U12.2 Lag - did we take a step backward?

[Cauthey]

Does anyone else feel like the latest patch (Update 12 Patch 2) took us a big step backward, back towards the lag, latency, spells not hitting, and rubberbanding (henceforth "lag") that had been previously improved?

Since Update 9, Turbine has acknowledged (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=319323) and has been presumably battling the lag. (THANK YOU Turbine!!)

Since U12.2, I have noticed a dramatic increase in group-wide and raid-wide, and even zone and cross-zone wide game performance issues, a few of which have wiped raids. In correllation, I have also noticed a distinct increase in zone-out (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=337672) problems.

My issues with zone-outs had almost all but disappeared. Instead of having this happen EVERY session, it had become a relatively rare problem. However, since U12.2, it's been back in full swing. And, I know that I am not the only one to also suffer a resurgence of the zone-out client crashing.

Have you had similar observations about the dreaded lag monster? It was getting better there for a while (Yay Turbine), and now it's seemingly taken a big step back. Any thoughts or observations you have are appreciated! :D


FIX LAG

[JamnJD]

Ice games dude.

Just like any other special event = more lag.

...J

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

Are you playing a caster?

[Cauthey]

Are you playing a caster?

Yes, primarily. Metalbone of Orien, Wiz/Rog 18/2.

However, the latency I've seen is not limited to rearing it's ugly head just on him. I was in a really bad Shroud lag wipe yesterday playing Ellarinen of Orien (Virtuoso Bard, 18).

Things were "a little chunky" through parts 1-3. In part 4, after carefully and tediously dealing with the bearded devils, Harry landed. He was maybe 1 meteor swarm in, and then everything stopped.

I thought, "Oh, yeah...fire damage. Better get my Cloak of Ice fired up."

I click click click click click CLICKED on my cloak, but it never equipped. I clicked at it for maybe 8 seconds, and then KAPOW! half of the party was dead.

FWIW, zone-outs also are not specific to my caster, Metalbone. I see them pretty much once per session on any or my characters on Orien. This did NOT seem to be the case in U12.1.

[AZgreentea]

I have seen the reports of lag since U9, but until sometime in U11 I wasnt effected. Around that time I started getting an extra 10 -20 ms on my latency (was about 105 ms and now runs between 110 and 140) and 0-4% packet loss. The packet loss is more frequent after U12. I usually run with a hireling, so when I almost red'd out in a 3BC cove quest I was more frustrated than worried about my party. That was the first time that has happened in more than a year. On the plus side, it has made me watch my send/receive in game more, and I dont think I will log out on the airship from now on. While on the airship, the send demand is twice as high as anyplace else in the game, and it seems to have a negative impact on initial character loading (i.e. when you first log into the game). I normally hang around 500-750 send and 1500-5000 receive while running around town and questing (seems to depend on the environment). 1000 to 1500 send on the airship.

I hate packet loss, because it makes me feel like I am having system or connection issues, but I cannot replicate the packet loss outside of DDO. Maybe I will try to run a mass ping request while DDO is running and see if that will do it.

Maj - I havent run on my caster in a long time, unless you count my runs with a cleric hireling. I have been running with the two lvl 5, 6, and 7 cleric hirelings while I have been focusing on lowbie alts since October/November.

[Tyrande]

Are you playing a caster?

Major, I have 3 arcane wizard casters, one divine cleric caster not counting bard(s).

I have also experienced strange lags in a party two days ago in Epic Bargain of Blood.

We were just entering the area by the shrine and was going up the lookup post for the gate to slay the pirate guard on top. Somehow I aggro'd the First Mate far far away and the whole party froze for a complete 30 seconds. Luckily, no one was dead and the First Mate somehow climbed up to the area we're on from below.

Are the new boss monsters casting "Time Stop" while thinking about their tactics, I do not know. But, I *bet* they are. ;)

[Dagolar]

Cauthey has it right. The game has become oft-times unbearable since patch 2; This is a definitive change, timing precisely to the inclusion of the patch, and of significant effect and persistence to be undeniably tied to it. Since patch 2, regardless of what characters I play, or play with*, lag has been far worse. I've had entire parties suffer 'Lag Dragon'-esque lag, failing quests simply because of it; A matter most noteworthy in VoN raids, where we've learned to patiently wait on whoever- and there is always at least one person- is suffering a complete lag lock.
This issue seems most dominant in raids of any sort, but it happens in any quest.

It's a change to the UD9 lag problems as UD9 was to previous lag. Since patch 2, I've had my first lag-fails in solo questing (frequently, even), lagged off VoN bridges for the first time/notably lagged in VoN for the first time, lagged in Shroud for the first time, and so forth.

*There is one exception: The usual ice storm lag has dramatically worsened, and playing with ice casters CAN further amplify the problems- though isn't always a contributing element to the worst lags. As usual for ice storm lag, it's usually not an issue with one or two ice storms, but as soon as anyone starts spamming it, there's a likelihood for significant extra lag. Strangely, I haven't yet had these problems when playing my ice caster, even when I do spam the spells, which makes me think that for some reason the lag may only- or simply predominantly- affect the players other than the caster.

Relogging and rebooting both have no effect whatsoever on the lag, as per most usual non-event lags, and while the events have added their usual lag amplification, they certainly don't seem to be the cause, nor even a major contributor to the overall lag change [even ignoring the timing of the beginning of the lag changes].

[Oakianus]

Ice games dude.

Just like any other special event = more lag.

...J

This has been my thought as well. Still, beats the hell out of the Mabar dragon. :P

[HernandoCortez]

Yes, lags are really worse now on Ghallanda. I've seen a few 10 seconds lag when everything would freeze and heard people talking about 30 seconds lags. Tried many times to change weapon sets and it won't work too. If you need to spot heal someone you need to double-triple-click to make sure the person won't die.

And we're having only 2-3 Risia instances on harbor even on peak times. Last Risia 5-6 instances were common. At the moment there is only ONE harbor instance. So Risia is not to blame. Not even during Mabarbore I've seen lags like this.

So, whats going on?

[whereispowderedsilve]

Yes, primarily. Metalbone of Orien, Wiz/Rog 18/2.

However, the latency I've seen is not limited to rearing it's ugly head just on him. I was in a really bad Shroud lag wipe yesterday playing Ellarinen of Orien (Virtuoso Bard, 18).

Things were "a little chunky" through parts 1-3. In part 4, after carefully and tediously dealing with the bearded devils, Harry landed. He was maybe 1 meteor swarm in, and then everything stopped.

I thought, "Oh, yeah...fire damage. Better get my Cloak of Ice fired up."

I click click click click click CLICKED on my cloak, but it never equipped. I clicked at it for maybe 8 seconds, and then KAPOW! half of the party was dead.

FWIW, zone-outs also are not specific to my caster, Metalbone. I see them pretty much once per session on any or my characters on Orien. This did NOT seem to be the case in U12.1.

I was in/with that particular Shroud run with ella/cauthey.

Personally myself I've only been playing about a year & a half on DDO, my rig is a custom built $1000+ desktop

my ISP is cable at least 15MB. I had rarely ever seen lag other then mabar with the spectral dragon. The odd time

here & there, going up the shroud steps always. Particularly in Shroud never had a wipe solely due to lag until that

one yesterday. Was just as Cauthey/ella described it, was quite frustrating(I was playing on 1 of my mains the one

in my sig). The only other thing that's been happening in the past 1 or 2 weeks is I will get a: "the/your

dndclient.exe has stopped working" & DDO crashes, has happened 2 or 3x.

So it seems like imo it's not something that will be a easy fix, however I do hope eventually it'll be reduced! :P! :)

[Cauthey]

Are you playing a caster?

When you ask "caster," do you mean any character with any amount of blue bar? Because I was thinking "arcane." My mistake! :)

Metalbone (Pale Master Wiz/Rog 18/2), Ellarinen(Virtuoso Bard 18), and Alihana (Radiant Servant Cleric 17) all have blue bars. I have a couple of characters that aren't blue bars, but I do not play them very frequently, and cannot honestly tell you that their lag is congruent to that of my primary characters.

Dagolar: Oddly, I've NEVER seen a correlation on my rig between Ice Storm and lag. I presume Ice Storm to be a client-end, graphics-heavy spell, and those with older or more hardware challenged systems suffer more when this is cast. I recently remember a rogue in a Shroud with Metalbone saying "Hey, those Ice Storms on the portals aren't helping at all." I didn't at first see who said it, and responded that Ice Storm does bludgeoning, and in fact does help. He retorted that it wasn't helping the lag. I saw NO lag at all from my own casts. I did stop casting, though, cause the little bit of DPS Ice Storm adds in part 1 is not really worth impacting someone else's play experience.

Anyway, I believe that the reason I do not see Ice Storm lag is because I have a beast of a gaming rig.

[Cauthey]

Yes, lags are really worse now on Ghallanda. I've seen a few 10 seconds lag when everything would freeze and heard people talking about 30 seconds lags. Tried many times to change weapon sets and it won't work too. If you need to spot heal someone you need to double-triple-click to make sure the person won't die.

And we're having only 2-3 Risia instances on harbor even on peak times. Last Risia 5-6 instances were common. At the moment there is only ONE harbor instance. So Risia is not to blame. Not even during Mabarbore I've seen lags like this.

So, whats going on?

This is worthy of noting, too. I believe that Orien has only ever seen a total of 4 Harbor instances this Risia (maybe 5?). I can't tangibly argue that Risia is not a part of the lag. But, I honestly do not feel that it is. It was when U12.2 went in that everything felt...different. In particular with the zone-outs I am plagued with. Those had previously all but gone away.

[DragonMageT]

Are you playing a caster?

Yes, ran an eDA 2 days around 5PM EST and noticed spells not going off, targeting issues (there 1 sec, gone the next). Having to hit clickies twice.

Asked in party chat if others were experiencing lag, 1 person said yes.

While I almost never experience zone dcs or pretty much any type of dc, it does seem like dcs from others
have increased.

Some times it hard to pin point if it's lag related or game design related. For example, happen to me twice in Shroud part 4, full hp bar, blades all around, next second dead. It happened so fast, I didn't even have time to cast a heal.

eDQ2, stayed alive up to the very end, like 2% left, almost full hp bar, next second dead.
I was on a healer away from the group.

[Tyrande]

[...]
*There is one exception: The usual ice storm lag has dramatically worsened, and playing with ice casters CAN further amplify the problems- [...]

I have not seen lag when casting ice storms, even multiple of them. However, when the pet snow elemental casting ice storm, it seems to be lagging a little, but not much.

I did notice one odd behavior with Arraetrikos in part V of the Shroud when he was up there enjoying the power of the Eclipse. He had a particular dislike of my wizard at times as she killed Arraetrikos during part IV debuffed with waves of exhaustion and damaged with DOTS, polar ray and icestorm. She casted ice storm while killing the lieutenants and that somehow aggro'd Arraetrikos and he fired up meteor shower and delay blast fireballs and target my wizard. He wouldn't stop until my wizard was dead. This was *before* he even dropped down.

[WielderofGigantus]

Are you playing a caster?

That's an interesting comment. I recently just TR'd my caster for my next sorc life, and was suddenly having connection issues and lag. The yellow warning about my connection would pop up occasionally, which isn't something I normally have.

The only difference that I can think of is that unlike in my last life when I was capped, I was spamming spells left and right in my new life. When I hit the cap, it usually takes only a few spells to take care of multiple enemy, but as a lowbie again, I have to spam a couple of different spells to take down the enemies one by one.

Could the rapid spamming of spells be causing the yellow connection warnings?

[irivan]

Are you playing a caster?

I do play an Arcane caster, and I can tell you for several updates now, that i experience extreme lag when casting insta kills and more importantly when using Pale Master effects and spells such as necro blasts, and negative energy burst. Often when using Neg energy burst it will not register for up to 10-15 seconds, the whole game lags for me, and often an enemy can land a death blow before the spell takes effect, even if clerics attempt to harm in this time period, I still die first.

Also every character that i have that has any kind of UMD suffers extreme lag when swapping gear, including my caster, it is frustrating to say the least because i use many configurations on my characters, and often when changing gear in intense situations, i end up dead, where as before i could easily save my self with quick reflexes.

Thanks.

[Dragavon]

Lag has been getting steadily worse after every update since my characters where transferred from the Europeean servers. It is now worse than ever.

I have never noticed any improvement, even with the update Turbine touted as a fight against lag.

[Missing_Minds]

Are you playing a caster?

.... *reads through the rest.. ponders*

Those that are getting lag like that, do you guys have metas attached to spells? Not the all or nothing method of the past?

I'm curious if that is why Maj asked. No, I've not seen/played recently and if I did it would have been a low level TR that is very multi classed. But when I did play, I saw no differences with lag, but I haven't attached any metas to spells, and indeed.... don't htink I have any metas off the top of my head yet.

[bhgiant]

I can confirm this frustration with my caster. Lightning bolts passing straight through mobs and not hitting. Heck, even when targeted and I'm looking straight at the mob I'm getting the "You have to face the mob" message. Sometimes they won't hit even when targeted.

The game is still playable, but it's getting increasingly frustrating to the point where I am logging on less and not playing as much because of it.

Edit: Haven't noticed a difference between using Metas and not. This is also (to a lesser extent) with my melee. I've noticed the hit box is not as on target as it was when they first fixed it. I'm pretty sure this is due to the mob being somewhere else on the server when I swing though graphically it shows my weapons swinging through the mob.

[Cauthey]

I do play an Arcane caster, and I can tell you for several updates now, that i experience extreme lag when casting insta kills and more importantly when using Pale Master effects and spells such as necro blasts, and negative energy burst. Often when using Neg energy burst it will not register for up to 10-15 seconds, the whole game lags for me, and often an enemy can land a death blow before the spell takes effect, even if clerics attempt to harm in this time period, I still die first.

I don't typically see any lag as a direct result of casting my own spells. Much like Ice Storm, I would presume this to be a client side graphically intensive bit, and I have a monster of a rig. Most of the time the lag I see appears to be more of a client-server latency, and is not necessarily provoked from casting.


Also every character that i have that has any kind of UMD suffers extreme lag when swapping gear, including my caster, it is frustrating to say the least because i use many configurations on my characters, and often when changing gear in intense situations, i end up dead, where as before i could easily save my self with quick reflexes.

Thanks.

I'm not sure that I have ever witnessed UMD item-related lag.


.... *reads through the rest.. ponders*

Those that are getting lag like that, do you guys have metas attached to spells? Not the all or nothing method of the past?

I'm curious if that is why Maj asked. No, I've not seen/played recently and if I did it would have been a low level TR that is very multi classed. But when I did play, I saw no differences with lag, but I haven't attached any metas to spells, and indeed.... don't htink I have any metas off the top of my head yet.

All of the blue bar casters that I play regularly have metas assigned in some fashion to at least one or more spells on their hotbars. Good bit of brainstorming, Missing Minds.

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

When you ask "caster," do you mean any character with any amount of blue bar? Because I was thinking "arcane." My mistake! :)

Metalbone (Pale Master Wiz/Rog 18/2), Ellarinen(Virtuoso Bard 18), and Alihana (Radiant Servant Cleric 17) all have blue bars. I have a couple of characters that aren't blue bars, but I do not play them very frequently, and cannot honestly tell you that their lag is congruent to that of my primary characters.

Dagolar: Oddly, I've NEVER seen a correlation on my rig between Ice Storm and lag. I presume Ice Storm to be a client-end, graphics-heavy spell, and those with older or more hardware challenged systems suffer more when this is cast. I recently remember a rogue in a Shroud with Metalbone saying "Hey, those Ice Storms on the portals aren't helping at all." I didn't at first see who said it, and responded that Ice Storm does bludgeoning, and in fact does help. He retorted that it wasn't helping the lag. I saw NO lag at all from my own casts. I did stop casting, though, cause the little bit of DPS Ice Storm adds in part 1 is not really worth impacting someone else's play experience.

Anyway, I believe that the reason I do not see Ice Storm lag is because I have a beast of a gaming rig.

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

[Memnir]

Are you playing a caster?
I realize the probable non-response to this - but why would that be significant?
Is the spell engine causing the lag, somehow? Is one class more then any other "lag-prone" in terms of casters? Certain spells you've identified, or spells in general?

Can you please, Maj, elaborate on why you asked this particular question?

I've not been paying close attention to the forums for the past week or so, so if this has already been discussed I apologize for my lack of diligence. But, lag is one of the key reasons I'm taking a DDO hiatus - so knowing steps are being made in identifying/killing the lag would be welcome news.

[bhgiant]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

Both my melee and my caster have 10-14 hotbars. My caster only uses about 3 spells though on the same bar. My melee has about two clickies he uses regularly. The rest are for gear swaps, curse potions, etc.

[RTN]

Swapping items (I don't think weapons, but I'm not 100% sure) that have ability scores, skill boosts, resists, etc., all give me lag. I don't think that has changed or improved in a long time. I think this applies to all classes, although I swap items a lot more on my casters.

[BrianTheHun]

I play my caster some, but I usually play as my rogue, and I see this lag quite often. Clickies taking multiple times to work, same as heal scrolls, stutters and freeze ups, and the client crashing when I enter the desert or gianthold. It does become unplayable at times, and I've died several times from being unable to heal myself at times from the lag.

I've noticed that the zone out bug seems to occur more often after alting one or more times, not as much if I stay on just the one character.

But I agree, FIX LAG ALREADY! If the DA and TWF nerf aren't solving it as promised, then I would like to see those features removed. :)

[crimsonknights2]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

I am seeing more lag on all my characters. I'm primarily playing my wiz and Monk right now. I get a lot of delay in my stuns executing on my monk. The monster will get 2-3 hits in after I've hit stun, before they actually stop.

FYI Maj, I run with 12 toolbars minimum on all my characters, they all share the same layout.

[scoobmx]

I seem to have discovered that 1 lagger in party can lag the whole party. But I was under the impression that ddo was client-server model?

[Cauthey]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

Thank you (again, and again, and AGAIN! :) ) for your efforts on nipping this! :)

If it's helpful, I can detail the hotbars of my casters:

Metalbone
1 primary horizontal hotbar (roll through with mapped mouse buttons)
5 auxillary horizontal hotbars
1 auxillary vertical hotbar (item swaps/clickies, typically)
2 "what do I have" horizontal hotbars (spell component monitoring, also for monitoring my "standard equipped gear")
1 hireling hotbar (seldom used)

9 Total (10 if summoning a hireling)


Ellarinen
1 primary horizontal hotbar (roll through with mapped mouse buttons)
5 auxillary horizontal hotbars
2 auxillary vertical hotbar (item swaps/clickies, typically)
1 "what do I have" horizontal hotbars (spell component monitoring, also for monitoring my "standard equipped gear")
1 hireling hotbar (occasionally used)

9 Total (10 if summoning a hireling)


Alihana
1 primary horizontal hotbar (roll through with mapped mouse buttons)
5 auxillary horizontal hotbars
1 auxillary vertical hotbar (item swaps/clickies, typically)
2 "what do I have" horizontal hotbars (spell component monitoring, also for monitoring my "standard equipped gear")

9 Total


Yeah, 9 seems to be my number for most of my "mature" characters

[Cauthey]

I seem to have discovered that 1 lagger in party can lag the whole party. But I was under the impression that ddo was client-server model?

I think that this can happen. It would seem that raid clients 2-12 are awaiting a critical update from raid client 1, and will begin to hang if raid client 1 is hanging. No idea what this critical bit of information is that the other clients are holding out for. Still, I have also witnessed what you have observed.

I have had VARYING success by Alt-Tabbing to desktop, and then Alt-Tabbing back into game to cure lag. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

My thinking is that whatever is memory leaking in the client is fixed or recovered when the game is forced into swap file memory. Something there gets trimmed, and when you swap back into active memory, all is improved.

In any case, if the whole raid is lagging badly, I'll immediately Alt-Tab out and back in. I fear that the current code has a beef with my NIC, and I don't want to be "that guy" causing the raid to fail. If Alt-Tabbing out for me fixes my lag, I'll speak up via voice to the rest of the raid, and suggest that they do the same if they are still being affected by lag.

If nothing at all improves, and everyone is still complaining about being frozen, I'll often suggest Alt-Tabbing out anyway. Mainly because if you're frozen, you're not doing anything. If you Alt-Tab out AND it works, you might be able to save the raid.

[QuantumFX]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

So, having over 10 hotbars is why it takes 5 taps of my "f" key to get Stunning Fist to work on my monk? (Yes, the client “sees” all 5 taps as the icon flickers, but doesn’t trigger, when I tap the key.)

[Missing_Minds]

I'm not sure that I have ever witnessed UMD item-related lag.


I know what he is talking about. It is very reminsicient of the old Master's Touch lag, and current Madstone boots, weapon profic proc applied/removed from current weapons.

I myself keep...10-8, 5-1... I run 8 bars on screen, 9 with hirelings. I've never run an arti yet, but I bet that would be 10 given hireling and dog.

I also run with the latency Green/Yellow/Red indication icon on my screen, and full sized viewing window.

I also run in Window'ed mode, not fullscreen.

[BrianTheHun]

I don't know how much of a difference it makes, but I use 10 or 11 hotbars for my rogue. I only ever have 1 hotbar on the screen at a time, though.

[Desonde]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

There are other reasons for that to be the case.

Spell lag appears to be something entirely different, as it also affects bow attacks. It's something in the collision code and how the server doesn't allow a build up of 'lag hits' (12 hits are cued up to hit once the server recognizes they are are hitting). For example, Niac's Ray of Cold will cast taking sp, and it hits, but the server is laging, so the damage is delayed a bit. The cool down finishes and you recast, takes sp, appears to hit, but damage is never dealt. Cast Polar ray, sp is taken, appears to hit, no damage is ever dealt. Frost lance, the same.

However, through the same period of time, Niac's Biting Cold will still work, as will the Sorc Curse, that is unless line of sight is broken.

The same thing happens with bows and xbows, when it lags, they shot, but they never hit.

And melee does have a lag cue.

Since melee doesn't have the issue, and ranged is pretty useless outside artificier (Artificiers and AA's are probably the second largest sum of classes that complain about these issues, but do to proportionate demographic sizes, melee and arcane make up the largest size of user base).

[Desonde]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

And my caster was experiencing this with Niac's, Niac's SLA, Snowball swarm, diplo and 4 buffs. only one hot bar.

That and my ranger experienced it with trip and sunder with the bow, and I wasn't spamming those skills on recharge (same as with my mechanic, just hold left mouse and hope it doesn't lag).

[Darkrok]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

Gah...so my 20 bars is a bad idea? :(

[Flavilandile]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

Well, now that I know this, I'll take notice of what happens when I'm on my casters.

I have a few with more than 10 bars.

For those that don't know, as MajMal hint by that statement, there's something different between the bars from 1 to 10 and those from 11 to 20.

Basically when DDO started you officially had 10 bars, though through a bug ( yes they did exist at that time ) you could have up to 20 bars.
It was extremely useful, especially for the Clerics in the early days ( I ran with up to 16 bars ), and when Turbine tried to plug the bug, they hit a wall of ( mainly clerical ) players ( figuratively speaking ) and backed away. Then they made those 10 more bars official bars.
So what Maj Mal is hinting is that there might be something with those bars from 11 to 20 that has to do with Lag.

[dkyle]

I've recently started playing my Wizard again, TRing him, after setting him aside for a while. I can't say I've noticed more lag, per se, but have seen a lot of missed castings (hit the button, cooldown starts, but nothing happens; click it again, now it does happen, but the cooldown is wrong, and the spell only comes back when the actual, invisible, cooldown is finished). This happens all the time on my FvS when I'm DoTing bosses. I have to keep an inspection window up just to see if my DP is actually landing, and so I can estimate when my cooldown will actually be up. Oon that note, can we get a keybinding for "lock inspection window"? Almost everything I do except switch acessories and active all but a few clickies, I do from the keyboard, so it's annoying having to click the "lock" button. And if I don't lock it, it constantly knocks me out of mouse-look mode (which I normally stay in at all times).

I have noticed, also, that the "facing" seems to be more strict than I remember. I feel like I'm accustomed to being able to start casting a spell, then make sure I'm facing the target when it goes off and have it work. Currently, it feels like I can start casting a spell, turn to make sure I'm facing the target while it goes through the animation, and it fails because I wasn't facing the enemy at the moment I started casting. It's really messing with my instincts on how targeting works. And if facing is required at start of casting, shouldn't the spell fail immediately?

[crimsonknights2]

There are other reasons for that to be the case.

Spell lag appears to be something entirely different, as it also affects bow attacks. It's something in the collision code and how the server doesn't allow a build up of 'lag hits' (12 hits are cued up to hit once the server recognizes they are are hitting). For example, Niac's Ray of Cold will cast taking sp, and it hits, but the server is laging, so the damage is delayed a bit. The cool down finishes and you recast, takes sp, appears to hit, but damage is never dealt. Cast Polar ray, sp is taken, appears to hit, no damage is ever dealt. Frost lance, the same.

However, through the same period of time, Niac's Biting Cold will still work, as will the Sorc Curse, that is unless line of sight is broken.

The same thing happens with bows and xbows, when it lags, they shot, but they never hit.

And melee does have a lag cue.

Since melee doesn't have the issue, and ranged is pretty useless outside artificier (Artificiers and AA's are probably the second largest sum of classes that complain about these issues, but do to proportionate demographic sizes, melee and arcane make up the largest size of user base).

I have also noticed the delay in damage in casting Niac's stacking. Particularly in running EPIC claw. I'll peek down the first hole after clearing the entry and opening the secret door on the left. There is a giant that will come running up to turn the lever. If I stand up top and stack DOTs of Niac on him, often times, (I'd say 1/4 runs) the damage will take a few seconds showing nothing, then damage numbers start rolling. When this happens, the first number that does tick is a crit though. Maybe it's just me, but I have seen the exact scenario described above with alarming consistency.

[DragonMageT]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

I have also notice client-server lag on my Barb especially when I need to activate Barb rage.
I have about 5 or 6 hotbars total and only use about 3 clickies (Barb rage and 2 frenzy clickies).

During battle (after Barb rage has wore off), click on Barb rage, resume attacking, then I notice I am not raged, timer is going. This has happened many, many times and I have 2 Barbs that it happens on.

I will have to pay more attention next time but I am pretty sure you even hear the Barb grunting sound from the client side but it didn't take effect.

To be honest, playing a fully raged out Frenzied Barb is just laggy all over the battle.

Edit: with the delayed damage numbers rolling

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

Well, now that I know this, I'll take notice of what happens when I'm on my casters.

I have a few with more than 10 bars.

For those that don't know, as MajMal hint by that statement, there's something different between the bars from 1 to 10 and those from 11 to 20.

Basically when DDO started you officially had 10 bars, though through a bug ( yes they did exist at that time ) you could have up to 20 bars.
It was extremely useful, especially for the Clerics in the early days ( I ran with up to 16 bars ), and when Turbine tried to plug the bug, they hit a wall of ( mainly clerical ) players ( figuratively speaking ) and backed away. Then they made those 10 more bars official bars.
So what Maj Mal is hinting is that there might be something with those bars from 11 to 20 that has to do with Lag.

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.

[Thrudh]

I seem to have discovered that 1 lagger in party can lag the whole party. But I was under the impression that ddo was client-server model?

I've seen that too, and that is something they definitely need to fix if true. Someone else's crappy connection should have zero effect on mine.

[Qezuzu]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.

I've seen someone with a program that would track networking and load for DDO. Anyone know where that is? I, personally, would like to test some things, like this.

[dkyle]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.

Hmm... I have at least 12 bars on all my capped characters, so maybe I'm not noticing caster lag, because all my characters are in the same boat in that regard. If it's a matter of frequency of activation of icons, thus producing the cooldown animations, wouldn't Monks be just as prone to this lag as casters?

[Tyrande]

I seem to have discovered that 1 lagger in party can lag the whole party. But I was under the impression that ddo was client-server model?

Yes, I have experienced this too. One lagger or one DC in party can cause lag. Possible workaround:
1) have the lagger press [ALT]-F4 and then reboot the computer and then restart DDO.
2) If #1 doesn't work, have the lagger reboot their routers too.
3) If both #1 & #2 does not work, reform party without the lagger.

[Dagolar]

When you ask "caster," do you mean any character with any amount of blue bar? Because I was thinking "arcane." My mistake! :)

Metalbone (Pale Master Wiz/Rog 18/2), Ellarinen(Virtuoso Bard 18), and Alihana (Radiant Servant Cleric 17) all have blue bars. I have a couple of characters that aren't blue bars, but I do not play them very frequently, and cannot honestly tell you that their lag is congruent to that of my primary characters.

Dagolar: Oddly, I've NEVER seen a correlation on my rig between Ice Storm and lag. I presume Ice Storm to be a client-end, graphics-heavy spell, and those with older or more hardware challenged systems suffer more when this is cast. I recently remember a rogue in a Shroud with Metalbone saying "Hey, those Ice Storms on the portals aren't helping at all." I didn't at first see who said it, and responded that Ice Storm does bludgeoning, and in fact does help. He retorted that it wasn't helping the lag. I saw NO lag at all from my own casts. I did stop casting, though, cause the little bit of DPS Ice Storm adds in part 1 is not really worth impacting someone else's play experience.

Anyway, I believe that the reason I do not see Ice Storm lag is because I have a beast of a gaming rig.

As I said, I've never see the ice storm lag while playing on a caster, only while partying with them. So it doesn't seem to be client-side; Especially since my computer doesn't TYPICALLY get lag from DDO [Excepting Tangleroot Gorge wilderness, Redwillow, and, leagues and leagues beyond those two, Shadow Crypt, there are no areas of the game that usually give me any lag whatsoever unless events, ice storms, relogs without resets, or updates bring it to such]. It may be a problem in the way ice storm data is transferred to other clients, rather than host-side, where it would be interpreted first, then sent to server to be forwarded [I assume].


I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

My toons range from 2 to 8 hotbars on screen (always starting from bar #1 and stepping consecutively forward), one specific one always active; the rest accessed by mouse click. I haven't been playing any toons with more than 6 hotbars since the patch [and, actually, well before that]. I've had no reason to spam clickies, and I generally play utility types; Rogues, hybrid-rogues. Casters are my secondary, though I play every class/build on and off. So very few activated clickies for combat on my primary toons, usually quite a fair lot on my secondary. I have never at any point seen more lag playing a caster than playing a melee.
There may be a problem there for some, perhaps. But it seems very unlikely to have anything to do with the escalating lag I've been experiencing since UD9. In fact, to reiterate, I see less lag playing a caster, at least as it ties into Ice Storm.

The lag is persistent, regardless of actions taken, and comes and goes in severity in waves, again seemingly regardless of what is happening in quest, spell-wise, mob-wise, party-wise, etc.
And the fact that the lag is forcing ctds, entire parties to suffer lag, frequent laglocks, lag in places where you've never, ever experienced any before, and so forth, where it -never did before-..

No, that's not typically client side.

I'd give you a spell bug since it all started with UD9, but Update 12 patch 2? Unless there was some sort of spiral backlash through artificers into the core spell system that then in turn hit all melees..

It's not my intent to be disrespectful here; If anything, the feedback on your end is a welcome thing.
Rather, I'm intending to emphasize how very peculiar your current line of pursuit seems from this side.

I've changed computers and isps over the years, to no change; But I've been using the same setup for the months leading up to UD9 and on to the current moment, and the change was immediately notable just after the patch.

Besides, if it was client-side, or directly spell-related, and ignoring how it affects parties as a whole at times, that wouldn't explain why so many people are suffering it from the exact same catalyst point, and on non-spell-related things such as zone entries.

Now, as to spell bugs:
Yes, since UD9 spells have been miscasting. A few runs ago, I saw three different people all try to raise one other player, and not a single raise went through. Be dubious of the circumstances as you wish, but there have been enough failed raises, heals, lay on hands, damage spells, and more since UD9 that it's a sure enough thing.
This is a separate bug, and it doesn't matter how much you are or are not lagging, from my experience. We'll be smoothly running and we'll notice a specific spell simply hasn't cast. Usually by someone dying, or not dying, whichever is least helpful.
I've had this bug both apply to my toons [as in, I haven't received heals or raises, etc] and to others from me, and from others to others.
I've even had this bug apply to hirelings, who will expend sp to no effect [though, given hirelings usual issues, and their relatively newfound lockup/immobility/non-targetting/overall confusions that may be something else all together.]

And those three different, major bugs up there? That's why even the post placid minded players are getting a bit troubled with how the game is going. It's not one major bug with some smaller ones. It's an overall picture of declining game stability that makes us hesitant on the reliability of the game's future.

I know several players that have quit for the reasons listed in this post..
Sadly, I'm far too deeply caught in your web to even casually suggest doing such a thing.
Though, if I laglock-fail a solo quest just one more time, perhaps.. x_x

[Phoenix-daBard]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.

FYI-On redraw issues, since U12 if I have Firefox open but not minimized there is some bad graphics driver interaction that causes client lag that propagates to the party. I'm blaming Firefox for the local issues but it should not affect party members too.

[Solmage]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.

It is possible, I DO have less lag than most people, and I always assumed it was because I know better than to run with max settings in a graphics-heavy raid environment (subterranean, part 4 shroud, Abbot, etc) - in spite of what DDO's auto-sense function will tell you.

In fact, I also suspect the auto-sense is partially at fault for some people's extreme lag. For example, I get auto-sensed into max settings at 1280x1024. However in stressful raids I switch to low or very low and only set max draw distance to ultra high, and USUALLY have a very smooth experience. If I don't do this, I will feel a lot more 'lag' that is very hard to distinguish from real lag.

However, I also only use *ONE* bar for all my casters.

To complicate matters, there are two other kinds of lag: The everyone freezes for a few seconds lag, and the everything works in the game just fine and you can move around and jump and whatnot and even swing a sword, BUT spells have a 4-6 second triggering delay, AND may not even work occasionally, but will always use up the mana type of lag.

The latter kind of casting lag is what wipes parties. If the lag is more constant, you can compensate for it (we used to with DPS lag afterall) by simply spamming the heals before they're needed. But if it just suddenly hits, this will be extremely frustrating. Nothing is worse than getting nicked to death because your heals aren't going off.

[JustMe_ca]

The lag has been hitting more than just casters. I am currently doing my barbarian life (so no blue bar for me :( ) and have had very bad lag. I can think of a few examples

1) We weren't even in a quest - just talking before everyone went to bed - I saw the other party member showing that he had disconnected (and the corresponding party chat notice) BUT he was still talking to me for around a minute longer...
2) I join a group... someone says that they were dying/died... but it never showed the player as dead on my screen.
3) Velah did her flame thing without anyone seeing any warning signs. We just dinged then saw the breath.

[Kaytis]

I think it might be a good idea to find out what servers people complaining about lag are on. I noticed during Mabar that complaints about soul-crushing lag tended to come from users of Orien, and either Argo or Sarlona (can't remember which). Of the 25-odd runs I did on Orien, probably 16 or more featured "can't even take a single step for more than 60 seconds at a time, repeat ad-nauseum" kind of lag. DOTs were often the only reason we didn't fail most of them.

But the forums were replete with players from other servers suggesting that their runs were absolutely smooth - Khyber users notably, something I can't say ever happened in any of my runs on Orien.

I have seen lag spikes shoot up recently on Orien again now that the games are back and the population is inching back up from the lows of several hundred over the holidays. I personally feel that the underlying hardware being used for Orien may be sup-par in some way. This could be better isolated if people reported what server they are on when they are seeing lag.

For what it's worth, I have never seen ice-storm cause lag. I have seen acid rain in Weapons Shipment elite drop the fps to its knees, but that is not the same as lag -the server and client were communicating at full speed -it's just that the local hardware was not able to draw everything fast enough.

[Aliss7]

Does anyone else feel like the latest patch (Update 12 Patch 2) took us a big step backward, back towards the lag, latency, spells not hitting, and rubberbanding (henceforth "lag") that had been previously improved?


To be fair, I can't really say lag has gotten worse since 12.2. I do know that I still get lag though and I did feel an uptick of lag when the ice games started. (last night EST time, it did feel particularly bad, lag deaths in p4 shroud and I got rubberbanding in the marketplace). The loot lag issue is especially annoying to me as we've been beaten into submission to just accept it as "something that just happens as part of the game".

My toons aren't arcanes, but they do have blue bars and my bard has like around 15 toolbars.

[Missing_Minds]

FYI-On redraw issues, since U12 if I have Firefox open but not minimized there is some bad graphics driver interaction that causes client lag that propagates to the party. I'm blaming Firefox for the local issues but it should not affect party members too.

Yes. If you have any flash videos open it will cause client lag noticeably in my experience.
And don't even try apple quicktime. I did that one, and never again.

Now having it open to the forums, I've never had an issue. Granted I also run with no script, so very little extranious stuff happens in the background as well.

Also, at time some background programs, such as Steam, Xfire, etc. will mess with games too.


Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.
I know that sometimes programs don't interact well with DDO.

Ron's Character Planner was (maybe still is) one such. You will see the effects being pop ups/character overhead name issues, let alone some of the planner would stay on the screen even if ddo was on top and the active window.

And at times, even though there is no mouse movement, popup hints/tools vanish as if the mouse just moved.

The UI also randomly turns on push to talk and has for YEARSs. This was noticed back in Mod 3! So every now and then people will catch snippets of conversations.

[Dagolar]

The lag has been hitting more than just casters. I am currently doing my barbarian life (so no blue bar for me :( ) and have had very bad lag. I can think of a few examples

1) We weren't even in a quest - just talking before everyone went to bed - I saw the other party member showing that he had disconnected (and the corresponding party chat notice) BUT he was still talking to me for around a minute longer...
2) I join a group... someone says that they were dying/died... but it never showed the player as dead on my screen.
3) Velah did her flame thing without anyone seeing any warning signs. We just dinged then saw the breath.

As to the first, DDO uses three different 'server connections':
A game connection, a text-chat connection, and a voice-chat connection.
From when I started playing the game, there have often been instances of one or the other disconnecting for a time while others remained active. While that may be influenced by the current problems, it's not inherently due to them.

[gloopygloop]

I honestly haven't read through the entire thread, so I don't know if anyone has suggested this yet.

Have you guys tried nerfing Two Weapon Fighting to see if that fixes the problem?

[BoBo2020]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.

Is it possible that a localized UI skin like Blackbird could impact on something like this?

This seems a bit counterintuitive, but I have noticed the lag less after I inadvertently inactivated my UI skin.

[Cauthey]

I've seen that too, and that is something they definitely need to fix if true. Someone else's crappy connection should have zero effect on mine.

But...but...you say you don't experience lag! Ever! (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4141932#post4141932) :p

[smatt]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.


Since there seemed to be a significant increase in problems aroudn the time of the U-11 UI changes, maybe something to do with the cooldown timer graphic changes on the bars as well....

[Cauthey]

Is it possible that a localized UI skin like Blackbird could impact on something like this?

This seems a bit counterintuitive, but I have noticed the lag less after I inadvertently inactivated my UI skin.

It's a fair point for the brainstorm.

However, I will report that I am Mr. Defaulty Defaulterson as far as UI skin goes - I don't run with any custom skins.

[smatt]

I seem to have discovered that 1 lagger in party can lag the whole party. But I was under the impression that ddo was client-server model?


There is no question this does happen..... It used to be likethis as well but was mittigated to some extent back around the time that they actualyl admitted there were big lag issues, right at the time of the TWF socalled nerf, and beginnings of DA. I forget what Elarin said the probem was, but it most certainly partially caused by Client - Client com....

Funny, they had also at least for a time dealt with the issues of what happens when 1 or more players is DCing in a raid instance on how helaing and damage gets built up then hits all at once, typically in HUGE WIPE fashion. Which of course is back....

[smatt]

But...but...you say you don't experience lag! Ever! (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4141932#post4141932) :p


SSSSHHHH, that's a secret :)

[smatt]

I honestly haven't read through the entire thread, so I don't know if anyone has suggested this yet.

Have you guys tried nerfing Two Weapon Fighting to see if that fixes the problem?


Naw, that won't work but nerfing EVERY monk in the game would... In fact /delete monk class would be best... I mean heck, they so underpowered, poor things, and it would put them out of their misery :)

[Eistander]

In some ways I am happy that I didn't have any extensive, previous MMO experience before I hopped onto DDO.. over the time I have been playing, I never have more than the 1 bar set at any give time, although coming from a heavy FPS background prior might have helped me out with ease of hitting ctrl and whatever # of bar I want to see then use what I want and back again within a very short amount of time.. mentioned this to a few other players and I was called crazy lol.. but it might also explain the lower instances of lag than what most are reporting (no crazy ISP or top-end gear for my system), then again I could just be lucky.

[crimsonknights2]

Maj,

I have noticed since U12 I will freeze on my monk in certain areas of the game where my FPS drops down to single digits and it takes several seconds for things to "catch up". An example is leaving Meridia to return to the 12, running down the bridge back to the tower of the 12, I lock up every time for several seconds.

If you think specifics would be helpful or videos or anything, let me know.

[slimkj]

17-18 bars open on all casters and no noticeable lag difference before or after any recent patch for me.

(I hide the bloody GCD flash with post-it notes now, good job I know all my major spell locations by number :P)

[HernandoCortez]

FYI-On redraw issues, since U12 if I have Firefox open but not minimized there is some bad graphics driver interaction that causes client lag that propagates to the party. I'm blaming Firefox for the local issues but it should not affect party members too.

I'm not a fanboi, but thats why I went Chrome.

[Missing_Minds]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.


(I hide the bloody GCD flash with post-it notes now, good job I know all my major spell locations by number :P)

Yeah.. that cooldown timer showing up on all the bloody icons probably doesn't help the UI lag.

[Flavilandile]

Lets see...


Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.

Ok. I'm going to be the Devil Advocate here... Could it be caused by that nice flashing bars cooldown that has been forced down our throat ?


Maj,

I have noticed since U12 I will freeze on my monk in certain areas of the game where my FPS drops down to single digits and it takes several seconds for things to "catch up". An example is leaving Meridia to return to the 12, running down the bridge back to the tower of the 12, I lock up every time for several seconds.

Got it too, and the weird thing is that if you follow somebody on that bridge you will see him stuck in place, then he will start moving again, and when you reach the sticky zone, you're it.

I have that problem too on the lower bridge to access the Twelve tower, Once it even crashed the game client because I kept hitting the move ahead key.

[slimkj]

Got it too, and the weird thing is that if you follow somebody on that bridge you will see him stuck in place, then he will start moving again, and when you reach the sticky zone, you're it.
Me too, tho I think that's a different issue, as it's persistent. It's been around as long as I can remember running to and from Amrath for me.

Maj has mentioned before about the different flavours of lag, I think that's a fairly consistent but different type, and I'm racking my brains now trying to think where else I get it. There are about 3 spots in the game I just know I'll stick before I get there, and always do.
--
Whilst I'm on that note, I dislike the new overuse of particles lag I got after House Cannith's refit relatively soon after its launch. First iteration, no problem running. Now, particle "lag" client-end anytime I'm near the floating ball light thing in the centre-ish.

This happens in the marketplace near the tent too, though I suspect it might be numbers-of-polygon driven there. This kind irritates me the most of all, as it seems area design driven and is inconsistent. I have a fairly decent gaming rig, and 99% of the game runs like a dream but these places and a couple of others I can't remember really make the experience treacle-like. I dread to think what it'd be like on a low-end machine.

Yes, I could turn some FSAA down or something to accommodate but I just figure if most of the game can be handled by a decent gaming set up, why not make it all of it the same. The overuse of effects or whatever it is in just a couple of areas is almost like lulling players into thinking X settings are okay, and then pulling the rug out from under them once they're comfortable.

[JamnJD]

Lets see...



Ok. I'm going to be the Devil Advocate here... Could it be caused by that nice flashing bars cooldown that has been forced down our throat ?



Got it too, and the weird thing is that if you follow somebody on that bridge you will see him stuck in place, then he will start moving again, and when you reach the sticky zone, you're it.

I have that problem too on the lower bridge to access the Twelve tower, Once it even crashed the game client because I kept hitting the move ahead key.


Of course you do, everyone does lag at this point, it's a common lag spot, just as there are spots like this in the marketplace and other public areas. This is a different kind of lag, it's local, caused by the loading of more graphical data from your local hard drive. So everyone will see this hickup (this is improved if you use a solid state drive.)

There are different types of lag in this game, with different causes. They all need to be identified, prioritized, and looked at separately, or this will become another chase the lag tail thread.

...J

[Dark_Helmet]

Every time they have games, I see lag. Not local client lag (I can solo reaver with several disco balls going and not see issues as bad as just running through the marketplace and rubber banding when buffs/debuffs happen).

It seems like every time you run into a situation where a buff/debuff happens, there are a lot of calculations being done on you and the mobs which got worse when they implemented the code changes to handle Disjunction.


Since there seemed to be a significant increase in problems aroudn the time of the U-11 UI changes, maybe something to do with the cooldown timer graphic changes on the bars as well....

Or, when the "fixed" the in-game bug report system (tied the main game servers back to an outside service via IE/Firefox).

I have had cooldowns on and off and just see the issues - unless I have the "memory leak" (e.g. badly written memory cleanup code and hard ceiling).

That client memory leak (non-release) issue runs up against a wall (working set of memory hits 1.9GB and you start rubber banding / pausing). Relogging your characters doesn't lower the memory usuage. In fact, it makes the problem worse (stay logged in all day and you can run about 1.1GB. Relog between several characters and zone into an area or two and you hit that 1.9 GB issue).

I have 12 GB of memory, can run 4 of their clients simultaneously fine - until I start logging / relogging characters. I check the task manager and see the one client that starts having the most issues has hit 1.9 GB.



My gaming system, while older, is not the problem:

Gamer Paladin F870-SB
Case ( Coolermaster HAF 932 Full-Tower Gaming Case )
Power Supply ( 800 Watt -- Power Supply Quad SLI Ready )
Processor ( Intel Core i7 Processor 940 (4x 2.93GHz/8MB L3 Cache) )
Processor Cooling ( Certified CPU Fan and Heatsink )
Motherboard ( Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 Chipset CrossFire and SLI Supported w/7.1 Sound, Triple-Channel DDR3, Dual Gb LAN, S-ATA Raid, USB 2.0, Three PCI-E MB )
Memory ( 12 GB [6 GB X3] DDR3-1333 Triple Memory Module Corsair Value or Major Brand )
Video Card ( ATI Radeon HD 4870-X2 DDR5 2GB PCI-Express x16 )
Video Card Brand ( Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA )
Hard Drive ( 1.5 TB HARD DRIVE [Serial-ATA-II, 3Gb, 7200 RPM, 64M Cache] )
Hard Drive ( 2 TB HARD DRIVE [Serial-ATA-II, 3Gb, 10000 RPM, 32M Cache] )
Sound Card ( 3D Premium Surround Sound Onboard )
Operation System ( Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium +]

[TheDearLeader]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

Few things:

I think the "lag" OP was referring to is one that happens simultaneously, yet without distinct cause, to all members in the same party/instance, regardless of class/race/hotbar situation.

Specifically referring to Casters :

At the same time Melee characters were encountering the "Hit Box" issue in recent past, Arcanes also had some sort of "issue" crop up. I know it's been bug reported, but I will attempt to talk about it, anyway.

Spells are not "syncing" up to their Client-side casting animations. What I mean by this:
I cast a spell, be it from Scroll or Blue Bar : I take damage after spell effect has completed (such as a Heal Scroll). I still make a Concentration Check.
There is a Mob behind my caster. I spin to face it, then cast immediately upon facing it. The casting animation occurs, but at the end of the animation, I get a "You are not facing [Mob Name]" error. Spell sometimes still lands, sometimes does not.

This is most noticeable with mobile mobs. They'll spin, I'll cast and spin with them to preserve the spell, and still get an error message, wasted SP, a spell cooldown, and...no spell.


These are the two most noticeable causes of issues. But I have asked multiple people, and all started experiencing this phenomena at the same time, without any change in their internet connection/ISP/computer/etc.

The above *may* be some of the reports of "lag" you're hearing. If you'd like, I can attempt to at least replicate the "not facing" error on video, and perhaps with only one hotbar.

The only "Hotbar/Lag" issue I've seen is UMD/Proficiency Lag, which becomes increasingly worse the longer I'm online, and the more I toon swap. Any toon that has UMD, or items that grand temporary proficiency (either innately, like Epic Midnight Greetings, or bestowed upon it through Master's Touch) will notice further and further significant Lag in relation to swapping items, but especially any item which chances UMD, involves UMD to use/wear, or involves Master's Touch or other Proficiency : [Weapon] enhancement bonuses to utilize.

[LordMond63]

Anecdotally:

I play on Orien and, in the time between Update 12.1 and 12.2, enjoyed some of my most lag-free Shrouds that I can remember. I cannot recall even getting the stutter running up the stairs to the Altar after completing Part 1, and that spot, prior to then, almost always had some level of lag.

Then comes Update 12.2 and the lag is back, though nothing like it was during the last Mabar games. Still, it did cause a Shroud raid wipe due to blades appearing to be in one location visually but recorded by the server as being in another location entirely- namely, on top of our Divines.

A conclusion would be that Turbine is on the right track but not too far down it.

[AmatsukaIncarnate]

I noticed it today when I was on my cleric.
Was soloing through Blown to Bits and realized that right after I set a charge I was stuck right next to it because of the lag :D

I had death pact on, but every time I set a charge, I was scared that lag would freeze me in place again...although it does make that quest a LOT more "interesting" :D

[Kmnh]

Multiple bars do have a big effect on the UI responsiveness. Messing with the UI settings helps, but doesn't really solve it.

May we get rid of that bit of code that goes through all your gear and sees if they are usable or not whenever you change your UMD score? It turns "prayer" into a 2 seconds time stop, and the bunny hat close to unusable.

[Antheal]

I've noticed it with playing an archer. Every now and then I'd be shooting arrows and it seems every 4th or 5th arrow wouldn't even be making a to-hit roll.

[Carpone]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.
Does this have anything to do with the lag in Shroud when everyone approaches the chests at the same time? Or is that a separate issue?

[BrianTheHun]

The only "Hotbar/Lag" issue I've seen is UMD/Proficiency Lag, which becomes increasingly worse the longer I'm online, and the more I toon swap. Any toon that has UMD, or items that grand temporary proficiency (either innately, like Epic Midnight Greetings, or bestowed upon it through Master's Touch) will notice further and further significant Lag in relation to swapping items, but especially any item which chances UMD, involves UMD to use/wear, or involves Master's Touch or other Proficiency : [Weapon] enhancement bonuses to utilize.

That might be it. My main uses UMD constantly from wands, scrolls, gear swaps meeting alignment/racial requirements, etc. I have the UMD covered for all of it, but I'll have to see if I notice it becoming worse the more I switch. I've just assumed it was the 'normal' lag occuring lately.

[WolfSpirit]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)
I run 14 Hotbars on my Sorc, 12 on Monk, 10 on warriors (I like my clickies) and a whopping 16 on my Artificer. I rarely see lag but I also have a BEAST of a rig. But I can watch my Frame rate go from mid 60s to teens in Shroud pt 3 and also during pt 4 but not consistent in there. Blades? I do not know but it doesnt seem to be the same as standard Shroud lag (approach shrines after portals etc.)
Perhaps it would help narrow down data if you respectfully request data from players who have X amount of Memory, X amount of processing power etc. Wouldnt that yield more accurate data?

[DrunkenBuddha]

Significant change in lag. Noticed on all my toons, not just casters. Have 7 bars up and I am stutter-stepping through Marketplace. Guildies all report it as well. At the time I mentioned it to the guild, I was the only one on a caster and everyone else was on melee toons. None of us were in the same party.

Hopefully a fix to this gets expedited. It is quite pronounced - usually I only experience lag in the Shroud before chests and occasionally in the sub.

[Myznar]

Since last update im having HORRIBLE lagg in form of loading screen in the first toon i log in, i takes several minutes, its very annoying. it only hhappens in the first one, if i log out and then enter with another one, the loading screen takes a lot less time

[AMDarkwolf]

I remember people used to complain about the umd lag bug.. as where if u switch gear that would affect umd, you get a 1-2 second lag spike. I never once had this issue, but since the last downtime, i get it for ANY and ALL skills that change.. if i equip an item that adds good luck, if I get a boost to a stat, if a mob casts any form of shaken, bad luck, etc effect, it don't matter, ANY and ALL of those effects give me the lag spike, when said effect wears off, BANG there it is again.

I now fully understand what people went though before, and I just can't fathom how some quests can be done with it this way.

Before the last 'patch' (Or maintenance or whatever it was) the lag WAS worse than before, but not terribly so.

Hope somethings done about it because this, for abetter word, sucks.

[Phoenix-daBard]

Yes. If you have any flash videos open it will cause client lag noticeably in my experience.
And don't even try apple quicktime. I did that one, and never again.

Now having it open to the forums, I've never had an issue. Granted I also run with no script, so very little extranious stuff happens in the background as well.

No flash, typically it will be the forums and I have adblock running.

Interestingly Chrome doesn't cause an issue for me.

[Scraap]

I've seen that too, and that is something they definitely need to fix if true. Someone else's crappy connection should have zero effect on mine.

Here's another anecdote to pile onto the list for pinpointing causality:

Did a round-robin in the introductory challenges a while back showing a few guildies around.

One of them has a notoriously bad connection. (Among other things, he hadn't killed pando with fire yet. Since fixed, and he lags less.)

He started lagging as we entered the The Dragon's Hoard map.

He didn't stop lagging till it was done.

While we could lay torches, the kobolds didn't move a muscle. Once we were all kicked, he started hearing them spawn (which was about 10 seconds into the round.)

[Flavilandile]

Of course you do, everyone does lag at this point, it's a common lag spot, just as there are spots like this in the marketplace and other public areas. This is a different kind of lag, it's local, caused by the loading of more graphical data from your local hard drive. So everyone will see this hickup (this is improved if you use a solid state drive.)


Weird, once upon a time, when I was playing in Europe I didn't have all these stuck spots.
The HD is the same, the computer is the same, the graphic card is the same.

[Pewf]

I've 'lagged out' twice since U12.2.

Once was during a trade, where I was trading some lame House P scrolls for some larges. I lagged out immediately after the trade, re-logged in and was back in Amrath. :eek: (We were trading in Harbor) I checked my bags for good measure, but I had my epic scrolls back, along with the larges I had got... I whispered my trader and he too had lagged out and had his larges back, AND my epic scrolls.

I took them out of the bags and linked them, and they seem to be really there. So they... duplicated? :confused:

Hmmmmm...

[Agarwaen]

Actually my guess is there is something with UI redraw causing some of this. The more icons, the more redraw-like every spell icon all at the same time. Not concrete, but it is one of a few things we suspect.

This would explain a lot for me. The two characters I experience the most lag on are my caster and my rogue. The latter experiences by FAR the most lag. My caster has around 13 toolbars, but my rogue uses 15 and he has clickies all over them. Using a clicky causes a bit of lag at first login, a ton of lag after I have been on for hours or made a few character switches. When logging my rogue, it also takes his toolbars for ever to appear sometimes: they pop up one at a time all over the place. I don't think I have ever experienced this on any of my other 12 characters

As a side note, the lag I get from using a clicky is nothing in comparison to the lag I get when I swap an item that changes my UMD or my charisma. That also causes an icon redraw I believe. It used to be such that when your umd went high enough to use an item with a red border, the red border remained iirc. Now, the icons redraw instantly. Even your inventory redraws if you have inventory open. The lag I get from this problem is such that I seldom ever use my gs haste clicky for example. It has charisma skills on it, and switching back and forth to use it in the heat of battle results in freezes of 3-5 seconds.

[MaximumCharisma]

Does anyone else feel like the latest patch (Update 12 Patch 2) took us a big step backward, back towards the lag, latency, spells not hitting, and rubberbanding (henceforth "lag") that had been previously improved?

Since Update 9, Turbine has acknowledged (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=319323) and has been presumably battling the lag. (THANK YOU Turbine!!)

Since U12.2, I have noticed a dramatic increase in group-wide and raid-wide, and even zone and cross-zone wide game performance issues, a few of which have wiped raids. In correllation, I have also noticed a distinct increase in zone-out (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=337672) problems.

My issues with zone-outs had almost all but disappeared. Instead of having this happen EVERY session, it had become a relatively rare problem. However, since U12.2, it's been back in full swing. And, I know that I am not the only one to also suffer a resurgence of the zone-out client crashing.

Have you had similar observations about the dreaded lag monster? It was getting better there for a while (Yay Turbine), and now it's seemingly taken a big step back. Any thoughts or observations you have are appreciated! :D


FIX LAG

Yes I have noticed this. One of the most interesting is that what seems like "quicken bug" is even worse these days. Several times I have cast spells that took mana, show the casting animation (along with the sound), but have nothing in combat log nor an actual effect. Happens all the time with mass hold monster. I play with 7 hotbars atm.

Lots and lots of new party-wide choppy movement sections as well.

[Carpone]

If you want to easily reproduce lag on hotbars, login and logout of the same character ten times. With each subsequent login, the redraw time on hotbars increases significantly. As you login, you can see how painfully slow the client is with populating each icon in hotbars.

If I had to guess, it's the same lag issue with swapping UMD items.

[RumbIe]

My apologies for not reading through an entire lag thread, but figured I'd post my experience to add to the "proof" of lag.

Just prior to the Ice Games (maybe a few weeks) I started getting horrible lag in the marketplace and the harbor. More so than in any quest. Now with the ice games it's even worse and I'm not just getting freeze type lag, but serious rubber banding and it's happening on my ship too. Yesterday I ran the length of my ship, up the steps and into a room for my electric resistance only to have my toon flung back to the other end and facing the wrong direction so I ran into a wall. In the harbor the rubber banding has flung me off the stairs a bunch of times. Running to the Bazaar yesterday in Searing Heights had me banding back and forth a bunch. Once in Bargain of Blood I banded into the whirling blades a number of times thinking I'd stopped well in advance. The forward banding where the screen shows where you were as opposed to where you are is annoying especially around traps.

In any case these are all happening on the Cannith server, across all my characters. Pre-u12 I had almost no lag. I'm running on a 4gig Laptop and I have a 25 Mbps connection (tested) though my provider claims it should be 40 Mbps. I think this is pretty decent. I mean it's not super fast, but it's perhaps better than the average player. At least good enough I figure. What gives Turbine?

[somenewnoob]

If you want to easily reproduce lag on hotbars, login and logout of the same character ten times. With each subsequent login, the redraw time on hotbars increases significantly. As you login, you can see how painfully slow the client is with populating each icon in hotbars.

If I had to guess, it's the same lag issue with swapping UMD items.

This type of lag has been around for a long time. If you swap toons a bunch eventually you have to restart client of the lag gets horrible. This isn't new.

[Missing_Minds]

No flash, typically it will be the forums and I have adblock running.

Interestingly Chrome doesn't cause an issue for me.

Considering,(well FireFox) has released a version 8, then a 9... you know I wouldn't be surprised.

I know I've noticed something odd with the current versions, but I really can't explain it more than it is a "feeling".

[Carpone]

This type of lag has been around for a long time. If you swap toons a bunch eventually you have to restart client of the lag gets horrible. This isn't new.
Regardless of how long it's been around, it may be exacerbating the root cause of the problem. This is one of the few threads where Turbine is soliciting responses regarding lag, so it's worth bringing it up.

[JamnJD]

Weird, once upon a time, when I was playing in Europe I didn't have all these stuck spots.
The HD is the same, the computer is the same, the graphic card is the same.

Yes, but the game was different back then. Many of the public areas have changed since, with the additions of new houses and content.

Go walk across the bridge in the twelve, listen to your hard drive and watch the hdisk led on your computer. When you hit "the spot" you will see that your hard disk is thrashing a bit as more data is loaded in.

Another spot is in the marketplace, when you exit an airship, make a right and go down the stairs and head towards the lordsmarch bank area. There is a spot there, just as you walk away from the stairs down.

...J

[smatt]

My apologies for not reading through an entire lag thread, but figured I'd post my experience to add to the "proof" of lag.

Just prior to the Ice Games (maybe a few weeks) I started getting horrible lag in the marketplace and the harbor. More so than in any quest. Now with the ice games it's even worse and I'm not just getting freeze type lag, but serious rubber banding and it's happening on my ship too. Yesterday I ran the length of my ship, up the steps and into a room for my electric resistance only to have my toon flung back to the other end and facing the wrong direction so I ran into a wall. In the harbor the rubber banding has flung me off the stairs a bunch of times. Running to the Bazaar yesterday in Searing Heights had me banding back and forth a bunch. Once in Bargain of Blood I banded into the whirling blades a number of times thinking I'd stopped well in advance. The forward banding where the screen shows where you were as opposed to where you are is annoying especially around traps.

In any case these are all happening on the Cannith server, across all my characters. Pre-u12 I had almost no lag. I'm running on a 4gig Laptop and I have a 25 Mbps connection (tested) though my provider claims it should be 40 Mbps. I think this is pretty decent. I mean it's not super fast, but it's perhaps better than the average player. At least good enough I figure. What gives Turbine?


Yep, it's long been shown that the "Ice Games" and "Mabore" even in the slow hours of the day cause problems gamewide, and yet Turbine still refuses to do anything about it. Even though the popularity of those "Special Events" is waning... They were poorly designed poorly coded events, that at the time were worth it to Turbine since they were very popular with the part of the gaming community that thought the lag was worth the rewards. But it's sad that the ENTIRE community has to suffer..... It's obvious that the public instance "Special Events" cause a huge amount of drag on the overall world for whatever reason.

Turbine may be working on some of the various forms of lag/lag like problems right now, after ignoring the build up over the last year..... But they're also completely ignoring easily fixed ones. Like the mostly useless Mabore, and Lag games events.

[smatt]

Yes, but the game was different back then. Many of the public areas have changed since, with the additions of new houses and content.

Go walk across the bridge in the twelve, listen to your hard drive and watch the hdisk led on your computer. When you hit "the spot" you will see that your hard disk is thrashing a bit as more data is loaded in.

Another spot is in the marketplace, when you exit an airship, make a right and go down the stairs and head towards the lordsmarch bank area. There is a spot there, just as you walk away from the stairs down.

...J


Yep... House C causes all kinds of problems for many people...

[smatt]

This type of lag has been around for a long time. If you swap toons a bunch eventually you have to restart client of the lag gets horrible. This isn't new.


Nope not new, and it's been 100% ignored for years, even though people have been discussing it all along. But we do have UNDERWATER COMBAT! :D

[Cauthey]

Yes, but the game was different back then. Many of the public areas have changed since, with the additions of new houses and content.

Go walk across the bridge in the twelve, listen to your hard drive and watch the hdisk led on your computer. When you hit "the spot" you will see that your hard disk is thrashing a bit as more data is loaded in.

Another spot is in the marketplace, when you exit an airship, make a right and go down the stairs and head towards the lordsmarch bank area. There is a spot there, just as you walk away from the stairs down.

...J

I've NEVER heard of these spots before.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to go to these spots, specifically, and do a bug report with the /loc hash information of the spot?

Are there other observed/documented spots?

[smatt]

I've NEVER heard of these spots before.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile to go to these spots, specifically, and do a bug report with the /loc hash information of the spot?

Are there other observed/documented spots?


But that woudl require a "Working" bug reporting system..... If only.... And then it would require someone to actually READ said bug reports... If only.... :eek::o

[Cauthey]

Yep, it's long been shown that the "Ice Games" and "Mabore" even in the slow hours of the day cause problems gamewide, and yet Turbine still refuses to do anything about it. Even though the popularity of those "Special Events" is waning... They were poorly designed poorly coded events, that at the time were worth it to Turbine since they were very popular with the part of the gaming community that thought the lag was worth the rewards. But it's sad that the ENTIRE community has to suffer..... It's obvious that the public instance "Special Events" cause a huge amount of drag on the overall world for whatever reason.

Turbine may be working on some of the various forms of lag/lag like problems right now, after ignoring the build up over the last year..... But they're also completely ignoring easily fixed ones. Like the mostly useless Mabore, and Lag games events.

I disagree with you completely here, Smatt. I dig the events. When I know that they are coming, I pour through all of my alts to get my remainder event "bits" together, and start making a plan for which gear I'm going to need to get for which characters.

Even after I manage to assemble EVERY piece I'll ever need for my many alts (if I ever get that far), I feel that I will still get a Major Static Charge out of these events. Sorry - they're all just NEAT! :D

Yes, they lend to creating additional latency. Yes, they may not be coded perfectly. Yes, we've played them before. But, I still find them fun, and I believe that a large portion of the playerbase do also.

[BrianTheHun]

After playing again last night, I realized it really does seem to be an issue with UMD items. My rogue will be in combat, jump back to heal himself off scrolls, and often get a stutter where I hit the button numerous times and nothing happens except lag. It does indeed get worse the longer I play.

[rocky0]

Yep, it's long been shown that the "Ice Games" and "Mabore" even in the slow hours of the day cause problems gamewide, and yet Turbine still refuses to do anything about it. Even though the popularity of those "Special Events" is waning... They were poorly designed poorly coded events, that at the time were worth it to Turbine since they were very popular with the part of the gaming community that thought the lag was worth the rewards. But it's sad that the ENTIRE community has to suffer..... It's obvious that the public instance "Special Events" cause a huge amount of drag on the overall world for whatever reason.

Turbine may be working on some of the various forms of lag/lag like problems right now, after ignoring the build up over the last year..... But they're also completely ignoring easily fixed ones. Like the mostly useless Mabore, and Lag games events.


I find it amusing how you claim that the popularity of these events is waining yet there seem to be a lot of people who participate in them. You shouldnt make sweeping comments like that without having any proof except your obvious dislike of said games.

The lag issues as has been stated before is not solely from these games. There have been many posts about people having lag issues when these events arent running. Do the events add to it, Im sure they do but doubt they are the main cause of it all. I am very lucky in that I dont have any issues with the lag during the events that others have. This has always made me wonder what exactly causes these issues. I have been talking with a guildy about the issues as he has been hit hard by them both during events and in normal times.

I'm willing to bet a lot of people have the issues because their machines cant handle what they want to do. I do know a few people were complaining about their lag and when they post what their machine is, they are the problem not the game. I do know though that many people have legititmate issues with the game and I am sory they have these problems. It just seems strange that so many have issues when others are very lucky in that they dont have them at all.

[smatt]

I disagree with you completely here, Smatt. I dig the events. When I know that they are coming, I pour through all of my alts to get my remainder event "bits" together, and start making a plan for which gear I'm going to need to get for which characters.

Even after I manage to assemble EVERY piece I'll ever need for my many alts (if I ever get that far), I feel that I will still get a Major Static Charge out of these events. Sorry - they're all just NEAT! :D

Yes, they lend to creating additional latency. Yes, they may not be coded perfectly. Yes, we've played them before. But, I still find them fun, and I believe that a large portion of the playerbase do also.


Sure sure, of course there are people who still like the "Special Events" ... I didn't say there wasn't, but it's far fewer than in the past. FAR fewer... So, what I am saying is it worth lagging out the ENTIRE game just so a few people can bounce around like fricken a mario bros game? Just check out for yourself how many peopel are actualyl doign the Ice games... How m,any instances at various tiems of the day... It used to be 8-9-10, even at the slower times... Now it's 2-3-maybe 4... And the bogwater is DEAD.... And yet it's still causing issues worldwide.... And I believe this lack of enthusiasm is far more than the obvious drop in total player population....

Your Sig has "Fix Lag" in big bright yellow text and yet you say this particulsr kind of lag is OK?

While I hate analogies because they're typicall yso far misplaced they are totally irrelevant.. I'll use a little one.... DDO and Turbine are like the U.S. car companies.. They became lazy and so out of touch with the product they offer.... They don't see the problems with the junk they're providing, the bugs, the lag.... The new content while it has its merits for some, is so narrow in scope as far as appealing to the population, well it's not that great of an offering.... The leadership is so out of touch with what's going on with their product.....

Has the uproar since "U-11ME" knocked some sense into them? Who knows, it might've... I mean we can look at the much talked about MAJOR enhancement changes and how that will bring about new PRE's etc as evidence they weren't even considering working on anything new like that, the long dead PRE's etc until all hell broke loose.. The were too busy working on a product line like "Challenges" which are like a blip in popularity... And Arti$, again a big lead balloon... Meanwhile the game has turned akin to a tenament building so full of bugs, and when people can actually figure out how to report the bugs, they get ignored... Lag so bad at times some people just log off, or stand around chatting instead of questing... Worse and worse, and yet ignored..... For the sake of things like "Underwater Combat"..... Which turned out to be as popular as the AMC Pacer... :eek:

We'll see.... I hope things are turning around as I type... So far tons of talk... But nothign else from them...

[freelove]

It is not the special event or volume of players, unless a lot of new players are running winter festival cuz less people are on especially after holiday/exploit.

Our channel and guild has experienced about a 40% reduction in players - we even went from lvl 81 back down to 80 recently. Also trying to get even an LFM for say Gianthold/Necro 4 (so much easier to run those less then solo friendly quests with a group) has gotten tougher last 3 weeks or so.

Now some of it is SWOR, some the exploit, some the changes in U12 but it is not volume of people, it is lag. Especially mass charm spells are not hitting - you can see the server try to calculate the saving throws ... wait for it, wait - ok some are charmed or it just does not land at all!

Spells, rubber band, jump backs, opps you are dead yes - I am familiar with Turbine lag for 3 years now - it is lag. The days of partial pugging 4 eVONS, 2 eDQS, jumping in 3-4 shrouds and a handfull of other epics in a week are long gone.

Really update 5 turned off many players and the next 7 updates finished off many of the rest. Seeing them add so much content that only added a few things that the whole community wanted or at least could use. Fixing lag by nerfing your player base was something I have never seen before, usually game designers go about this a bit different.

But hey I own all of the packs I need to log in a few days a month and see if Turbine gets it yet.

/signed

[smatt]

It is not the special event or volume of players, unless a lot of new players are running winter festival cuz less people are on especially after holiday/exploit.

Our channel and guild has experienced about a 40% reduction in players - we even went from lvl 81 back down to 80 recently. Also trying to get even an LFM for say Gianthold/Necro 4 (so much easier to run those less then solo friendly quests with a group) has gotten tougher last 3 weeks or so.

Now some of it is SWOR, some the exploit, some the changes in U12 but it is not volume of people, it is lag. Especially mass charm spells are not hitting - you can see the server try to calculate the savings throw ... wait for it, wait - ok some are charmed or it just does not land at all!

Spells, rubber band, jump backs, opps you are dead yes

/signed


This lends to the fact that lag/lag-like behaviors are caused by MANY different things. It's not all population, or quest specific, or group specific, or region specific... But there's most certainyl somethign about things liek the Ice Games, even at slwoer tiems that cause issues world wide. That goes for Mabore, as well as say 30-40 peopel opeing somethign over an dover 1,000's of times... Specific spells such as Ice Storm, dancing balls, hyno-dome.... Items effects that affect a lot fo things such as UMD skills affecting items etc...

But I will say that the bugs, lag etc of the last 6-7 months has had an impact on the game population wise... It's not just the new games out..... A lot fo peopel are leaving becsue the minute to minute gaming experience of DDO sucks balls for many, and has for a while.... Many times it's nto the single factor, BUT it's enough to push them over the edge... That's why my DDO = U.S. car manufacturer anology applies.... Completely and totally out of touch leadership....

[freelove]

This lends to the fact that lag/lag-like behaviors are caused by MANY different things. It's not all population, or quest specific, or group specific, or region specific... But there's most certainyl somethign about things liek the Ice Games, even at slwoer tiems that cause issues world wide. That goes for Mabore, as well as say 30-40 peopel opeing somethign over an dover 1,000's of times... Specific spells such as Ice Storm, dancing balls, hyno-dome.... Items effects that affect a lot fo things such as UMD skills affecting items etc...

But I will say that the bugs, lag etc of the last 6-7 months has had an impact on the game population wise... It's not just the new games out..... A lot fo peopel are leaving becsue the minute to minute gaming experience of DDO sucks balls for many, and has for a while.... Many times it's nto the single factor, BUT it's enough to push them over the edge... That's why my DDO = U.S. car manufacturer anology applies.... Completely and totally out of touch leadership....

I agree. Seems like when Turbine got some money built up and WB bought them they added all of these updates (8 in a year versus like 4 in two years) with no idea what to create.

I do not see the festival point though I can remember 12 instances with the winter festival and now there are like 3 and lag was FAR less with the 12.

I have also noticed more lag trying to switch items which is real pain when soloing. Hit it swing, oh ****, hit it again, again - ok now swing. It really is all of the effects, buffs, gear, etc on toons that they keep adding with little regard for what it does to game play.

I tried to use my G110 keyboard and program keys and gave up along time ago on lag in this game, yet I have them programmed for Rift and not one problem.

[BladeTricks]

Yes, lag has gotten worse in the past few weeks. No matter the time of day, it's never smooth.

* the first log-in takes several minutes. Subsequent log-ins are faster, but that's of course not counting the memory leaks that bring my computer to a crawl after several toon swaps.

* walking in the marketplace, house c, or anywhere really, is always a stutter-fest.

Worse, it has a big impact while questing:

* spells/clickies not going off (while still consuming sp/charges and starting cooldown timer).

* message of spell failing because I'm not facing the mob (when I clearly am).

* lag-freezes, for several seconds at a time, especially noticeable running Challenges (I ran Tangleroot yesterday after a couple hours of Challenges and noticed no lag).

[Cauthey]

Your Sig has "Fix Lag" in big bright yellow text and yet you say this particulsr kind of lag is OK?

No. Nowhere did I say "x-kind of lag is OK by me."

What I DID say was "I like the events."

I can certainly appreciate and identify with your frustrations. However, instead of poo pooing every chance I get, I choose to try and raise awareness about the issues I see with the game. Yes, this includes /bugging though a sometimes functional bugging tool. I also try to compare notes with other players, and see if they are experiencing the same things that I experience.

MajMalphunktion has proven your signature file wrong with the second reply in this thread. Turbine cares. Perhaps sometimes it doesn't appear that the devs are listening to us. But they are listening. And they do care. I know this for a fact.

The Devs have acknowledged the lag issues, and I believe that they are working on them. I believe that they are far reaching, 6 year old code-related issues, and it's going to take them some time and digging to work through. Dev engagement and communication has shown that they know the problem is here, and that they DO in fact want to fix this.

Now - if you have some helpful or constructive observations about the lag you've experienced, I would be happy to hear it.

However, if you are only here with an interest in spraying sourness, please do so in a different thread (there are many other poo poo threads to pick from). I would like for this thread to remain positive and productive. Thank you! :D

[slimkj]

I now fully understand what people went though before, and I just can't fathom how some quests can be done with it this way.
Yeah UMD change lag is the worst :( Especially in eADQ1 where one touch of those Mordenkainen's balls can mean death on a UMD char with the mass of calcs as you enter and exit.

[slimkj]

Yep, it's long been shown that the "Ice Games" and "Mabore" even in the slow hours of the day cause problems gamewide, and yet Turbine still refuses to do anything about it.
Sorry to be the contrary git, but I've rarely seen an increase in lag issues during events, and when I have it was seldom enough to easily be coincidental. I think this is far from proven.

Remember the naughty wraps bug? That may have been unrelated but server lag around that time was far worse than anything I've seen of late, and iirc there was no event on then.

(UMD skill lag aside, that's with us forever it seems, like the ladder bug!)

[Arnhelm]

I'm noticing a lot more lag since the maintenance window. Also, I'm seeing more mouse-wheel failures when switching chars and when switching instances, and occasional client crashes.

Hmm...

[smatt]

Sorry to be the contrary git, but I've rarely seen an increase in lag issues during events, and when I have it was seldom enough to easily be coincidental. I think this is far from proven.

Remember the naughty wraps bug? That may have been unrelated but server lag around that time was far worse than anything I've seen of late, and iirc there was no event on then.

(UMD skill lag aside, that's with us forever it seems, like the ladder bug!)


Well you seem to be one of the VERY few who say you that you dont' see any difference in SERVER performance during Mabor and Lag games... But sure.. We each have our own opinions based on our own experiences. I'll take the 100's that I talk to in game and the many that post here as back up to my personal opinion though.

[smatt]

No. Nowhere did I say "x-kind of lag is OK by me."

What I DID say was "I like the events." I'm sorry, I took what you said goign about how you like them and find value in them and then saying you realise they do cause lag/lag-like issues as an acceptable trade-off.



I can certainly appreciate and identify with your frustrations. However, instead of poo pooing every chance I get, I choose to try and raise awareness about the issues I see with the game. Yes, this includes /bugging though a sometimes functional bugging tool. I also try to compare notes with other players, and see if they are experiencing the same things that I experience.
Been here for over 5 years, I USED to bother until it became futile.



MajMalphunktion has proven your signature file wrong with the second reply in this thread. Turbine cares. Perhaps sometimes it doesn't appear that the devs are listening to us. But they are listening. And they do care. I know this for a fact.
It will wear off.. Maj has shown he's interested, but thigns HAVEN''T changed a bit since he's been, almsot a year now. At least not from fromt he players perspective. Sure he posts a bit, offers some appologies etc. Eladrin and Madfloyd have their spats of communication as well. I know the Devs at least by the prson actually care. Heck, even the socalled "Producers" probably care... BUT..... The evidence over the last 7-8 months is clear.... While they released all this AWESOME popular content/game changes... The lag was ignored.... The longstanding unfinished issues were ignored..... Uneeded/mostly unwanted changes to the UI were instituted in a HORRIBLE UNTESTED fashion. New systems put in palce that were either totoally non-functioning, or barely funictioning, and even then what was working was so bugged.. Well....

Care sure they may "care".... But the lack of clear leadership, the lack of clear vision, the lack of clear direction is very evident.




The Devs have acknowledged the lag issues, and I believe that they are working on them. I believe that they are far reaching, 6 year old code-related issues, and it's going to take them some time and digging to work through. Dev engagement and communication has shown that they know the problem is here, and that they DO in fact want to fix this.
Ya, after a huge outcry months later they decide to devote resources to the problem. They did try a fix back Mid December, one that involved the instance virtual server crashing.... It remains to be seen how committed they actually are.



Now - if you have some helpful or constructive observations about the lag you've experienced, I would be happy to hear it.
Meh.... Did that years ago... When I see them actually start doing something more, then perhaps myself as well as MANY other dedicated DDO players will again attempt to give our input. Many have given up though, after years of lip service... Maj talked about being right on top of the bugged content, and how things would change 9 months ago... Not sure if you've been paying attention since U11ME..... But......


However, if you are only here with an interest in spraying sourness, please do so in a different thread (there are many other poo poo threads to pick from). I would like for this thread to remain positive and productive. Thank you! :D

Sorry not your forums..... I give credit when it's due.... And a blurb here and htere about them "working on it" isn't progress.... It's more "Soon" type stuff.... I spent a long time defending Turbine, they don't deserve it right now, sorry.... I will offer various reports of when I see lag/lag-like related issues, most of which are related to things that have been competely ignored for over a year or more. So yes you WILL continue to see sourness from me... :cool:

[gloopygloop]

MajMalphunktion has proven your signature file wrong with the second reply in this thread. Turbine cares. Perhaps sometimes it doesn't appear that the devs are listening to us. But they are listening. And they do care. I know this for a fact.

Maj cares. MadFloyd cares. Eladrin cares. Individual people at Turbine care. Unfortunately, the people who are making the decisions about how to manage content release and at what pace to release content don't particularly care. That's pretty obvious.

If they did care as a company, then they'd actually have a single person in charge of releasing new code that would be able to put a release management program in place that would include things like version checking to make sure that old bugs don't slip into new code and to make sure that everything that's in the release notes is in the code and that everything that's in the code is available to the people writing the release notes.

They'd put into place actual procedures for moving code from developers private build, to QA builds, to Preview Builds, to Public Preview, final Preview and Production.

If they actually cared, they'd have community liasons who liased with the community instead of just policing the comunity.

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

Sorry to be the contrary git, but I've rarely seen an increase in lag issues during events, and when I have it was seldom enough to easily be coincidental. I think this is far from proven.

Remember the naughty wraps bug? That may have been unrelated but server lag around that time was far worse than anything I've seen of late, and iirc there was no event on then.

(UMD skill lag aside, that's with us forever it seems, like the ladder bug!)

Every time the event lag topic pops up, there are a few people who are really adamant that they don't see it much. And I believe you, I do. I just wish somebody knew what the common factor was between you all.

I'm seeing a lot of minor lag right now, just hiccups, but it's constant; lots of empty attack animations and small rubberbanding and such. I will say it seems better than previous ice games.

[smatt]

Maj cares. MadFloyd cares. Eladrin cares. Individual people at Turbine care. Unfortunately, the people who are making the decisions about how to manage content release and at what pace to release content don't particularly care. That's pretty obvious.

If they did care as a company, then they'd actually have a single person in charge of releasing new code that would be able to put a release management program in place that would include things like version checking to make sure that old bugs don't slip into new code and to make sure that everything that's in the release notes is in the code and that everything that's in the code is available to the people writing the release notes.

They'd put into place actual procedures for moving code from developers private build, to QA builds, to Preview Builds, to Public Preview, final Preview and Production.

If they actually cared, they'd have community liasons who liased with the community instead of just policing the comunity.


Yes of course they do care, for at least 8 hours a day, and probably a lot more since they likely think about this stuff constantly.... And over the last few weeks we've seen Madfloyd and Eladrin step out and talk about this "New" project as far as enhancements/PRE's/Feats/skills goes. Which is great, Maj. has posted a little tiny bit about work on Lag issues. Fernando said nothing.. But "Happy New Year". Madfloyd also posted about his team growing by 50% which is very encouraging, since I believe that one of the main problems is understaffing. And of course his (Madfloyd's) other "Let's Talk" threads. Let's hope things improve in the coming months..... They can't spend all their time posting or reading these forums.... That's a HUGE job in itself trying to sift through this junk... There's been some great ideas posted in the Enhancements thread, some pretty deep ideas for them to wade through.

I would love to see a few preliminary steps as far as the issues created over the last 2 updates though, more than just talk. This game still has lots of potential..... We'll see... Many of us that have been here a long time have seen and heard it all before. Leet's keep our fingers crossed :)

[merentha]

I'm thinking anyone who has 10 (or more) bars of clickies that they are hammering on. Something QA is chasing. All the casters...arcane and otherwise are usually the ones that complain more about 'lag'. Anyway...the more data the better. :)

I don't think it takes 10 bars, but I do experience this on my sorcerer and my monk. My sorc (lvl 11 now) has 9 hotbars and the issue only seems to crop up after a while of play. I remember one day it wasn't until a few of the quests in the Threnal chain until I started to have spells black-hole or tell me I wasn't facing my target.

My monk has 12 bars, but the last 2 have bags and gear to swap into (I rarely use anything on these bars more than once or twice an hour, it is just to avoid going thru my inventory).

I used to think it was my own fault for using the macro buttons on my keyboard and mouse, but my sorc started experiencing the issue before I had enough spells to need to use the extra buttons (for a while the only one I used was the maximize toggle on my mouse for bosses).

It's also been my observation that the lag starts to become 'communal'. If I am in a group and the bigger that group, then the sooner I will experience it or hear of someone experiencing it (usually from the most active caster first or a button crazy melee).

[LucidLTS]

My lag was getting a little better. It still made for a miserable playing experience, but the peaks were a little less miserable and spaced a little further apart.

With 12.2 it seemed to get a bit worse again. And Zone Out seems much more often too.

I do use 7-9 hot bars on most of my characters, and most of my characters have a blue bar (rangers, clerics, wizards, and a bard) I'm not sure if my pure rogue is spared, but he uses UMD constantly so maybe he gets his lag from other sources.

Please fix this, it's killing the fun. It wasn't like this 9 months ago, and my computer has not changed.

[smatt]

OK, so someone requested some lag related discussion.

The other night I ran into what has become a typical issue in raids at least for me and some others, that I believe is pretty new IE: the lat 4-6 months.

In Tower of Despair around 10PM EST on Thursday evening, part 1. We were fighting the Judge just below and to the right of the spot you drop onto. Swing swing swing, oh telekenisis the party I'm up over there, wait no we're still next to him, wait no we're up over there, no we're still next to him. Many of us were bouncing back and forth from standing on him, to all the way accross the room, 3 or so times this happened.

I think this issue is pretty common, just not as pronounced or as obvious, but it was easy to see since there was a great distance between the places where it seems the parties client and the server thought we were. I would guess this has something to do with client-server sync? And somekind of glitch on the server side, since it was 6 or 7 of us that this was happening to at the same time? More than likely the more common manifestion would be like a step back and forth a few times, and likely would be far less noticible in most cases, and only show as pause like animations when fighting a stationary type mob.