Update 48.3 didn't address lag in a meaningful way

[Carpone]

For the handful of runaway effects that were fixed in U48.3, great. But if the devs were expecting server-wide lag improvements, then U48.3 missed the mark.

I run reaper content exclusively with a static group of DC instakill sorc, healer, alchemist x2, rogue, and barb/wolf. In the two weeks since the patch, there's been no noticeable difference in lag compared to pre-patch.

The three areas where lag needs to be addressed:

1. Zoning in/out of quests. When someone zones into a reaper difficulty quest, everyone already in the quest lags until the person loads in. When someone comes in late to a quest, that's where it's a kick in the crotch. Gameplay freezes for 10-15 seconds and when it resumes, we're all dead from monster damage or vengeance circles. Being penalized with a 2-min death penalty when it's outside of our control, well, it just sucks.

2. Disconnecting/reconnecting. When someone disconnects or reconnects to the game in reaper difficulty, everyone in the quest or raid freezes for 10-15 seconds. Again, when it resumes, characters are dead because the game catches up after loading in reaper enhancements.

3. Random occurrences. There's no observable-to-players event that is causing lag to occur. Mobs spawning in the quest? Maybe. Expensive mob AI/pathing? Probably. It happens both in and out of combat. The cause doesn't matter to me, because it's not anything I can control. Figure it out.

Desired outcome for #1 and #2: Players should not be impacted by other players entering/leaving a quest. Find a different way to "load" reaper enhancements so the only person impacted by a load-in is the individual loading in, not the rest of the party or the raid. The current way reaper points load in and update the character sheet is an abysmal play experience. It's exacerbated the more reaper points a person has spent. In my group, the average character has 130 reaper points. There are nights we want to throw our monitors out of our windows because of the frustration with lag.

I've been reporting issues about reaper lag for a while now, and it's not getting the attention it requires.

Lag is killing my desire to play DDO.

[adamkatt]

I fought the lag and the lag won...

[Hogdog5]

Did you seriously expect it to though?

[droid327]

I feel like there's just a cache somewhere in the DDO engine that needs to be emptied or something, and all the devs are way overthinking it trying to find all these complicated solutions

[Cordovan]

Thank you for the feedback, fyi, as we have been and are continuing to look into ways to improve game performance. We recently did some work on effects bugs, so it is a bit disheartening to hear that U48.3 hasn't had much if any improvement for you.

[Arkat]

Thank you for the feedback, fyi, as we have been and are continuing to look into ways to improve game performance. We recently did some work on effects bugs, so it is a bit disheartening to hear that U48.3 hasn't had much if any improvement for you.

It seems to me (and others) that the miniscule tweaks made to the game like a stacking effect here and there is really like kicking the can down the road in an unrealistic hope of delaying the inevitable. I really wish the Devs/Engineers at SSG would have a "come to Jesus meeting" and genuinely attempt to address the elephant in the room.

You know what the real problems are (you're not stupid), but it sure seems like y'all are afraid to take the bull by the horns.

I'm not asking for a response by SSG, and I certainly don't expect one. There are a myriad of reasons why I'm sure one won't be forthcoming, and I understand those reasons.

[Chai]

It seems to me (and others) that the miniscule tweaks made to the game like a stacking effect here and there is really like kicking the can down the road in an unrealistic hope of delaying the inevitable. I really wish the Devs/Engineers at SSG would have a "come to Jesus meeting" and genuinely attempt to address the elephant in the room.

You know what the real problems are (you're not stupid), but it sure seems like y'all are afraid to take the bull by the horns.

I'm not asking for a response by SSG, and I certainly don't expect one. There are a myriad of reasons why I'm sure one won't be forthcoming, and I understand those reasons.

Watch it be something like U5 all over again.

[Paladin_of_Power]

Panda sad LagMonster won again.

[Arkat]

Watch it be something like U5 all over again.

Apparently, your memory is better than mine.

Can you please elucidate?

[ValariusK]

Going to suggest a test plan. I can think of two decent hypotheses as to why the lag is bad and getting worse over time.
1: It relates to all the bonuses, especially reaper ones applying and unapplying. To test this, can you turn off reaper bonuses for a day or two on a few servers where lag has been a big issue? That would tell you whether it is reaper bonuses that are the big issue.
2: It relates to the size of the database, especially where toons have numbers of items expressed mostly in exponential notation. For this I suggest some real testing using Lam. See how raid performance etc worsens as you bulk out their databases with 1E10 large dragonscales and the like. Yeah most stacks that big probably came from black sorcery, but you need to know if they're actually dragging you down.
3: Other effects---you've got a lot of short duration but continuous effects like bard songs and so forth floating around. You might look into whether that's causing lag. If so, going to a more fixed implementation (e.g. ballad lasts a lot longer but applies more rarely) might help.

[apocaladle]

It seems to me (and others) that the miniscule tweaks made to the game like a stacking effect here and there is really like kicking the can down the road in an unrealistic hope of delaying the inevitable. I really wish the Devs/Engineers at SSG would have a "come to Jesus meeting" and genuinely attempt to address the elephant in the room.

You know what the real problems are (you're not stupid), but it sure seems like y'all are afraid to take the bull by the horns.

I'm not asking for a response by SSG, and I certainly don't expect one. There are a myriad of reasons why I'm sure one won't be forthcoming, and I understand those reasons.

They already said the lag is caused by pathing (hirelings, summons, pets, dragging aggro till you get dungeon alert red, etc.) and effects (feats, items, enhancements, epic destinies, reaper points, spells, debuffs, buffs, etc.) on player characters.

Which is also why raids are so much more laggy than quests as you have all the effects that hit more than 1 player there (auras, aoe buffs etc.)
So when people complain about "make summons have more buffs and better AI" that would just cause an insane amount of lag.

I think one of the main issues the devs have is that they are just looking at server records of raids or solo quests rather than 12 fully decked out and buffed players all in the same instance live.

[Bjond]

no noticeable difference in lag compared to pre-patch

Actually, there has been an enormous difference. Since the patch, it's now so bad raids are almost impossible. Huge 30s lag-outs where you can't do anything at all.

Single-group instances are worse, too. I'm currently playing my ranged character. The classic Hunt's End + Shoot Later | Sniper shot often fails. Why? Because you can no longer hit them in sequence. You have to hit a skill, then wait 3-4s to find out if it really hit the server or was ignored and put on GCD anyway. Then hit it again and watch and again and watch until finally it sticks. Only then can you hit your Later/Sniper, which might have the same issue.

The only fix I've found is to solo. Synch issues? Simultaneity / deadlock bugs? Whatever it is, a tester with a single client won't reproduce it.

[Mofus]

I have noticed a lot of hanging load screens, so bad that you have to shut down the client. Could this be adding to lag in game?

[mikarddo]

For the handful of runaway effects that were fixed in U48.3, great. But if the devs were expecting server-wide lag improvements, then U48.3 missed the mark.

I run reaper content exclusively with a static group of DC instakill sorc, healer, alchemist x2, rogue, and barb/wolf. In the two weeks since the patch, there's been no noticeable difference in lag compared to pre-patch.

The three areas where lag needs to be addressed:

1. Zoning in/out of quests. When someone zones into a reaper difficulty quest, everyone already in the quest lags until the person loads in. When someone comes in late to a quest, that's where it's a kick in the crotch. Gameplay freezes for 10-15 seconds and when it resumes, we're all dead from monster damage or vengeance circles. Being penalized with a 2-min death penalty when it's outside of our control, well, it just sucks.

2. Disconnecting/reconnecting. When someone disconnects or reconnects to the game in reaper difficulty, everyone in the quest or raid freezes for 10-15 seconds. Again, when it resumes, characters are dead because the game catches up after loading in reaper enhancements.

3. Random occurrences. There's no observable-to-players event that is causing lag to occur. Mobs spawning in the quest? Maybe. Expensive mob AI/pathing? Probably. It happens both in and out of combat. The cause doesn't matter to me, because it's not anything I can control. Figure it out.

Desired outcome for #1 and #2: Players should not be impacted by other players entering/leaving a quest. Find a different way to "load" reaper enhancements so the only person impacted by a load-in is the individual loading in, not the rest of the party or the raid. The current way reaper points load in and update the character sheet is an abysmal play experience. It's exacerbated the more reaper points a person has spent. In my group, the average character has 130 reaper points. There are nights we want to throw our monitors out of our windows because of the frustration with lag.

I've been reporting issues about reaper lag for a while now, and it's not getting the attention it requires.

Lag is killing my desire to play DDO.

Interesting. I havent observed #1 or #2 myself and I run quite a bit of reaper. So your experience differs from mine. I only have 50-83 reaper points depending on character though in case that matters.

I have observed
- not being able to log out being very severe at times lately
- zoning taking a long time often
- spells not landing despite not otherwise having noticeable lag
- spells taking 5-10 seconds to land when having noticeable lag
- stuttering in movement
- freezing in movement
I have also observed periods of play being lag free though so its not something static.

I have also observed not really looking for forward to raid nights because lag is the single most important factor in terms of those being fun or not.

[Carpone]

I only have 50-83 reaper points depending on character though in case that matters.

It does matter. The more reaper points spent == the more times the character sheet has to be updated == the more noticable the lag. Open your character sheet to the feats tab. Enter a quest. Watch how many times it is refreshed. There's got to be a more streamlined way to apply reaper enhancements that doesn't negatively impact the group/raid.

I have observed
- not being able to log out being very severe at times lately
- zoning taking a long time often
- spells not landing despite not otherwise having noticeable lag
- spells taking 5-10 seconds to land when having noticeable lag
- stuttering in movement
- freezing in movement

All of that has been in place so long I've become numb to it. I'll never understand the first point, where I type /logout on the guild ship and it takes 30+ seconds for the game to recognize the command. I've just gotten used to typing /quit now instead as a work around.

I have also observed not really looking for forward to raid nights because lag is the single most important factor in terms of those being fun or not.

Lag is the number one reason it took us nearly a year to complete R10 Killing Time. And the lag didn't go away, we just got lucky where we lagged out. In ToD, we had two people disconnect. It's a miracle the kiter didn't die, which would have been a wipe for us. That's over an hour spent just to get to that point. We had more than 20 prior R10 attempts, most of which resulted in a wipe due to lag (spells not landing, game freezing, etc)

[Jerevth]

Interesting. I havent observed #1 or #2 myself and I run quite a bit of reaper. So your experience differs from mine. I only have 50-83 reaper points depending on character though in case that matters.

I have observed
- not being able to log out being very severe at times lately
- zoning taking a long time often
- spells not landing despite not otherwise having noticeable lag
- spells taking 5-10 seconds to land when having noticeable lag
- stuttering in movement
- freezing in movement
I have also observed periods of play being lag free though so its not something static.

I have also observed not really looking for forward to raid nights because lag is the single most important factor in terms of those being fun or not.

I've not seen my character freezing more than a few seconds, but running slayers with 3-5 others, about 50% of the spells don't land, as above.
I've also seen mobs freeze but still reposition (as statues) and some teleport.
What really threw me for a curve was, while running RL Slayers yesterday, I was getting the royal beat-down at level 28, for the first five minutes, but I had been in there at level 21 without issues before. When the PUG broke up it stopped- as if some of the static bonuses starting working. (I didn't check the character stats, unfortunately.) When more players joined it remained the same- no issues- but initially, it was like the wilderness was scaled up with the number of players.

-I only recently caved in and started running with PUGs so if wildernesses do scale let me know.

[slarden]

I haven't been able to raid much the past few weeks so my sample size is smaller, but I was on for several hours today including Killing Time, Project Nemesis and Too Hot Too Handle - I didn't experience any lag during the raids today - or before/after raiding. I have several high rxp characters.

I don't face tremendous lag problems much except during raiding with large groups. When I 3 main-raids with friends we rarely get lag which makes me think some builds are causing much of the lag in raids. Button mashing builds revolving around an op sniper shot is one build I suspect of that.

[kanordog]

Lag related to reaper

I am not a fun of huge power gap but if to fix lag means that reaper enhancements applied semi-PERMANENTLY (like Past life and enhancement effects) than please SSG, let reaper trees work all the time, even in public areas instead of reapplying it again and again and again when a character enters a new instance.

[Dragavon]

Thank you for the feedback, fyi, as we have been and are continuing to look into ways to improve game performance. We recently did some work on effects bugs, so it is a bit disheartening to hear that U48.3 hasn't had much if any improvement for you.

I watched yesterdays livestream and that made me both sad and dissapointed when you said you (SSG) did not have anything you where working on right now related to reducing lag.

Lag has gotten progressively worse over the last 6 months or so, and it is now a more or less constant thing for me and the people I play with. It is true that we do not see the 1 minute complete freeze we used to have some time ago, but 1 second freeze, 1 minute loading screens, spell lag happens all the time every day now.

The changes in the 48,3 did not improve anything for us.

You guys at SSG really needs to start focusing on lag again.

[Stravix]

I watched yesterdays livestream and that made me both sad and dissapointed when you said you (SSG) did not have anything you where working on right now related to reducing lag.

Lag has gotten progressively worse over the last 6 months or so, and it is now a more or less constant thing for me and the people I play with. It is true that we do not see the 1 minute complete freeze we used to have some time ago, but 1 second freeze, 1 minute loading screens, spell lag happens all the time every day now.

The changes in the 48,3 did not improve anything for us.

You guys at SSG really needs to start focusing on lag again.

The TLDW from the devstream said the exact opposite... I am guessing one of you misheard? Anyone else who watched who can weigh in?