test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Lag and rubberbanding - Ability interactions which can and should be fixed - Let the community help!
cogent992
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 2 Arc User
There have been many lag and rubberbanding problems throughout the life of Neverwinter. We players often hear from our friends about frame rate drops, network lag, and other crashes, disconnects, and problems. Most of the time the issue is with the players PC or network connection. Some of the time the issue is with the internet backbone (such as the recent issues with comcast/xfinity customers). An unacceptable amount of the lag and rubberbanding we experience, however, is due to the game servers and poor choices made during the design of the game and is entirely correctable.
The biggest problem now the interaction between certain class abilities and effects. When used in combination, these effects feed back on themselves in a sort of infinite-loop kind of way and cause massive lag to anyone nearby or in the zone. Hunters and clerics have both had some really bad ones in the past which took many months (and thousands of players leaving the game) to eventually get addressed.
The problem is not just in how long it takes to fix these problems, its the way they get fixed. When these kinds of problems are eventually looked at, developers seem to focus only on the specific class ability causing the problem. They apparently change only the minimum amount of code to correct the issue and move on as quickly as possible, putting no real thought into it. No one looks at the deeper issue that allows these types of problems to continue to crop up.
Every time a new ability, feat, boon, or enchant is added to the game, a new issue arises. It's time to change the way these problems are handled. Developers: have a look at the underlying mechanics that cause these infinite-feedback interactions. Have a close look at every kind of reflective damage and triggered damage ability and add an internal cooldown to them. It only needs to be a short cooldown of half a second, a quarter of a second, or whatever. Next, set up a system to detect when any ability is used too often in a short period of time, say more than 10 or 20 times a second. All this system needs to do is output scary messages to a log file and alert the humans in charge that there is a problem. Detecting the cause of these issues is the first step, put some detection mechanisms in place so that every time these issues come up, the cause is immediately known!
One last and very important step you guys need to take to improve bug squashing for every kind of problem is to vastly improve how you track and squash bugs. The biggest problem you have is that you don't have enough testers to play the game thoroughly enough and file formal bug reports. This shows big time. The solution is clear... allow your community moderators and other members of the community to file formal bug reports. Get a roster going of players who are sensible enough to report these kinds of things and who know how to file bug reports and let them do so. Ensure that these people are filing reports that contain the big three: 1.) how to reproduce 2.) what they expected to see 3.) what they saw instead. Put some unpaid people in charge of this operation you're sure to have plenty of volunteers. Allow a hierarchy to develop where the top people are well trusted by you and each have a few people that they trust, exactly like an open source project such as the Linux kernel operates.
You need some help, developers. Let the players help you. Put together a few simple procedural and operational changes in place to make your lives a thousand times easier and bring this game up to where it belongs, as the best MMO around.
-Cog
The biggest problem now the interaction between certain class abilities and effects. When used in combination, these effects feed back on themselves in a sort of infinite-loop kind of way and cause massive lag to anyone nearby or in the zone. Hunters and clerics have both had some really bad ones in the past which took many months (and thousands of players leaving the game) to eventually get addressed.
The problem is not just in how long it takes to fix these problems, its the way they get fixed. When these kinds of problems are eventually looked at, developers seem to focus only on the specific class ability causing the problem. They apparently change only the minimum amount of code to correct the issue and move on as quickly as possible, putting no real thought into it. No one looks at the deeper issue that allows these types of problems to continue to crop up.
Every time a new ability, feat, boon, or enchant is added to the game, a new issue arises. It's time to change the way these problems are handled. Developers: have a look at the underlying mechanics that cause these infinite-feedback interactions. Have a close look at every kind of reflective damage and triggered damage ability and add an internal cooldown to them. It only needs to be a short cooldown of half a second, a quarter of a second, or whatever. Next, set up a system to detect when any ability is used too often in a short period of time, say more than 10 or 20 times a second. All this system needs to do is output scary messages to a log file and alert the humans in charge that there is a problem. Detecting the cause of these issues is the first step, put some detection mechanisms in place so that every time these issues come up, the cause is immediately known!
One last and very important step you guys need to take to improve bug squashing for every kind of problem is to vastly improve how you track and squash bugs. The biggest problem you have is that you don't have enough testers to play the game thoroughly enough and file formal bug reports. This shows big time. The solution is clear... allow your community moderators and other members of the community to file formal bug reports. Get a roster going of players who are sensible enough to report these kinds of things and who know how to file bug reports and let them do so. Ensure that these people are filing reports that contain the big three: 1.) how to reproduce 2.) what they expected to see 3.) what they saw instead. Put some unpaid people in charge of this operation you're sure to have plenty of volunteers. Allow a hierarchy to develop where the top people are well trusted by you and each have a few people that they trust, exactly like an open source project such as the Linux kernel operates.
You need some help, developers. Let the players help you. Put together a few simple procedural and operational changes in place to make your lives a thousand times easier and bring this game up to where it belongs, as the best MMO around.
-Cog
0