The other games I play have no issues like this. Just STO. And it doesn't have to be during an event. I'd guess it's a problem they can't fix or don't have the money to fix.
Potts, if a system is broken, it's broken for everyone. My car won't magically start just because I'm not there; my mother's roast beef doesn't become moist and tender when someone else eats it. (I love my mom, but she's really not much of a cook. My wife, on the other fork...)
If the servers lag, that means that all the information they process is slowed, not just yours. I know you want to feel special, everyone does, but that really doesn't apply here.
Potts, if a system is broken, it's broken for everyone. My car won't magically start just because I'm not there; my mother's roast beef doesn't become moist and tender when someone else eats it. (I love my mom, but she's really not much of a cook. My wife, on the other fork...)
If the servers lag, that means that all the information they process is slowed, not just yours. I know you want to feel special, everyone does, but that really doesn't apply here.
@jonsills That's not how servers or lag work and I am pretty sure I explained this to you before with proof and examples. There have been lots of well documented cases where the lag was 100% the servers fault but only effected a few or some players.
Server lag does not mean all information is slowed and so all players are slowed that's false. Depending on what is creating the server lag it can be the case all players are effected but just as often if not more often lag caused by the game server only effects some people while others are lag free.
Its got nothing to do with feeling special. Just because you say you have no server lag it doesn't mean there is no server lag nor does it mean no one else is experiencing real server lag or that Cryptic will be unable to fix it.
If the problems you describe were entirely in STO then such issues would be universally felt by the players. Since they are not then the problem is not contained within the servers. Which means there is little to nothing Cryptic can do about it.
Why do you keep spreading this misinformation when you know its not true. Its misleading and wrong and you know it. Server lag which is 100% the servers fault is often not universally felt by the players and Cryptic have often been able to fix what is causing that server lag.
Just because not all players are experiencing server lag it doesn't mean Cryptic can do nothing about it or that its not the servers fault.
This is why I don't contribute to these discussions, there is always the group that insists there is no lag. I don't know if those people are being intentionally disingenuous or if some people really just don't know how to recognize server lag. Either way, I have found it best just to abstain due to the lack of productivity involved in arguing with people that are basically arguing that the 'sky is orange.'
The game has lag, serious lag.. we can can try to pretend otherwise, but Cryptic knows it's there. Unfortunately, they have so far failed to eliminate it.. in fact, I have been playing slightly less lately because it's just annoying. I consider myself fortunate, I live in an area that has very high speed Internet, and I have the luxury of a very nice PC so it's rare for me to have any issues with lag on any game. Right now, out of 4 games I play online, STO is the only one that does this.
I am not going to argue with someone over something I know for sure is a fact. Now, the severity of this lag.. that's always debatable, it definitely effects people with differing levels of severity, but it's there for everyone. My experience with lag is far from 'unplayable' it's definitely enough to annoy me to the point that sometimes I just play something else.
That's pretty much how I feel and it sounds like we are in similar situations where its not our PC or internet connection. I have gone from doing daily TFO's to just doing endeavours and barely playing due to lag. Oddly this week I had both my best day and worse day from a lag point of view. For the first time in a year+ I had a lag free day, 2 days later I had my worst lag day with multiple disconnects, major rubber banding. You know its real lag or problems with the game server when everyone else in the same zone is experiencing it.
> @pottsey5g said:
> (Quote)
> Why do you keep spreading this misinformation when you know its not true. Its misleading and wrong and you know it. Server lag which is 100% the servers fault is often not universally felt by the players and Cryptic have often been able to fix what is causing that server lag.
>
> Just because not all players are experiencing server lag it doesn't mean Cryptic can do nothing about it or that its not the servers fault.
Why do you keep spreading this utter TRIBBLE which every person with coding knowledge says is utter TRIBBLE? I have never at any time said 1 damn thing "I know isn't true" you are wrong and nothing you say will change that.
We had this discussion before and in the thread it was proved to you that lag issues are not universally felt by the players and that just because its not universally felt it doesn't rule out it being contained within the servers. This was backed up with evidence and cases where lag was caused by the servers but only effecting some players while others where lag free. In one case aprox 10% of players had lag while the other 90% aprox had no lag but it was 100% caused by the severs and Cryptic fixed it.
Both @jonsills and you where in the thread and at the time I gave you both the proof you asked for. You both should know lag is not all or nothing, effecting all or zero players. Lag can be server side and only effect some players while others are lag free.
Sea why do continue to misconstrue what I say? I did not say there was no lag at all, check the post that pottsey cherry picked what to respond to. I specifically mention the small amount of lag I experienced yesterday.
@azrael605 - You were not the one I was referring to as a 'lag denier,' my apologies. Since I responded to a post that was a reply to you it made it look like I was talking specifically about you. I should have been more clear, sorry.
There have been many discussions on this topic over the last year and many people saying there is 'no lag at all' and they are either clueless or liars. I am not putting you in this group.
We both agree that there is lag, the question is the severity which seems to vary from player to player.
Lag is a very complex issue. It can be from the servers themselves, the LAN the servers are on, the user's network, or any place along the route between the two. It can even be the player's computer lagging (not frame dropping, that is different) in a few niche cases, like for instance if some of the game files are stored on a directory that is backed up by an internet storage service like OneDrive or Dropbox (putting things that the game changes a lot in "Documents" subfolders is the usual culprit of that). On any of those levels it can be either software or hardware related or some weird interaction of the two.
Cryptic has made numerous attempts to lower lag (with some success) so they probably have all the easier internal stuff covered and further improvements generally take far longer to get the same proportional amount of effect as the fixing process goes on (the last few percent are always the hardest in things like this).
Akami is a known issue not only in STO but in many other games too. Not only do they traffic shape in a way that favors streaming over things like gaming, and their DDoS detection sometimes mistakes gaming for attacks, there is also the fact that if anyone attacks anything that routes through Akami it responds by clamping everything coming in from those "attacking" routes along with any other routes that the attacker is likely to be switched to by normal internet operation when the logjam from the clamping trickles back. Gamers who are routed through any of those path elements that get clamped get lagged out.
It is not a case of some people are right and some are wrong about the causes of the lag in this game, everyone is right to some degree.
My lag/rubberbanding/disconnects is due to a bad router on my end. Something I can't do anything about until we can replace it. When it gets bad, resetting the router fixes it for awhile.
Now a LTS and loving it.
Just because you spend money on this game, it does not entitle you to be a jerk if things don't go your way.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a memory like Etch-A-Sketch. I shake my head and forget everything.
So what the game is from 2010? His specs are more then enough to play the game and I don't see how a 5.4krpm Hard Drive has anything to do with lag. I have a Ryzen 2700, RTX 2070 with 8gb and 1TB NVME M2 with 32gb 3200mhz DDR4 and 1gigabit Fiber Optic Internet connection. I get the same lag as most people here and when we play in teams people get the same lag at the same time even though they are in different locations world wide and have different computers / specs. Just because somebody has older hardware doesn't mean that this contribute to lag. By the way hard drive speed does not effect your fps in games look it up before you suggest to people to buy new hardware because of the way the game is today.
I suggest you read what I said again, but slower this time since you missed some major points. I NEVER said that his hardware was THE cause of his lag. What I said was that it's contributing to it. That's not the same thing as saying it's the direct cause of his issue. Although frame rate drops can often accompany lag, lag itself is not limited to manifesting exclusively as frame rate drops. Lag can appear as large skips around areas as well as input delays being 2 examples. An example of one of them being if you're walking down a 100 foot hallway. You only intend to go 25 feet, but lag kicks in and your command is not received to stop the toon until you've gone to 45 feet.
As to how a hard drive can contribute to the issue it's actually fairly simple and it lies in how the hard drive functions. A traditional hard drive aka "spinning rust" encodes data onto several magnetic discs with a special coating on them using the swing arm present in the drive. In order to read or write data to the discs the discs must be spun up to a certain speed and the little swing arm then reads the data on the disc or writes to it as needed. The slower the drive the longer it can take to read and write data to the drive. Because of how the data is stored and written on a HDD, this is also what can lead to fragmentation among the discs and why the drives need to be defragmented from time to time if they see alot of use. A Solid State Drive like it's name suggests, is a single solid piece of equipment and doesn't have moving parts like a traditional spinning rust drive. Solid State drives store their data by electrically encoding the data onto the flash chips present within the drive. Due to how the SSDs encode data onto the chips instead of using the mechanical methods of a traditional HDD they don't need to be defragmented like a HDD does. In fact trying to do so will lower the life expectancy of your drive as defragmenting will cause unnecessary writes to the disc. When something needs to read or write data from/to a SSD, it either reads or encodes the data electrically to the flash chips in the drive. Because it's done electrically and there are no mechanical parts that need to spin up etc, this process is far far faster with a SSD than a traditional HDD could ever accomplish. If someone only uses their rig for basic activities such as internet shopping, surfing youtube and such, they will most likely never notice a difference between using a SSD and HDD. However if they do anything that pushes the rig, such as modern gaming, the difference in performance becomes much more pronounced and obvious.
If you are playing a game with loading screens, be it STO or otherwise, it can also take longer to load into a map using a HDD vs a SSD. This was one of the chief complaints people had about the game Anthem when it was going really big. People complained about really long loading screens. It was soon discovered this was in part due to how the game handled data and also to only be effecting folks trying to play the game from a HDD instead of a SSD. Those folks who used a SSD were uneffected and could load into maps sometimes a full minute to 2 minutes faster than folks on a HDD. If you have 2 folks in STO that have the same setup as far as their rig goes, but the only difference is one is playing it from a SSD and the other a HDD, this is why the guy with the SSD will often get into the map before the guy with the HDD when it occurs. During each of those loads there is data that must be read about the map, where you're going, what's there etc. SSDs are far faster at reading that data and getting people rolling vs a HDD. Today if someone is going to play from a standard HDD then you really want the 7500 RPM drives if you're going to attempt to game as they read/write data faster than their slower counterparts at the cost of a bit more power draw to the power supply. SSDs and HDDs both still have their place, but for reading, writing, and transfers a SSD is far superior to a standard HDD. The downside is the SSD's flash chips are only good for so many writes before they eventually wear out and you need a new drive. A standard HDD today will last far longer than a SSD in terms of long term storage and can read/write data many times more than a SSD can do. For long term storage a HDD is the way to go. Currently you will also get more bang for your buck in terms of storage amount per dollar with a HDD vs a SSD. That may change in the future but is currently the way of things.
As to how this relates to our previous user, the fact that all they have is a 5400 RPM HDD is part of what's slowing them down in terms of getting the most power out of their rig. Not only does that drive have to account for anything Windows is doing, but it also must account for activities the game is doing as well. If Windows wants to do one thing with the drive but the game wants to do another, it's going to bog the drive down big time and he's going to feel that. While he may not be able to play the game at maxed out everything all the time he can at least play with medium-low graphics in today's game and that HDD is where his performance bottleneck is going to be at. Even going to a 7500 RPM drive he will notice a huge difference in performance. It would be even better if he could do a SSD for Windows and core programs and then a HDD for storage and such. Though that may not be possible depending on whether it's a laptop or not.
As to how this relates to the issues of lag with the STO itself. If there are hardware issues at play or internet issues, those can contribute to lag and rubberbanding making issues appear worse than they actually are. My rig is far superior to his yet I have also experienced lag and rubberbanding. However I have not experienced this lag/rubberbanding to the degree others with older hardware have experienced it. Older hardware and such can contribute to the already existing issues, but correlation does not equal causation.
Believe me I don't like these lag issues anymore than you do and I can assure you the devs don't either. The issue at play here is one, not enough data to pinpoint an exact cause or commonality. With the issues effecting such a wide variety of hardware configurations both newer and older, as well as different ISPs and such, it can be hard to pinpoint a cause. Right now as things sit we all know there is lag, and we all know it rubberbands at times. While hardware may be a contributing factor in some instances, this isn't always the case. For some people the issue is Akamai, for some it's not. For some it could be hardware, but for others its not. Get me or the devs some hard data showcasing an exact cause or something along those lines and it will get fixed or some kind of something to show how widespread these issues are. While I believe the folks here, just the few of us that come on here aren't always enough.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
I love STO but their insistance on not upgrading their servers seems to had started a downward spiral.
whenever I think back on months we had population spikes the servers couldnt handle making the game practically incapable to grow as it is caught in a vicious circle where whenever more people play the lag forces many old and new players quit.
I hope they realise the importance of a stable and mostly lag free service soon else things wont be good in the long run. I play another 4 mmos and got another 3-4 I visit few days a month. I never seen the problem elsewhere. STO is the king of lag
So what the game is from 2010? His specs are more then enough to play the game and I don't see how a 5.4krpm Hard Drive has anything to do with lag. I have a Ryzen 2700, RTX 2070 with 8gb and 1TB NVME M2 with 32gb 3200mhz DDR4 and 1gigabit Fiber Optic Internet connection. I get the same lag as most people here and when we play in teams people get the same lag at the same time even though they are in different locations world wide and have different computers / specs. Just because somebody has older hardware doesn't mean that this contribute to lag. By the way hard drive speed does not effect your fps in games look it up before you suggest to people to buy new hardware because of the way the game is today.
I suggest you read what I said again, but slower this time since you missed some major points. I NEVER said that his hardware was THE cause of his lag. What I said was that it's contributing to it. That's not the same thing as saying it's the direct cause of his issue. Although frame rate drops can often accompany lag, lag itself is not limited to manifesting exclusively as frame rate drops. Lag can appear as large skips around areas as well as input delays being 2 examples. An example of one of them being if you're walking down a 100 foot hallway. You only intend to go 25 feet, but lag kicks in and your command is not received to stop the toon until you've gone to 45 feet.
As to how a hard drive can contribute to the issue it's actually fairly simple and it lies in how the hard drive functions. A traditional hard drive aka "spinning rust" encodes data onto several magnetic discs with a special coating on them using the swing arm present in the drive. In order to read or write data to the discs the discs must be spun up to a certain speed and the little swing arm then reads the data on the disc or writes to it as needed. The slower the drive the longer it can take to read and write data to the drive. Because of how the data is stored and written on a HDD, this is also what can lead to fragmentation among the discs and why the drives need to be defragmented from time to time if they see alot of use. A Solid State Drive like it's name suggests, is a single solid piece of equipment and doesn't have moving parts like a traditional spinning rust drive. Solid State drives store their data by electrically encoding the data onto the flash chips present within the drive. Due to how the SSDs encode data onto the chips instead of using the mechanical methods of a traditional HDD they don't need to be defragmented like a HDD does. In fact trying to do so will lower the life expectancy of your drive as defragmenting will cause unnecessary writes to the disc. When something needs to read or write data from/to a SSD, it either reads or encodes the data electrically to the flash chips in the drive. Because it's done electrically and there are no mechanical parts that need to spin up etc, this process is far far faster with a SSD than a traditional HDD could ever accomplish. If someone only uses their rig for basic activities such as internet shopping, surfing youtube and such, they will most likely never notice a difference between using a SSD and HDD. However if they do anything that pushes the rig, such as modern gaming, the difference in performance becomes much more pronounced and obvious.
If you are playing a game with loading screens, be it STO or otherwise, it can also take longer to load into a map using a HDD vs a SSD. This was one of the chief complaints people had about the game Anthem when it was going really big. People complained about really long loading screens. It was soon discovered this was in part due to how the game handled data and also to only be effecting folks trying to play the game from a HDD instead of a SSD. Those folks who used a SSD were uneffected and could load into maps sometimes a full minute to 2 minutes faster than folks on a HDD. If you have 2 folks in STO that have the same setup as far as their rig goes, but the only difference is one is playing it from a SSD and the other a HDD, this is why the guy with the SSD will often get into the map before the guy with the HDD when it occurs. During each of those loads there is data that must be read about the map, where you're going, what's there etc. SSDs are far faster at reading that data and getting people rolling vs a HDD. Today if someone is going to play from a standard HDD then you really want the 7500 RPM drives if you're going to attempt to game as they read/write data faster than their slower counterparts at the cost of a bit more power draw to the power supply. SSDs and HDDs both still have their place, but for reading, writing, and transfers a SSD is far superior to a standard HDD. The downside is the SSD's flash chips are only good for so many writes before they eventually wear out and you need a new drive. A standard HDD today will last far longer than a SSD in terms of long term storage and can read/write data many times more than a SSD can do. For long term storage a HDD is the way to go. Currently you will also get more bang for your buck in terms of storage amount per dollar with a HDD vs a SSD. That may change in the future but is currently the way of things.
As to how this relates to our previous user, the fact that all they have is a 5400 RPM HDD is part of what's slowing them down in terms of getting the most power out of their rig. Not only does that drive have to account for anything Windows is doing, but it also must account for activities the game is doing as well. If Windows wants to do one thing with the drive but the game wants to do another, it's going to bog the drive down big time and he's going to feel that. While he may not be able to play the game at maxed out everything all the time he can at least play with medium-low graphics in today's game and that HDD is where his performance bottleneck is going to be at. Even going to a 7500 RPM drive he will notice a huge difference in performance. It would be even better if he could do a SSD for Windows and core programs and then a HDD for storage and such. Though that may not be possible depending on whether it's a laptop or not.
As to how this relates to the issues of lag with the STO itself. If there are hardware issues at play or internet issues, those can contribute to lag and rubberbanding making issues appear worse than they actually are. My rig is far superior to his yet I have also experienced lag and rubberbanding. However I have not experienced this lag/rubberbanding to the degree others with older hardware have experienced it. Older hardware and such can contribute to the already existing issues, but correlation does not equal causation.
Believe me I don't like these lag issues anymore than you do and I can assure you the devs don't either. The issue at play here is one, not enough data to pinpoint an exact cause or commonality. With the issues effecting such a wide variety of hardware configurations both newer and older, as well as different ISPs and such, it can be hard to pinpoint a cause. Right now as things sit we all know there is lag, and we all know it rubberbands at times. While hardware may be a contributing factor in some instances, this isn't always the case. For some people the issue is Akamai, for some it's not. For some it could be hardware, but for others its not. Get me or the devs some hard data showcasing an exact cause or something along those lines and it will get fixed or some kind of something to show how widespread these issues are. While I believe the folks here, just the few of us that come on here aren't always enough.
While what you say is mostly correct, in theory. It's pretty certain it doesn't apply.
STO is a 10 year old game on a 12+ year old engine. Sure, it's had some changes and improvements since then, but it's still that 10 y/o engine at it's core. A top of the line system in 2010 can play this game nearly as well now as it did back then. Keep in mind the game only added DX11 support in the last 5 or so years. DX11 has been around since Windows Vista. Even last year, I played this on a GTX 580, which was top of the line back then, and it was fine.
HDD speed is mostly irrelevant to lag. Yes, it slows your loading times. If you have enough RAM to not need to swap often, then it has little to no effect on runtime performance. If you have 8GB of RAM, running on Windows 7, and close most your other programs when loading STO, it works fine. I've done it. I used to play this game on a Core2 Duo laptop, before DX9 was killed. It would still run now if the GPU on it supported DX11. I can play it on my current Core i5 4310M with 8GB RAM with no difference in lag as to my core i7 3820 desktop, with 64GB RAM, both with SSDs in this case.
Yes, it can contribute, but in STO's case, it most assuredly does not. MMOs in general typically target lower-end specs than other games, to ensure more players can join in. STO's requirements were already fairly low back then (given it was DX9, and DX11 was already out).
Server hardware is far more contributing factor than client. Especially if multiple people are experiencing it at the same time (which if you look at zone chat... they do). I'd wager that's why the instance limit was lowered, to reduce CPU load. I would guess (I have some experience in game development) that each instance is on a CPU core. More specifically, every player in the same instance must be processed on the same thread, to deal with interactions and whatnot properly. What happens on instance 2 has zero effect on instance 1, so they can run in parallel. However Player 1 on instance 1 can make a difference on what player 2 does on instance 1. Lowering the instance limit lowers the CPU requirements of the server (per the point made earlier about 750k of work queued, but only 500k completed). Since that didn't fix the problem (or only fixed it partially), it's quite possible server specs (at least CPU) aren't contributing to lag in a major way. There could be other server factors contributing, such as RAM, but those are less predictable on what effects will happen. Of course, this only addresses Core speed really, the GHz of the server. Changing instance limits has an inverse effect on core utilization. eg. One core could support 40 players, but if you lower the limit to 20, then that is potentially split to 2 cores (though not necessarily, depending on affinity and workload). So it's not a perfect win even, lowering instance size.
This is further evidence of an ISP/networking issue. Not necessarily Akamai, could be internal switches for example. If a server switch is starting to fail, it could do contribute to this, though I would hope they'd have monitoring in place to detect a failing switch (as they'd have dropped and delayed packets internally as well as externally).
As for Akamai, the company where I worked also noticed some odd things with Akamai recently. We use them for load balancing or something for our websites, and the non-US urls were not being redirected properly. I don't recall the details, since I don't work in that department, but I remembered it was Akamai.
TL;DR
Given STO's age, client PC performance has maybe 0.01% chance of contributing to lag. Lower than the lockbox grand prize.
Unless there's only a handful of people experiencing lag (there isn't), not worth discussing IMO.
“Get me or the devs some hard data showcasing an exact cause or something along those lines and it will get fixed or some kind of something to show how widespread these issues are.”
What else are we meant to do? We have people myself included that have travelled 100’s+ of miles over multiple countries and reported the same rubber banding/lag no matter if we take the same hardware with us, use different hardware and/or use different internets connections.
In the past weeks I have travelled and stopped in 3 countries and across 1 ocean using both the same laptop for reference and different hardware testing on low and end high end equipment in different locations with different internets. Everything from 1MB to 350MB+ with wireless to wired. I have tested 2 miles down the road, 15miles, 300+ miles e.c.t Bar 1 day which I am writing off as a fluke as the other 4 tests in the location had lag, every single other day had lag and rubber banding. I am running out of ideas on how to prove there is lag or on what else to try.
It doesn’t though not really, assuming everything it setup and working correctly and we are not talking about lots of multitasking. I certainly agree SSDs can impact loading screens and performance but they don’t really impact the lag being talked about here.
Once past the loading screen and on the map outside of faulty hardware, faulty drivers there should be no difference in the network lag we are talking about between a 5400 RPM HDD, 7500 HDD, SSD or other system specs.
Or to put it another way with all unnecessary background apps switched off. If you run an ancient 5400 RPM machine with 4GB ram, 10 year old CPU with inbuilt GPU that is at the very minimum specs to run the game. Then run this alongside a high-end modern machine on the same network the lag should be the same. Your game would look x10 worse on the old machine but the way it plays with lag and rubber banding should be the same.
It doesn’t seem right to me to be pointing to someone’s old system specs and old hard drive and blaming that as contributing to network lag. Old hardware correctly setup should not be creating any difference in network lag and rubber banding over modern hardware.
I am not trying to say hardware is never an issue. We can for sure have hardware related issues, internet issues or even software issues. What I am trying to say is if the drivers are good and everything’s setup correctly the old hardware doesn’t contribute to lag/rubber banding over a modern high-end system in Star Trek.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
The other games I play have no issues like this. Just STO. And it doesn't have to be during an event. I'd guess it's a problem they can't fix or don't have the money to fix.
It may also be insufficient server hardware for this kind of mmo since practically almost all mmos in the market dont lag or dont lag as much - so yes that would require time and downtime to migrate the game to new hardware(aka money + money lost for the time the game isnt accessible) but if they dont solve the problems I cant see how this game will grow.
It crossed many times my mind that this game doesnt run on dedicated servers but rather in VM instances
Either way I cant blame them for not trying, they do try it but seems its not enough, probably due to the old hardware
This isn't about proving whether there is lag, but rather where and what is causing it. See the new thread to provide the requested data. /Thread
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Comments
If the servers lag, that means that all the information they process is slowed, not just yours. I know you want to feel special, everyone does, but that really doesn't apply here.
Server lag does not mean all information is slowed and so all players are slowed that's false. Depending on what is creating the server lag it can be the case all players are effected but just as often if not more often lag caused by the game server only effects some people while others are lag free.
Its got nothing to do with feeling special. Just because you say you have no server lag it doesn't mean there is no server lag nor does it mean no one else is experiencing real server lag or that Cryptic will be unable to fix it.
Both @jonsills and you where in the thread and at the time I gave you both the proof you asked for. You both should know lag is not all or nothing, effecting all or zero players. Lag can be server side and only effect some players while others are lag free.
@azrael605 - You were not the one I was referring to as a 'lag denier,' my apologies. Since I responded to a post that was a reply to you it made it look like I was talking specifically about you. I should have been more clear, sorry.
There have been many discussions on this topic over the last year and many people saying there is 'no lag at all' and they are either clueless or liars. I am not putting you in this group.
We both agree that there is lag, the question is the severity which seems to vary from player to player.
Cryptic has made numerous attempts to lower lag (with some success) so they probably have all the easier internal stuff covered and further improvements generally take far longer to get the same proportional amount of effect as the fixing process goes on (the last few percent are always the hardest in things like this).
Akami is a known issue not only in STO but in many other games too. Not only do they traffic shape in a way that favors streaming over things like gaming, and their DDoS detection sometimes mistakes gaming for attacks, there is also the fact that if anyone attacks anything that routes through Akami it responds by clamping everything coming in from those "attacking" routes along with any other routes that the attacker is likely to be switched to by normal internet operation when the logjam from the clamping trickles back. Gamers who are routed through any of those path elements that get clamped get lagged out.
It is not a case of some people are right and some are wrong about the causes of the lag in this game, everyone is right to some degree.
I suggest you read what I said again, but slower this time since you missed some major points. I NEVER said that his hardware was THE cause of his lag. What I said was that it's contributing to it. That's not the same thing as saying it's the direct cause of his issue. Although frame rate drops can often accompany lag, lag itself is not limited to manifesting exclusively as frame rate drops. Lag can appear as large skips around areas as well as input delays being 2 examples. An example of one of them being if you're walking down a 100 foot hallway. You only intend to go 25 feet, but lag kicks in and your command is not received to stop the toon until you've gone to 45 feet.
As to how a hard drive can contribute to the issue it's actually fairly simple and it lies in how the hard drive functions. A traditional hard drive aka "spinning rust" encodes data onto several magnetic discs with a special coating on them using the swing arm present in the drive. In order to read or write data to the discs the discs must be spun up to a certain speed and the little swing arm then reads the data on the disc or writes to it as needed. The slower the drive the longer it can take to read and write data to the drive. Because of how the data is stored and written on a HDD, this is also what can lead to fragmentation among the discs and why the drives need to be defragmented from time to time if they see alot of use. A Solid State Drive like it's name suggests, is a single solid piece of equipment and doesn't have moving parts like a traditional spinning rust drive. Solid State drives store their data by electrically encoding the data onto the flash chips present within the drive. Due to how the SSDs encode data onto the chips instead of using the mechanical methods of a traditional HDD they don't need to be defragmented like a HDD does. In fact trying to do so will lower the life expectancy of your drive as defragmenting will cause unnecessary writes to the disc. When something needs to read or write data from/to a SSD, it either reads or encodes the data electrically to the flash chips in the drive. Because it's done electrically and there are no mechanical parts that need to spin up etc, this process is far far faster with a SSD than a traditional HDD could ever accomplish. If someone only uses their rig for basic activities such as internet shopping, surfing youtube and such, they will most likely never notice a difference between using a SSD and HDD. However if they do anything that pushes the rig, such as modern gaming, the difference in performance becomes much more pronounced and obvious.
If you are playing a game with loading screens, be it STO or otherwise, it can also take longer to load into a map using a HDD vs a SSD. This was one of the chief complaints people had about the game Anthem when it was going really big. People complained about really long loading screens. It was soon discovered this was in part due to how the game handled data and also to only be effecting folks trying to play the game from a HDD instead of a SSD. Those folks who used a SSD were uneffected and could load into maps sometimes a full minute to 2 minutes faster than folks on a HDD. If you have 2 folks in STO that have the same setup as far as their rig goes, but the only difference is one is playing it from a SSD and the other a HDD, this is why the guy with the SSD will often get into the map before the guy with the HDD when it occurs. During each of those loads there is data that must be read about the map, where you're going, what's there etc. SSDs are far faster at reading that data and getting people rolling vs a HDD. Today if someone is going to play from a standard HDD then you really want the 7500 RPM drives if you're going to attempt to game as they read/write data faster than their slower counterparts at the cost of a bit more power draw to the power supply. SSDs and HDDs both still have their place, but for reading, writing, and transfers a SSD is far superior to a standard HDD. The downside is the SSD's flash chips are only good for so many writes before they eventually wear out and you need a new drive. A standard HDD today will last far longer than a SSD in terms of long term storage and can read/write data many times more than a SSD can do. For long term storage a HDD is the way to go. Currently you will also get more bang for your buck in terms of storage amount per dollar with a HDD vs a SSD. That may change in the future but is currently the way of things.
As to how this relates to our previous user, the fact that all they have is a 5400 RPM HDD is part of what's slowing them down in terms of getting the most power out of their rig. Not only does that drive have to account for anything Windows is doing, but it also must account for activities the game is doing as well. If Windows wants to do one thing with the drive but the game wants to do another, it's going to bog the drive down big time and he's going to feel that. While he may not be able to play the game at maxed out everything all the time he can at least play with medium-low graphics in today's game and that HDD is where his performance bottleneck is going to be at. Even going to a 7500 RPM drive he will notice a huge difference in performance. It would be even better if he could do a SSD for Windows and core programs and then a HDD for storage and such. Though that may not be possible depending on whether it's a laptop or not.
As to how this relates to the issues of lag with the STO itself. If there are hardware issues at play or internet issues, those can contribute to lag and rubberbanding making issues appear worse than they actually are. My rig is far superior to his yet I have also experienced lag and rubberbanding. However I have not experienced this lag/rubberbanding to the degree others with older hardware have experienced it. Older hardware and such can contribute to the already existing issues, but correlation does not equal causation.
Believe me I don't like these lag issues anymore than you do and I can assure you the devs don't either. The issue at play here is one, not enough data to pinpoint an exact cause or commonality. With the issues effecting such a wide variety of hardware configurations both newer and older, as well as different ISPs and such, it can be hard to pinpoint a cause. Right now as things sit we all know there is lag, and we all know it rubberbands at times. While hardware may be a contributing factor in some instances, this isn't always the case. For some people the issue is Akamai, for some it's not. For some it could be hardware, but for others its not. Get me or the devs some hard data showcasing an exact cause or something along those lines and it will get fixed or some kind of something to show how widespread these issues are. While I believe the folks here, just the few of us that come on here aren't always enough.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
whenever I think back on months we had population spikes the servers couldnt handle making the game practically incapable to grow as it is caught in a vicious circle where whenever more people play the lag forces many old and new players quit.
I hope they realise the importance of a stable and mostly lag free service soon else things wont be good in the long run. I play another 4 mmos and got another 3-4 I visit few days a month. I never seen the problem elsewhere. STO is the king of lag
While what you say is mostly correct, in theory. It's pretty certain it doesn't apply.
STO is a 10 year old game on a 12+ year old engine. Sure, it's had some changes and improvements since then, but it's still that 10 y/o engine at it's core. A top of the line system in 2010 can play this game nearly as well now as it did back then. Keep in mind the game only added DX11 support in the last 5 or so years. DX11 has been around since Windows Vista. Even last year, I played this on a GTX 580, which was top of the line back then, and it was fine.
HDD speed is mostly irrelevant to lag. Yes, it slows your loading times. If you have enough RAM to not need to swap often, then it has little to no effect on runtime performance. If you have 8GB of RAM, running on Windows 7, and close most your other programs when loading STO, it works fine. I've done it. I used to play this game on a Core2 Duo laptop, before DX9 was killed. It would still run now if the GPU on it supported DX11. I can play it on my current Core i5 4310M with 8GB RAM with no difference in lag as to my core i7 3820 desktop, with 64GB RAM, both with SSDs in this case.
Yes, it can contribute, but in STO's case, it most assuredly does not. MMOs in general typically target lower-end specs than other games, to ensure more players can join in. STO's requirements were already fairly low back then (given it was DX9, and DX11 was already out).
Server hardware is far more contributing factor than client. Especially if multiple people are experiencing it at the same time (which if you look at zone chat... they do). I'd wager that's why the instance limit was lowered, to reduce CPU load. I would guess (I have some experience in game development) that each instance is on a CPU core. More specifically, every player in the same instance must be processed on the same thread, to deal with interactions and whatnot properly. What happens on instance 2 has zero effect on instance 1, so they can run in parallel. However Player 1 on instance 1 can make a difference on what player 2 does on instance 1. Lowering the instance limit lowers the CPU requirements of the server (per the point made earlier about 750k of work queued, but only 500k completed). Since that didn't fix the problem (or only fixed it partially), it's quite possible server specs (at least CPU) aren't contributing to lag in a major way. There could be other server factors contributing, such as RAM, but those are less predictable on what effects will happen. Of course, this only addresses Core speed really, the GHz of the server. Changing instance limits has an inverse effect on core utilization. eg. One core could support 40 players, but if you lower the limit to 20, then that is potentially split to 2 cores (though not necessarily, depending on affinity and workload). So it's not a perfect win even, lowering instance size.
This is further evidence of an ISP/networking issue. Not necessarily Akamai, could be internal switches for example. If a server switch is starting to fail, it could do contribute to this, though I would hope they'd have monitoring in place to detect a failing switch (as they'd have dropped and delayed packets internally as well as externally).
As for Akamai, the company where I worked also noticed some odd things with Akamai recently. We use them for load balancing or something for our websites, and the non-US urls were not being redirected properly. I don't recall the details, since I don't work in that department, but I remembered it was Akamai.
TL;DR
Given STO's age, client PC performance has maybe 0.01% chance of contributing to lag. Lower than the lockbox grand prize.
Unless there's only a handful of people experiencing lag (there isn't), not worth discussing IMO.
our CM is asking to report him on lag spikes with most detail possible
In the past weeks I have travelled and stopped in 3 countries and across 1 ocean using both the same laptop for reference and different hardware testing on low and end high end equipment in different locations with different internets. Everything from 1MB to 350MB+ with wireless to wired. I have tested 2 miles down the road, 15miles, 300+ miles e.c.t Bar 1 day which I am writing off as a fluke as the other 4 tests in the location had lag, every single other day had lag and rubber banding. I am running out of ideas on how to prove there is lag or on what else to try.
It doesn’t though not really, assuming everything it setup and working correctly and we are not talking about lots of multitasking. I certainly agree SSDs can impact loading screens and performance but they don’t really impact the lag being talked about here.
Once past the loading screen and on the map outside of faulty hardware, faulty drivers there should be no difference in the network lag we are talking about between a 5400 RPM HDD, 7500 HDD, SSD or other system specs.
Or to put it another way with all unnecessary background apps switched off. If you run an ancient 5400 RPM machine with 4GB ram, 10 year old CPU with inbuilt GPU that is at the very minimum specs to run the game. Then run this alongside a high-end modern machine on the same network the lag should be the same. Your game would look x10 worse on the old machine but the way it plays with lag and rubber banding should be the same.
It doesn’t seem right to me to be pointing to someone’s old system specs and old hard drive and blaming that as contributing to network lag. Old hardware correctly setup should not be creating any difference in network lag and rubber banding over modern hardware.
I am not trying to say hardware is never an issue. We can for sure have hardware related issues, internet issues or even software issues. What I am trying to say is if the drivers are good and everything’s setup correctly the old hardware doesn’t contribute to lag/rubber banding over a modern high-end system in Star Trek.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
It may also be insufficient server hardware for this kind of mmo since practically almost all mmos in the market dont lag or dont lag as much - so yes that would require time and downtime to migrate the game to new hardware(aka money + money lost for the time the game isnt accessible) but if they dont solve the problems I cant see how this game will grow.
It crossed many times my mind that this game doesnt run on dedicated servers but rather in VM instances
Either way I cant blame them for not trying, they do try it but seems its not enough, probably due to the old hardware
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