I will only say this one other time, drop the bickering. If you have a problem with the signature as I said prior, direct it to the community manager Ambassador Kael. Now with that said, I get that folks are annoyed by lack of action or perceived lack of action on Cryptic's part. I wish I had more information to give you guys in regards to the lag issues and similar people have had. I've forwarded the bits of information that could be gleaned from this thread over the past year. What they do now is up to them. If they tell me something I can share I will do so. I will admit I'm not a fan of Akamai either, but that's neither here nor there until Cryptic decides to act.
I can share with you guys that for some folks I have found that the Windows 10 Game Mode interferes with STO a good bit. It didn't completely eliminate all issues but it drastically cut them down for me. Might work for some of you as well. Not always a guaranteed thing. With that said, I can assure you guys I'm still doing what I can on my end when issues arise. They've not abandoned the game, especially with new series still airing. Beyond that idk what else I can tell you folks at this point, save the occasional tech tip that works for some until I get more information myself.
"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
Tracert 16:35 20/08/2020
Location Risa
Standing next to flying high NPC.
May have caught multiple login attempts on this tracert games only just come back up
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms ttrouter [192.168.1.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 11 ms 9 ms 9 ms ae54-ner002.csm.as13285.net [78.144.1.19]
4 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms ae54-scr101.loh.as13285.net [78.144.1.18]
5 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms akamai.prolexic.com [195.66.224.31]
6 431 ms * 320 ms po110.bs-b.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.200]
7 509 ms 691 ms 265 ms a72-52-1-199.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.199]
8 43 ms 13 ms 12 ms ae121.access-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.205]
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 94 ms 93 ms 93 ms a209-200-171-102.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [209.200.171.102]
11 110 ms 96 ms 97 ms 198.49.243.237
12 93 ms 93 ms 93 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
Today I had some rubberbanding, on my torpedos hehe, that was really weird and cool at the same time, the look was like the old movie Robin Hood, Men in Tights scene, my torpedos got another shot.
"Nuke the entire site from orbit--it's the only way to be sure"
Just had rubber banding and server not responding which then kicked me out game, 3:42pm GMT UK
did trace route after getting kicked, was flying around on Risa after doing Flying High mission
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 24 ms 5 ms 2 ms fritz.box [192.168.1.1]
2 48 ms 14 ms 14 ms vt1.cor1.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.72.21]
3 15 ms 71 ms 20 ms ae-3.pe2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.12]
4 14 ms 14 ms 13 ms ae-2.br1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.117]
5 14 ms 15 ms 15 ms 5.57.81.220
6 539 ms 319 ms 586 ms po111.bs-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.194]
7 605 ms * 606 ms a72-52-1-157.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.157]
8 31 ms 15 ms 15 ms ae120.access-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.197]
9 103 ms 113 ms 92 ms 93.191.173.11
10 91 ms 91 ms 96 ms a72-52-27-212.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.27.212]
11 104 ms 97 ms 99 ms 198.49.243.237
12 96 ms 96 ms 96 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 11 ms 2 ms 2 ms fritz.box [192.168.1.1]
2 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms vt1.cor1.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.72.21]
3 13 ms 14 ms 15 ms ae-3.pe2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.12]
4 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms ae-2.br1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.117]
5 15 ms 14 ms 15 ms 5.57.81.220
6 * 413 ms 426 ms po111.bs-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.194]
7 599 ms 692 ms 639 ms a72-52-1-157.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.157]
8 16 ms 15 ms 14 ms ae120.access-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.197]
9 149 ms 130 ms 92 ms 93.191.173.11
10 97 ms 96 ms 96 ms a72-52-27-212.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.27.212]
11 106 ms 95 ms 99 ms 198.49.243.237
12 96 ms 96 ms 96 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
Trace complete.
C:\Windows\system32>
Soft Tribble Warm Tribble, Little ball of fur, Happy Tribble, Sleepy Tribble, Purr Purr Purr
Hard Gorny, Cold Gorny, Big Ball of Scales, Angry Gorny, Fighty Gorny, Hiss, Hiss Hisssss
History will never forget the name "InvalidEntityName"
I will only say this one other time, drop the bickering. If you have a problem with the signature as I said prior, direct it to the community manager Ambassador Kael. Now with that said, I get that folks are annoyed by lack of action or perceived lack of action on Cryptic's part. I wish I had more information to give you guys in regards to the lag issues and similar people have had. I've forwarded the bits of information that could be gleaned from this thread over the past year. What they do now is up to them. If they tell me something I can share I will do so. I will admit I'm not a fan of Akamai either, but that's neither here nor there until Cryptic decides to act.
I can share with you guys that for some folks I have found that the Windows 10 Game Mode interferes with STO a good bit. It didn't completely eliminate all issues but it drastically cut them down for me. Might work for some of you as well. Not always a guaranteed thing. With that said, I can assure you guys I'm still doing what I can on my end when issues arise. They've not abandoned the game, especially with new series still airing. Beyond that idk what else I can tell you folks at this point, save the occasional tech tip that works for some until I get more information myself.
The game doesn't play well with MSI motherboard utilities either, especially the DSP part of the sound suite the motherboard comes with, which can be an annoyance if you use it to compensate for poor speakers or bad room acoustics. Oddly enough, one of the few of those utilities it does not seem to have a problem with is the MSI gaming lan manager.
This lag really needs fixing yet again I just lost a morning play session due to lag which in turn caused an AFK penalty. Its not the first time this has happened
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
This lag really needs fixing yet again I just lost a morning play session due to lag which in turn caused an AFK penalty. Its not the first time this has happened
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
Most games have it to some extent, so leaving STO for something else due to lag or rubberbanding is not particularly effective. ESO is worse than STO quite often for instance, and some of the secondlife and opensim stuff is much worse yet.
A few games, like ArchAge you don't notice it so much just walking around, but the lag silently kills your dps because the way that game handles combat so you can keep shooting even lower level mobs without doing much damage to them when it is bad.
This lag really needs fixing yet again I just lost a morning play session due to lag which in turn caused an AFK penalty. Its not the first time this has happened
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
Most games have it to some extent, so leaving STO for something else due to lag or rubberbanding is not particularly effective. ESO is worse than STO quite often for instance, and some of the secondlife and opensim stuff is much worse yet.
A few games, like ArchAge you don't notice it so much just walking around, but the lag silently kills your dps because the way that game handles combat so you can keep shooting even lower level mobs without doing much damage to them when it is bad.
That's not right in my expreince as leaving STO for other games is very effective. Due to lag problems with STO I have been playing other online games all day and its been a much better expreince in those other games with zero lag over the rubberbanding lag fest that STO has turned into. Looking back all year I have have 99% no lag problems in other games and the times I did get lag it was minor and didn't disrupt the game like STO lag.
As some examples in Age of Wonders Planetfall in over 100 hours I had less then 1 hour of lag. In Division 2 in not far off 300 hours I had 1 hour of lag. The past 400 hours of STO has been 390 hours of lag and rubberbanding.
The lag and rubberbanding in STO is much worse then then most other online games in fact I rate STO lag as extremely bad compared to most other online games.
This lag really needs fixing yet again I just lost a morning play session due to lag which in turn caused an AFK penalty. Its not the first time this has happened
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
Most games have it to some extent, so leaving STO for something else due to lag or rubberbanding is not particularly effective. ESO is worse than STO quite often for instance, and some of the secondlife and opensim stuff is much worse yet.
A few games, like ArchAge you don't notice it so much just walking around, but the lag silently kills your dps because the way that game handles combat so you can keep shooting even lower level mobs without doing much damage to them when it is bad.
That's not right in my expreince as leaving STO for other games is very effective.
The lag and rubberbanding in STO is much worse then then most other online games in fact I rate STO lag as extremely bad compared to most other online games.
I totally agree...sort of. I won't leave the game, but I will NOT be spending any more actual money on this game either. If more people follow suit, that can be just as bad as people leaving the game altogether. Now this is only my opinion, but I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way. Cryptic (or whatever) knows damn well, WHERE the issues are. But for reasons which they won't say, NOTHING is going to be done about it. All these surveys and trace route requests...well I feel it's all for show, to try and keep us "calm". I don't think they intend to do ANYTHING about it...so long as people keep throwing their money at this game. If that cash flow stops, or at least slows down to where they actually take notice...I feel ONLY then will this issue be remedied.
This lag really needs fixing yet again I just lost a morning play session due to lag which in turn caused an AFK penalty. Its not the first time this has happened
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
Most games have it to some extent, so leaving STO for something else due to lag or rubberbanding is not particularly effective. ESO is worse than STO quite often for instance, and some of the secondlife and opensim stuff is much worse yet.
A few games, like ArchAge you don't notice it so much just walking around, but the lag silently kills your dps because the way that game handles combat so you can keep shooting even lower level mobs without doing much damage to them when it is bad.
That's not right in my expreince as leaving STO for other games is very effective. Due to lag problems with STO I have been playing other online games all day and its been a much better expreince in those other games with zero lag over the rubberbanding lag fest that STO has turned into. Looking back all year I have have 99% no lag problems in other games and the times I did get lag it was minor and didn't disrupt the game like STO lag.
As some examples in Age of Wonders Planetfall in over 100 hours I had less then 1 hour of lag. In Division 2 in not far off 300 hours I had 1 hour of lag. The past 400 hours of STO has been 390 hours of lag and rubberbanding.
The lag and rubberbanding in STO is much worse then then most other online games in fact I rate STO lag as extremely bad compared to most other online games.
Age of Wonders is turn based so yes, it is mostly lag-proof, it is the realtime games that have the most problems. And of realtime games, shooters that have little or no customization fair the best. I am not sure exactly what Division 2 is like (I have never played it) but on the surface at least it looks a lot like Defiance and the other low-Barbie shooters in that respect.
And some game engines are naturally lag resistant, usually they have a huge HDD footprint (and take forever to download) because they have so much of the graphics and whatnot on the player's machine and simpler presets for colors and whatnot to reduce the amount of signals passing between the client and server, or they have very simple graphics and/or controls.
Others are just better at hiding the hit your are taking from the lag, like the AA example where it silently strangles your DPS (bows in that game are the worst hit, if you have a laggy connection they become effectively useless). Rubberbanding is just the most noticeable form of lag problem.
In STO the engine is for realtime combat, and there is considerable space Barbie so they are transmitting a lot of information about what you see compared to low-Barbie-factor shooters. And it is not unusually bad for MMORPGs, those by definition have the worst problems with lag. I already mentioned ESO, ArcheAge, and Secret World Legends, but those are far from the only other ones with problems
There is probably not a lot of stuff Cryptic can do with the engine since it is old and was not designed with today's traffic shaping in mind. One thing they have already done is the autofire stuff, if they did it serverside (which they probably did) that would reduce the command traffic somewhat since it would only have to deal with the initial command to open fire and the sever takes it from there instead of the client transmitting a separate fire command for every weapon every time (which is the root of ArcheAge's DPS loss problem btw, since they have that one-to-one ratio).
There is also the factor that if you happen to be on a CDN that owns a game company you can bet that company's games get priority now that net neutrality is gone. Also, crossing between CDNs can be a problem because of the way packets tend to get squeezed into bursts by the traffic shaping and the exact methods differ between the CDNs so they are even more likely to get out of order or dropped. It is especially bad when crossing between Akami and Cloudflare, an intermittent glitch those two companies have been working on for years to figure out, and have not yet gotten there.
I have occasionally been running pcaps and using Wireshark to analyze them (though I am having to relearn a lot of it as I go so I may be wrong) and the pattern of out of order packets and lost packets actually does look like something is not quite right with the traffic shaping, like the game is getting too low of a priority for smooth running, and maybe some of it is cached that should not be.
Anyway, while there may be some things left Cryptic could do serverside, possibly speeding database lookups or whatever, or arraigning something to reduce the client-server communications more, those are not quick and easy things to do. And the Akami stuff is out of their hands without an extremely solid case.
This lag really needs fixing yet again I just lost a morning play session due to lag which in turn caused an AFK penalty. Its not the first time this has happened
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
Most games have it to some extent, so leaving STO for something else due to lag or rubberbanding is not particularly effective. ESO is worse than STO quite often for instance, and some of the secondlife and opensim stuff is much worse yet.
A few games, like ArchAge you don't notice it so much just walking around, but the lag silently kills your dps because the way that game handles combat so you can keep shooting even lower level mobs without doing much damage to them when it is bad.
That's not right in my expreince as leaving STO for other games is very effective. Due to lag problems with STO I have been playing other online games all day and its been a much better expreince in those other games with zero lag over the rubberbanding lag fest that STO has turned into. Looking back all year I have have 99% no lag problems in other games and the times I did get lag it was minor and didn't disrupt the game like STO lag.
As some examples in Age of Wonders Planetfall in over 100 hours I had less then 1 hour of lag. In Division 2 in not far off 300 hours I had 1 hour of lag. The past 400 hours of STO has been 390 hours of lag and rubberbanding.
The lag and rubberbanding in STO is much worse then then most other online games in fact I rate STO lag as extremely bad compared to most other online games.
Age of Wonders is turn based so yes, it is mostly lag-proof, it is the realtime games that have the most problems. And of realtime games, shooters that have little or no customization fair the best. I am not sure exactly what Division 2 is like (I have never played it) but on the surface at least it looks a lot like Defiance and the other low-Barbie shooters in that respect.
....
Firstly, it’s not about being lag proof its that there is no lag in the first place. As for Age of Wonders its simultaneous. You can only do so many actions a turn but everyone does the actions simultaneously so lag does matter.
Division isn’t a low barbie shooter it’s a real time mass RPG online shooter where reactions matter more then STO does and it has as much space barbie as STO if not more then STO. So, its transmitting as much if not more data than STO. Division is well known for its highly detailed world.
But that’s not the point. Over the years with many 1000's of hours of gaming the only game I expreince this level of lag and rubberbanding is STO. Its not that the other games are hiding the lag better its they they do not have the lag problems STO has in the first place. I don’t know why you are defending STO as the lag and rubber banding is well beyond normal online game levels and well beyond acceptable levels both in how bad it is and how long it’s being going on for and a lot of it is Cryptic fault and their job to fix. Even when I played Everquest, D&D, Neverwinter and all the others the lag was tiny in comparison to the problems in STO over the past 3+ years. I am not saying those games are 100% lag free they do have the odd bad night/day. But none of them have lag daily every single day for 3 years+.
“There is probably not a lot of stuff Cryptic can do with the engine since it is old and was not designed with today's traffic shaping in mind.“
Strongly disagree as other MMORPG including the space ones managed to do large rewrites of entire sections of the engine. Even STO has done that in the past so its been shown it can be done.
I also don’t buy that Akami is out of their hands. Yes solutions take time but they have had more then enough time so the blame falls onto Cryptic. Both from terrible communication to finding a solution. They have had more then enough time to run a detailed investigation and tell us the results even if they cannot fix it. When we had the server lag problems in 2015 they put out a statement what caused it and even though they couldn't fix it right away we where accepting. The problem today is the lack of communication.
Another space MMO I used to play contacted the ISP and other known problem areas like Akami and got it fixed. Why can STO not do the same? Other parts of the lag like the engine freezing up for a split second on certain actions is 100% Cryptic fault and given how the actions are 100% repeatable and confirmed by multiple players the actions they should have found the cause by now. For example how many years has the entire engine frozen up when we open the skill page or endeavor finishes.
I totally agree...sort of. I won't leave the game, but I will NOT be spending any more actual money on this game either. If more people follow suit, that can be just as bad as people leaving the game altogether. Now this is only my opinion, but I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way. Cryptic (or whatever) knows damn well, WHERE the issues are. But for reasons which they won't say, NOTHING is going to be done about it. All these surveys and trace route requests...well I feel it's all for show, to try and keep us "calm". I don't think they intend to do ANYTHING about it...so long as people keep throwing their money at this game. If that cash flow stops, or at least slows down to where they actually take notice...I feel ONLY then will this issue be remedied.
Agreed Cryptic/PWE couldn't give a flying fook about the server stability. As long as people can login and spend money that's the only thing they care about. If people stop spending money and hurt the bottom line then that's the only way we are going to get change from this company.
Officially my wallet is closed
I did have bit of a reprieve and reduction in rubber banding last week but it's hit back this weekend with a vengeance
This lag really needs fixing yet again I just lost a morning play session due to lag which in turn caused an AFK penalty. Its not the first time this has happened
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
Most games have it to some extent, so leaving STO for something else due to lag or rubberbanding is not particularly effective. ESO is worse than STO quite often for instance, and some of the secondlife and opensim stuff is much worse yet.
A few games, like ArchAge you don't notice it so much just walking around, but the lag silently kills your dps because the way that game handles combat so you can keep shooting even lower level mobs without doing much damage to them when it is bad.
That's not right in my expreince as leaving STO for other games is very effective. Due to lag problems with STO I have been playing other online games all day and its been a much better expreince in those other games with zero lag over the rubberbanding lag fest that STO has turned into. Looking back all year I have have 99% no lag problems in other games and the times I did get lag it was minor and didn't disrupt the game like STO lag.
As some examples in Age of Wonders Planetfall in over 100 hours I had less then 1 hour of lag. In Division 2 in not far off 300 hours I had 1 hour of lag. The past 400 hours of STO has been 390 hours of lag and rubberbanding.
The lag and rubberbanding in STO is much worse then then most other online games in fact I rate STO lag as extremely bad compared to most other online games.
Age of Wonders is turn based so yes, it is mostly lag-proof, it is the realtime games that have the most problems. And of realtime games, shooters that have little or no customization fair the best. I am not sure exactly what Division 2 is like (I have never played it) but on the surface at least it looks a lot like Defiance and the other low-Barbie shooters in that respect.
....
Firstly, it’s not about being lag proof its that there is no lag in the first place. As for Age of Wonders its simultaneous. You can only do so many actions a turn but everyone does the actions simultaneously so lag does matter.
Division isn’t a low barbie shooter it’s a real time mass RPG online shooter where reactions matter more then STO does and it has as much space barbie as STO if not more then STO. So, its transmitting as much if not more data than STO. Division is well known for its highly detailed world.
But that’s not the point. Over the years with many 1000's of hours of gaming the only game I expreince this level of lag and rubberbanding is STO. Its not that the other games are hiding the lag better its they they do not have the lag problems STO has in the first place. I don’t know why you are defending STO as the lag and rubber banding is well beyond normal online game levels and well beyond acceptable levels both in how bad it is and how long it’s being going on for and a lot of it is Cryptic fault and their job to fix. Even when I played Everquest, D&D, Neverwinter and all the others the lag was tiny in comparison to the problems in STO over the past 3+ years. I am not saying those games are 100% lag free they do have the odd bad night/day. But none of them have lag daily every single day for 3 years+.
“There is probably not a lot of stuff Cryptic can do with the engine since it is old and was not designed with today's traffic shaping in mind.“
Strongly disagree as other MMORPG including the space ones managed to do large rewrites of entire sections of the engine. Even STO has done that in the past so its been shown it can be done.
I also don’t buy that Akami is out of their hands. Yes solutions take time but they have had more then enough time so the blame falls onto Cryptic. Both from terrible communication to finding a solution. They have had more then enough time to run a detailed investigation and tell us the results even if they cannot fix it. When we had the server lag problems in 2015 they put out a statement what caused it and even though they couldn't fix it right away we where accepting. The problem today is the lack of communication.
Another space MMO I used to play contacted the ISP and other known problem areas like Akami and got it fixed. Why can STO not do the same? Other parts of the lag like the engine freezing up for a split second on certain actions is 100% Cryptic fault and given how the actions are 100% repeatable and confirmed by multiple players the actions they should have found the cause by now. For example how many years has the entire engine frozen up when we open the skill page or endeavor finishes.
Age of Wonders is basically an automated board game, from what I have read they use an entirely different signal structure from realitime games (and no, simultaneous turns are not realtime). It is like the difference between an organized boxing match and a wild everything-goes mass bar brawl. You issue commands at a relatively high level and the units are at rest when not responding to player commands or enemy attack, a vastly different situation from a realtime game were you have one avatar under your continuous control and can more readily perceive glitches in movement or command functions.
Division is third person shooter, and like most shooters has control schemes that are simpler and more streamlined than an RPG, like for instance the idea of a single ready weapon and grenade possibly along with two or three on-tap powers instead of big trays full of options all at once. Also, the items in the videos I saw of character creation and gameplay look mainly standardized and probably do not take much description and customized linking/positioning when a character enters the shard and moves around doing things.
Most of all, Division uses the Snowdrop engine, one of the newest cutting edge AAA engines. Those are built from the ground up for today's internet environment, not the environment that existed a decade ago. It is built be resistant to the effect of out of order packets and the other effects that traffic shaping and the increasing volume of VoIP, video streaming, and other high-priority packets have on internet lag. And even Snowdrop is not totally immune though it is harder to see, as the person in this Division gameplay video points out:
As for STO being the worst of the ones you played for the last three years or so, that is entirely possible with all the variables in how the internet works. In my case though, the rubberbanding in STO has been very intermittent and didn't start increasing a lot until this year. Even with the increase it is nowhere near continuous, and it mainly seems to happen in full shards or TFOs with very heavy combat spam (and that is when the extremely annoying button lag happens too).
It also probably has to do with the selection of games, I tend to go for the MMORPGs more than the streamilined shooters (except for Defiance), and of those I have played the most recently (ESO, BDO, Secret World Legends, Defiance, and SWTOR, along with Second Life and the Opensim based grids) they have had lag problems to one degree or another too (on top of that ESO has been battling database lookup issues but that is a different matter). If you mainly play shooters and strat/tac games you would not see as much lag on those normally for the reasons above.
And from what I have read on the forum Cryptic has been in contact with their ISP and Akami at various times and so far none of the quick and easy "try first" solutions have done much. That means digging in for the long haul and tracking down more elusive causes, and THAT takes time. The company I used to work for took over five years to track down and fix an internal network problem despite bringing in all sorts of experts and ripping out whole sections and replacing them over the years and that is a lot simpler than what Cryptic faces. And gathering the information to do that is what this thread is for and I don't want to derail it with this stuff so this is the last I will say on it.
This lag really needs fixing yet again I just lost a morning play session due to lag which in turn caused an AFK penalty. Its not the first time this has happened
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
Most games have it to some extent, so leaving STO for something else due to lag or rubberbanding is not particularly effective. ESO is worse than STO quite often for instance, and some of the secondlife and opensim stuff is much worse yet.
A few games, like ArchAge you don't notice it so much just walking around, but the lag silently kills your dps because the way that game handles combat so you can keep shooting even lower level mobs without doing much damage to them when it is bad.
That's not right in my expreince as leaving STO for other games is very effective. Due to lag problems with STO I have been playing other online games all day and its been a much better expreince in those other games with zero lag over the rubberbanding lag fest that STO has turned into. Looking back all year I have have 99% no lag problems in other games and the times I did get lag it was minor and didn't disrupt the game like STO lag.
As some examples in Age of Wonders Planetfall in over 100 hours I had less then 1 hour of lag. In Division 2 in not far off 300 hours I had 1 hour of lag. The past 400 hours of STO has been 390 hours of lag and rubberbanding.
The lag and rubberbanding in STO is much worse then then most other online games in fact I rate STO lag as extremely bad compared to most other online games.
Age of Wonders is turn based so yes, it is mostly lag-proof, it is the realtime games that have the most problems. And of realtime games, shooters that have little or no customization fair the best. I am not sure exactly what Division 2 is like (I have never played it) but on the surface at least it looks a lot like Defiance and the other low-Barbie shooters in that respect.
....
Firstly, it’s not about being lag proof its that there is no lag in the first place. As for Age of Wonders its simultaneous. You can only do so many actions a turn but everyone does the actions simultaneously so lag does matter.
Division isn’t a low barbie shooter it’s a real time mass RPG online shooter where reactions matter more then STO does and it has as much space barbie as STO if not more then STO. So, its transmitting as much if not more data than STO. Division is well known for its highly detailed world.
But that’s not the point. Over the years with many 1000's of hours of gaming the only game I expreince this level of lag and rubberbanding is STO. Its not that the other games are hiding the lag better its they they do not have the lag problems STO has in the first place. I don’t know why you are defending STO as the lag and rubber banding is well beyond normal online game levels and well beyond acceptable levels both in how bad it is and how long it’s being going on for and a lot of it is Cryptic fault and their job to fix. Even when I played Everquest, D&D, Neverwinter and all the others the lag was tiny in comparison to the problems in STO over the past 3+ years. I am not saying those games are 100% lag free they do have the odd bad night/day. But none of them have lag daily every single day for 3 years+.
“There is probably not a lot of stuff Cryptic can do with the engine since it is old and was not designed with today's traffic shaping in mind.“
Strongly disagree as other MMORPG including the space ones managed to do large rewrites of entire sections of the engine. Even STO has done that in the past so its been shown it can be done.
I also don’t buy that Akami is out of their hands. Yes solutions take time but they have had more then enough time so the blame falls onto Cryptic. Both from terrible communication to finding a solution. They have had more then enough time to run a detailed investigation and tell us the results even if they cannot fix it. When we had the server lag problems in 2015 they put out a statement what caused it and even though they couldn't fix it right away we where accepting. The problem today is the lack of communication.
Another space MMO I used to play contacted the ISP and other known problem areas like Akami and got it fixed. Why can STO not do the same? Other parts of the lag like the engine freezing up for a split second on certain actions is 100% Cryptic fault and given how the actions are 100% repeatable and confirmed by multiple players the actions they should have found the cause by now. For example how many years has the entire engine frozen up when we open the skill page or endeavor finishes.
Age of Wonders is basically an automated board game, from what I have read they use an entirely different signal structure from realitime games (and no, simultaneous turns are not realtime). It is like the difference between an organized boxing match and a wild everything-goes mass bar brawl. You issue commands at a relatively high level and the units are at rest when not responding to player commands or enemy attack, a vastly different situation from a realtime game were you have one avatar under your continuous control and can more readily perceive glitches in movement or command functions.
Division is third person shooter, and like most shooters has control schemes that are simpler and more streamlined than an RPG, like for instance the idea of a single ready weapon and grenade possibly along with two or three on-tap powers instead of big trays full of options all at once. Also, the items in the videos I saw of character creation and gameplay look mainly standardized and probably do not take much description and customized linking/positioning when a character enters the shard and moves around doing things.
Most of all, Division uses the Snowdrop engine, one of the newest cutting edge AAA engines. Those are built from the ground up for today's internet environment, not the environment that existed a decade ago. It is built be resistant to the effect of out of order packets and the other effects that traffic shaping and the increasing volume of VoIP, video streaming, and other high-priority packets have on internet lag. And even Snowdrop is not totally immune though it is harder to see, as the person in this Division gameplay video points out:
As for STO being the worst of the ones you played for the last three years or so, that is entirely possible with all the variables in how the internet works. In my case though, the rubberbanding in STO has been very intermittent and didn't start increasing a lot until this year. Even with the increase it is nowhere near continuous, and it mainly seems to happen in full shards or TFOs with very heavy combat spam (and that is when the extremely annoying button lag happens too).
It also probably has to do with the selection of games, I tend to go for the MMORPGs more than the streamilined shooters (except for Defiance), and of those I have played the most recently (ESO, BDO, Secret World Legends, Defiance, and SWTOR, along with Second Life and the Opensim based grids) they have had lag problems to one degree or another too (on top of that ESO has been battling database lookup issues but that is a different matter). If you mainly play shooters and strat/tac games you would not see as much lag on those normally for the reasons above.
And from what I have read on the forum Cryptic has been in contact with their ISP and Akami at various times and so far none of the quick and easy "try first" solutions have done much. That means digging in for the long haul and tracking down more elusive causes, and THAT takes time. The company I used to work for took over five years to track down and fix an internal network problem despite bringing in all sorts of experts and ripping out whole sections and replacing them over the years and that is a lot simpler than what Cryptic faces. And gathering the information to do that is what this thread is for and I don't want to derail it with this stuff so this is the last I will say on it.
Simultaneous turns is real-time in that you actions and response happen in real-time and so do the other players. So when there is lag it is just as noticeable as STO.
As for Division you are wrong it’s an RPG with specialization skill tress, tons of skill triggers, mixture of talents e.c.t. Character item customization is I would say more then x10 more detailed then STO character item customization. The engine itself is 7 years old.
Anyway all that is largely irreverent as you are missing the point. It is not that the other games are hiding the lag better. It is they do not have the daily high lag in the first place. For the most part 99% of other online games be is turn based, shooter or MMORPG have sub 80 milliseconds of latency and even the bad days are sub 120 milliseconds of latency. They get the odd spike of 300+ but not daily and none stop like STO does. Yes some of them hide it better but that is not what is happening. They just don't have the daily lag the STO does.
“In my case though, the rubberbanding in STO has been very intermittent and didn't start increasing a lot until this year. Even with the increase it is nowhere near continuous, and it mainly seems to happen in full shards or TFOs with very heavy combat spam (and that is when the extremely annoying button lag happens too).”
In my case and confirmed by lots of other people it started getting bad 3+ years ago and has had a steady increase. It got to the point where it happens even in empty shards, TFO’s with low combat spam. My main playtime is when the server is at the lower population point which normally the most lag free time to play. But even at the lowest server population point the game is a massive leg fest with rubberbanding and recently disconnects. It is well beyond normal or acceptable levels of lag.
Yes the other MMORPG have the odd lag problem but none that I play including some out of your list are anywhere near the level of STO or as daily as STO.
“That means digging in for the long haul and tracking down more elusive causes, and THAT takes time. “
That’s the problem we have already reached the long haul. Some of the causes are not elusive but very clear and should be relatively easy to track down like the skill page and endeavor lag.
“What do you expect Cryptic to do about the SECURITY MEASURES that a thrid party is using on a network that is not owned or under the control of Crypti”
They could change ISP and move to a different datacenter which doesn’t use that third party problem area. They could you know look at what was promised and said “provides them with less than 80 milliseconds of latency without needing a presence in all the markets their users are located.” And point out that they are failing and hitting 300ms+ on a daily basis due to the third party Akumai rubbish they use.
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
“What do you expect Cryptic to do about the SECURITY MEASURES that a thrid party is using on a network that is not owned or under the control of Crypti”
They could change ISP and move to a different datacenter which doesn’t use that third party problem area. They could you know look at what was promised and said “provides them with less than 80 milliseconds of latency without needing a presence in all the markets their users are located.” And point out that they are failing and hitting 300ms+ on a daily basis due to the third party Akumai rubbish they use.
Changing internet providers and moving data centers is not the easy and cheap solution you think it is. This is not like just moving a single computer across town. And as I recall, the Internet provider that began hosting STO after PWE bought Cryptic was not immediately easy to find, as they needed a provider that offered specific capabilities to host an MMO.
And incidentally, the Internet provider was chosen by Perfect World, who OWNS cryptic, not by Cryptic themselves. I think they were just glad that a host was found. And as I understand it, Akumai was not always a factor. It became one after the transition occurred. And as mentioned, it is used to safeguard mission critical internet services like financial institutions and networks that are key to infrastructure. There may be some sort of mandate that hosting those types of services require a certain level of protection which Akumai provides. I'm sorry, but as annoying as the resultant lag and disconnects are, STO is not a mission-critical internet service like banks and ifrastructure. To remove our and Cryptic's inconvenience would mean the removal of vital security for real-world-important networks. It sucks, but there it is.
A game that we are not required to spend a single dime on to play just isn't that important in the grand scheme. And like I said, Akumai is being used pretty widely, impacting multiple MMOs the same way STO is impacted. Even if they changed ISPs and moved the data center, there is no guarantee that Akumai won't start being used after the fact, like what has originally happened. Changing ISPs and moving the data center are both calls that PWE must make. Cryptic does not have that authority. And PWE won't make either call unless their minimum profit floor is breached. And as long as so many people keep throwing money at this game for the random chance to get a fluff item, that's not going to happen.
Again, our choice is to tolerate the Akumai issue or just find something else to play. Cryptic can't do anything about it, and unless PWE's bottom line takes a significant enough hit, THEY won't.
I know. It sucks. But there it is.
Don't buy that at all we had 8+ years without todays major problems and they can do various things about the lag and rubberbanding. They could move ISP or as they are a big client with multiple games being hosted they could put pressure on the datacenter. Its not like they are a tiny company paying a small amount. When you pay for a service and get a subpar service back you don't just sit there and go well there is nothing I can do and worse renew the contract. As for bottom line I would dare say they have taken a significant hit already from this, the question is do they realize that?
Last night, played the Risian Scavenger Hunt on my Delta Recruit. Then, I logged off that character and was going to play on one of my other characters. The game froze and stayed frozen for a long time. It then got to the picturesque character screen and crashed to desktop. I quit for the night and went to bed.
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.254]
2 10 ms 8 ms 8 ms 162-201-164-1.lightspeed.jcvlfl.sbcglobal.net [162.201.164.1]
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 22 ms 14 ms 14 ms 12.240.213.50
5 15 ms 20 ms 21 ms 12.122.28.125
6 19 ms 21 ms 21 ms attga402igs.ip.att.net [12.122.117.121]
7 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 192.205.36.158
8 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms ae-6.r23.atlnga05.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.5.59]
9 32 ms 33 ms * ae-4.r25.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.165]
10 31 ms 38 ms 31 ms ae-0.a02.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.5.190]
11 32 ms 33 ms 32 ms 165.254.191.122
12 31 ms 32 ms 32 ms po111.bs-b.sech-iad.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.144.202]
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 32 ms 34 ms 32 ms ae121.access-a.sech-iad.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.144.205]
15 44 ms 44 ms 43 ms a209-200-171-102.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [209.200.171.102]
16 57 ms 48 ms 47 ms 198.49.243.237
17 44 ms 44 ms 44 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.75]
1 dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.254]
2 162-201-164-1.lightspeed.jcvlfl.sbcglobal.net [162.201.164.1]
3 * * *
Computing statistics for 50 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.75]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.254]
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 1ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 162-201-164-1.lightspeed.jcvlfl.sbcglobal.net [162.201.164.1]
My patience is over, my resolve to struggle and battle through the lag and rubber banding has ran out. I'm out. Time to find another game to play and one that is supported by it's company. Bye STO you have failed me for the last time.
My patience is over, my resolve to struggle and battle through the lag and rubber banding has ran out. I'm out. Time to find another game to play and one that is supported by it's company. Bye STO you have failed me for the last time.
Yeah, I returned (again) this year for the Risa event and stuck around for the Red Alert one hoping to finish the overall event when it begins next week as I haven't got much left to go, but no. I'm so beyond done.
It's funny that above ESO is brought up as an MMO that has a lot of issues too and yes I know its rep because I play that one too, but outside of known problematic instances and full server burndown I rarely see much, both EU and NA server. I really don't care who in the company is responsible for the complete lack of anything done but I'm out until such a time as it gets fixed.
Maybe it was time several MMO companies got together and collectively sued Akamai to get their **** and provide the service they've been paid to provide.
Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end of it.
Comments
I can share with you guys that for some folks I have found that the Windows 10 Game Mode interferes with STO a good bit. It didn't completely eliminate all issues but it drastically cut them down for me. Might work for some of you as well. Not always a guaranteed thing. With that said, I can assure you guys I'm still doing what I can on my end when issues arise. They've not abandoned the game, especially with new series still airing. Beyond that idk what else I can tell you folks at this point, save the occasional tech tip that works for some until I get more information myself.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
Location Risa
Standing next to flying high NPC.
May have caught multiple login attempts on this tracert games only just come back up
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms ttrouter [192.168.1.1]
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 11 ms 9 ms 9 ms ae54-ner002.csm.as13285.net [78.144.1.19]
4 12 ms 11 ms 12 ms ae54-scr101.loh.as13285.net [78.144.1.18]
5 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms akamai.prolexic.com [195.66.224.31]
6 431 ms * 320 ms po110.bs-b.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.200]
7 509 ms 691 ms 265 ms a72-52-1-199.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.199]
8 43 ms 13 ms 12 ms ae121.access-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.205]
9 * * * Request timed out.
10 94 ms 93 ms 93 ms a209-200-171-102.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [209.200.171.102]
11 110 ms 96 ms 97 ms 198.49.243.237
12 93 ms 93 ms 93 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
did trace route after getting kicked, was flying around on Risa after doing Flying High mission
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>tracert patchserver.crypticstudios.com
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 24 ms 5 ms 2 ms fritz.box [192.168.1.1]
2 48 ms 14 ms 14 ms vt1.cor1.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.72.21]
3 15 ms 71 ms 20 ms ae-3.pe2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.12]
4 14 ms 14 ms 13 ms ae-2.br1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.117]
5 14 ms 15 ms 15 ms 5.57.81.220
6 539 ms 319 ms 586 ms po111.bs-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.194]
7 605 ms * 606 ms a72-52-1-157.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.157]
8 31 ms 15 ms 15 ms ae120.access-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.197]
9 103 ms 113 ms 92 ms 93.191.173.11
10 91 ms 91 ms 96 ms a72-52-27-212.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.27.212]
11 104 ms 97 ms 99 ms 198.49.243.237
12 96 ms 96 ms 96 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
Trace complete.
C:\Windows\system32>tracert patchserver.crypticstudios.com
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 11 ms 2 ms 2 ms fritz.box [192.168.1.1]
2 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms vt1.cor1.lond1.ptn.zen.net.uk [51.148.72.21]
3 13 ms 14 ms 15 ms ae-3.pe2.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.12]
4 14 ms 13 ms 14 ms ae-2.br1.thn-lon.zen.net.uk [51.148.73.117]
5 15 ms 14 ms 15 ms 5.57.81.220
6 * 413 ms 426 ms po111.bs-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.194]
7 599 ms 692 ms 639 ms a72-52-1-157.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.1.157]
8 16 ms 15 ms 14 ms ae120.access-a.sech-lon2.netarch.akamai.com [72.52.60.197]
9 149 ms 130 ms 92 ms 93.191.173.11
10 97 ms 96 ms 96 ms a72-52-27-212.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [72.52.27.212]
11 106 ms 95 ms 99 ms 198.49.243.237
12 96 ms 96 ms 96 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
Trace complete.
C:\Windows\system32>
The game doesn't play well with MSI motherboard utilities either, especially the DSP part of the sound suite the motherboard comes with, which can be an annoyance if you use it to compensate for poor speakers or bad room acoustics. Oddly enough, one of the few of those utilities it does not seem to have a problem with is the MSI gaming lan manager.
Its no wonder so many people quit and leave the game for good due to lag/rubberbanding.
Most games have it to some extent, so leaving STO for something else due to lag or rubberbanding is not particularly effective. ESO is worse than STO quite often for instance, and some of the secondlife and opensim stuff is much worse yet.
A few games, like ArchAge you don't notice it so much just walking around, but the lag silently kills your dps because the way that game handles combat so you can keep shooting even lower level mobs without doing much damage to them when it is bad.
As some examples in Age of Wonders Planetfall in over 100 hours I had less then 1 hour of lag. In Division 2 in not far off 300 hours I had 1 hour of lag. The past 400 hours of STO has been 390 hours of lag and rubberbanding.
The lag and rubberbanding in STO is much worse then then most other online games in fact I rate STO lag as extremely bad compared to most other online games.
I totally agree...sort of. I won't leave the game, but I will NOT be spending any more actual money on this game either. If more people follow suit, that can be just as bad as people leaving the game altogether. Now this is only my opinion, but I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way. Cryptic (or whatever) knows damn well, WHERE the issues are. But for reasons which they won't say, NOTHING is going to be done about it. All these surveys and trace route requests...well I feel it's all for show, to try and keep us "calm". I don't think they intend to do ANYTHING about it...so long as people keep throwing their money at this game. If that cash flow stops, or at least slows down to where they actually take notice...I feel ONLY then will this issue be remedied.
Age of Wonders is turn based so yes, it is mostly lag-proof, it is the realtime games that have the most problems. And of realtime games, shooters that have little or no customization fair the best. I am not sure exactly what Division 2 is like (I have never played it) but on the surface at least it looks a lot like Defiance and the other low-Barbie shooters in that respect.
And some game engines are naturally lag resistant, usually they have a huge HDD footprint (and take forever to download) because they have so much of the graphics and whatnot on the player's machine and simpler presets for colors and whatnot to reduce the amount of signals passing between the client and server, or they have very simple graphics and/or controls.
Others are just better at hiding the hit your are taking from the lag, like the AA example where it silently strangles your DPS (bows in that game are the worst hit, if you have a laggy connection they become effectively useless). Rubberbanding is just the most noticeable form of lag problem.
In STO the engine is for realtime combat, and there is considerable space Barbie so they are transmitting a lot of information about what you see compared to low-Barbie-factor shooters. And it is not unusually bad for MMORPGs, those by definition have the worst problems with lag. I already mentioned ESO, ArcheAge, and Secret World Legends, but those are far from the only other ones with problems
There is probably not a lot of stuff Cryptic can do with the engine since it is old and was not designed with today's traffic shaping in mind. One thing they have already done is the autofire stuff, if they did it serverside (which they probably did) that would reduce the command traffic somewhat since it would only have to deal with the initial command to open fire and the sever takes it from there instead of the client transmitting a separate fire command for every weapon every time (which is the root of ArcheAge's DPS loss problem btw, since they have that one-to-one ratio).
There is also the factor that if you happen to be on a CDN that owns a game company you can bet that company's games get priority now that net neutrality is gone. Also, crossing between CDNs can be a problem because of the way packets tend to get squeezed into bursts by the traffic shaping and the exact methods differ between the CDNs so they are even more likely to get out of order or dropped. It is especially bad when crossing between Akami and Cloudflare, an intermittent glitch those two companies have been working on for years to figure out, and have not yet gotten there.
I have occasionally been running pcaps and using Wireshark to analyze them (though I am having to relearn a lot of it as I go so I may be wrong) and the pattern of out of order packets and lost packets actually does look like something is not quite right with the traffic shaping, like the game is getting too low of a priority for smooth running, and maybe some of it is cached that should not be.
Anyway, while there may be some things left Cryptic could do serverside, possibly speeding database lookups or whatever, or arraigning something to reduce the client-server communications more, those are not quick and easy things to do. And the Akami stuff is out of their hands without an extremely solid case.
Division isn’t a low barbie shooter it’s a real time mass RPG online shooter where reactions matter more then STO does and it has as much space barbie as STO if not more then STO. So, its transmitting as much if not more data than STO. Division is well known for its highly detailed world.
But that’s not the point. Over the years with many 1000's of hours of gaming the only game I expreince this level of lag and rubberbanding is STO. Its not that the other games are hiding the lag better its they they do not have the lag problems STO has in the first place. I don’t know why you are defending STO as the lag and rubber banding is well beyond normal online game levels and well beyond acceptable levels both in how bad it is and how long it’s being going on for and a lot of it is Cryptic fault and their job to fix. Even when I played Everquest, D&D, Neverwinter and all the others the lag was tiny in comparison to the problems in STO over the past 3+ years. I am not saying those games are 100% lag free they do have the odd bad night/day. But none of them have lag daily every single day for 3 years+.
Strongly disagree as other MMORPG including the space ones managed to do large rewrites of entire sections of the engine. Even STO has done that in the past so its been shown it can be done.
I also don’t buy that Akami is out of their hands. Yes solutions take time but they have had more then enough time so the blame falls onto Cryptic. Both from terrible communication to finding a solution. They have had more then enough time to run a detailed investigation and tell us the results even if they cannot fix it. When we had the server lag problems in 2015 they put out a statement what caused it and even though they couldn't fix it right away we where accepting. The problem today is the lack of communication.
Another space MMO I used to play contacted the ISP and other known problem areas like Akami and got it fixed. Why can STO not do the same? Other parts of the lag like the engine freezing up for a split second on certain actions is 100% Cryptic fault and given how the actions are 100% repeatable and confirmed by multiple players the actions they should have found the cause by now. For example how many years has the entire engine frozen up when we open the skill page or endeavor finishes.
Agreed Cryptic/PWE couldn't give a flying fook about the server stability. As long as people can login and spend money that's the only thing they care about. If people stop spending money and hurt the bottom line then that's the only way we are going to get change from this company.
Officially my wallet is closed
I did have bit of a reprieve and reduction in rubber banding last week but it's hit back this weekend with a vengeance
Age of Wonders is basically an automated board game, from what I have read they use an entirely different signal structure from realitime games (and no, simultaneous turns are not realtime). It is like the difference between an organized boxing match and a wild everything-goes mass bar brawl. You issue commands at a relatively high level and the units are at rest when not responding to player commands or enemy attack, a vastly different situation from a realtime game were you have one avatar under your continuous control and can more readily perceive glitches in movement or command functions.
Division is third person shooter, and like most shooters has control schemes that are simpler and more streamlined than an RPG, like for instance the idea of a single ready weapon and grenade possibly along with two or three on-tap powers instead of big trays full of options all at once. Also, the items in the videos I saw of character creation and gameplay look mainly standardized and probably do not take much description and customized linking/positioning when a character enters the shard and moves around doing things.
Most of all, Division uses the Snowdrop engine, one of the newest cutting edge AAA engines. Those are built from the ground up for today's internet environment, not the environment that existed a decade ago. It is built be resistant to the effect of out of order packets and the other effects that traffic shaping and the increasing volume of VoIP, video streaming, and other high-priority packets have on internet lag. And even Snowdrop is not totally immune though it is harder to see, as the person in this Division gameplay video points out:
As for STO being the worst of the ones you played for the last three years or so, that is entirely possible with all the variables in how the internet works. In my case though, the rubberbanding in STO has been very intermittent and didn't start increasing a lot until this year. Even with the increase it is nowhere near continuous, and it mainly seems to happen in full shards or TFOs with very heavy combat spam (and that is when the extremely annoying button lag happens too).
It also probably has to do with the selection of games, I tend to go for the MMORPGs more than the streamilined shooters (except for Defiance), and of those I have played the most recently (ESO, BDO, Secret World Legends, Defiance, and SWTOR, along with Second Life and the Opensim based grids) they have had lag problems to one degree or another too (on top of that ESO has been battling database lookup issues but that is a different matter). If you mainly play shooters and strat/tac games you would not see as much lag on those normally for the reasons above.
And from what I have read on the forum Cryptic has been in contact with their ISP and Akami at various times and so far none of the quick and easy "try first" solutions have done much. That means digging in for the long haul and tracking down more elusive causes, and THAT takes time. The company I used to work for took over five years to track down and fix an internal network problem despite bringing in all sorts of experts and ripping out whole sections and replacing them over the years and that is a lot simpler than what Cryptic faces. And gathering the information to do that is what this thread is for and I don't want to derail it with this stuff so this is the last I will say on it.
As for Division you are wrong it’s an RPG with specialization skill tress, tons of skill triggers, mixture of talents e.c.t. Character item customization is I would say more then x10 more detailed then STO character item customization. The engine itself is 7 years old.
Anyway all that is largely irreverent as you are missing the point. It is not that the other games are hiding the lag better. It is they do not have the daily high lag in the first place. For the most part 99% of other online games be is turn based, shooter or MMORPG have sub 80 milliseconds of latency and even the bad days are sub 120 milliseconds of latency. They get the odd spike of 300+ but not daily and none stop like STO does. Yes some of them hide it better but that is not what is happening. They just don't have the daily lag the STO does.
“In my case though, the rubberbanding in STO has been very intermittent and didn't start increasing a lot until this year. Even with the increase it is nowhere near continuous, and it mainly seems to happen in full shards or TFOs with very heavy combat spam (and that is when the extremely annoying button lag happens too).”
In my case and confirmed by lots of other people it started getting bad 3+ years ago and has had a steady increase. It got to the point where it happens even in empty shards, TFO’s with low combat spam. My main playtime is when the server is at the lower population point which normally the most lag free time to play. But even at the lowest server population point the game is a massive leg fest with rubberbanding and recently disconnects. It is well beyond normal or acceptable levels of lag.
Yes the other MMORPG have the odd lag problem but none that I play including some out of your list are anywhere near the level of STO or as daily as STO.
“That means digging in for the long haul and tracking down more elusive causes, and THAT takes time. “
That’s the problem we have already reached the long haul. Some of the causes are not elusive but very clear and should be relatively easy to track down like the skill page and endeavor lag.
They could change ISP and move to a different datacenter which doesn’t use that third party problem area. They could you know look at what was promised and said “provides them with less than 80 milliseconds of latency without needing a presence in all the markets their users are located.” And point out that they are failing and hitting 300ms+ on a daily basis due to the third party Akumai rubbish they use.
videogames can belong to more than one genre, people
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Makes me want to open a can of
Oh and rubber banding my way through Borg Red Alerts
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.254]
2 10 ms 8 ms 8 ms 162-201-164-1.lightspeed.jcvlfl.sbcglobal.net [162.201.164.1]
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 22 ms 14 ms 14 ms 12.240.213.50
5 15 ms 20 ms 21 ms 12.122.28.125
6 19 ms 21 ms 21 ms attga402igs.ip.att.net [12.122.117.121]
7 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 192.205.36.158
8 15 ms 15 ms 15 ms ae-6.r23.atlnga05.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.5.59]
9 32 ms 33 ms * ae-4.r25.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.4.165]
10 31 ms 38 ms 31 ms ae-0.a02.asbnva02.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.250.5.190]
11 32 ms 33 ms 32 ms 165.254.191.122
12 31 ms 32 ms 32 ms po111.bs-b.sech-iad.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.144.202]
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 32 ms 34 ms 32 ms ae121.access-a.sech-iad.netarch.akamai.com [209.200.144.205]
15 44 ms 44 ms 43 ms a209-200-171-102.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [209.200.171.102]
16 57 ms 48 ms 47 ms 198.49.243.237
17 44 ms 44 ms 44 ms patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
Tracing route to patchserver.crypticstudios.com [208.95.184.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
0 dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.75]
1 dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.254]
2 162-201-164-1.lightspeed.jcvlfl.sbcglobal.net [162.201.164.1]
3 * * *
Computing statistics for 50 seconds...
Source to Here This Node/Link
Hop RTT Lost/Sent = Pct Lost/Sent = Pct Address
0 dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.75]
0/ 100 = 0% |
1 0ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% dsldevice.attlocal.net [192.168.1.254]
0/ 100 = 0% |
2 1ms 0/ 100 = 0% 0/ 100 = 0% 162-201-164-1.lightspeed.jcvlfl.sbcglobal.net [162.201.164.1]
Trace complete.
Yeah, I returned (again) this year for the Risa event and stuck around for the Red Alert one hoping to finish the overall event when it begins next week as I haven't got much left to go, but no. I'm so beyond done.
It's funny that above ESO is brought up as an MMO that has a lot of issues too and yes I know its rep because I play that one too, but outside of known problematic instances and full server burndown I rarely see much, both EU and NA server. I really don't care who in the company is responsible for the complete lack of anything done but I'm out until such a time as it gets fixed.
Maybe it was time several MMO companies got together and collectively sued Akamai to get their **** and provide the service they've been paid to provide.