Spawns on Blight, and how they affect gameplay

[Illyist]

Hi Blight!

I had a conversation today that brought up the subject of spawns. So I wanted to see how everyone felt aboutthem, and how they affect your gameplay.

What do you see? What do you like? What do you dislike?

[Alexandra Reynard]

Well, spawns seem to run hot or cold. I can understand how the presence of the character would act as a switch to activate it/them. This would defintiely save on server use probably. But a big complaint of mine is the duration of the spawn.

Example: my main character, Domtar, uses the arbotus near feladan to level some of his lower level classes. It takes several passes up and down the road near the wall to get one or more arbotus to spawn. Then they always seem to spawn behind me (90% of the time at least). If he stops anywhere in the middle of the area to fight one or stands still there for any length of time, suddenly there's a dozen all around him. Now, that in itself is very good. but usually they all descend upon him while in combat and he has to tactically retreat (or heaven forbid if Nature or RL calls). Doing so almost instantly turns the spawn off. If he is gone longer than, say, one minute from the prime spawn area, the arbotus are gone, poof. Then he has to start all over again.

Please make the spawn have a longer duration, like 5 or 10 minutes.

There are other spots where the spawns are excellent once I get them started, but dem's my secret fishin' holes and will remain as such. These also have the poof-they're -gone spawns. But once they start, the dam has broken.

Other spots, the only critter there are the Named mobs of that type. Until the loot and xp's from the Named mobs is worth the added risk, why bother with those? At least let them have trophies/tech components. Dropping forms used to be really good with named mobs. Anyone remember Fang? What happened with those loot tables? Giving Named bosses higher amounts of resources than grunt mobs just don't cut it. Alot of times I get better loot from grunts.

Maybe it's just me or my timing, I've also heard on chat about other players getting mobbed in areas where I've found nothing.

Thanks at least for the 20 second post-spawn activation time.

[Illyist]

Thanks Domtar!

Anyone else have any opinions or observations?

[evilkarl]

While not on blight... I have a guild member a young hatchling whom spent nearly a week of her play time trying to kill 20 frost pygmies...waiting for them to spawn slowly 1 or 2 every 10-15 mins...

Spawn spots like this are bad

Other areas the wait is no where near as bad but it still present. Having to stay in one area at the mithril for 5 golems to pop on your location then non respawn is annoying.

On the flip side when a spawn is actually popping it won't stop and this makes for a great deal of fun.

The inital wait to have things suddenly appear out of thin air can be annoying especially as you have be standing still for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to see anything.

[Frons Von Frik]

ive noticed that there is either mass amounts of spawning or very few mobs if any in any given area... what I noticed is that the more I kill the more they pop...

[Hordolin Awanagin]

I had a conversation today that brought up the subject of spawns. So I wanted to see how everyone felt aboutthem, and how they affect your gameplay.

What do you see? What do you like? What do you dislike?

Similar observations on spawns. Mithril golems for example, I'll enter an area, have enough time to deplete one node then one or two golems will spawn, wait their non aggressive period, then start along their paths. After depleting a couple more nodes, more golems will spawn (this number really varies depending on the number of people in the area and how recently I'd been in the area), wait their time, and start wandering. if I leave the area for a short period of time, like run to South Gate and back, the second group of golems have disappeared but the first couple are still there. The second group again shows back up after a node or two.

I noticed yesterday (before we were at the flies) that the only time the golems walked in place was at waypoints at the edge of their defined area or when they made a direction change of more than 40 degrees or so (the forward movement stopped but the animation still played). smaller angles of direction change were fluid and they didn't stop at a waypoint.

How do spawns affect my gameplay? What do I like? What do I dislike? That's a tough one and everyone will have differing opinions. Here's mine:

The spawns make me modifymy play style to be as efficient as possible while doing whatever. Long distance cross country travel is more of a hit autorun and wait and spawns don't really play a part in that as long as I don't stop. Sure, I might get whacked every once in a while but most stuff can't one shot me and I'm out of aggressive range before it can kill me. Exploring is a little dangerous but not much if you go kinda slow and learn the defined area for a particular monster location.

Combat: My biggest issue is finding large enough populations in an area that I'm able to successfully hunt without finding so many that I'm overwhelmed *shrug* it makes the solo experience frustrating at times but makes for some very interesting group play at others :D

--Hordo

[Dren Fire]

Spawn rate is getting better, but the rate is still a little slwo, but in some places like the rift and purple necroflies the rate is excellent. Places for elm treants the spawn is slow, sometimes none at all. [N][Y]. I also noticed in areas where creatures realate to craftin ( mostly creatures that deal with choppin trees) (i.e. cedar treant to cedar tree) that the creatures spawn slowly . thats all i observed

(p.s. Illyist check your private messages ;)

[Astor]

Spawns are BORKED...... imho...

I personally hate running laps.. or standing in an area for minutes.. waiting for them to appear.. if they appear at all..... then having the spawn of 6 - 8 of them start on top of you....

Whatever it is that triggers them appears to be very erratic......

Sometimes you can have 3 people standing around and get Nothing to spawn for over 10 minutes.... as in hunting Fire and Flame beetles west of Dralk... other times you suddenly get tons of mobs....

Grodec and I were hunting Flame Ogres and Pygmies for tech items... had a slow but reasonable spawn in groups of 2 - 3 ... occasionally 6 in an area... we went away... came back out there later with Katrone I think it was... and only got 2 to spawn in over 15 minutes...

Said to heck with it and went to the Flies..

I think there should always be at least a minimal number of a creature present in a spawn area......IF there is a Player within say 300 meters of that area... wether they are running or standing still....

I don't know how feasible that is with your current hardware changes and load issues... but That's what I'd like to see.... so even if I have to search a whole area.. like the Mithril, or a forrest, or a swamp.. i should always be able to find a mob or two... unless someone is just ahead of me beating me to them all... then I should catch up while they are fighting one eventually and realize why i am not finding some...

Also if there are 10 Players in an area.. it needs to spawn more mobs to keep up...

You asked... that's my opinion.

It's funny... I took a newbie character.. and for giggles the other day ran from Aughendell, to Harro, attuned,, then ran up to the WA purple flies and didn't encounter a single Mob on the trip... level 1 mage. rated 6 from scout classes... wearing training non teched boots... and no buffs...

My daughter greatly appreciates the cool spell effects she can get now (She's 4 years old) that I made it up to level 15 before recalling by being grouped with my main character

But the fact that I made that whole journey just running in newbie gear should grant me the luckiest elf ever for her character.. or just shows why some mobs should always be pre-character spawned at least in their core area...

[:D]

[Illyist]

Great feedback, I'd like to thank you all.

We've been continually working on this (i.e. Thursday evening I did a monster respawn for a change that should help with sluggish spawns) so please feel free to keep this thread up to date - even if it's to say "I didn't notice a change, here's an example of behavior observed on <date>."

There is a minimum spawn set by the designers on all areas, and there are tech/code changes that apply to this subject. There are many factors like region size, timing of entering and leaving the region, etc. so the more examples and details the better.

Thanks :)

PS there are also a lot of conditions that need to be considered, some of which might not be as apparent as others, like total number in the world at any time.. too many and we'll have all sorts of problems bigger than waiting in an area to get spawns started. That being said we're continuing to work on getting the best play experience that we can for you.

[Hordolin Awanagin]

Noticed the Mithril golems are now showing up quite rapidly after entering an area. Makes mining there quite dangerous now. There still seems to be a staggering of the monsters showing up when you enter an area the first time. A wait for the initial spawn, then another wait, but it seems that once they're spawned and you leave and come back, they show up pretty darn quick. I ran out to the redbacked spiders west of Aughundellagain and they seem to be showing up on about the same schedule. The golems out on Isle of the Winds seemed to be kinda slow. a wait for the first one to show up. got tired of waiting for others so attacked the first one. Had it down the 1/4 health then the other golems finally showed up. Had to leave the area for death point avoidance and when I came back it was a pretty long wait again.

[Fel Tir]

I hate running laps, one thing the world should provide plenty of is mobs and resources, should not have difficulty getting either IMHO.

The flies seem to do real good, it seems like more spawn when you loot the dead ones, I like that.

The linked field concept has been around a while and I'm used to it, and in one way its a challenge to find which fields are linked, but once you figure it out then its the same as not having linked fields, you just have to move. So I guess I'd like to try a field of resources that isn't linked and another pops up when one is depleted. I like the way the wisps work on the abandoned isle, gather from the wisp and kill it then more pop up, just wish they would pop faster.

[Goatboy]

I ran into a real problem with the spawn of pale wisps on the abandoned island, that being that once you get a full load of essence, run to the essence channeler, make your orbs and run back, the wisps are gone. I think it would be a good idea for the spawns for harvestable mobs, like wisps and sheep take a little longer to despawn. But that's just me.......