What the hell is wrong with the forum, these days, everyone seems so dammed aggressive against each other....
Anyhoo....
Lag as a term used in his instance is correct as it's a blanket term for any game related delay in what the game does from your point of view.
Lag, latency, rubber-banding; there all pretty much mean the same thing in this instance and it's no use arguing over terminology and who knows more about network technology etc.
It's highly likely that the main issues at play are some form of delay someone down the pipe between the servers and the client side (your PC) and these can vary dramatically and come & go all over the place over a 24hr period. There's also the simple fact that perhaps the game engine itself simply cannot handle the sheer volume of data it needs to process every second whilst you run it.
It basically gets overwhelmed once it's trying to display a 5 person queue with 20+ NPCs and every single entity in that instance having 30+ stats/buffs/debuff/traits needing to be tracked on top of 30+ different visual components, all of which needs to be recalculated every second or less.
Pretty much my point. When people's machines are clogged up with all the Graphical lag, it's going to cause issues with other people with-in the same instance, and the blanket 'it's the servers fault' claim isn't true. I have the same graphical lag issues on my Xbox One S as I do on my laptop, which is why I ascertain that it's an engine issue.
"You don't want to patrol!? You don't want to escort!? You don't want to defend the Federation's Starbases!? Then why are you flying my Starships!? If you were a Klingon you'd be killed on the spot, but lucky for you.....you WERE in Starfleet. Let's see how New Zealand Penal Colony suits you." Adm A. Necheyev.
My current build which I did a year ago doesnt give me any issues. The Build I'm using is X99 chipset Asus Rampage Edition 10 with Broadweell E 6850 Clocked anyware from 4.2-4.8 Ghz Sometimes i leave it at stock for Sto sometimes i push it for the heck of it.
Memory im using Corsair platinum 64 gigs 3000mhz
Samsung pro M.2 1T as the main OS and for games. Storage Baracuda Old version for storage only.
Video Cards its two GTX 1080 ROG STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING I have them clocked from 1980- 2123 depending what im playing if Im doing rendering etc.
Power Supply 1000watts EVGA
This rig is water cooled and it to OP for this kind of game of Star trek Online. The game is like 8 years old or so your rig should be able to handle it. I have also increased all visuals and running combat meters logs etc while in PVE runs with no tick issue. You may have to do some more looking into what could be causing it.
What the hell is wrong with the forum, these days, everyone seems so dammed aggressive against each other....
Anyhoo....
Lag as a term used in his instance is correct as it's a blanket term for any game related delay in what the game does from your point of view.
Lag, latency, rubber-banding; there all pretty much mean the same thing in this instance and it's no use arguing over terminology and who knows more about network technology etc.
It's highly likely that the main issues at play are some form of delay someone down the pipe between the servers and the client side (your PC) and these can vary dramatically and come & go all over the place over a 24hr period. There's also the simple fact that perhaps the game engine itself simply cannot handle the sheer volume of data it needs to process every second whilst you run it.
It basically gets overwhelmed once it's trying to display a 5 person queue with 20+ NPCs and every single entity in that instance having 30+ stats/buffs/debuff/traits needing to be tracked on top of 30+ different visual components, all of which needs to be recalculated every second or less.
Pretty much my point. When people's machines are clogged up with all the Graphical lag, it's going to cause issues with other people with-in the same instance, and the blanket 'it's the servers fault' claim isn't true. I have the same graphical lag issues on my Xbox One S as I do on my laptop, which is why I ascertain that it's an engine issue.
Oh, come on... you can't expect everyone to differentiate between "server" and "engine" side lag, or use those terms totally accurately.
The fault is on cryptic's side, that's what me, and several others are claiming and now you also seem to agree.
My current build which I did a year ago doesnt give me any issues. The Build I'm using is X99 chipset Asus Rampage Edition 10 with Broadweell E 6850 Clocked anyware from 4.2-4.8 Ghz Sometimes i leave it at stock for Sto sometimes i push it for the heck of it.
Memory im using Corsair platinum 64 gigs 3000mhz
Samsung pro M.2 1T as the main OS and for games. Storage Baracuda Old version for storage only.
Video Cards its two GTX 1080 ROG STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING I have them clocked from 1980- 2123 depending what im playing if Im doing rendering etc.
Power Supply 1000watts EVGA
This rig is water cooled and it to OP for this kind of game of Star trek Online. The game is like 8 years old or so your rig should be able to handle it. I have also increased all visuals and running combat meters logs etc while in PVE runs with no tick issue. You may have to do some more looking into what could be causing it.
Again... how often are you playing Hive Onslaught Elite with top-end premades? That's the only place I've had issues so far.
And yes, I'm fully aware it should handle it more than perfectly, at least reading STO's recommended specs, also considering the fact that it has absolutely no problems with Elite:Dangerous, a much more demanding game, on ultra.
Just run HSE and GKA in close succession and those both suffered from massive "lag" and it's clearly because there's just way too much "spam" going on at once. The game simply cannot handle these missions anymore i feel. There's too much to be constantly calculated and displayed and changed every second, the engine is just not built for that sort of punishment.
Start of GKA it actually ceased up for 10 seconds and i thought it had crashed. Similar issue in HSE at first a few times.
I doubt it was lag to the servers or from my end because i can have YouTube running in the background and the wife is on Netflix too, both without issue.
Soi'm pretty sure it's the game engine/optimization.
Just run HSE and GKA in close succession and those both suffered from massive "lag" and it's clearly because there's just way too much "spam" going on at once. The game simply cannot handle these missions anymore i feel. There's too much to be constantly calculated and displayed and changed every second, the engine is just not built for that sort of punishment.
Start of GKA it actually ceased up for 10 seconds and i thought it had crashed. Similar issue in HSE at first a few times.
I doubt it was lag to the servers or from my end because i can have YouTube running in the background and the wife is on Netflix too, both without issue.
Soi'm pretty sure it's the game engine/optimization.
Thanks for trying it out. For the sake of gathering more information, what are your PC specs, at least CPU and GPU?
Just run HSE and GKA in close succession and those both suffered from massive "lag" and it's clearly because there's just way too much "spam" going on at once. The game simply cannot handle these missions anymore i feel. There's too much to be constantly calculated and displayed and changed every second, the engine is just not built for that sort of punishment.
Start of GKA it actually ceased up for 10 seconds and i thought it had crashed. Similar issue in HSE at first a few times.
I doubt it was lag to the servers or from my end because i can have YouTube running in the background and the wife is on Netflix too, both without issue.
Soi'm pretty sure it's the game engine/optimization.
Thanks for trying it out. For the sake of gathering more information, what are your PC specs, at least CPU and GPU?
Nothing special but i can run something like GTAV on nearly max settings.
Edit: it's liquid cooled too if that has any affect (doubt it does tbh)
And this was with a friend with her uber-buffed Ent-J tank too, @tunebreaker you'll know who i mean.
Just run HSE and GKA in close succession and those both suffered from massive "lag" and it's clearly because there's just way too much "spam" going on at once. The game simply cannot handle these missions anymore i feel. There's too much to be constantly calculated and displayed and changed every second, the engine is just not built for that sort of punishment.
Start of GKA it actually ceased up for 10 seconds and i thought it had crashed. Similar issue in HSE at first a few times.
I doubt it was lag to the servers or from my end because i can have YouTube running in the background and the wife is on Netflix too, both without issue.
Soi'm pretty sure it's the game engine/optimization.
Thanks for trying it out. For the sake of gathering more information, what are your PC specs, at least CPU and GPU?
My current build which I did a year ago doesnt give me any issues. The Build I'm using is X99 chipset Asus Rampage Edition 10 with Broadweell E 6850 Clocked anyware from 4.2-4.8 Ghz Sometimes i leave it at stock for Sto sometimes i push it for the heck of it.
Memory im using Corsair platinum 64 gigs 3000mhz
Samsung pro M.2 1T as the main OS and for games. Storage Baracuda Old version for storage only.
Video Cards its two GTX 1080 ROG STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING I have them clocked from 1980- 2123 depending what im playing if Im doing rendering etc.
Power Supply 1000watts EVGA
This rig is water cooled and it to OP for this kind of game of Star trek Online. The game is like 8 years old or so your rig should be able to handle it. I have also increased all visuals and running combat meters logs etc while in PVE runs with no tick issue. You may have to do some more looking into what could be causing it.
Glad finally someone agrees with me, that a good system can handle alleged graphics issues just fine. Which doesn't mean the client-side code couldn't be optimized (a very high-end graphics card basically just masks the potential issues, in this case). And, like I said, the most crashes I hear about are ppl with AMD cards (whether that be driver issues and/or the fact that this game was simply made with nVidia cards in mind, like many other games).
RAM is often also an issue. I have 32G of it. People rarely believe it, but most Windows crashes are caused by lack of RAM. Disk-swapping is simply an inherently unstable endeavor, and always has been: the more swapping occurs, the higher the chances you'll crash. 'Add more RAM' is typically Microsoft's nr. 1 advice for any myriad of Windows problems.
All-in-all, it's good to hear I'm not the only one to whom this game is running very smoothly. Then again, I don't do Elite content, so I can't attest to 'lag' in there. And it just occurred to me -- although it would be a rather douche move, on Cryptic's end, but I wouldn't put it past them -- that Elite instances are being 'niced', so to speak, to run at lower priority (what with them being used less, I guess).
So...something funny has happened lately to me. The game would run fine for a bit and then I would suddenly get a LOT of rendering issues. Like the game has problems rendering stuff at all or if it does, it looks like old 16 bit games bad. Everything basicallys becomes a crawl or jumpy. Was wondering what the hell was causing it and found out that my GPU temp is spiking...badly. But since I run other games at the same time, I am working on seeing if it's STO related...but that seems to only happen when I have STO active and playing. If I tray STO and play other games, the temp goes back down...but it could definately be a combo issue. Also if I let it run like that for like 5 min or so, the temp drops back down for a few min before spiking and being useless again.
Thermal throttling is a beatch, but really should not occur under normal circumstances. I have a very well cooled-system (still on air, yet almost noise-less), with an i7 8600k, that never exceeds 73C. Still, it's surprising to hear STO is so CPU-demanding. It really shouldn't be, as it's a rather old game. In GTA V (I love driving around in fancy wheels, looking pretty *g*), I noticed a CPU-bound issue too, much to my dismay. Though my GTX 1080 Ti can handle it just fine, the number of draw calls can be so overwhelming, that your CPU can become the bottleneck, after all. I doubt that's the case in STO, though, as the graphics engine is simply not nearly as demanding as that of GTA V.
Maybe Cryptic really needs to do some optimizing -- but keep all the shiny effects.
@coldnapalm, yep, that sounds awfully like overheating. Which, frankly, does not surprise me - especially on newer maps STO has tendency to run incredibly hot, for an older game. I don't have that issue myself, as I made that rig also with mining in mind, but I can definitely see it being a problem for someone with more regular parts, as well as older components that tend to throttle at lower temps.
@meimeitoo, btw, throttling can affect any part, not only CPU. Also, don't you think it's a bit silly when you need to have *the very best* consumer grade gaming GPU to be able to run STO, an 8 year old game, completely smoothly? I'm very happy that both you and bishop have no problems, but you both have 1080ti-s, so if anything, it reinforces my jokingly said "new benchmark" idea.
In any case, I encourage you all to try out a HSE. Or maybe GKA, if Steve is saying that's also very taxing - however I can't say whether I personally have any lag there or not, haven't played it yet with new PC.
Everyone will have their theory, and that's fine.. but I still firmly believe the issue is server side bandwidth.
My System is relatively close to yours Tune, I am ahead of you in GPU, behind you in CPU:
Intel i7 4790k @ 4.2GHZ
Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming Edition
Samsung Evo 960 SSD (SATA)
32GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 (I only have this much because it was insanely cheap, 32G is totally unnecessary.)
I have played this queue with you and Connor on a couple occasions and it runs smoothly for me. For some reason, I seem to be lucky with my connection to the game servers, I get very little lag, but other people seem to get excessive lag. When you play does it look like frame skipping? like the game is processing but it's not able to handle the output? or is it more like lag where you click powers and they do nothing.. your team mates seem to just 'jump' around on the screen instead of flying to the new location.. etc?
I get lag sometimes on ESD, but that seems to be the only place it happens. I haven't done HSE in a couple weeks though, so it's possible they have added a mechanic or visual effect since then that is the culprit.
I think I made a total of 16 HSE runs yesterday and can confirm that power activation related lag is quite persistent.
We had it mostly in the beginning of the map where all in team use most buffs simultaneously and in the end where team interacting abilities are used on single targets. All too often it takes multiple attempts to activate powers. On other occasions the UI tells you they have been activated, you get a cd, but they are simply not there.
Now this problem has been acknowledged by Cryptic back at the day when command powers were introduced and team-interacting abilities were addressed which put heavy stress on the server and therefore were changed a bit. That and especially the fact that we got quite an exodus of performance players in S13 felt as if this problem is at bay while in fact it is not or at least could use some further concern.
Now on a positive note lag-like issues that are at the players-end can get tended to individually. Justified or not I bought a new machine for STO: an MSI GS65 with a 1070 card. With that thing all framerate-related issues belong to the past. On highest settings DS9, Risa and Dranur all play totally fluent no matter how many UI interfaces I have opened. The workload of the card with everything set to max there is at 90% according to the onboard software.
The third form of lag one usually gets with SNR & rubber banding. As far as I can tell they are always connection related results from your machine up to cryptic. Even here peeps can do a lot. One thing I often found was that playing via WLAN is the main problem. Since my new MSI got a weaker connection to the router than my old Mac Book I was forced to get a repeater there which works wonders seeing to it that my home signal is always strongest. Have yet to rubber band or SNR since then. Another thing player can do is make use of proxy connections. During different times of the day different proxies can lead to much better results. If anybody need info as to set them up just ask, it’s fairly easy.
Post edited by peterconnorfirst on
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Yes, I play on max settings. As for the description of my problem - at times of heated combat, game comes to a complete halt for a very small amount of time (less than second). I'm not experienced enough to say what *exactly* it is, but it doesn't happen all the time and the bigger team DPS is, more frequently I get that stuttering. Now with my new rig, it's not a huge problem (compared to my old one where some HSEs were true slideshow even at medium settings), but considering what an overkill my PC should be, annoying nevertheless.
Yeah, your PC specs are beyond overkill for STO. It's either connection lag, or what connor mentioned with poor engine optimizations. Unfortunately, from a player perspective without access to anything 'under the hood' it's impossible for us to know for sure.
If it's performing well on everything else, it's pretty safe to say that your PC is not the problem.
I agree with leem, most issues of lag being reported is spotty at best. If everyone was experiencing it, then everyone would be flooding the forums with complaints.
I experience spotty lag and rubberbanding during the day. SNR, getting kicked off and able to sign right back in. So I'm pretty sure all of that is on my end and not the game.
Sadly power activation related lag is something that only performance player suffer from. With the reopening of the league table of the metal league and the fact that HSE has been set to entrance requirement for #s that map is becoming quite a hotspot. You are unlikely get any of that when tending to story missions.
Since ViL we have a creepy low number of parses of about a hundred players who have been logged in HSE. Perhaps a dozen of them report to STO forums and even among them too many got simply tired of this issue and have lost all hope that it will be addressed properly.
There are times where I’m afraid that teamed PvE is doomed to walk the path of PvP in this game. If simply too few pursue a certain activity it’s not worth for cryptic to tend to it.
That’s quite sad actually as the current poll clearly shows that we have more veterans in game than newcomers. Would not surprise if, much like performance players, are the ones who bankroll STO.
I don’t speak for them but at least here I rather get a smooth running endgame for my efforts and investments rather than the option to play yet another tutorial make yet another toon and make yet more effort just to approach at the same point where I am already.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Yes, I play on max settings.
As for the description of my problem - at times of heated combat, game comes to a complete halt for a very small amount of time (less than second). I'm not experienced enough to say what *exactly* it is, but it doesn't happen all the time and the bigger team DPS is, more frequently I get that stuttering.
Now with my new rig, it's not a huge problem (compared to my old one where some HSEs were true slideshow even at medium settings), but considering what an overkill my PC should be, annoying nevertheless.
I think the very only thing you can do to test is at DS9 or Risa with lots of interface windows opened ad see if you can do doffing and admiralty smoothly. I’m sure that your machine can handle that so what you experience is most likely result of large server loads when running with performance groups.
Edit: could just be that your mega grav wells simply break the game in HSE.
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Yeah, doffing/admirality on Risa poses no problems. If it happens, it's only in combat. And yeah, you might be right that specifically my particle-heavy (both in EPG and graphic rendering sense, lol) sci powers put exceptionally high toll on game performance. Now to think of it, the worst issues occured in the run with Nirett, and we both have sci-torp boats...
Just think of it as you're performing so well in queues that you have overwhelmed the game engine. STO is just not optimized to deal with a player of your elite caliber.
Hah, yeah, I have joked for quite a bit already how all the performance issues we high-end players are seeing is just cryptic's new and innovative way to nerf us.
@meimeitoo, btw, throttling can affect any part, not only CPU.
Also, don't you think it's a bit silly when you need to have *the very best* consumer grade gaming GPU to be able to run STO, an 8 year old game, completely smoothly? I'm very happy that both you and bishop have no problems, but you both have 1080ti-s, so if anything, it reinforces my jokingly said "new benchmark" idea.
Absolutely. Didn't you say Elite: Dangerous doesn't have that problem for you?! Like I said, our high-end cards are simply masking the issue(s), as it were. So, yeah, it's Cryptic-side alright: reportedly (Bort), the hamsters themselves are struggling at times; and the client isn't fully optimized either, it seems.
What Sea said (and, to an extent, myself) is likely true, though, that the game simply can't handle the precision timing true Elite players require. But it's the first time I hear you about it, so it would seem something deteriorated.
I don’t have any issues with any part of the game like DS9, Rosa, Drozana; even on max setting with every window open and trying to run admiralty. My PC is not as powerful as the others listed here but it can handle the game fine with the exception of instance like what @tunebreaker is talking about. It’s as if we are experiencing the exact same issues, but on vastly different powered rigs.
My usual experience is thus: Start HSE or similar mission, the team buffs up and it starts to chug. Then when we move to the first attack wave (I.e. the first run against the cube wall in HSE or the initial defences in GKA) the game literally locks up once shots start flying. It’s clear to me that once the game is having to calculate a million different shots/buffs/debuffs on upwards of 30+ targets all at once it’s struggling to calculate and especially render that all. If it was connection lag I’d see others being ahead of me, or get rubber banding like you can get even in ESD but I don’t. There’s the usual UI lag going on throughout the whole run as well which compounds things.
There probably needs to be options and settings put in for "VFX Spam" for overloaded visual overlay of player view so they can see their vessel, vs "VFX ability visual response" for abilities they cast or are affected by.
Would be nice if there were an option to scale down 'VFX spam', for those who want that; but it would likely also mean it will give Cryptic an excuse to remain/become lazy, and not fix anything at all.
If your GPU can handle such (for example I have a 1080, nothing really affects it). If the engine cannot handle such (due to communicating with server/client/others) then maybe some coding for offloading to the client side that would be able to handle their part could be improved, but I have a feeling that would require a complete revamp of such, to the point of too much work.
Other than transmitting your own position and keystrokes, I bet there's actually very little communication going on from the game client to the server: the latter just broadcasts all pertinent data to you, UPD-style, with no handshakes, and that's just it (which, IMHO, is why loadouts have always been so problematic: if your client doesn't receive the tray position in time, your client just leaves the spot open). Anyway, offloading server-side calculations to the client probably wouldn't work, for that reason alone; not to mention leave the system wide open to abuse (when you could, say, ignore certain DPS-effects, client-side). So, they'll likely never do that. But there's no real reason, near as I can tell, why they couldn't let your game client ignore some of the VFX effects, locally.
Same here massive fps drop and stutter of pictures scince 3 days .....
Dont know what it is Elite Que unplayble cos the LAG your skills not work
And Evertime Dieying cos lag make no fun ....
My little junker laptop that barely meets the lowest end of the STO system requirements runs STO fine 90 percent of the time, and the other 10 is usually clearly a problem on my end.
Lol yea, why even acknowledge the mere possibility of problem with your most favorite game run by your most favorite company?
Considering that someone with such a biased towards DPSer probably never ends up in engaging teamed PvE where most problems occur that’s really easy.
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I don't think there's any need to lower the conversation to how people feel about DPS chasers, that it not required here and distracts from the discussion. Graphical and lag issues are affecting all sorts of people, regardless of how elite people think they are or what sort of player circles they are playing in. Let's not try to muddy the waters and pretend this only affect people of certain skills because of what content they play.
Comments
Pretty much my point. When people's machines are clogged up with all the Graphical lag, it's going to cause issues with other people with-in the same instance, and the blanket 'it's the servers fault' claim isn't true. I have the same graphical lag issues on my Xbox One S as I do on my laptop, which is why I ascertain that it's an engine issue.
Memory im using Corsair platinum 64 gigs 3000mhz
Samsung pro M.2 1T as the main OS and for games. Storage Baracuda Old version for storage only.
Video Cards its two GTX 1080 ROG STRIX-GTX1080-O8G-GAMING I have them clocked from 1980- 2123 depending what im playing if Im doing rendering etc.
Power Supply 1000watts EVGA
This rig is water cooled and it to OP for this kind of game of Star trek Online. The game is like 8 years old or so your rig should be able to handle it. I have also increased all visuals and running combat meters logs etc while in PVE runs with no tick issue. You may have to do some more looking into what could be causing it.
Oh, come on... you can't expect everyone to differentiate between "server" and "engine" side lag, or use those terms totally accurately.
The fault is on cryptic's side, that's what me, and several others are claiming and now you also seem to agree.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Again... how often are you playing Hive Onslaught Elite with top-end premades? That's the only place I've had issues so far.
And yes, I'm fully aware it should handle it more than perfectly, at least reading STO's recommended specs, also considering the fact that it has absolutely no problems with Elite:Dangerous, a much more demanding game, on ultra.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Start of GKA it actually ceased up for 10 seconds and i thought it had crashed. Similar issue in HSE at first a few times.
I doubt it was lag to the servers or from my end because i can have YouTube running in the background and the wife is on Netflix too, both without issue.
Soi'm pretty sure it's the game engine/optimization.
Thanks for trying it out. For the sake of gathering more information, what are your PC specs, at least CPU and GPU?
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Intel i5 3.50 GHz
Nvidia GTX 750ti
16GB RAM
64bit Win 10 OS
Nothing special but i can run something like GTAV on nearly max settings.
Edit: it's liquid cooled too if that has any affect (doubt it does tbh)
And this was with a friend with her uber-buffed Ent-J tank too, @tunebreaker you'll know who i mean.
Yeah, that rig should also be totally enough for a lag-free STO.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Glad finally someone agrees with me, that a good system can handle alleged graphics issues just fine. Which doesn't mean the client-side code couldn't be optimized (a very high-end graphics card basically just masks the potential issues, in this case). And, like I said, the most crashes I hear about are ppl with AMD cards (whether that be driver issues and/or the fact that this game was simply made with nVidia cards in mind, like many other games).
RAM is often also an issue. I have 32G of it. People rarely believe it, but most Windows crashes are caused by lack of RAM. Disk-swapping is simply an inherently unstable endeavor, and always has been: the more swapping occurs, the higher the chances you'll crash. 'Add more RAM' is typically Microsoft's nr. 1 advice for any myriad of Windows problems.
All-in-all, it's good to hear I'm not the only one to whom this game is running very smoothly. Then again, I don't do Elite content, so I can't attest to 'lag' in there. And it just occurred to me -- although it would be a rather douche move, on Cryptic's end, but I wouldn't put it past them -- that Elite instances are being 'niced', so to speak, to run at lower priority (what with them being used less, I guess).
Thermal throttling is a beatch, but really should not occur under normal circumstances. I have a very well cooled-system (still on air, yet almost noise-less), with an i7 8600k, that never exceeds 73C. Still, it's surprising to hear STO is so CPU-demanding. It really shouldn't be, as it's a rather old game. In GTA V (I love driving around in fancy wheels, looking pretty *g*), I noticed a CPU-bound issue too, much to my dismay. Though my GTX 1080 Ti can handle it just fine, the number of draw calls can be so overwhelming, that your CPU can become the bottleneck, after all. I doubt that's the case in STO, though, as the graphics engine is simply not nearly as demanding as that of GTA V.
Maybe Cryptic really needs to do some optimizing -- but keep all the shiny effects.
@meimeitoo, btw, throttling can affect any part, not only CPU.
Also, don't you think it's a bit silly when you need to have *the very best* consumer grade gaming GPU to be able to run STO, an 8 year old game, completely smoothly? I'm very happy that both you and bishop have no problems, but you both have 1080ti-s, so if anything, it reinforces my jokingly said "new benchmark" idea.
In any case, I encourage you all to try out a HSE. Or maybe GKA, if Steve is saying that's also very taxing - however I can't say whether I personally have any lag there or not, haven't played it yet with new PC.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
My System is relatively close to yours Tune, I am ahead of you in GPU, behind you in CPU:
Intel i7 4790k @ 4.2GHZ
Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming Edition
Samsung Evo 960 SSD (SATA)
32GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 (I only have this much because it was insanely cheap, 32G is totally unnecessary.)
I have played this queue with you and Connor on a couple occasions and it runs smoothly for me. For some reason, I seem to be lucky with my connection to the game servers, I get very little lag, but other people seem to get excessive lag. When you play does it look like frame skipping? like the game is processing but it's not able to handle the output? or is it more like lag where you click powers and they do nothing.. your team mates seem to just 'jump' around on the screen instead of flying to the new location.. etc?
I get lag sometimes on ESD, but that seems to be the only place it happens. I haven't done HSE in a couple weeks though, so it's possible they have added a mechanic or visual effect since then that is the culprit.
Are you playing on Max settings?
We had it mostly in the beginning of the map where all in team use most buffs simultaneously and in the end where team interacting abilities are used on single targets. All too often it takes multiple attempts to activate powers. On other occasions the UI tells you they have been activated, you get a cd, but they are simply not there.
Now this problem has been acknowledged by Cryptic back at the day when command powers were introduced and team-interacting abilities were addressed which put heavy stress on the server and therefore were changed a bit. That and especially the fact that we got quite an exodus of performance players in S13 felt as if this problem is at bay while in fact it is not or at least could use some further concern.
Now on a positive note lag-like issues that are at the players-end can get tended to individually. Justified or not I bought a new machine for STO: an MSI GS65 with a 1070 card. With that thing all framerate-related issues belong to the past. On highest settings DS9, Risa and Dranur all play totally fluent no matter how many UI interfaces I have opened. The workload of the card with everything set to max there is at 90% according to the onboard software.
The third form of lag one usually gets with SNR & rubber banding. As far as I can tell they are always connection related results from your machine up to cryptic. Even here peeps can do a lot. One thing I often found was that playing via WLAN is the main problem. Since my new MSI got a weaker connection to the router than my old Mac Book I was forced to get a repeater there which works wonders seeing to it that my home signal is always strongest. Have yet to rubber band or SNR since then. Another thing player can do is make use of proxy connections. During different times of the day different proxies can lead to much better results. If anybody need info as to set them up just ask, it’s fairly easy.
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As for the description of my problem - at times of heated combat, game comes to a complete halt for a very small amount of time (less than second). I'm not experienced enough to say what *exactly* it is, but it doesn't happen all the time and the bigger team DPS is, more frequently I get that stuttering.
Now with my new rig, it's not a huge problem (compared to my old one where some HSEs were true slideshow even at medium settings), but considering what an overkill my PC should be, annoying nevertheless.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
If it's performing well on everything else, it's pretty safe to say that your PC is not the problem.
Sadly power activation related lag is something that only performance player suffer from. With the reopening of the league table of the metal league and the fact that HSE has been set to entrance requirement for #s that map is becoming quite a hotspot. You are unlikely get any of that when tending to story missions.
Since ViL we have a creepy low number of parses of about a hundred players who have been logged in HSE. Perhaps a dozen of them report to STO forums and even among them too many got simply tired of this issue and have lost all hope that it will be addressed properly.
There are times where I’m afraid that teamed PvE is doomed to walk the path of PvP in this game. If simply too few pursue a certain activity it’s not worth for cryptic to tend to it.
That’s quite sad actually as the current poll clearly shows that we have more veterans in game than newcomers. Would not surprise if, much like performance players, are the ones who bankroll STO.
I don’t speak for them but at least here I rather get a smooth running endgame for my efforts and investments rather than the option to play yet another tutorial make yet another toon and make yet more effort just to approach at the same point where I am already.
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I think the very only thing you can do to test is at DS9 or Risa with lots of interface windows opened ad see if you can do doffing and admiralty smoothly. I’m sure that your machine can handle that so what you experience is most likely result of large server loads when running with performance groups.
Edit: could just be that your mega grav wells simply break the game in HSE.
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Now to think of it, the worst issues occured in the run with Nirett, and we both have sci-torp boats...
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Now when it happens, it feels like a compliment.
U.S.S. Buteo Regalis - Brigid Multi-Mission Surveillance Explorer build
R.R.W. Ri Maajon - Khopesh Tactical Dreadnought Warbird build
My Youtube channel containing STO videos.
Absolutely. Didn't you say Elite: Dangerous doesn't have that problem for you?! Like I said, our high-end cards are simply masking the issue(s), as it were. So, yeah, it's Cryptic-side alright: reportedly (Bort), the hamsters themselves are struggling at times; and the client isn't fully optimized either, it seems.
What Sea said (and, to an extent, myself) is likely true, though, that the game simply can't handle the precision timing true Elite players require. But it's the first time I hear you about it, so it would seem something deteriorated.
My PC is not as powerful as the others listed here but it can handle the game fine with the exception of instance like what @tunebreaker is talking about. It’s as if we are experiencing the exact same issues, but on vastly different powered rigs.
My usual experience is thus:
Start HSE or similar mission, the team buffs up and it starts to chug. Then when we move to the first attack wave (I.e. the first run against the cube wall in HSE or the initial defences in GKA) the game literally locks up once shots start flying. It’s clear to me that once the game is having to calculate a million different shots/buffs/debuffs on upwards of 30+ targets all at once it’s struggling to calculate and especially render that all.
If it was connection lag I’d see others being ahead of me, or get rubber banding like you can get even in ESD but I don’t. There’s the usual UI lag going on throughout the whole run as well which compounds things.
Would be nice if there were an option to scale down 'VFX spam', for those who want that; but it would likely also mean it will give Cryptic an excuse to remain/become lazy, and not fix anything at all.
Other than transmitting your own position and keystrokes, I bet there's actually very little communication going on from the game client to the server: the latter just broadcasts all pertinent data to you, UPD-style, with no handshakes, and that's just it (which, IMHO, is why loadouts have always been so problematic: if your client doesn't receive the tray position in time, your client just leaves the spot open). Anyway, offloading server-side calculations to the client probably wouldn't work, for that reason alone; not to mention leave the system wide open to abuse (when you could, say, ignore certain DPS-effects, client-side). So, they'll likely never do that. But there's no real reason, near as I can tell, why they couldn't let your game client ignore some of the VFX effects, locally.
Dont know what it is Elite Que unplayble cos the LAG your skills not work
And Evertime Dieying cos lag make no fun ....
Lol yea, why even acknowledge the mere possibility of problem with your most favorite game run by your most favorite company?
Considering that someone with such a biased towards DPSer probably never ends up in engaging teamed PvE where most problems occur that’s really easy.
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Graphical and lag issues are affecting all sorts of people, regardless of how elite people think they are or what sort of player circles they are playing in. Let's not try to muddy the waters and pretend this only affect people of certain skills because of what content they play.