Event lag, we say it every single event but....

[Knight_slayer]

Every time we have an event like Mabar or Crystal Cove the server lag becomes 10x worse. Everyone I know experiences it. Every time there is an event people complain about it yet nothing is ever done. It's game breaking lag that makes you want to smash your computer. Especialy when your in EE Deathwyrm, beating down the dragon trying to controll that crazy instance and then you're just frozen in place. 20 minutes later after some had tried restarts and not been able to log back in, everyone else still frozen in the raid we just logged off. Hours of planning and preperation down the drain.

What is the plan here Turbine? Continue ignoring it no doubt. I say scrap all events, if they destroy the rest of the game the entire time they are up whats the point?

[JamnJD]

It's not just events. They don't help, but the game has been broken this way for quite some time.

Their response will be to not respond.

The truth sucks, but there it is.

...J

[Knight_slayer]

It's not just events. They don't help, but the game has been broken this way for quite some time.

Their response will be to not respond.

The truth sucks, but there it is.

...J

Yes it's bad even without the events but it's just playable. You can at least complete EE raids 70% of the time without being completly crippled or whipe due to lag.

With the event it's a whole other story. We've been trying to run EE MoD for the past two weeks. Each attempt ends with lag causing party whipe. On normal you can get away with it because the damage isn't that bad but we just can't get an elite run of anything while the event is on.

[Tobril]

Yes it's bad even without the events but it's just playable. You can at least complete EE raids 70% of the time without being completly crippled or whipe due to lag.

With the event it's a whole other story. We've been trying to run EE MoD for the past two weeks. Each attempt ends with lag causing party whipe. On normal you can get away with it because the damage isn't that bad but we just can't get an elite run of anything while the event is on.



Try tanking a shroud rainbow wall during the cove opening.

:)

[NyteByrd1017]

It's not just events. They don't help, but the game has been broken this way for quite some time.

Their response will be to not respond.

The truth sucks, but there it is.

...J

Or maybe the response will be to delete the game bit by bit until Turbine tanks DDO all together.

[Knight_slayer]

Or maybe the response will be to delete the game bit by bit until Turbine tanks DDO all together.

It's weird, new permanent content like quest packs don't have anyewhere near the effect on lag as does temporary content like events.

[MeliCat]

See this is where my sucky timezone wins.

Next to no lag if u want to play at the dead times.

[Monkey-Boy]

I've got to admit, this makes me curious: why isn't it universal? Why is it that some people will have increased lag during events, and others won't? Was running with a friend last Monday night, and he never has lag issues - untill then. He had trouble logging on, and had lots of pauses/freezes during quests while I was playing just fine. Then on a different occasion with different people we all had pausing and freezing during a quest. I imagine that "some have, some don't" has got to make it difficult to diagnose and correct.

Its probably a server thing.

[DeathdefyBeta]

I feel like it has to be the 'spawn mobs sort of appropriate to nearby players' levels' code that does it. That's the main thing I can think of that is unique to events.

I know DDO can't handle too many mobs at once or it freaks out, so that code is sort of necessary if it's deemed crucial to have a big free-for-all explorer area.

I don't think the actual torch running challenge inside the cove can be the problem since challenges never caused this sort of lag (when epic Time is Money and Buying Time were popular for quick token gathering / levelling heroic characters).

The compromise solution of removing the explorer area (and consequent treasure map hand-ins) would be fine by me.


EDIT: Actually I can see how creating about a hundred instances simultaneously at the exact moment cove opens would do it. Removing timed openings by having it open full-time would still be my suggestion.

[Paleus]

I've got to admit, this makes me curious: why isn't it universal? Why is it that some people will have increased lag during events, and others won't? Was running with a friend last Monday night, and he never has lag issues - untill then. He had trouble logging on, and had lots of pauses/freezes during quests while I was playing just fine. Then on a different occasion with different people we all had pausing and freezing during a quest. I imagine that "some have, some don't" has got to make it difficult to diagnose and correct.

You are correct, people have different experiences with lag and it makes it difficult to diagnose and correct. My experience with these discussions of lag is that the problem isn't "fanbois" denying lag exists. The problem is that someone attempts to suggest that while there is lag caused by the game's code/servers, there are also some game performance issues that the player can take steps to try to address. Those steps will not alleviate lag in all cases, so doombois would rather claim anyone offering suggestions a person could take on their own to improve performance are fanbois claiming all is well. But there should be no reason that suggesting personal steps to improve game performance is the same as saying there are no problems with the game unless the goal is to cut off your nose to spite your face.

For example, the Black Loch has notoriously bad lag in the room where the ship is. If a person looks at the wall instead of at the water I've found lag to be significantly mitigated in a lot of cases. Now, you could suggest that a person tries looking at the wall while playing that quest to reduce their lag and still acknowledge that its seriously messed up that you have to look at the wall because the coding of the water and standard graphics settings produces tremendous lag. Or, you could be the type that claims anyone making that sort of suggestion is a fanboi claiming all is well. I guess doomers gonna doom.

[Eth]

My summary of the last two days in DDO:
- EE CitW raid, started with 5 people slowly filled to 12. Crippling lag from start to finish with an almost wipe caused by it.
- 4 MoD runs, lag, lag, lag and ...lag
- Crafted a Tier3 shroud item to change some gear around, do some other stuff, teleport to orchard, stuck in loading screen, waited 10 minutes, relog, cleaning up old connection, 30 minutes later of waiting - disconnected, server full blah, log back in, MY CHARACTER IS ROLLED BACK ABOUT 10 minutes before that teleport...I mean what in the world is going? I noticed because the tier3 item I just crafted was back to tier2. W T F

- Guild raid night: ran 4 or 5 MoDs. Again lag in every single one. One run particularly so bad, it was barely playable.
- Start a EH Deathwyrm, little interest, takes good 20 minutes to fill, reach gravity room, complete it, LAG, no one can move for 20 minutes, put ticket in, gets closed without comment, we give up, logged out

I'm seriously questioning why I even continue to play this game.


I don't know if it's the event. But the lag is worse than ever before.

[MeliCat]

- Start a EH Deathwyrm, little interest, takes good 20 minutes to fill, reach gravity room, complete it, LAG, no one can move for 20 minutes, put ticket in, gets closed without comment, we give up, logged out
.

Curious thing Eth; you're still showing up in the Who list as being in that same Deathwyrm even though your guildleader assures us you're not logged in.

ie you're lagging even when you've logged off. Quite a feature they've got going on here.

[Eth]

Curious thing Eth; you're still showing up in the Who list as being in that same Deathwyrm even though your guildleader assures us you're not logged in.

ie you're lagging even when you've logged off. Quite a feature they've got going on here.

I just closed the game since I couldn't even log out. So wouldn't surprise me.
Wonder if my character will get rolled back again.

[thakorian]

- Start a EH Deathwyrm, little interest, takes good 20 minutes to fill, reach gravity room, complete it, LAG, no one can move for 20 minutes, put ticket in, gets closed without comment, we give up, logged out.

We did eventually complete it with 6 or 7 people with a 101min completion time. It was harsh but fun.

[axel15810]

Mindblowing lag on Thelanis last night (Wednesday).

Honestly I have applauded Turbine until yesterday as I have had very little lag issues with the new content.

But during an EE run of vol last night we had soul crushing lag. THe run ended up taking ~40 minutes because of lag. Often times we were all frozen and couldn't move for several minutes straight. We had one memorable lag spike where we couldn't move for a solid 7 minutes at least...we all almost quit. Through most of the quest we'd get a lag spike that would last ~30 seconds to a minute where we couldn't move, about 2 minutes of normal play, another 20-30 lag spike, ect. ect.

We tried another run after that but ended up all quitting at the named quell and deciding to log off and try again another day as the lag hadn't improved. I even took a video of it.

[DakFrost]

I didn't see any lag for a few minutes last night, so obviously there is no lag in DDO.

All is well.

[Powskier]

It's weird, new permanent content like quest packs don't have anyewhere near the effect on lag as does temporary content like events.

bullshut ...the regular quests in wheelon lag Worst in Game..noless slayer there! CITW with med or high resolutions is laggathon central! just walkin around evestar and market are laggy as hell when no event is here...I saw almost zero lag in cove events(like 4seconds worth in one run)

[BD_]

I feel like it has to be the 'spawn mobs sort of appropriate to nearby players' levels' code that does it. That's the main thing I can think of that is unique to events.

I know DDO can't handle too many mobs at once or it freaks out, so that code is sort of necessary if it's deemed crucial to have a big free-for-all explorer area.

I don't think the actual torch running challenge inside the cove can be the problem since challenges never caused this sort of lag (when epic Time is Money and Buying Time were popular for quick token gathering / levelling heroic characters).

The compromise solution of removing the explorer area (and consequent treasure map hand-ins) would be fine by me.


EDIT: Actually I can see how creating about a hundred instances simultaneously at the exact moment cove opens would do it. Removing timed openings by having it open full-time would still be my suggestion.

This. The huge "lag" spikes people are seeing are normally right when the doors to CC open. Just get rid of maps altogether or make it so you need a compass and 50 maps to enter CC or something like that and many of the "lag" problems with CC would be fixed. It would also make it so that people at off peak times have more chances to run the instance and stop the whining about people not helping turn in maps...

The spawn/respawn mobs might have some effect - but probably minimal. Most spawning, too many mobs in one area, DA, etc. type lag (mostly) only hits that particular instance. For example if I'm in a Deathwyrm and we get a red DA and it lags our raid - it (mostly) only affects our raid. This type of CPU intensive "lag" would most likely affect other instances that are being run on the same physical server so in theory it would affect some other instances also but not others.

[BD_]

My summary of the last two days in DDO:
- EE CitW raid, started with 5 people slowly filled to 12. Crippling lag from start to finish with an almost wipe caused by it.
- 4 MoD runs, lag, lag, lag and ...lag
- Crafted a Tier3 shroud item to change some gear around, do some other stuff, teleport to orchard, stuck in loading screen, waited 10 minutes, relog, cleaning up old connection, 30 minutes later of waiting - disconnected, server full blah, log back in, MY CHARACTER IS ROLLED BACK ABOUT 10 minutes before that teleport...I mean what in the world is going? I noticed because the tier3 item I just crafted was back to tier2. W T F

- Guild raid night: ran 4 or 5 MoDs. Again lag in every single one. One run particularly so bad, it was barely playable.
- Start a EH Deathwyrm, little interest, takes good 20 minutes to fill, reach gravity room, complete it, LAG, no one can move for 20 minutes, put ticket in, gets closed without comment, we give up, logged out

I'm seriously questioning why I even continue to play this game.


I don't know if it's the event. But the lag is worse than ever before.

I ran an EH Deathwyrm not too long after yours - was filling slow so I started on mirrors with just me and one other in the raid. Think we only had like 4 people with us and 2 more otw when we got to the Bone Guardian. Soon after got a lot of join requests though...
Luckily was able to finish without too much lag - got a few spikes here and there but was able to live through it. Seems like right now the only raids that fill reliably are MoD and ones that have no early lockout and are fairly far IP.

Ran about 3 MoD's the other day - first couple no issues and the last one we barely finished due to massive lag spikes - after that one about 2/3 of the raid left (including me).

[redoubt]

bullshut ...the regular quests in wheelon lag Worst in Game..noless slayer there! CITW with med or high resolutions is laggathon central! just walkin around evestar and market are laggy as hell when no event is here...I saw almost zero lag in cove events(like 4seconds worth in one run)

I'm not saying that you did not have lag in places, but if it is related to screen resolution and/or frame rate it is not lag.

Lag is when you computer is running fine, but the server is not responding to you. i.e. you are running and the screen looks normal and you suddenly rubberband back. That is a lag issue. Or when you stop moving and can do the "jump start" where you try to jump and it looks like your feet are in cement. Your screen looks fine and back ground stuff still animates, but commands do not go through. When you see this, it is not related to an overworked graphics card, but is either extreme packet loss or an unresponsive server. I mention this because you mentioned screen resolution.

[PermaBanned]

I'm not saying that you did not have lag in places, but if it is related to screen resolution and/or frame rate it is not lag.This is one example of "lag-like behavior" based on the players end of things.


Lag is when you computer is running fine, but the server is not responding to you. i.e. you are running and the screen looks normal and you suddenly rubberband back. That is a lag issue. Or when you stop moving and can do the "jump start" where you try to jump and it looks like your feet are in cement. Your screen looks fine and back ground stuff still animates, but commands do not go through. When you see this, it is not related to an overworked graphics card, but is either extreme packet loss or an unresponsive server. I mention this because you mentioned screen resolution.Good examples - but don't forget the "Scooby Do" effect of your character making the running animation while not going anywhere ;)

What really confuses me is that sometimes the whole party will experience this simultaneously (obviously server-side lag) and other times only some o the party will and others will be fine - how's that happen? I mean, when we're all in the same quest together, we're all on the same server together; right?

So what would cause part of a party to experience (genuine) lag but not the whole group?

[Rys]

Update 24 will round out the year with a new event
http://www.memecreator.org/static/images/memes/3216717.jpg

[NyteByrd1017]

I'm seriously questioning why I even continue to play this game.

After a good 6 months or so of not playing DDO, I logged in only to find Mabar had been cancelled.

That did it for me. I cancelled my VIP subscription.

[Jatner]

...a compass and 50 maps to enter CC

That is the best suggestion for updating Cove I've heard in a while. The amount of maps might need to be adjusted slightly but in addition to addressing the potential lag spike when the doors first open, it would also stop individuals who play at 'dead' times having to wait forever for them to do so. Not only that, there would also be far less people standing around on the ship doing nothing while they wait.

The biggest downside I can see is that it would encourage more people to do solo runs, rather than grouping.

[kumagnificent]

There are currently 2 theories that I propagate about lag:

a) Mobs have learned to cast time stop.

b) Lag is part of the game, and now lag scales with difficulty.

[NyteByrd1017]

Yanno, in all the years I played DDO's Mabar event, I never had a problem with lag. Since I'm semi-retired, I was able to play at all hours. I'm in the eastern time zone of the US and that's always a busy time. Never had a problem.

I can't count how many runs I did for the dragon scales and still never had a problem. No lag there either.

I'm not discounting other's problem with lag. I'm just wondering what the cause is. Is it the hardware or the ISP? Or something at Turbine depending on where you are?

Regardless, CC is a snoozefest and no substitute for Mabar.

[Paleus]

I'm not discounting other's problem with lag. I'm just wondering what the cause is. Is it the hardware or the ISP? Or something at Turbine depending on where you are?

The answer is all of the above and other unmentioned causes, and that is the problem. Anyone trying to tell you it is caused by just one thing is short-changing the explanation. And just to further complicate things, there are other issues that can present the symptoms of lag but be something else. But yeah, events are time periods associated with increased lag for multiple people so the correlation cannot be discounted that Events are a contributing factor to lag.

However, I remember back when running VoD was a thing that a lot of raid leaders would tell people to turn-off combat logging and tone down shadow graphics. I'll grant that I'm not sure if that did anything. It just feels like back then people complained about lag, but also tried to take steps to reduce it on their end while still complaining about Turbine causing lag. I think we also sacrificed a lot more halflings to the loot gods back then too. Hmm... I guess we were a lot more of a primitive supersititious lot back then.

[Purkilius]

Every time we have an event like Mabar or Crystal Cove the server lag becomes 10x worse. Everyone I know experiences it. Every time there is an event people complain about it yet nothing is ever done. It's game breaking lag that makes you want to smash your computer. Especialy when your in EE Deathwyrm, beating down the dragon trying to controll that crazy instance and then you're just frozen in place. 20 minutes later after some had tried restarts and not been able to log back in, everyone else still frozen in the raid we just logged off. Hours of planning and preperation down the drain.

What is the plan here Turbine? Continue ignoring it no doubt. I say scrap all events, if they destroy the rest of the game the entire time they are up whats the point?

I agree lag killed our EE MoD...

[Knight_slayer]

This thread seems to have eneded up being about all the different types of lag people experience.

What I am talking about is the type of lag that effects everyone in your partry or at least 90% at the same time. In our Deathwyrm a few days back every single raid member was lagged in place, there were 12 of us. This is the type of lag that increases with the introduction of events IMO.

[Grahson]

After a good 6 months or so of not playing DDO, I logged in only to find Mabar had been cancelled.

That did it for me. I cancelled my VIP subscription.

Good for you more of us should do this maybe Turbine would get the message! I wondered why they could run a similar event like cc without these issues, but now I see people are starting on cc also. Keep listening to these people whine and soon there will be no events.

[DakFrost]

Good for you more of us should do this maybe Turbine would get the message! I wondered why they could run a similar event like cc without these issues, but now I see people are starting on cc also. Keep listening to these people whine and soon there will be no events.

Good.

[depositbox]

This thread seems to have eneded up being about all the different types of lag people experience.

What I am talking about is the type of lag that effects everyone in your partry or at least 90% at the same time. In our Deathwyrm a few days back every single raid member was lagged in place, there were 12 of us. This is the type of lag that increases with the introduction of events IMO.

Racing through en shadowraids today started early morning. Me and guildies do this every Saturday morning. We started off fine first 6 completions. Then after a certain thresold of players logged on and were doing cove we got hit with all members freeze in place for 20 minutes type of lag. That is 4 or 5 hours of deathwyrm. This just happened right now. Party wiped.

We pug and wait for new players. We get them through the rooms before entering shrine room making completion times sometimes hit 40 minutes. Usually can do 20 minutes if we dont have to go back and get people who entered late and dont know portal rooms. I logged off and wont be logging back until later tonight.

[Erdrique]

It does make me curious how the lag generated while Crystal Cove is up and running is any different from the lag that was generated by Mabar. The lag from both events seems to be affecting more than just the special event but is spread server wide. I really hope they can ratchet this source down and eliminate. I really liked Mabar and I like Crystal Cove, I would hate to see these events completely cancelled, although we already know that Mabar is now done and not to come back. Lag that is affecting so many other players is a detrimental and frustrating thing and solving that issue would go a long way.

[Uska]

bullshut ...the regular quests in wheelon lag Worst in Game..noless slayer there! CITW with med or high resolutions is laggathon central! just walkin around evestar and market are laggy as hell when no event is here...I saw almost zero lag in cove events(like 4seconds worth in one run)

I have a super fast connection and since the wretched cove has opened back up I have gotten very noticeable lag sometimes even crippling I know when it ends that lag will be gone

[Grahson]

bullshut ...the regular quests in wheelon lag Worst in Game..noless slayer there! CITW with med or high resolutions is laggathon central! just walkin around evestar and market are laggy as hell when no event is here...I saw almost zero lag in cove events(like 4seconds worth in one run)

Thank you you're right the market lags continuously all year with no events. No one ever seems to mention the famous shroud lag in these threads. The lag in the shroud is legendary. Will people want to remove that from the game also?

[Celebras]

Thank you you're right the market lags continuously all year with no events. No one ever seems to mention the famous shroud lag in these threads. The lag in the shroud is legendary. Will people want to remove that from the game also?


Think its not the point to remove this or that from the game (sad enough Mabar went down the drain). I only have the impression that players try to fix lag from theirs side (i have my graphis down to loooooow) while on the other hand Turbine is doing jack. If they would acknowledge, reply and do something to reduce it on THEIR side i assume more players that whine now would stop it or find something else to whine about :)

[Hendrik]

Run a continuous trace route. Let it run and check it once lag starts. There are many free visual trace apps out there.

At least it will show or eliminate the network from the equation.

This server side lag grow worse on the weekends, no brainer there, while we have events.

Sadly, the WOPR (bonus points if you post the reference source) had it all figured out in the 80s.

"Only way to win is to not play the game"

[Knight_slayer]

Thank you you're right the market lags continuously all year with no events. No one ever seems to mention the famous shroud lag in these threads. The lag in the shroud is legendary. Will people want to remove that from the game also?

The lag in the shroud comes after completing the portal beatdown in part 1 and running up to the chests. The main difference between the lag you mention and the lag I'm talking about is the lack of the CR80+ raid boss. If there was a CR80 undead litch dragon at the chests in part 1 shroud I'm sure your tolerance levels would go right down in reguard to the lag experienced there. However there is not any mobs at that point in the raid so lag all you like and its not going to do any real harm. Probably the reason why knowone realy cares about the small amount of lag in the shroud.

[Grahson]

I feel like it has to be the 'spawn mobs sort of appropriate to nearby players' levels' code that does it. That's the main thing I can think of that is unique to events.

There it is right there thank you!

At least this would have been a partial fix for Mabar. So players are mixed from say 16 to 19 or whatever it was I forget now. The server continually checks the lvl of people so it can spawn that lvl mob. This constant checking has to be slowing down the server especially with so many people in the grave yard at once. So why not just spawn the highest lvl mob for the lvl instance instead of the constant checking. This would take some of the load off the server. Wouldn't it?

[Knight_slayer]

Example of what i'm talking about from another Deathryrm run last night. Note that all 10 party members experience the same lag at the same time.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpN26pSWBQM&feature=youtu.be

[fatherpirate]

I think they should remove all events forever.
at the same time they should also remove all raids forever.

kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

remove what causes the most lag AND
remove the players who complain the most about it.

win/win

[G_Lich]

They should leave all events open all the time, no crippling instance opening lag, and when it comes season, you just get more out of them.

[DakFrost]

They should leave all events open all the time, no crippling instance opening lag, and when it comes season, you just get more out of them.

Either leave them open 24/7 or cancel them. Easy fix either way.

[Shtinkie]

Run a continuous trace route. Let it run and check it once lag starts. There are many free visual trace apps out there.

At least it will show or eliminate the network from the equation.

This server side lag grow worse on the weekends, no brainer there, while we have events.

Sadly, the WOPR (bonus points if you post the reference source) had it all figured out in the 80s.

"Only way to win is to not play the game"

Would you like to play a game?

I don't discount lag, but rarely see it myself. I live for the events (R.I.P mabar). But then again I don't usually raid and I've noticed that lagged raids are a common complaint in this thread. Dare I say it...Shut down all the .....Naaah /ducks under table..

[RapkintheRanger]

Example of what i'm talking about from another Deathryrm run last night. Note that all 10 party members experience the same lag at the same time.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpN26pSWBQM&feature=youtu.be

almost the same

People wont join a group figuring it will just lag to death with CC Lag Spikes.

So we started deathwyrm with 5 people. made it to the end, (people on levers ready to pull....) 90 min in as there were so few of us... and lag kills us all.

waste of an evening.

[Eth]

Run a continuous trace route. Let it run and check it once lag starts. There are many free visual trace apps out there.

At least it will show or eliminate the network from the equation.

This server side lag grow worse on the weekends, no brainer there, while we have events.

Sadly, the WOPR (bonus points if you post the reference source) had it all figured out in the 80s.

"Only way to win is to not play the game"

When we have this lag everyone still has a green connection and a normal latency. Party chat (voice and text) is still working too. If you use /loc however it takes up to 10 minutes before you even see the output of /loc.
This indicates that the instance itself is completely screwed.

This is no network lag if you ask me it's simply the server that has no resources left to keep the instance running.
I personally think there is some bad coding that triggers a loop, causing raid instances to completely wipe out.
Indication of this is that when we have that kind of lag, it usually clears up under the following conditions:
- a certain mob dies
- a certain player dies
- a certain player disconnects
- a certain player enters a different room in the raid (through a portal)

I guess there is some kind of 'bad AI'-coding between certain mobs and players that can trigger some AI loop.

What I don't get though is that we also had this happen sometimes in gravity room (because there are no mobs in there). It always happened after killing the phylactery in that room.

[Hendrik]

When we have this lag everyone still has a green connection and a normal latency. Party chat (voice and text) is still working too. If you use /loc however it takes up to 10 minutes before you even see the output of /loc.
This indicates that the instance itself is completely screwed.

This is no network lag if you ask me it's simply the server that has no resources left to keep the instance running.
I personally think there is some bad coding that triggers a loop, causing raid instances to completely wipe out.
Indication of this is that when we have that kind of lag, it usually clears up under the following conditions:
- a certain mob dies
- a certain player dies
- a certain player disconnects
- a certain player enters a different room in the raid (through a portal)

I guess there is some kind of 'bad AI'-coding between certain mobs and players that can trigger some AI loop.

What I don't get though is that we also had this happen sometimes in gravity room (because there are no mobs in there). It always happened after killing the phylactery in that room.

I only bring up network lag as a possible source from personal experiences and do not discount yours as I have seen that as well.

What I have seen during these times of lag is some odd happenings at the last couple of hops to Turbine, packet loss, and clears up at off peak times.

[EdwinRophe]

Last Night Deathwrym EH on Thelanis

Smooth run until the end fight.

we get in start the fight, get the ragers, get the shadow portal and start on the Phly process , lag spike, 3 escape death (5 mins long)

we re group, res the party get control again and lag spike (7 mins long)

rinse and repeat 3 times.

then the worst lag spike occurs (about 10 mins)

after that, the dragon some how falls off the platform to the lower level.

put in tickets and wait............

Support responseds after 20 mins and half the group leaving that lag is part of the game and because it's a raid they cannot do anything.

then the dragon miraculously teleports back to mound

so we start at it again. beat it down and .... lag spike (6 mins)

with 2 make it off the platform , rest die. so back up we go , res and try again. still very laggy we manage to complete the raid.

[Blackheartox]

This is not a rumor, this is what actually happend.
In a raid a wyrm like several months ago a friend of mine said to me in tell, look over il lag the instance now.
2 seconds after he said that we all had cripling lag, 12 of us couldnt move, couldnt act, totally frozen.
After 3 minutes he sends me tell again, check now il unlag it.
Couple seconds after lag gone.

What he did is equip a crafted cloack with enchant resist and enchant vs will with sloted resistance and he got a endless loop of stacking which caused total freeze up of instance.

I know this is totally sidetracking the discussion here, but point is even players have ability to cause the same 12 man freeze cant move lag with gear swaps.

And yes i had several lag moments since cove started. I really feel sad when i almost /or actually die in xp/min quests.

[Nestroy]

(...)

You forgot to mention "- a certain player dies / the party wipes."

Oddly enough, party wipe = immediate release from lag.

Is it the aggro management or what?

[Eth]

What he did is equip a crafted cloack with enchant resist and enchant vs will with sloted resistance and he got a endless loop of stacking which caused total freeze up of instance.

I know this is totally sidetracking the discussion here, but point is even players have ability to cause the same 12 man freeze cant move lag with gear swaps.


I've seen stuff like that, too. Things that can lag a instance for a bit (not totally freeze it though):
- Swapping destinies in public instances
- Activating zeal of righteous
- examining certain people

One would think though they have people that monitor stuff like that. An instance that is completely frozen should raise some red flags. Track down the source and fix it. But that's probably more wishful thinking of me.

[Monkey-Boy]

You forgot to mention "- a certain player dies / the party wipes."

Oddly enough, party wipe = immediate release from lag.

Is it the aggro management or what?

I've been in many situations where the lag doesn't go away even after the party wipes.

This also happens in a few 6-person quests as well as the Whelloon Explorer zone.

[Powskier]

almost the same

People wont join a group figuring it will just lag to death with CC Lag Spikes.

So we started deathwyrm with 5 people. made it to the end, (people on levers ready to pull....) 90 min in as there were so few of us... and lag kills us all.

waste of an evening.

these reports happen all the time when no event is ongoing...

[Powskier]

i always wondered if gear swaps could do it..there is a pause when equipping and using hotbar items fast when alone....12 players swappin items no less an eternal stacking item too...must feel life the endless howler quail stack when it hits,...it smells like lag contribution

[Phaeton_Seraph]

When we have this lag everyone still has a green connection and a normal latency. Party chat (voice and text) is still working too. If you use /loc however it takes up to 10 minutes before you even see the output of /loc.
This indicates that the instance itself is completely screwed.

This is no network lag if you ask me it's simply the server that has no resources left to keep the instance running.
I personally think there is some bad coding that triggers a loop, causing raid instances to completely wipe out.
Indication of this is that when we have that kind of lag, it usually clears up under the following conditions:
- a certain mob dies
- a certain player dies
- a certain player disconnects
- a certain player enters a different room in the raid (through a portal)

I guess there is some kind of 'bad AI'-coding between certain mobs and players that can trigger some AI loop.

What I don't get though is that we also had this happen sometimes in gravity room (because there are no mobs in there). It always happened after killing the phylactery in that room.

Which instance is screwed? Sorry, you may not be as unclear as I am hard of reading.

Are you referring to the non-event instance in which people may be lagging, without any indication of lag via their in-game network icon?

The way you mention "a certain player..." it almost makes me think of how XBL's P2P hosting worked (works? haven't played it in years since my last RROD). They wouldn't be sneakily shifting server load onto clients, would they?


Is there also more AoE lag during events?

This just coincides with some complaints I've been reading about elsewhere.

[Grahson]

You forgot to mention "- a certain player dies / the party wipes."

Oddly enough, party wipe = immediate release from lag.

Is it the aggro management or what?

Good point, I've seen this a lot total party freeze and wipe. Suddenly no lag, so if its event related why does it just go away that instant?

[depositbox]

these reports happen all the time when no event is ongoing...

But even more so when events start. And less so when events arent there.

[Paleus]

But even more so when events start. And less so when events arent there.

Unfortunately we're relying on anecdotal evidence here. But, aren't these reports also higher when the events open their doors as well?

I would say that completely axing events is a non-starter of an idea (not everyone has everything already and some do enjoy the events). However, there is an acknowledged increase in lag during events. If, as the anecdotes suggest, it is tied to when doors open, then Turbine should really consider removing the threshold limits on these events (in fact I think they may have reduced the threshold recently). While having thresholds will help incentivize people into playing the time-sink slayer areas (which I think is the general purpose) they also have the side-effect of having everyone who engages in the event simultaneously taxing the servers when the event does open its doors. At this point, reconsidering how they design the time-sink so that it doesn't produce this type of cluster-lag behavior seems like a better path forward from doing nothing and axing everything.

That said, I admit this purely based on anecdotal evidence and I cannot say that this will remedy things. But the alternative suggestion of everyone upgrading to SSDs and moving to a city with google fiber while turning off their shadow effects and sacrificing halflings didn't go anywhere. I'm guessing the halfling union was responsible for shooting that one down.

[Nestroy]

I've been in many situations where the lag doesn't go away even after the party wipes.

This also happens in a few 6-person quests as well as the Whelloon Explorer zone.

I had this happen once in a while. About 10-15 times less than the wipe immediately restoring the lag-free "experience". This only happens if the monsters do not de-spawn or de-aggro on the party upon death. In Wheelon wilderness, many monsters scale with the party and despawn upon party members releasing - so usually the lag noticeably diminuishes gradually. Oddly enough in Thunderholm the lag usually immediately vanishes even with many monsters remaining spawned upon death... well, please do not ask me about the technical details behind this - but I am still of the oppinion that most of the lag is due to monsters running thru shody done aggro and combat scripts and servers not being able to cope and dynamically scale with the suddenly multiplying mobs in an instance.

[Powskier]

well, please do not ask me about the technical details behind this - but I am still of the oppinion that most of the lag is due to monsters running thru shody done aggro and combat scripts and servers not being able to cope and dynamically scale with the suddenly multiplying mobs in an instance.

this is what I see ,when more than 20-30 enemies start poppin up ,shootin casting like mad simultaneous and hidden assassins appear too ,I feel my computer cry just a little at least

[Thar]

The problem probably is something like 1000 new instances open ALL the same time and populate mobs ALL the same time and said respawns pop ALL the same time.

The next event should not be based on turn ins or timeing. collect x pieces and you can get in. so it's random instance timing not everyone all starts the same moment. put a 2 hour delay on indiviuals to reenter the said event to avoid super farming or not. who cares if someone wants to run mabar all day instead of normal content? or cove. if it's open all the time then it spreads out the new instances and hence lag.

[bsquishwizzy]

Every time we have an event like Mabar or Crystal Cove the server lag becomes 10x worse. Everyone I know experiences it. Every time there is an event people complain about it yet nothing is ever done. It's game breaking lag that makes you want to smash your computer. Especialy when your in EE Deathwyrm, beating down the dragon trying to controll that crazy instance and then you're just frozen in place. 20 minutes later after some had tried restarts and not been able to log back in, everyone else still frozen in the raid we just logged off. Hours of planning and preperation down the drain.

What is the plan here Turbine? Continue ignoring it no doubt. I say scrap all events, if they destroy the rest of the game the entire time they are up whats the point?

I'm on G-Land, and I honestly don't know what you are talking about.

[Grahson]

I'm on orien no lag here while cove is going on either. There is always intermittent lag in this game. The truth of the matter is people don't join their raids while an event is going on. Someone posted it in another thread that people aren't joining their raids. Can't find that thread now, but i'll keep looking. People are having fun running the cove instead, so what do they do? Whine and complain about lag till Turbine trashes it like they did mabar.

edit: here's the truth right here "becasue nobody will join a raid, we decided to try anyway. 5 people on Deathwyrm. we made it to the end but we were 90 min in. had the levers covered and the boss on the mound with 50K or so HP and lag takes us all out. What nonsense."

Taken from the locked thread stop the cove I want to raid. Note the part nobody will join a raid. They did not specifically blame that on cc but ya know what that's closer to the truth.

[Deathdefy]

The worst lag I've had recently was in the 3BC explorer, approaching the rare troll who has the potential to but never actually does drop the bludgeoning longbow, who was actually up.

The instant he died, all clear. No more crippling, 1 Frame per 3 seconds lag. I also had this bizarre static noise while anywhere near him until he died.

I had an identical issue with razor cats last year for a while.

I think it's a monsters hooked up to non-existent sound files issue - possibly totally localized to my computer, but thought I'd throw this in here since it may be a more general cause of lag.

[Knight_slayer]

Again last night in Deathwyrm our whole raid party frozen in place for well over 5 minutes.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1focKFdbeo

[Singular]

Again last night in Deathwyrm our whole raid party frozen in place for well over 5 minutes.


Wow, so it's clearly your computer.

(joking)

[DarthCaedus]

I ran cc 50 times or so and never had more than a few brief lag spikes. Others in the party complained of lag, but I wasn't getting it.

[diasho2]

Lag is an issue with every event, more with some than with others because of the load caused by instances/mob generating explorer areas. As long as these types of instances are being used for events the servers will continue to be crippled every time there is an event.

A simple solution to this would be to handle events like cc similar to the way festivult is done. Notice while festivault ice games, and traveler do cause lag, they do not cause nearly the lag that cc or mabar do/did. It all comes down to how the events create instances, where they occur, and where the event items are dropped. In these lower lag events we get several instances of the harbor/market, they have no mob generation and fewer instances to track. I'm not saying turn everything into the same events just take what works and apply it in other events.

This could be done by making at least a few mobs in every quest drop event explorer area items (IE map pieces, dubloons, vampire fangs, motes etc) or put them in every chest. This will push people into more quests and spread the workload across more areas of the game not just one place generating hundreds or thousands of instances. Similar to the way ice games works with ice coins and fire creatures or festivult coins are given.

Event areas like the dragon or the cove should be left open. Having something that only opens every so often creates a massive rush when it does open meaning massive server load and many instances often in the case of cc, with just a few people in them. If these were open all the time those who had collected items from chests would be able to gather a group and enter at will again reducing server work load.


It is not that events are bad in and of themselves. They give the game flavor, as they say variety is the spice of life. However as I sit waiting again for my old connection to clean up and reflect on the number of lag wipes, crashes, even problems walking across the bridge in the market place during this and other events I believe there is a way to have a little spice in our ddo lives without adding several logs out of the local sewer treatment plant and calling it a spicy dump cake.