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What is being done about the lag and rubber banding? DEV RESPONSE Page 3
mattjohnsonva
Member Posts: 4,974 Arc User
It's getting worse Cryptic Devs, even sitting in sol and cycling my abilities I'm seeing short duration cool downs on most of them rather than instantaneous activations. My 80K ISA run is a distant memory as the same ship now with the same gear is lucky to parse 55K. I'm starting to forget what a torp spread looks like in ISA.
I think it's time we had some sort of feedback from the team as to what is being done with the lag in this game. For me personally it is the No 1 issue and judging from the comments in fleet and various channels it's pretty high up on most people's wish list although I wouldn't presume to speak for everyone.
I think it's time we had some sort of feedback from the team as to what is being done with the lag in this game. For me personally it is the No 1 issue and judging from the comments in fleet and various channels it's pretty high up on most people's wish list although I wouldn't presume to speak for everyone.
pwlaughingtrendy wrote: »There are a lot of working elements that are being changed with the powers affecting lag. Yesterday I went down to Cryptic and spoke with a couple people who really were able to put it into a better perspective for me.
The team is changing a lot of the way that these powers function with regards to the server. The major issue is their interaction with said server. Don't worry, your powers aren't going to be changing in a way that you can see (your pew pew and deeps deeps will largely go unaffected as I understand).
The team has a combined effort of different things. For one, they're fixing the powers as they can find them. There's been a large list of powers that they've already worked on to reduce the stress put on any server-side processes. The other effort is that they've included monitoring processes on live to get a better analysis of how different powers are hitting the server.
Let's say that mathematically, you have an interaction that creates a fair amount of server load. You get a few hundred people on Tribble using this at at time, and you might not see anything really substantial as far as server load goes.
But what if that same thing interacts with thousands of people on Holodeck? What if it's exponentially heavier on the server rather than simply additive? What if that power interacts with other powers creating an exponential recursive effect? It hits hard. But the team is working on it. Hell, they're bloody well tearing into the problem.
For a while, I have been putting out company-wide reports. I talk about this being an issue and in turn, Cryptic has been combing through the power interactions to change them so that you, the players, don't have this problem any more. They've showed me that they're working on it.
First thing: Game Crashes
The team has been working on a graphics related crash that's been dropping people. This is believed to be the major cause of crashes and it seems to be usually happening at or around startup. We have a test going through that will have potentially a major fix for it, but that's still in testing. We're getting more testing data on that.
We're still analyzing crash data to look in terms of any specific area related to it. There isn't a specific classification data pool for it (brand of graphics card, O/S, ram size, etc.) so the cause is still a little nebulous. But we're still narrowing in.
Second thing: Lag (Server Stalls)
There's a specific distinction between server stalling and client stalling. We have our data to tell us that there's data stalls happening on the server, so that's where a lot of our attention has been. We've been spending a lot of time doing analysis on the combat (powers) systems. This meant a lot of retooling of previously expensive computational designs. We're constantly retooling these powers so that they work better in terms of overall server load. This has been a case/case/case basis.
For some people, they see these in more intensive maps related to power usage. That being said, I'm happy with some of the changes I've been seeing. We're seeing another big batch of changes come into testing right now that we'll be able to analyze.
~LaughingTrendy
Post edited by mattjohnsonva on
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As soon as I entered the system, the video cut scenes were jerky, my ship would lurch forward at .5 - 1km intervals and trying to navigate was out of the question. I didn't parse (because who parses a storyline mission) but I am pretty sure that the NPC damage was at a normal rate but my damage was way lower than normal.
I would be quite happy if season II was titled "The End to Lag" and had no new content and only fixed their system and brought the gameplay quality back to what it was prior to Delta Rising.
Things are being done.
We've been (re)assured that they've got people working on cleaning up the lag, analyzing abilities that are deemed taxing on the server and optimizing them. Fixes are being released as they come, instead of waiting and getting doing a bunch at once. It's a continuing process.
So... they're trying?
It's not an excuse, but the DQ patrol missions are notorious for their latency. Personally i stay as far away from the ocampa freighter mission/patrol and some others.
Having said that, perhaps the community as a whole should look at the most widely used ability (BFAW) as a potential cause for the ingame latency.
It is basically like maintenance but instead of no server its 'login2 timeout" and a bag of other connection related messages. Sometimes the client just takes about 15 minutes to switch from patching to "engage" even though there is no patch - sometimes it just flat out won't do anything.
And its not just sto, its neverwinter too. While at the same time everything else works fine. I really hope they get on top of this because i strongly suspect that it costs them a lot of players.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/3fkrtd/lagits_been_beaten_to_deathbut_shouldnt_it_be/ctqkfea
Would it be such a bother for them to reply on their OWN forum?
I always find it funny that STO's forums are the worst and last place to get information. Reddit and Twitter are the place to be. Which sucks if you're older than 16.
I don't play Reddit Online, so i don't read Reddit Posts. Devs answering in an unofficial STO forum is an unofficial answer
I agree here. You know its bad when they don't even try to sort it out or tell stuff on their own forums.
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Check out some of the other threads there as well. They actually interact with people there.
Can't say I care for the layout there, but there doesn't really seem to be a point in coming here anymore.
They nerfed plasma explosions that should help with the lag. ;-)
I wonder how many got that reference... i did
So they just stuff the bug reports in a box marked "DO NOT OPEN" in Area 51 never to be seen or heard from again?
I also did.
Unfortunately, this is how I feel--whether it's STO or Duolingo where devs answer things on Reddit instead of on their official site. Unless it's on the official site, it isn't official.
What is also sad and annoying is that someone in that reddit blames us, the forumgoers, for being the reason that we don't receive official updates. While I sometimes call the business decisions like they are, I hope I demonstrate that it is perfectly possible to do so without a bunch of personal invective.
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You stole my thunder ! lol
"our systems designers are fixing up powers that are too "expensive" for our servers"
See this has me scratching my head. I thought they had upgraded some of their equipment in order to "improve stability".
I coulda swore that's what they said about a month ago.
I took that to mean that they were updating equipment to handle the increased load and the such.
Now it sounds like they're just Nursemaiding the old equipment.
Given game performance, especially at peak-times, (like the weekends), and in social zones, STFs, ect. Wouldn't increased capacity cause these problems too? I mean, I'm booted off all the time, a whole lot more on the weekends vs weekdays, same with the lag. (at least for me).
There have been times on the weekend, where I can't even log back into the account server, especially on the past few Sundays.
Nope I did not. But the last time I read about Cryptics Top Men looking into something it was to fix the bugged customization for the KDF Marauding (Diplomacy) Boff.
It got fixed about 2 years later as a side effect of removing what allowed KDF chars to save Risa-Bikini outfits on not zone restricted outfit slots.
I joined my fleet mates on an ISA run a few nights ago, the first I'd done for ages, since the last changes to the failure rules. I can see what Matt means when he mentions torp spreads. I lost count of the amount of times I requested this from my keybinds only to be greeted with....nothing...or one single torp fired.
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As for the fact that the devs post elsewhere instead of here just makes me fume. I dont read Reddit. THIS is the official STO forum, the place I turn to for news on the game.
I feel that communications are beginning to fail again. It improved greatly after the change in leadership at Cryptic but seems to have fallen by the wayside again.
Whenever there are systemic issues, game down, logins failing, etc. they post to twitter first and the forums last. I get it that twitter is essentially an instantaneous broadcast but not all of us are glued to twitter feeds!
So, you don't get the reference, but you understand the inference.
They are working on these things continuously.
Not everyone has problems. I for one, experience this only on the very odd occasions and I think most of that is due to the huge amount of apps I have open when I play!
Scanning this thread I see very little information that the Devs can use to help identify issues; I have only seen complaints.
Please give examples of maps/missions/powers that make the lag worse. Give dates, times (plus timezone!), errors, warnings etc that you get.
Did others in your team have everything freeze up at the same time?
If so or if not, are you all in the same country? (remember not give any personal information out!).
Have you given the results of a ping test.
The more information you can give, the more the engineers have to use to try and diagnose the problems to then work out a fix.
I also saw someone mention about the Dev Tracker. The new one is in production - we will have it here as soon as we can.
Exactly. There has been numerous, extremely detailed, traceroutes, ping tests and diagnostic output given on the forum before now. This is a call for an update on where we stand regarding this, as it is game breaking for many.
I found a post telling us like small children to submit more info quite frankly insulting, even more so from someone who starts his post off by stating how lag doesn't affect him? Wow. Just ... wow.