I don't have many gripes about the server because mostly I find it to be the best one I've managed to find, but one thing that's always stuck out at me as I leveled up various characters was just how crazily this server spawns encounters in your face constantly. Most servers I've been on spawn encounters a decent distance off, but so many, many areas here spawn encounters almost on your head. It makes being low level a lethal condition - you're walking along, alone and *BAM* 6 hostile monsters spawn around you in many cases. Several areas have spawns that trigger as you transition into them even.

This makes certain types of characters pretty unplayable... "Minion masters" are nearly pointless because having a summons, animal companion/familiar, etc etc rarely means much when you're crawling along and suddenly find yourself in the middle of a group of epic monsters who beat you to death. Archers without HiPS are for sadomasochists only. It also causes a lot of bugs for things like stealth where it doesn't matter how high your scores are, because monsters spawn on top of you and instantly start swinging at your hidden self.

It's probably too much to dream for, given you'd have to go through the module area by area and adjust these things, but it's probably the most glaring flaw Amia suffers that affects everyone equally imo.

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Rashad the Azure, Zakharan Merchant-lord Most Fair and Master of the Desert Wind
Loremaster Tukson Devers, Oghmanyte Wrestler of Knowledge and Child of the Passive Voice

(No tells for Rashad while I'm playing other characters please.)

This was like, my VERY first complaint about the server. It's probably because some dungeons are really really old and some built in the pre-haks age, very hack and slashy feel... some builder just painted the spawn points half asleep?! Lol. I can't see it being TOO hard to fix, just really tedious for developers.

I've seen people explain it away as "random encounters" you're "supposed to be surprised" but really where was that group of 8 gigantic mylocks hiding, huh? I don't think it needs to be harped on and I can't see anyone disagreeing with it.

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Monsters spawning around you is dumb.

Yeah. I gotta admit this is a complaint of mine, as well. More often than not, I have enemies spawning completely around me. It's also worse when about 90% of the time, they seem to auto-spot me while Aedan is in stealth. Now, one could say they just spot him because of high spot or something. However, this happens so frequently. Additionally, if I approach these same mobs (after running off at times and returning), they can't spot me at all. So I do feel it might be something in the code?

But yeah. Putting the auto-spotting aside, it's definitely a huge pain to be walking down a road or wherever else and, instead of spotting them from a distance (like it explains in the actual emote), it makes you feel like the character is totally blind and deaf as the mobs get the jump on the character every single time.

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I think the "spawning around you" thing is due to latency. Not positive.

The spotting thing is annoying, yeah, and I think it's mainly the AI "cheating" because Bioware and something about when the spot triggers. I'm not sure if that's something we can fix outright.

What places are the worst offenders for this back-to-face, in-your-face spawning to you guys?

So, I'm a pretty new person to the server and this is basically my one big problem with it - I'm honestly terrified of adventuring with anything but my wizard with near constant invisibility and monsters pre-summoned and buffed to act as a distraction because, well, not only do the monsters just kinda spawn on top of you they can have a massive jump in difficulty from one area to the next.

Also if you report an Area where this is an issue, pleeeeease list the Area name. If you can screenshot your position on the minimap, that's also helpful but not as important as the Area name. There's a playertool that will tell you where your party is (which includes yourself) if you can't see the Area name by hovering your cursor over your portrait.

I'm done for the night, but I'll keep an eye out for areas like that when I play tomorrow.

Thanks! Every little bit is helpful data.

I know that my own issue that seems the largest is Grumdek Murr: Peak in the Brog mountains. Given the terrain as well, the spawning right in front of you gets pretty annoying. I can grab some screenshots next time I'm there, if possible.

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If youcan post screen shots with the minimap open of one's that seem off to you that would be great. One thing to remember though (for some not all) is that to get enough spawns in an area and keep it from feeling empty spawns have to be pushed closer sometimes and there is only so much distance you can give between the trigger edge and the way point, and when you are running sometimes you can close that distance a lot in that fraction of a second it takes from crossing the trigger till the critters spawn.

In the interest of greater transparency, I wanted to show some of the conversation that was had in Dev chat about this.

Are there any dungeons you guys think would be good for a live test like this?

fire giants and frost giants are really lousy with just walking forward and suddenly being surrounded by giants.

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ANT ALARM

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I setup the fire giants and most of those allow 40 or more meters from the edge of the trigger to the spawn point for the Mob.

the next time I bulldoze through there ill take screens. map to maximum size.

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ANT ALARM

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In my experience this occurs frequently with the Frontier Orcs near where the Black Root shrub is.

However, this does not occur in the Nexus Hills coming from Winya Rivana when you walk across the first bush along the road.

I think it's the size of the trigger spawns that makes them appear but I am not too sure. Personally, I thought with high enough spot I would be able to see mobs before they see me.

Additionally, with the recent AI update, One of my characters can't use any ranged weapon anymore without the whole group charging after me even at what I think is a safe distance. I am not implying that the AI is buggy but it would be nice to have a few shots in from a distance before the whole mob comes after a PC for combat.

http://i.imgur.com/nlk34kA.jpg

Most frost giants spawn like this. Notice how im actually surrounded and can't leave.

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Here is that area in the toolset, the green box is the trigger highlighted and the yellow arrow in the box is the spawn point of the frost giants. It's not easy to tell from the elevation on that map, but the waypoint is roughly 25 meters from the edge of the trigger. If you are running at full speed it is possible you are covering that distance while the system determines that a PC entered the trigger, that there is a spawn associated with it, grabs the information from the data base to spawn the critters, finds the way point to know where to put them and then puts them in.


http://puu.sh/nI7H0/2c18c394a6.jpg

I mean, I'm not going to argue with you. But that spawn frequently puts me in the center of a mob.

I'll go do frost giants later and get more screenshots. Last time I did fire giants they mostly behaved.

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The situations I speak of are not running, they're not walking, they're not haste and not monk speed or anything of the like. I've played people with normal walk speed who were in stealth mode and ended up with monsters spawning on their heads. For the record, I've great high-speed internet and rarely get lag - any lag I experience is serverside - usually when some DM is doing something resource intensive and the server is suffering for it.

In general, it's everywhere mostly. I mean, just make a plain old human rogue and give it 150 stealth and walk from transition to transition and you'll find plenty of spawns that pop on your head to the point they automatically ignore your stealth and you'll see my point.

However, specific offenders of monsters spawning before you've even moved after transitioning that I can recall off the top of my head:
* On the first level of Darkhold, after you exit from the basement (coming out) and get past that first tiny room and go through the door, a spawn jumps you on the other side immediately.
* After killing Bidoc the Vampire and taking his staircase up to get out of Manor of Morn, as soon as you go through the secret door on the ground floor, you often get jumped immediately before even moving.
* Transitioning into the area of the Snowbeast often spawns spectres before you even get the chance to move (and in the case of lag, load).

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Rashad the Azure, Zakharan Merchant-lord Most Fair and Master of the Desert Wind
Loremaster Tukson Devers, Oghmanyte Wrestler of Knowledge and Child of the Passive Voice

(No tells for Rashad while I'm playing other characters please.)