One of reasons for Lag during this event must be the spawning and De-spawning of mobs

[IronClan]

why on earth do so many mobs despawn right in front of you? like a spawn will appear and then half of them will leash (white stop sign, I've heard Dev's call this "leashing") even if you activate them it seems some will still despawn.

Hitting everything as fast as possible with small damage (not one shotting) seems to be the best way to keep them from disappearing but some still go away.

This can't be good on server resources, and since the event started everything seems laggy, nothing happens in real time literally button presses are delayed by 1-2 seconds and feedback delayed by 2-3 seconds.

[Nestroy]

The de-spawning occurs when the toon originally triggering the spawning leaves the nearby area. Maybe or maybe not this causes lag. So far I have not had much issues with lag anyways, but perhaps playing on Wayfinder where there is generally less lag.

[Darkmits]

Basically, if an enemy strays a certain distance from its spawn point, it is coded to return to that point, as if it is on a leash. For Delera's Tomb, and generally any event, this distance is short, so as to discourage mass spawn of enemies and quick AoE clear. Why they do that is up for discussion; either to reduce server load, or to reduce farming rate for AoE specs, or some other reason. Tagging an enemy with a hit extends this distance, again by an amount set by the devs.

[dunklezhan]

The de-spawning occurs when the toon originally triggering the spawning leaves the nearby area. Maybe or maybe not this causes lag. So far I have not had much issues with lag anyways, but perhaps playing on Wayfinder where there is generally less lag.


In short:

Keep moving advice that players are giving each other to get better drops could be, in and of itself, creating the lag.

So it's "settle for fewer personal rewards and get a better experience for everyone", or "every man for himself and complain to the authorities about the results"

Huh. Sounds just like real life!

And also just like duping, exploiting...

[Nonesuch2008]

The movement is definitely needed to encourage more spawns or better spawn frequency, but if the patrol route is a short one, you should be able to double back or loop around and catch any spawns that you've triggered along your route before they white dot, barring any pauses to combat other spawns.

My best routes are those that come within range of others doing the same but don't overlap with their areas. This has the benefit of generating more spawns for both and avoiding tagging/kill thieving.

[Qaliya]

IMO it is all the special effects, especially those from warlocks. I go into Delera's and if there are even two warlocks around, it's lag city every time mobs appear and people try to kill them.

[IronClan]

Hmmm some of you haven't seen what I am am talking about so since Thelanis decided to lock up the group I had going because we had peak spawns with about 15 or 16 people running around in one area, and it desynced everyone and DC's and froze us let me explain:

In a larger group with peak spawn rates (very large spawns constantly) a bunch of mobs will appear and then a hard to determine number of them will immediately white stop sign usually before they even move. Sometimes tagging all the mobs right away keeps them from despawning sometimes they despawn anyway.

This is not a thread about best practices for farming, moving around constantly in an area with lots of people clearly increases spawns, but that's not the point. Trust me we have no need of increasing spawn rate, we're already locking up and DC'ing every so often due to the sever not handling it.

[IronClan]

interesting tid bit: I had a 12 man group farming, in the same area (bridge) there were 4 other people sitting idle (they were there all morning AFK not in my group) we started here because the idle people had the spawns moderately ramped up, we all froze up and DC'ed including the people who were AFK because all four of them were gone when we got back in and started farming again...

[jalont]

Hmmm some of you haven't seen what I am am talking about so since Thelanis decided to lock up the group I had going because we had peak spawns with about 15 or 16 people running around in one area, and it desynced everyone and DC's and froze us let me explain:

In a larger group with peak spawn rates (very large spawns constantly) a bunch of mobs will appear and then a hard to determine number of them will immediately white stop sign usually before they even move. Sometimes tagging all the mobs right away keeps them from despawning sometimes they despawn anyway.

This is not a thread about best practices for farming, moving around constantly in an area with lots of people clearly increases spawns, but that's not the point. Trust me we have no need of increasing spawn rate, we're already locking up and DC'ing every so often due to the sever not handling it.

I've seen it. When I go in there by myself, I stay away from everyone else. Sometimes things spawn, take two steps and then whitebox.

Anyway, obviously the spawning is what causes lag. I don't think that's even up for debate. I'm sure the whiteboxing doesn't help either.

[Enderoc]

This happens mostly around afk players I think. People are parking alts and collecting ingredients. I find it better just to solo for keys and chocolates.

[IronClan]

so okay a second round of everyone DC'ing pattern is obvious: get peak spawns up and lag increases until the server desyncs everyone.

BTW this same pattern happens in raids and raid explorer areas like Thunderholme and this was the exact same thing that Mabar was pulled for last time that caused them to scrap it.

Too many players and mobs causing too many attacks/procs/things going boom/affixes/glancing blows/auras/etc.

http://i.imgur.com/80XLZ73.jpg


This happens mostly around afk players I think. People are parking alts and collecting ingredients. I find it better just to solo for keys and chocolates.

That doesn't appear to be it either, I've seen it happen when everyone was running in circles when several friends and I were testing out the best ways to get spawns high, no AFK'ers anywhere to be seen.

Yes AFK'ers are parking with warlock aura going, but not a part of this IMO, and too slow for my blood I almost have enough keys already and waiting on only getting keys from the small % chance due to getting hits in and not the much better % chance from kills is not something I want to spend time doing. It does work as a slow boat way to farm though.

IMO Solo'ing is faster than sitting around with an aura going but it's painfully slow compared to being in a party that's active and moving and getting kills yourself.

[hp1055cm]

On Argo in the 16-20 instance there were 6 members of a guild standing, appeared to be afk. Large mobs would spawn periodically but then either most of them would de-spawn or crippling lag would hit (or both). It affected anyone withing sight of the group. The lag made it inefficient to try to collect kills there.
Not sure what their strategy was as I never saw any of them attack any mobs; and I have seen that same group there on multiple days at different times. I didn't notice a warlock in their group.

Whenever I have had lag or a high number of de-spawns i change to another of the same instance (if more than 1 are available) or go to a higher level instance and it clears up and seems to run normal.
I have been around large groups 10+ people and not had any noticable lag/despawns but then been running around alone without seeing any other or few players and had lag/de-spawns.

I haven't seen any pattern to it really, except that it seems to be caused by the event (and spawning mobs).

[Enoach]

My observations over the years as it concerns lag has been as follows...

1. Early to mid heroic levels I don't experience lag
Part of this is because the majority of the early quests mobs don't spawn, most mobs are already in place and simply become active as we the players come into range. The few quests that do have spawns only have a few.

2. Later zones and Epic Level Quests with high number of spawn areas as well as having Zone effects be it Shavarath or Whaloon Prison tend to have the most lag. Areas like the Thunderholm explorer area really showed this as it was magnified by the shear numbers of skeletons that were present as the group size got bigger.

We as players also see this with the Events, such as Cove and Mabar/Night Revels

This leads me to believe that what is happening behind the scenes
1. Mob is generated (base model)
2. Area Effects are then Applied (Environmental, Epic Ward types, Player generated [Warlock, FvS, DA, EA Auras])

While this isn't necessarily a big issue in small numbers the become exponential as the numbers increase.

Example: 1 Epic Mob when it spawns - needs Epic Ward applied plus any Auras which could be as few as Zero to as much as 3 (Warlock/FvS running in EA or DA). So after spawning it will take on 4 Calculations. Of course this is also ignoring an AoE damage/Cloud effects.

So if just for our situation 5 mobs spawn we are looking at 20 calculations just to apply effects.

[Drwaz99]

On Argo in the 16-20 instance there were 6 members of a guild standing, appeared to be afk. Large mobs would spawn periodically but then either most of them would de-spawn or crippling lag would hit (or both). It affected anyone withing sight of the group. The lag made it inefficient to try to collect kills there.
Not sure what their strategy was as I never saw any of them attack any mobs; and I have seen that same group there on multiple days at different times. I didn't notice a warlock in their group.

Whenever I have had lag or a high number of de-spawns i change to another of the same instance (if more than 1 are available) or go to a higher level instance and it clears up and seems to run normal.
I have been around large groups 10+ people and not had any noticable lag/despawns but then been running around alone without seeing any other or few players and had lag/de-spawns.

I haven't seen any pattern to it really, except that it seems to be caused by the event (and spawning mobs).

This was a big problem on Argo earlier today (to the point it made me log off). I was in a raid train (MOD, ToDW, FoTP, DoJ) and we would periodically get crippling lag that would nearly lock everyone up. I was able to deduce that this was likely due to the large spawning then tethering of event mobs as I was in teamspeak with guildies who where farming the event and sure enough, when the lag hit the graveyard due to the spawns, we locked up as well in the raids. When it cleared in the graveyard, it did as well in the raids.

[Nonesuch2008]

so okay a second round of everyone DC'ing pattern is obvious: get peak spawns up and lag increases until the server desyncs everyone.

Too many players and mobs causing too many attacks/procs/things going boom/affixes/glancing blows/auras/etc. ~snip~

http://i.imgur.com/80XLZ73.jpg

~snip~

Thankfully I've never seen it to this degree in Revels or the old Mabar, even when we were locked in placed for up to 15 or 20 minutes. But that was before ED's were around, much less all the new auras & such. I think you're onto it with all of the transactional processing going on playing a large factor, it looks like a pure buffer overload situation.

It may not be the singular cause, but it certainly isn't helping.

[IronClan]

On Argo in the 16-20 instance there were 6 members of a guild standing, appeared to be afk. Large mobs would spawn periodically but then either most of them would de-spawn or crippling lag would hit (or both). It affected anyone withing sight of the group. The lag made it inefficient to try to collect kills there.
Not sure what their strategy was as I never saw any of them attack any mobs; and I have seen that same group there on multiple days at different times. I didn't notice a warlock in their group.

Whenever I have had lag or a high number of de-spawns i change to another of the same instance (if more than 1 are available) or go to a higher level instance and it clears up and seems to run normal.
I have been around large groups 10+ people and not had any noticable lag/despawns but then been running around alone without seeing any other or few players and had lag/de-spawns.

I haven't seen any pattern to it really, except that it seems to be caused by the event (and spawning mobs).

there are 3 types of "standing around" going on

Type 1 I'll call this the slow boat pike (can be done in a party for elevated key drops) symptoms: standing around doing nothing at all with no visible sign of damage output.



use any damaging long term aura to "tag" mobs, the other people in the instance (or other parties) will kill them and you have a small chance to get a drop because you did some damage. You can do this entirely AFK (with permanent damaging aura of course like Warlock) and as far as I can tell not break any rules.


Type 2 I'll call this the autoattack begging a GM to send you tells marathon: dead giveaway: warlock cone attack spam with no movement.



put auto attack on or put a roll of quarters on your LMB using Warlock cone attack in a high spawn area standing in one spawn spot and facing the nearest next spawn spot. Preferably with others in your party doing the same go AFK if you dare because this looks like unattended macro'ing even when it is NOT (well as far as I know). As far as I can tell this is NOT technically against the rules but I wouldn't want to fail to answer any Tells that were sent to me, that would be flirting with trouble.


Type 3 I wont describe because it might be considered moderation worthy [edit]

Note none of this is necessary, the absolute fastest key farming rate is being active, running around in an area with 11 other active people tagging all mobs as soon as possible (so they don't despawn) and getting kills

getting a kill seems best drop %
being in a party that got the kill seems next best %
being in a party that did damage (if only because that's up to 11 other people) seems maybe 3rd best %
doing damage finally to any mob so long as someone kills it eventually seems the basic minimum %

So clearly anyone can have enough keys to build multiple items in a couple evenings of farming. Unless your goal is to craft two of everything no one will really need to go to the extents that some people show in trying to find the most lazy/productive way to farm.

Some people just insist on trying to find the optimum even when it isn't important or needed, it's in their DNA to find the most efficient way. I don't have a problem with this, more people in the area even when standing still seem to set the numbers of mobs that spawn higher (moving around and killing quickly seems to generate spawn chances above a minimum, while numbers of local players seems to determine how many spawn). In fact when I start a LFM I go look for AFK's and put up the LFM there.

[moomooprincess]

In my findings

The magic number is FIVE monsters.

When in a large spawn, say three groups of five, do not MOVE. Just start whacking stuff. As soon as you move, the monsters that disappear will be the ones that are not of the first group of five.

As soon as you move, then the monsters will get the white dot on their head. But if you can whack a few of them down while not moving, it is better.

In this Night Revels, I have never had lag in Delera's no matter how many spawn or how many players are near me.

[Silverleafeon]

The problem Iron is that you are bridge farming which creates a run path on the rock surface and a run path on the ground below the rock surface. This double your spawns theoretically however you are also creating more spawns that you actually see. That area of farming has a much higher rate of lag than other places. Try the pond which yields about as much with less lagginess?

[Qaliya]

Yes AFK'ers are parking with warlock aura going, but not a part of this IMO, and too slow for my blood I almost have enough keys already and waiting on only getting keys from the small % chance due to getting hits in and not the much better % chance from kills is not something I want to spend time doing. It does work as a slow boat way to farm though.

IMO Solo'ing is faster than sitting around with an aura going but it's painfully slow compared to being in a party that's active and moving and getting kills yourself.

This warlock spamming is starting to really get on my nerves. There were two bots doing it on Sarlona earlier, I reported them and of course nothing was done.

After we experienced a server disconnect they didn't reappear, and while there was still some lag it was MUCH better.

I still think all these auras and special effects are what is causing the trouble. The old Mabar you had MANY more people in an instance and yes it slowed down when a big group spawned, but nothing like this.

And Turbine, please do something about the AFKing bot-spammers.

[Severlin]

why on earth do so many mobs despawn right in front of you? like a spawn will appear and then half of them will leash (white stop sign, I've heard Dev's call this "leashing") even if you activate them it seems some will still despawn.

Hitting everything as fast as possible with small damage (not one shotting) seems to be the best way to keep them from disappearing but some still go away.

This can't be good on server resources, and since the event started everything seems laggy, nothing happens in real time literally button presses are delayed by 1-2 seconds and feedback delayed by 2-3 seconds.

There is a problem with areas of the game unloading in the Delara's public area. We are making adjustments to that in tomorrow's patch that should help.

Sev~

[dunklezhan]

Our party experienced a lot of lag leaving the night revels adventure instances back to the graveyard. Could be a noticeable 20-30 seconds before we were able to move away from the instance entrace (though was usually <10 secs).

Only once have I experienced actual laggy rubber bandy shenanigens once that initial 'zoning in lag' is over. That's on argo playing in the 'cap' instance in a 6 man or less party and also a few hours in the 8-13 instance in a three man.

[eachna_gislin]

why on earth do so many mobs despawn right in front of you? like a spawn will appear and then half of them will leash (white stop sign, I've heard Dev's call this "leashing") even if you activate them it seems some will still despawn.

Leashing is when a mob is chasing something, stops when they hit an invisible maximum 'range' away from their home spot, and then runs back to where they spawned. Like a dog on a long leash, they've reached the end of their tether and will stop chasing you.

Some people call despawning leashing because the animations have the same symbol over their heads, but despawning is not leashing.

[Dragavon]

There is a problem with areas of the game unloading in the Delara's public area. We are making adjustments to that in tomorrow's patch that should help.

Sev~

If anything it is worse after patch.

I constantly see large groups of monsters spawn and then despawn after a few seconds, with constant lagspikes and rubberbanding.