[IWD] Invisible Beholder 1-shotting you

wixxgs1cht

Hi folks,

I've been playing the IWD expansion quite extensively now and often encountered an issue that really needs to be addressed.

I'm talking about invisible mobs, a bug most likely caused by too many models on the screen. While in your average epic HE (Remorhaz, Raid, you name it) this might be just a bit irritating it becomes a real big issue with the Beholder encounter in DV.
Why? The Beholder has several AoE attacks that will one-shot you even through unstoppable. While this in general is a challenge that I really embrace kindly refer to what I wrote in the lines above. Invisible mobs. Now in my last three Beholder fights it wasn't only some adds that turned invisible but the beholder and it's AoE indicators as well. So I found myself 1-shotted frequently without the slightest chance to avoid it. In my books, that's not a "challenging and l2p" aspect but a bug that needs to be looked at.

Some other guildies were experiencing the same thing so I think it might not be just on my end. Anyone experiencing the same thing? Any workarounds or the likes?

Edit: While I'm at it - the lag/rubberbanding feels like the good ol' first CTAs.

Cheers

helloz2

Having the same issues as well, where mobs are invisible unless the character gets close to them, and also sudden huge burst damage when the boss reappears after burrowing.

iambecks1

There doesn't seem to be any work around for the mobs going invisible , don't the red circles even appear on the ground or are they invisible too? I only got onto Dwarf valley today but played in there a lot during testing but due to small number of players never saw this issue till it went live , if red aoe splats are invisible too black ice beholder is going to be a ballache xD

iuliandrei

I had a similar experience aswell, in combat log it appeared "unknown entity one-shots you"

dragoness10

In old NWN Classic invisible mobs were fixed by relogging. It's rather a boring solution that can cause some panic amoungst party members especially in the middle of a fight, but it worked then.

Also, check graphics settings. I know here there's a render graphics button and such on the Options you can try adjusting. Might just be you don't see the beholder because it's too far away for current settings?

If I'm totally unhelpful with this maybe it provided at least some possibilities to eliminate so you can get down to the real issue behind it?

Good luck.

helloz2

iambecks1 wrote: »

There doesn't seem to be any work around for the mobs going invisible , don't the red circles even appear on the ground or are they invisible too? I only got onto Dwarf valley today but played in there a lot during testing but due to small number of players never saw this issue till it went live , if red aoe splats are invisible too black ice beholder is going to be a ballache xD

The Beholder's could be invisible at times (huge Black Ice damage AoE i think), especially when it pops up after hiding at a certain point of HP.

wixxgs1cht

iambecks1 wrote: »

don't the red circles even appear on the ground or are they invisible too

They indeed are invisible as well.

dragoness10 wrote:

Might just be you don't see the beholder because it's too far away for current settings?

I suspect it's just me that can't see the beholder in that very moment. However I'm sure that it'll become invisible to other players as well, maybe not in the exact same moment tho.

Just one minute ago:

"[17:50] an unknown entity deals 38702 (68656) Psychic Damage to you with Ice Armor." Neither AoE nor Beholder visible for the entire fight for me.

loboguild

I wonder what causes this because we never had any problems on preview.

wixxgs1cht

My guess would be that the servers are massively overwhelmed.

cayapp

It did happen on preview. The encounter for below was Prospector Attack in IWP.

The devs know about this. During the play with the devs, the dev there in IWP commented on it in twitch tv, during the one and only encounter this happened in. He commented oh no, "something" (referring to the warping/fading/invis or whatever you want to call it) is starting, we have too many players around the encounter. Nothing else was ever said. It was the only time we pretty much had the instance almost full on preview.

wixxgs1cht

Great. So they know about it but don't plan to do anything about it? That's cool, cause I mean, why bring more than 5 guys to one of those HEs? L2P! Blame the players.

wixxgs1cht

Yeah, don't get me started on the lag part. Even if you see the beholder every once in a while and "mighty leap" out of the red you'll end up in the red again as in KIA. Oh, and why is CN the biggest lag fest around lately?
Something really has to be done about all this. I'm getting to a point where I'd label NW as currently not playable.

iambecks1

magenubbie wrote: »

Same bug is happening in GG. You can't see half the players until they are on you. I won't comment on the lag making it harder.

Is it since module 3 this has started? I used to do GG at least once or twice a day and never suffered this but haven't done GG since after module 3.

silverquick

loboguild wrote: »

I wonder what causes this because we never had any problems on preview.

Actually I think I know what it is,

Remember just recently in the patch they advised they did some things to improve graphics with a lot of people on the screen at once?

I suspect whats happening is the game is only displaying a certain number of models on screen at once. So when you get like 20 people in one of these encounters now, it only makes the closest models to the character appear. SO you literally have to be on top of the mobs before you can see them IF there's a ton of people doing it.

If you think about it, what you said to me in another thread was true.

When we were doing these things over on Preview there was maybe 5 of us Max doing these 6-10 man encounters. So we never could have seen what happened with that many on these.

silverquick

If you think about it the most we ever had when doing the Black Ice Beholder was 8.

I don't think there were enough of us on to even put 20+ people on one of these encounters previously.

justsyndra

It's some kind of load issue, the same 'invisible unless really close' thing was happening during the very first Call To Arms last year - then they optimized something and it hasn't been an issue until now.

grogthemagnif

One other option is that graphics were reset to default and one of the defaults was that objects in the distance were fuzzy, less visible. I have reset my reset to clear at all distances.

onecoolscatcat

I'll give this a try next time I log on.

gromm1t

silverquick wrote: »

Actually I think I know what it is,

Remember just recently in the patch they advised they did some things to improve graphics with a lot of people on the screen at once?

I suspect whats happening is the game is only displaying a certain number of models on screen at once. So when you get like 20 people in one of these encounters now, it only makes the closest models to the character appear. SO you literally have to be on top of the mobs before you can see them IF there's a ton of people doing it.

If you think about it, what you said to me in another thread was true.

When we were doing these things over on Preview there was maybe 5 of us Max doing these 6-10 man encounters. So we never could have seen what happened with that many on these.

I agree with this and second on Preview there was specific "patch" and after that patch Beholder/Epic/Major encounter bosses/mobs started "blinking/fading".

Before that patch it was "easy" kite around Beholder and keep Aoe away from team, but now on Live its impossible, also HE´s are now really too easy, but its fun to look look Beholder fall on few minutes when on Preview it took allmost full time and sometimes even failed, .

I hope to see that population per instance will lower so HE´s need more teamwork and game became more fun again.

mmm1001

silverquick wrote: »

Actually I think I know what it is,

Remember just recently in the patch they advised they did some things to improve graphics with a lot of people on the screen at once?

I suspect whats happening is the game is only displaying a certain number of models on screen at once. So when you get like 20 people in one of these encounters now, it only makes the closest models to the character appear. SO you literally have to be on top of the mobs before you can see them IF there's a ton of people doing it.

I don't think so. If you ever played castle never, there areas with 100+ mobs around and no lag at all. I think all this is connected with rendering snow terrain - remember they had same issues with winter event and never ever fixed them, just event ended.
Also Areas of IWD without snow are much more responsive and you can actually play there.

iambecks1

silverquick wrote: »

Actually I think I know what it is,

Remember just recently in the patch they advised they did some things to improve graphics with a lot of people on the screen at once?

I suspect whats happening is the game is only displaying a certain number of models on screen at once. So when you get like 20 people in one of these encounters now, it only makes the closest models to the character appear. SO you literally have to be on top of the mobs before you can see them IF there's a ton of people doing it.

If you think about it, what you said to me in another thread was true.

When we were doing these things over on Preview there was maybe 5 of us Max doing these 6-10 man encounters. So we never could have seen what happened with that many on these.

If this is true then I have no problem with them making other players invisible ( although that is a major annoyance for DC's I imagine when they are trying to heal ) but enemy mobs , especially ones that can 1 hit just about any player in the game should most certainly not become invisible.

nathyiel

I think they have done it to reduce CPU's work. But yes, it's really annoying as it require to be in the red zone to be able to see the boss.

How can it be improved ?
+ make some character always visible :
> Elite and Boss enemy
> Player from our group

+ make a priority in what to not display (from lesser important to most important to be seen) :
> player from same faction, other guild and not PvP flagged
> player from other faction, other guild and not PvP flagged
> player from same faction, other guild and PvP flagged
> player from other faction, other guild and PvP flagged
> player from same guild
> enemy of lower type (minion)

Like this, personage that are important to be seen are always visible and enemy are only hidden in the worst case.

wixxgs1cht

mmm1001 wrote: »

If you ever played castle never, there areas with 100+ mobs around and no lag at all.

Did you run CN since M3 launch? Especially today/yesterday?

Edit: To avoid misunderstanding: My reply is only referring to lag, not invisibility of mobs.

helloz2

Tried a CN today, initially it was really lag when mass mobbing, but for some reason re-logging solves the problem for me.

silverquick

gromm1t wrote: »

I agree with this and second on Preview there was specific "patch" and after that patch Beholder/Epic/Major encounter bosses/mobs started "blinking/fading".

Before that patch it was "easy" kite around Beholder and keep Aoe away from team, but now on Live its impossible, also HE´s are now really too easy, but its fun to look look Beholder fall on few minutes when on Preview it took allmost full time and sometimes even failed, .

I hope to see that population per instance will lower so HE´s need more teamwork and game became more fun again.

Honestly I do too,

I think all they really need to do for that is to increase the spawn rate of the Major and Epic HEs and that will take care of it.

What you have right now is people running from instance to instance JUST to run HEs, so you end up with people piling on all these when theyr'e only designed for half the numbers of people they are.

Increased spawn rate in ALL the instances would keep this from happening as there's no way players would be able to saturate one specific instance when all of the Instances have them spawning.

wixxgs1cht

Or have them spawn on all instances at the same time. Players should then evenly distribute or at least I could imagine so.

(Also thanks for moving this thread to the appropriate section, dear Mods.)

purp4

Same problem here, I have all my graphics settings set to max rendering and can't see "Big" battles unless I stand on top of the mob (not a good idea for a squishey). The tanks (for example) are there fighting it, so its not invisible to everyone just people more than 1 step away from it.

Many times we have had to kill XX/XX and are all running around in circles looking for the last few to kill as they are invisible to us. In this example there is not too many of us there as its a lower tier encounter. So it's not necessarily the fact that there is too many people around as this was only a small encounter with a few of us there, unlike the bigger encounters where everyone in zone shows up for.

gabrieldourden

Same problem for me. Especially the remorhaz battle is a pain as the boss disappears, but it happens also in Dwarven valley when you have to protect the spirits.

jintortle

This Phasing is ridiculous.

1 Step to the right I see peeps and mobs. Step back to the left and they disappear. Step back to the right they appear again. Step left again and they disappear. Rinse and repeat!!! As much fun as general adventuring!!!

It is game breaking when "prospector is injured" and you can not find him.