Agreed. Thank you for making this thread and thank you Cryptic for the detailed response.
I once again have hope for the future. A fix to the lag, misfires, crashes and other performance issues would breathe new life into the game.
Thank you.
First of all, thank you very much for responding here DVS.
For some reason I have not figured out yet power related lag on space pve maps has gotten much better over the duration of the last 1-2 weeks at my end. Problems like misfire for example are reduced from felt 40% down to 10%. Now I have now idea why but knowing that you guys are at the problem makes me feel better about the game and restores confidence in it a bit.
Thanks for your work.
- Connor
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
So a couple of the big bad wolfs were "assimilate ship", crystallizing of the CE and Attack Pattern Beta. These items have been around for quite some time.
Is the cause the powers themselves or is it merely the interaction between them and other powers.
Just trying to wrap my head around the fact that these oldtimers are specifically mentioned as causes for lag.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
So a couple of the big bad wolfs were "assimilate ship", crystallizing of the CE and Attack Pattern Beta. These items have been around for quite some time.
Is the cause the powers themselves or is it merely the interaction between them and other powers.
Just trying to wrap my head around the fact that these oldtimers are specifically mentioned as causes for lag.
It's very likely they have always been like that but in the past when there were less flashy and overall less abilities flying about it didn't really notice a lot, but now with everything going nova on your screen those specific resource hogs are pushing it over the limit.
So a couple of the big bad wolfs were "assimilate ship", crystallizing of the CE and Attack Pattern Beta. These items have been around for quite some time.
Is the cause the powers themselves or is it merely the interaction between them and other powers.
Just trying to wrap my head around the fact that these oldtimers are specifically mentioned as causes for lag.
It's very likely they have always been like that but in the past when there were less flashy and overall less abilities flying about it didn't really notice a lot, but now with everything going nova on your screen those specific resource hogs are pushing it over the limit.
Honestly, I think it's that, too. It wasn't like that prior to Delta Rising and I don't think there were problems when DR first hit concerning the Intelligence powers (Those first few months are just a blur to me, so I'm not sure!). But, it sounds like the Intelligence + Command powers were what finally pushed it over the edge and what caused the system to start crapping its pants.
To piggyback on Trendy's statements, I'd like to let everyone know that we're already discussing the option of doing a "Performance Review" Tribble event, once we have a number of our more prominent powers tweaks in place. Basically inviting players to come play a few specific queues, with Devs playing along, to see if we can see any measurable improvements with power performance.
So, keep your eyes open if you'd like to be a part of such an event. We'll make an official announcement, once everything's situated.
Thanks Trendy and Borticus for the updates. That was the type of info I was looking for. I feel much more confident that "things" are being done. I will be more than happy to help with the performance review. Let us know what we need to do and when and I am sure you get as much assistance as you can use, if not more!
Thank you, this will be greatly appreciated as you no doubt gather having read this thread.
May I persist and suggest that we receive regular updates, I personally would suggest fortnightly. Don't be afraid to put on the updates that you tried X and Y and it didn't work, at least it's something to cross off the list. Then instead of self entitled players like me shouting and generally making a fuss, I'll be right behind you guys as we discuss this at fleet level and on the forum, your company's forum.
Without giving you a flat out yes, my full intention is to try and be more transparent. I'm making more regular trips to Cryptic now (I work at PWE) in order to get a better understanding so that I can communicate with ya'll. I don't want to say a regular X amount of days, but my full intention is to keep you informed as I learn more. Always.
How about a very small change to begin with this new found transparency and start to add all player given (important) bug reports that you guys are actually working on and recognize as a general problem for a lot of players by adding those bugs to the "known issues" list in the weekly server update logs.
That does not cost you guys lots of extra work or anything but it shows on a weekly basis that this issue is being recognized and prioritized as being a serious issue that is worked on by you guys continuously.
We dont expect you to fix everything today, just give your best, keep giving your best and maybe - as the list of bugs seems to grow constantly - recognize that as a general problem in your work flow and get more ressources towards this part of code-maintenance.
If all goes according to plan, we should have a new build on Tribble either later today, or tomorrow, which contains a good number of the higher-profile changes we've made in an attempt to address some of the more egregious performance issues. So keep an eye out for new Tribble Patch Notes to arrive, and please play on Tribble over the weekend (presuming there are no catastrophes, and the patch gets applied as planned).
Early next week - probably either Monday or Tuesday - we'll be doing a "Play With The Devs" event at some point, to focus test some of the top offending queue maps, with as much traffic as we can get on Tribble. This event will likely be announced on our Twitter feeds, so it may be best to follow one or all of the following, to keep informed on that front:
Quick update:
Early next week - probably either Monday or Tuesday - we'll be doing a "Play With The Devs" event at some point, to focus test some of the top offending queue maps, with as much traffic as we can get on Tribble. This event will likely be announced on our Twitter feeds, so it may be best to follow one or all of the following, to keep informed on that front:
So does this mean Tribble will be unlocked to everyone, instead of just Gold members?
If all goes according to plan, we should have a new build on Tribble either later today, or tomorrow, which contains a good number of the higher-profile changes we've made in an attempt to address some of the more egregious performance issues. So keep an eye out for new Tribble Patch Notes to arrive, and please play on Tribble over the weekend (presuming there are no catastrophes, and the patch gets applied as planned).
Early next week - probably either Monday or Tuesday - we'll be doing a "Play With The Devs" event at some point, to focus test some of the top offending queue maps, with as much traffic as we can get on Tribble. This event will likely be announced on our Twitter feeds, so it may be best to follow one or all of the following, to keep informed on that front:
But what if that same thing interacts with thousands of people on Holodeck? What if it's exponentially heavier on the server rather than simply additive? What if that power interacts with other powers creating an exponential recursive effect?
I am curious as to whether PWE/Cryptic consider this to be nothing more than one of the many complexities of programming, or if it's considered an indication that whoever wrote those functions did a very poor job.
This meant a lot of retooling of previously expensive computational designs.
I am curious as to whether this is being looked at as some refactoring and optimization of reasonable code that needed a bit of streamlining, or as the wholesale replacement of code that didn't break the build but should never have been checked in.
Please don't take this the wrong way. I know that what's said internally is sometimes a bit... metamorphosed before being passed along to the public, and I'm just trying to get a better idea of how Cryptic/PWE are looking at this.
I am curious as to whether PWE/Cryptic consider this to be nothing more than one of the many complexities of programming, or if it's considered an indication that whoever wrote those functions did a very poor job.
The code was more likely "well" written at the time but it's impossible to anticipate everything you may want it to do a year or 2, hell even 6 months, down the road. At this point I would think the devs have a lot more experience and knowledge about what these particular systems need to do now and down the road which would require a complete rewrite. Many companies in these situations will implement a policy of rewriting some systems every year or so, something cryptic will need to adopt.
My impression of what Borticus said they've done, is what I would just call a "patch" to make it perform better but not a real fix as I have a feeling a true fix would require a rewrite.
A real fix would mean some algorithmic changes to how stuff like this a done - instead of just decreasing the frequency of the expensive things they should find ways to do the same stuff more efficiently in the first place.
All this talk about completely refreshing a players stats when stuff triggers is just sad. Its like "we cant do it correctly as that would actually take time to implement so we're going to thin skill updates out and hope thats enough.
If all goes according to plan, we should have a new build on Tribble either later today, or tomorrow, which contains a good number of the higher-profile changes we've made in an attempt to address some of the more egregious performance issues. So keep an eye out for new Tribble Patch Notes to arrive, and please play on Tribble over the weekend (presuming there are no catastrophes, and the patch gets applied as planned).
Early next week - probably either Monday or Tuesday - we'll be doing a "Play With The Devs" event at some point, to focus test some of the top offending queue maps, with as much traffic as we can get on Tribble. This event will likely be announced on our Twitter feeds, so it may be best to follow one or all of the following, to keep informed on that front:
What i dont get is why the lag starts for me between 1-2pm UK time, its not like its peak play time anywhere, been like this since befor the kids holidays so its not that unless it is Cryptics ISP & if im right in thinking that the US is about 7-8 hours behind us it must be the start of office time with PCs getting turned on all over the US.
Query: Is one of the lag inducers tied in with the tholian torpedo, Nukara Appropriated Munitions or Nukara Strikeforce Technologies sets?
I have noticed that my tholian orb weaver with those sets equipped sometimes becomes sluggish and near impossible to manoeuvre. At first i thought it was related to the maps in the latest FE, but it also happens in borg red alerts.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
Funny that they insist on keeping their own forum as sterile as possible, yet post CRITICAL gaming information and updates on the cesspool of the internet. This smacks of bad leadership from the EP. That info should be posted on THIS forum first or at the same, not long after loyal forum posters and players have called them out on it.
Here I was thinking I finally needed to upgrade my GTX 470 vid card to play the newer grassy ground missions inthe early mission, but maybe it was just the games horrible lag, because even dropping the settings to cartoon visuals it still lagged and I stopped playing last month.
STO: @AGNT009 Since Dec 2010
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
To piggyback on Trendy's statements, I'd like to let everyone know that we're already discussing the option of doing a "Performance Review" Tribble event, once we have a number of our more prominent powers tweaks in place. Basically inviting players to come play a few specific queues, with Devs playing along, to see if we can see any measurable improvements with power performance.
So, keep your eyes open if you'd like to be a part of such an event. We'll make an official announcement, once everything's situated.
What about bringing back Tribble Weekend each season to test the new maps and items under heavy load? Ideally, this should happen a couple of weeks before launch to allow enough time to fix any problems that are found.
Borticus, I have further questions about your comments, but I'm not sure whether you know the answers or whether they would require a programmer to answer.
All Borg Ships have an ability called "Assimilate Ship" which players will recognize as the big "red borders on the screen" ability that mucks with power recharges and such. This ability was built in such a way that each tick was as expensive as creating an entire copy of your ship, complete with all ~300 powers a player ship possesses.. And each Borg Ship could do this as frequently as once every 6 seconds.
"Assimilate Ship" was recently rebuilt so that it no longer ... screws everything up. The only player-facing difference will be that if you destroy the ship using this on you, the effect will not linger for more than 6 seconds, whereas it used to run its full duration (up to 60sec) even if the caster was killed.
Was there a particular reason why the entire ship was being copied? Or was it simply inefficient code---for example, passing the ship by value instead of by reference?
Y'know how certain abilities can trip that Re-Crystallize Buff off the CE, but only has that effect on this specific Map? That's because we were granting you an additional power effect in order to do that. And we were doing so every 1 sec. And it was being added to all "foes" of the CE on the entire map. And each time it did so, it was again just as expensive as creating an entire copy of your ship, complete with all ~300 powers a player ship possesses. Every second.
After a recent rework, it now only does this once every 5 seconds (1/5th the server load!), and only applies to Players thus reducing the impact by not attempting to add the effect to Torpedoes, Mines, Shuttles, Hangar Pets, etc. It also only refreshes every 5 seconds, instead of removing and re-applying, further reducing the server-side performance hit.
This does mean that Hangar Pets that use Tachyon Beam and such, will no longer strip Re-Crystallize buffs from the CE. We decided the trade-off is worth it.
Why do player ships, hangar pets, torpedoes, mines, etc. have to be modified at all? Whether it be every one second or every five seconds, this refresh sounds like a lot of needless computation. Instead of dynamically changing the powers of player ships, hangar pets, and other objects to strip the buffs off the Crystalline Entity, why not make a static change to the Crystalline Entity itself to allow its buffs to be stripped by those powers?
The conversation on this subject going on over on our sub-reddit has even more details on some of the power changes we've recently been working on. I'll go ahead and copy that information over here, for those that'd rather stick with the Official Forums...
Borg Badness:
All Borg Ships have an ability called "Assimilate Ship" which players will recognize as the big "red borders on the screen" ability that mucks with power recharges and such. This ability was built in such a way that each tick was as expensive as creating an entire copy of your ship, complete with all ~300 powers a player ship possesses.. And each Borg Ship could do this as frequently as once every 6 seconds.
"Assimilate Ship" was recently rebuilt so that it no longer ... screws everything up. The only player-facing difference will be that if you destroy the ship using this on you, the effect will not linger for more than 6 seconds, whereas it used to run its full duration (up to 60sec) even if the caster was killed.
Crystalline Entity:
Y'know how certain abilities can trip that Re-Crystallize Buff off the CE, but only has that effect on this specific Map? That's because we were granting you an additional power effect in order to do that. And we were doing so every 1 sec. And it was being added to all "foes" of the CE on the entire map. And each time it did so, it was again just as expensive as creating an entire copy of your ship, complete with all ~300 powers a player ship possesses. Every second.
After a recent rework, it now only does this once every 5 seconds (1/5th the server load!), and only applies to Players thus reducing the impact by not attempting to add the effect to Torpedoes, Mines, Shuttles, Hangar Pets, etc. It also only refreshes every 5 seconds, instead of removing and re-applying, further reducing the server-side performance hit.
This does mean that Hangar Pets that use Tachyon Beam and such, will no longer strip Re-Crystallize buffs from the CE. We decided the trade-off is worth it.
Attack Pattern Beta:
Again, as in the previous two examples, one aspect of APB was being re-applied to players that used this power on a 1x/sec basis, which - with every tick - was that massively expensive transaction where it had to reload every single one of your powers.
This one was really tricky, and we actually had to create an entirely new type of Power just to facilitate reducing its server impact without altering its player-facing functionality. Suffice it to say, this ability can be used safely without making the servers weep. And, according to the internal testing we've been doing, there is absolutely no difference in the end-result performance of the ability, after the rebuild.
If all goes according to plan, we should have a new build on Tribble either later today, or tomorrow, which contains a good number of the higher-profile changes we've made in an attempt to address some of the more egregious performance issues. So keep an eye out for new Tribble Patch Notes to arrive, and please play on Tribble over the weekend (presuming there are no catastrophes, and the patch gets applied as planned).
Early next week - probably either Monday or Tuesday - we'll be doing a "Play With The Devs" event at some point, to focus test some of the top offending queue maps, with as much traffic as we can get on Tribble. This event will likely be announced on our Twitter feeds, so it may be best to follow one or all of the following, to keep informed on that front:
There are many other Devs on Twitter, if you wanna keep in touch. These are just the few of us likely to be announcing this particular event.
Hope to see you on Tribble!
Perhaps it might be an idea to announce it via the in game announcements system, to get the attention of a much bigger group of people.
Now that's just crazy talk right there ... .
It'd just get more crazy if they made the announcement a couple of hours early so that ppl could actually patch Tribble .
Well it comes down to they broke their own game by releasing content again & again that was not properly tested due to deadlines.
Now its in such a mess they dont no how to fix it.
6 months & counting.
They have lists of stuff that they identified as likely causes a couple of months ago. When you've got a game like STO, it's going to take time to identify everything and get it working better.
can we get an official timetable/estimate of when the lag will be gone?
6+ months (and YES IT HAS BEEN over 6 months of game wrecking lag)
the IP has been keeping this game afloat through what would have killed off any other MMO with these constant levels of lag by now..
a
silver
SPOON was handed to cryptic when they got the privilege to do star trek online, 5 years and we have 1 class that matters- the other 2 are pointless, grind obviously aimed at pushing players to swipe credit cards to make it go away, dry- glitchy- story content, and all other side content like the foundry and pvp woefully underdeveloped...
honestly,
the players of star trek online at this point need to know that the lag will be gone soon, not another 6 months from now.. not "sometime in the near future.." a date- a time-
at the very absolute least, to know that at this time, fixing the lag IS the top priority
might as well rename the lockbox: "the year of lag"
we all hung in there like loving, dedicated customers- telling our friends "ya, its laggy, but they will fix it soon, its no big deal"
we all laughed together as we all struggled to do the simplest pve content- telling our friends "omg LOL! I cant even control this ship right now, ah well haha.. they will fix it soon"
for months and months, dedicated- loyal- forgiving- customers
but half a year is enough, that's well and above common sense
just to be honest, 100% honest-
and I know many wont like this but, at this point?
I would just prefer the game to be shut down so that there can be a vacuum of no star trek games for a bit,
with the aim of within a year.. there would be enough demand out in the gaming market for a brand new star trek MMO from the fans,
and that a new game developer could take a crack at providing an engaging, smooth running MMO game,
a "I love you letter" to the fans of star trek that we all want and are not getting now with sto:(
all I see now is a glitchy, laggy, game that barely lives up to average MMO standards... and everyday it is still live on the market delays the creation of a real star trek MMO within the next 5 years
this is coming from someone that has played MMOs constantly since 98', coming from someone that could plug in any random 5 new release games.. load them up, and have them running smoothly on the computer, this is coming from someone that is a diehard fan of star trek and has put hundreds and hundreds of dollars into this game
I feel tired at this point,
its not even anger or frustration-
its just bored disappointment
"we are working on it" doesn't cut it,
that would have shut me up and sent we away with a smile on my face 6 months ago.. 4 months ago
now?
this just feels like the stupid timetable for lockboxs and c-store ships have taken priority over the ability to even play the game...
what a waste of a silver spoon:(
Excuse me, but do you expect every STO developer to actually be working on issues that are not in their area of expertise?
The devs have been saying that the cause seems to be coming from various abilities that are taxing on the server. Ship artists and Environmental Artists have no real reason to be working on something that a dev that specializes in powers has the knowledge to work on.
They also cannot just halt on releasing new ships either. This is an MMO that is funded by people buying new ships. It would be a loss of revenue if they halted releasing stuff.
Finally, the Devs can't give an exact time table when all of this is fixed because it's more than one thing that is causing the lag experienced in the game. It'll be fixed when it'll finally be fixed.
The conversation on this subject going on over on our sub-reddit has even more details on some of the power changes we've recently been working on. I'll go ahead and copy that information over here, for those that'd rather stick with the Official Forums...
Borg Badness:
All Borg Ships have an ability called "Assimilate Ship" which players will recognize as the big "red borders on the screen" ability that mucks with power recharges and such. This ability was built in such a way that each tick was as expensive as creating an entire copy of your ship, complete with all ~300 powers a player ship possesses.. And each Borg Ship could do this as frequently as once every 6 seconds.
"Assimilate Ship" was recently rebuilt so that it no longer ... screws everything up. The only player-facing difference will be that if you destroy the ship using this on you, the effect will not linger for more than 6 seconds, whereas it used to run its full duration (up to 60sec) even if the caster was killed.
Crystalline Entity:
Y'know how certain abilities can trip that Re-Crystallize Buff off the CE, but only has that effect on this specific Map? That's because we were granting you an additional power effect in order to do that. And we were doing so every 1 sec. And it was being added to all "foes" of the CE on the entire map. And each time it did so, it was again just as expensive as creating an entire copy of your ship, complete with all ~300 powers a player ship possesses. Every second.
After a recent rework, it now only does this once every 5 seconds (1/5th the server load!), and only applies to Players thus reducing the impact by not attempting to add the effect to Torpedoes, Mines, Shuttles, Hangar Pets, etc. It also only refreshes every 5 seconds, instead of removing and re-applying, further reducing the server-side performance hit.
This does mean that Hangar Pets that use Tachyon Beam and such, will no longer strip Re-Crystallize buffs from the CE. We decided the trade-off is worth it.
Attack Pattern Beta:
Again, as in the previous two examples, one aspect of APB was being re-applied to players that used this power on a 1x/sec basis, which - with every tick - was that massively expensive transaction where it had to reload every single one of your powers.
This one was really tricky, and we actually had to create an entirely new type of Power just to facilitate reducing its server impact without altering its player-facing functionality. Suffice it to say, this ability can be used safely without making the servers weep. And, according to the internal testing we've been doing, there is absolutely no difference in the end-result performance of the ability, after the rebuild.
Suggestion: Make a stickied thread in general discussion titled 'Ongoing lag issues being addressed' or something like that. Post this information in it as well as update it with new information later when you have more info to release.
The problem with posting this in the middle of a thread is that it isn't easily found. There are still comments after comments all over the forums claiming that you guys have "never" given us any response to the issues, and/or you're not doing anything at all. A stickied post would be easily visible and people can see right away that you are in fact working on it.
Thank you very much for posting the info here also, instead of only posting on Reddit and other websites. I hope you guys can do that more often because as you say, a lot of us don't use Reddit or other social media websites.
I notice that we still have the "He who shall not be named" lag in STO.
You know, that sudden hesitation every minute or so while you are at the Exchange or Bank and a command doesn't execute like putting something in the Bank?
The exploits around this have been fixed, but what about the overall problem?
I'm under the impression that it's the game engine cycling, could this be the cause of some lag and or powers not working? How about Torpedoes and Cannons/ Turrets not reliably firing?
Ok what am i reading in here from bort and guys seems like a joke... and a nasty one .
Seriously you want us to believe APB makes lags?
Wow...
Ok ill tell you one thing guys, Even if i support cryptic testers ect by sending them personally images of bugs, of ppl who abuse these bugs to oblivion (and cryptic barely even time bans them - where they made multiple ppl quit the game - so crytpic self supports bug abuse and loses money for it), i inform them mostly how the bugs occur, and we took in our fleet them to teach them how to build a pvp ship so they know how the stuff works.
And im tired of hearing such things (some of my pics landed even on your twitter by other community memebers copied them there).
First of all i will tell you about kerrat map or arenas.
THERE ARE NO PPL USING APB THERE
and the lag is worse then you ever see in any PVE map on 100k runs.
So if there are no APB how can there be lag? ill tell you how, as we already tested it fleet wide.
2 days ago arena matches, 2x lag builds with resonance beam, pilot stuff, plasma doping and and pilot tree scratch the paint mostly on enemy side.
half of enemy team gets SNR's most of the time the ppl start getting in 10k of the lag build enemies, other half cant even shoot a single cannon bolt or topr in 30s as weapons jam and gray out.
here bort, here you have the most annoying bugs and things that seem to make them and yes there was no APB on anyone on the map.
1st) Cannon weapon and torpedoes dont shoot at all from 6-7 months now. If you dont believe me equip your lvl 60 toon ship in cannons and neutronic torpedo spread 3 and come to kerrat and you will see they go dont fire even in 20-30s ONE TIME (like yesterday in arena match, 2 ppl had plasma doping heavy build and whole map was getting freezes, ppl got SNR's even it was so bad).
2nd) Traits like iconian t4 RDM trait make netgraph spike by 200-500 ping alone just on procing, like other traits: Reciprocity, Emergency weapon power cycle (probably because of plasma doping more often proces), guardian ship trait, All hand on deck and few others.
3rd) Resonant destabilising beam ability still makes ppl freeze in space for its whole duration (again checked today in kerrat) netgraph goes wild on it (and to it the graph lag is amazin even on minimal setting on NEW PC's that can handle 5 STO's running on the same time with max settings).
4th) Pilot tree primery alldmg immunity and strach the paint also make 200-300 ping spikes in netgraph (and cannons with torps barely shoot on ships with these traits).
5th) Command ship powers and pilot maneuvers also can make weapons jam (specially pilot menuvers when the enemy just moves out on beggining of the firing cycle making your weapons gray out for 5-10s).
It seems pilot ship manuevers are to fast to calculate for cannons and torps.
6th) ramm doesnt make dmg to you if oyu use attack pattern while having pilot primery or secondery (and enemy takes 200% dmg from ram - from start of DR).
7th) FBP after rework STILL DEALS DMG THROUGH ABILITIES THAT MAKE YOU IMMUNE TO IT LIKE WARPSHADOWS (EVERY ROMULAN SHIP after T4 IS AFFECTED BY IT.
8th and probably one of main problems) I know fixing this problem i not easy, but adding more stuff in such short time (and then adding more t6 ship traits ect) wont help you out, at it seems the game cant even handle the high number of proce's counted on faw hit if you got a multi proc weapon, kemocite, and few plasma consoles. Its not only graphical lag, but it seems like the engine and maybe network cant handle the new added data stress and the stress is caused by traits and new abilities that have multi dmg/proc effects in 1. This occurs mostly in 2+ more plasma doping console+ kemo+ few proc weapons. Add 3-5 ships like that and enemies get perma SNR's in arena.
I will also pass by the 58s of alldmg immunity and invincibility a pilot ship can have on 64s time span (yes bort its posstible to be 90% of the time alldmg immune while dealing dmg).
I dont understand how you could come to conlusion that APB is fault when one one uses it on PVP and PVP is the most suffering from lag, but well lets hope your right.
As currently hearing such things mades me regrett the support i gave to the testers and actually makes me regret im playing the game at all (even when the lack of punishment for bug abusers and alldmg immunity made me delate already alt toons).
And if you want to see real lag Borticus i invite you to our HOBO fleet for a match we show you how fed side abuses lags builds normally. Maybe you will get some good data from it, that helps you out more.
And no there wont be APB on the map.
Hello Devs,
on my location in Germany there is an improvement with the lag situation last days! ISA and CCA are in playable condition at the moment. Since a long time I enjoy flying it again! Please keep going!
FED: Special Circumstances, Raumpatroullie Elysion, Naeramarth KDF: Special Circumstances KDF
Comments
I once again have hope for the future. A fix to the lag, misfires, crashes and other performance issues would breathe new life into the game.
Thank you.
For some reason I have not figured out yet power related lag on space pve maps has gotten much better over the duration of the last 1-2 weeks at my end. Problems like misfire for example are reduced from felt 40% down to 10%. Now I have now idea why but knowing that you guys are at the problem makes me feel better about the game and restores confidence in it a bit.
Thanks for your work.
- Connor
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Is the cause the powers themselves or is it merely the interaction between them and other powers.
Just trying to wrap my head around the fact that these oldtimers are specifically mentioned as causes for lag.
It's very likely they have always been like that but in the past when there were less flashy and overall less abilities flying about it didn't really notice a lot, but now with everything going nova on your screen those specific resource hogs are pushing it over the limit.
Honestly, I think it's that, too. It wasn't like that prior to Delta Rising and I don't think there were problems when DR first hit concerning the Intelligence powers (Those first few months are just a blur to me, so I'm not sure!). But, it sounds like the Intelligence + Command powers were what finally pushed it over the edge and what caused the system to start crapping its pants.
Thanks Trendy and Borticus for the updates. That was the type of info I was looking for. I feel much more confident that "things" are being done. I will be more than happy to help with the performance review. Let us know what we need to do and when and I am sure you get as much assistance as you can use, if not more!
How about a very small change to begin with this new found transparency and start to add all player given (important) bug reports that you guys are actually working on and recognize as a general problem for a lot of players by adding those bugs to the "known issues" list in the weekly server update logs.
That does not cost you guys lots of extra work or anything but it shows on a weekly basis that this issue is being recognized and prioritized as being a serious issue that is worked on by you guys continuously.
We dont expect you to fix everything today, just give your best, keep giving your best and maybe - as the list of bugs seems to grow constantly - recognize that as a general problem in your work flow and get more ressources towards this part of code-maintenance.
Thx in advance
If all goes according to plan, we should have a new build on Tribble either later today, or tomorrow, which contains a good number of the higher-profile changes we've made in an attempt to address some of the more egregious performance issues. So keep an eye out for new Tribble Patch Notes to arrive, and please play on Tribble over the weekend (presuming there are no catastrophes, and the patch gets applied as planned).
Early next week - probably either Monday or Tuesday - we'll be doing a "Play With The Devs" event at some point, to focus test some of the top offending queue maps, with as much traffic as we can get on Tribble. This event will likely be announced on our Twitter feeds, so it may be best to follow one or all of the following, to keep informed on that front:
LaughingTrendy = https://twitter.com/LaughingTrendy
Borticus = https://twitter.com/BorticusCryptic
ZeroniusRez = https://twitter.com/zeroniusrex
Farktoid = https://twitter.com/CrypticEQAH
There are many other Devs on Twitter, if you wanna keep in touch. These are just the few of us likely to be announcing this particular event.
Hope to see you on Tribble!
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
So does this mean Tribble will be unlocked to everyone, instead of just Gold members?
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Yep it's been open since DR launched. I'm silver and I go there all the time to test things.
Perhaps it might be an idea to announce it via the in game announcements system, to get the attention of a much bigger group of people.
I am curious as to whether PWE/Cryptic consider this to be nothing more than one of the many complexities of programming, or if it's considered an indication that whoever wrote those functions did a very poor job.
I am curious as to whether this is being looked at as some refactoring and optimization of reasonable code that needed a bit of streamlining, or as the wholesale replacement of code that didn't break the build but should never have been checked in.
Please don't take this the wrong way. I know that what's said internally is sometimes a bit... metamorphosed before being passed along to the public, and I'm just trying to get a better idea of how Cryptic/PWE are looking at this.
My impression of what Borticus said they've done, is what I would just call a "patch" to make it perform better but not a real fix as I have a feeling a true fix would require a rewrite.
A real fix would mean some algorithmic changes to how stuff like this a done - instead of just decreasing the frequency of the expensive things they should find ways to do the same stuff more efficiently in the first place.
All this talk about completely refreshing a players stats when stuff triggers is just sad. Its like "we cant do it correctly as that would actually take time to implement so we're going to thin skill updates out and hope thats enough.
This is a good idea, but it needs to be done in advance so that as many as possible can patch tribble so its up to date.
I have noticed that my tholian orb weaver with those sets equipped sometimes becomes sluggish and near impossible to manoeuvre. At first i thought it was related to the maps in the latest FE, but it also happens in borg red alerts.
Here I was thinking I finally needed to upgrade my GTX 470 vid card to play the newer grassy ground missions inthe early mission, but maybe it was just the games horrible lag, because even dropping the settings to cartoon visuals it still lagged and I stopped playing last month.
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
What about bringing back Tribble Weekend each season to test the new maps and items under heavy load? Ideally, this should happen a couple of weeks before launch to allow enough time to fix any problems that are found.
Borticus, I have further questions about your comments, but I'm not sure whether you know the answers or whether they would require a programmer to answer.
Was there a particular reason why the entire ship was being copied? Or was it simply inefficient code---for example, passing the ship by value instead of by reference?
Why do player ships, hangar pets, torpedoes, mines, etc. have to be modified at all? Whether it be every one second or every five seconds, this refresh sounds like a lot of needless computation. Instead of dynamically changing the powers of player ships, hangar pets, and other objects to strip the buffs off the Crystalline Entity, why not make a static change to the Crystalline Entity itself to allow its buffs to be stripped by those powers?
Much obliged kind sir.
Now that's just crazy talk right there ... .
It'd just get more crazy if they made the announcement a couple of hours early so that ppl could actually patch Tribble .
They have lists of stuff that they identified as likely causes a couple of months ago. When you've got a game like STO, it's going to take time to identify everything and get it working better.
Excuse me, but do you expect every STO developer to actually be working on issues that are not in their area of expertise?
The devs have been saying that the cause seems to be coming from various abilities that are taxing on the server. Ship artists and Environmental Artists have no real reason to be working on something that a dev that specializes in powers has the knowledge to work on.
They also cannot just halt on releasing new ships either. This is an MMO that is funded by people buying new ships. It would be a loss of revenue if they halted releasing stuff.
Finally, the Devs can't give an exact time table when all of this is fixed because it's more than one thing that is causing the lag experienced in the game. It'll be fixed when it'll finally be fixed.
Suggestion: Make a stickied thread in general discussion titled 'Ongoing lag issues being addressed' or something like that. Post this information in it as well as update it with new information later when you have more info to release.
The problem with posting this in the middle of a thread is that it isn't easily found. There are still comments after comments all over the forums claiming that you guys have "never" given us any response to the issues, and/or you're not doing anything at all. A stickied post would be easily visible and people can see right away that you are in fact working on it.
Thank you very much for posting the info here also, instead of only posting on Reddit and other websites. I hope you guys can do that more often because as you say, a lot of us don't use Reddit or other social media websites.
You know, that sudden hesitation every minute or so while you are at the Exchange or Bank and a command doesn't execute like putting something in the Bank?
The exploits around this have been fixed, but what about the overall problem?
I'm under the impression that it's the game engine cycling, could this be the cause of some lag and or powers not working? How about Torpedoes and Cannons/ Turrets not reliably firing?
Seriously you want us to believe APB makes lags?
Wow...
Ok ill tell you one thing guys, Even if i support cryptic testers ect by sending them personally images of bugs, of ppl who abuse these bugs to oblivion (and cryptic barely even time bans them - where they made multiple ppl quit the game - so crytpic self supports bug abuse and loses money for it), i inform them mostly how the bugs occur, and we took in our fleet them to teach them how to build a pvp ship so they know how the stuff works.
And im tired of hearing such things (some of my pics landed even on your twitter by other community memebers copied them there).
First of all i will tell you about kerrat map or arenas.
THERE ARE NO PPL USING APB THERE
and the lag is worse then you ever see in any PVE map on 100k runs.
So if there are no APB how can there be lag? ill tell you how, as we already tested it fleet wide.
2 days ago arena matches, 2x lag builds with resonance beam, pilot stuff, plasma doping and and pilot tree scratch the paint mostly on enemy side.
half of enemy team gets SNR's most of the time the ppl start getting in 10k of the lag build enemies, other half cant even shoot a single cannon bolt or topr in 30s as weapons jam and gray out.
here bort, here you have the most annoying bugs and things that seem to make them and yes there was no APB on anyone on the map.
1st) Cannon weapon and torpedoes dont shoot at all from 6-7 months now. If you dont believe me equip your lvl 60 toon ship in cannons and neutronic torpedo spread 3 and come to kerrat and you will see they go dont fire even in 20-30s ONE TIME (like yesterday in arena match, 2 ppl had plasma doping heavy build and whole map was getting freezes, ppl got SNR's even it was so bad).
2nd) Traits like iconian t4 RDM trait make netgraph spike by 200-500 ping alone just on procing, like other traits: Reciprocity, Emergency weapon power cycle (probably because of plasma doping more often proces), guardian ship trait, All hand on deck and few others.
3rd) Resonant destabilising beam ability still makes ppl freeze in space for its whole duration (again checked today in kerrat) netgraph goes wild on it (and to it the graph lag is amazin even on minimal setting on NEW PC's that can handle 5 STO's running on the same time with max settings).
4th) Pilot tree primery alldmg immunity and strach the paint also make 200-300 ping spikes in netgraph (and cannons with torps barely shoot on ships with these traits).
5th) Command ship powers and pilot maneuvers also can make weapons jam (specially pilot menuvers when the enemy just moves out on beggining of the firing cycle making your weapons gray out for 5-10s).
It seems pilot ship manuevers are to fast to calculate for cannons and torps.
6th) ramm doesnt make dmg to you if oyu use attack pattern while having pilot primery or secondery (and enemy takes 200% dmg from ram - from start of DR).
7th) FBP after rework STILL DEALS DMG THROUGH ABILITIES THAT MAKE YOU IMMUNE TO IT LIKE WARPSHADOWS (EVERY ROMULAN SHIP after T4 IS AFFECTED BY IT.
8th and probably one of main problems) I know fixing this problem i not easy, but adding more stuff in such short time (and then adding more t6 ship traits ect) wont help you out, at it seems the game cant even handle the high number of proce's counted on faw hit if you got a multi proc weapon, kemocite, and few plasma consoles. Its not only graphical lag, but it seems like the engine and maybe network cant handle the new added data stress and the stress is caused by traits and new abilities that have multi dmg/proc effects in 1. This occurs mostly in 2+ more plasma doping console+ kemo+ few proc weapons. Add 3-5 ships like that and enemies get perma SNR's in arena.
I will also pass by the 58s of alldmg immunity and invincibility a pilot ship can have on 64s time span (yes bort its posstible to be 90% of the time alldmg immune while dealing dmg).
I dont understand how you could come to conlusion that APB is fault when one one uses it on PVP and PVP is the most suffering from lag, but well lets hope your right.
As currently hearing such things mades me regrett the support i gave to the testers and actually makes me regret im playing the game at all (even when the lack of punishment for bug abusers and alldmg immunity made me delate already alt toons).
And if you want to see real lag Borticus i invite you to our HOBO fleet for a match we show you how fed side abuses lags builds normally. Maybe you will get some good data from it, that helps you out more.
And no there wont be APB on the map.
With best regards
on my location in Germany there is an improvement with the lag situation last days! ISA and CCA are in playable condition at the moment. Since a long time I enjoy flying it again! Please keep going!
FED: Special Circumstances, Raumpatroullie Elysion, Naeramarth
KDF: Special Circumstances KDF