Game Performance Improvements and Feedback

[the_dark_one]

Server - Wayfinder
Approximate Time -Thursday, Friday, Saturday ,Sunday, Monday and Tuesday
Time- different between 11 am - 3 am CEST with breaks.
Location - Europe Germany

Raid/Quests.- DOJ, Deathwyrm, Fire Peaks, Crucible, Curse the Sky, Epic Orchard Chain,
Wizard King, Spies in the House, Korthos Quests, Deleras Graveyard Chain, Jungles of Khyber, Xorian Chiper, A Explosive Situation, Stand the Ground, Dirty Laundry, TOD, Reavers Fate.

Difficult- Epic: Elite, Hard, Normal, Legendary Hard... Heroic: Elite, Normal and Solo.

Your character class – Druid/Cleric, Ranger/Fighter

Number of players in the group - Raids 10/12/2... Normal Groups 2/6, Alone.

Anything else you think we should know :
I tried different Raids, Quests and difficults in group and alone, to see if it impact the lag. But no difference always the same lag. Almost every Minute- unable to move on for a short time. Even in Public Areas.
Its really awful since Friday.

In Inferno, everyone got frozen for some minutes, as the whole party were in the air on a portal.
It was a bit different as the movement lag, it took longer and the enemies were able to hit us.

On Thursday we got beside the Raid lag Problems in Deathwyrm , no Phylacterys to destroy on the shadow side, there were none in the rooms. A GM had to finish the raid for us.

[PaulKorin1967]

Having more instances generated in public places will decrease some lag, have 3 or 4 instances regardless of how many people are online will decrease lag in public and quests areas, as the quests are situated from the public areas, due to trade/advice chats. disabling these two chats in quests will also decrease lag because they will not interfere with the transfer rate. The game only needs to update the people in the party, not everyone who is in the public area where the quest came from.

[Yeeehaw]

Ran 2 quests solo on wayfinder. Epic Normal Jungle of Khyber and EN Spies in the House. Both had really bad lag all the way through the quest. Would not go more than a minute - A MINUTE - between lag stopping the game freezing the screen. Takes about twice as long to finish each quest due to the lag. And this is on Wayfinder server - the least populated server in the game.

While I am sure that turbine is spending some hours on this issue it does not seem to have any real effect to me. Especially when we start talking raids. Every single raid I have tried in the last week or two has been either a failure or it takes at least twice as long to complete if you are lucky enough to be allowed to finish before the lag wipes the party.

So after thinking that turbine was actually spending time on this issue I see an update about this: 2. Looks like we may have a hotfix-style patch we're working on to squash another out-of-control stacking enhancement bug with barbarian.
(stay tuned)

So a hotfix for barbarian stacking enhancement bug? Really? This is a pressing issue right now? I can just imagine the discussion at turbine...

"Gee, I know people are up in arms on this so called lag issue but my god! There is a stacking enhancement bug on the barbarian class. Pull all the people we got on lag issues and get them on this STAT! If this goes another day it will break the game!!!!"

Like the enhancement stacking bug is even going make any difference in the face of this neverending lag. You got to be able to play the game before you can take advantage of any exploit you guys think is there.

[Krelar]

Ran 2 quests solo on wayfinder. Epic Normal Jungle of Khyber and EN Spies in the House. Both had really bad lag all the way through the quest. Would not go more than a minute - A MINUTE - between lag stopping the game freezing the screen. Takes about twice as long to finish each quest due to the lag. And this is on Wayfinder server - the least populated server in the game.

While I am sure that turbine is spending some hours on this issue it does not seem to have any real effect to me. Especially when we start talking raids. Every single raid I have tried in the last week or two has been either a failure or it takes at least twice as long to complete if you are lucky enough to be allowed to finish before the lag wipes the party.

So after thinking that turbine was actually spending time on this issue I see an update about this: 2. Looks like we may have a hotfix-style patch we're working on to squash another out-of-control stacking enhancement bug with barbarian.
(stay tuned)

So a hotfix for barbarian stacking enhancement bug? Really? This is a pressing issue right now? I can just imagine the discussion at turbine...

"Gee, I know people are up in arms on this so called lag issue but my god! There is a stacking enhancement bug on the barbarian class. Pull all the people we got on lag issues and get them on this STAT! If this goes another day it will break the game!!!!"

Like the enhancement stacking bug is even going make any difference in the face of this neverending lag. You got to be able to play the game before you can take advantage of any exploit you guys think is there.

Stacking enhancement bugs are a major source of lag. (It's probably not the sort of stacking you're thinking)

It's the same sort of bug that was causing everyone in an instance to freeze whenever someone equipped an item with parrying on it awhile back.

[Rog]

If you are on Argonnessen or Sarlona, please tell us about your current game experience.

thnx for doing this. going though a decade of code has to be painful. asking for player feedback talk about opening a can of worms.
keep grinding your get it.

[babygirl692]

We have been working since moving DDO to a new data center to optimize in-game performance, and have additional work to do. We have heard from too many of you about lag and other issues, so we took steps this week to make some improvements. We expect these improvements to have some impact, but not "solve" lag in-game. We will continue to work in the coming days and weeks to make further adjustments.

Some answers:

1. What's being done to resolve these issues?

We are implementing new network connections and adjusting our main networking backbone. Additionally, we are troubleshooting server-side configuration changes.

2. Why is it taking so long?

As part of our move to the new data center we updated some architecture to modern operating systems and virtualization technologies. In some cases adjusting the old code to run in this new environment has added additional challenge.

3. What is happening in the next few days?

We will be migrating select networking components, and make additional configuration changes to servers. When these efforts require downtime, we'll let you know.

well i stoped playing cause every time i log in i lose connection so i try and try and try again same thing all the time its not my internet and its not my computer so its really hard to play ddo when i'm having trouble logging in i have been play since january of 2015 an when ddo did their 10th Anniversary i started a new toon on cannith and Baudry Cartamon didn't give me my Small Collectables Bag the new toon is name Babettte Moonshadow

[knightgf]

Worst. Anniversary. Event. Ever.

[Malvontae]

2106-04-06 16:00-19:00
Server Wayfinder
18druid/2rogue ( wolf form combat, using melee wolf specials and occaisonal firewalls)
Storm horms - single person with hireling, any combat with more than 3 monsters experiences pauses( 3-5 seconds no activity, then combat spam to catch up, then pauses again)/ Stuttering in movement 2-5 seconds of no movement then can move for 3-4 seconds
Wheloon prison - single person with hireling, any combat with more than 5 monsters experiences pauses( 1-3 seconds no activity, then combat spam to catch up, then pauses again). Very little movement stuttering

[Sam1313]

Lag report for 4/6/16

1. Server - Cannith
2. Approximate Time - 10:30pm EST to 12:00 am EST.
3. Approximate location of your computer - Lafayette, Indiana (Midwest)
4. Quests/raids run - The Missing.
5. Difficulties run - Heroic Elite.
6. Your character class - Paladin/Rogue
7. Number of players in the group - 1
8. Anything else you think we should know - I only experienced Lag in the public instances and even then it was very little. I did not experience any lag in the quest.

[Waaye]

[...] What do you mean "posts by system types"?

There are three kinds of people in the world, computer hardware types, computer software types, computer users, and people that do not use computers of any sort. Um...wait...that is four types. So there are four kinds of people in the world...

Anyway, the first two types grouped together are known as system types. Computer users, or just "users" as they are usually called by system types, often give bad advice based on their misconceptions about what is going on inside the boxes. Users' wrong answers are less than worthless because it will take their victims a considerable amount of time just to reach complete ignorance again. Good information saves time and that is why I give more weight to posts by system types on technical threads like this. System types may be wrong but at least their opinions are consistent with how the boxes actually work.

[Faltout]

There are three kinds of people in the world, computer hardware types, computer software types, computer users, and people that do not use computers of any sort. Um...wait...that is four types. So there are four kinds of people in the world...

Anyway, the first two types grouped together are known as system types. Computer users, or just "users" as they are usually called by system types, often give bad advice based on their misconceptions about what is going on inside the boxes. Users' wrong answers are less than worthless because it will take their victims a considerable amount of time just to reach complete ignorance again. Good information saves time and that is why I give more weight to posts by system types on technical threads like this. System types may be wrong but at least their opinions are consistent with how the boxes actually work.

Ah, so I didn't really need to justify what I said in case I was wrong. I just needed to slap a "I'm an electrical engineer and my jobs vary from creating software, testing, creating system core code in linux and developing parallel processing programs" at the end of my post. Then, even if what I said was complete **** like "I told you Turbine to look at the network configurations in at the subnetwork <something> because packets get dropped there" or "Ok, from previous experience that specific type of VM has those kinds of problems and you should look into it", you would have totally believed it.

So, while I'm indeed one of those "system types" you say, I'd never use my resume to defend something I'm saying. Even a non-system type can have very useful insight in how something works as long as they have some knowledge and they are clever enough to make deductions. If something I say does not seem true, provide arguments of why it isn't instead of asking "are you a dev? you don't know ****".

[Certon]

My biggest problem with the data center move is that the number of mobs that cause noticeable lag has gotten fewer in number. Before, if there were a red alert in a dungeon due to mob aggro, it wouldn't lag at all. Now it seems even at yellow alert, I can be bogged down by lag so badly that my toon is dead long before it registers on the client.

It wouldn't be because these virtual clients are running in aggregate on the same server, are they? That'd be a cost cutting measure instead of a game optimization measure, and it is in line with End-of-Life system maintenance protocols, which will definitely get me to jump ship.

[Steve_Howe]

1. Server - Khyber
2. Approximate Time - 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM PDT on 4/6/2016
3. Approximate location of your computer - Near Colorado
4. Quests/raids run - Tried a Legendary Shroud and a Legendary Tempest Spine
5. Difficulties run - LH for both
6. Your character class - Warlock for the Shroud run, Cleric for the TS run
7. Number of players in the group - Full group (12) for Legendary Shroud, 8 for Legendary Tempest Spine
8. Anything else you think we should know - The lag was so bad in Part 1 of the Legendary Shroud, we failed because we couldn't kill the portal keeper. This is the FIRST time in MANY YEARS that I've been in a group that's actually failed a Shroud in Part 1. The lag in Legendary Tempest Spine was also so bad at the Atchkar fight that people just gave up and left. By the time I finished out of TS, I was just so demoralized, I logged out of DDO for the night and got in bed and read a book.

[Zephea]

Server : Ghal
Time : 8th April, 4.40pm EST
Location: SE Asia
In-Game Location: mailbox Eveningstar, single instance
Activity and Experience: on for approx 10mins, lag for 30 sec unable to move or do any action while at the ES mailbox, typed /tell response buffered but delivered after lag spike. was unable to detect if was affecting other characters nearby.
Character : level 15 sunelf pure cleric

[kalecii]

severe lag, 9:48-10:04pm , cannith server class: barbarian, quest: devils assault

game unplayable

here's my tracer

C:\Users\Owner>tracert gls.ddo.com

Tracing route to gls.ddo.com [198.252.160.23]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 3 ms 1 ms 1 ms dslrouter.netgear.com [192.168.254.254]
2 15 ms 16 ms 16 ms adr02.prtg.in.frontiernet.net [74.42.148.214]
3 20 ms 20 ms 21 ms ae8---0.car02.ftwy.in.frontiernet.net [74.42.150
.41]
4 25 ms 27 ms 28 ms ae0---0.car01.ftwy.in.frontiernet.net [74.40.1.3
3]
5 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms ae5---0.cor01.chcg.il.frontiernet.net [74.40.2.2
05]
6 24 ms 25 ms 24 ms ae0---0.cbr01.chcg.il.frontiernet.net [74.40.4.1
38]
7 25 ms 28 ms 25 ms 206.111.2.148.ptr.us.xo.net [206.111.2.148]
8 47 ms 47 ms 47 ms vb2001.rar3.chicago-il.us.xo.net [207.88.13.130]

9 51 ms 46 ms 46 ms te-4-1-0.rar3.nyc-ny.us.xo.net [207.88.12.169]
10 66 ms 69 ms 59 ms 216.156.16.133.ptr.us.xo.net [216.156.16.133]
11 48 ms 49 ms 47 ms 205.197.230.6
12 59 ms 78 ms 81 ms border1.pc2-bbnet2.nyj001.pnap.net [216.52.95.73
]
13 110 ms 103 ms 106 ms turbine-14.border1.nyj001.pnap.net [70.42.39.234
]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 48 ms 47 ms 47 ms 198.252.160.23
16 67 ms 59 ms 89 ms 198.252.160.23

Trace complete.

C:\Users\Owner>

[Sam1313]

Lag Report for Thursday 4/7/16

1. Server - Cannith
2. Approximate Time - 9:00 pm EST to 12:00 am EST.
3. Approximate location of your computer - Lafayette, Indiana (Midwest)
4. Quests/raids run - Devils Assault - Grim and Lagget - That thing that crawled from the Tarrasques doodoo that we call lag
5. Difficulties run - Heroic Elite.
6. Your character class - Paladin/Rogue
7. Number of players in the group - 6
8. Anything else you think we should know - The most severe lag started exactly at 9:48 pm EST and lasted until 10:04 pm EST. I don't know if this was server wide but it happened while I was in a guild party running Devils Assault on level 18.

I would rate Cannith as unplayable at the moment.

[JOTMON]

Having more instances generated in public places will decrease some lag, have 3 or 4 instances regardless of how many people are online will decrease lag in public and quests areas, as the quests are situated from the public areas, due to trade/advice chats. disabling these two chats in quests will also decrease lag because they will not interfere with the transfer rate. The game only needs to update the people in the party, not everyone who is in the public area where the quest came from.

or will it..
If the overall resources are not there to support it then even smaller instances will suffer.


I am still seeing lag standing by myself in my own instance in the cargohold on the guildship(no other guildies on at the time)..
..not even doing any intensive or interactive activities, just sorting personal inventory checking consumable levels to see if I needed to restock supplies between quests.

Anything less than near lag free should be unacceptable to anyone, not even DDO should be happy with any instances of lag..

The server migration was supposed to improve the lag problems from last year, not make them worse then bring it back to pre-server move bad and be happy it is only a bit worse than it was before the move..
While we would expect some short term transition pains, the migration is supposed to be a overall improvement to the lag we had with higher population levels and an active raiding community.

Greetings!

It’s been extremely busy and fun for us here on the DDO team this year and we feel the time is right to provide an update on some of our plans over the next few months.

We’ve made some excellent strides to reduce lag and improve stability, and we are continuing to work towards these goals. One of the larger projects that we are working on is a transfer of our game servers and other hardware to a new data center. The new facility will provide both Dungeons and Dragons Online and our friends over at The Lord of the Rings Online with more stability, greater CPU power, and a better networking capability. This will complement our ongoing efforts to reduce lag. It’s a big project and as the year progresses we will be working toward a date where we will migrate to the new datacenter.

~snip~
Robert “Severlin” Ciccolini

[maddong]

I was on at that same time on Sarlona last night. We ran four legendary raids with full raid parties: LH tempest spine; LN HOX, LN Shroud and then LH HOX.
It seemed fine. There were 2seconds freeze when monsters and bosses died at the end but nothing unplayable.

I bet whenever you gain guild renown every person in your guild has to have every item in their inventory checked to see if you have the right guild level to equip it (like the old umd lag). If you are raiding with multiple guild members then it would do the same check 12 times if you had 12 people in your guild that gained renown at the same time.

[Rhunellin]

LN shroud has just been finished on Orien.

Lag all time and in critical moment at :

round 2 => fail destroy crystal because big lag when all 4 boss killed.
round 3 => fail puzzle completion (move and lag) and die because of rainbow.
Last round => sometimes no lag

I suggest for stop lag => no future raid content and close all raid. The kind of thing that you know how to do the best rather than to solve a problem.

You are killing your own game, gratz.

[Thoggy]

Hi again.

K-world is totally lagged out right now. Stuck in shop for 5 minutes....and now free!

So still getting lag spikes but can move again. Going to try some quests in group.

In central US.