Missing things from Vanguard

[Xitix]

Originally Posted by Lweniel

When streaming, you need to fill your stream buffer to a certain amount before you start playing, so it'll start streaming well before it starts playing, and you always over-read in case some of your reads fail, or are skipped to read other resources. The throughput of even a crappy CD drive is many times to read speed needed to play CD quality music, and the throughput of your harddrive is many many times that. What you're seeing is quite normal and certainly won't have a significant impact on performance in itself.

Your clueless. For a file under 4k in size Vanguard is doing 66 reads including a 4k read right at the start which reads in the ENTIRE FILE. It repeats the same shitty pattern for every sound and music .ICB file it opens. It also opens and reads the .ICB files fully then closes them before it starts playing any sound from the matching .ISB file. So it has nothing to do with streaming and everything to do with real crap code paths for first opening the sound files. It also does the same thing when it reads parts of the .ISB file - rereading what it just read over and over again.

There are two distinct access patterns for asset files in VG. One is when they are first opened and the structure/directory information of whats in the file and where is read. The second is randomly retrieving/streaming specific assets from the file as needed. For sound files the first is absolute gargage currently. For other assets I don't know but suspect they might have some problems as well. For the second way when files are being read mostly in sequence anyway (like the sound files are) loading in decent sized chunks will be faster, at least all 8k chunks and not 8k,512bytes,8k,512bytes etc.

As for this being a performance hit, it sure is but as to the degree I don't have the rest of the code to profile so can't say. Still this isn't an optmization issue - it's getting rid of redundant unneccesarry reads and any performance gain will happen exactly where a lot complain VG peforms poorly: when new stuff is being loaded.

[splok]

Originally Posted by Camerous

Hit N

As for this shit..



Why don't you STFU? Fucking tard. Over 1/2 a dozen classes can solo just as well, and in some cases better, than a disc. So you can take your whiny ass crybaby shit and shove it up your ass next to that cock you obviously have rimming your ass out.

at least seven classes solo as well or better than a disc? lets have a list then... oh, and examples....

[Lweniel]

Originally Posted by Xitix

Your clueless. For a file under 4k in size .

Well, Nino said

Originally Posted by Nino
That particular file is the largest music file in the game by the way.

So one of you is wrong. I choose to believe the one who actually has a clue about streaming and didn't call someone who's writted streaming routines for PS1, PS2 and PCs clueless. Still I don't actually have a copy of Vanguard to check so who knows!

[Senen]

Originally Posted by splok

at least seven classes solo as well or better than a disc? lets have a list then... oh, and examples....

Shaman,Cleric,BM,Ranger,Brd kiting,Paladin,Psi, There thats 7 I know for certain can solo aswell if not better then Disc.

[Kendrick]

Ranger can solo better than a disc? News to me, here I've spent 42 levels often dying to a single even con 3 dot solo, it's at best a 50/50 chance (as it should be). Over my level, forget about it. And I've always made sure I have very good gear for my level. Sure, there's a few tomato can 3 dots out there that ANY class can take down at the same level.

4 dots? Yeah, I can do those, if they're 10 levels or more lower than me, AND I'm lucky with crits and evades. Snare kiting and bow, you say? Well, that's making the grand assumption that snare isn't resisted 90% of the time.

Escape death better than a disc? News to me, here I've spent 42 levels getting stunned when trying to run away, 3 second heals that don't even counteract a single 3 dot (or even 2 dot) hit, roots resisted, etc. My best survival tools? Wood Elf racial, Winter Cloak, and a prayer.

More easily/speedily get to someplace than a disc? Yeah, I can do that, run speed buff and stealth helps there. It also helps with the inevitable CR.

Long story short, a Ranger doesn't solo nearly as well as ANY of the healer classes when it comes to 3 dots or higher. Sure, we have good dps, but not THAT good, and our "legendary" dps doesn't really come into play until grouped and fully buffed.

Bard kiting 3 and 4 dots generally involves some VERY exploitive tactics and broken abilities, btw, and hopefully that'll get fixed soon. They don't even have to kite, just perma-root. Not saying all bards do this, but more than a few do.

Long story short, the Ranger is a solid class, but it ain't the best solo class, by far, and ranks far behind a Disciple in my book. I'd go so far to say that only the Warrior and Rogue have a harder time solo than the Ranger, and we're about even with Monks.

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Senen

Shaman,Cleric,BM,Ranger,Brd kiting,Paladin,Psi, There thats 7 I know for certain can solo aswell if not better then Disc.

I'd like to know how I as a Blood Mage can solo better then a Disciple!

[splok]

Originally Posted by Senen

Shaman,Cleric,BM,Ranger,Brd kiting,Paladin,Psi, There thats 7 I know for certain can solo aswell if not better then Disc.

call me skeptical... but what? I'd like to see all of these classes matching/besting a disciple at soloing. I've trio'd with a disciple that could offtank, self heal, and kill one mob before the dk and bm could kill the other. Also, consider the previous post... how many times do we hear other classes cry about not quite being able to solo a -1 4d named? and then not even because he couldn't kill it, but because the mob spazed out and became unkillable... (Hell, at least with kiting, it makes a little sence because the mob isn't hitting you.)

[Faltigoth]

I know as a low-20s paladin that even con (maybe level +1/2, haven't tried much in the way of those) 3 dots are soloable with barely a sweat being broken, as long as they are mainly melee - paladins have a judgment that lowers a mob's strength by a shitload, which significantly reduces their damage. As long as nothing gets resisted, two at a time isn't even that bad. However, one judgment gets resisted when there's more than 1 3-dot, and its brave brave sir falti bravely ran away time. Offensive casters are a different story though, not a sure thing with those unless I get lucky with a few crits and bun them down before they burn me.

It sure as hell ain't fast, but its relatively safe. Usually takes me about 1-1.5 minutes to kill a 3-dot even con.

How that stacks up on the "soloing cock-length" chart, or how it changes at the higher levels (as I am still relatively low) I don't know.

[Dashal]

Disc's do solo very well, not as well as they did in the glory days and who knows what this patch will bring when I get home, but yeah we and other healers solo well.

OTOH that was a whiney post calling for a nerf on us, we're probably the most nerfed class in the game since release. Granted we were broken initially and had stupid high crit rate, but now only the overpowering aspects were over adjusted while our abilities are still a mish mosh of broken or buggy skills and we had heal nerfs to boot. All this on top of a dearth of buffs (hi, I have 2 you'd want) and 0 group utility.

But I could forsee this from the begining with the class. Grass is always greener, and when others see us solo well they get jealous and we get tagged for nerf calls.

[teneran]

Originally Posted by splok

call me skeptical... but what? I'd like to see all of these classes matching/besting a disciple at soloing. I've trio'd with a disciple that could offtank, self heal, and kill one mob before the dk and bm could kill the other. Also, consider the previous post... how many times do we hear other classes cry about not quite being able to solo a -1 4d named? and then not even because he couldn't kill it, but because the mob spazed out and became unkillable... (Hell, at least with kiting, it makes a little sence because the mob isn't hitting you.)

I should have posted more clearly the first time that I don't expect as a disciple to be able to be an uber soloing god, I just want bugs fixed with named mobs. Bugs that have jacked with small groups as well. I asked for it in the context of a real experience I had. So, for the record, I wasn't "crying" about not being able to kill a named 4-dot, I was "crying" about it being bugged. Bugged to the point that I doubt anything but a group of 4+ would have been required to take it down from 10% to death sucessfully, and that's assuming that group could do significant ranged damaged because you could forget about sucessfully hitting it in melee more than about 10% of the time once it started spazzing out.

The balancing of disciples was needed, but as always, they are going to over nerf us, as is always done in these games. And the complaints of some disciples about being nerfed while known bugs with class abilities are NOT fixed is very valid.

BEFORE you nerf one more thing, for chirst's sweet sake fix the fucking known, documented bugs with our abilities please. Why is it in every fucking game of this type the developers drop everything to nerf into oblivion anything beneficial to a player but take their sweet time getting around, if they ever do, to fixing bugs which negatively impact players? Don't you guys play this game along with us?

p.s. i've seen psi's, necros, bards, clerics, sorcerers and shaman pull off some great soloing acts. So I guess we can expect "balancing" very soon on these classes as well?

[splok]

Originally Posted by teneran

stuff

Ya, I understand your point, and I wasn't arguing with you, just using your passage as an example, as I think the idea of soloing an evenish 4d named is simply laughable to the majority of players.

[Nino]

Originally Posted by Xitix

Your clueless. For a file under 4k in size Vanguard is doing 66 reads including a 4k read right at the start which reads in the ENTIRE FILE. It repeats the same shitty pattern for every sound and music .ICB file it opens. It also opens and reads the .ICB files fully then closes them before it starts playing any sound from the matching .ISB file. So it has nothing to do with streaming and everything to do with real crap code paths for first opening the sound files. It also does the same thing when it reads parts of the .ISB file - rereading what it just read over and over again.

There are two distinct access patterns for asset files in VG. One is when they are first opened and the structure/directory information of whats in the file and where is read. The second is randomly retrieving/streaming specific assets from the file as needed. For sound files the first is absolute gargage currently. For other assets I don't know but suspect they might have some problems as well. For the second way when files are being read mostly in sequence anyway (like the sound files are) loading in decent sized chunks will be faster, at least all 8k chunks and not 8k,512bytes,8k,512bytes etc.

As for this being a performance hit, it sure is but as to the degree I don't have the rest of the code to profile so can't say. Still this isn't an optmization issue - it's getting rid of redundant unneccesarry reads and any performance gain will happen exactly where a lot complain VG peforms poorly: when new stuff is being loaded.

This is not a dead issue by the way, I am still trying to get people to look further into this.

[teneran]

Originally Posted by splok

Ya, I understand your point, and I wasn't arguing with you, just using your passage as an example, as I think the idea of soloing an evenish 4d named is simply laughable to the majority of players.

I agree with you on that one, 100%.

[Cabales]

A bit off topic, but a question I have for those who have leveled a bit higher than me. I'm currently a level 20 cleric (yes overpowered, but I always play a main healer class and did not choose cleric b/c it was overpowered), and I've been noticing a disturbing trend as far as gear goes. The crafted gear I see tends to be significantly better than the gear I've seen drop in dungeons off of named mobs even. Is this intended? does it change at higher levels? Is it just poor itemization that they plan to fix? I have spent most of my time leveling up from 14-20 in Kheggor's End in full groups and received lot's of drops, but none of it was as good as the crafted gear I had purchased.

I like the game world and the feel a lot, and I'm willing to work through the bugs while they get fixed, but I want to gear up mostly from gear that drops while dungeon crawling or from quest rewards. If the dynamic is supposed to be go out and earn cash to buy your upgrades from the crafters then I probably won't be sticking around long. I figure this must be a bug because I can't imagine Brad not making a loot centric MMO, but I feel the need to ask since it is really starting to concern me.

Does anyone know the answer to this? or perhaps Nino or one of the other devs who frequent the boards here can respond?

[Vinen]

Originally Posted by Cabales

A bit off topic, but a question I have for those who have leveled a bit higher than me. I'm currently a level 20 cleric (yes overpowered, but I always play a main healer class and did not choose cleric b/c it was overpowered), and I've been noticing a disturbing trend as far as gear goes. The crafted gear I see tends to be significantly better than the gear I've seen drop in dungeons off of named mobs even. Is this intended? does it change at higher levels? Is it just poor itemization that they plan to fix? I have spent most of my time leveling up from 14-20 in Kheggor's End in full groups and received lot's of drops, but none of it was as good as the crafted gear I had purchased.

I like the game world and the feel a lot, and I'm willing to work through the bugs while they get fixed, but I want to gear up mostly from gear that drops while dungeon crawling or from quest rewards. If the dynamic is supposed to be go out and earn cash to buy your upgrades from the crafters then I probably won't be sticking around long. I figure this must be a bug because I can't imagine Brad not making a loot centric MMO, but I feel the need to ask since it is really starting to concern me.

Does anyone know the answer to this? or perhaps Nino or one of the other devs who frequent the boards here can respond?

It's a mixed bag. There is gear better then from dungeons and gear better from crafters. If you realized the amount of effort crafted go into the get to the levels to craft decent gear it makes perfect sense to me.