QA In Progress Close the Gate: Underwhelming Shadows

Discussion in 'Bug Reports' started by Jumvapace, Jul 9, 2022.

  1. Jumvapace The Most hated

    Achievement: Close the Gate: Underwhelming Shadows
    ----Allow no Overwhelming Darkness spells to be cast.

    Overwhelming Darkness {ID: 52724}
    Not a player spell: Clicky, NPC spell, Proc, etc.
    Slot 21-Decrease Current Hit Points by 450450
    Slot 22-Decrease Current Mana by 8500 (v417)

    Ok. I've known what's been going on for a long time, and well I've just been too lazy to post yet another bug report; was kind of hoping someone else would take care of it. But since that's not gonna happen. Here we go:

    This achievement is broken in the spirit of how it's supposed to be accomplished. The failure is being triggered when any 'a servant of darkness' casts their aura. Not overlapping, just straight up casting.

    Current Mechanics and steps are as follows:
    Phase 3 Starts: Kratakel, Lord Misery, 4x 'a servant of light', and 4x 'a servant of darkness' spawn. 10 seconds after they spawn, all mobs go active.

    1 minute after the mobs go active, any remaining 'a servant of darkness' mobs will port to 4 different pre-set locations, and will cast a darkness aura around them. How long they it takes for them to cast the aura is dependent on where the global server tick is). After they spawn their aura, you can move them around again. On Beta their auras would follow, and if you overlapped auras, they would cast cast overwhelming darkness for every aura that touched. Contrastingly, since the raid was activated on Live in March; as soon as these servants spawn their aura, while still at their 'port to' locations, the auras instantly disappear and the achievement in question is auto failed. And you get your messages for the failure.

    But wait...There's more!

    The second part of of this event, after Kratakel is brought below 50%, The touch of Light and Darkness Auras start. (6 people emoted for Light, and 3 for Darkness). The 3 Darkness emoted people, have an Aura spawn around them 10s after the emote, which stays up around them until 1 of 2 things happen:
    1. The predetermined mechanic time has elapsed and the Aura fades on its own (Don't remember the true time, cause server lag on Cazic makes it so it lasts anywhere from 30s to 1min).
    2. 2 of the 3 people overlap their auras, they disappear and Overwhelming Darkness is cast. (At which point, you get the same Failure message as from the servants of darkness' auras, BUT it does not fail the achievement.

    Side note: If someone with 'Touch of Light' on, enters a Darkness aura, it does not make the aura disappear, instead will spawn 'a shadow' (Aura not fading is working as intended). Originally this was supposed to spawn as a person's pet and help them out, unless they died, at which point it would be 'Freed' and be an enemy. This has been a broken mechanic ever since Beta and reported many times on the beta boards, but never fixed. But for those that didn't know, this is why you see (Freed) under the mob's name whenever someone spawns a shadow add. (I Doubt this will ever be fixed/changed to it's orginal intent/design)

    The Following are detailed-ish logs from a recent CTG win with an Open Raid Team on Cazic:

    07/07/22 09:09:38 PMThe gate grows dark for a moment and figures appear in its shadow. (phase 3 starts)
    07/07/22 09:10:15 PMA servant of darkness has been slain by Kryntox! (Darkness Servant #1 Death)
    07/07/22 09:10:30 PMYou have slain a servant of darkness! (Darkness Servant #2 Death)
    07/07/22 09:10:44 PMA servant of darkness has been slain by Ianya! (Darkness Servant #3 Death)

    --The 1 remaining servant ported to it's location and spawned it's Aura 5s after the 3rd servant is dead --

    07/07/22 09:10:49 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created. (Lore emote indicating 2 Auras overlapped even though only 1 exists)
    07/07/22 09:10:49 PMYou have failed the Underwhelming Shadows Achievement: Dark Servants have combined their power causing a brief and deadly concentration of shadows. (Logistical achievement failure message for the non-roleplayer)
    07/07/22 09:11:01 PMA servant of darkness has been slain by Wyen! (Darkness Servant #4 Death)

    --At this point, the raid clears the 4 servants of light, and take Kratakel, Lord Misery to 50% and beyond --

    07/07/22 09:19:03 PMA dark aura starts to form around Faldyarr, Vulcanex, and Mten. Light begins to shine from Sarakonnar, Qestrel, Costel, Padraigg, Cinilya, and Marsmage. (The 1st Dark/Light emote, no overlaps from the 3 emoted people, hooray, they stayed away from each other!)

    07/07/22 09:20:43 PMA dark aura starts to form around Vulcanex, Arkaron, and Omnip. Light begins to shine from Sumii, Trommel, Raiena, Ianya, Huevos, and Nnyxx. (The 2nd Dark/Light emote, but this time 2 Dark auras overlap!)
    07/07/22 09:21:00 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created. (Lore message that 2 auras overlapped, with SAME message as before when a single aura spawned around 'a servant of darkness')

    --The rest of these are more times where 2 darkness aura players overlapped their dark auras--

    07/07/22 09:22:58 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created.
    07/07/22 09:22:58 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created.
    07/07/22 09:24:28 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created.
    07/07/22 09:26:40 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created.
    07/07/22 09:29:39 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created.
    07/07/22 09:30:04 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created.
    07/07/22 09:30:04 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created.
    07/07/22 09:30:04 PMAs two dark shadows merge, overwhelming darkness is created.
    At this point the event was beaten. If you want to see video evidence of all these events happening, you can see it at www.twitch.tv/rexaraven from a mage's perspective.

    Wrapping up:
    Everyone who has gotten this achievement successfully has had to burn the 4 Servants of darkness down after they activate in under 1 minute +\- the server tick when they port out to their locations and spawn 1 aura. Most every week Silent Redemption kills the 4 'a servant of darkness' mobs before they have a chance to port out to their locations. Every time we've done this, we get the achievement, even if we have a 'light/dark emote fire and 2 of the 3 dark emoted people overlap their auras. The 'lore message' goes off, but it doesn't fail the achievement. It's hard to find a recent example of this, as our current strategy prevents showing an example in our log files.

    TL/DR - Currently the same aura and 'overlap message' is being triggered by both the Aura that the 'a servant of darkness' is summoning, as well as the Auras that form around the players for the Light/Dark Emote. While this isn't a problem by itself. The problem is the 'Lore Message' for a failure is being used for both auras, yet only 1 actually is affecting the 'check' for a failure. Concurrently, even if the achievement is intended to be linked to both auras, they are only tied to the aura that the 'servants' spawn, as well as failing the achievement automatically once that aura is spawned, NOT when 2 auras overlap. This needs to be changed to check when the auras actually overlap, not just when they spawn.
    Stephen51, Tropi, josh and 17 others like this.
  2. Jumvapace The Most hated

    Oh I also posted this on the Beta Forums, was 'noted' but never fixed...

    07/07/22 08:27:00 PMKratakel, Lord Misery begins casting Monster!.
    07/07/22 08:27:00 PMKratakel, Lord Misery begins casting Bugs!.
    07/07/22 08:27:00 PMKratakel, Lord Misery begins casting Falling!.
    07/07/22 08:27:00 PMKratakel, Lord Misery begins casting Chased!.
    07/07/22 08:27:00 PMKratakel, Lord Misery begins casting Drowning!.
    Punctuation.. has a period after the exclamation point... I remember Absor having a comment about it, but I won't share that here, maybe that can get fixed now too? teeheehee
    Stephen51 and Lophophora like this.
  3. Soulbanshee Augur

    The name of the spells has an exclamation mark in it. So he is casing Monster! and it is a sentence so there is a period put at the end.

    Kratakel, Lord Misery begins casting [spell].
    Kratakel, Lord Misery begins casting [Monster!].
  4. Soulbanshee Augur

    Even though you get an event message about overwhelming darkness when players overlap, I am pretty sure that did not cause us to fail the achievement one night (we got the message after all servants were killed). It seems like only the servants of darkness will fail the achievement.
  5. Jumvapace The Most hated


    Totally aware of this heh, I pointed it out in Beta.. was just trying to consolidate with the main topic of this post and get another 'plug' at an attempt to fix it.
  6. Fenthen aka Rath

    This is literally the hardest raid achievement in the past several years due to how broken it is, between general server lag (which is "on the road map" but will likely absolutely never be fixed, stop programming raids to be terrible on Live servers) and as above-mentioned the teleportation of the darkness mobs instantly failing the achievement if they move a single pixel off their warping spot.
  7. josh Augur

    I think what is happening is an aura is spawning at the location the mob ports to and the mob is also spawning its own aura. you'll notice in the final part of the event auras continue spawning at the locations the dark servants would teleport to.
  8. Zunnoab Augur

    If I recall it works, it's just the pets automatically break at 50%.

    Effectively, all time spent coding those pets was pointless. They are so dangerous when free they are raid wipers and not worth it.

    If you kill all adds before 50%, those emotes start earlier theoretically giving extra dps for the HP sponge time to 50% if you get the pets on purpose. But the pets break and after are so dangerous it's pointless to do that.

    I get the impression it was meant to be a fun mechanic to help speed getting to 50, but by making them automatically break after 50, and so dangerous, it's effectively nothing more than a raid ending emote if failed, rendering the entire pet mechanic utterly pointless.

    As to the rest, yeah the achievement is basically burn the servants of darkness before they port or fail. I didn't know on beta the mechanic worked properly.
  9. Syylke_EMarr Augur

    Just commenting that this achievement/mechanic is still bugged.
    Stephen51 likes this.
  10. josh Augur

    still broken