Patch Notes
- Mantis
- 0001599: Mobs are stuck / non targetable at the ruined Sith complex
- 0001616: Low Power Droid Spam
- 0001607: Wild Lars spawning in the middle of the Thunderdome on Lok
- 0001566: acid rifle applying dot
- 0001580: /unstick gives an instant error
- 0001580: /unstick gives an instant error
- 0001575: Admin Drop/Pickup Outside removed by Core3 updates
- 0001568: Pet Special attacks are not applying to DNA templates
- 0001569: No Sample DNA option on creatures for Bio Engineers
- 0001570: Unknown Attack
- 0001560: Female Twi’lek vendor refuses to wear regular necklaces I make for her.
- 0001562: Creatures wander off when trying to milk them.
- 0001612: Conversation with Rodius Minimus
- 0001260: nightsister elder loot error
- Performance
- Spawn to Spawn distance modified
- Lair hitpoints calculation modified to make more sense
- [Modify] Change Spawn logic to allow for some boundary variance (33% +/-) from defined range, so that things feel a little more natural and less predictive (Also allows for spawn vs spawn interaction to some degree, but much less so than upstream implementation).
- [Modified] Modified SpawnArea to allow more configurable spawn distances.
- Changed player distance for spawn checks to initiate from 32m to 96m.
- Changed spawn buffer distances (between each other) from 64m to 128m.
We are continuing to work diligently to address the performance (and memory usage) issues, ensuring smooth and seamless gameplay for all players. Above everything, this is the highest priority. We ask that, while discussing other topics, you keep this in mind. There are many things we absolutely want to get to, but this issue demands as much attention as we can give it. In light of that, below is our current plan for evaluating and adjusting server performance. This is a continuous effort to improve server performance, and we are currently evaluating several AI behavior patterns in relation to gameplay. Specifically, we are assessing the following situations:
1. AI behavior with regards to aggro range.
2. AI behavior with regards to “stalking” range.
3. AI behavior with regards to the number of total wild spawns and their proximity to each other.
4. AI behavior with regards to how frequently behavior checks are evaluated.
5. AI behavior with regards to aggro modifier calculation (how likely an NPC is to attack from a given range)
6. Evaluation of the significant changes SR has made over time to "mission" components. This includes things like ranger compasses, non-jedi player bounties, level 4 npc bounties, expanded active mission counts, and more. These situations have been identified as areas that require further optimization and fine-tuning to improve gameplay and reduce strain on the server. We are committed to these evaluations as part of our ongoing efforts to maintain the high level of player experience we expect, and to evaluate and address any performance implications they may have caused. We will be implementing several changes in the coming weeks to attempt to address these issues. We will be working to isolate and evaluate several things, all relating to the above points. Unfortunately our attempts to reproduce these performance issues locally and on TC have not yielded anything of note, as we simply cannot generate the load (or player activities) necessary to create the problems we see on live. While we will communicate these changes as they roll out, you can expect a pattern similar to the following;
1. Restart window is identified, for a number of varying reasons.
2. Performance changes are applied to the upcoming deployment package (say, adjusting stalk range)
3. Patch notes are released notifying of the specific changes being made for evaluation
4. Package is deployed and performance & feedback are evaluated for a period of time, until #1 occurs again. At that point, we will opt to either remove the change made (if we have enough data), or add to it with something else.
5. At the end of these evaluations, we will share anything we've learned, **as well as our long-term changes** to these gameplay areas. Additionally, we want to clarify something that has received quite a bit of attention recently.
Many of you had probably noticed that bounty hunter missions were sometimes generating a reward payout. This mechanic, while appearing to be legitimate, was actually firing incorrectly. This particular mechanic was introduced as a way to obsfucate player Jedi pvp bounty payouts, so that bounty hunters could not easily identify individual Jedi player names while taking a mission. This system was designed to cover the gap in anonymous player Jedi missions and to hide actual payouts. This helped to prevent pseudo-determination of player names by skill point or template allocation.
SR had a previous implementation of this, but during rebase we converted to using the recently added SwgEmu variation (you may remember the BH terminal usage lag problem we had before). Effectively, this paid the bounty hunter – upon mission completion – the remaining credits that would have historically been listed on the mission screen. But, since we only show a static value when taking the mission there needed to be a mechanism to track this differential between say 50k (advertised rate) and 226k (actual mission value).
Because of a bug involving mission object caching, these bonuses were being incorrectly stored alongside a player component that could be used in other missions outside of player bounties. This particular bug has been fixed, so “bonus” payouts will no longer be applied to non-player missions of any kind.
We apologize for any confusion this may have caused and assure you that we have rectified the issue to ensure fair gameplay for all.
However, this situation has brought attention to something we want to have serious discussion and thought about – “Are there ways we can incorporate this or a similar mechanic – with the goal of making other mission types a profitable exercise and competitive to janta/mokk farming?”
We are not fundamentally opposed to re-implementing something in this vein, but with explicit intent. If you have thoughts or feedback on an appropriate and balanced way to do this, please feel empowered to share with us.
On a related note, we would also like to emphasize that any changes to functionality introduced post-rebase are likely not intentional and even less likely “nerfs.” Instead, they are probably bugs or changes made upstream that we have not yet caught and adjusted based on our standard. The development team is continuously monitoring the game and making necessary adjustments to ensure that all features and gameplay mechanics are functioning correctly – and with change on this scale, that can take considerable time and effort.
We will continue to monitor and assess server performance in relation to these situations and make necessary adjustments to optimize performance and gameplay.
Thank you for your patience and support as we work to make SR the best it can be.