Respawn rate during events

[EyeContact]

In this topic I want your thoughts and ideas on the respawn rate during events.

We (Hunters Unlimited) have been hosting a number of events the last few months. We are very pleased with the number of participants, there is enough interest in well organised events I think.
The main issue we have is the respawn rate of mobs. 50 hunters can wipe an LA clean within 15 minutes and after that everyone has problems finding mobs to kill. This is bad, very bad. Bad for the landowner, MindArk, the organisers and the players.
MindArk are aware of the problem, we have an open supportcase and the support people have forwarded the issue to the design team several times. The last reply we got basically said "we know there's a problem, but spawning more mobs would case more lag, so we're sorry but we can't help you".
This leaves for us only one option and that is to reduce the number of participants and increase the ticket prices to still be able to hand out prizes worth competing for. But that is really not what we want, we want to create low cost events which many hunters can join and enjoy!

Maybe someone has some ideas we haven't thought of.

 

[NetStalker]

sounds like a bullshit answer to me, your not asking them to spawn MORE mobs, just to increase the spawn rate to keep mobs available for shooting.

now how can that increase lag?

 

[Nicole]

sounds like a bullshit answer to me, your not asking them to spawn MORE mobs, just to increase the spawn rate to keep mobs available for shooting.

now how can that increae lag?

I agree that the answer sounds like a kind of brush off!

But cant help thinking that the re spawn rate might be a factor in loots (HoFS and Global’s) , so MA might have to be really careful on how they go about fixing the problem?


Just a idea that came to me

 

[Mikah]

Since MA made a monitored event in CND, maybe its time to pay attention to small requests like these... seems fair...

A BUMP

 

[Digital Angel]

Why not events covering 2 or 3 land areas simultaneously?

 

[Edwards]

I took part on only my second event yesterday, great fun and well organised. To add to the idea of more areas, maybe have the event limited to 1 hour, with 15 to 20 minutes on each area, with area as well as overall winners. I would pay for a ticket.

 

[Fopsie]

I think they misunderstood what you guys wanted. Perhaps they understood that you wanted the mob spawn rate to increase over the entire game or in all the land areas instead of having the spawn rate go up on only the land areas that has active events and it to go back to normal after the event

 

[Legion]

eeerm.. you mean that one mob doesnt spawn when you kill it? or what are we talking about here?

 

[EyeContact]

eeerm.. you mean that one mob doesnt spawn when you kill it? or what are we talking about here?

Exactly. With the latest VU's it is better then before, but especially with the Exa event on sundays we "clear" the LA in 20 mins or so. During the last 40 minutes the spawn rate is very low.

 

[Legion]

Exactly. With the latest VU's it is better then before, but especially with the Exa event on sundays we "clear" the LA in 20 mins or so. During the last 40 minutes the spawn rate is very low.

hmm must be some sort of failsafe then i guess, as usually stuff always spawn when you kill one.. it could very well be strain on the server when so much get's killed.

ie the loot server get's to much to do so it tells the spawn server to slow down a bit sort of.

 

[KP708]

I can actually kind of see why MA would say what they did.

Consider for a moment what happens when a mob spawns. It is not just a case of adding it to the DB of active mobs in game. There is a lot else to do:
- pick maturity (maybe same as one which died, who knows, maybe there is a complex calculation)
- pick location and initial state (ok just a random number)
- pre-allocate loot (?)
- add it to the database of MOBs in game
- search the players online to see who has the new mob in radar range for that mob (this is non-trivial)
- add the details of the new mob to the queue of updates to be sent to each of the players who will be able to see it, and send to the players' computer (this is also non-trivial, especially in a busy area like an open event or PA)

I think it's the last 2 that are the sticking point. Every single change within EU in fact has to go through the same processing. OK they divide the world into separate 'servers' so that only some of the online players need to be checked, to see if their computer needs to be told about the new mob (ie only those currently playing on the same 'server') but it's still a major piece of processing load.

In fact I think that most likely the servers keep a list of the players in radar range for each mob. Once you are in the mob's list, it is quick for the server to tell you if it changes. So if it dies, all the players in the list for that mob get updated that the mob is dead. This is fast for the server to do.

But have you ever noticed how when you run continuously in one direction, sometimes mobs pop onto the radar a bit closer than expected and all at once? That imo is the server catching up with adding you to the lists of various mobs that you are now in radar range of. This is a slow operation - it can't use the short lists of players in radar range. It has to search all mobs and all players on the server to find what's in range.

Ok it's probably optimised a bit, but in principle, killing a mob is fast to update, because players close enough to see will already be on the list of players in range on that mob. Spawning a mob is slow, because you have to search all players on the server to see who is in range.

If there are 5000 players on the affected server, and mobs are killed at a rate of 1 every second, then you want to spawn 1 new mob every second. That means searching those 5000 players every second, or searching 5 players a millisecond, just to determine whether each player needs to be told about the newly spawned mob.

The solution here
- spawn the mobs in batches (what I think they probably do). So wait until the server has become quiet, then spawn 10 mobs, and search for affected players all at once

OR

- spawn the mobs in a remote location out of radar range of all players. But how do you do this when the spawn area is smaller than a LA. Just searching for remote locations becomes its own problem.

OR

- spawn at a few key hotspots. but once some players know where these are, they just camp that location and win the event.

It's a problem.

I guess the best answer for them is to divide the event LA into smaller cells like they are planning for mobile phone congestion. But that's an architectural change, and not one to undertake lightly for MA.

Meanwhile, what to do as an event organiser... Can you do triathlon events? Mining, hunting and crafting? Maybe worth raising with MA as an option.

Otherwise I suppose you need to slow down the rate of killing so that there is more time available for respawning. So
- bigger maturities (slower to kill)
- mobs that run away (chirpy event)
- use bigger LAs (more running less killing)
- long thin LAs instead of square ones (it takes longer to run the full length of a long LA than diagonally across a square LA of the same area, so more running less killing)
- bonus ammo awards every 10 minutes? Every 10 minutes the top 3 players at that point get a bonus of 5k ammo each if they come to the revive (lowers final prize, but slows killing)

Or wait for MA to get a second laptop for Christmas so EU will run twice as fast