Why is instance 2049 on Orion exceptionally laggy

[Oliphant]

There's not even a 1% chance

You're committing a burden of proof fallacy...its not on the devs to come up with a reason why not, its on the players to demonstrate a reason why they should

Talking about folks that check instances for 2049. Very common risk fallacy is requiring people to be right about harmless superstitions. Not being super cereal though.

[Silverleafeon]

Time to repost this! The reason you see lag most often in i2049 is that i2049 is the most common label attached to instances. But it's literally only a label.

It's not tied to anything, and we've definitively (and exhaustively) confirmed that i2049 is not different from any other instances. It is simply a label. As for the label itself, it's 2049 because 1-2048 are reserved for other kinds of instances.

I understand that not everyone will accept that, but in that case there's nothing more I can say or do that will help. An explanation was asked for; a definitive answer was given.

Thank you for the clarification.
(and by the way I heard from other DEVs ages ago the I2049 rumor is wrong).

There is a brutal irony going on here.

For example:

Players hear a rumor that I2049 causes lag, therefore one should instance fish for something other than I2049.

Lots of Players log into Orien for their evening/weekend rituals.
Say at 8 PM there are X players logged in and they are grouped up into X/4 parties.

Say 60% of these parties have leaders that subscribe to the rumor.
These parties do instance fish for something other than I2049.
These parties in the process create 1d4+3 (insert other random numbers here as desired) instances before finding a not I2049 (let us call it Random Non Common Label or RNCL or short).

The amount of traffic on Orien has suddenly increased by:
Y (new traffic) = ((((X/4) .60) (1d4+3)) +X)

The lag gets worse because people start instance fishing
Due to increased Lag, more parties start instance fishing.

Due to the increased instance fishing, lag gets worse.

People log out because they are frustrated.
People go to bed because it is late.
Lag diminishes.

The cycle returns tomorrow....

[Micki]

I haven't read all the threads about lag, so this may very well have been discussed before, but as the population on Orien grew we started having 2-3 instances of public areas - and every time the public area is split into another instance we experience lag. This lag does does seem to spread to quest instances.

[Silverleafeon]

...

Interestingly, this brings up an even bigger problem concerning the situation.

Awhile back during an Ask Sev twitch stream, Sev said something like: "Upon researching the tech for building a Mega Server, we hit upon a roadblock. ...there is a limit to the number of shards a world can create..."

Please forgive my imperfect quote, but it conveys the general message.
This is why the Devs have not already created a Mega Server, and are working on a workaround.
Refer to a recent returning Dev quote about the initial design choices and why these limit current projects.


So, an awful lot to assume here, but:

Instances might be related to shards directly or indirectly.
Therefore, there could be a maximum number of instances the game can allow.

Bear in mind, this game was created a long time ago when technology was different.
{For example, the original Atari game was limited to 4k memory and a game designer used a trick to flip memory back and forth to create Asteroids with 8k memory.}


Assuming this is correct, look at an example of the problem this could create.

N = a number of maximum instances the game will allow.


For example, say on Orien the player population on a weekend was at one-third of the total maximum number of instances allowed.
This seems like a safe amount.

Until the untrue rumor goes around that I2049 is a bad instance and one should fish for an RNCL.

Suddenly, using the numbers above we have:
Y = instances usually produced by the typical population
X = current population
W = Y + ((((X/4) .60) (1d4+3))

So, one might ask if Y is 1/3 of the maximum instances allowed, does W exceed the maximum instances allowed?
If we assume that Y = X/4 then it becomes W = Y + (.6 Y (1d4+3)).
[.6 * 5.5 = 3.0 + .3 = 3.3]
If we assume that 1d4+3 averages out to 5.5 then this becomes W = 4.3 Y

This means that although in our example Orien normally would easily be below the maximum instance at 33/100 the practice of fishing for RNCL puts Orien at 33/100 * 4.3 which definitely would exceed the maximum shards allowed in this totally hypothetical example.


While the numbers are made up, can you see how fishing for a non-I2049 greatly increases instances at least temporarily even in a world that might normally not have a problem with maximum instances?