ATTENTION! New group/raid invite system needs testing. What's in it for you

Taryth

Administrator
Staff member
So after about a month of rework, it looks like we're ready to start testing a new raid/group system. As anyone familiar with these sorts of changes knows, they often break quite a few things, and sometimes make the situation worse. Hopefully that's not the case here.

However, since the changes are so massive, we're going to open up the test server in the next couple of days to folks and test real scenarios to make sure things are working properly. Since test is fully independent, the question arises: what's in it for me?

For testing, we'd like to simulate proper raids and groups. To that end, if you are willing to put together a raid and walk through a proper test of the system, we will transfer loot from one encounter to the corresponding characters on live. The encounter you want not up? We're willing to pop any encounter of your choice for testing. This is only open to one encounter per guild right now, so pick your targets wisely. If we have future rounds of testing, we may do it again. If you need an encounter popped, it's best to coordinate that with the GM/dev staff before you're assembled so you're not waiting around with a raid and nothing to do!

Rules:
- 18-man encounters only (for now). You're welcome to kill anything you like to test, but we will only transfer loot from full raids. It can be a lower tier target I guess, but we want at least 15 or so people to participate so we've got three active groups.
- You need to kill the target legitimately. If something bugs out, offer is null and void, sorry
- Need to do proper clears, etc. The goal is to test things as close to a real scenario as possible, this means clearing and doing other things you'd normally do
- This is targeted at guilds and other established groups just because of logistics. If you want to do a PUG that's fine, but we reserve the right to deny loot transfers. It's best to check with us if you want to PUG something so you don't waste your time
- ALL LIVE RULES APPLY! Don't consider the testing server a free-for-all; we expect you to follow normal rules there as well
- Gear and such is that in place as of the morning of 10/25. No we won't transfer newer items. Logins are the same, you will just select the Test server at server select. If it is Locked, we are currently not allowing new players in, so check back later.

What we need tested, specifically:

- Groups form correctly, carry across zones, handle disconnects/disbands appropriately
- Ditto raids, especially handling people going linkdead (this ideally means some people pull the plugs on their connections)
- People are appropriately kicked out of group/raid when they leave and don't return in an "incomplete" state (some people see them in raid/group, some don't, etc.)
- Raid management features work - you should be able to use the raid console to move people around, etc. Note that there are some limitations, like reassigning group leaders, but from a practical perspective this seems to be minor
- HP/mana/endurance packets work
- /makeleader (for groups) and other commands work
- Cross-zone invites work
- Out-of-group raid members work
- Spells/songs hit all group/raid members as appropriate
- Other funky edge cases you can think of

Please use this thread to report issues, and please check to see if someone already reported it. /bug is too much noise for this, and I think posting here is the best way to get things fixed quickly.
 
First major issue we have encountered occurred when the following happened

1. Group leader forms a group with two other people char A, B, and C. A being leader.
2. A and B zone into new zone everything still OK.
3. A then dies and upon zoning client crashes.
4. Upon loading back in A still see's B and C in group.
5. B can only see C in group, and C see's no one.
6. Group buffs cast by A still land on all people.
7. C can then invite char D.
8. Char D and C can see each other. Buffs by char A now land on all 4 members.

Disbanding on all characters prevents anyone from re making the group EXCEPT char A can invite char D to a group.

Logged all characters out to try and reset grouping.

Upon logging back in characters A and B still have a disband button. Unable to create new group.
 
Going off of Hal's post (I was Char C and D). Logged my two characters out and tried more things.

1. Upon logging back in, Char C was still in a "group" and could disband endlessly. Char D was not in a group and could be invited, but not invite Char C.
2. Char C could invite Char D, and Char D could see Char C's group text but not vise versa.

The only way I managed to get back to being able to form a normal group was to:

1. Raid invite Char D from Char C. This formed no groups, but had them in the raid window.
2. Once both players raid disbanded, they could be invited to groups again and disband freely.

Once these two characters were back to "normal".. Char A zoned back in (still "bugged"), the same stuff started happening again.

Edit**

I've noticed that when forming groups, there is no "Green Name" that indicates a leader regardless of the above potential bugs. ONLY until a raid is formed, does green text show up on a name.

I played around with moving people in raid window, and it seemed to work pretty good. I had troubles Unlocking the raid after a few switches and stuff, but the zone crashed so I'm not sure if that was related or not.
 
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OK, good notes, especially since these situations were (I believe) working on on test. Working on them, thanks already!
 
Found the issues people mentioned, they were all related, so making that all a bit more durable. Should have them updated this weekend - they are tricky to work out.
 
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Updated 5pm 10/27: should hopefully fix Haloria's reported bug. I need to see if it addressed what Emzur mentioned too; the groups should handle linkdeads and leader changes better now, but I anticipate some more weird things, too. Found a major underlying bug as well that may fix a lot, we'll see. Good work guys!
 
We went through it last night, had a fully functional raid where the only fix that was absolutely necessary was fixing group-only spells, now corrected. Three issues I know need addressing yet:

1) Raid member mana/endurance bars don't always show up after zoning
2) Disbanding sometimes isn't complete - your raid may still see you in it, but you can't disband (if this happens, just /raidinv the person as a workaround and they will pop back into place)
3) Need better messaging around inviting people who are already in a raid

I'm very pleased with where things are at. Please do some more testing, especially non-raid groups; if all goes well, we might be able to get this out in the next week or two.
 
One other thing - if you find a no rent halloween QP during testing, let me know if you need it on the production server. We're almost out of time to finish up the quest - just let me know what it dropped off.
 
1. Invited 2 characters to group, formed
2. They died, were rezed
3. Could not summon food/drink on them, their stamina/mana were not visible
4. Broke group, reinvited, zone crashed
 
Group shrink not targeting other groups.
Group cunning not working on other groups after dying and rezzing back in to zone.
 
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Collating all of the above into details:

1. Forming the raid inside the zone worked, when the raid wiped upon zoning back to bind points everyone's mana / stam was displayed as 0 and would not update.
2. Upon ressing back to raid zone. The people that zoned before you their mana/stam would appear to be full, but would not update any more.
3. People who zoned in after you their mana/stam appeared at 0 and would not update during fight.
4. Group buffs could not be targeted onto other groups such as casting cunning / shrink onto the caster group while the caster was in the melee group. This was with TGB on.
-Could not summon things such as food and water with clickies to other raid members outside of group.
5. Locking group windows and moving people from one group to another would break the order people appearing in the group windows for people.
-Main tank forms raid they should be the f2 spot for group one and never move
-Groups do not appear in players group window in the same order they are appearing in the raid management window.
-Every zone change or group member movement would re order the groups in everyone's group window and would not match the order appearing in the Raid Window.


Side Note: No one seemed to get the invis group member bug.
 
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1. Forming the raid inside the zone worked, when the raid wiped upon zoning back to bind points everyone's mana / stam was displayed as 0 and would not update.
2. Upon ressing back to raid zone. The people that zoned before you their mana/stam would appear to be full, but would not update any more.
3. People who zoned in after you their mana/stam appeared at 0 and would not update during fight.

Should be addressed for next patch (I hope). Those packets are tricky. Working on the others.
 
/tgb on doesn't work

When the 6th person to join a group already in raid disbands group and raid, and a new person gets invited in their place, the whole group explodes to its members, but not to others in raid.
 
OK, I am continuing to make changes that will require more testing. As such, after the patch tomorrow I will open another round of loot-for-testing. If the test server isn't up, it means things aren't in a state to test, but if it is, feel free to claim your second set of loot (assuming you got a first!). Same rules, etc., though I want to mention you can box in as many for buffs as you like - just NOT for killing, etc. where two box rules apply. The goal is to simplify testing and speed it up some, and I think that's fair. Likewise, if I'm around and you could use a res to restart an event or something, let me know.
 
OK, going to go forward with opening things tomorrow. Updates have focused almost exclusively on raids rather than non-raided groups, so please spend extra time beating on those. Specifically, the following should be fixed as of 11/10/17:

1. Stamina/mana should display consistently now, and should update
2. Targeted group buffs (like Cunning of the Beast) should hit the right group. Raid-wide buffs should hit everyone.
3. Ordering of group members within a raid should be more stable. Group leaders should always appear as F2 target. Note that other slots may bounce around a bit, but I can live with that for now
4. Disbanding should work correctly now, both when a player disbands him/herself or is forcibly disbanded by the raid leader
5. Raid member list should always show correctly now for all players

Please really really give raids a going-over. We'll address non-raid groups once these are done, as they are simpler by comparison. But consider the offer open on loot from test now (one more per guild), PROVIDED you give me feedback on how it went (even if it was perfect, just say 'hey nothing broke').

I want this done well before Thanksgiving! Sorry Euros and Canadians, you have no idea what that is. And no, Canadian Thanksgiving doesn't count.
 
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