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PSA: Unannounced Ship XP Changes - No Need To Panic
salazarraze
Member Posts: 3,794 Arc User
Hi guys. I played SB1 and Argala today. You no longer get ship XP at the time you kill a ship. You now instead get a large chunk of XP at the time of warping out of SB1 and Argala even if it's only 4/5 in Argala. Argala 4/5 is dead. Per a dev and other testers, you now get your xp all at once upon warping out instead of per kill.The reason is apparently because the old way of getting ship xp per kill caused lag. I checked the most recent patch notes and this wasn't mentioned at all so I wanted to make everyone aware of this. Thanks.
For those interested, upon completing SB1, I got a large chunk of XP along with my marks that pushed me up to T1 with 1406 xp remaining to hit T2. Upon completing Argala, I got another large chunk of XP to get me to T2 with 2967 xp remaining to hit T3.
For those interested, upon completing SB1, I got a large chunk of XP along with my marks that pushed me up to T1 with 1406 xp remaining to hit T2. Upon completing Argala, I got another large chunk of XP to get me to T2 with 2967 xp remaining to hit T3.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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If getting the exp after helps keep lag down, I'm all for it.
Me too
It makes sense that reducing the number of messages between the clients and server would help, and it's good that Cryptic has people doing the analysis to find slowdowns like that.
This is a 'Norman' conundrum. 'You say providing individual kill XP was causing the lag, but you used to provide individual kill XP that did not cause lag. 'Illogical! Illogical! Please explain! You are human. Only humans can explain their behavior! Please explain!'
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Nope, not necessarily a contradiction.
Let's say there were 10 messages per second, one of them being XP to one of the clients.
Now after adding more "stuff" (powers, traits, consoles, ...) there are 20 messages per second, still one of them being XP. And now there are too many messages, with every message over 15 adding a little lag. The XP message used to be harmless, but now removing it will lessen the lag a bit.
Coding has situations like this all the time, where scaling up load or traffic beyond some tipping point causes non-linear slowdowns. I had a database query jump from under a second to 10+ seconds when the number of rows in a table grew by about 10%, because one of the columns needed to be indexed.
It works just as the OP said, you get the bulk XP when you warp out. Most players shouldn't really notice the change, and if it helps cut lag then sounds like a good idea to me.
Yes, I noticed that, yesterday, when leveling up several new ships at Argala. Nothing really changed materially. The XP, indeed, is now added upon warp-out.
It's been a lot better for me overall as well. The exception is the Tholian Red Alert which is still just too much lag to be enjoyable.
Overall though, the change has definitely helped for me.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Tholian Alert was smooth as silk yesterday.. today it was a lag fest (for me.) Maybe just bad timing, I'll try again later. Thanks for the heads up.
Same for me in the Tholian Red Alert.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
It's like when I think everything is just fine, and then there's an all-hands meeting at work where the bosses tell us not to be nervous.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
If the updates for xp gains was causing lag then surely the updates covering the volume of visual spam would also be a contributing factor as well, specially for a group scenario with massive amounts of pewpew going on.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
A few hours earlier I was in probably the worst zone for rubberbanding and lag (well for me besides DS9) Dyson Battlezone and that was rubberbanding fairly hard.
Time to look at the Hud and Visual spam when using/activating powers
Hello rubber banding my old friend, time to bounce around the battlezone again, where are all my bug reports going?, out of love with this game I am falling, As Cryptic fail to acknowledge a problem exists, Shakes an angry fist, And from Support all I'm hearing are the sounds of silence.
I am not sure if this would matter or not. What really counts for server side lag is the computations, the amount of on screen visuals are rendered mostly client side. So while that could cause lag on lower end PC's, I don't think it's a huge contributor. I get the same lag as everyone else and I am running a system that can easily handle the visuals.
Funny thing is, I have seen a noticeable reduction in Lag overall.. but it didn't effect Argala at all. I have been using it the last few days for the usual trait grinding, and it was just as laggy as ever while the rest of the game has been mostly smooth for me. I honestly believe that NPC power usage is a huge factor, because it's FAR more laggy when fighting Hirogen then any other enemy. The only other place I have seen lag like that was the Tholian Red Alert which was just brutal.
What I did notice, while they are awarding the XP and Expertise on exit, they still show you the amount of each individual award as you kill it. So, I assume, that the display does not contribute to lag but the actual update does.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'