You wanted it on the forums here it is... SHIFTERS

Ebenezer Grymm · Post by **Ebenezer Grymm** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:05 pm

I'll start.

It's not even a "You shouldn't PK shifters" issue. You can't kill them at all or the server crashes.

You PK a shifter, server crash. You defend your relic against a shifter, server crash. You raid a relic and kill a shifter, server crash and relic is returned. Shifter walks into the negative energy plane and dies, server crash.

Everything on this server is so nice and balanced so well it's not right to have one class that screws everyone up like that.

My solution, either disable shifter as a class until problem is 100% solved, or disable whatever script was added that changed shifters so that this occurs.

The one main thing right now is one particular shifter who likes to blame the server crash on the person killing him. It's not the person killing hims script that is crashing the server.

Thats all I have to say about it, everyone please feel free to comment and lets get this mess sorted out once and for all.

*I don't want this to be an arguement, just post what you think the problem is and what should be done about it*

Go'f · Post by **Go'f** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:10 pm

In my understanding doing something massivley disruptive or that could force a crash is considered an exploit and therefore bannable?

Play a shifter eo ipso risk a ban

Dynmi · Post by **Dynmi** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:49 pm

Nobody complains that you kill a shifter. It is when you consistently kill the SAME shifter every 2-5 minutes.

Go'f · Post by **Go'f** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:54 pm

The whole game crashes and everyone gets logged out and potentially loses levels and gear and no one is upset by that, apart from the shifter if he has been target of several successive Pk ?

Things must have chilled a bit since I was last on prime

Dynmi · Post by **Dynmi** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 9:56 pm

They must have. Rest and use your book often.

kgb · Post by **kgb** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 11:58 pm

Unfortunately Dynmi resting and using your book is not good enough.

Having lost levels and items for doing exactly as you suggest I would stress to all players especially new ones to the server is this:

1. If you gain a level be it 2nd or 40th rest and log out and back in.
2. If you find a unique item or have bought/sold a stack of gear do the same as in 1.
3. Whenever you feel it is important.

Nothing is ever 100% bulletproof but this is the best way I know to avoid instability issues with the server.

Others have suggested this so I am simply reiterated the importance to new players who are not aware of the bug.

It would be a shame if we had to freeze shifters but after all the majority of players are affected by a minority - isn't that how we get the mainstream vs margin argument.

Yep those shifters are on the edge in more ways than one

MasterYoda · Post by **MasterYoda** » Mon Feb 26, 2007 11:58 pm

MD .... u guys have constantly been hunting the one shifter....

the other night with Silvanuses event u crashed the server shich costed 90 mins of preperation down the drain.

Now u say its not intentional.

But the SAME GUY is being killed by u over and over and over again.

You can say what you want about "i didnt know" or "im not doing it on porpous" but when it comes down to it the DMs are smarter than that.

Moving on.....

You cant disable the shifter class. If you do then you would have to give TC another PRC which is specific for the faction. Lets use SD for example.

Now everyone who has a SD and cant use them cause there not out of the circle and now anyone who wants to make one gets to complain that its not fail so and so has one out of SL i want one too.

So now by banning shifters u would have to wipe the server. Cause it would be way easier on the devs to wipe the server than to delevel and relevel everyones hipser to be from the circle.

And if a wipe occurs then everyone starts from scratch again .....

My advice?

Its a game and its XP. U can still gain it tomorrow. Yeah it sucks really bad when one occurs that could have been avoided but in reality it is a game and there are bugs.

kgb · Post by **kgb** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:08 am

MasterYoda - I think there are a large number of builds possible in TC that invariably do not need the shifter class. To play the TC faction just for the Shifter class is kind of narrow. I see relatively few assassins in SL or CoTs in NC etc.

The majority who, as you mention may have SD toons should not be penalised by a faction specific class bug.

Given the choice I believe the Devs would be more favourable towards freezing Shifters for a specific period while they are able to work the problem out rather than grant another Prestige Class to TC (Harpers are looking lonely) over that troubleshoot period only for them to become useless when the shifter gets fixed.

This is of course based on if it's even possible to place such limitations retrospectively.

MLoki · Post by **MLoki** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:23 am

Unfortunatly it's not even just shifters that can cause a crash. So what you are suggesting is to ban Shifters, Rangers, Wizards, Sorcerers, and Druids. All of these classes can "shift" and they can all cause the server to crash. Instead of having the Devs eliminate all the possible ways players can shift let them spend about the same amount of time to find an answer.

Alot of work has been done to make shifting more enjoyable and at one point it seems that the Devs had even found a way to reduce the crashes. The Devs know there is a problem with shifters so let them do what they need to do instead of causing more problems by having them deal with all the complaints as well.

MLoki

Merrip · Post by **Merrip** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:24 am

There still that issue of crashing with shifters coming out of hips on you? Or that been resolved?

Dynmi · Post by **Dynmi** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:22 am

kgb wrote:MasterYoda - I think there are a large number of builds possible in TC that invariably do not need the shifter class. To play the TC faction just for the Shifter class is kind of narrow. I see relatively few assassins in SL or CoTs in NC etc.

Terrible point here, any build from TC can be done almost anywhere else, shifter is the one thing that gives it reason. You see relatively few assassins in SL, I see no SL members.

Loki brought up great points, any shape change causes this, and frankly I only know of 3 shifters, myself being one of them. To tell you the truth most of the time when I die shifted the server is fine. There has been much improvement since the beginning.

Just play cautious folks, sometimes the server just crashes and it has nothing to do with shifting.

(I I don't know anything of HIPSing crashes never seen one personally)

Post by **Binkyuk** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 9:41 am

MLoki is very right, this isn't just a Shifter issue. It happens to Dragonshape druids, Shapechanged Wizards, the whole shebang. The main reason shifters get a bad rap for this is because they get their shapes at a lower level where dying is more common.
In fact I believe the worst spate of 'shifter crashes' ever was caused by a druid using Wildshape a lot at level 5.

My Dragonshape has PvPed loads in the past and it's dead easy to deshift just before the killing blow comes.

Findor · Post by **Findor** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 11:08 am

Is anyone aware of shifter-related crashes on plain vanilla NWN servers (i.e., those that do not have custom scripting)? If so, then it may well mean there is a bug in Bioware's code, and the chances of doing anything about that are slim and none. If not, then the following applies.

The best way to help the developers solve this problem is to identify actions that ALWAYS cause a server crash - not maybe, not sometimes, not possibly. That will enable them to place break points and message out code in various places and step through what happens after said triggering effect. Trust me, it's very hard to troubleshoot bugs when you don't have clear and specific information to go on. So, if you have a shifting class that has been causing server crashes, start paying VERY close attention to everything surrounding the crash: what happened just before, what was your state, location, etc.

You know, it might be a good idea to dedicate one day to this. Like, have a schedule where two different people (one shifting and one non-shifting toon) log on every hour and try to figure out what ALWAYS causes a server crash. Each player with a shifting toon would report his or her findings to Zing or one of the other developers.

Just an idea...

Dynmi · Post by **Dynmi** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:02 pm

Okay folks, theres a thread just for the crash issue, I suggest posting server crashes with the shape changers name and time at least. I doesn't seem like everyone who crashes the server posts so if possible even if it wasn't you try and note it on that thread.

disastro · Post by **disastro** » Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:07 pm

Binkyuk wrote: My Dragonshape has PvPed loads in the past and it's dead easy to deshift just before the killing blow comes.

i think expecting folks to deshift when they are about to get killed (rather than performing some other action that might AVOID them getting killed like healing/running/etc) is the wrong way to go. you can wish for it all you want but in the heat of the moment folks will either forget or simply not care enough to do it.

the other trivial solution of having everyone ELSE use book, rest, log out and log back in every 5 minutes is also not a good solution to having a fun game experience. These steps dont even always work, I've had toons become inaccessible after all these steps have been taken due to a server crash. also rest by itself definitely does not do anything regardless of what the combat log tells you.

we probably need to think outside the box on this one. rather than banning all shifting perhaps look into something that will deshift you automatically when you get to less than half hit points or something. something that will wholly circumvent the "dead while shifted" event that we can't really fix at its core due to bioware issues.