Bug: Spell & Combat Art damage not displayed properly (Wraps at 65536)

The orange numbers that float overy your head all seem to wrap at 64K. (As if someone stored them in a __uint16).
It affects all classes, although it disproportionatly affects wizards and assassins (or any other single big hit classes).
If you hit for over 65535, the counter wraps and only the remainder floats above your head. I couldn't get a solo hit to land for over 128K while I was watching, but I've seen it. Finaly get that hit off for 130K, and instead of seeing glorious orange numbers, you get a floating -2769 instead.
For those not yet following me:
A hit for 26,901 orangy floats as 26,901
A hit for 46,314 orangy floats as 46,314
A hit for 49,091 orangy floats as 49,091
A hit for 49,925 orangy floats as 49,925
A hit for 53,615 orangy floats as 53,615
A hit for 68,308 orangy floats as 2,772 (off by 65,536)
A hit for 70,654 orangy floats as 5,118 (off by 65,536)
A hit for 75,526 orangy floats as 9,990 (off by 65,536)
A hit for 75,869 orangy floats as 10,333 (off by 65,536)
A hit for 83,190 orangy floats as 17,654 (off by 65,536)
A hit for 86,873 orangy floats as 21,337 (off by 65,536)
A hit for 92,533 orangy floats as 26,977 (off by 65,536)
A hit for 102,811 orangy floats as 37,275 (off by 65,536)

-----------------------------------------
This affects other floaty numbers, but it's harder to reproduce. Jumping off a cliff and taking an inordinate amount of falling damage will do it.
It's purely visual, but it makes the orange numbers completely useless for any real damage output. A fix would be appreciated.
-Ynnek

yah wizards found this out at level 70 - 80 =p

Been in game for years...and yeah just keeps cutting off at increments of the number you gave. I've actually gotten my Ice Comets to appear to hit for "2" Ive gotten so close to a cut off...kinda humerous.

hmm, as a ranger I don't think I have ever seen this issue, but will have to watch out for it

I noticed this on Sniper Shot during T8 - it can be pretty horrifying to charge up that long cast time and see the "huge" number that pops up be in the hundreds.

You guys are correct. Obviously for bandwidth issues, we limit data sizes in packets that are sent between client and server. This is strictly a display bug because the server handles the larger number, but we send it as a smaller value to lessen bandwidth.
Fixing it would be trivial but would also increase the size of all damage packets that go between client and server by a few bytes.

Rothgar wrote:

Increasing the size of the damage packets would probably only add more lag, something that I don't think anyone wants. In fact, if you fix lag, I don't care about overhead combat feedback at all!

Not that I care if this is fixed, because it is pretty trivial like you say, but doesn't the client already receive the correct number? Because it does show up in our logs correctly unless the overhead displayed amount is some seperate packet, in which case, why doesn't the client just handle it straight from the same packet that shows the numbers in our logs?

The logs among other things could use an overhaul as well, too much extraneous information is shot out at near light speeds during combat as it is. I know that there is an option to hide certain things but all the same I believe everything is sent to the log anyways even if you chose to hide it.
For example, by pressing a single button to cast a spell, it generally spews out around 4 lines of text at various times for just one single spell or combat art. There might even be yet another line that is nothing but flavor text added in as well.
Generally there would be one line saying you begin to cast it, another line saying you cast it, another line saying it hit, and another line displaying the damage. Now multiply all the extraneous information by each person around you doing something different at various speeds, thats alot of server generated text being shot out in quick succession especially in raids.
Ideally it would be condensed into a single line of text I think, one line for each ability or some such.
I don't know for sure if that would help alleviate lag during combat but it could help. I know that certain kinds of effects and scripts in particular though cause more lag than normal, any fight for example with permanent detrimentals that check when a player casts or begins to cast things for example is near guaranteed to be more laggy than normal from the way it appears to be coded.

othgar wrote:

Please do. An additional 2 bytes per damage packet isn't going to put anyone into the ground, and it's peanuts compared to (as others have mentioned) the combat chat text that flys by during any given fight (no matter how localized/tokenized those messages are).
It was excessivly rare in T7. Happened to those that were paying attention in T8. But given the signifigant increase in damage output in T9, it's reached the point where sometimes it's more often incorrect than it is correct. 64K+ big hits have become the minimum for DPS classes at times. And it's only going to happen more and more often as time goes on, might as well fix it now.
Thanks,
-Ynnek

Kreton wrote:

I'm guessing they're sent separately so that the over-head numbers can be formatted properly without the game having to parse log text.

As long as the numbers show up fine in the logs, I have no issues with the overhead numbers wrapping around.

Ynnik@Kithicor wrote:

If 64k+ big hits are a minimum for a dps class, maybe dps is out of control and needs to be scaled back, lol. Probably a much preferable option then then more lag as that is pretty much the one thing that makes hard fights not doable and game play in general unpleasant.
Mobs HP's can be scaled down as necessary.

Kreton wrote:

You're right, I made the assumption that the data was wrong in the packet. After looking, the data is sent correctly but is truncated elsewhere in the client. I've already made the fix internally so you should see this on live servers in a couple of weeks.

Rothgar wrote:

This is why Rothgar is the ONLY God of EQ2!

Rothgar wrote:

You sir, do, indeed, rock...
Thanks!
-Ynnek

Surdatiny wrote:

Why?
Because he immediately gave an incorrect answer?
Because he told us that, while trivial to fix, it wasn't worth fixing or would make the game, as a whole, worse?
Because it took a player to point out the fallacy?
Actually, Kreton is the God of EQ2 at this moment. If we're hailing anyone, it should be him.
However, I'll assume on this occasion that Rothgar was standing too close to the trees to see the forest.

Aemm@Splitpaw wrote:

Kreton might have pointed it out but, Kreton didn't fix it.

Aemm@Splitpaw wrote:

No, because Rothgar first actually took the time to check to see if his assertation was correct or if the player was and then admitted his mistake and fixed it. Can't ask for much more, and no Dev is going to remember every tiny aspect about the game's code off the top of their head.