Cosmics stop registering damage

jadejade3 · February 2018

Can't seem to find this posted before, but this bug (or engine limitation?) isn't that new or specific to recent patches. The cosmics stop registering over half, if not more, of the damage being done to it. It has been happening since the past 3-4 months, at the minimum.

Cosmics stop taking damage most often when map is full and there are many players. Possibly due to too many debuffs and/or dots. It happens fairly regularly at Kiga and players lose their form stacks while they are engaging the boss.
It has occured a few times at Teleiosaurus getting to the point where dps checks fail not becuase there isn't enough dps, but because it stops taking damage at the rate it 'should' be taking (for real

). Till players are forced to leave the fight - so it may progress.
Don't think I've seen it explicitly happen at Qwyjibo or Eidolon.

While not exactly game breaking, it doesn't make for the best of experiences and would be great to see it fixed or mitigated. The solution ofcourse is in your hands, but maybe through a stricter cap or better stacking of dot's (including devices) (which appear to be the likely cause). For more variety, more mass one-shot mechanics like Mega-Destroid's beams to spice the fights up so less players are alive for a long time leading to less dot's etc. Or in the worst case reducing the zone cap or making the fights open instanced to improve engine resources. Thank you.

spookyspectre · February 2018

I've noticed an uptick in this after the last patch or two, mostly at Kiga. My experience before that seemed better and more consistent.

deadman20 · February 2018

Honestly, I think the best way to mitigate this issue is to start consolidating DoT/Debuff effects a bit. Most of them stack up to 5 and if I remember right, incoming damage is also counted toward the limit. So, essentially 5 stacks of Bleed/Poison/etc. takes up 10 effects at any given time. All of these effects are also capping out at 3 times that amount when at minimum 3 other players are using the same effect. Theoretically, it's a whopping 30 effects toward the limit for 3 players stacking one type of DoT and that's not including whatever other debuffs/attacks they're adding in with the DoTs. Of course, just those three people alone won't actually hit the limit... but when you gather like 40 people and start nearing the zone cap that effect limit is going to become incredibly apparent when they all start stacking other effects from their different sets and start doing damage of their own accord.

The effect limit is there to stop a server meltdown. Like I said though, I think the best thing to do is to lower the amount of effects being used. So instead of capping something like Bleed out at 5 per person for up to 3 people (15 stacks max, theoretical 30 effects), reduce the amount to say... 3 Bleeds per person for 3 people (9 stacks max, theoretical 18 effects) and adjust the damage slightly to compensate for the loss in stacks.

kaiserin · February 2018

Bleed and Plasma Burn will eventually get the treatment poison got, (it takes a while to convert it over).
We can't really cap those dots at a low number due to power interactions.

Specs like Find the Mark and Expose Weakness are far worse offenders, but unfortunately do not have a nice solution.

lordnightmare · February 2018

Bleed is such a tricky one since you have a few powers that rupture or convert it into other debuffs. For Reaper's Caress, one idea would be to remove the rupture portion and instead make it consume stacks of Focus for extra damage. Same technical playstyle since Swordsman Form gains focus by causing and refreshing bleeds.

pantagruel01 · February 2018

kaizerin said:

Specs like Find the Mark and Expose Weakness are far worse offenders, but unfortunately do not have a nice solution.

Well, there's a fairly easy fix for both of those: make individual stacks more potent, but reduce stack cap, plus proc chance and/or duration, so net effect is about the same.

jadejade3 · February 2018

Obviously, I don't have much programming knowledge and how the game works on the inside, but if the ideas are any help, then it might be worth it.
If stack caps on cosmics are an issue, if possible, transfer the buff effects/pointers/placeholders on the players when attacking a cosmic class npc.
So for example, if a player tries to stack bleeds, the boss registers only one 'placeholder' which is linked to the buff effects/stacks/timers on the player. This could be set as a master placeholder responsible for all the effects of an individual player. When a player procs a bleed, the player gets the x number stacks on himself (similar to Ego Infusion, Ego Leech, Locus, Setup etc, which is a buff on the player instead of being reliant on a placeholder on the npc attacked), while the damage/debuff inflicted is based on the stacks and timer called by the placeholder, as one tick. This can be especially useful to see own buffs/stacks on the character's buff bar, instead of all players' jumbled on the cosmic and losing track). This could similarly be applied to Find the Mark and Expose Weakness, so instead of stacks on the boss, it is converted to a stacking buff on the player. This will help maintain the number of stacks and their interaction with powers - which will help avoid significant rebuilds - while at the same time potentially reducing the impact on the cosmic.

kaiserin · February 2018

Bleed, Poison, Expose Weakness, etc effects have a chance to apply per target, they are not universal effects. Having a pointer on the player would not work for target specific effects like that, there needs to be a pointer on the target.

While there may come a day those specs will see a change, I don't think it's going to go the route of clumping them up into a single apply effect with a low chance to proc.

jadejade3 · February 2018

Incase this was to be implemented throughout, the stacks on the player could be branched individually with respect to various targets. Eg. if I apply my stacks/debuffs etc on a single target, the target has its own placeholder running. When i switch my target, the placeholder on the current target is separate, and the stacks/debuffs on the player are updated by the placeholder on the target. If i don't have anything running on that target, all the target reliant buffs are removed from the players' visible buff bar, but those for the now untargeted entity are still running in the background(on the player), invisible to the player. The placeholder on the current target hasn't registered a new stack/debuff, and thus they aren't carried over on the player's visible buff bar. This way the player will also know that he doesn't have those running for that target and avoids them becoming universal effects.

Eg. If I apply 2 bleed stacks on current target entity A with placeholder identity A, the 2 bleed stacks have a unique identity which only applies for target A, but are registered and are running off the player. The placeholder calls all the buffs/stacks with identity A from the player, and updates/transfers the effects accordingly. When I take a new target entity B, the placeholder calls all the buffs/stacks with identity B, but the player doesn't have any such running on his character with identity B, so it doesn't transfer universally. So the player is the nexus, while the various targets are just calling off data from the player, instead of otherwise as it is.

kaiserin · February 2018

There would still need to be stacking pointers on the target for any of that to work.

Edit: Your above post is a bit confusing so I'll just reiterate some stuff here: Bleed (and co.) is a stacking debuff that has interactions with other powers based on stacks and if you own the effect. When I apply a bleed stack, I apply that stack on a individual enemy and any interactions are based on the bleed stacks on that specific enemy.

In order for this to work, there needs to be a pointer on that specific enemy. None of those entity specific interactions can be achieved without a pointer on that enemy. If it's a stacking effect, the pointer needs to stack. Any sort of pointer stacking on the player will not work for that sort of situation.

If that stacks were handled on the player level, the game would not be able to distinguish which enemies have x stacks of bleeds on them and which do not for power interactions. There would also be no (not insanely expensive) way for enemies to be taking bleed damage based on number of stacks without a specific pointer on them dictating how many stacks of bleed they have.

jadejade3 · February 2018

kaizerin said:

If that stacks were handled on the player level, the game would not be able to distinguish which enemies have x stacks of bleeds on them and which do not for power interactions. There would also be no (not insanely expensive) way for enemies to be taking bleed damage based on number of stacks without a specific pointer on them dictating how many stacks of bleed they have.

Alright, thank you very much for your replies! Ofcourse stacking pointers would be required, what i was trying to look for was if the pointers can be trasferred partially from the entity to the player, in order to reduce the number of stacking pointers on the entity to prevent overload, and spread them around - not eliminate them. But I see.

sterga · February 2018

Does the DUC put a debuff on the enemy? Could player debuffs be handled similarly? Not bleeds and crap. Would it matter much for performance? And no, I don't care if there is no longer party interaction with debuffs. Make a generic party debuff and leave the damage specific debuff on the player.

Also: Kind of pointless to have stuff like Fear, Disorient, and Jinx all basically do the same thing but be three different debuffs.

kaiserin · February 2018

Player specific debuffs are still debuffs on the target. DUC isn't that bad, as its effect is instant and doesn't linger (which actually causes other bugs, like not applying to damage over time or attacks with multiple hits).

There are actually far fewer effects than there was in the past, as many unnamed effects have been consolidated into a named effects and many have been given caps when previously there were none.

Cosmics stop registering damage

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