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2008-12-01 18:06:44
Update on the war against bots
Along with the constant improvements to the game’s content, the Support service and our communication policy, the DOFUS team has always taken the more ‘behind-the-scenes’ issue of bots and Kama farmers very seriously.
We have been receiving more and more questions on the subject from players, though, so I’m going to talk a little about the current status of this ongoing effort.
Several years ago we began taking various measures in order to reduce the number of Kama farmers in game, or at least to make their lives more difficult. While some of these measures were announced and have been visible (e.g. progressively lower drop rates when players fight in the same location with several accounts; limitations in access to banks; random inversion of cells at the beginning of combat…), others are not so visible and are in fact confidential. The latter forms of measures allow us to identify bots more easily and to ban them from the game.
On top of all these measures, let’s not forget all the hours of hard work put in by volunteer moderators whose ranks have grown immensely these last few months and show no signs of slowing down. These volunteers spend most of their time finding and banning bots and farmers and the number of scammers banned daily can be anything from several thousand to several tens of thousand.
What’s more, we recently created a brand new position here at Ankama. Please welcome Tyg to the CCM team. He’s in charge of supervising the hunt for bots in game and along with Bill, the server Dev and Ludo, the Web Dev, he studies the behaviour of bots, bans any ones he sees and makes sure all our tools are running as they should.
So as you can see, we’re not resting on our laurels and our tools are getting better every day. Bots and farmers are a real hindrance to the MMO industry - few games are free of them – so much so that some players seem to think that, because they see bots so often, this means we aren’t doing anything about the problem. For every bot that is banned from the game, another arrives behind it.
One sure sign of our success is the increase in the price of Kamas on subscriber only servers by 30%, although the increase on other servers has been less noticeable.
This is a job that is never finished, there are always numerous bots in game, but please don’t conclude from this that all our efforts are in vain. We are also developing new long-term projects every day, many of which will arrive along with DOFUS 2.0 and which will give us a boost when it comes to our battle against the bots.
A few figures to finish (the numbers relate the total to present):
215,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in June 2008
320,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in July 2008
450,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in August 2008
900,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in September 2008
1,850,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in October 2008
We have been receiving more and more questions on the subject from players, though, so I’m going to talk a little about the current status of this ongoing effort.
Several years ago we began taking various measures in order to reduce the number of Kama farmers in game, or at least to make their lives more difficult. While some of these measures were announced and have been visible (e.g. progressively lower drop rates when players fight in the same location with several accounts; limitations in access to banks; random inversion of cells at the beginning of combat…), others are not so visible and are in fact confidential. The latter forms of measures allow us to identify bots more easily and to ban them from the game.
On top of all these measures, let’s not forget all the hours of hard work put in by volunteer moderators whose ranks have grown immensely these last few months and show no signs of slowing down. These volunteers spend most of their time finding and banning bots and farmers and the number of scammers banned daily can be anything from several thousand to several tens of thousand.
What’s more, we recently created a brand new position here at Ankama. Please welcome Tyg to the CCM team. He’s in charge of supervising the hunt for bots in game and along with Bill, the server Dev and Ludo, the Web Dev, he studies the behaviour of bots, bans any ones he sees and makes sure all our tools are running as they should.
So as you can see, we’re not resting on our laurels and our tools are getting better every day. Bots and farmers are a real hindrance to the MMO industry - few games are free of them – so much so that some players seem to think that, because they see bots so often, this means we aren’t doing anything about the problem. For every bot that is banned from the game, another arrives behind it.
One sure sign of our success is the increase in the price of Kamas on subscriber only servers by 30%, although the increase on other servers has been less noticeable.
This is a job that is never finished, there are always numerous bots in game, but please don’t conclude from this that all our efforts are in vain. We are also developing new long-term projects every day, many of which will arrive along with DOFUS 2.0 and which will give us a boost when it comes to our battle against the bots.
A few figures to finish (the numbers relate the total to present):
215,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in June 2008
320,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in July 2008
450,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in August 2008
900,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in September 2008
1,850,000 Kama farmer accounts banned in October 2008
2008-09-03 17:22:30
Changes to Xelors and to the AP/MP formula
For some time now we've been working on a new formula for the dodging and removal of AP/MP.
Here are the main principles we'd like to respect with our new formula:
- With equal wisdom, the probability of dodging a loss of AP/MP should be 1/2.
- During a PvP fight, a character with equal wisdom to his adversary should not be able to take more than 50% of their AP.
- The game's larger monsters (Bosses, mainly) shouldn't be able to have more than 50% of their AP removed (when faced with an adversary suited to the bosses level) without a specific tactic being used, based on a reduction in their dodging rate which happens over a number of turns.
- Spells which reduce a small amount of AP/MP should still be effective.
- Classes which have a limited capacity for AP/MP reduction shouldn't be penalized by a formula that's too restrictive.
- Builds based completely on AP/MP reduction should still be effective in PvM and PvP.
- investing in wisdom should remain profitable and attractive for both reduction and dodging [of AP/MP]
- the formula should remain relatively simple to calculate in your head so that the viability of a loss of AP/MP can be quickly estimated without the need to spend 3 years studying for a degree in mathematics.
In most cases, we feel that removing all of the AP/MP or even more than 75% of the AP/MP of an adversary isn't normal.
Removing just one AP/MP from an adversary is sufficient to completely destabilize a tactic.
The massive reduction of MP seems problematic to us, some classes can move using AP and all classes can attempt some defensive/offensive actions even when they're unable to move.
However, a massive reduction of AP/MP remains a tactic that we feel brings diversity to the game.
We don't want to make this tactic less effective, but we feel at the moment it's too easy to remove large amounts of AP/MP without constraint.
After our preliminary tests, the following formula appears to meet our needs:
Probability to make someone loose a AP/MP = Da / Dt * Pr / 2
With:
* Da: dodge of the attacker
* Dt: dodge of the target
* Pr: percentage of AP/MP that the target still has
The resulting probability is limited to a 10% minimum and a 90% maximum.
%resistance to a loss of AP/MP is handled like bonuses from wisdom
(a decrease of 50% corresponds to having 200 wisdom less)
Each attempt at dodging a loss is calculated separately, if a spell causes 3 AP to be removed, three dodging attempts will be calculated.
This formula means that each consecutive attempt to remove AP/MP from a target will be more difficult.
It also gives characters that aren't able to dodge AP/MP loss a progressively better chance of doing so.
It also means wisdom is still important in dodging.
This progressively better chance of dodging AP/MP loss allows us to keep a formula that's very effective for the removal of a moderate amount of AP/MP but forces those players who wish to base their entire game on AP/MP loss to have a large amount of wisdom and to weaken as much as possible the base probability of their adversary dodging AP/MP loss.
We're conscious of the fact that tactics based on removing AP are only effective on some monsters when a large amount of AP is removed.
An important factor is that monsters don't have a large enough variety of spells (compared to players) for us to be able to change their behavior when faced with a moderate loss of AP/MP.
Technical constraints relating to AI stop us from developing monsters with more than 4 spells (we make exceptions for certain larger monsters). We don't want to expand the range of spells of each monster.
However, we will try to take into consideration this tactic as early as possible in the conception of future monsters, to allow us to provide you with challenges where AP reduction is less effective.
Balancing of Xelor Spells
Xelors are the most effective class at removing AP and we want to change this aspect of the game.
We appreciate the diversity of specific builds (notably those builds exclusively designed for removing AP).
We feel that at the present time, Xelors are far too effective at removing AP - equally well in PvM as they are in PvP
The majority of classes have almost no viable alternative when faced with the massive AP loss caused by a Xelor in PvP.
With the new formula that we're currently testing, this problem isn't entirely settled, since the formula remains very permissive, and places a large importance on the wisdom of the attacker and the target.
We'd like Xelors to keep the possibility, in certain conditions, of taking a large amount of AP from their adversaries.
We've decided to tackle this problem by offering an alternative to the other classes to allow them to protect themselves to a certain extent from the massive loss of AP caused by a Xelor.
We plan to impose a minimum range of 3 squares on the majority of the AP reducing spells of Xelors (Time Theft, Slow Down, Hourglass and Frostbite)
It is amongst other things this minimum range that will offer the Xelor's adversaries the opportunity of dodging some of the loss of AP.
In concrete terms, at long range (more than 10), a Xelor will not be able to effectively use all of his AP reducing spells, which means the massive loss of AP from distance will be limited.
At short range, the Xelor will be incapable of using the majority of its AP reducing spells without being forced to distance itself at least 3 squares from its adversary.
At mid-range (3-8 squares) the Xelor will be able to use all of his AP reducing spells.
For the time being we've chosen this approach because the Xelor has two teleportation spells, one of which (Flight) has a very small AP cost, which will allow the Xelor to get away from a target that's too close without too much difficulty, before being able to more easily reduce the AP of its target.
By doing this, we're giving the other classes a chance to learn how to adapt to the range and positioning of a Xelor to give them an alternative tactic in PvP.
Here are the changes we plan to test shortly:
- Slow Down - minimum range of 3 squares
- Frostbite - minimum range of 3 squares, maximum range of 6 squares
-Time Theft - minimum range of 3 squares, range non-modifiable, maximum range of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 squares depending on the level of the spell
-Hourglass - minimum range of 3 squares, usage limited to once per target per turn (no longer once per turn, so it can now be used on multiple targets in the same turn)
-Xelor's Dial: maximum range of the summon modifiable to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 squares according to the level of the spell. The dial's spell goes from 4 to 6 range.
(Spell points will be given back.)
After our internal testing, these changes are, for the moment, conclusive. Xelors can, with difficulty, remove large amounts of AP/MP over the first few turns, but can still remove massive amounts of AP thanks to their spells that remove resistance to AP loss, if they employ (over an average of 4 turns) a tactic based on removing the AP and resistance to loss of AP of their target.
We know that these tests aren't enough to determine if these changes are correctly balanced and viable for the other classes.
These changes will be available on the test server in the weeks to come. We will closely follow your thoughts before refining these changes.
Here are the main principles we'd like to respect with our new formula:
- With equal wisdom, the probability of dodging a loss of AP/MP should be 1/2.
- During a PvP fight, a character with equal wisdom to his adversary should not be able to take more than 50% of their AP.
- The game's larger monsters (Bosses, mainly) shouldn't be able to have more than 50% of their AP removed (when faced with an adversary suited to the bosses level) without a specific tactic being used, based on a reduction in their dodging rate which happens over a number of turns.
- Spells which reduce a small amount of AP/MP should still be effective.
- Classes which have a limited capacity for AP/MP reduction shouldn't be penalized by a formula that's too restrictive.
- Builds based completely on AP/MP reduction should still be effective in PvM and PvP.
- investing in wisdom should remain profitable and attractive for both reduction and dodging [of AP/MP]
- the formula should remain relatively simple to calculate in your head so that the viability of a loss of AP/MP can be quickly estimated without the need to spend 3 years studying for a degree in mathematics.
In most cases, we feel that removing all of the AP/MP or even more than 75% of the AP/MP of an adversary isn't normal.
Removing just one AP/MP from an adversary is sufficient to completely destabilize a tactic.
The massive reduction of MP seems problematic to us, some classes can move using AP and all classes can attempt some defensive/offensive actions even when they're unable to move.
However, a massive reduction of AP/MP remains a tactic that we feel brings diversity to the game.
We don't want to make this tactic less effective, but we feel at the moment it's too easy to remove large amounts of AP/MP without constraint.
After our preliminary tests, the following formula appears to meet our needs:
Probability to make someone loose a AP/MP = Da / Dt * Pr / 2
With:
* Da: dodge of the attacker
* Dt: dodge of the target
* Pr: percentage of AP/MP that the target still has
The resulting probability is limited to a 10% minimum and a 90% maximum.
%resistance to a loss of AP/MP is handled like bonuses from wisdom
(a decrease of 50% corresponds to having 200 wisdom less)
Each attempt at dodging a loss is calculated separately, if a spell causes 3 AP to be removed, three dodging attempts will be calculated.
This formula means that each consecutive attempt to remove AP/MP from a target will be more difficult.
It also gives characters that aren't able to dodge AP/MP loss a progressively better chance of doing so.
It also means wisdom is still important in dodging.
This progressively better chance of dodging AP/MP loss allows us to keep a formula that's very effective for the removal of a moderate amount of AP/MP but forces those players who wish to base their entire game on AP/MP loss to have a large amount of wisdom and to weaken as much as possible the base probability of their adversary dodging AP/MP loss.
We're conscious of the fact that tactics based on removing AP are only effective on some monsters when a large amount of AP is removed.
An important factor is that monsters don't have a large enough variety of spells (compared to players) for us to be able to change their behavior when faced with a moderate loss of AP/MP.
Technical constraints relating to AI stop us from developing monsters with more than 4 spells (we make exceptions for certain larger monsters). We don't want to expand the range of spells of each monster.
However, we will try to take into consideration this tactic as early as possible in the conception of future monsters, to allow us to provide you with challenges where AP reduction is less effective.
Balancing of Xelor Spells
Xelors are the most effective class at removing AP and we want to change this aspect of the game.
We appreciate the diversity of specific builds (notably those builds exclusively designed for removing AP).
We feel that at the present time, Xelors are far too effective at removing AP - equally well in PvM as they are in PvP
The majority of classes have almost no viable alternative when faced with the massive AP loss caused by a Xelor in PvP.
With the new formula that we're currently testing, this problem isn't entirely settled, since the formula remains very permissive, and places a large importance on the wisdom of the attacker and the target.
We'd like Xelors to keep the possibility, in certain conditions, of taking a large amount of AP from their adversaries.
We've decided to tackle this problem by offering an alternative to the other classes to allow them to protect themselves to a certain extent from the massive loss of AP caused by a Xelor.
We plan to impose a minimum range of 3 squares on the majority of the AP reducing spells of Xelors (Time Theft, Slow Down, Hourglass and Frostbite)
It is amongst other things this minimum range that will offer the Xelor's adversaries the opportunity of dodging some of the loss of AP.
In concrete terms, at long range (more than 10), a Xelor will not be able to effectively use all of his AP reducing spells, which means the massive loss of AP from distance will be limited.
At short range, the Xelor will be incapable of using the majority of its AP reducing spells without being forced to distance itself at least 3 squares from its adversary.
At mid-range (3-8 squares) the Xelor will be able to use all of his AP reducing spells.
For the time being we've chosen this approach because the Xelor has two teleportation spells, one of which (Flight) has a very small AP cost, which will allow the Xelor to get away from a target that's too close without too much difficulty, before being able to more easily reduce the AP of its target.
By doing this, we're giving the other classes a chance to learn how to adapt to the range and positioning of a Xelor to give them an alternative tactic in PvP.
Here are the changes we plan to test shortly:
- Slow Down - minimum range of 3 squares
- Frostbite - minimum range of 3 squares, maximum range of 6 squares
-Time Theft - minimum range of 3 squares, range non-modifiable, maximum range of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 squares depending on the level of the spell
-Hourglass - minimum range of 3 squares, usage limited to once per target per turn (no longer once per turn, so it can now be used on multiple targets in the same turn)
-Xelor's Dial: maximum range of the summon modifiable to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 squares according to the level of the spell. The dial's spell goes from 4 to 6 range.
(Spell points will be given back.)
After our internal testing, these changes are, for the moment, conclusive. Xelors can, with difficulty, remove large amounts of AP/MP over the first few turns, but can still remove massive amounts of AP thanks to their spells that remove resistance to AP loss, if they employ (over an average of 4 turns) a tactic based on removing the AP and resistance to loss of AP of their target.
We know that these tests aren't enough to determine if these changes are correctly balanced and viable for the other classes.
These changes will be available on the test server in the weeks to come. We will closely follow your thoughts before refining these changes.
Thanks to Jiri for the translation
2008-08-22 18:00:49
Balancing of the Osamodas Class and its Summons
For the release for the 1.25.0 version, we intend to introduce numerous modifications to the Osamodas class.
We don't intend to make Osas much better at PVP in "one on one" mode.
Summons will be less obsolete at higher levels, but above all it's an Osa's usefulness in groups that we want to improve.
Making Osamodas more Versatile:
We're well aware of the problems faced by Osas who wish to have a useful role at the heart of a team.
As a result, we've decided to improve the support capabilities of this class by allowing Osas to cast their support spells on their allies as well as their summons.
In concrete terms, each support spell (Animal Healing, Bear's Cry, Toad etc.) will be able to be used however you want, on a summon, or an ally. It goes without saying that the effects on allies will be less powerful than on summons.
We want for Osas to be able to continue to use their summons in a group, which is why we're looking for a good balance between the benefits brought by using the support spells on summons or on allies.
In addition, for a long time, a secondary healing class has been missing from Dofus. With the exception of enirpsas, none of the other classes are effective at healing their allies (apart from those classes who sacrifice close combat by using healing weapons)
With this change, Osas will be able to effectively play the role of secondary healer, while keeping a great versatility.
Osas' support spells will be less effective on their allies than the support spells of other classes.
However, Osas will be the only class to have such a varied range of support spells at their disposal.
Characteristics of Summons:
We also wanted to review the role of each summon so that they all keep their interest over the course of an Osa's evolution.
As a result, each summon will have a major elemental resistance and weakness.
We are changing the Bwork Mage so that it is no longer in conflict with the Boar summon.
The Bwork Mage will only push its enemies one square but will now also reduce the MP of its target by 1.
The Tofu is generally considered a "temporary" creature that can only survive for a couple of turns at best.
We want to encourage players to protect this fragile creature. The Tofu will therefore have the possibility of stealing a few points of agility from its adversary with each attack. The longer it stays in play, the better its damage will be over the next turns and the more agility it will take from its enemies.
At a high level, the Gobball quickly becomes obsolete, and the role of tank or locker is given to the Crackler.
We want for these two summons to complement each other. The Crackler will keep its AP reducing capabilities, its large vitality and its resistances, but it will lose some of its locking ability.
The Gobball will be able to play the role of “locker" thanks to a considerably increased agility.
Level 6 Summons:
All the classes will have at their disposal level 6 summons.
The level 6 summons will have more vitality, better resistance and cause better damage.
These level 6 summons will counter the obsolete nature of some summons at high levels.
Modifications to the Evolutions of Summons:
Currently, each summon gains 1% damage and additional heals for each level of the caster.
We're changing this so that summons gain 1% of their base stats for each level of the caster.
In concrete terms, the evolution of the damage of each summon will stay the same, but the increase in their base characteristics will allow them to better lock their adversaries, to better avoid AP/MP loss and to better reduce the AP/MP of their enemies.
This change to the evolution of summons will also render higher-levelled summons less obsolete.
We've chosen a linear evolution as the appearance of level 6 summons will compensate for the non-linear evolution of the power of higher-levelled adversaries.
We've also decided to review the distribution of the base stats of summons to ensure a better coherence with the change to the evolution of summons.
As a result, the Intelligence of Osa's summons has been standardised, and the Toad spell changed so that each summon can benefit from the same level of protection when the spell is used.
Changes to Osamodas spells:
Some of the Osamodas' support spells will be reviewed, giving a better bonus to vitality, or giving greater damage.
The standardisation of the majority of the base stats of summons will allow us to have damage bonuses that have the same effect whatever the targeted Osa's summon.
Osamodas Special Class Spell:
The Osa special class spell will be called "Spiritual Leash".
It's a resurrection spell which only works on allies (and not on summons).
For a significant AP cost, it will allow the Osa to resurrect a dead ally.
This spell is only usable once per battle.
The revived character will come back to life with a very small percentage of its HP, which makes it particularly vulnerable.
As well, if the Osa dies, the revived character dies as well (as happens currently with summons.
It's a very powerful spell that gives the Osa class a unique talent.
In the future, it could be that certain monsters will be able to take advantage of this new talent as well.
The AI of Creatures:
With these changes, we're not planning to review the Artificial Intelligence (AI) of summons and other creatures in the game in general.
The changes to AI and its improvements are more complex technically, and we prefer to keep them separate from the changes to the game's design and balancing.
For AI, we eventually plan to separate the behaviour of monsters and the behaviour of summons.
We hope to put in place simpler, more predictable behaviours for summons.
For example, we'd like a summon that doesn't have a "fearful" nature to consistently attempt to attack its adversary without attempting to dodge it. This more simple behaviour will better allow the summoner to control which targets his summons attack.
A person specialising in AI is joining our development team in a few days, the game design team will work with them to work out which are the generic behaviours that we need to review, and what bugs there are with the current AI that need fixing.
We'll correct certain malfunctions with the existing AI over the months to come, but no major overhaul is expected until the start of 2009.
The changes to Osas will be tested on test servers in the weeks to come. We'll keep you informed when the test server will be available.
We don't intend to make Osas much better at PVP in "one on one" mode.
Summons will be less obsolete at higher levels, but above all it's an Osa's usefulness in groups that we want to improve.
Making Osamodas more Versatile:
We're well aware of the problems faced by Osas who wish to have a useful role at the heart of a team.
As a result, we've decided to improve the support capabilities of this class by allowing Osas to cast their support spells on their allies as well as their summons.
In concrete terms, each support spell (Animal Healing, Bear's Cry, Toad etc.) will be able to be used however you want, on a summon, or an ally. It goes without saying that the effects on allies will be less powerful than on summons.
We want for Osas to be able to continue to use their summons in a group, which is why we're looking for a good balance between the benefits brought by using the support spells on summons or on allies.
In addition, for a long time, a secondary healing class has been missing from Dofus. With the exception of enirpsas, none of the other classes are effective at healing their allies (apart from those classes who sacrifice close combat by using healing weapons)
With this change, Osas will be able to effectively play the role of secondary healer, while keeping a great versatility.
Osas' support spells will be less effective on their allies than the support spells of other classes.
However, Osas will be the only class to have such a varied range of support spells at their disposal.
Characteristics of Summons:
We also wanted to review the role of each summon so that they all keep their interest over the course of an Osa's evolution.
As a result, each summon will have a major elemental resistance and weakness.
We are changing the Bwork Mage so that it is no longer in conflict with the Boar summon.
The Bwork Mage will only push its enemies one square but will now also reduce the MP of its target by 1.
The Tofu is generally considered a "temporary" creature that can only survive for a couple of turns at best.
We want to encourage players to protect this fragile creature. The Tofu will therefore have the possibility of stealing a few points of agility from its adversary with each attack. The longer it stays in play, the better its damage will be over the next turns and the more agility it will take from its enemies.
At a high level, the Gobball quickly becomes obsolete, and the role of tank or locker is given to the Crackler.
We want for these two summons to complement each other. The Crackler will keep its AP reducing capabilities, its large vitality and its resistances, but it will lose some of its locking ability.
The Gobball will be able to play the role of “locker" thanks to a considerably increased agility.
Level 6 Summons:
All the classes will have at their disposal level 6 summons.
The level 6 summons will have more vitality, better resistance and cause better damage.
These level 6 summons will counter the obsolete nature of some summons at high levels.
Modifications to the Evolutions of Summons:
Currently, each summon gains 1% damage and additional heals for each level of the caster.
We're changing this so that summons gain 1% of their base stats for each level of the caster.
In concrete terms, the evolution of the damage of each summon will stay the same, but the increase in their base characteristics will allow them to better lock their adversaries, to better avoid AP/MP loss and to better reduce the AP/MP of their enemies.
This change to the evolution of summons will also render higher-levelled summons less obsolete.
We've chosen a linear evolution as the appearance of level 6 summons will compensate for the non-linear evolution of the power of higher-levelled adversaries.
We've also decided to review the distribution of the base stats of summons to ensure a better coherence with the change to the evolution of summons.
As a result, the Intelligence of Osa's summons has been standardised, and the Toad spell changed so that each summon can benefit from the same level of protection when the spell is used.
Changes to Osamodas spells:
Some of the Osamodas' support spells will be reviewed, giving a better bonus to vitality, or giving greater damage.
The standardisation of the majority of the base stats of summons will allow us to have damage bonuses that have the same effect whatever the targeted Osa's summon.
Osamodas Special Class Spell:
The Osa special class spell will be called "Spiritual Leash".
It's a resurrection spell which only works on allies (and not on summons).
For a significant AP cost, it will allow the Osa to resurrect a dead ally.
This spell is only usable once per battle.
The revived character will come back to life with a very small percentage of its HP, which makes it particularly vulnerable.
As well, if the Osa dies, the revived character dies as well (as happens currently with summons.
It's a very powerful spell that gives the Osa class a unique talent.
In the future, it could be that certain monsters will be able to take advantage of this new talent as well.
The AI of Creatures:
With these changes, we're not planning to review the Artificial Intelligence (AI) of summons and other creatures in the game in general.
The changes to AI and its improvements are more complex technically, and we prefer to keep them separate from the changes to the game's design and balancing.
For AI, we eventually plan to separate the behaviour of monsters and the behaviour of summons.
We hope to put in place simpler, more predictable behaviours for summons.
For example, we'd like a summon that doesn't have a "fearful" nature to consistently attempt to attack its adversary without attempting to dodge it. This more simple behaviour will better allow the summoner to control which targets his summons attack.
A person specialising in AI is joining our development team in a few days, the game design team will work with them to work out which are the generic behaviours that we need to review, and what bugs there are with the current AI that need fixing.
We'll correct certain malfunctions with the existing AI over the months to come, but no major overhaul is expected until the start of 2009.
The changes to Osas will be tested on test servers in the weeks to come. We'll keep you informed when the test server will be available.
Thanks to Jiri for the translation
2008-05-16 17:07:55
DOFUS 2.0 EX + Alpha Prime
Hello everybody!
Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Tyn (some of you know me by the name of Nimaoh), and I am the DOFUS client development manager here at Ankama. I said I’d cook up this l entry to go through some important aspects of DOFUS 2.0, whose release was announced last Friday.
First of all, I’ve noticed while reading your reactions that most of you were worried about performance. Will DOFUS still run on my current PC? Will I have to side-step Zaap maps for fear of my processor melting down? From the beginning, our intentions on this point have been clear: DOFUS 2.0 is designed with the same minimum system requirements as its younger brother in mind.
We think we’ll be able to achieve this objective by entirely rewriting the game client and optimising client/server communication. Let me explain: while the DOFUS you now know is a patchwork of 23 versions (already!), each of which adds its web of features, corrections, and problems, DOFUS 2.0 will be rewritten from zero. This will give us an opportunity to reassess and optimise any issues concerning the functioning of the program with the benefit of what we now know about how it’s used. Other relics whose usefulness has long gone out of date will be given a full burial with all the usual honors etc…
We’re also taking this chance to put many more options for improving performance in place – now you’ll be able to toggle the decorative effects in order to gain a few FPS (Frames Per Second, ie images per second), to reduce the resolution a little or to reduce the size of some caches to reduce memory consumption. A good number of other optimisations will become possible with the rewrite.
Staying with the technical side of things, another question I saw repeated a few times was – is DOFUS 2.0 in Flash? Well the answer is yes. Flash technology has always been one of Ankama’s strong points With DOFUS we pushed this technology further than we could have imagined up to then. With DOFUS 2.0, the leap forward will be almost as considerable. The years of experience garnered by our team (who’ve been excellent) have given us an impressive prowess in Flash.
By the way, if you’re a Flash/Actionscript 3 coder yourself, we are always looking for people with a high level of expertise in this area who are prepared to join us in overcoming the daily challenges we face in our work (abrakedabra!)
Now let’s talk about the graphical side of things. We’ll we’ve been through them with a fine toothed comb and couldn’t help notice that not everyone was quite happy with the DOFUS 2.0 screenshots that were sent out last Friday, particularly with the character design. You must understand that these characters were taken from Dofus Arena and are not necessarily the same as the characters in DOFUS 2.0. In fact designing avatars is a high priority in DOFUS 2.0. We don’t want to change their appearance completely, but we’d like to spruce them up a bit all the same.
Although characters in DOFUS 2.0 will be based on a universal ‘skeleton’ in order to facilitate their integration into the game and the placing of various equipment on them, this generic form will be ‘personalised’ according to class. So a Xelor will always be a little smaller than a Iop but bigger than an Eni… We’re really doing our best to make this skeleton as discreet as possible in game. Above all, we’re trying to retain that particular DOFUS spirit even if this might entail a little change in approach.
This tendency towards the use of generic skeletons will also serve to unify character design in Dofus Arena, Wakfu and DOFUS 2.0. There are various changes being made in order to knit these games closer together, while ensuring that they all keep their respective styles. Our focus on cross-game content is increasing as we try to unite all three communities across particular bridges between them. We want players to mingle regardless of which game they play and the possibilities that this sort of super-community suggest mean that we’ll certainly be paying more and more attention to this in future.
Another reaction we noticed on the forums was to the resemblance between Wakfu and Dofus Arena. I repeat that although there are many aspects of the design of all games that are drifting together, DOFUS 2.0 will remain DOFUS - we have no intention of changing that. The approach to the two games is different. Shadows in DOFUS 2.0 are created using rounded patches while in Wakfu they are done on a cell-by-cell basis. The transition between textures is softer in DOFUS, and more pronounced in Wakfu. Relief is approached in different ways in each game.
Most importantly, I want to tell you that your remarks have not fallen on deaf ears. We have a precise vision of where we want DOFUS to go, but since many aspects of the project remain ‘works-in-progress’, your opinion is always welcome. After all, we’re doing all this for you!
This post is by TYN
Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Tyn (some of you know me by the name of Nimaoh), and I am the DOFUS client development manager here at Ankama. I said I’d cook up this l entry to go through some important aspects of DOFUS 2.0, whose release was announced last Friday.
First of all, I’ve noticed while reading your reactions that most of you were worried about performance. Will DOFUS still run on my current PC? Will I have to side-step Zaap maps for fear of my processor melting down? From the beginning, our intentions on this point have been clear: DOFUS 2.0 is designed with the same minimum system requirements as its younger brother in mind.
We think we’ll be able to achieve this objective by entirely rewriting the game client and optimising client/server communication. Let me explain: while the DOFUS you now know is a patchwork of 23 versions (already!), each of which adds its web of features, corrections, and problems, DOFUS 2.0 will be rewritten from zero. This will give us an opportunity to reassess and optimise any issues concerning the functioning of the program with the benefit of what we now know about how it’s used. Other relics whose usefulness has long gone out of date will be given a full burial with all the usual honors etc…
We’re also taking this chance to put many more options for improving performance in place – now you’ll be able to toggle the decorative effects in order to gain a few FPS (Frames Per Second, ie images per second), to reduce the resolution a little or to reduce the size of some caches to reduce memory consumption. A good number of other optimisations will become possible with the rewrite.
Staying with the technical side of things, another question I saw repeated a few times was – is DOFUS 2.0 in Flash? Well the answer is yes. Flash technology has always been one of Ankama’s strong points With DOFUS we pushed this technology further than we could have imagined up to then. With DOFUS 2.0, the leap forward will be almost as considerable. The years of experience garnered by our team (who’ve been excellent) have given us an impressive prowess in Flash.
By the way, if you’re a Flash/Actionscript 3 coder yourself, we are always looking for people with a high level of expertise in this area who are prepared to join us in overcoming the daily challenges we face in our work (abrakedabra!)
Now let’s talk about the graphical side of things. We’ll we’ve been through them with a fine toothed comb and couldn’t help notice that not everyone was quite happy with the DOFUS 2.0 screenshots that were sent out last Friday, particularly with the character design. You must understand that these characters were taken from Dofus Arena and are not necessarily the same as the characters in DOFUS 2.0. In fact designing avatars is a high priority in DOFUS 2.0. We don’t want to change their appearance completely, but we’d like to spruce them up a bit all the same.
Although characters in DOFUS 2.0 will be based on a universal ‘skeleton’ in order to facilitate their integration into the game and the placing of various equipment on them, this generic form will be ‘personalised’ according to class. So a Xelor will always be a little smaller than a Iop but bigger than an Eni… We’re really doing our best to make this skeleton as discreet as possible in game. Above all, we’re trying to retain that particular DOFUS spirit even if this might entail a little change in approach.
This tendency towards the use of generic skeletons will also serve to unify character design in Dofus Arena, Wakfu and DOFUS 2.0. There are various changes being made in order to knit these games closer together, while ensuring that they all keep their respective styles. Our focus on cross-game content is increasing as we try to unite all three communities across particular bridges between them. We want players to mingle regardless of which game they play and the possibilities that this sort of super-community suggest mean that we’ll certainly be paying more and more attention to this in future.
Another reaction we noticed on the forums was to the resemblance between Wakfu and Dofus Arena. I repeat that although there are many aspects of the design of all games that are drifting together, DOFUS 2.0 will remain DOFUS - we have no intention of changing that. The approach to the two games is different. Shadows in DOFUS 2.0 are created using rounded patches while in Wakfu they are done on a cell-by-cell basis. The transition between textures is softer in DOFUS, and more pronounced in Wakfu. Relief is approached in different ways in each game.
Most importantly, I want to tell you that your remarks have not fallen on deaf ears. We have a precise vision of where we want DOFUS to go, but since many aspects of the project remain ‘works-in-progress’, your opinion is always welcome. After all, we’re doing all this for you!
This post is by TYN
2008-04-11 17:38:17
Changes to the perceptor system
We’ve been working on changes to the perceptor system this week and have almost finished. Some settings still have to be adjusted and tests must be run, but all going well the changes will come on line sometime next week.
This element of the game has been a source of many woes for a long time and we felt that it was finally time for an overhaul. We wanted to make perceptors more fun and more agreeable and took the following as our main aims:
- Perceptors must not disturb players
Perceptors must not be attacked because they take from players, but because of the resources that can potentially be gained from them
Victories against perceptors must bring drops that merit the risk
Guilds should not be able to have perceptors with fully developed characteristics (a choice to be made, then!)
Guilds should be able to personalise their perceptors according to their style of play and their community.
Perceptors will no longer steal the players’ loot. They’ll come in as an additional player who is last to draw (no matter its prospection) when the loot is handed out (they won’t come in the actual fight). Their prospection will not be added to the group’s total prospection. The preceptor’s prospection will only help him with his own probability to gain an item.
Perceptors will no longer steal other players’ experience. They will win experience at the end of a fight just like any other player (the XP will be calculated according to the group’s level.) The experience gained by the perceptor won’t affect the one gained by other players. They will be able to increase their perceptors’ wisdom so as to increase the level of XP they gain in combat.
The theft of Kamas during fights and their sale as well as the theft of resources collected will be cancelled definitively.
Players will have an additional incentive to attack perceptors because the XP perceptors gain will be stocked on them. The owners of the perceptor will have to come and ‘harvest’ XP so as to distribute it within their guild. In this way, a guild that attacks a perceptor and wins will have XP to distribute among them also.
On top of this, and to increase the likelihood that perceptors possess a good number of items, we have decided that once players have removed either items or XP, the perceptor will be automatically removed from the map. It will therefore be disadvantageous for guilds to come and collect from their perceptors too regularly, which will add further to the potential gains in attacking perceptors.
The time constraints on the placement of perceptors and the maximum number that may be placed per zone will be retained.
Players can now increase the following stats by spending the points their guild gains when it climbs in level:
The maximum number of perceptors per guild - there will be one available at the outset but now guilds will have to spend points to increase this limit, it will not happen automatically when its level increases.
Prospecting of perceptors (to help it bring in more items)
Wisdom of the perceptor (so that it wins more XP in combat)
Number of pods in the perceptor’s inventory - their inventory will be limited to 1,000 by default. Players can invest points to increase this limit.
Perceptor spells (all levels of all spells will require no more than 5 points)
With this new system, guilds with lower populations which have difficulty protecting their perceptors will now be able to increase the number of pods their perceptors have as well as their prospecting or their wisdom to the detriment of the number of perceptors they can place.
All points won by a guild will be entirely redistributed when these changes come into effect on the game servers.
This element of the game has been a source of many woes for a long time and we felt that it was finally time for an overhaul. We wanted to make perceptors more fun and more agreeable and took the following as our main aims:
- Perceptors must not disturb players
Perceptors must not be attacked because they take from players, but because of the resources that can potentially be gained from them
Victories against perceptors must bring drops that merit the risk
Guilds should not be able to have perceptors with fully developed characteristics (a choice to be made, then!)
Guilds should be able to personalise their perceptors according to their style of play and their community.
Perceptors will no longer steal the players’ loot. They’ll come in as an additional player who is last to draw (no matter its prospection) when the loot is handed out (they won’t come in the actual fight). Their prospection will not be added to the group’s total prospection. The preceptor’s prospection will only help him with his own probability to gain an item.
Perceptors will no longer steal other players’ experience. They will win experience at the end of a fight just like any other player (the XP will be calculated according to the group’s level.) The experience gained by the perceptor won’t affect the one gained by other players. They will be able to increase their perceptors’ wisdom so as to increase the level of XP they gain in combat.
The theft of Kamas during fights and their sale as well as the theft of resources collected will be cancelled definitively.
Players will have an additional incentive to attack perceptors because the XP perceptors gain will be stocked on them. The owners of the perceptor will have to come and ‘harvest’ XP so as to distribute it within their guild. In this way, a guild that attacks a perceptor and wins will have XP to distribute among them also.
On top of this, and to increase the likelihood that perceptors possess a good number of items, we have decided that once players have removed either items or XP, the perceptor will be automatically removed from the map. It will therefore be disadvantageous for guilds to come and collect from their perceptors too regularly, which will add further to the potential gains in attacking perceptors.
The time constraints on the placement of perceptors and the maximum number that may be placed per zone will be retained.
Players can now increase the following stats by spending the points their guild gains when it climbs in level:
The maximum number of perceptors per guild - there will be one available at the outset but now guilds will have to spend points to increase this limit, it will not happen automatically when its level increases.
Prospecting of perceptors (to help it bring in more items)
Wisdom of the perceptor (so that it wins more XP in combat)
Number of pods in the perceptor’s inventory - their inventory will be limited to 1,000 by default. Players can invest points to increase this limit.
Perceptor spells (all levels of all spells will require no more than 5 points)
With this new system, guilds with lower populations which have difficulty protecting their perceptors will now be able to increase the number of pods their perceptors have as well as their prospecting or their wisdom to the detriment of the number of perceptors they can place.
All points won by a guild will be entirely redistributed when these changes come into effect on the game servers.
2008-03-24 17:16:39
Support response time
This is the first article I’ve written for the devblog, although some of you have come across me before This time, I’m not here to wag my finger or ban you, but to nip certain rumours in the bud and to clear up some aspects of our job.
First of all, let me make it clear that the working hours of Support are from Monday to Friday, 9am to 12.30 pm and 2pm to 6pm. As of last week, we also have Support staff on call through the weekend.
It makes sense that you won’t receive any response from us outside of these hours. I can’t help thinking of the player who sent us a message saying “Answer me!” at three o’ clock in the morning in the middle of the week and who then proceeded to fire off a ticket every 5 minutes until it was finally time to go to sleep. So that’s cleared our working hours up.
As for different message categories, some are dealt with faster than others. Why? Well it’s quicker to send on a link for the password recovery form than to unravel the details surrounding the theft of an account after it’d been lent to a friend who’s not your friend anymore who sold it to someone…
And for the tricky ones among you, posting your problem under a section where you think it might get looked at faster won’t help you either. Any message that finds its way into the wrong section will be automatically rejected.
As for our policy on all tickets being replied to… If you don’t get a response, check your junk mail box. If you don’t find anything there, the address linked to your account must be invalid. In most cases, it’s nothing more than a typing mistake when players write the email. Go to the Support website, sign in and click on “See Tickets”.
Even when your message is refused, you will receive a reply, not necessarily what you want to hear, but a response nonetheless, such as in the following cases:
- Message is written in SMS speak or capitals
- Message is in the wrong section
- Message is incomprehensible and/or unreadable
- Message is written in insulting or disrespectful language
- Message is written from a third ¬party account
- Message is written for a friend, a guild member a parent etc.
In certain cases, Support will decline to respond altogether:
- Job applications for Ankama positions
- Requests for Hints and tips
- Suggestions for Game developments
How can you optimise response time?
Well it’s very simple… just fill in the form when you send a ticket. The details you are asked in this form are not there to look pretty, but serve to help us resolve your problem. If we do not have all the required information, we won’t be able to deal with your request. In this case we’ll ask you for the remaining information which will slow down the process.
One request = One ticket. More than one ticket per request slows down the process.
The key to success is a correctly filled out form and a message which gets right to the point of your problem, having been placed in the right section. It goes without saying that courtesy and politeness go a long way. “Go on modo, what are you doing, change my %^*(^& password”, usually this doesn’t cut it.
We make every effort to get back to players who follow the rules as quickly as possible. And if you have followed the rules and the reply is still taking too long? One word for you: “Patience!” Nothing stops you form having a look in the knowledge database (no, really, you’ll probably find the answer to your query there…)
[Article by Redfish!]
First of all, let me make it clear that the working hours of Support are from Monday to Friday, 9am to 12.30 pm and 2pm to 6pm. As of last week, we also have Support staff on call through the weekend.
It makes sense that you won’t receive any response from us outside of these hours. I can’t help thinking of the player who sent us a message saying “Answer me!” at three o’ clock in the morning in the middle of the week and who then proceeded to fire off a ticket every 5 minutes until it was finally time to go to sleep. So that’s cleared our working hours up.
As for different message categories, some are dealt with faster than others. Why? Well it’s quicker to send on a link for the password recovery form than to unravel the details surrounding the theft of an account after it’d been lent to a friend who’s not your friend anymore who sold it to someone…
And for the tricky ones among you, posting your problem under a section where you think it might get looked at faster won’t help you either. Any message that finds its way into the wrong section will be automatically rejected.
As for our policy on all tickets being replied to… If you don’t get a response, check your junk mail box. If you don’t find anything there, the address linked to your account must be invalid. In most cases, it’s nothing more than a typing mistake when players write the email. Go to the Support website, sign in and click on “See Tickets”.
Even when your message is refused, you will receive a reply, not necessarily what you want to hear, but a response nonetheless, such as in the following cases:
- Message is written in SMS speak or capitals
- Message is in the wrong section
- Message is incomprehensible and/or unreadable
- Message is written in insulting or disrespectful language
- Message is written from a third ¬party account
- Message is written for a friend, a guild member a parent etc.
In certain cases, Support will decline to respond altogether:
- Job applications for Ankama positions
- Requests for Hints and tips
- Suggestions for Game developments
How can you optimise response time?
Well it’s very simple… just fill in the form when you send a ticket. The details you are asked in this form are not there to look pretty, but serve to help us resolve your problem. If we do not have all the required information, we won’t be able to deal with your request. In this case we’ll ask you for the remaining information which will slow down the process.
One request = One ticket. More than one ticket per request slows down the process.
The key to success is a correctly filled out form and a message which gets right to the point of your problem, having been placed in the right section. It goes without saying that courtesy and politeness go a long way. “Go on modo, what are you doing, change my %^*(^& password”, usually this doesn’t cut it.
We make every effort to get back to players who follow the rules as quickly as possible. And if you have followed the rules and the reply is still taking too long? One word for you: “Patience!” Nothing stops you form having a look in the knowledge database (no, really, you’ll probably find the answer to your query there…)
[Article by Redfish!]
2008-02-25 16:57:55
Improvements to backups
For the past weeks, if you are an early bird at least, you may have seen these messages in-game:
Server backup processing… You can keep on playing, but access to the server is temporarily blocked. You will be able to access the server within a few moments. Thank you for your patience.
And a few minutes later...
Server backup completed. You can now access the server. Thank you for your understanding.
We have finally introduced a new system which allow us to backup data much more securely than before.
Historically, backups done during the day did not take into account ‘in-game’ elements which were being modified at the time. Only data outside the game, that is data of disconnected players, were saved in their final form.
To illustrate this, let us take the example of inventory backup. Inventories are backed up every X minutes and again when players disconnect. As a result, in the event of a server crash, certain data may not be up to date in the database. For example, you lend your Bora to a friend, you disconnect, you are saved without the Bora. The server then crashes before your friend’s details have been backed up. Your friend will also be saved without the Bora and so the Bora will disappear. Conversely, if you lend your Bora to a friend and stay in game and your friend disconnects, both of you will be saved with the Bora in the event of a server crash, and so the item is duplicated.
The only backups which were 100% secure were those done during the total shutdown on Tuesdays and Fridays, since server activity was nil.
All this has since changed. Backup now includes in-game elements, characters are frozen for several tenths of a second, in order to prepare the backup, and everything is correctly saved.
The cost of this procedure is minimal. Connections to the server are refused for its duration. In fact, to ensure that data is not changed along the way, the database is frozen for reading as well as writing.
Very soon we plan to back data up daily, probably around 6am. We are trying to establish other ideal times to back data up. Ideally this would occur around 11am and again around 4pm. The goal is to have regular backup events which will ensure that any rollback that occurs due to a crash (which we would rather avoid altogether) will be of a few hours at the most. So players will no longer lose huge amounts of data.
Since blocking connections to the server is disruptive, we must avoid periods of high volume. Peaks in connection, during the week at least, occur around midday and between 6pm and 10pm.
Server backup processing… You can keep on playing, but access to the server is temporarily blocked. You will be able to access the server within a few moments. Thank you for your patience.
And a few minutes later...
Server backup completed. You can now access the server. Thank you for your understanding.
We have finally introduced a new system which allow us to backup data much more securely than before.
Historically, backups done during the day did not take into account ‘in-game’ elements which were being modified at the time. Only data outside the game, that is data of disconnected players, were saved in their final form.
To illustrate this, let us take the example of inventory backup. Inventories are backed up every X minutes and again when players disconnect. As a result, in the event of a server crash, certain data may not be up to date in the database. For example, you lend your Bora to a friend, you disconnect, you are saved without the Bora. The server then crashes before your friend’s details have been backed up. Your friend will also be saved without the Bora and so the Bora will disappear. Conversely, if you lend your Bora to a friend and stay in game and your friend disconnects, both of you will be saved with the Bora in the event of a server crash, and so the item is duplicated.
The only backups which were 100% secure were those done during the total shutdown on Tuesdays and Fridays, since server activity was nil.
All this has since changed. Backup now includes in-game elements, characters are frozen for several tenths of a second, in order to prepare the backup, and everything is correctly saved.
The cost of this procedure is minimal. Connections to the server are refused for its duration. In fact, to ensure that data is not changed along the way, the database is frozen for reading as well as writing.
Very soon we plan to back data up daily, probably around 6am. We are trying to establish other ideal times to back data up. Ideally this would occur around 11am and again around 4pm. The goal is to have regular backup events which will ensure that any rollback that occurs due to a crash (which we would rather avoid altogether) will be of a few hours at the most. So players will no longer lose huge amounts of data.
Since blocking connections to the server is disruptive, we must avoid periods of high volume. Peaks in connection, during the week at least, occur around midday and between 6pm and 10pm.
2008-02-22 16:43:27
Dofus and your computer’s memory
Dofus and your computer’s memory… this subject regularly finds its way to the discussion table, so let me clarify a few points.
DOFUS consumes between 160 and 180 Mb of memory on average.
This figure can increase greatly if:
• You use the minimap (+20 Mb of RAM)
Reason:
Storing of map images in memory
• You are taking part in a fight (+5 to 20 Mb of RAM)
Reasons:
1. Loading of monsters’ skin
2. Loading of monster animations (increase in memory usage each time an animation is used for the first time)
• You are on a highly populated map
Reason:
Loading of players’ skins, guild insignias and mounts
• You enter a well-stocked market (a Resources' Market for example) (+10 to 30 Mb of RAM)
Reason:
Loading of object images (usually more than one hundred at once)
The above factors explain why the DOFUS client takes up more memory.
Why does memory usage not decrease once a fight has ended or I leave an over-populated map?
Simply because Flash stores this data in case it needs it later on. It will only delete this data if it has insufficient memory. In the same way, if you enjoy launching several clients at the same time, you’ll notice that each one takes up less space. It’s normal – Flash needs some memory so it does what it can to get it.
The problem is that you don’t quite have a handle on memory management.
Nevertheless, we are striving to improve consumption whenever we have the possibility.
A few tips:
- The power of your processor is very important since Flash currently does not use graphics cards
- You should use creature mode when in overpopulated areas (lowers memory usage noticeably and processer usage considerably)
- Close and relaunch the client from time to time if you notice that too much RAM is being taken up (lowers memory usage)
- Relaunch windows at least once a day
- Play in low or medium quality if you open more than one account at once (lowers processor usage.)
DOFUS consumes between 160 and 180 Mb of memory on average.
This figure can increase greatly if:
• You use the minimap (+20 Mb of RAM)
Reason:
Storing of map images in memory
• You are taking part in a fight (+5 to 20 Mb of RAM)
Reasons:
1. Loading of monsters’ skin
2. Loading of monster animations (increase in memory usage each time an animation is used for the first time)
• You are on a highly populated map
Reason:
Loading of players’ skins, guild insignias and mounts
• You enter a well-stocked market (a Resources' Market for example) (+10 to 30 Mb of RAM)
Reason:
Loading of object images (usually more than one hundred at once)
The above factors explain why the DOFUS client takes up more memory.
Why does memory usage not decrease once a fight has ended or I leave an over-populated map?
Simply because Flash stores this data in case it needs it later on. It will only delete this data if it has insufficient memory. In the same way, if you enjoy launching several clients at the same time, you’ll notice that each one takes up less space. It’s normal – Flash needs some memory so it does what it can to get it.
The problem is that you don’t quite have a handle on memory management.
Nevertheless, we are striving to improve consumption whenever we have the possibility.
A few tips:
- The power of your processor is very important since Flash currently does not use graphics cards
- You should use creature mode when in overpopulated areas (lowers memory usage noticeably and processer usage considerably)
- Close and relaunch the client from time to time if you notice that too much RAM is being taken up (lowers memory usage)
- Relaunch windows at least once a day
- Play in low or medium quality if you open more than one account at once (lowers processor usage.)
2008-02-20 16:05:44
Overview of lags and the state of the game
What an uphill battle...
Many of you have been complaining of the recent lags, so I would like to elaborate on some aspects of this. We are working on several fronts to improve the situation.
First of all: the hosting. Although it’s not the primary cause of lag issues, it limits our capacity to open new servers and it’s always beneficial to have some reserves. We were hoping to do it for the start of the year, it shouldn’t be long now. We’ve been announcing it for two months, but unfortunately it can’t happen overnight. We can’t just decided one day to ‘move house’, the servers must be prepared on the other side, their performance (which is a bit problematic at the moment) must be tested, network settings must be established and I won’t even get started on the administrative issues involved. I still can’t give you a date unfortunately, but it should happen soon.
As for the servers, we are making the most of the migration to refurbish them all. But that won’t change a whole lot as far as game performances are concerned. As it is now, the servers aren’t 100% occupied even at the busiest times during the day.
There are two types of lag, or three if you take all the elements into account.
First of all: the network lag. As for the servers, there’s nothing more to say, all is going well, though the ping speed leaves a lot to be desired. There could be several factors behind this. If it’s happening to everybody, it must be an issue with the server, or it could be due to an incident with their fibres or it could be something more suspect. If it’s not affecting everybody, it could be due to a problematic link with a particular service provider. These providers often share lines, so a problem from one provider can affect people from the others, even foreign ones who transmit information through French systems to access our servers. So if it affects only you, it must be a very narrow, localized issue, either with your computer or on the DSLAM or equivalent you are using.
As for mini-disconnections that happens in every system. Even if your MSN account seems to remain connected throughout, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the fault of our server. The thing is, MSN reconnects in half a second, with DOFUS, you notice it happening, it has to be done by hand. What is more, when you’re navigating between sites, a mini-disconnection has no impact. DOFUS requires a permanent connection, so one disconnection makes a big mess. We are continuing to test a solution which will allow reconnection during combat, this solution being necessary before the launch of the heroic server, but it’s not perfect just yet. Unfortunately DOFUS was designed in this way from the outset, so there are four or five years of code to adapt…
The second type of lag is ‘residual’, which usually happens when the system becomes saturated. In general, this type of lag is minimal and almost unnoticeable because it usually only lasts a few milliseconds. When the duration of this lag (which we see in real time and which lasts for as long as it takes for the instruction from the flash client to be received and to be processed by the server) reaches a certain point, we begin to intervene. We see if there are too many chat messages being sent, and if there are, we limit them. If there are too many players on certain maps, we render them instanced (which means that only one person may occupy each map at a time and you won’t see them nor they you). If it persists, we usually re launch the server to free up its memory and resources.
The corrections introduced on the 4th of January to the friend search function was linked to this residual lag, since searching was taking too long and, with several thousand connected, it was more common to see many searches being carried out at the same time. Everyone suffered.
In fact, it is the last case which is most frustrating, peaks of lag which can go on for as long as tens of seconds. This type of lag occurs relatively infrequently (during times of high use, we can get up to three or four per hour on highly populated server) and does not last too long (usually one to two minutes). We have identified some of the problems, which will be rectified along with the migration to the new server. It is caused by a sufficiently large number of packets being sent by the server. It is not solely an issue with bandwidth, the servers very rarely exceed the bandwidth allocated them even though the connection is 20 times faster, but more concerned with the number of packets which are transmitted. Suffice it to say that sending a packet of 10,000 bytes is quick but sending 10,000 packets of one byte is much slower, above all when it concerns thousands of recipients. The duration of this lag is not excessive, but it is very visible and frustrating.
We have put a sort of a ‘sniffer dog’ in place which specifically analyses the traffic during lag peaks of this kind. We have received very precise data on which areas to improve and step by step the developers are modifying each potential source of the lags.
We therefore expect great improvements to the game on this score. The new hoster will give us a lot of leeway, since the total network structures will have doubled and load-sharing will occur in real time.
In addition, many modifications are about to come on stream, and these will be put on line with each weekly maintenance. You may not notice a thing, but these improvements will group all these small messages into larger, but fewer, messages. The idea is simple, but adapting it to the system is not necessarily so. If a small package needs to be sent, you could say that it’s best to wait until more messages arrive so that they can be grouped together. But this creates a lag for the recipient who’s waiting for the information… We must therefore differentiate between packets according to their importance in order to send urgent elements right away and try to gather other messages into groups.
Las month was more difficult than most since it was holiday season and the normal rhythm of server population (peaks between 6:00 and 8:00 pm) turned into a constant demand. This understandably contributed to the level of latency, but on the bright side, it gave us an opportunity to look over a good number of potential factors linked to the lags. If only one element lay behind the issue, we would have sorted it out long ago, but many distinct and minute factors contribute which, when they occur at the same moment, can lead to a lag peak.
So, a few words before the Tuesday/Friday maintenances. These maintenances, even if they don’t add any elements to the game, will systematically introduce changes on the servers. They also serve to clean up character databases, to wipe the servers’ memory and to carry out work on the disks and the connection databases. Without these maintenances, queues and other annoying little things would occur much more frequently.
It can happen that a bug occurs in the course of a maintenance, even if work was only being carried out on non-game elements. In this case, according to the severity of the bug and the time it takes to correct it, we have to re launch the servers, or if the problem is not too critical, we can wait until the next maintenance. But the intention from the outset, the modifications carried out, would still constitute an over all improvement, be it to performance, stability or security.
Well, there you have it. Please don’t be too harsh on my spelling mistakes, it’s late and I doubt Kaoly will have the time to read over this. I hope I have managed to answer some of your questions and given you some confidence in the next few advances we are preparing to bring to the game.
Concerning connection problems:
For some days now we have been experiencing crashes in the chain of connection, which according to reports are due to an excessive number of simultaneous connections. As much as I’d like to believe it at 6pm, I have more doubts about the origin of the problem when it happens at five o’clock in the morning.
We therefore intend to do two things right away:
• Develop crash-proof servers (well, that doesn’t exist, but we’re going to develop more powerful servers which will be able to take more of a beating)
• Limit the number of IP connections within certain time frames to put an end to improper use.
The entire structure of the game is already in the process of being redeveloped so as to solve the case of the ‘missing server’.
A few weeks ago, we put a series of server optimisations on stream, which we were able to finalize during the holidays. Some will say that it’s coming a bit late, but it’s better late than never, as they say.
We should experience a considerable gain in terms of lags, which should be much less evident in the game.
As you know, the holidays, are over, so the daytime is a more ‘chilled out’ time for the servers, but the peak period between eight and nine o’clock on some days demonstrated that these modifications brought the desired results.
We are not resting on our laurels, though. We are continuing to track the sources of the lags and constantly trying to anticipate what might cause them to manifest themselves.
Happy gaming!
Many of you have been complaining of the recent lags, so I would like to elaborate on some aspects of this. We are working on several fronts to improve the situation.
First of all: the hosting. Although it’s not the primary cause of lag issues, it limits our capacity to open new servers and it’s always beneficial to have some reserves. We were hoping to do it for the start of the year, it shouldn’t be long now. We’ve been announcing it for two months, but unfortunately it can’t happen overnight. We can’t just decided one day to ‘move house’, the servers must be prepared on the other side, their performance (which is a bit problematic at the moment) must be tested, network settings must be established and I won’t even get started on the administrative issues involved. I still can’t give you a date unfortunately, but it should happen soon.
As for the servers, we are making the most of the migration to refurbish them all. But that won’t change a whole lot as far as game performances are concerned. As it is now, the servers aren’t 100% occupied even at the busiest times during the day.
There are two types of lag, or three if you take all the elements into account.
First of all: the network lag. As for the servers, there’s nothing more to say, all is going well, though the ping speed leaves a lot to be desired. There could be several factors behind this. If it’s happening to everybody, it must be an issue with the server, or it could be due to an incident with their fibres or it could be something more suspect. If it’s not affecting everybody, it could be due to a problematic link with a particular service provider. These providers often share lines, so a problem from one provider can affect people from the others, even foreign ones who transmit information through French systems to access our servers. So if it affects only you, it must be a very narrow, localized issue, either with your computer or on the DSLAM or equivalent you are using.
As for mini-disconnections that happens in every system. Even if your MSN account seems to remain connected throughout, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the fault of our server. The thing is, MSN reconnects in half a second, with DOFUS, you notice it happening, it has to be done by hand. What is more, when you’re navigating between sites, a mini-disconnection has no impact. DOFUS requires a permanent connection, so one disconnection makes a big mess. We are continuing to test a solution which will allow reconnection during combat, this solution being necessary before the launch of the heroic server, but it’s not perfect just yet. Unfortunately DOFUS was designed in this way from the outset, so there are four or five years of code to adapt…
The second type of lag is ‘residual’, which usually happens when the system becomes saturated. In general, this type of lag is minimal and almost unnoticeable because it usually only lasts a few milliseconds. When the duration of this lag (which we see in real time and which lasts for as long as it takes for the instruction from the flash client to be received and to be processed by the server) reaches a certain point, we begin to intervene. We see if there are too many chat messages being sent, and if there are, we limit them. If there are too many players on certain maps, we render them instanced (which means that only one person may occupy each map at a time and you won’t see them nor they you). If it persists, we usually re launch the server to free up its memory and resources.
The corrections introduced on the 4th of January to the friend search function was linked to this residual lag, since searching was taking too long and, with several thousand connected, it was more common to see many searches being carried out at the same time. Everyone suffered.
In fact, it is the last case which is most frustrating, peaks of lag which can go on for as long as tens of seconds. This type of lag occurs relatively infrequently (during times of high use, we can get up to three or four per hour on highly populated server) and does not last too long (usually one to two minutes). We have identified some of the problems, which will be rectified along with the migration to the new server. It is caused by a sufficiently large number of packets being sent by the server. It is not solely an issue with bandwidth, the servers very rarely exceed the bandwidth allocated them even though the connection is 20 times faster, but more concerned with the number of packets which are transmitted. Suffice it to say that sending a packet of 10,000 bytes is quick but sending 10,000 packets of one byte is much slower, above all when it concerns thousands of recipients. The duration of this lag is not excessive, but it is very visible and frustrating.
We have put a sort of a ‘sniffer dog’ in place which specifically analyses the traffic during lag peaks of this kind. We have received very precise data on which areas to improve and step by step the developers are modifying each potential source of the lags.
We therefore expect great improvements to the game on this score. The new hoster will give us a lot of leeway, since the total network structures will have doubled and load-sharing will occur in real time.
In addition, many modifications are about to come on stream, and these will be put on line with each weekly maintenance. You may not notice a thing, but these improvements will group all these small messages into larger, but fewer, messages. The idea is simple, but adapting it to the system is not necessarily so. If a small package needs to be sent, you could say that it’s best to wait until more messages arrive so that they can be grouped together. But this creates a lag for the recipient who’s waiting for the information… We must therefore differentiate between packets according to their importance in order to send urgent elements right away and try to gather other messages into groups.
Las month was more difficult than most since it was holiday season and the normal rhythm of server population (peaks between 6:00 and 8:00 pm) turned into a constant demand. This understandably contributed to the level of latency, but on the bright side, it gave us an opportunity to look over a good number of potential factors linked to the lags. If only one element lay behind the issue, we would have sorted it out long ago, but many distinct and minute factors contribute which, when they occur at the same moment, can lead to a lag peak.
So, a few words before the Tuesday/Friday maintenances. These maintenances, even if they don’t add any elements to the game, will systematically introduce changes on the servers. They also serve to clean up character databases, to wipe the servers’ memory and to carry out work on the disks and the connection databases. Without these maintenances, queues and other annoying little things would occur much more frequently.
It can happen that a bug occurs in the course of a maintenance, even if work was only being carried out on non-game elements. In this case, according to the severity of the bug and the time it takes to correct it, we have to re launch the servers, or if the problem is not too critical, we can wait until the next maintenance. But the intention from the outset, the modifications carried out, would still constitute an over all improvement, be it to performance, stability or security.
Well, there you have it. Please don’t be too harsh on my spelling mistakes, it’s late and I doubt Kaoly will have the time to read over this. I hope I have managed to answer some of your questions and given you some confidence in the next few advances we are preparing to bring to the game.
Concerning connection problems:
For some days now we have been experiencing crashes in the chain of connection, which according to reports are due to an excessive number of simultaneous connections. As much as I’d like to believe it at 6pm, I have more doubts about the origin of the problem when it happens at five o’clock in the morning.
We therefore intend to do two things right away:
• Develop crash-proof servers (well, that doesn’t exist, but we’re going to develop more powerful servers which will be able to take more of a beating)
• Limit the number of IP connections within certain time frames to put an end to improper use.
The entire structure of the game is already in the process of being redeveloped so as to solve the case of the ‘missing server’.
A few weeks ago, we put a series of server optimisations on stream, which we were able to finalize during the holidays. Some will say that it’s coming a bit late, but it’s better late than never, as they say.
We should experience a considerable gain in terms of lags, which should be much less evident in the game.
As you know, the holidays, are over, so the daytime is a more ‘chilled out’ time for the servers, but the peak period between eight and nine o’clock on some days demonstrated that these modifications brought the desired results.
We are not resting on our laurels, though. We are continuing to track the sources of the lags and constantly trying to anticipate what might cause them to manifest themselves.
Happy gaming!
2008-01-03 18:16:37
The Support loves you! Please love us back...
Ever since the release of the DOFUS devblog, and especially since the Presentation of the team was uncovered to you, the adored, adoring public, not a day goes by where I don’t feel the empty, tear-filled gazes scrutinizing me here in the shadow… you know what I mean, that look that carefully cuts your heart up slice by slice... puppy eyes!
It’s true my sidekicks in Support are little known, the poor things, and so you’re getting an exclusive opportunity to meet them, to keep their ego from sinking altogether and to keep my conscience from going down with it (damn it, I feel so sorry for those guys).
Right, here goes nothing:
Bii : Watch out, it’s Bii the boss! She’s our own little queen bee, honey included. I’m not saying she’s sticky, just that she’s incredibly sweet… a lot better in my opinion. She spends her day munching on little sugary bits, like myself, but unlike me, she manages to keep in shape...
Redfish : Our little Northern light, who has the special gift of always arriving with his head in the clouds. Being the boss' lieutenant, he lets out an incessant droning noise and tries for better or worse to hide his perverse spirit behind a mercenary front. Sometimes he's almost nice... but never to you.
Sato : He has a compulsive problem with bots - once he sees one, he is driven into some kind of frenzy and starts banning them over and over again. Besides that strange aspect of his personality, Sato is almost normal, leaving in the middle of his cactuses and worshipping strange Japanese teddy bears… Maybe being part of the Technical Support Team got his brain washed, he now believes that the Chosen One in the Prophecy is Luke Skywalker when everybody knows it has always been Anakin!
Necros : If you don't know him it's not too late, but if you do, guess you won’t be surprised if I tell you that he is very scary with his 'Toys' bought overseas for some unknown purpose, better not think too much about it… This is the guy who makes you wonder ‘What’s he building in there?’ Apart from the frightening nickname, he has a collection of dead carnivorous plants on his desk. This guy is clearly not right in the head. He spends his days fantasizing about naked Spawn and Saint-Seiya figurines…
El-Tux : Beyond the fact that he has spends a long time grooming himself and that he wears glasses that are out of this world, I really don’t have much to say about our new guinea-pig for the Spanish Support. He seems nice, let’s see how it goes.
Okajin : A funny young man who talks about himself a lot and who listens to loud music, turning the support desk into a mini club. This explains why I feel so close to him. Ah, he’s good at heart and full of energy, a little too much, maybe, but he’s a gamer… a hardcore gamer with the finger muscles to prove it… Now that means a lot.
Sept : I’ve already been honored with a description, so I won’t add to that… it’s just not cool. I just want to say that I am not obsessed with pink. So you know.
Méluze : A pure Iopette like none I’ve ever seen before. There’s no one like her to kick at the stable door. She’s also the last to close it! Since she came along, the support desk has come to resemble an armory, which keeps Bill happy… he’s finally found someone to shoot the breeze with. As for me, I always keep her sword nearby… you never know what’ll happen with the team that surrounds me…
It’s true my sidekicks in Support are little known, the poor things, and so you’re getting an exclusive opportunity to meet them, to keep their ego from sinking altogether and to keep my conscience from going down with it (damn it, I feel so sorry for those guys).
Right, here goes nothing:
Bii : Watch out, it’s Bii the boss! She’s our own little queen bee, honey included. I’m not saying she’s sticky, just that she’s incredibly sweet… a lot better in my opinion. She spends her day munching on little sugary bits, like myself, but unlike me, she manages to keep in shape...
Redfish : Our little Northern light, who has the special gift of always arriving with his head in the clouds. Being the boss' lieutenant, he lets out an incessant droning noise and tries for better or worse to hide his perverse spirit behind a mercenary front. Sometimes he's almost nice... but never to you.
El-Tux : Beyond the fact that he has spends a long time grooming himself and that he wears glasses that are out of this world, I really don’t have much to say about our new guinea-pig for the Spanish Support. He seems nice, let’s see how it goes.
Okajin : A funny young man who talks about himself a lot and who listens to loud music, turning the support desk into a mini club. This explains why I feel so close to him. Ah, he’s good at heart and full of energy, a little too much, maybe, but he’s a gamer… a hardcore gamer with the finger muscles to prove it… Now that means a lot.
Sept : I’ve already been honored with a description, so I won’t add to that… it’s just not cool. I just want to say that I am not obsessed with pink. So you know.
