Post-U9 lag

[Noelemahc]

Once we work out what this one is, we should be back to where we were immediately prior to U9.

The lag wasn't any better before update 9 as it is now. Honestly Epic Demon Queen is one of the worst raids now even without any arcane casters in the raid and only 2 divines, so casters as part of the update 9 is not the source of the lag. They may make it marginally worse only because of all the extra effects now from people going in to pew pew pew mode, but that most definitely does not seem to be the source of it.

The lag pops up randomly when you're doing anything. It doesn't matter if I'm soloing Last Stand on my Paladin (as I was earlier today), in a raid doing epic DQ, in a 2-3 man group working on my TR, or just running around marketplace or hanging out on my guild airship. The lag pops up everywhere near constantly now it seems, and it's getting beyond the point of frustrating. Lag shouldn't be so bad that it's near impossible to play at times and right now it is.

[bigolbear]

last night, around 8 pm gmt. (29/05/2011)

quest: devil assault.

4 man team again - same team as last report actualy.

Interestingly i noticed a major reduction in lag if my summon (lantern archon) wasnt up, aditionaly major reduction in lag if i was using mele rather than ranged combat.

[bigolbear]

I want to assure everyone that we have most certainly not stopped looking for the source(s) of the lag. Reports in this thread indicate that it can happen pretty much anywhere; we have plenty of other evidence that not everyone is seeing it. These factors actually mean that it's that much more difficult to track down; there's no single obvious cause popping up, although we do have some leads. We are still pursuing the problem.

I want to reiterate what I said last year when we fixed the hireling-based lag:



That said, new problems obviously crop up sometimes, as we are seeing now. Once we work out what this one is, we should be back to where we were immediately prior to U9. Thanks for your continued help and patience.

an idea occured to me.

Could it be the database server thats causing the lag? Im guessing with the introduction of crafting that the database is being hit a LOT more than it was previously. Im working under the assumption that modifying some ones inventory is dealt with transactionaly, but this seems to be held up by comonly percieved 'chest lag' and 'looting lag'.

[Meetch1972]

It occurs to me that many people ALWAYS have the problem (perhaps they've got something persistent on their client?), a bunch of people regularly have the problem (maybe something runs frequently and messes with client behaviour), and there's a bunch who have problems rarely (only when there's a genuine server or connectivity issue).

Is it worth getting those who have regular/ongoing issues with lag see what happens with "things that affect network connections" off, if they have them on? Things that filter or mangle packets - peerblock, firewall software (if you're behind a source NATing router - or if you need a firewall, change products for a short time), antivirus that watches your incoming packets, and so forth? It wouldn't be the first time something nasty was done by something innocent-looking.

Or perhaps the devs could whip up something to get a summary of processes, connection debugging attached to the client or such on volunteers' clients when they're experiencing issues.

[bkasavan]

O.K.
Today i had one of the first times I've had bad Server lag (often get it from my computer )
We were in a Hound run, on normal, and we would be moving, stopping, moving, stopping... and 1 person went from full health, to dead.
It is here that he asked us to report lag, no?

O, and it was on Argonessan.

[Kambuk]

I have noticed if I buy a few 100 deconstrucion materials i can run over the the deconstrucion machine, open my gargantuan ingredients bag and still see the numbers counting up in the stack in the bag.

Also before I deconstructed them all I had an insane number of shards of different types in the bag and it was getting slow to open the bag. i.e. there was a a loading bar at the bottom of the bag that slowly went across as it opened.

Kambuk

[The_Metal_Monster]

Server: Ghallanda
Quest: The Waterworks quest chain
Time: -2:30 PM 5/29
Party Composition: Me and my wolf summon

Pretty much constant lag but it got really bad, to where I almost died, when I got into fights with more than 3 or 4 Kobolds.

[Fezik84]

Server: Orion
Time: 3 to 5 AM EST
Where: Cannith Crafting Hall
Character: Vikernoff


Suddenly started experiencing extreme lag in the hall. Logging, bank and inventory interactions became impossible. If I stepped out into House K, there was no lag, seeming to make it exclusive to the hall. All functions were fine outside the hall, but did not work or took 2 to 5 min to happen.

IE: dragging an item from my shared bank to my inventory took up to 5 min, and usually about 3 min to log out. Counter would count down like normal, but screen would stay for an extended period of time, where I watched people come and go still, all while waiting to return to Character screen.

[Ardalis]

29/05/2011 1am bst (7-8pm est)
Server: Orion
Instance: Shroud elite
party make-up: 2 Fvs, 3 barbs, bard, wizard, ranger AA, rogue, paladin, 1 fighter, monk.

Stage 1; not really much lag apart from normal loot lag ect
Stage 2; abit of lag pulling all the trash to the SW ( to be expected maybe with all the trash in one place )
Stage 3; all good
Stage 4; massive lag spikes while fighting harry in stage 4 stuttering ect, heals not landing ect, raid hardly had harry to 50% before he ported away ( normally raid will have him at 15-20% before he ports )
Stage 5; Incredible lag when harry spawned, fight lasted nearly 8 mins with all the lag, barbarians in party myself inclueded could not even rage, others reporting damage boosts and haste's ect not activating, on average most boosts would not even activate, got cooldown on hotbar but boost never apllied same with rages and frenzy's from the barbs. healers used nearly 10 pots each trying to keep raid up and in the end only 4 people were alive and both healers out of sp.

( Group is guild group mostly Righteous Ire so very well equipped toons who normally have no problems running elite shrouds )

Unfortunatly where we normally run evon/edq/echrono/tod also on a sunday night we cancelled them again after the shroud lag, tbh since update 9 we have cancelled our sunday raid night 3 times now, we also run wednesday nights but have noticed the lag seems to be far worse on sundays or thats my observation.

[Neouni]

I want to assure everyone that we have most certainly not stopped looking for the source(s) of the lag. Reports in this thread indicate that it can happen pretty much anywhere; we have plenty of other evidence that not everyone is seeing it. These factors actually mean that it's that much more difficult to track down; there's no single obvious cause popping up, although we do have some leads. We are still pursuing the problem.

I want to reiterate what I said last year when we fixed the hireling-based lag:

That said, new problems obviously crop up sometimes, as we are seeing now. Once we work out what this one is, we should be back to where we were immediately prior to U9. Thanks for your continued help and patience.

Try to make the crafting machine listings local\client side, and let the server check them instead of sending a freshly generated list keeping the server busy each time.
And see how much that helps

[Rydlic]

Shroud
10:30 ish 5/29/11
full party of 12
all participants experience lag.
Noticeable jump during portal spawn and each time Trog spawned out of portals.
Did run previous and no lag, other than chest lag.

I have been trying to track and spawning monsters, and the moment that the AI is registers that there are Player Characters seems to have a slight hic-up. Larger player character group, or larger the mob group will increase the Length and Amplitude of the Lag Event. Sometimes causing a major drop in FPS.

[Codeshaper]

I appreciate your continued efforts, but I think I would feel better if everyone at Turbine got a great weekend off, and came back sharp and refreshed on Tuesday.

Have some BBQ on me, Code.

Just because I post on a Sunday night (or a Monday holiday morning,) it doesn't mean I'm at work.

And, we had BBQ chicken yesterday, so that's covered, too.

[geoffhanna]

I haven't read anything in this except the dev posts. But somehow I feel that entitles me to posting my opinion anyway.

I know there are occasional lag spikes that effect everyone but to me they are unusual, client lag is far more frequent. And I have a primary suspect.

Last night I had horrible lag in ToD. Horrible. But I was the only one, and it didn't take me too long to narrow in on why: dndclient.exe was using over 1.2 gig of mem. I was fortunate to be able to complete the quest at all.

My girlfriend has similar issues, when she zones several times her frame rate slows to a crawl and eventually her client crashes (BSOD).

Something about the log out process does not free memory. Ditto the zoning process.

Memory leaks = Client lag

BTW the leak seems worse after Update 9 but I have no metrics, maybe I am just imagining that.

[Solmage]

I want to assure everyone that we have most certainly not stopped looking for the source(s) of the lag. Reports in this thread indicate that it can happen pretty much anywhere; we have plenty of other evidence that not everyone is seeing it. These factors actually mean that it's that much more difficult to track down; there's no single obvious cause popping up, although we do have some leads. We are still pursuing the problem.

I want to reiterate what I said last year when we fixed the hireling-based lag:



That said, new problems obviously crop up sometimes, as we are seeing now. Once we work out what this one is, we should be back to where we were immediately prior to U9. Thanks for your continued help and patience.

I have a Q: Did you guys upgrade your database in anticipation of the crafting, and/or change anything else in the backend to accommodate the larger load? If you did, I think these changes are the source of the lag, because the lag started a week-ish or so BEFORE U9.

As for current lag, it has nothing to do with casters casting (in that instance anyway) or any specific actions the party is taking. For example:

- You enter one epic DQ, none of your polar rays land (the ray's graphic travels to it's static target, hits, you loose the mana, but no damage is displayed either in the combat log or on the screen, and ofc the monster's hps stay the same) , so you re-enter after you fail (since the cleric's spells get similar issues) and then it's smooth as silk.

- One epic DQ with 1 caster lags horribly like that, the next epic DQ with I think it was 6 casters blasting finished in 7 minutes with only minor 'normal' lag. (I have a fraps to show this, but will need to check at home how many casters we had)

- One Shroud, before anyone is DPSing any portals, killing the initial creatures my spells may take 6+ seconds to land, the next shroud it's just fine.

- Etc etc.

Some of the very few constant sources of lag are unfortunately rather benign: Every time you finish part 1 of the shroud and head to the chests the lag in the last few 'meters' is insane. But since this only lasts for 3-6 seconds and just delays shrining, it isn't particularly critical. It is rather easy to reproduce since it seems to appear every time

Anyway, I think I'm speaking for everyone when I say we appreciate your efforts and hope you're able to fix this, soon. I'll start to create a 'lag log' to see if this can't help you out: exact time, party composition, etc.

[ProdigalGuru]

A lot of these sound like connection issues.

ISP's would like you to think their product is flawless, but this is simply not true.

I used to be a Comcast Cable Installer, and would often troubleshoot internet connectivity issues.

It is amazing the things I have seen cause connection problems:

Squirrels or mice chewing on coax shielding
High winds pulling out connectors
Cheap splitters failing randomly
Water damage inside walls
Staples and nails through cables
Big metal appliances placed to interfere with wireless signal
Bent/stepped on/tripped over cables

This is all in addition to many more common connection issues like loosely crimped fittings, fittings that aren't screwed in all the way, very old (copper) wiring, drops and outlets that are far too long...

The number 1 cause of problems, from my experience, is a poor install. Installers are overworked, undertrained, and underpaid. Many are simply lazy, or incompetent, and the nature of the product is that it is very forgiving, because problems may not surface for a long time.

Also, there are often server issues at the hub that people are not even aware of, causing slow load times and disconnects that seem random, and are usually so short lived that people shrug them off or fail to notice.

I can only guess that DSL suffers the same and even more problems, as the wiring is so tiny it could easily break, and it is affected by distance as well, I believe.

Any purely wireless connection like Clearwire or a satellite connection is going to be affected by every random sunspot, rain, snow, and other man-made interference.

I am not claiming there are no lag issues, I have experienced many of them myself, but if I have connection issues I always look at the ISP first, computer second, and software last.

[Deathlos]

Server: Khyber
Quest: Mining For Ancient Secerts, Reclaiming Memoriers, Sunken Parish.
Time: 7:00-8:30 Cst PM 5/29
Party Composition: Static, Monk/Ftr, Wiz/Barb/Rogue, Sorc, Pld/ftr/rogue. with random 2 people.

While Farming theses quests everyone in the party got stuck in a loading screen several times, the longest being a 6min wait. I Also noticed the sometimes my Clickies, potions, and abilities wouldnt go off when i clicked em.
Others where complaining about lag related issues. and the sorc was thrown off more then once. but may have been a connection issue

[red_cardinal]

Cannith, Quest: Wrath of the flame, Time: Post time - 2 min.
Maybe you guys have put a debug build live?

[donfilibuster]

Had an interesting night of poofing while doing big top, where lag leading to party dc's.
At least two times it has looked as if player A lagging leads to player B crashing.
e.g. player B run into player A when A was stuck running in place.
And then player A dc'ed and had to relog, player B then said had crashed again on loading.
Later on the same quest player C lagged and player A crashed, followed by player C dc'ing while stuck.
And lastly player D dc'ed, afterwards people joked 'who's next' or 'don't run into the wf', etc.
Took longer than usual to finish big top, we didn't took any shortcuts and did all the optionals.
I just worry that lag might be contagious :/ anyone has had something similar lately?

[smatt]

I want to assure everyone that we have most certainly not stopped looking for the source(s) of the lag. Reports in this thread indicate that it can happen pretty much anywhere; we have plenty of other evidence that not everyone is seeing it. These factors actually mean that it's that much more difficult to track down; there's no single obvious cause popping up, although we do have some leads. We are still pursuing the problem.

I want to reiterate what I said last year when we fixed the hireling-based lag:



That said, new problems obviously crop up sometimes, as we are seeing now. Once we work out what this one is, we should be back to where we were immediately prior to U9. Thanks for your continued help and patience.

The first palc you should look and adjust is the Ice Storm spell, that spell causes HUGE lag for MANY players. And in raids that laready lag for most peoplesuch as the Shroud, it's pathetically bad. Changing the graphics and sound effects of ice Storm would be a good first step. I'm also of the opinion that with all the variosu active auras going these days in parties, that woudl be another great place to look. I noticed lag more often when in aura heavy parties and situations prior to U-9, and notice it FAR more post U-9.

[mystafyi]

devs, pls reboot servers or something.....i dont get ice storm lag since i got rid of **** ati radeon cards, i rarely get isp lag, but this past weekend lag issues have become bs. it took me 10 minutes of standing in korthos after a TR for the game to remove items and place in tr bank. I had all 5 inv slots full plus overflow and could examine these items. finally server caught up and removed everything. No, it wasnt during server maint/backup time either.

btw forcing vsync off with older radeon cards does seem to help with ice storm lag. maybe this will help identify that issue since alot of players wont know how to do this within ati's ccc.