The lag fix seemed to work

[Karthunk]

As a disclaimer my experiences yesterday was playing just on the Hardcore server. My assumption is that it is the most stressed server because of population.

The experience yesterday was wonderful. I played on and off the entire day, solo and group play, and noticed no server side lag. My camera still spins around randomly at times when I move and climbing a ladder is equivalent to soloing the Tarasque but the lag fix seemed to work ... so far.

[Evean]

No change on GLand. Bank slow to open. Store slow to open. Chest slow to open. Spells not landing. Every door is a load screen. Client crashes every 15–30 mins, or every 3rd-4th door, whichever comes first…

And that’s just an off the top of my head short list.

That said, I’m not confident subjective reports on the forums are a valid measure of lag.

[Hawkwier]

As a disclaimer my experiences yesterday was playing just on the Hardcore server. My assumption is that it is the most stressed server because of population.

The experience yesterday was wonderful. I played on and off the entire day, solo and group play, and noticed no server side lag. My camera still spins around randomly at times when I move and climbing a ladder is equivalent to soloing the Tarasque but the lag fix seemed to work ... so far.

Early to say definitively, but I can't say I'm seeing much of a useful improvement thus far.

The good...

There was definitely a reduction in lag at the end of Shroud parts, which were relatively smooth compared to the stop frame animation experienced previously, so there has definitely been a change - the question is whether that improvement is worth it?

The bad...

There is still interminable load screen lag - three times out of three transitions (ship->marketplace->lordsmarch->quest), I was hitting /quit in order to apologise to the PUG I'd joined for delay. That isn't something I've had to do before.

And the deadly...

There was significant lag at the early part of the endfight in Shroud. Not nice.

So, yes there has been some sort of improvement. But my experience at least shows significant problems persist, and the question remains whether the hugely disruptive changes are worth this level of improvement. Time will tell...

[Artos_Fabril]

As a disclaimer my experiences yesterday was playing just on the Hardcore server. My assumption is that it is the most stressed server because of population.

The experience yesterday was wonderful. I played on and off the entire day, solo and group play, and noticed no server side lag. My camera still spins around randomly at times when I move and climbing a ladder is equivalent to soloing the Tarasque but the lag fix seemed to work ... so far.
Their description of the problem indicates that it doesn't matter which server shard you're playing on, but rather what physical hardware is running it. If HCL were running on independent hardware, we'd expect to see less queue lag there as a rule even without this change, as there are fewer high-end items with lots of effects to add to queue, and far fewer people running content that requires spiking performance through procs because people are running at +4 to gather favor before leveling.

In addition, between HCL, people trying to get a feel for these new changes and retune their builds, and the recent server issues that caused an extra 12 hours of downtime, people may be shying away from some raids and exceptionally difficult content. These factors all skew in favor of apparent effectiveness without giving us a realistic test of true effectiveness of the changes.

[Oliphant]

Hard to say yet. To be honest, I live in area with a decent internet network, I have a decent PC and I rarely experience lag that causes major quest fails. I get the TH slayer lag spikes but we still get to 7500 no problem. That said, in game experience was very smooth yesterday. Doors maybe a little slower than usual. Given I've been playing a few hours per day on average last several months, play in raids, doing R10s etc, and I don't have lag problems FULL STOP, I really have to wonder what is going on with lag in the bigger picture.

[GramercyRiff]

No change on GLand. Bank slow to open. Store slow to open. Chest slow to open. Spells not landing. Every door is a load screen. Client crashes every 15–30 mins, or every 3rd-4th door, whichever comes first…

And that’s just an off the top of my head short list.

That said, I’m not confident subjective reports on the forums are a valid measure of lag.

I'm on Gland too and I had some of the same issues. I didn't have any crashes but my tr buddy did. I also had lag in quests, but I can't say if it's worse or better. I have to play more. I can say lag is still there, but is it other things causing or what I can't say.

[Justicesfury]

As a disclaimer my experiences yesterday was playing just on the Hardcore server. My assumption is that it is the most stressed server because of population.

The experience yesterday was wonderful. I played on and off the entire day, solo and group play, and noticed no server side lag. My camera still spins around randomly at times when I move and climbing a ladder is equivalent to soloing the Tarasque but the lag fix seemed to work ... so far.

They fix lag just enough before a pack comes out so they can sell it.

[Strider1963]

I play on Sarlona and this am (EST), I had no lag at all in all quests. This afternoon I had minor lag in a couple of quests, but no where near as bad as before. The porting issus for me has been much improved also. This weekend will really show how good (or bad) the fix is as the servers will be much fuller on Sat and Sun, esp when guilds run their weekly raids.

[Vua]

Their description of the problem indicates that it doesn't matter which server shard you're playing on, but rather what physical hardware is running it. If HCL were running on independent hardware, we'd expect to see less queue lag there as a rule even without this change, as there are fewer high-end items with lots of effects to add to queue, and far fewer people running content that requires spiking performance through procs because people are running at +4 to gather favor before leveling.

In addition, between HCL, people trying to get a feel for these new changes and retune their builds, and the recent server issues that caused an extra 12 hours of downtime, people may be shying away from some raids and exceptionally difficult content. These factors all skew in favor of apparent effectiveness without giving us a realistic test of true effectiveness of the changes.

So you mentioned things that people may or may not be doing and say those things are skewing the results. But you have no idea if the things you said are true outside of HCL. It will take a while to see how effective the changes are but so far I've seen zero lag outside of one load screen crash that happened while I loaded into the game the first time after the update. Still not a fan of the changes themselves but we'll see.

[LavidDynch]

I'm on Gland too and I had some of the same issues. I didn't have any crashes but my tr buddy did. I also had lag in quests, but I can't say if it's worse or better. I have to play more. I can say lag is still there, but is it other things causing or what I can't say.

Played for 6 hours on gland. Load screen crashed on a socket acct. but otherwise I noticed no lag or anything lag related (i.e. missing 30% of your attacks)whilst playing as per above posters... everything felt smooth... BUT! here comes the disclaimer: It was during off-hours and HC is running -- so hard to tell.

[Karthunk]

Early to say definitively, but I can't say I'm seeing much of a useful improvement thus far.

The good...

There was definitely a reduction in lag at the end of Shroud parts, which were relatively smooth compared to the stop frame animation experienced previously, so there has definitely been a change - the question is whether that improvement is worth it?

The bad...

There is still interminable load screen lag - three times out of three transitions (ship->marketplace->lordsmarch->quest), I was hitting /quit in order to apologise to the PUG I'd joined for delay. That isn't something I've had to do before.

And the deadly...

There was significant lag at the early part of the endfight in Shroud. Not nice.

So, yes there has been some sort of improvement. But my experience at least shows significant problems persist, and the question remains whether the hugely disruptive changes are worth this level of improvement. Time will tell...

How many people were in the raid group? I haven't experienced a raid since the fix.

[Cordovan]

This would likely have minimal if any impact on loading screen issues as that would be caused by something different. This should help particularly with "start of fight" style lag.

[Artos_Fabril]

It will take a while to see how effective the changes are
Yes, that was my point. It's far too early to say if the changes have been effective. In particular, I noted that one report is not indicative of the effectiveness, and that any individual person's experience on any server shard is not even a reflection of what other people on the shard experience, as it is the physical hardware that was being overburdened, not "server" instances, and based on what we've been told, any given hardware blade might be running any quest instance launched from any "server".

[Shadospawn]

Spells not landing.

I played only a few hours last night however when I played my melee lvl 30 all seemed OK.

Switched to my lvl 4 sorc and burning hands was like... ridiculous. There was a huge delay between the animation/action and the damage showing up, and it was consistent across multiple dungeons. I’ve not experienced such consistent lag before. Usually it’s more sporadic. Did not feel right at all. That and there were intermittent just freezes where myself and the mobs were playing red light green light 1 2 3.

I thought it was “me” so will try again when I play Sunday.

[Mercureal]

Anecdotal and so not especially useful, but...

I've played 5 quests, all on the Hardcore server, since the system came back up and seen noticeable lag in two of them.

The worst was actually the first quest I played yesterday, and began as soon as I entered the first room in the quest - stuttering, rubberband movement, even midair freezing for 4-5 seconds at a time. That encounter involved a large number of enemies, somewhere between 15 and 20 in the room, I think, which could have been a factor? I didn't stick around to see if the lag would go away, I recalled and quit for the day.

I played the first few Catacombs quests today, and that was when I saw some lag again, but quite minor, just a bit of stutter stepping and rubberbanding once or twice. It cleared quickly and I completed the quest and played another afterwards and didn't see more lag.

[Chai]

Alot of hitching in the Feywild slayer zone this morning where it looks like the character is running into an invisible wall and can't move forward, even when there are no visible obstacles present.

[Amoneth]

It really isn't. I'm doing Sharn chain 1 on Ghallanda and it's awful

[KoobTheProud]

I've seen minimal lag since the servers came back up. Basically activation lag in Wheloon Prison which has always been a thing for me.

[Karthunk]

It really isn't. I'm doing Sharn chain 1 on Ghallanda and it's awful

Played a few hours in the necro with zero lag today. I'm guessing all the server shards, how ever the worlds/zones are split up, are not equal.

[voxson5]

Been running HC:

Stutter/slideshow lagged pretty bad in wheloon quests, wilderness area was still bad.

Same for in the flesh (that was not one I wanted to lag out in), and in mask of deception.

[Hawkwier]

How many people were in the raid group? I haven't experienced a raid since the fix.

Full 12.

[TitusOvid]

Friday 3pm-6pm Boston time

Better than wednesday, still bad spikes.
In

- quests moving and casting, special attacks
- public areas. moving, quest windows
- chat (user chats)
- apply and accept group seems to work fine though.

Cheers,
Titus

[Singular]

As a disclaimer my experiences yesterday was playing just on the Hardcore server. My assumption is that it is the most stressed server because of population.

The experience yesterday was wonderful. I played on and off the entire day, solo and group play, and noticed no server side lag. My camera still spins around randomly at times when I move and climbing a ladder is equivalent to soloing the Tarasque but the lag fix seemed to work ... so far.

I didn't notice a change. Still lots of lag. We were running the new quests. I often couldn't move during combat. etc., etc., the same lag as before.

[Jaxtan]

So far today:
- a couple of occasions where couldn't transfer items to banker, standing next to them but it keeps saying banker is too far away. After a minute or so, can eventually start transferring items.
- a couple of occasions of load screen delays/hang ups requiring hard restart of the game
- lag spikes in game, but only a few seconds here and there, nothing fatal yet
- dropped spells and ranged shots where spell points and ammunition are used, but nothing is recorded (either hit or miss)

Seems the normal bad, but not 100% unplayable.

[voxson5]

More on HC, solo w hire & pet:

Search & rescue (server 32 from /loc) stutter lag throughout the quest, worst with the helmed horror spawn points & the kobold spawn points.
Outbreak (server 54) slideshow in the end fight - I could move ok but from the client's perspective everything else was frozen for several seconds at a time

[BDog77]

Sigh...

I would say lag, for me, is worse. Disclaimer: I did not as a rule experience any lag before this update (occasional stutters in quests, no full stop deaths though). Now I seem to have a low grade lag always throughout everything, quests, explorers, public areas. Things just seem slightly off all the time. Had 2 instances of full stop death (Slavers part 1 EH and House of Rusted blades ER1). I now understand why people were so frustrated. I play on Gland, btw. Also, I thought we were going to lose the much beloved scrolling of effects long after combat was over, but this has not been my experience. Although my hits seem to register closer to the actual time they "land", I still have a long scroll of things happening after combat. Note: Anecdotally, these seem to be a clump of healing effects, misses (enemies missing me), blurries, displacements, etc. In my opinion, this is much worse than the way it used to be. If I am to see these effects, I would rather see them in the ORDER they happen, even if that is slower than WHEN they happen. It is really unhelpful to see them after combat, so if that is the answer, then let's remove them from the scrolling effects altogether.

Also, I have noticed a new, smoother looking lag in the game. Rather then seeing the enemies "flicker" towards me when this lag hits, I see the enemies far away, far away, far away, then suddenly they are behind me. They look like they are moving all the time, just very slowly closer, then BOOM, they are behind me. I don't know whether this is server side lag or client side, however, starting to swing when I see this lag does not result in me hitting the enemies as they "pass" me. This is much worse than any form of lag I have seen before, as even with the full stop short lag (lasting a second or 2), if you keep swinging then when the lag releases you will see those hits.

So for me, this update is a complete fail, and I am not at all factoring nerfs into my evaluation. My 2 mains are THF, so I have not tried a "nerfed" playstyle yet.

Beyond the "new" (to me) lag, I have noticed a lot of unintended (I hope) effects (call that halo if you wish).

My TR partner was disconnected 4 times in Slavers Part 1 (which we finished), as well as being disconnected so much during the beginning of CitW that we just gave up on that. She has recently started to have that happen (last 4 months or so), but never more than 2 times a session although fairly often once per session. We are hoping this improves going forward, but at the moment the game is borderline unplayable for her.

As she did the traps in Slavers part 1, we got to the 10% bonus, but she DCed, when she returned, we had lost that bonus. Her trap count continued to increase to 39 where it stopped counting traps. No matter how many more she did, the total remained 39, nor did we ever get the percent bonus back. Now this may have been a visual bug only, we did get the approximate XP I expected on completion, but I am not entirely sure whether we got that bonus or not.

Monster aggro seems to be broken again. we had at least 4 instances of orange dungeon alert, and uncountable greens. The way we play, I am not sure we have seen 4 orange dungeon alerts in the past few years (unless we were running CitW), so to have 4 in a session was startling, to say the least. The 2 quests we played are quests we play all the time, so something in aggro definitely changed.

As other people have reported, swapping items is slow, doesn't happen a lot of the time (more than it used to), lost spells, lost Endless Fusillade, pause after LOH (although my LOHs seemed more reliable than before). None of these things taken separately is that much of a big deal, but taken together, they result in a much degraded game experience.

Hirelings seem a little worse, of course.

We have NOT had any opening quest lag, bank or vendor lag, or loading screen lag.

As I mention above, the general reason for me judging this Update a fail is the general game experience. For me it has lost that "active control" feeling that separates DDO from all other MMOs. All that being said, I don't plan to quit, having faith that most of these issues can be worked out. Whether or not I can get that active control feel back to the game will likely weigh heavily on the amount of time I spend in game.

Sorry for the WOT, thanks if you stayed with me this long.

B

[AbyssalMage]

This would likely have minimal if any impact on loading screen issues as that would be caused by something different. This should help particularly with "start of fight" style lag.
If that is the case it is noticeable much worse.

For some clarification:
I was solo/molo (soloing with a mercenary) most of yesterday (Thursday pm/Friday am) and didn't experience much in the way of lag. It was more a slight delay that I attributed to my personal internet connection. I friend I commonly group with was mentioning the horrible lag they were experiencing and we were talking about it through chat. I then switched characters and met up with them and we ran a few quests together in Epic GH. Holy H*E*Double hockey stick was the lag horrendous. Every encounter with a group of enemies left me waiting for the system to buffer. It was much more pronounced when the NPC's go from a neutral state to active one OR they "spawn" from no where (i.e. not invisible but code makes them appear from some trigger, like walking into the room).

So from my POV you made it much worse with no benefit (To be fair I expected this).

[Kielbasa]

After a few quests super laggy today. Auto attacking was fine. But every time I tried to do my great maul, shred, roar combo it was lag, lag, lag. Felt like the game was hitching with every ability use. Surprisingly was able to quit the game and not have it hang forever and force me to force shutdown it in the task manager seemed a bit better after the client reboot.

[Jbo335]

We (4-5 in party) did some slayer in Barovia wilderness yesterday. First, it was kind of OK, but then huge lag with freezes and no way to continue playing. After dying we reconnected, but I decided to quit as it was just no fun.
This was in a non-raid party in a wilderness area.

[Aelonwy]

I'm reserving judgement until I've played through the weekend. The first couple hours I played on Friday afternoon felt better but my after dinner playtime felt the same as ever.

[Hawkwier]

This would likely have minimal if any impact on loading screen issues as that would be caused by something different. This should help particularly with "start of fight" style lag.

Thanks for clarifying. I guess the load screen issues are simply coincidence then.

Having played more today though, I'm afraid I'm not seeing any meaningful improvement, in fact quite the reverse!

In particular it is far more noticeable that some things fail to proc...

On several occasions Boulders Might failed to activate as the button failed to press. This was immediately after hitting Adrenaline, and it certainly wasn't happening like this before. This might be a similar issue to those reported for Intimidate?

Also, critically, I died when tanking a VOD as the remove curse pots failed to activate twice in a row when quaffing to remove the curse. They were consumed but nothing happened, and I died due to the anti heal curse persisting. Not had this happen before either. I can't be sure what the underlying cause was but lag surely can't be ruled out, and like I say, never experienced it pre U49.

Had a few other lag moments but nothing serious in terms of impact. Just disappointing to still see it with such frequency.

On the up side, running up Yester Hill seemed smoother overall. Not, IMO worth the other issues for this though.

So, whilst still willing to wait before bringing back the jury, it's not looking very good in terms of their prospective verdict at this point I'm afraid...

[fatherpirate]

fixing what you just broke is not an IMPROVEMENT
it is just a fix

[Alizar]

Lag improved drastically after patch. Happy camper here on Cannith.
.

[phillymiket]

While I've seen a few lag blips here and there, the fix has exceeded my expectations.
But I'm going to wait and see how it looks next week at the end of the server restart cycle before I do a happy /dance.

[FengXian]

Just had a huge serve wide lag wave on HC, confirmed by multiple guildies in DS. Second time I see this after U49, and I've played maybe 5hrs overall since the update, usually not at peak time either.

Great fix, totally worth sacrificing proc builds, AF, aggro management etc...

[bruener]

I haven’t seen any change in the lag issues. Played quite a bit this weekend. Same issues that I usually see. At least they keep trying.

[SimCat]

Got lag in every single quest, raid, wilderness, and common area to one degree or another. I think that the lag fix was a bust. Making changes to everything that no one wanted was a bust. How about a statement of accountability from SSG that this didn't work and that the fixes are obviously not the issue. What's next?

[Khurse]

Haven't seen much lag in a half dozen raids /groups since the update.

A few times in slayer areas, annoying, but cleared up relatively quickly.

Still going to wait a month or so before passing judgement, but so far it seems considerably better.

[voxson5]

We had such bad lag on HC today in Sin's that the quest completely locked up for maybe 15-20 seconds after Gula went down (at the time there were no other mobs and no dungeon alert).

A few spikes in bastion at the end fight for both phases too.

It really feels that SSG management doesn't care about all this feedback, and I find that pretty sad.

[dunklezhan]

Playing from Europe (UK. But it's functionally Europe since the data is all using the same transatlantic pipe and all the rocks are connected to the same plate):

Main playstyle: solo whenever or static group on Sunday (3), Monday (6), Wednesday (2). None of the groups raid.

Previous lag experience:
Solo: fine. Never really had a problem except the occasional stuck loading screen.
Group lag: always been the case that we have occasional group wide lag: a loading screen will get stuck for one person and it then sticks for everyone, or the whole instance pauses for very little reason (or noticeably right before a bunch of spawns happen, particularly in Wheloon which is presumably Shadows-related).
One of those players in the 6 person group is constantly lagging (or blaming it on the lag lol) so we're fairly happy that must be their particular hardware/internet connection/personality :).
Loading screens being stuck can also be an individual issue, seems no rhyme/reason from our end (like, it happens to high RAM machines or low RAM machines, good GFX card machines and bad etc).

Current lag experience:
Solo: basically it's all been fine as usual.

Last weds, after the patch: duo group. Every loading screen or quest entrance screen is taking an age except when I'm playing solo. Other than that, seemed normal in-quest: no sign of sudden group-wide lag mid quest as far as we could determine. We were running epic Spies in the House and related Saga stuff.

Last night (3 person group) was crazy bad. Every loading screen, mid-quests freezes for the whole group, the whole nine yards etc. We were doing the Age of Rage chain 1-4.

Monday's full 6 person group hasn't played yet! So I don't know. We'll be running, I think, heroic High Road.

So... I have to say if anything the sort of lag we would generally experience in our small groups is worse, and seems to get worse the bigger the group gets (although a few nights play for solo and one night each of duo/triple is very very very vey small sample size, admittedly). Or Monday night (euro time) was just particularly bad this week.

[grohgredin]

I play often. Europe time. Solo and group , actually on HC.

Lag seemed better after update. Even if worse that WE, especially sunday, sounds logic...

Stuck loading screen still happen, liltle freezes in group fight/delay on the output damages/incoming healings, still deadly for HC players, Raid pushers etc...

So still some lag but some improvements. Not satisfying enough for a decent gameplay/experience but better.

Keep the good work on it please. Please focus on it. It's the most important for so much players...

We dont need quests, items, raids, we need to be lag/freeze free. Many players will come back with better performances.

Cheers

[Jerevth]

Bard, Solo on HC, Drow, male;

Spells (SLA:sonic blast, shout/ regular: sound burst) casting animation works but spell animation will not appear and target takes damage. Color spray seems to work fine (non-damage).
~OR~
Sometimes the spell goes off but there is a delay between casting and landing (1-3 seconds) and the target gets close and hits me before the spell damage manifests. The bard may, or may not, have hit a high note when this occurs. (Ranged mobs and casters get a final attack off when they die- really rough when it's a champ with their specials; Silence sucks for a bard, lol)

Melee isn't up to snuff to really focus on so I haven't noticed any issues there.

So far the only major issue I've seen is the delay between casting and the spell landing, but there have been some moments where it got a little edgy and I might not be watching while stacking panic casts (Champion Stone Elementals in 'Home of Memory' comes to mind.)

I had no issues in Slavelords I, on Normal, but those mobs waited patiently and politely died without creating a scene. Not ready to test it on HE at level 8.

Happily, mimics haven't caused lag. Clearing that darn ui loot window that "sticks" when it's a mimic is rough enough.

Still get stuck in screen loading a lot, but I'll take that to the in-fight lag we were seeing the month before (Juddering, spells vanishing, melee attacks vanishing, mobs teleporting, freezes, etc)
Overall, it seems better but I haven't been able to play as much recently.

[Miahoo]

snip

[Loholt-UK]

Friday we attempted Project Nemesis on R5 and it was a laggy mess. Lag wiped a couple of times in there. It was actually worse lag than I've seen at any other time in there.

I've also been playing on Hardcore quite a bit and there are still pockets of lag to deal with. I started doing reapers today and the first reaper I met was accompanied by a 4-second lag spike. This is not fun. I survived but it's made me not want to play on there and I'm sure that can't be your mission objective.

[DYWYPI]

I've perceived no real improvement so far... The Hardcore Server seemed to have as many random latency spikes as to prior to U49 especially on Saturday (possibly traffic). I have seen what looks like a few people "rubber banding" in there. There does seem to have been a few split second latency spikes on Hardcore today whereas on Thelanis they'd be possibly occur on average once per week - not two or three per day like on Hardcore. Some objects seem to load slightly different.


https://i.imgur.com/oeNE3ow.jpg

The Chat Servers still appear to be sporadic when they decide to bother to establish a connection. So obviously that issue hasn't been resolved either. Albeit I haven't noticed the "The chat server is temporarily unavailable." message being as frequent since after last Friday (typically a handful of times per day). However, the odds are the lower occurrence is simply because I haven't been logged in much.

[TedSandyman]

So far seems much better to me.

[Karthunk]

Lag was back to being terrible last night. I lost my HC character to the sliding portion in white plume because of it; I was in the sliding section having no issues (I've done this hundreds of times)... games lags for 5 seconds and I am dead at the bottom.

There has to be solutions on the table to fix the lag issues.

[Montegue]

It's been weird. It's been better in places, but still weird in others. For example, running around Sharn (not quests, just in town), I'll randomly get stuck and then hurled up into the air. Happened in some of the Sharn quests as well - Just Business, I lagged like hell while waiting for the opening shadow puppetry to play out.

[Dandonk]

I still have a fair amount of lag spikes where I, and three of my guildies, get stuck for 5-10 seconds at the same time.

Is it better? Perhaps a tiny bit, but I must say, if this is all we got for those nerfs and QoL-degrading changes, colour me disappointed.

EDIT: Not surprised, but still disappointed. Silly me.

[Aelonwy]

Friday seemed really good and I was really happy, and ready to enthusiastically eat crow. Saturday lag was awful, didn't seem to be any different than before. :( Sunday was somewhat smoother but still had lag.

Honestly, I can't say that lag was any different than any late week server restart. But I am noticing the reduction of procs on my TA, my swashbard, and my Mechanic Inquisitor (all in epics), I couldn't really tell on my warchanter, seemed about the same, maybe because she's in heroics not epics yet? Also didn't notice a whole lot of difference on my paladin but she's Vanguard sword & board so maybe I'm just not hitting enough mobs swiftly enough as-is to notice? I'm not enjoying either my tempest ranger nor my pure artificier but I wasn't enjoying them before the update either so I can't say for certain if my displeasure is due to previous bias or if the update made anything worse. Tempest is in heroics, Arty just made it to epics right before HC started and... well haven't really played her much since.

The level of reduction I am noticing isn't game-breaking for me... however and I cannot stress this enough... I am not a min-maxer, I do not play the highest difficulties, I barely poke reaper, I do not use action boosts frequently and on some alts hardly at all. I can only imagine the difference in my play-experience versus one of those people on You-tube soloing high reaper with 20 hot key bars out and apparently a super-mouse to use them all very efficiently, I can only imagine that our play experience is not even on the same plane. I'm prime material, they're astral plane or something ascended. I can have no real conception of what differences they might be experiencing.

In conclusion, AFAICT from just a few days of play, neither lag nor procs changed so much for me that I am either thrilled or upset. I am meh.

Edit: I do expect the swap delay to get improved. But for the most part it wasn't vastly degrading my play experience.

[rabidfox]

Lag on Khyber and HC were both minimal for me all weekend. Occasional little bits of stuff but next to nothing overall which was a nice change of pace. But I did notice hirelings were acting extra glitchy, where they'd occasionally stop moving and just hang back like their pathing was borked. Hirelings are always kind meh to use but they felt way worse than usual.

[Glorious]

So the first day or 2 post the update things felt better - we have a dedicated trio that groups together almost every day for at least 2 hours - and last week wasn't too bad - Sunday it started to feel a little stuttery and some lag here and there but overall was better.

Last night however we were running Wheloon quests and it was back to being as bad as it had been previously (Pre-Update). Big pauses in the quest - didn't matter if it was a couple of MOBS or the end fight with the boss and a crate full of Howlers - we had multiple instances where the game just paused - spells didn't land and then it catches up and someone died or was near to death having had a full bar seconds before etc...

Is there something that still needs to be purged every couple of days or something? Because the 2 days after the update it was better - our whole group remarked on it - our 6 man Thursday night group and our trio Friday and Saturday...by Sunday the lag was back...

As my youngest says "Sad Face"

[gaxpar]

I've perceived no real improvement so far... The Hardcore Server seemed to have as many random latency spikes as to prior to U49 especially on Saturday (possibly traffic). I have seen what looks like a few people "rubber banding" in there. There does seem to have been a few split second latency spikes on Hardcore today whereas on Thelanis they'd be possibly occur on average once per week - not two or three per day like on Hardcore. Some objects seem to load slightly different.


https://i.imgur.com/oeNE3ow.jpg

The Chat Servers still appear to be sporadic when they decide to bother to establish a connection. So obviously that issue hasn't been resolved either. Albeit I haven't noticed the "The chat server is temporarily unavailable." message being as frequent since after last Friday (typically a handful of times per day). However, the odds are the lower occurrence is simply because I haven't been logged in much.


Chat servers broken 1/4 -1/3 log ins . Cleaning up old connection 1/7 ----1/8 . In game quest barely noticeable improvements on lag . 1/4 of spells dont animate or land .

If that's considered a success , then what is a failure ?

[HolthienSturmbow]

https://clips.twitch.tv/WealthySeductiveRabbitTheThing-tvsbNVvO-GGVE0ih

[Chacka_DDO]

I just died on the HC server with a lvl 15 character and almost all favor done (incl challenges VoN raid, the Titan TOEE2 etc.) and already almost 8 reaper APs and why?
At the end of a quest when you finish you have almost always crippling lag and during this lag spike, a skeleton mage champion killed me with no chance for me at all to avoid this death.
On the HC server, such technical problems are simply not acceptable when you work more than a week on a character and then you lose him just only because of server performance issues!

[LittleLexi]

Did not notice any improvement, and the doublestrike "solution" diminishes current, and potential future, enjoyment.

[Hawkwier]

OK so I've run enough now to return my final verdict on U49...

I think the first thing to acknowledge is that my biggest concern around the nerf to adrenaline has not manifested. There has undoubtedly been an introduction that favours classes with easier access to 100% DS than those that don't, and as such my barb has been relatively disadvantaged, but critically, not to the extent of a nerf, which was my overriding concern. DPS hits under adrenaline seem broadly comparable to those before U49, so the change means that those other classes with easy 100% DS gained more of a buff than my barb, but I don't really have an issue with that, and as the expected nerf didn't manifest, I hold up my hands and acknowledge I called that wrong. Sorry.

(NB I do think a change to PTWF increasing its DS, similar to the change for the Assimaar Scourge PL stance, would help close that DS gap, and prove consistent in approach to such issues.)

The next thing to call is whether there has been a significant reduction in lag. YES, at times it has been possible to see improvements. Yester Hill was smoother, as was the penultimate ambush in Records of the Past (which I've always found to be another really bad lag-fest). However there are still far too many instances of severe lag occurring during combat, and one "added feature" that absolutely requires to be addressed...

Whilst not seeing as much severe lag (i.e. freeze frame), there is a more persistent low level lag that repeatedly causes hot-bar buttons to misfire - initially I saw this on Boulders Might after hitting Adrenaline, but I'm also seeing it regularly on features such as Cracking Attack (without Adrenaline being invoked), and also on potions (the pot is consumed but no effect manifests). The introduction of this level of misfire/unreliability in combat situations is completely unacceptable. Weapon swapping in combat has also become a major issue, with multiple repeated hitting of the swap-to weapon button on the hot-bar having absolutely zero effect - particularly galling if you happen to be holding a scroll at the time! These are non-trivial issues, and they MUST be fixed. (Incidentally I also don't understand how such misfires have been generated by the approach taken to reduce procs in the queue? If something else has also been introduced to cause these effects, please reverse it).

So, final verdict: I am NOT of the opinion that the U49 changes require wholesale reversal, and acknowledge they have improved lag (though not widely enough), so am generally now supportive of U49. I am however absolutely convinced that misfiring effects and failed weapon swaps DO require to be reversed (I would hope/expect not, but for clarity, If that does mean reversing everything, then so be it), as the current levels of unreliability of these misfires is unacceptable I'm afraid.

TLDR: FIX THE MISFIRES AND WEAPON SWAP FAILS, AND WE CAN ALL BE HAPPY. BUT DO FIX THEM!

I hope this feedback proves helpful.

(Naturally this is my personal view based on play experience - I make no comment on other issues around ranged etc., due to my insufficient experience/knowledge.)

[nobodynobody1426]

This would likely have minimal if any impact on loading screen issues as that would be caused by something different. This should help particularly with "start of fight" style lag.

My toes are still cold, SO LAG WASN'T FIXED!!!!!

[myliftkk_v2]

- particularly galling if you happen to be holding a scroll at the time!

^^ This is not acceptable behavior for any characters taking advantage of UMD. Considering how often I've used and swap scrolls, I'm tabling any thought of return until this gets fixed.

[HolthienSturmbow]

I just died on the HC server with a lvl 15 character and almost all favor done (incl challenges VoN raid, the Titan TOEE2 etc.) and already almost 8 reaper APs and why?
At the end of a quest when you finish you have almost always crippling lag and during this lag spike, a skeleton mage champion killed me with no chance for me at all to avoid this death.
On the HC server, such technical problems are simply not acceptable when you work more than a week on a character and then you lose him just only because of server performance issues!

Cordo: That sucks and I'm sorry, but we explicitly say in our rules for the Hardcore server that all deaths count, including deaths caused by lag

[gam3rfi3nd]

As a disclaimer my experiences yesterday was playing just on the Hardcore server. My assumption is that it is the most stressed server because of population.

The experience yesterday was wonderful. I played on and off the entire day, solo and group play, and noticed no server side lag. My camera still spins around randomly at times when I move and climbing a ladder is equivalent to soloing the Tarasque but the lag fix seemed to work ... so far.

I thought I was the only one who had this thought. The amount of people playing makes the server sucks!

[gam3rfi3nd]

No change on GLand. Bank slow to open. Store slow to open. Chest slow to open. Spells not landing. Every door is a load screen. Client crashes every 15–30 mins, or every 3rd-4th door, whichever comes first…

And that’s just an off the top of my head short list.

That said, I’m not confident subjective reports on the forums are a valid measure of lag.

Of every single problem you are pointing out, I have to say that the worst of all is definitely the fact that spells fail to land.

[Stales]

Also Gland, spells not hitting, getting stutter spikes in quest solo, low level stuff, Also stutter freezing in market.

[Hawkwier]

^^ This is not acceptable behavior for any characters taking advantage of UMD. Considering how often I've used and swap scrolls, I'm tabling any thought of return until this gets fixed.

Fair position. Looks like U49.1, which drops tomorrow, will help with the swapping issue at least. Let's see what that looks like...

[Kessaran]

I think it's important to note that the "lag fix" wasn't designed to improve lag in general areas, it was designed specifically to fix lag from the combat log (the numbers popping overhead monsters when you attack them). To my understanding, this was achieved specifically through literally cutting in half (more for ranged) the number of times new numbers pop up. This was suspected to be causing server lag that affected everyone, which has proven to not be true. I will be the first to admit that I don't get anywhere near as much combat log lag. But none of these lag fix changes have succeeded in improving my playing experience. I still get severe lag consistently inside a wilderness area, I get lag at the end of EVERY quest (right when exp is awarded, even when I get 0 EXP from a favor run), I get lag during bank screens and mailbox, my TR cache is empty thankfully so can't attest to that but there has been a noticeable delay when swapping gear around in my inventory. It's almost like that initial logging in lag you get where the game has to account for all your gear, except it's happening every 2-3 pieces of gear swapped. And that affects my weapon as well, lag died in an R8 run last night because I swapped to a scroll and got stuck in mid-air when I swapped to my weapon. Overall, combat log lag is much better and you probably won't notice numbers popping up overhead of dead monsters for 3-4 seconds after they've died but they made changes to address lag that fixed next to nothing but the combat log. Also, this is just my personal experience and opinion so don't get all salty.

Edit: I average 700Mbps down and 130Mbps Up speeds with 12 ping to DDO's server cluster, I get no packet loss during any of this lag and no packet loss when pinging their servers directly. Running an i9-9900k CPU and 2080 TI GPU, hard wired ethernet. This is 100% server sided lag.

Cannith Server, 64-bit client.

[Artos_Fabril]

I think it's important to note that the "lag fix" wasn't designed to improve lag in general areas, it was designed specifically to fix lag from the combat log (the numbers popping overhead monsters when you attack them). To my understanding, this was achieved specifically through literally cutting in half (more for ranged) the number of times new numbers pop up.
You're close, but no. The effects queue is not the same thing as the floating combat text. What they told us is that the effects queue gets overloaded with the number of events (the output of if;then checks) being generated by every single effect generated in every instance running on the same piece of silicon being run through one process. This, we are told, can't be usefully split into multiple parallel processes, so it was necessary to reduce the number of events happening by cutting down all of the effects that happen and then multiplying the resulting numbers by the doublehit chance.

[Jinxx]

I play on Thelanis. The lag was good on the first day after the update but seemed to get worse as time went on up to yesterday being really bad. I was with a group in Wheloon Prison (wilderness) and the lag was so bad that I died because I couldn't do a **** thing. Yes, we were fighting a lot of mobs but we did not have yellow or red alert. Then, while playing in one of the quests inside the prison, I was seeing damage number scrolling by after battles were over like before the update. So far it seems like U49 was a fail for fixing lag but a success for nerfing.

[Lanadazia]

This would likely have minimal if any impact on loading screen issues as that would be caused by something different. This should help particularly with "start of fight" style lag.

i didn't notice any difference in the ammount of lag, it rather happens on different occassions now.
sometimes i get a massive 5 second lagspike during a fight, where i before never had any issue with lag spikes like that.
.
playing from europe with a solid 25k internet connection

[Hawkwier]

Lag on Khyber and HC were both minimal for me all weekend. Occasional little bits of stuff but next to nothing overall which was a nice change of pace. But I did notice hirelings were acting extra glitchy, where they'd occasionally stop moving and just hang back like their pathing was borked. Hirelings are always kind meh to use but they felt way worse than usual.

Sorry, but.we had a wipe (recovered) in R10 Mists at wisps in exactly this scenario where lag kicked in at fight start (I ran in to trigger it and never even got a single swing off before death amid freeze frame).

Also, though weapon swapping doses seem better now, the button mis-firing is still critical. Died twice in high reaper due to Meld mis-firing over past couple of days, and whilst those are the most extreme examples, they are far from the only mis-fires happening.

Not happy. This isn't good enough. The button mis-firing needs fixed!

[DistantOceans]

Hey All,

Writing from Gland, sometimes it's fine, other days the whole range of issues, intermittent freezing, drops in load screens, stutters etc. There may be some overall improvement, but it appears there's still a broad range of factors and issues that need to be addressed to get the game to a consistently playable state. Not tryna rag onthe developers efforts, but there's more work to be done.

I’m working on drafting a resolution addressed to SSG concerning the persistent server performance issues currently effecting the game. I’m going through the forums and flagging threads related to this issue in hopes of rallying public support and crowd sourcing possible solutions.

If this topic is important to you, please take a moment to check it out, talking to your friends, guilds, and playgroups and consider contributing whatever you can to the process.

Thank you and good hope,

- Distant.Oceans01 (Ellewellyn)

Link:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/524157-Resolution-Drafting-Persistent-Server-Performance-and-Latency-Issues?p=6430234#post6430234

[FengXian]

Just played on HC, a huge and prolonged lag spike hit, got it confirmed in guild chat to make sure it wasn't just me, as I usually do.

I was lucky to be out of quests, it was very annoying.

I'm aware U49 wasn't supposed to fix all lag as there are other sources besides the on-hit effects in raids or whatever they supposedly fixed by killing so many builds, but even after U49 improvements this is not acceptable.

So was it worth sacrificing a relevant part of the game's diversity? Everyone can answer this question based on personal priorities; given the radical changes U49 introduced, I was expecting a much bigger improvement than the one we got.

[Aelonwy]

So was it worth sacrificing a relevant part of the game's diversity? Everyone can answer this question based on personal priorities; given the radical changes U49 introduced, I was expecting a much bigger improvement than the one we got.

This^.

[merlinfire1]

still seeing pretty significant lag. the improvement, sometimes, seems noticeable, at other times, as bad as it ever was

they will actually need to fix it even better than we hope. because once they fix it with the current load, people will start coming back since they heard lag got fixed, and then the load will go up and cause lag again

[BDog77]

This^.

+1000

Did they even restart the servers this Wednesday? Lag on Gland has been pretty horrible yesterday (Thursday) and today. Today my GF and I both suffered the lag crash to desktop, her twice, and me 4 times (in an hour and a half session). This is something that used to happen to her only occasionally, and me never. So if this is part of the price for "fixing" the effects queue, then no thanks. I find this much worse than the effects lag, although I guess it could been seen as part of the fix, I suppose. Not in game, not contributing to lag, amiright?

Also, and I can't recall which thread this was in, but someone was arguing the the scrolling numbers bit was not actually part of the effects queue. OK, I'll buy that, but the Devs touted no more scrolling numbers as a way we would notice the lesser effects queue, and spoke about this as if it was fixed. Yeah, no, not even a little bit. Sure, sometimes when I am fighting a single MOB, maybe the numbers seem to be more or less keeping up, but add even 1 more MOB, and the scrolling of number starts, and is, if anything, worse than before the fix. On top of everything, MOB aggro is back to where it was before they "fixed" that, so the chances of fighting only a single MOB are slim and none.

I never actually built a toon reliant on proc effects, so I feel as if I don't really have a dog in this fight, but if you are going to say you fixed something, I think it would be nice if it was actually fixed, at least in a way that I can experience consistently. Otherwise, the only thing I can see is a huge nerf to game diversity (although not to me personally). However, I can not say that I am particularly surprised. If Turbine couldn't fix lag when they were in charge, why would we imagine they could do so when hired by SSG?

Edit: OK, so the scrolling numbers discussion was just above me in this thread, lol.

[DistantOceans]

still seeing pretty significant lag. the improvement, sometimes, seems noticeable, at other times, as bad as it ever was

they will actually need to fix it even better than we hope. because once they fix it with the current load, people will start coming back since they heard lag got fixed, and then the load will go up and cause lag again

This is sort of why I think the problem becomes existential. SSG needs the games to grow/players return in order for remain profitable/fund new projects, but server performance degrades inversely.

I'm going through this thread and trying to think how the dots can be connected, there's a lot of anecdotal information about how lag has been past in present through the different patch cycles, but it's getting from there to some concrete course of action.

One of the things that I think keeps the problem in it's current state is that it seems like we don't really have a comprehensive model of how lag works, SSG seems to have their current theory.

so there's lots of observations, some people have hypotheses, but no way to test them, let alone repeat that cycle to distill down a working theory, then keep track of it all so it doesn't get lost in the collective forum chatter of every other issue.

[TitusOvid]

Rubberbanding on Orien. Ravenloft and House J.
3pm - 5pm Boston time.


Titus.

[Lonesols]

This game runs the same as it did when I quit due to lag months ago. Same rubber banding, of characters bouncing all over, skipping monsters, spells not working, ect ect. The loading screen garbage is still a thing too. Who ever made this game should be ashamed of them selves for making it run worst than fan made emulators. They should just shut this down and release the server code, guarantee it would run better.

So we got pay 2 win cash shop, with predatory practices on the sale of stuff, lag, bugs out the ass, stuck on loading screen, ect ect, yet some reason people pay for this kind of shady service.

[FengXian]

I may have missed this, but did devs tell us why they haven't rebalanced procs accordingly to the loss of doublestrike/shot?

I know they couldn't just increase proc chance from say 7% to 14% or it would have made the update pointless, in their words.

But why not improve other aspects of said procs like so many people have been suggesting?

Like DC, damage, maybe RP per AF stack, or something like that.

I'm sure that increasing the magnitude of the procs is a reasonable solution to countebalance the nerf. Pretty much same as increasing some aspects of the nerfed legacy bows for example.

Was it because they don't have time, or they just won't bother? Were we even given a reason in all these weeks?

[Twilight23]

This game runs the same as it did when I quit due to lag months ago. Same rubber banding, of characters bouncing all over, skipping monsters, spells not working, ect ect. The loading screen garbage is still a thing too. Who ever made this game should be ashamed of them selves for making it run worst than fan made emulators. They should just shut this down and release the server code, guarantee it would run better.

So we got pay 2 win cash shop, with predatory practices on the sale of stuff, lag, bugs out the ass, stuck on loading screen, ect ect, yet some reason people pay for this kind of shady service.

They never said it fixed lag. They said it fixed effects queue lag. This will be most noticeable in raids. However, I have noticed slightly decreased combat lag outside of raids. All of the other sources of lag are still there and are being investigated.

How is it a pay2win cash shop? DDO has one of the least pay2win shops of any MMO (or really any game) with a cash shop that I've seen.

You've never done professional software development over a long period of time on one application with changing developers, have you? Some of the dev disclosures are kind of surprising but I would be utterly shocked if something as complex as an MMO engine developed by a small changing team did not become a nightmare of spaghetti over the course of 15 years. To prevent that takes some combination of developer continuity, funds, moderate-sized dev team, funds, strict coding policies/procedures, and funds. From what we can tell, DDO is relatively successful for a niche game but they don't have nearly the funds of more popular MMOs.

[TitusOvid]

Just to let you know that the lag is still pretty bad. Regular lag spikes of about 5 seconds and more start around 3 pm Boston time and don't stop until I log off around 3 hours later. It was worse outside of quests than in (Orien)

Titus.

[Shadospawn]

Yeah I mean I like the game anyway, but the lag has been around forever. I've always thought it was terrible vs. other games I've played.

There's only one game I can recall ever having worse lag than DDO, and that was the massive disaster that was Vanguard, Saga of Heroes. You can talk all you want about old engines, sophistication, or smaller player base. There's just something fundamentally off with the design. Other games, however old/new/populated/complex just don't have the lag issues DDO does. Take it or leave it.

I'm not saying we should just be happy with the lag. I'm just saying I don't ever see it getting fundamentally better. If it were a simple thing, it would have been fixed many years ago.