I would like to address some of the lag and rubber-banding issues people are having and point out not all of it is based in the game servers at Cryptic.
Cryptic uses Cogentco as their so-called ISP and Cogentco has a very long history of this type of problem on the Internet. Cogentco has great local links to their customers like Cryptic, but they rely TOTALLY on the "Free Peering" links with the REAL ISP's of the world to get the packets to the rest of us. What this means is Cogentco shoves massive amounts of traffic through these links which are supposed to be an equal amount of traffic initiated by both companies to the point that the Real ISP's have to regulate the traffic coming from Cogentco to avoid the links being overloaded. They do this by dropping the packets into the bit-bucket. This causes lag, rubber-banding, crashes, etc. Each time Cryptic checks their connection to Cogentco it looks fine and is running smoothly so they reply back to us with "Everything is fine on our end" because they just don't seem to understand where the real problem is. I have talked with several of my peers at the "Real" ISP NOCs (Network Operation Center) and it is always the same story over and over again. Cogentco is overloading the Free Peering links in violation of the agreement. The Real ISP's have had enough of Cogentco and I don't blame them for doing this. They are not in business to give Cogentco unlimited free Internet bandwidth.
If Cryptic would fire Cogentco and spend the extra money for a "Real" ISP, then we would see a much more stable connection and they would not have to constantly be doing "stability" patches on the servers to correct an issue they cannot fix with software patches on their servers.
Cryptic is not the only company that uses Cogentco and most every one of the other companies that use Cogentco have the very same connection issues that Cryptic has.
The old saying holds true in this case... You get what you pay for!
So until Cryptic gets someone working for them that actually knows how the Internet works, we will all suffer lag and rubber-banding. Oh by the way when one of the "free Peering" links gets throttled back by the Real ISP's, Cogentco sets up another link to another ISP and it all starts over again. And all of the sessions that were on the overloaded link get dropped. That is the main reason for most of your crashes to desktop. The session was just blasted into the void of nowhere so the game client does not know how to recover communications to the server.
I would offer my 37 years of networking knowledge to Cryptic to help them, but someone at Cryptic would have to know how to spell Network and Internet first!
First of all, I have no problem with preventive maintenance and can live with a 4-hour outage.
The only "detail" I see is that they'll be "doing some quarterly updates on a number of systems".
Servers need to be patched, databases re-indexed, and so forth. And frankly the periodic reboot we're all so used to on our desktops sometimes is needed on servers as well.
It's usually much more effective to be proactive with maintenance rather than reactive to a server crash, system failure, or some software bug. The 4 hours some of you are complaining about is a lot better than the possible alternative of an 8 or 12+ hour crash. I think "stability update" is exactly the appropriate name to give it.
My point about 'more detail' was because they actually said why it was a 4 hour downtime instead of the standard 2 hour downtime. Though Neverwinter CMs are much more on the ball with patches. If you check his post now you'll even notice that he's updated it a few times since maintenance started to let players know how it's progressing. We don't even get an update to say the servers are back up these days.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
I've found that when they do stability updates, they sometimes place in stealth fixes to certain things. I mentioned on the player run STO group page on Facebook that they could be swapping out hardware which is why the downtime is a little longer than normal.
No, I am not who you think I am. I am someone different. I am instead a banana.
Oh don't misunderstand, I am all for them fixing stuff and taking as long to do it as needed. However, the whole point of patch notes is to inform, and that tiny little snippet really doesn't inform of much. What things did they change to improve the stability? That's what we should be hearing.
They optimized/defragged the databases and restarted, automated and initiated remotely, would be my guess.
The only thing I have noticed in terms of change recently is my screenshots come out very dark. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, I never have connection or crash issues, runs like a champ every time.
STO isn't young game. I playing from the beginning. And I see a reduction in the stability of the game. Although there is widespread development of technologies in the computer industry.
I really do loathe this attitude that Crypic employees shouldn't have time off work to enjoy the hoidlay season.
And what is even more sickening is that, in quite a few instances, said attitude is coming from people who are OFF WORK/SCHOOl ENJOYING THE HOLIDAY SEASON!
FFS - get over yourselves! Resenting the Devs and co for having/wanting time off work to be with their families over the christmas holidays, because you want them to do stuff to a game you want to play, is the epitome of selfish.
How to miss the point completely...
No right minded individual objects to them having time off during the holidays FFS. What we've come to expect are solutions to problems created by said Devs not being addressed in a timely manner prior TO the holiday season.
An event which by it's nature is only run once a year is so fubared it couldn't be sorted 2 weeks before these holidays started. 2 stability updates, really? All well and good, but hardly what is expected.
Selfish, no, you're pointing fingers at the wrong people being selfish. Attitudes like yours are why these Devs believe they can get away with doing what they do now.
We need the game to be running. You need to address the game client stopped responding crashes that are plaguing the game. There are allot of us that can't even run a battle zone with out the client crashing. That was totally unresponsable to leave the game in that state just before the holidays and during .
What you are describing is not a client issue, its an issue with the connection between the client and the server.
The cause of it could be be in any of the number of locations the connection passes through between the server and client.
As for the update, would you rather they not do maintenance on the servers and just let it slide?
You should be happy they do anything at all during the holidays, they could just as well have done nothing.
Improving the stability of the servers is just as important as any of the other fixes they do, its no point in fixing bugs and other issues with the game, if the servers are too unstale to run the game.
People complain when things are fixed, because its not what they think should be or want fixed.
People complain whe the things they want fixed are fixed.
Sometimes I think there are no pleaseing people.
Must be a really horrible job to have being a game developer when you have people always complaining about the work you do, never being satisfied.
Out of curiousity, what other games have you known to move to an entirely new engine?
Everquest1 and Anarchy Online did complete engine overhauls, and I believe WoW had a big engine upgrade in one of the expansions, Draenor or Mists I don't remember since I have not played any of these games in a long time, and don't recall the player dropoff after their updates.
Out of curiousity, what other games have you known to move to an entirely new engine?
EVE online significantly raised its graphic parameters. Its looks nice now. But I not been there a long time. I can not say anything about stability now
EVE online significantly raised its graphic parameters. Its looks nice now. But I not been there a long time. I can not say anything about stability now
That wasn't the question. Do you know what a game engine is?
I'm sorry. Out of the entire year they spend having to put up with the complainers, whiners, and nitpickers who look for every reason to attack them even if it's not warranted. They deserve a nice long break with their families. Period. SO let them enjoy the last of their holidays with their families and then they'll be back at work soon. They are not here to jump when the community tells them to. They're human like the rest of us.
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
Both WoW and EvE touched up their graphics, but the underlying game engine is still the same in both cases. And STO's already had a graphical improvement, so they don't really have a lot of room in that area.
Everquest didn't change game engines - I understand Everquest 2 uses an updated engine, but that's not exactly the same thing, is it? And how many people here would be doing the Dance of Joy for STO 2 if it meant having to restart their characters from Level 1? Because that's one of the implications of a whole new game engine.
We need the game to be running. You need to address the game client stopped responding crashes that are plaguing the game. There are allot of us that can't even run a battle zone with out the client crashing. That was totally unresponsable to leave the game in that state just before the holidays and during .
Honestly, I don't crash very often. I sometimes wonder if part of the problem is older computers, or graphics cards, not enough memory, slow internet, I just don't get it.
I mean the game is pretty buggy, Perfect World/Cryptic is pretty greedy, but I seldom crash. I'm sorry for your bad experiences and I hope that it get's sorted out.
Oh don't misunderstand, I am all for them fixing stuff and taking as long to do it as needed. However, the whole point of patch notes is to inform, and that tiny little snippet really doesn't inform of much. What things did they change to improve the stability? That's what we should be hearing.
That would be far more detail than would be useful.... as server stability updates are going to be server configuration tweaks, possilble hardware updates or replacements and load-ballancings changes to the network. Which is more useful to the general player-base as being called "server stability updates".
That would be far more detail than would be useful.... as server stability updates are going to be server configuration tweaks, possilble hardware updates or replacements and load-ballancings changes to the network. Which is more useful to the general player-base as being called "server stability updates".
I think for most people it's still mostly "computer magic", except they get to nod understandingly more often if you use longer sentences.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
They post an excessive list of things which are done, players raise a sh*tstorm because they will take offense at one thing or another, like why a certain thing hasn't been fixed/included/removed, how something got nerfed, whatever.
They post nothing or very little, players go up in flames as well.
So the end result stays the same, why not going with the cheaper alternative?
Really, were I to rake through the heap of flames day in day out, I'd just do the "post as little as you have to, then close the web browser and forget about the forum" routine, because I wouldn't deem the responses worth reading soon enough.
Yep, I'd understand well enough why a Cryptic employee wouldn't touch the forum with a ten foot rod anymore.
Honestly, I don't crash very often. I sometimes wonder if part of the problem is older computers, or graphics cards, not enough memory, slow internet, I just don't get it.
I mean the game is pretty buggy, Perfect World/Cryptic is pretty greedy, but I seldom crash. I'm sorry for your bad experiences and I hope that it get's sorted out.
I have an older comp and sto runs beautifully for me... granted I have to turn everything down as low as it goes but I almost never have cashes from sto. and my computer cashes all the time for everything else. I really need to get a new one. and it's a AMD computer. which I hear is terrible for sto.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
For me, the irony of this is...when I logged in yesterday evening and got that update...the game ran worse for me...and I have a screaming fast PC and a solid internet connection. Spare me the stability patches and fix the Klingon D7/K'tinga glowing nacelles please.
I would like to address some of the lag and rubber-banding issues people are having and point out not all of it is based in the game servers at Cryptic.
Cryptic uses Cogentco as their so-called ISP and Cogentco has a very long history of this type of problem on the Internet. Cogentco has great local links to their customers like Cryptic, but they rely TOTALLY on the "Free Peering" links with the REAL ISP's of the world to get the packets to the rest of us. What this means is Cogentco shoves massive amounts of traffic through these links which are supposed to be an equal amount of traffic initiated by both companies to the point that the Real ISP's have to regulate the traffic coming from Cogentco to avoid the links being overloaded. They do this by dropping the packets into the bit-bucket. This causes lag, rubber-banding, crashes, etc. Each time Cryptic checks their connection to Cogentco it looks fine and is running smoothly so they reply back to us with "Everything is fine on our end" because they just don't seem to understand where the real problem is. I have talked with several of my peers at the "Real" ISP NOCs (Network Operation Center) and it is always the same story over and over again. Cogentco is overloading the Free Peering links in violation of the agreement. The Real ISP's have had enough of Cogentco and I don't blame them for doing this. They are not in business to give Cogentco unlimited free Internet bandwidth.
If Cryptic would fire Cogentco and spend the extra money for a "Real" ISP, then we would see a much more stable connection and they would not have to constantly be doing "stability" patches on the servers to correct an issue they cannot fix with software patches on their servers.
Cryptic is not the only company that uses Cogentco and most every one of the other companies that use Cogentco have the very same connection issues that Cryptic has.
The old saying holds true in this case... You get what you pay for!
So until Cryptic gets someone working for them that actually knows how the Internet works, we will all suffer lag and rubber-banding. Oh by the way when one of the "free Peering" links gets throttled back by the Real ISP's, Cogentco sets up another link to another ISP and it all starts over again. And all of the sessions that were on the overloaded link get dropped. That is the main reason for most of your crashes to desktop. The session was just blasted into the void of nowhere so the game client does not know how to recover communications to the server.
I would offer my 37 years of networking knowledge to Cryptic to help them, but someone at Cryptic would have to know how to spell Network and Internet first!
Zeus :eek:
Yeah, I've heard some pretty bad things about Cogent Communications. On the flipside, there are those that are satisfied with their service.
Since Cogent is global, with servers located internationally, I serious doubt that Cryptic/PWE will drop them anytime soon. Especially, if it offers them "bang for the buck" on their earnings sheets.
Comments
Cryptic uses Cogentco as their so-called ISP and Cogentco has a very long history of this type of problem on the Internet. Cogentco has great local links to their customers like Cryptic, but they rely TOTALLY on the "Free Peering" links with the REAL ISP's of the world to get the packets to the rest of us. What this means is Cogentco shoves massive amounts of traffic through these links which are supposed to be an equal amount of traffic initiated by both companies to the point that the Real ISP's have to regulate the traffic coming from Cogentco to avoid the links being overloaded. They do this by dropping the packets into the bit-bucket. This causes lag, rubber-banding, crashes, etc. Each time Cryptic checks their connection to Cogentco it looks fine and is running smoothly so they reply back to us with "Everything is fine on our end" because they just don't seem to understand where the real problem is. I have talked with several of my peers at the "Real" ISP NOCs (Network Operation Center) and it is always the same story over and over again. Cogentco is overloading the Free Peering links in violation of the agreement. The Real ISP's have had enough of Cogentco and I don't blame them for doing this. They are not in business to give Cogentco unlimited free Internet bandwidth.
If Cryptic would fire Cogentco and spend the extra money for a "Real" ISP, then we would see a much more stable connection and they would not have to constantly be doing "stability" patches on the servers to correct an issue they cannot fix with software patches on their servers.
Cryptic is not the only company that uses Cogentco and most every one of the other companies that use Cogentco have the very same connection issues that Cryptic has.
The old saying holds true in this case... You get what you pay for!
So until Cryptic gets someone working for them that actually knows how the Internet works, we will all suffer lag and rubber-banding. Oh by the way when one of the "free Peering" links gets throttled back by the Real ISP's, Cogentco sets up another link to another ISP and it all starts over again. And all of the sessions that were on the overloaded link get dropped. That is the main reason for most of your crashes to desktop. The session was just blasted into the void of nowhere so the game client does not know how to recover communications to the server.
I would offer my 37 years of networking knowledge to Cryptic to help them, but someone at Cryptic would have to know how to spell Network and Internet first!
Zeus :eek:
My point about 'more detail' was because they actually said why it was a 4 hour downtime instead of the standard 2 hour downtime. Though Neverwinter CMs are much more on the ball with patches. If you check his post now you'll even notice that he's updated it a few times since maintenance started to let players know how it's progressing. We don't even get an update to say the servers are back up these days.
They optimized/defragged the databases and restarted, automated and initiated remotely, would be my guess.
Never. You don't change the engine of a game when it's already released.
You improve it, yes, but you don't replace it.
Moving to a new engine would be a long process.
it would be also good
Out of curiousity, what other games have you known to move to an entirely new engine?
STO isn't young game. I playing from the beginning. And I see a reduction in the stability of the game. Although there is widespread development of technologies in the computer industry.
How to miss the point completely...
No right minded individual objects to them having time off during the holidays FFS. What we've come to expect are solutions to problems created by said Devs not being addressed in a timely manner prior TO the holiday season.
An event which by it's nature is only run once a year is so fubared it couldn't be sorted 2 weeks before these holidays started. 2 stability updates, really? All well and good, but hardly what is expected.
Selfish, no, you're pointing fingers at the wrong people being selfish. Attitudes like yours are why these Devs believe they can get away with doing what they do now.
Fred Karno's legacy lives on
The cause of it could be be in any of the number of locations the connection passes through between the server and client.
As for the update, would you rather they not do maintenance on the servers and just let it slide?
You should be happy they do anything at all during the holidays, they could just as well have done nothing.
Improving the stability of the servers is just as important as any of the other fixes they do, its no point in fixing bugs and other issues with the game, if the servers are too unstale to run the game.
People complain when things are fixed, because its not what they think should be or want fixed.
People complain whe the things they want fixed are fixed.
Sometimes I think there are no pleaseing people.
Must be a really horrible job to have being a game developer when you have people always complaining about the work you do, never being satisfied.
Everquest1 and Anarchy Online did complete engine overhauls, and I believe WoW had a big engine upgrade in one of the expansions, Draenor or Mists I don't remember since I have not played any of these games in a long time, and don't recall the player dropoff after their updates.
EVE online significantly raised its graphic parameters. Its looks nice now. But I not been there a long time. I can not say anything about stability now
That wasn't the question. Do you know what a game engine is?
Defending The Galaxy By Breaking One Starfleet Regulation After The Next.
Everquest didn't change game engines - I understand Everquest 2 uses an updated engine, but that's not exactly the same thing, is it? And how many people here would be doing the Dance of Joy for STO 2 if it meant having to restart their characters from Level 1? Because that's one of the implications of a whole new game engine.
Honestly, I don't crash very often. I sometimes wonder if part of the problem is older computers, or graphics cards, not enough memory, slow internet, I just don't get it.
I mean the game is pretty buggy, Perfect World/Cryptic is pretty greedy, but I seldom crash. I'm sorry for your bad experiences and I hope that it get's sorted out.
That would be far more detail than would be useful.... as server stability updates are going to be server configuration tweaks, possilble hardware updates or replacements and load-ballancings changes to the network. Which is more useful to the general player-base as being called "server stability updates".
I think for most people it's still mostly "computer magic", except they get to nod understandingly more often if you use longer sentences.
Server stability updates, to fix server stability updates! Genius!
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
They post an excessive list of things which are done, players raise a sh*tstorm because they will take offense at one thing or another, like why a certain thing hasn't been fixed/included/removed, how something got nerfed, whatever.
They post nothing or very little, players go up in flames as well.
So the end result stays the same, why not going with the cheaper alternative?
Really, were I to rake through the heap of flames day in day out, I'd just do the "post as little as you have to, then close the web browser and forget about the forum" routine, because I wouldn't deem the responses worth reading soon enough.
Yep, I'd understand well enough why a Cryptic employee wouldn't touch the forum with a ten foot rod anymore.
It cannot happen. You would need to rewrite the whole game from scratch..
Exactly.
I have an older comp and sto runs beautifully for me... granted I have to turn everything down as low as it goes but I almost never have cashes from sto. and my computer cashes all the time for everything else. I really need to get a new one. and it's a AMD computer. which I hear is terrible for sto.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
Yeah, I've heard some pretty bad things about Cogent Communications. On the flipside, there are those that are satisfied with their service.
Since Cogent is global, with servers located internationally, I serious doubt that Cryptic/PWE will drop them anytime soon. Especially, if it offers them "bang for the buck" on their earnings sheets.