today in Beast Domain, heals not registering, abilities not triggering, it's a horrible mess & if a few bards are making it worse I still think there is another problem at work here. I even had lag in instances in Rubek Oseka yesterday so it isn't safe there either. None of my other online games have been suffering lag so I don't think its my ISP/Network either.

If one bard kiting a few mobs (like 5-10) is the only thing lagging an entire zone, which I personally do not believe to be the only thing at fault at all, its not the bard at fault its the crappy load management of the server.

I'm not a bard I box one for support buffs for my Ber/Shm but I'm not kiting on it.
Can honestly say I have died at least 6x today purely due to lagging in the zone.

Can confirm that the VoA zones are lagging for me as well, I was the only person in there, and I'm like 99% sure I wasn't swarm kiting.

I haven't noticed it in Sarith FWIW.

Here's my experience in EQ this week:
Log in, send pet at mob.
Pet spends 45 seconds running at the mob but never reaching it.
I spend the next 30 seconds camping out.

Don't forget druid swarming!

Instances or older content won't solve the problem, because the lag generated by swarm kiting impacts more than just the zone you are in. It's why they nerfed SK swarm kiting even though they did it almost exclusively in instances like Mech Guardian.

Couple differences though. Bard swarm kiting is almost always limited by how many mobs you can pull before they start pathing oddly where SKs could pull crazy amounts, and if this lag was caused by bards, why have we not heard of it until now? I'm more of the opinion that it's something odd with VoA.

During HoT the only zone I saw people do it in regularly was The Foundation, which is UF content and the zone was basically a backwater at the time. Those pulls definitely lagged the hell out of the zone.

Yeah Tried to help a friend getting flagged. Was doing Foundation tasks, had to forget about it due to zone-lag from Swarm Kiting.

There's a reason people break the foundation pulls in to 3 or 4.

Honestly, why not just ask the kiters to hold off while you finish what you're after?

I swear people lately are demanding nerfs when talking to people would fix most of these problems.

Yeah talking to them gets the expected responses of "lmao", "nerf bards", silence, etc. It's not just one person or one guild either.

Last time I politely asked about that, I got this;

"HAHAHAHAHA NO!" "Go make a post about it".

Yeah, Those a jerk problems, not bard problems.

Yeah.

Again, I don't have anything against bards being able to swarm kite. They deserve to have that edge in some zones. I just hope the game eventually will get better at supporting it.

5-10? usually see bards running around valley with 20 to 30 rats and other trash after them.

I just go for a coffee when I see that because i know its useless trying to pull and kill mobs for the next 5 minutes.