Feedback: Quest Ground Spawns Should Repop Quickly

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Fanra, Dec 15, 2021.

  1. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    Please make it so if we have to loot a ground spawn for a quest, that the ground spawn comes back quickly. When your entire group is at the same point in a quest and they all need the same ground spawn, it is not fun to just have to sit there for 10 minutes before everyone has the item.

    I'd say 1 tick (6 seconds) is a good respawn time.

    Thank you.
    Shindius, PatCleric, Yinla and 3 others like this.
  2. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    More shared tasks, please. I can send the rest of my kid's Halloween candy to DPG HQ, if that works as a bribe.
  3. Velisaris_MS Augur

    Waiting on respawns wouldn't matter if every partisan task was a group task. Solo tasks should only be for the merc tasks.

    Why the devs refuse to do this is beyond me.
    Shindius likes this.
  4. Fian Augur

    Ground spawns every 12 seconds would be nice.
  5. Koryu Professional Roadkill

    Those quest groundspawns are already repopulating once per minute. It's probably handled by a script. Having faster respawns would mean the script runs more frequently, which takes server resources. Sure, it's a small resource, but there are so many spread throughout the game, and likely multiple virtual servers to a physical server, so it all quickly adds up. 1 minute each respawn is a small inconvenience, basically only experienced early in the expansion or by a box crew.
    Scroll Facebook on your phone for a sec and check again. Better still, if it's the quest where you need to grab multiple groundspawns, make it an assembly line. Keep leading the first guy to new pickups and have the rest follow as they get theirs. Don't wait 5 minutes at each location, wait 7 minutes total.
    klanderso likes this.
  6. Deux Corpse Connoisseur

    Pretty sure the dev team, like all coders, would respond well to Mountain Dew and cheetohs.
    Shindius likes this.
  7. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    Let me see if I understand.

    You are saying that a script runs and polls once a minute or so to see if it needs to respawn. And having it poll once every 6 seconds would use up more server resources.

    Ok, here's a way to handle this that uses even fewer resources than the current method.

    Currently, when someone picks up the ground spawn, the server must:
    1. Remove the item from the ground
    2. Place it on the cursor of the character picking it up
    3. Update the character's inventory
    4. Update the character's quest
    So add one more action to those four:

    5. Spawn a new item on the ground

    This actually reduces the server load since it no longer needs to poll once a minute or so. It can sit idle for hours. It's only when someone picks up the item that it adds just one more action to a list of actions already being taken.
    Shindius, Tatanka and Yinla like this.
  8. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    Not all ground spawns are created equal it seems. Some do respawn very quickly and others may take 20 minutes. So it may help to say which you are concerned about.
  9. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    All of them.

    However, lately I've noticed this for The More They Stay the Same and Record Scratch.

    But all quests are what I'm concerned about. Any quest where you have to loot a ground spawn.
  10. CatsPaws No response to your post cause your on ignore

    I was thinking of the older quests apparently.

    For example The Ether Ash in Ethernere #1: Overcoming the Cataclysm respawn amazingly fast. I mean that one is so fast I can hardly get the rest of my group to the last spawn point before one spawns right where we are. And many of the others are just as fast.

    I think maybe its just TOL.
  11. Fanra https://everquest.fanra.info

    No, this is a problem for many older quests as well. I just don't have the ones off the top of my head.
  12. Qwalla Developer

    What kind are we talkin' about here? Sour patch kids? Reese's cups?
    Someone else mentioned cheetos, and I'll accept the flaming hot or jalapeno variety.

    But on another note, yes yes yes, we see the feedback about task types -- just wanted y'all to know that I'm grateful for your enthusiasm about it ("it" being that we need to think about the types more when we make the quests). Qwalla will remember this. :cool: Thank you for the input on ground spawns as well. I'll make a note of it as something to pass along to the team.
    Shindius, Marton, Fanra and 5 others like this.
  13. Zipe The Healer

    Hey,
    Only one Shared task across the expansion felt like... too few. It feels ok that quick quests are solo task, but specially long ones that require multiple loots would be cool for them to be Shared tasks (Ka Vethan#3 or Mercenaries on Shadow Valley as an example).
    About groundspawns... stack 6 of them would work too! (Ka Vethan groundspawns by the statue, Bloodfields scrolls by the house ruins, and the leaf on Umbral Plains by the tree)