Kraken's LOD is really freakin' short

[mechahamham]

My world detail is at 130%, but that doesn't affect NPC draw distance, and character detail, which does, is at 180%.

 

 

I'm standing on the war-wall side of the boat house, and have positioned myself so he's just on the border of popping out of LOD culling, and Kraken himself is just on the other side. Note that the other hydra-men have a much higher draw distance.

[tidge]

I believe this is working as intended. This was changed long ago (sometime circa Fall 2023? Or part of the Giant Monster revamp immediately after that time).

 

If I had to guess at the reasoning: It is because Kraken 'blends in' with the environment of Perez Park.

[Krimson]

53 minutes ago, tidge said:

I believe this is working as intended. This was changed long ago (sometime circa Fall 2023? Or part of the Giant Monster revamp immediately after that time).

 

If I had to guess at the reasoning: It is because Kraken 'blends in' with the environment of Perez Park.

There's no blending, just pop in and pop out, which kills immersion.

[tidge]

3 hours ago, Krimson said:

There's no blending, just pop in and pop out, which kills immersion.

 

To my eyes (and graphics setting), the trees in Perez Park have similar shading to Kraken from a distance.

 

There are some Giant Monsters which are visible almost all the way across a zone, which must be equally immersion killing, particularly in a place like "Dark" Astoria.

[Ukase]

I wish I'd taken a screenshot. But I didn't. 

I see the system message about Jurassik, and I zone into Crey's Folly, and from 800 yards away, my target macro picked up Jurassik. 

From 200 feet away, the macro has the same format, just Kraken where Jurassik is within the same macro, and it doesn't pick him up. It makes monster hunting a bit annoying. Now, if someone says this is a feature, or that Kraken has stealth, fine. But I've never seen that, just evidence of it. 

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

I wish I'd taken a screenshot. But I didn't. 

I see the system message about Jurassik, and I zone into Crey's Folly, and from 800 yards away, my target macro picked up Jurassik. 

From 200 feet away, the macro has the same format, just Kraken where Jurassik is within the same macro, and it doesn't pick him up. It makes monster hunting a bit annoying. Now, if someone says this is a feature, or that Kraken has stealth, fine. But I've never seen that, just evidence of it. 

 

This *is* a feature; it was changed as one of the GM balancing passes. (i27p7 IIRC). It's been this way for well over a year.

[Hedgefund]

I just did a search for Kraken, especially from Unitas and found nothing about adding any form of stealth.  I would be interested in seeing what proof someone may have that this was an intended change.

[Krimson]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

 

This *is* a feature; it was changed as one of the GM balancing passes. (i27p7 IIRC). It's been this way for well over a year.

How does changing the LOD achieve balance in this case? You still get a notification when it spawns, so you know it's there. The only effect this change MIGHT have is killing lowbies once in a while who stumble upon it, because the thing isn't going to one-shot any slotted build. What was the previous issue that prompted the change? Were people finding it too fast? So instead of maybe adding a few more spawn points to make it more challenging, they decided to adjust LOD? If this is a deliberate action, I fail to see the benefit of this. It just looks like messing with players for the sake of messing with them. There's no balance to be considered here; once Kraken is found, it becomes a hand-holding dogpile fest anyway.

[tidge]

2 hours ago, Krimson said:

 So instead of maybe adding a few more spawn points to make it more challenging, they decided to adjust LOD? If this is a deliberate action, I fail to see the benefit of this. It just looks like messing with players for the sake of messing with them. There's no balance to be considered here; once Kraken is found, it becomes a hand-holding dogpile fest anyway.

 

I can't explain the rationale. Kraken got a couple of rounds of Resistance/HP buffs, and now the extra ToHit. It's obviously a "flavor" choice that was made to have it 'emerging' from the surroundings. Aside from the visibility change and the previously mentioned buffs, Kraken got almost nothing else added to it during the rebalance(s). The only other blue zone GM that got less was IMO Babbage. Paladin got the pulse, Adamastor got the soul drain, Eochai got a new attack, Jack got better control... I suppose Jurassik only got more HP and Resistance (plus a little buff to the stun). Lusca's big buff came when the ToHit chances were increased; prior to that (recent) change Lusca was one of the easier GMs to solo.

[srmalloy]

There are other cases where the draw distance priority for objects in the game are screwed up. One that's easy to see is the way the large sailboats are rendered. You can approach them fairly closely, and only a thin wedge of the luff from the foot to the head is visible:

But if you keep getting closer, you hit a point where the server decides that it should render the whole sail, and suddenly the rest of the sail pops into existence:

Some time ago here, and also back on Live, I submitted requests for the draw-distance settings for the sailboats to be looked at so you didn't have boats floating around with partial sails up, but it seems to be a sufficiently minor issue to not be addressed, like Paragon City's continuing violation of the IALA Maritime Buoyage Standard (but that's a different and particularly geeky failure on the original devs' part).

[gameboy1234]

They did some LOD work recently.  The patch notes mentioned START vendors skirt, which had no/incorrect LOD information which needed to be changed.  I guess there's a lot of such objects in game.

 

I'd like a longer LOD, at least as an option, in nearly all cases.  Environment, mobs, everything, at least as a default if there's no LOD information already.  And to be able to increase the LOD for objects that have a draw distance.  I can see issues (exploration badges are supposed to have a really small LOD distance).  But in general it would help a lot.

 

Red side, experimenting with regular mobs in Sharkhead, I noticed that the draw distance was about 250 yards, and that tab target would work up to about 500 yards.  (You could have the mob targeted, you'd get the orange "box" outline to mark its location, but no polygons would draw until you'd get to 250 yards.)  Beyond 500 yards the target would just disappear and you couldn't tab to it again.  And I think it was 500 and not 800 or something like, not 100% sure right now.

 

But if this were universal I think it would be fine.  Then increase the draw distance (but maybe not tab targeting) according to user preferences.  If the user likes a 1 frame per second slide show, that's their business.

 

I think also there perception distance here too for mobs, not sure, but I'm noticing AVs and such will pop their text in missions while I'm still three rooms away.  Not sure but at least requiring line sight to a player before starting their text would help this sort of thing.

 

OK, rant over, back to bopping bad guys (and gals).

 

 

[Krimson]

If pop-in equals greater immersion, I recommend playing No Man's Sky. You will be amazed at the amount of "immersion" as things such as the surface patch pop in.

[tidge]

As I noted: I don't know of anyone who asked for the change (to Kraken) but the devs specifically made this change, and only to Kraken (I rarely bother with Caleb, which is the only other GM I can think of that offers more annoyance in locating). No one has to like my imagined reasons for the change, but "giant swamp creature rising from the terrain" seems like what the change was going for... not "let's sucker the players, har har".

 

I had to change up my approach to this Giant Monster, I don't think it was that big of a deal and added a slight amount of variety to hunting and defeating it... which was essentially the point of the Giant Monster balance pass. It's been almost two years for this change... this isn't something that just rolled out.

 

I'll be blunt and judgemental: I see many players who act (in-game) as if Giant Monsters (and their rewards) are something they are owed... and yet put minimal effort into looking for them and/or resetting zones to get GM respawns (Croatoa, Crey's Folly, KR, Unseelies)... and if something happens like when a Paladin is in a slightly different location in KR they'll completely miss it, they'll skip cleaning up extra spawns, they'll AFK/park-at-logout multibox at Adamastor waiting to drop 3xLore pets as soon as the timer counts down.  If "ace players" are that desperate for the 6 merits, there are plenty of repeatable arcs that offer a similar amount of merits for less time than waiting for the GM respawns (and tracking them down).