Rip PvE Vampire hunter

Ryuvain

Is killing vampire hunting completely in PvE necessary? It was fun to at least use against npcs and see your targets light up. Why not add a keyword to each enemy instead of making a list? A list in the first place is the worse option in comparison for code. Seems like it's going overboard to completely remove vampire/wolf/undead hunters completely isn't it?

Overall it seems like it will make the fighters guild skills pvp centric instead of universal.

Vevvev

Never understood the point of that change tbh in making it PvP centric when it clearly had PvE applications. The loss of the Prismatic glyph for vampire hunting hurt but you could at least substitute a flame damage glyph, but that change to the Skilled Tracker passive was taking it a bit too far. Their reasoning was to reduce the checks being done server side, but that was only done on the Fighter's Guild abilities which is 4 abilities and an ultimate. Not exactly a large well rounded build and the only thing worth spamming is Silver Bolts and it's pretty expensive for a spammable.

Ryuvain

Vevvev wrote: »

Never understood the point of that change tbh in making it PvP centric when it clearly had PvE applications. The loss of the Prismatic glyph for vampire hunting hurt but you could at least substitute a flame damage glyph, but that change to the Skilled Tracker passive was taking it a bit too far. Their reasoning was to reduce the checks being done server side, but that was only done on the Fighter's Guild abilities which is 4 abilities and an ultimate. Not exactly a large well rounded build and the only thing worth spamming is Silver Bolts and it's pretty expensive for a spammable.

True. Also they mentioned having these abilities check a whole list of enemies from the entire game? Why? Just add a small keyword for an enemy like 'IsVampire' or something so that you dont need a gigantic list thats gets added to every dlc?

BlueRaven

It’s interesting how the developers note seems oblivious to the fact that pve even exists. 😐

Thevampirenight

There is a good reason why they are doing this change , of course there is many back end things they do need to address as well. But here is why, basically if you have a fighters guild ability slotted and of course many pvpers may have some slotted fighters guild ability and even pvers use fighters guild abilities. Now when they did the champion update they explained how those points worked before. They explained the reason why they made it so you can slot only twelve stars each in the champion points system is because the old system all the stars you had slotted added more calculations that had to be checked each time you did something. Each time you use an ability and you slotted in a star that allows to have a better damage shield for example every time you cast an ability the server checks for that.

Now with the passive, skilled tracker its checking if you have a fighters guild ability's slotted its checking through the list of all the types of undead creatures and daedra, and werewolves they have plus if a player has lycanthropy or vampirsim.

So basically they are doing this to remove so many calculations that have to be calculated by making it just check if your player who is a vampire and werewolf which is three calculations. They get rid of twenty boggling calculations that stack up with everyone who has that passive unlocked which the server has to check for and even more by removing it from the prismatic enchantment as well.

So when the update goes live, so many calculations the server has to check are going bye bye and there might be a noticeable increase in performance because of it. I expect as more updates happen more stuff is going to be addressed from the back end to reduce more calculations that the game has to perform. Which I think will also do more to help with performance.

EF321

It's weird to me that they could not make a simple flag for entity... like "isVampire = 1"

Then again, knowing how things can be coded sometimes, this very much could be next to impossible without rebuilding entire thing from ground up.

stefj68

Ryuvain wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

Never understood the point of that change tbh in making it PvP centric when it clearly had PvE applications. The loss of the Prismatic glyph for vampire hunting hurt but you could at least substitute a flame damage glyph, but that change to the Skilled Tracker passive was taking it a bit too far. Their reasoning was to reduce the checks being done server side, but that was only done on the Fighter's Guild abilities which is 4 abilities and an ultimate. Not exactly a large well rounded build and the only thing worth spamming is Silver Bolts and it's pretty expensive for a spammable.

True. Also they mentioned having these abilities check a whole list of enemies from the entire game? Why? Just add a small keyword for an enemy like 'IsVampire' or something so that you dont need a gigantic list thats gets added to every dlc?

to add that they will add that they would prolly have to add a new variable to all monster in their database to flag if they are a vampire or not... yes its doable, but is it worth the time to do that?

Ryuvain

stefj68 wrote: »

Ryuvain wrote: »

Vevvev wrote: »

Never understood the point of that change tbh in making it PvP centric when it clearly had PvE applications. The loss of the Prismatic glyph for vampire hunting hurt but you could at least substitute a flame damage glyph, but that change to the Skilled Tracker passive was taking it a bit too far. Their reasoning was to reduce the checks being done server side, but that was only done on the Fighter's Guild abilities which is 4 abilities and an ultimate. Not exactly a large well rounded build and the only thing worth spamming is Silver Bolts and it's pretty expensive for a spammable.

True. Also they mentioned having these abilities check a whole list of enemies from the entire game? Why? Just add a small keyword for an enemy like 'IsVampire' or something so that you dont need a gigantic list thats gets added to every dlc?

to add that they will add that they would prolly have to add a new variable to all monster in their database to flag if they are a vampire or not... yes its doable, but is it worth the time to do that?

Adding a single variable would be monotonous, but it would work. And you wouldn't have a gigantic list.

It would be way better than taking out even more uniqueness.

DreadDaedroth

It seems the illusion of performance improvement is more important than fun.

adriant1978

I don't like to criticise other people's code without having seen it, and I'm always mindful that while I have some familiarity with programming I am not a professional developer, but ... wow, a list of 23 individual conditions in a single statement is pretty bad. Definitely think it would be worthwhile implementing something more efficient like the keyword system Skyrim uses.

I really hope this isn't indicative of how the game's backend code is written generally.

Ryuvain

adriant1978 wrote: »

I don't like to criticise other people's code without having seen it, and I'm always mindful that while I have some familiarity with programming I am not a professional developer, but ... wow, a list of 23 individual conditions in a single statement is pretty bad. Definitely think it would be worthwhile implementing something more efficient like the keyword system Skyrim uses.

I really hope this isn't indicative of how the game's backend code is written generally.

Same, I really don't hope that it's all spaghetti code. But hey, they dont communicate anything.

I'm not a professional but I've done a lot of code and programming for more than a couple years. If they don't have a keyword or flag system, then no wonder the entire game is getting bogged down.

They most likely won't, but if they say that the game checks a LIST of npc names/enemies instead of simple flags/keywords, then they should just go and rework a lot of back-end systems.

Again, I have no idea how their system truly is though.

BlueRaven

adriant1978 wrote: »

I don't like to criticise other people's code without having seen it, and I'm always mindful that while I have some familiarity with programming I am not a professional developer, but ... wow, a list of 23 individual conditions in a single statement is pretty bad. Definitely think it would be worthwhile implementing something more efficient like the keyword system Skyrim uses.

I really hope this isn't indicative of how the game's backend code is written generally.

I understand what you are saying, but isn’t this just a simple y/n statement?

Deadra/Vampire/werewolf - Trigger ability.

It’s not like the ability cares what type of creature it is beyond that. It’s not like it has 23 separate damage applications to give out.

If it was “feral vampire”” does x amount of damage, but “master vampire” it does y amount, I could see simplifying it. But this is just a broad category of many creatures.

Personally I am getting sick of these “pvp only” abilities creeping in all over the place.

Vevvev

BlueRaven wrote: »

Personally I am getting sick of these “pvp only” abilities creeping in all over the place.

Same, I'd like to use my abilities in PvE to when I'm not in Cyrodiil.

Alucardo

adriant1978 wrote: »

I don't like to criticise other people's code without having seen it, and I'm always mindful that while I have some familiarity with programming I am not a professional developer, but ... wow, a list of 23 individual conditions in a single statement is pretty bad. Definitely think it would be worthwhile implementing something more efficient like the keyword system Skyrim uses.

I really hope this isn't indicative of how the game's backend code is written generally.

Did they actually say 23?? I can't even fathom what that would be. I imagine a check to make sure you have the passive unlocked and skill on your bar, then another check to see if the mob should light up. I guess they must be checking each type, ie: Vampire, Werewolf, Daedra, Undead individually instead of just flagging them as fgDebuff for example, to signify that particular enemy type is weak to fighter's guild abilities.
As a developer myself, I'm really interested to see them explain why 23 checks are necessary. I'm genuinely curious.

adriant1978

BlueRaven wrote: »

I understand what you are saying, but isn’t this just a simple y/n statement?

Deadra/Vampire/werewolf - Trigger ability.

It’s not like the ability cares what type of creature it is beyond that. It’s not like it has 23 separate damage applications to give out.

I'm only going by the developers' justification for the change in the PTS patch notes, where they claimed that they cut 23 different checks in this ability down to 3.

BlueRaven

adriant1978 wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

I understand what you are saying, but isn’t this just a simple y/n statement?

Deadra/Vampire/werewolf - Trigger ability.

It’s not like the ability cares what type of creature it is beyond that. It’s not like it has 23 separate damage applications to give out.

I'm only going by the developers' justification for the change in the PTS patch notes, where they claimed that they cut 23 different checks in this ability down to 3.

I was not criticizing you at all.

It’s just super frustrating to have a skill line that can only be leveled by slaying daedra, vampires, and werewolves in pve, yet deprive us of using those abilities to fight daedra, vampires, and werewolves in pve.

This feels so lazy by the developers. Like the Bosmer “stealth detect” change, it really feels like the combat team is saying ”PvE? Who cares?”

Jaraal

DreadDaedroth wrote: »

It seems the illusion of performance improvement is more important than fun.

Yep, I guarantee this change will have no noticeable effect on performance. But the continued disregard for the player base and changing things they have enjoyed for years will certainly add up in loss of consumer confidence and corporate goodwill.

They act like what the players care about doesn't matter. And yet, performance never gets better, especially in Cyrodiil.

amanes

Let's just hope the new people they hired are experienced coders and would provide some help to the dev team in this sector.

Jaraal

amanes wrote: »

Let's just hope the new people they hired are experienced coders and would provide some help to the dev team in this sector.

That would depend on the goals of the job seeker. Would they be looking to work for a company with a good reputation regarding their coding prowess, or are they the type that thinks they can get into a dysfunctional situation and "turn things around?" The problem with the latter is that it's usually that way because of management decisions. And regardless of how good you are at your job, you are still at the behest of your superiors.

I'm sure some of the developers at ZOS are very good at their jobs and know how to fix a lot of these issues. But the decision is probably not up to them.