2. Hard drive extremely active and running hot, as well as system fans hitting maximum.
My casing was very hot to the touch, a day after I cleaned it out was the same day I downloaded ARC.
3. Lag, just not in STO, I mean everywhere. So bad that sites took 6 -7 times longer.
4. Server time out's where every few minutes.
5. ARC was uploading content to PW. I checked with my ISP, yes, a hell of a lot of uploading.
6. My computer wouldn't shut down during these uploading sessions. Had to pull the plug from the phone line.
7. Non stop warnings about CPU and system over use, to a point where it threatened to shut down.
I removed ARC, and my computer returned to normal right away.
I have 30 years of computer knowledge. I know BS when i see it.
I'm sorry but I think that is a load of rubbish to be frank, Arc might be crappy but there is no way any developer would mess up a program that badly and having tried it for a few days I have no seen it do anything like that at all, and if what you are saying about your PC overheating is remotely true then for someone that claims to have that much experience with computers, why haven't you fixed or upgraded the clearly inadequate cooling?
All I have to say is if your PC was exhibiting all that then it sounds more like your PC has serious hardware failures, even a real virus would have trouble causing all of that to happen.
Judging by your post you seem to be so biased against ARC that you are just making things up to try and put people off of using it.
Many people might not like ARC, cause they are affraid of it, this I do not know why, but in this case, when it comes to me....
I personally find ARC to be a very intresting asset and tool to have and use and the reasons for this is that, for example I have steam, which I use for all my non-Cryptic and Perfect World Games, but when it comes to ARC I'm more comftrable in having ARC be, my sorta, say "bookshelf" to all the games I play with them, which in my case inlude; STO, CO, NW, and BL:R.....
This is my my thought, many of you might not like it..... I do not care.... nor mind ARC.....
Keep up the great work you have done with ARC Beta, Perfect World, and be sure to give Cryptic Studios a Great "bonus" *cough**cough* for making Star Trek Online the best MMO, I've ever played!!!!!!
#thumbsup
This guy is a plant! They planted him in here! We've been infiltrated! Plant!
IMHO the only real problem with Arc is that it isn't Steam. I have both at the moment, and I can honestly say that from what I've seen Steam is more of a resource hog than Arc is. (Still prefer Steam at the moment.
Alot of the hate I've seen for Arc is in that it is just another Steam copy. I have had zero issues with it functioning properly or overloading my PC in any way, including bandwidth. That said, I have no desire to switch to Arc over Steam, because STO is my only Cryptic/PWE game. (Removed CO less than 5 hours after install)
I do however think Arc is better looking than Steam, and several of it's features work better or are more convenient than their Steam counterparts.
Steam > Arc because it's not a company specific platform, but has games from a multitude of different companies and that number grows every day.
not true. it eat a lot of memory for the "benefits" it provides. it runs constantly, which disallow to toss it in to swap and basically blocks space in RAM needed for textures and resources of the game, causes quite longer loading times and reduced FPS performance.
also ARC causes peak cpu loads due to bad coded routines that the game literary freezes or drop down to 1 frame per second.
Honestly, this happens with steam as well. And it will happen with any front-end launcher you will find, not only with arc.
In the beginning, everybody was complaining about steam, for the same reason. Now almost everybody uses steam. The problem here is something else.
The problem is, you can have 1 single launcher running in the background as your actual game you playing, but having 2 of em is just stupid and that will consume definitely all your resources. THAT is the main reason we dont want arc, because most of us we are already using steam or watsoever. Is not our fault that arc is new and steam isnt, bad luck. But we cant be forced to use arc as well.
If i end with the need of using arc because its the only way to run STO (right now i just launch STO with the launcher , without arc), well, i will use it since right now im not using steam (i almost mostly play STO only xD). But i understand the complains. And i am not running a game using steam and arc at the same time, the performance will drop just insane.
I'm sorry but I think that is a load of rubbish to be frank, Arc might be crappy but there is no way any developer would mess up a program that badly and having tried it for a few days I have no seen it do anything like that at all, and if what you are saying about your PC overheating is remotely true then for someone that claims to have that much experience with computers, why haven't you fixed or upgraded the clearly inadequate cooling?
All I have to say is if your PC was exhibiting all that then it sounds more like your PC has serious hardware failures, even a real virus would have trouble causing all of that to happen.
Judging by your post you seem to be so biased against ARC that you are just making things up to try and put people off of using it.
ARC is in beta at the moment, you can not fully dismiss someone elses claim as it could be valid. beta means an early released WIP (work in progress). in that way it will need to be upgraded consistently to become better, for now. its in its early stage, no point getting super defensive yet, besides its best to know these things now, if anything these bad comments about arc should be taken as a positive point rather then adding to another negative. thats one point in PWE's favor at this time.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
If STO had a launcher that worked properly, there would be no reason to install ARC, except for those playerrs who are also addicted to other ARC-linked games...
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STO player since November 2013
If STO had a launcher that worked properly, there would be no reason to install ARC, except for those playerrs who are also addicted to other ARC-linked games...
The actual STO launcher works great.. almost for me, what is the problem? i never used arc to play STO. I remember i was forced to install it ages ago to play champions online, but after i stop playin CO, i never used arc again.. that was about 5 months ago.
Honestly, this happens with steam as well. And it will happen with any front-end launcher you will find, not only with arc.
In the beginning, everybody was complaining about steam, for the same reason. Now almost everybody uses steam. The problem here is something else.
well, thats the reason i don't play steam games.
beside it happens to be that guildwars had such front loader, but unlike others after starting the game it shuts itself down if you want.
The problem is, you can have 1 single launcher running in the background as your actual game you playing, but having 2 of em is just stupid and that will consume definitely all your resources.
the one is already too much, second will be mercy-killer shot in the brain of cpu.
I'm going to seriously miss STO. It will hurt for a while, but it's less painful them having ARC bugger things up.
Edit: Oh, and for the record, PW doesn't give a fig. Just wants us to shut up and download ARC and spend money. I'm not doing all three.
Can I haz your stuffs? 'Cause I'm not going anywhere, at least as long as Steam still works (and so far, due to the outcry after the inital annoucement, they're sticking with the position that after the standalone is disabled Steam will still work).
Oh, and alfa, you can disable Steam after launching your game too. Not so much with Arc, so far as I can tell...
As tempting as the latest bribe is, I'm still not downloading Arc.
__________________________________
STO Forum member since before February 2010. STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
I have been following this discussion for a while now, and with the introduction of the Arc only shiny figured what the heck, install the sucker.
Program works ok as far as I can tell. It tried to install a plug-in into IE 11, which IE asked me about before doing so. Disabled it if anyone cares.
Game ran fine (Win7 with 8 Gigs of ram). For reference, my machine just sitting with no apps open is using 2 Gigs.
As to the memory issues (ram), did a snapshot of my system and here are the hard numbers:
713 k - Game Client (STO)
_72 k - Arc
_50 k - ArcOSBrowser
_27 k - ArcOSOverlay
So, Arc is using an additional 149 k of my available memory, and adding that to the game client brings the total up to 862 k.
So my thinking is for individuals running their machines near the max, this could definitely be a deal breaker.
Can you with the newer operating systems, still have a dual boot setup, allowing individuals to start their systems in a game mode with only the bare necessities loaded in order to run the game with Arc?
I'm sorry but I think that is a load of rubbish to be frank, Arc might be crappy but there is no way any developer would mess up a program that badly and having tried it for a few days I have no seen it do anything like that at all, and if what you are saying about your PC overheating is remotely true then for someone that claims to have that much experience with computers, why haven't you fixed or upgraded the clearly inadequate cooling?
All I have to say is if your PC was exhibiting all that then it sounds more like your PC has serious hardware failures, even a real virus would have trouble causing all of that to happen.
Judging by your post you seem to be so biased against ARC that you are just making things up to try and put people off of using it.
As someone who has experienced the same symptoms, your claims make you look like someone who's been sent in by ARC to "Whitewash" the true nature of what is going on.
As far as your inquiry about why they didn't upgrade goes, in my experience, there is no need to upgrade hardware if there is a software solution, a change in software is usually cheaper and easier than pulling parts out of your computer. Why would someone upgrade their system just because some company wants you to run their software, when there is no added benifit? Aside from sooome silly off-duty costume option...
"Logic is a little tweeting bird chirping in a meadow. Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell BAD." - Spock
2. Hard drive extremely active and running hot, as well as system fans hitting maximum.
My casing was very hot to the touch, a day after I cleaned it out was the same day I downloaded ARC.
5. ARC was uploading content to PW. I checked with my ISP, yes, a hell of a lot of uploading.
6. My computer wouldn't shut down during these uploading sessions. Had to pull the plug from the phone line.
7. Non stop warnings about CPU and system over use, to a point where it threatened to shut down.
I removed ARC, and my computer returned to normal right away.
This indirectly confirms ARC probing your pc and sending data to the mothership about its content and use. It's a threat to our privacy. I bet many other interfaces of other MMOs do the same.
Tyr shall give me strength! For the glory of Tempus! I am the hands of Shar! Flames of Kossuth, protect me! Oghma, grant me knowledge! Lolth commands, and I obey!
While some of the concerns about ARC may be valid, most like Spyware and the "fact" that it rams other PWE games down a players throat really aren't. ARC does make it easier to play other games in the PWE stable in the sense that they can all be seen in one place. As for the Spyware claim, ARC can be shut off just like any other program. Since I only see ARC using about 52 MB of memory (on par with Steam), I don't see it as a problem for system bloat. But, I can see where that could cause a problem. I haven't personally seen any performance issues while running ARC, although I don't dispute that others might.
My only issue with ARC is that it has no option to shut it down completely on exit. I have to do that manually. Since I don't play PWE games other than STO, it is unnecessary for me at the moment. However, it seems to me to be as innocuous as Steam so I don't really have a problem with it.
Does ARC reserve disk space, I'm sure that I read somewhere in one of the first ARC threads that it reserves 10g of disk space.
Can anyone confirm this, as I'm about to do a re-install of my 2nd PC and may give ARC a try on this, but I won't bother if it reserves MY disk space...
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Have finally taken the plunge to check out Arc. It's been on my TODO to see what files are being accessed by this thing as I know this is a concern to people. Luckily I have enough IT know-how to avoid another 12Gb download on my 900 kilobit connection.
The game fires up and I quickly flick over to the overlay. Nothing really exciting so back to the game and I'm hitting some serious lag. A quick check show that GameClient has it's 6 TCP connections (2 remote and 4 loopback) and Arc seems sensible with 1. But the Arc Overlay is a different story.
The Overly has between 32 and 36 TCP connections to a small collection of remote addresses on a selection of ports. And some of these connections have a latency over of 600ms. OK that explains the lag. It takes a while but finally the Overlay closes it's connections until nothing is left and the game is playable again
Just to put the 600ms into perspective, using the NetGraph command, GameClient is averaging a 120ms to 140ms latency.
I'm not sure if the overlay really requires all the network connections up-front, or some one hasn't Googled for the phrase "lazy loading", but this sort of load is a pain for someone who's not on a FTTC network.
GameClient doesn't require much in the way of network resource and it's the sodding game. That the Overlay is such a network resource hog is ridiculous.
You're pushing Arc hard, you need to make sure it's ready and backend properly provisioned to cope with demand.
I think I'll be switching back to Steam for the time being.
FYI, monitoring of the network resource usage was done using the "Resource Monitor" built into the OS.
This is probably one of the most lousiest implementation for a game I have ever seen. Any program or software that REQUIRES the use of another program all together, should come as an indication as a red flag to anyone.
We know at some point, "ARC" will be required to launch STO. Once again, STO never needed ARC before(it doesn't even now) to run, why now? This is a way of forcing you to use a program in which you may or may not use regardless if it benefits the player(which it doesn't). If ARC was as good as they say it is, then it would be left optional, as players would want to download ARC, it would in a sense 'speak for itself' product. It isn't, that's why it's being forced. This doesn't benefit the player in any way, in fact, it doesn't even benefit the game either, it only benefits PWE.
Anyone that can compare this with steam is just silly. Steam provides products of over three thousand games from all different companies while ARC is exclusive to PWE and only has, 12 to 13 titles that I can see as per their website. This ARC system isn't needed for just over half a dozen titles, it doesn't make any sense.
What's more nerve racking? Take this for example. Games for Windows Live is shutting down this year coming. They have over 70 titles which some would be of AAA class type games. Most of these games are in jeopardy of not working after the summer as they rely on GFWL authentication process for them to work. In most cases, these games just won't work anymore. This is Microsoft, and they had amazing titles and it wasn't enough to save it(and people for the most part are happy to see it go), what make ARC different? ARC is different than GFWL but in a bad kind of different but the point is ARC will be needed for these games to work. When it's shut down, so are all the other games including STO.
Even in a better case scenario, what if ARC is in need of maintenance? STO won't work. STO itself would still need its maintenance also. That means more down time overall.
You won't get any answers from the devs here. They are on ignore for all negative feedback. They are looking for feedback on ARC itself and how it looks and what could be changed about it, not, should this stay or should this go, PWE has already made up their minds.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
just got back some interesting info from someone who plays sto for time to time, that person put arc on their computer after deleting everything else, slow old computer built from parts laying around. the only time the cpu spiked was every moment these pictures rolled to the next and repeated on the arc client. but didnt note anything strange beyond sto being slow and stuttering and the logout and shut down of the client program spiked over half the cpu usage on that machine. this person is planning on doing more long term study on it when possible.
this person is not me, so when this person gets to it, it will be interesting to find out whats going on under the bonnet. one curious thing mentioned to me is how similar ARC looks to steam, as almost as if it was a direct rip from steams app. i also consider the source very reliable.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
2. Hard drive extremely active and running hot, as well as system fans hitting maximum.
My casing was very hot to the touch, a day after I cleaned it out was the same day I downloaded ARC.
yes. arc client has build-in torrent a like part. basically other people download from you the games you have. huge overhead in hard drive and network connection.
Comments
Funny thing is, Arc works better than Steam via Wine in Linux.
Romulan Institute
D'Galan - Engineer
I'm sorry but I think that is a load of rubbish to be frank, Arc might be crappy but there is no way any developer would mess up a program that badly and having tried it for a few days I have no seen it do anything like that at all, and if what you are saying about your PC overheating is remotely true then for someone that claims to have that much experience with computers, why haven't you fixed or upgraded the clearly inadequate cooling?
All I have to say is if your PC was exhibiting all that then it sounds more like your PC has serious hardware failures, even a real virus would have trouble causing all of that to happen.
Judging by your post you seem to be so biased against ARC that you are just making things up to try and put people off of using it.
Works on mine and I use Windows 8.1 (64-bit).
Join Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
This guy is a plant! They planted him in here! We've been infiltrated! Plant!
You dont need run Steam via Wine in linux anymore.
Alot of the hate I've seen for Arc is in that it is just another Steam copy. I have had zero issues with it functioning properly or overloading my PC in any way, including bandwidth. That said, I have no desire to switch to Arc over Steam, because STO is my only Cryptic/PWE game. (Removed CO less than 5 hours after install)
I do however think Arc is better looking than Steam, and several of it's features work better or are more convenient than their Steam counterparts.
Steam > Arc because it's not a company specific platform, but has games from a multitude of different companies and that number grows every day.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Honestly, this happens with steam as well. And it will happen with any front-end launcher you will find, not only with arc.
In the beginning, everybody was complaining about steam, for the same reason. Now almost everybody uses steam. The problem here is something else.
The problem is, you can have 1 single launcher running in the background as your actual game you playing, but having 2 of em is just stupid and that will consume definitely all your resources. THAT is the main reason we dont want arc, because most of us we are already using steam or watsoever. Is not our fault that arc is new and steam isnt, bad luck. But we cant be forced to use arc as well.
If i end with the need of using arc because its the only way to run STO (right now i just launch STO with the launcher , without arc), well, i will use it since right now im not using steam (i almost mostly play STO only xD). But i understand the complains. And i am not running a game using steam and arc at the same time, the performance will drop just insane.
ARC is in beta at the moment, you can not fully dismiss someone elses claim as it could be valid. beta means an early released WIP (work in progress). in that way it will need to be upgraded consistently to become better, for now. its in its early stage, no point getting super defensive yet, besides its best to know these things now, if anything these bad comments about arc should be taken as a positive point rather then adding to another negative. thats one point in PWE's favor at this time.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
The actual STO launcher works great.. almost for me, what is the problem? i never used arc to play STO. I remember i was forced to install it ages ago to play champions online, but after i stop playin CO, i never used arc again.. that was about 5 months ago.
beside it happens to be that guildwars had such front loader, but unlike others after starting the game it shuts itself down if you want. the one is already too much, second will be mercy-killer shot in the brain of cpu. exactly. crippled game isn't fun to play.
Oh, and alfa, you can disable Steam after launching your game too. Not so much with Arc, so far as I can tell...
http://youtu.be/EzGoDtmTllg
Do you buy anything online? Todah!
STO Forum member since before February 2010.
STO Academy's excellent skill planner here: Link
I actually avoid success entirely. It doesn't get me what I want, and the consequences for failure are slim. -- markhawman
Program works ok as far as I can tell. It tried to install a plug-in into IE 11, which IE asked me about before doing so. Disabled it if anyone cares.
Game ran fine (Win7 with 8 Gigs of ram). For reference, my machine just sitting with no apps open is using 2 Gigs.
As to the memory issues (ram), did a snapshot of my system and here are the hard numbers:
713 k - Game Client (STO)
_72 k - Arc
_50 k - ArcOSBrowser
_27 k - ArcOSOverlay
So, Arc is using an additional 149 k of my available memory, and adding that to the game client brings the total up to 862 k.
So my thinking is for individuals running their machines near the max, this could definitely be a deal breaker.
Can you with the newer operating systems, still have a dual boot setup, allowing individuals to start their systems in a game mode with only the bare necessities loaded in order to run the game with Arc?
As far as your inquiry about why they didn't upgrade goes, in my experience, there is no need to upgrade hardware if there is a software solution, a change in software is usually cheaper and easier than pulling parts out of your computer. Why would someone upgrade their system just because some company wants you to run their software, when there is no added benifit? Aside from sooome silly off-duty costume option...
For the glory of Tempus!
I am the hands of Shar!
Flames of Kossuth, protect me!
Oghma, grant me knowledge!
Lolth commands, and I obey!
My only issue with ARC is that it has no option to shut it down completely on exit. I have to do that manually. Since I don't play PWE games other than STO, it is unnecessary for me at the moment. However, it seems to me to be as innocuous as Steam so I don't really have a problem with it.
Does ARC reserve disk space, I'm sure that I read somewhere in one of the first ARC threads that it reserves 10g of disk space.
Can anyone confirm this, as I'm about to do a re-install of my 2nd PC and may give ARC a try on this, but I won't bother if it reserves MY disk space...
The game fires up and I quickly flick over to the overlay. Nothing really exciting so back to the game and I'm hitting some serious lag. A quick check show that GameClient has it's 6 TCP connections (2 remote and 4 loopback) and Arc seems sensible with 1. But the Arc Overlay is a different story.
The Overly has between 32 and 36 TCP connections to a small collection of remote addresses on a selection of ports. And some of these connections have a latency over of 600ms. OK that explains the lag. It takes a while but finally the Overlay closes it's connections until nothing is left and the game is playable again
Just to put the 600ms into perspective, using the NetGraph command, GameClient is averaging a 120ms to 140ms latency.
I'm not sure if the overlay really requires all the network connections up-front, or some one hasn't Googled for the phrase "lazy loading", but this sort of load is a pain for someone who's not on a FTTC network.
GameClient doesn't require much in the way of network resource and it's the sodding game. That the Overlay is such a network resource hog is ridiculous.
You're pushing Arc hard, you need to make sure it's ready and backend properly provisioned to cope with demand.
I think I'll be switching back to Steam for the time being.
FYI, monitoring of the network resource usage was done using the "Resource Monitor" built into the OS.
We know at some point, "ARC" will be required to launch STO. Once again, STO never needed ARC before(it doesn't even now) to run, why now? This is a way of forcing you to use a program in which you may or may not use regardless if it benefits the player(which it doesn't). If ARC was as good as they say it is, then it would be left optional, as players would want to download ARC, it would in a sense 'speak for itself' product. It isn't, that's why it's being forced. This doesn't benefit the player in any way, in fact, it doesn't even benefit the game either, it only benefits PWE.
Anyone that can compare this with steam is just silly. Steam provides products of over three thousand games from all different companies while ARC is exclusive to PWE and only has, 12 to 13 titles that I can see as per their website. This ARC system isn't needed for just over half a dozen titles, it doesn't make any sense.
What's more nerve racking? Take this for example. Games for Windows Live is shutting down this year coming. They have over 70 titles which some would be of AAA class type games. Most of these games are in jeopardy of not working after the summer as they rely on GFWL authentication process for them to work. In most cases, these games just won't work anymore. This is Microsoft, and they had amazing titles and it wasn't enough to save it(and people for the most part are happy to see it go), what make ARC different? ARC is different than GFWL but in a bad kind of different but the point is ARC will be needed for these games to work. When it's shut down, so are all the other games including STO.
Even in a better case scenario, what if ARC is in need of maintenance? STO won't work. STO itself would still need its maintenance also. That means more down time overall.
You won't get any answers from the devs here. They are on ignore for all negative feedback. They are looking for feedback on ARC itself and how it looks and what could be changed about it, not, should this stay or should this go, PWE has already made up their minds.
this person is not me, so when this person gets to it, it will be interesting to find out whats going on under the bonnet. one curious thing mentioned to me is how similar ARC looks to steam, as almost as if it was a direct rip from steams app. i also consider the source very reliable.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
system Lord Baal is dead