Post-U9 lag

[Aashrym]

Hi all,

We are aware of the increased lag that has cropped up post-U9 and are looking into it. There is enough anecdotal evidence to point to a few candidates for investigation, but more info could be useful, hence this thread.

What I'd like, for now, are the world you play on, the quest, the party size and composition, the time of day (with timezone, or converted to either GMT or EDT), details about what was happening when the lag hit (for example, "all the casters had just called up ice storms", or "we got up from the shrine and couldn't move"), and any other info that seems relevant. If you were chatting with other players in-game and they did or didn't see lag at the same time, that could also be useful.

Please don't post "I'm seeing horrible lag! Fix it!" or the like. As satisfying as it might be to rant and vent, it won't help us track down the problem.

Thanks!

Shroud part IV stands out from a couple of nights ago (Monday I believe). Party leader called out for a fog spell and someone tossed up a solid fog followed by a drop in frame rate. Somewhere in the midnight to 2am EST range on Ghallanda.

After zoning into Subterran I've seen the client simply become unresponse while waiting for the rest of the party several times and someone will disconnect. That hit me twice on reavers fate last week too. Starting to toss a few buffs and the system stops responding. Last DQ I did the party leader DC'ed when we were working on efreet right after entereing and there was some choppiness. I do not disconnect and the client becomes responsive again in a few moments.

Running thru the desert 2 of us could not proceed into the undead section because we would hit it and bounce back to where we hit it. Someone said try to go in backwards and that worked. Not sure if that was a weird voodoo fix or not.

When I log in and out swapping inventory or checking timers I see alot of lag while the system is populating my hotbars etc. The more I do it the worse it gets and frame rate drops followed by choppiness.

If I play for a while running thru several quests it seems to get worse and requires a restart.

I do not have the precise dates and times, or party composition. I'll watch for it now for the next time it happens, but hopefully that helps a bit. Around 4AM EST the lag gets worse almost every night.


EDIT: The optional at the end of Weapons Shipment.

I run that frequently (my idea of frequent is 2-3 times per week) because I still haven't gotten a mad lute and I want it in my weapon collection. The end fight with quicken on sudden my healing spells on capped spellsinger and my buddy on a capped AoV will simply disappear. No incoming healing from either of us. The spell is simply lost and never hits. Usually we're running it on hard, on Ghallanda, around midnight 1am ish ETA.

The typical method we use on the optional is to charm the tieflings above the the first portal so they can draw devil aggro ranging them while we beat down the portal, ddoor after the portal is down, buff up and invis sprint past the remaining portals to the end fight. (EDIT2: AoV aura certainly made the invisible sprint more complicated.)

[Aashrym]

Do you have Environmental Stencil Shadows turned off in your advanced graphics settings? These two quests, along with the Subterrane, are ones that commonly are impacted.

Thank you. I'm going to try that after work.

[mystafyi]

Strangely enough, post u9 i rebuilt my rig(new mobo/chip/ram/drives/ec)t... and now the only major lag issues since u9 has been on orien when the crafting hall zone crashed 2-3 hour prior to the 9.1 update. this crash caused a 30 min deletion of all my activities due to a total loss of data and character backup. this happened to everyone in that zone when it crashed.

I do notice insanely high latencies and P/L when first loading into the game. within a few minutes it settles down.

I have been doing some testing of older vid cards /mobo's and do get in game lag with those rigs. graphics lag im presuming.

edit: also would like to state that very recently my isp finally did some upgrades and reduced my ping times to gls.ddo.com to avg 100ms. (yes i know my isp sucks, but its the only one i can get)

[Thlargir]

Do you have Environmental Stencil Shadows turned off in your advanced graphics settings? These two quests, along with the Subterrane, are ones that commonly are impacted.

I had lag (of the hiccup type every 3-4s in the Sub) and changing this parameter fixed it. FYI.

[bigolbear]

server: orien
time:17th may, around 10 pm gmt.
Quest: the pit - elite.
party: guild group 4 man team - all players playing from england.
characters: beladora (archer FVS), jhatain (fighter rogue), wailinjoe (bard/sorc/cleric), bolatrix (fighter barb intimi)

what happend when the lag stuck: to be honest it was normal play, there was no excessive casting no summons and no dps nutters speed boosting. Experienced ruberbanding, delayed healing, missed casting and arrows not being registered as either hits or misses. The lag persisted through most of the quest from about half way in. lag experienced by all players.

[Jastron]

Server: Sarlona

Characters: Jastron (L18 Sorc), Borbank (L20 Bard)

I get about one second of total game freeze (IE nothing changes on screen) every time I swap out their main hand Tier 3 GS weapon which has +1 and +2 exceptional Charisma on it (they are not main chars of mine so no TOD rings for them yet). Swap to a scroll, lag. Swap back, lag. It is very consistent and quite a problem when I need to heal in a hurry with a heal scroll etc. I have quested with others who experience the same issue.

This may have existed prior to U9 and I just may be noticing more from starting to run the Sorc again, but the severity of it and the reproduceability merit its addition here.

Thank You!

[Lerl]

I have alts on 5 servers. Across the board, I get Dc'd in the bank. I have noticed rubber banding and lag spikes frequently. Will start to keep track for this post.

[redoubt]

On Sarlona I see random ping time spikes into the 700-800ms range. That seems to be when everything gets laggy. I play between 6-10pm. This did not happen before U9.

I'll see what happens tonight. If it happens I'll note the _exact_ times it happens in EST, based on my phone (since it NTPs the exact time)

Same here (server & playtimes as well.). I usually run 65ms or so.

I've noticed lag in a couple ways.

1. command passes. When I send commands it seems like many of them are not getting through. Item swaps, specifically, are slow. I don't mean weapon swap time either. I used to be able to double click a wand and have it fire off. Now I have to click two or more times to equip the wand and then click again at least once to get it to activate. I've taken to double (or triple) clicking on gear I want to swap because a single click just doesn't seem to get through anymore.

2. mob & character location. I seem to be having trouble with the mobs position relative to mine being accurate. This problem does not seem to be as common as the first.

I'll try to note additional details when I see #2 happening, but #1 happens all the time.

[Calebro]

Khyber and Thelanis.
Any hour of the day.
Party size doesn't matter
Bridges and changing elevation on a slope rather than a jump are a problem. Small elevation changes seem to trigger this, while larger ones do not.
Run across the bridge between the tent and the bank in the marketplace to check. Or run across the bridge in the Twelve. I rubberband every single time, whereas this never used to happen.

As for individual quest lag, I'll begin to document them a bit so I'm not attempting to remember things that may be incorrect.

[AZgreentea]

I play on Khyber. I live in Arizona.

I have only noticed the lag as higher than normal latency. The only quest I have experience true "Lag" on was in Siegebreaker, while running with several lvl 16 gold seal hirelings (Bard, Fighter, Cleric (normal contract), Barbarian, and a Sorc). In this case I noticed a lack of responsiveness ("missed" commands), and my hirelings would move to a location my screen showed I used to be in, implying I was standing there from their point of view. Then they would suddenly all change direction, like a flock of birds, and follow me again.

As far as the latency, I normally see just short of 100 ms in a quest, and up to 105ms in a public area. Lately I have seen 120ms in public areas and sometimes up to 145ms in quests. I have been running a lot of PUGs lately, with a lot of different people, all lvl 4-7 content. Mostly stuff like Archers point, Redwillow, Catacombs, The Sharn Syndicate, Tear of Dhakhan.

It does not seem to be restricted to a certain time of day. The only other thing I can add is that the game feels somehow less responsive overall. Jumping is a little more challenging, especially if I switch gear mid jump (like equipping FF gear).

[Rinnaldo]

Ghallanda, The Shroud Raid, 12 person group. Last night at around 8:30pm Mountain (10:30pm EDT).

There was minor lag the whole way through, but I really noticed it in part 4 (I believe), as I was casting Niac's Biting Cold, because I was watching the timer on my hotbar for that and the Cold Curse, waiting for the few seconds of cooldown to recast each. Several times throughout, the delay was longer than it should have been - in other words, the timer ticking down on the duration on the boss was not consistent with the timer on my hotbar and Niac's ran out (so I couldn't stack it properly), even though the hotbar timer had not yet reset. I don't know if that was clear enough. To restate: Niac's on the NPC ran out before the cooldown of the spell, because I was lagged.

There were only a few caster, but I do believe there were several AoE spells going on at the time. While there were several during the last part, as well, the lag there was not as bad (closer 10:45pm EDT).

EDIT:
More weirdness during the same run that I just remembered:

Sometimes I'd cast a spell successfully, but there was no animation and the NPC was already dead when I got confirmation of spell success (I have 10% chance of spell failure). This happened at least 3 times, possibly more. I'd go to cast a spell, see a second of lag, and then no animation, and no NPC because they were dead/gone already. This happened during the first part with all the NPC's coming out of the portals.

[kernal42]

Server: Sarlona

Characters: Jastron (L18 Sorc), Borbank (L20 Bard)

I get about one second of total game freeze (IE nothing changes on screen) every time I swap out their main hand Tier 3 GS weapon which has +1 and +2 exceptional Charisma on it (they are not main chars of mine so no TOD rings for them yet). Swap to a scroll, lag. Swap back, lag. It is very consistent and quite a problem when I need to heal in a hurry with a heal scroll etc. I have quested with others who experience the same issue.

This may have existed prior to U9 and I just may be noticing more from starting to run the Sorc again, but the severity of it and the reproduceability merit its addition here.

Thank You!

I have always seen this behaviour. It also appears to be worse the more times you've swapped characters since starting the client (likely due to the memory leak on char-swap).

-Kernal

[Zeruell]

I have always seen this behaviour. It also appears to be worse the more times you've swapped characters since starting the client (likely due to the memory leak on char-swap).

-Kernal

Ditto. It's exacerbated in the case of a dedicated Green Steel CHA-skill item, as each individual effect (+1, +2, +3) generates its own, separate-but-successive hitch in the client.

[Aashrym]

I have always seen this behaviour. It also appears to be worse the more times you've swapped characters since starting the client (likely due to the memory leak on char-swap).

-Kernal

Swapping characters (especially) and equipment absolutely kills me until I restart the client. That's another same here.

[Sarisa]

Ditto. It's exacerbated in the case of a dedicated Green Steel CHA-skill item, as each individual effect (+1, +2, +3) generates its own, separate-but-successive hitch in the client.

Swapping characters (especially) and equipment absolutely kills me until I restart the client. That's another same here.

I have always seen this behaviour. It also appears to be worse the more times you've swapped characters since starting the client (likely due to the memory leak on char-swap).

-Kernal

All of the above apply to me as well. I didn't notice any sort of delay on my old computer, but since I replaced that machine two months ago, I notice a significant delay whenever I equip something that modifies MOST skills.

It's most noticeable with UMD, since that's a swap I do most on all my characters (Seven Fingered Gloves/Head of Good Fortune/etc).

I do, however, also notice a 1 second freeze when I'm in vorpal-melee mode on my Cleric. I use a cove Scimitar and Smallblade combination and UMD Master's Touch on both of them to give myself proficiency. This is a multi-step process; Scroll+Scimitar, activate scroll, Scroll+Smallblade, activate scroll; Scimitar+Smallblade. When I switch to or from either the Scroll+Smallblade set or the Scimitar+Smallblade set, I get the 1 second freeze. The shortblade includes a bonus to Hide and Move Silently.

I do not, however, get any significant freeze when switching to or from the Scroll+Scimitar set, or my Scimitar+Shield set I used to use when intimidating. This is odd because there is an Intimidate bonus on the Scimitar.

On my new computer, I notice this issue regardless of how many times I've switched characters or how many instances I have gone into. My work computer, however, does not show any serious freeze up when switching between skill items.

[Vengeance777]

Disjunction traps really up the lag if you hit one. You basically are unable to move for about 15 seconds as each item and buff you are wearing rolls to save. Hit one in Epic ADQ yesterday and got stuck in mid jump for a while unable to do anything. Lag only stopped when I was killed by an Efreeti that I never saw move from the spot it was in across the bridge when disjunction hit.

In the time I was unable to move the efreeti had made its way across the bridge from monkey, and attacked me 10 times killing me. While I was unable to do anything.

Relogging really ups the lag as well. If you relog to another toon then try to switch weapons or items, especially UMD item and a scroll you can get stuck in place for up to 5 seconds. Restarting the client each time you want to swap characters is the only solution.

[Dark_Helmet]

On Khyber, at about 2330 PST, I was trying to open the bank in the crafting hall and nothing was happening. It took a minute to open up. While I was moving stuff to / from the bank, other people were also having issues and asking of the bank was broken, so it wasn't a single lag spike but over-all issues over a timeframe (I was there for about 5 minutes).

You could move around and swap things in inventory fine, so it was not a local client issue - nor graphics lag as I was just facing the bank.

Also, this wasn't during the usual timeframe (about 0100 - 0200) where trying to manipulate vendors (banks, bar-tenders), logging in/out seems to take a long time to respond.


What I have noticed is, since 9 dropped, clients crash a lot more. Just running through the market place the client would just suddenly crash. And, these are freshly loaded clients. In the past, if you had a client running for a long time, the client would slow down, have long load times and then crash. Now, it just suddenly locks without warning.

[stainer]

We are aware of the increased lag that has cropped up post-U9 and are looking into it. There is enough anecdotal evidence to point to a few candidates for investigation, but more info could be useful, hence this thread.

Is there any thing specific you would like us to run and/or look out for?

[BurnerD]

I think it's either:

A. All of the crafting going on...

B. Those silly monks toggling power attack so they can get their to-hit / damage bonuses on their wraps

[Codeshaper]

Is there any thing specific you would like us to run and/or look out for?

There are a lot of reports involving raids with multiple casters, but it really seems to be across the board, so I don't think it's necessary to run any particular content.