Rampage AA + big pulls = zone issues?

[AndMetal]

I know this has been an issue on Storm Haven for Melees doing AE on anything more than a few mobs at once & I'm not sure if anyone has experienced similar issues.

Basically, if you pull too many mobs at once, then use the AA Ability Rampage (attacks everything with a range of 30), it will either cause one to go Linkdead or crash the zone.

During my testing, I used the new #aggrozone command in Sanctus Seru (probably the most populated zone in the PEQ DB, 782 NPCs after a #repop force). If I used a weapon (with augs, so 1275 damage + 635 cold damage + 1270 human bane damage, 500% strikethrough) with no procs, the zone would hang for a moment (after jumping to about 20% utilization of the process on a 3.2 GHz Intel processor) and a bunch of mobs would die. In addition, the bandwidth utilization on the client was between 9,000 & 10,000 bytes/sec. However, if I put on an Earthshaker without any augments, etc, the zone process shoots up to 100% utilization, the client lags out, and once the client disconnects, the zone utilization goes down to 0 (but doesn't crash).

It seems like the zone server is working so hard on crunching all the data that it doesn't go back to let the client know it's still there.

After thinking about it, I think a temporary fix would be to send some sort of arbitrary packet (maybe like an HP Update) to all the clients in the zone every couple of iterations through EntityList::AEAttack in zone/effects.cpp, that way the client knows the zone is still there & doesn't lag out completely.

Does anyone have any similar experiences, or maybe some ideas on this?

[Derision]

A bit off-topic, but #cast 6801 (AE range 10000) is also a good way to pull the entire zone:

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/spell.htm...01&source=Test

[KLS]

I don't think expecting AEs to flow smoothly across 100+ npcs in a single zone is reasonable =p Can look and see if we can improve it though.

[AndMetal]

Originally Posted by KLS

I don't think expecting AEs to flow smoothly across 100+ npcs in a single zone is reasonable =p

Agreed. That's why, instead of trying to stop a speeding train, I'm thinking at least do something so everything down the line know it's coming.

The big thing I'm not sure about is, should we do this just for AE rampage (an exception), or are there any other circumstances where we would need to tell the client the zone is still alive? And if so, what's the best way to implement it without using much more bandwidth?

If memory serves me, Live implemented something back around Luclin or PoP (I forget which, couldn't find it browsing through the patch logs) where only so many (10-30?) mobs would attack at once, the rest would sit & twiddle their thumbs a safe distance away, then when one dies, another would get closer to take its place. It was odd, because you could pull a massive train, but when some started hitting you, the rest scattered like roaches. Then, if you got far enough that they weren't attacking you, then would all catch up (was a pita to get them all grouped together). I'm not sure if it's still the same way on Live, but maybe this is what we're looking at in the long run.

[ChaosSlayer]

I don't remeber where that was, but it was somewhere, that there was a max cap on how many mobs can be agroed at player at once.
this was capped at like 20 or 30 or so. Specificly for the purpose to prevent massive chain-agro trains and massive lag.

Of course aoe farmers would hate that, but if helps to improve zone stability- something like this could be put into rules =)

PS. related question of zone lag - is it posible to server side set MAX viewable distance for a zone? and fog density?

[trevius]

The odd thing is that he was able to test rampage with a normal weapon and not cause any large CPU spike or "crash", but using a procing weapon, it caused the problem right away and CPU went to 100%. Now, in his tests, he was using an AE procing weapon, which I can understand would cause a huge spike in CPU over a normal non-proc weapon when rampaging a huge pull. But, the rampage crashes on my server seem to happen with just normal procs, so maybe it is the proc process that is driving CPU Utilization up. I may have to do some more in-depth testing myself if I get time. If it is the proc process, maybe we can figure out what is causing it to be so much more CPU intensive than normal melee hits, because I don't think the formulas are any more complex.