Ranger Archive
Thread: lack of creatures normal?
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PaulWars
Wed Sep 08, 2004 5:28 pm
#1
I'm still pretty much of a newbie. I have some ranger skills (tracking up to III). It seemed when I started and wandered around on Tatooine, that there were creatures all over the place. Now I'm a ranger, I'm on Talus, I am running 7 - 9k between points of interest and see NO creatures except for the low level stuff near some cities and creatures I create with a mission. Nothing is visible, and tracking returns empty results. Is something broken?
Almagill
Wed Sep 08, 2004 6:05 pm
#2
The way the game engine spawns creatures is a bit of a mystery to me but I'll have a stab at answering as best as I can.
Think of the world you play in a bit like one of those old tabletop wargames. Divided up into a grid pattern?
When you enter a aquare the game engine will only allow you to see those creatures that are already spawned in that square, or maybe the ones adjacent to it, to put it another way, are in your visible range.
If nobody has been in a square for a given amount of time then, to save computing time, the game will despawn the creatures that are there. So, if you'r ethe FIRST player into an area, its going to look empty.
However, stick around in that square for a few moments and things may start to pop up around you. Lairs first then creatures near them, or so it seems.
Course, if you go out of that square into teh next, it'll seem empty too, but going back into the previous one, hey, full of living goodness.
On BUSY planets theres a fair chance someone will have been through an area within a few minutes of your arriving there, so its going to look busy.
On quiet planets either have a partner run / bike ahead 500m - 1km and double back as you travel through, or do the forward 500 / back 250 shuffle yourself.
OK, so, how to make this work to your advantage... you got bad faction with some npc MoB? Don't like fighting big scary monsters unbuffed? Just want to go out and feed the harvesters and head back to the ranch and tea witht he little woman?
Scoot out, using a previously untravelled route, travel back along a different and equally unpopulated route. This of course means, don't go along the main route from one town to another that everyone blats out on on their speeder, use the side valleys, get up on the slopes of hills...
sorry, rambling now. SOmebody coherent will be along shortly to make sense of this gibberish.
Think of the world you play in a bit like one of those old tabletop wargames. Divided up into a grid pattern?
When you enter a aquare the game engine will only allow you to see those creatures that are already spawned in that square, or maybe the ones adjacent to it, to put it another way, are in your visible range.
If nobody has been in a square for a given amount of time then, to save computing time, the game will despawn the creatures that are there. So, if you'r ethe FIRST player into an area, its going to look empty.
However, stick around in that square for a few moments and things may start to pop up around you. Lairs first then creatures near them, or so it seems.
Course, if you go out of that square into teh next, it'll seem empty too, but going back into the previous one, hey, full of living goodness.
On BUSY planets theres a fair chance someone will have been through an area within a few minutes of your arriving there, so its going to look busy.
On quiet planets either have a partner run / bike ahead 500m - 1km and double back as you travel through, or do the forward 500 / back 250 shuffle yourself.
OK, so, how to make this work to your advantage... you got bad faction with some npc MoB? Don't like fighting big scary monsters unbuffed? Just want to go out and feed the harvesters and head back to the ranch and tea witht he little woman?
Scoot out, using a previously untravelled route, travel back along a different and equally unpopulated route. This of course means, don't go along the main route from one town to another that everyone blats out on on their speeder, use the side valleys, get up on the slopes of hills...
sorry, rambling now. SOmebody coherent will be along shortly to make sense of this gibberish.
Dayre
Wed Sep 08, 2004 6:19 pm
#3
that all sounds about right from my experiences 
I have nothing coherent to add...
But I will say this, on my server I have experienced less and less wildlife on Talus and Rori, I have traveled both extensively camping, waiting, tracking... nothing. Other than the fact that these planets are lightly populated by players, I have no Idea why this is... but the previous explaination does seem logical.
Almagill
Wed Sep 08, 2004 6:25 pm
#4
Was on Talus (Bria) recently and it was quieter than usual. That having been said I was trying to avoid too much contact with stuff that time. OTOH, I made the rash suggestion to a friend that we go to Rori to get some wooly. Other than being lush and green that place was a desert.
I wes VERY dissapointed and ended up going off POI hunting instead. Even the fishing sucked.
/shrug
I wes VERY dissapointed and ended up going off POI hunting instead. Even the fishing sucked.
/shrug
Rebelcapt
Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:00 pm
#5
I was on rori earlier today trying to get back to master scout and novice ranger but after an hour i only found a few lairs and the pygmy torton cave was deserted the whole wime(there a spawn timer there?)
but what can ya do?
/sigh
Ailsa
Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:04 pm
#6
This has been a bone of contention for me too. I started at launch on the Tarquinas server and chose Dearic as my starting city. Getting to my mission waypoints was challenging back then because I had to zig-zag around groups of aggro mobs, but it made it very exciting.
Now I have just started playing again on the Flurry server. First thing I noticed was that they no longer allow you to select a city to start from - you have to start in Mos Eisley. Well, that's ok. I just made some money and headed over to Talus for old time's sake and found the place a ghost town. Other than a few random mobs within 500meters from town, the place is utterly desolate. You will from time to time (about every 5K-7K meters) find a herd or lair but that's it. It's the same on Rori. Even the more heavily populated planets have way less spawns then I remember. Oh, but run into town to the Starport and there are like 35 white-named NPCs hanging around. What is up with that? Note to devs- LOSE THOSE NPCS AND REPLACE THEM WITH SPAWNS THAT CAN ACTUALLY BE HUNTED.
The second poster who said that if you stand around for a while in an area, something will eventually spawn. This doesn't always work. But even if it is that way, what good is /areatrack then? I mean, you can't track what hasn't spawned yet.
PaulWars
Wed Sep 08, 2004 8:27 pm
#7
Well, I tried marking a square, 1k x 1k. I have been traveling across and back across this square. Right now I am camped right in the center. Still haven't seen a creature. So it appears that hanging around, or backtracking to create/see spawns is not working on Talus. This is a serious bug, it makes the Ranger skills practically useless. Also roleplaying a ranger, one that hangs out in the wilds doesn't work. Now the only way to fight critters is to take a mission???? I have created both a bug and a customer service ticket, but my Ranger character will probably be put on the shelf for a bit.
Aileili
Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:21 pm
#8
Yet another reason why we need that /track ability that was promised to us so long ago...
Oh, how I would LOVE to be able to track (spawn) a natural lair of vir vur on Rori right now. Rori avian meat is through the roof on Starsider this season! 
Serraphin
Wed Sep 08, 2004 9:25 pm
#9
Thank player cities, planet population, and assets made available to handle the popularity of the planet
stratgan
Wed Sep 08, 2004 10:31 pm
#10
Serraphin said what I thought exactly. Remember when Dantooine was so laggy, items in your house on the planet would take 10 minutes to show up? Well, they announced a fix to that, and it worked. I think they didn't increase server bandwidth, but rather, took up some of the cpu resources of the less adventurous planets, such as talus and rori, and dumped it on dantooine and dathomir (with the jedi trials, etc... LAG!), thus making them more viable.
I think this is a short-term fix, and hopefully they will get a more permanent hardware fix for this. If not, they might as well delete the two planets from the game, and make room for more bandwidth for dant and dath. Lol, it doesn't help that the number of players playing swg has been steadily diminishing. Hard to justify more expenditures for your product if you are making less and less money with it 
. Anyhow, my two cents and I might be completely wrong, lol.
. Anyhow, my two cents and I might be completely wrong, lol.Stratgan Ronilar - Master Ranger
JBMat
Thu Sep 09, 2004 4:21 am
#11
Rumor says the more players on a server the fewer random spawn across that server.
The more "mission spawn" generated, the fewer the random spawn. Think of the server having a finite limit of "creatures" to include players.
What makes me insane is people leaving missions undone because they can't do them. I saw a freaking master marksman attempt a level 100 mission. No armor, unbuffed. Whined when he died too. "But I am a master marksman!!!" To be nice, I did his mission as it was stepping on mine and he got paid, but I got the XP. Undone missions sometimes hang around for a while, taking the place of random spawn. How long is up in the air, but I swear a tortur lair (mission as it was labeled) hung around on my server for 2 days til I got tired of looking at it and took it out.
I run into this problem frequently. I found a motherlode for avian one morning - but as the day progressed the spawns stopped as more people got on.
As an aside, I was the sole player on Endor the other morning. When I left I gota message that my leaving caused the "planet channel" to cease to exist. I mean, Endor is outta the way, but having a planet to myself...???
JB
Vorpaks
Thu Sep 09, 2004 6:09 am
#12
On the Creature Handler forum this has been noted as well. The consensus is that they changed the spawn system in the latest patch (possibly related to Jedi quest animals?) and it broke Talus and some of the caves. I haven't been over to check myself but it sounds from what you are saying that it is true. There are no, or very little wild spawns on Talus since the last patch. I'll go search up the CH post and edit it in.
Here it is: Greater Sludge Panther extinct?
Here it is: Greater Sludge Panther extinct?
Message Edited by Vorpaks on 09-09-2004 09:17 AM
Nevaryn
Thu Sep 09, 2004 6:36 am
#13
I've actually found that in areas where there are no server constructs (ie.npc buildings, cities) or player constructs (ie. harvestors, player cities, homes) there will be little, if any spawns because there is no player traffic through that area. If you walk across planets instead of shuttling you'll find that at about 4-5km from any server or player constructs there will be no spawns.Only a few days ago Iwalked to the very lower right of the Tattooine map, right to the edge of it and I had not ran into a single spawn for kilometers. I dropped a single harvestor and instantaneously saw a mob spawn not 20m from the harvestor's location.
I'v also found that a dropped a camp does not cause a spawn, and that my presence in an unpopulated region does not cause a spawn, but drop a harvestor in the middle of nowhere and you'll see a spawn immediately, probably two or three.
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