Lag causing skills - Truth or Myth?

izwor

Hello everyone!

I want to know if there are any (CONFIRMED) lag causing skills.
Maybe it must be combined with specific feats or enchants, anything...
I heard rumours, some zerg chat rules, etc. but I want to be sure
So if you know for sure that specific skill/enchant/companion/etc combination couses lags feel free to share.

Why I ask?
I'd like to help with smooth guild runs of Tiamat or WoD Dragons.
I want to add to ignore list players who do it on purpose and destroy gameplay, so I won't have to waste time playing with them.
If I find one in PvP, I'll be happy to report him.

Thank you in advance fo your help

greywynd

If you ignore players you can still end up in runs with them.

You want to report players in PvP for using the abilities the game gives him?

lirithiel

I know that the HR at-will 'Careful Attack' contributes to laggy Herald runs. The GWF daily 'Crescendo' is another, along with the on-use power of the GWF Sigil, which has the same animation. The DC at-will 'Astral Seal' used to cause lag as well, as it had the same mechanic as Careful Attack but was changed more recently. There are probably a tonne of others which I am not aware of.

reg1981

Knights Valor is a real drain when doing SH Dragons and Tiamat. I can turn it on and off and see a major difference in game play. I never run KV during dragons anymore. I'm not sure if it's my PC or server lag. It's not my ISP or a bandwidth issue but maybe PC related. 5 man dungeons and campain is ok to use it.

okeephe

Skills don't cause server lag because the server does not actually perform the skill, it just sends codes to everyone in the vicinity and their systems display the result for each user.

People often think that things that display a lot of things like explosions or whatever cause server lag, but servers don't draw anything. You won't go into the server room and see people running around on screens, that's not how it works.

The server takes the keystroke and sends back the code to tell your system what to display. Your system is entirely responsible fro drawing all that you see on the screen. So if you get graphics lag it is your system doing it.

Neverwinter also uses instancing, meaning there are never enough people in any given zone to cause issues for the server. This game has some of the smallest world instances I have seen.

You don't see 400+ people like you did in AC, or EQ.

If a server lags, it is only because it is about to crash. I have seen this happen in many online games over the years, but no sign of it in Neverwinter.

If a server lags, it lags for EVERYONE, it doesn't randomnly pick people and lag them.

Most lag is actually internet based. and there are multiitudes of things going on with the internet at various times, and places, many of which cause issues in other areas, not directly affected as routers find the best route on the fly. The fact that your cousin across the street has no lag playing HALO while you are lagging on NW, is meaningless. Routing is very complicated business and is constantly changing. YOu can have a storm in Boston that causes all traffic to have to reroute around it, and not all traffic will choose the same route, not even from the same ISP in the same house.

voidgift

What we do know for sure is that some powers are causing lag. You just have to be in WoD at xx:45 to get that confirmed.

izwor

Thanks for answers.

I checked few things on my own... for further tests you may try chat command /netgraph
With skills like Careful Attack numbers begin to increase significantly - might be the issue.

urabask

okeephe said:

Skills don't cause server lag because the server does not actually perform the skill, it just sends codes to everyone in the vicinity and their systems display the result for each user.

People often think that things that display a lot of things like explosions or whatever cause server lag, but servers don't draw anything. You won't go into the server room and see people running around on screens, that's not how it works.

The server takes the keystroke and sends back the code to tell your system what to display. Your system is entirely responsible fro drawing all that you see on the screen. So if you get graphics lag it is your system doing it.

Neverwinter also uses instancing, meaning there are never enough people in any given zone to cause issues for the server. This game has some of the smallest world instances I have seen.

You don't see 400+ people like you did in AC, or EQ.

If a server lags, it is only because it is about to crash. I have seen this happen in many online games over the years, but no sign of it in Neverwinter.

If a server lags, it lags for EVERYONE, it doesn't randomnly pick people and lag them.

Most lag is actually internet based. and there are multiitudes of things going on with the internet at various times, and places, many of which cause issues in other areas, not directly affected as routers find the best route on the fly. The fact that your cousin across the street has no lag playing HALO while you are lagging on NW, is meaningless. Routing is very complicated business and is constantly changing. YOu can have a storm in Boston that causes all traffic to have to reroute around it, and not all traffic will choose the same route, not even from the same ISP in the same house.

This isn't true. The devs confirmed that prism was stressing the servers in higher population instances and went through multiple attempts to fix it before they reached the point where it is now.

voidgift

Skills that require a lot of calculatios because they are affecting lots of different players and events at different levels and generate many spin-off effects.

mentinmindmaker

It is sort of hard to prove or disprove anything like this.
* We do not have any control of what skills anyone is using at any time - and it could be just the very specific combination of two skills causing issues
* We do not have any control of what other load there is on the server
* We do not have any control of what performance the players PCs have and how that might affect the server
* Cryptic is ever tuning and updating mechanics.. so yesterdays suspicion probably is not valid today
* We do not know if the lag YOU experience is on your PC only of it affects everyone - it could be just your PC having a hard time with all the graphics. In particular skills that makes other characters putting on more graphics(KV, prism, others?) could be bad on one PC and not on another.

As for WoD stalling at xx:45 - that most likely is just because too many instances have too many players in them at the same time killing dragons. Not necessarily related to a specific skill.

Without cooperation from Cryptic with controlled tests etc it is next to impossible to substantiate any claim of a skill affecting performance badly. Too many variables.

lirithiel

mentinmindmaker said:

Without cooperation from Cryptic with controlled tests etc it is next to impossible to substantiate any claim of a skill affecting performance badly. Too many variables.

When you're running back-to-back Dragonflight runs without any issues and then suddenly encounter major lag in the next one, it's not hard to figure out what went wrong. On this occasion a HR was using Careful Attack (combat log confirmed it) when he was absent from the previous runs which all went smoothly.

dupeks

okeephe said:

Skills don't cause server lag because the server does not actually perform the skill, it just sends codes to everyone in the vicinity and their systems display the result for each user.

As @Urabask said, most of what @okeephe said is complete bollocks.

Whereas it's true that there are both client and server parts to the equation, it's wrong to say that certain powers and skills don't cause abnormally large server load, especially when paired with other effects from players in the area. The server has to perform calculations to determine which players are effected, and and certain powers involve significantly more of that type of calculation. Beyond that, it's been mentioned on several occasions by the devs that certain powers cause unusual server stress. This mostly effects powers that can trigger off of an effect originating from another player.

It's hard to "prove" but the kind of anecdotal evidence provided above has been incredibly consistent in my experience. I have personally seen the following skills observably degrade server performance when employed in large group instances (>5), in rough order of impact:
1) HR Careful Attack
2) DC Astral Seal
3) OP Prism feat
4) CW Icy Terrain (when concentrated around single target)
5) CW Steal Time

The first 3 are impact enough where one troll-minded player can bring an entire Tia run to a crawl.

This has nothing to do with client-side processing.

nornsavant

Troll minded player? How does one keep from using Prism?

beckylunatic

nornsavant said:

Troll minded player? How does one keep from using Prism?

It's really easy. All you had to do was... NOT cast dailies. Boggles the mind.

(It's really not game-breaking anymore though. But Holy Hannah did it used to be.)

dupeks

beckylunatic said:

(It's really not game-breaking anymore though. But Holy Hannah did it used to be.)

You're right is used to straight up stop Tia instances or Herald runs in their tracks.

It still hurts a lot during Tia, in my opinion. With all the crazy power stacking and buff interactions going on, the servers struggle to keep up during a zerg run. Add in a chucklehead who thinks his divine protector is going to be helpful and you get wipes on green and blue.

Actually my favorite lag-related outcome is when half of the CWs and TRs fall into the pit between dragon heads because the lag causes them to time the jump wrong.

It still happens, but usually when I'm forced to pick up newer players from WoD zone to top off our alliance or channel build Tia groups.

tripsofthrymr

dupeks said:

It's hard to "prove" but the kind of anecdotal evidence provided above has been incredibly consistent in my experience. I have personally seen the following skills observably degrade server performance when employed in large group instances (>5), in rough order of impact:
1) HR Careful Attack
2) DC Astral Seal
3) OP Prism feat

The first 3 are impact enough where one troll-minded player can bring an entire Tia run to a crawl.

I recently put Astral Seal on my left mouse and forgot I made the change until I was almost done with a Tiamat run. I didn't lag, nobody around me seemed to lag (no frozen toons, no shouts about lag) and we easily and smoothly won the match.

Astral Seal was "fixed" according to patch notes a while back. Based on my one personal experience, the quotes around fixed might need to disappear. I'm not going to purposely go experimenting in Tia runs to confirm this observation on the chance that it might actually mess people up, but unless there is recent and concrete evidence that Astral Seal is a problem after the patch that claimed to fix it, I consider the problem just as likely to be myth as fact.

playasinnombre

izwor said:

Hello everyone!

I want to know if there are any (CONFIRMED) lag causing skills.
Maybe it must be combined with specific feats or enchants, anything...
I heard rumours, some zerg chat rules, etc. but I want to be sure
So if you know for sure that specific skill/enchant/companion/etc combination couses lags feel free to share.

Why I ask?
I'd like to help with smooth guild runs of Tiamat or WoD Dragons.
I want to add to ignore list players who do it on purpose and destroy gameplay, so I won't have to waste time playing with them.
If I find one in PvP, I'll be happy to report him.

Thank you in advance fo your help

I'm not a dev, so I can't be 100% sure, but the first place I heard people complaining about certain skills causing lag was WoD herald runs. In my opinion, the lag has less to do with the skills used, & more to do with the fact that we cram twice as many players into an instance as they were designed to handle.

playasinnombre

okeephe said:

Neverwinter also uses instancing, meaning there are never enough people in any given zone to cause issues for the server. This game has some of the smallest world instances I have seen.

.

Except, during herald runs, the instances are purposely crowded past maximum capacity.

tripsofthrymr

playasinnombre said:

I'm not a dev, so I can't be 100% sure, but the first place I heard people complaining about certain skills causing lag was WoD herald runs. In my opinion, the lag has less to do with the skills used, & more to do with the fact that we cram twice as many players into an instance as they were designed to handle.

Not just that there are so many players in the instance, there are so many players in interaction range of each other (powers affecting other players). If you spread the same number of players around the instance and they do their thing, you will likely not have the same issues.

fastrean3

Every time i got lag, review netgraph, my receiving usually over 10k, just wondering what data are receiving

playersnoopy

First off this game is not all the intensive on the system and game has a hard cap of 60fps. Secondly those that have used certain skills and haven't experienced the lag it's probably due to other reasons than better system and connection.

Having said that because it's unclear exactly what combination is causing the lag with certain skills in large group areas but we do know of some skills that help trigger it. It's usually in WoD dragon runs or Tiamat runs; usually involves (for me at least) HRs using Careful Attack but usually more than 1 HR using it. You can check it out first hand in the 25 HR Tiamat run where the first round we froze the entire game for a few minutes and had everyone not use it the 2nd round. buviza.com/videos/watch?v=F3mQMTd1u4Q I froze up too and I'd be happy to list my system specs if it'll stop you from using certain lag skills in any Tiamat run I'm in I've played this game in a VM at 30+ fps on my laptop with no issues; but on my desktop w/ lag skills the game just locks up for some reason.

demonmonger

Things that make you go hmm
(Pay me Astral or your instance is on lock down)

Devs will fix it soon enough