Where does SSG stand on fixing the crippling lag

[Wipey]

The game runs worse with every new update.
Restarts make no difference.

Thank god there was a thread here recently that reassured everybody that there's no lag.
R8 GI endfight today

R10 Safety endfight today

Spells not going off, abilities not going off, clickies and other items not swapping back.
Banks not opening, stuck on teleports or loading screens.
Whole party freezes, rubberbanding.

Baba, PN, THTH, Doj, you always get the lag.

But the worst, omfg, the combat lag. My favourite, you "just die". Is it polar ? Veng circle you don't see ? Random melee champ that was 20 metres away from you ? Boss cleave when your meld just did go on cd ? Horrid from shadow you didnt even see ? So many fun ways to "just die".

I am sure most people would like to see it fixed being a real priority.

[cave_diver]

The game runs worse with every new update.
Restarts make no difference.

Thank god there was a thread here recently that reassured everybody that there's no lag.
R8 GI endfight today

Has to be your computer wipey....someone said it was fine for them running daily EN's so it cant be the game code.


Dev's this is a perfect example of what we run into every single day we run high skull, and has been going on for months

[cave_diver]

Just joined a pug H PN, everyone got red network connection at end fight, game crashed for everyone and when we came out we were out of the raid full hp's/sp's as if we never attempted it

[Clemeit]

The game runs worse with every new update.
Restarts make no difference.

Great video example of what many players face on a daily basis. The entire party is frozen; this isn't isolated to one player's connection - it's group-wide. Some raids are so predictably laggy (LH THTH) that nobody even bothers trying anymore. Why waste your time when you already know that halfway through everyone is going to lag out and wipe.

The players who run nothing harder than Casual difficulty would tell you there's no lag in this game at all and that it must be your computer. Pretty safe to assume the lag is linked to 1) the amount of mobs pathfinding or 2) the amount of total instantaneous damage output of the party. I know that on my inquisitive when mobs in r10s line up perfectly and I use NHB on the whole group, my connection goes orange (sometimes even red) and I lag out. I'd imagine that if an entire party does enough damage you'll get instance-wide lag as the game simply can't keep up with the number of outgoing attacks.

[LT218]

unacceptable levels.

Pretty sure SSG's definition of unacceptable is vastly out of line with the people playing the game and trying to actually complete missions and raids on challenging content.

When we fail to complete missions and raids on even a somewhat regular basis due not to the design and actual challenge of the content but instead due to lag, I'm fairly sure that falls into most reasonable peoples' definition of unacceptable.

[Dark_Helmet]

so let me understand what you are saying...
you are saying a week long interval between restart will give you data on the lag...
and you are also saying that the week long interval between restarts is not to collect data on lag...

Sorry if I seem confused by this statement of yours. Either the weekly restart is for data collection between shutdowns or it is not.

I understand: With the restarts happening so frequently, they are unable to track down certain types of lag that are additive over time. Now that it is back to a weekly restart, they can compare to previous data. If there wasn't such an issue, I am sure they would LOVE to have the server stay up for a full month so they can do some true trend analysis. The way the beta servers are built, they can't replicate some alternate causes of lag (namely unclear databases).


What people don't understand is the original system was designed for about 1000 players per server (publicly stated - not an NDA violation). They had expanded the number of servers, but with all of the bolt-on development, you will still have certain types of lag based on the engine design that no amount of throwing hardware at will fix.

Without rebuilding the database structures, combining servers could be the real death of the game... but people who don't know the structure will still squawk.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

I understand: With the restarts happening so frequently, they are unable to track down certain types of lag that are additive over time. Now that it is back to a weekly restart, they can compare to previous data. If there wasn't such an issue, I am sure they would LOVE to have the server stay up for a full month so they can do some true trend analysis. The way the beta servers are built, they can't replicate some alternate causes of lag (namely unclear databases).


What people don't understand is the original system was designed for about 1000 players per server (publicly stated - not an NDA violation). They had expanded the number of servers, but with all of the bolt-on development, you will still have certain types of lag based on the engine design that no amount of throwing hardware at will fix.

Without rebuilding the database structures, combining servers could be the real death of the game... but people who don't know the structure will still squawk.

You're right I'm squawking.

I stopped playing after Soul Splitter, and I've been playing pretty consistently since EGianthold came out.

Lag which cripples the experience is about as acceptable as pizza who's main ingredient is cardboard---ya some people will find it acceptable, but I'll continue squawking thank you.

If we don't have the development resources to merge servers then it doesn't matter what the lag is like. Both things have to be solved.

BOK BOK!

[nevergiveup356]

This happens everytime they dont reset the servers on friday.

Everytime.

[acemonkey]

There are some lag issues that are separate issues but my money is on the majority of the current terrible gaming experience coming from shorting the server budget. It was pretty obvious when hardcore opened that they'd just reallocated resources from the standard servers, performance took a huge nosedive and we got the safeties triggering, causing mobs to charge directly at whoever has agro, regardless of water, gaps, stairs, etc. Should have experienced the exact opposite with the normal servers practically abandoned in favor of HC, if resources had stayed the same.

I was hoping that once they turned off HC for good performance would pick back up, but it looks like they're trying to save money on server costs by keeping the normal servers as they were during HC and ruining the gaming experience in the process.

[myliftkk_v2]

I understand: With the restarts happening so frequently, they are unable to track down certain types of lag that are additive over time. Now that it is back to a weekly restart, they can compare to previous data. If there wasn't such an issue, I am sure they would LOVE to have the server stay up for a full month so they can do some true trend analysis. The way the beta servers are built, they can't replicate some alternate causes of lag (namely unclear databases).


What people don't understand is the original system was designed for about 1000 players per server (publicly stated - not an NDA violation). They had expanded the number of servers, but with all of the bolt-on development, you will still have certain types of lag based on the engine design that no amount of throwing hardware at will fix.

Without rebuilding the database structures, combining servers could be the real death of the game... but people who don't know the structure will still squawk.

If one has to cycle a server to improve performance, then one has pretty significant problems. It means either usually, out of control memory acquisition/release issues (unless the cycling is intended to pick up new code - which in most VM machines you can hot load now anyhow), or the introduction of self-referencing endless loops chewing up more and processor time. These are software, not server issues. Resetting helps the same way running a jet down your line to the sewer helps. It blasts the scale away, but don't blame the pipe for the scale. Blame the people flushing the toilets.

It's slightly plausible servers themselves could be weakening over time, but that goes against every related trend in server performance and design in the last 2 decades. The hardware they are on now is without a doubt more powerful than what they used to be on, by a good deal. It's highly plausible their game platform does not leverage that power to a maximum extent, and even more likely in a highly modified system that their abstraction model leaks memory, leaks loops, leaks leaks leaks (we know the client is a poor behaving program within the W10 container because of the consistency of which it crashes on zoning - I'm not about to blame W10 for that behavior).

If one start with a game and server designed for 1000 concurrent players, and then upgrade the server along the normal upgrade cycle (unless SSG really does own vs rent the server configurations), the game should perform better. Except that we've added code by the Spaghetti Warehouse full. Buckets of code which are dumped on probably higher quality servers, but servers still primarily constrained by the quality of the code and the game platform and as you said, better hardware doesn't help.

Whether the in memory data structures, or in memory database, or physical database, because those are all three separate things, are the cause of the issue would be explained by their ability to trace and measure the exact paths through the instruction stack being placed on the logical processor (which then has relationship to some kind of physical processor(s) governed by the hardware). There are some VM environments in which I've done this and it is fascinating.

The complaint about merging potentially being death is akin to arguing that we shouldn't stitch together amputated limbs because of the potential of sepsis, meanwhile the patient is bleeding out from the wound. We don't necessarily have to stitch every server together, but consolidation to a 1/3 of the current servers would be an improvement.

[HippieBallz]

I am a fan of this game and have been here for a very long time. id love to see it come back from the death it is headed to with the software unable to handle the added content and power creep and calculations that are loaded onto both software and hardware that support it. I feel the best way this might be done is to rebuild the patchwork base the game is now built on. we who have been here for the many years of the game are no stranger to lag issues or DR bypass bugs (damage 2.0 here's to you) we have seen the game grow and thrive and wane like the portals of the shroud on a good raid night. I do understand that a rework of the base code and systems would cost a sizable amount in both manpower hours and testing but I feel this would make the game perform in the way that would give other MMO's like ddo a run for their money without changing the way we play the game as a whole. I would honestly be okay with losing guild levels and other like things if the commitment to the game that I have shown over the years was returned in a way that showed commitment to giving us a game that is worth the years and thousands of hours we have put into it. make the old gear with it make the old raids worth running again many of which are a blast when you can get a group and are not stuck in an endless loop rubber banding. I do love what SSG has done to bring life back to this game and am grateful for hours you all put in to find the years-old bugs and issues that were swept under the rug but please hear us and show us that our time here and effort won't be for not. This game has made many people very happy and we have made life long friends here please remember it's about the grouping and not just slapping a lot of OP skills at us so we can run solo. The table is where this all started and I feel it should be not forgotten this game is based off friends coming together to play laugh and get the loot and for that halfling barb in all of us smash a box with our face lol.

[FlavoredSoul]

I understand: With the restarts happening so frequently, they are unable to track down certain types of lag that are additive over time. Now that it is back to a weekly restart, they can compare to previous data. If there wasn't such an issue, I am sure they would LOVE to have the server stay up for a full month so they can do some true trend analysis. The way the beta servers are built, they can't replicate some alternate causes of lag (namely unclear databases).


What people don't understand is the original system was designed for about 1000 players per server (publicly stated - not an NDA violation). They had expanded the number of servers, but with all of the bolt-on development, you will still have certain types of lag based on the engine design that no amount of throwing hardware at will fix.

Without rebuilding the database structures, combining servers could be the real death of the game... but people who don't know the structure will still squawk.

Anyone suggesting that combining servers would worsen lag is either completely uninformed or lying.

At the peak of the games life servers handled several times more players than are on now and the lag wasn't nearly as consistently bad (there were absolutely certain quests that that had very severe lag problems but it was not population caused).

Combining Servers is necessary because you have like 100 players on each server nowadays, the excuse that it'll increase lag is just that, an excuse.