Hitching keeps getting worse for me

The hitching, unfortunately, is worse for me than last release and the resource usage is up. Here are videos starting with, r57, followed by r56 and ending with QA Patch 734(which was way, way,way better) Each of the following videos are directly after loading the game(less than 2mins after load-up(hitching gets worse the longer I play:

r57


r56


QA Patch 734



User Specs:
OS: Linux 4.15 Ubuntu 18.04 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4) System RAM: 15913
GPU: AMD Radeon (TM) RX 480 Graphics (POLARIS10 / DRM 3.23.0 / 4.15.0-33-generic, LLVM 6.0.0) GPU RAM: 8166
SotA.Linux.64.823.Date.08.30.18
Area: Novia_R8_Hills01_VerdantisMines
Area Display Name: Verdantis Mines
Loc: (-153.9, 26.1, 47.7)

 

Oddly, I went to my usual massive hitching spots today, and the hitching was much much less. I actually was confused, and thought I was playing the QA build, but wasn’t. Still need to check one more place though.

 

@Sorthious

I have the exact same problem :/

 

Yep...And as many times as I, and others, have reported this bug we get next to no feedback as to what the problem is, when it might be fixed, or what we can do to help. I would like an explaination from developers as to why they can get the performance nearly perfect on QA, but when the same code is released onto Live it is horrible. To me, that sounds like a networking issue. There's normally next to no people on the test server. When everything moves to the Live server I guess it has way more information to coordinate and something in the code is bottlenecking smooth gameplay. I'm just guessing what the issue might be, but that's all I can do if Devs won't keep us updated on what the problem is.

 

I recently came back from an 7 month break.
While hitching was always present in the past it somehow got worse over theese 7 month.

Never had so much hitching and fps drops/lags like in r56 and r57 :/

I believe you are onto something with the networking issue, as on QA it is usualy a lot better.

 

I agree that it has always been present, but it became more pronounced as of r54 and, for me at least, has been getting worse with every subsequent release. Don't get me wrong, I'm not posting this feedback to just rag on the game; I love this game and want to be able to play it. I just want to be able to experience the game without all the hitching/lag. I've seen posts where people try to attribute it to just a Linux issue and it isn't; many Win users have experienced the same problems.

 

Last night I was mining in elysium but the hitching was so bad it made me motion sick! I had to quit for the night. Of note, most times my guild has like 10-12 folks on of an evening, last night i didnt even count because it was such a long list! I think the hitching is sometimes connected to the server population and last night there were TONS of folks on! (which is exciting for me

 

Hence, my networking issue suggestion. More people = more data to coordinate.

 

True, i play on Windows 7 and Windows 10, two different PCs and i have the same hitching/fps/lag issues on both of them.

 

I concur that it has gotten worse. I was seeing it occasionally before, but I see it now indoors, repeatedly, fighting a single mob.

 

I think you might be on to something here. On the QA server it was barely noticeable. Last night it occasionally popped up and lasted a little longer than on QA.

Presuming it's the same code from Wednesday, It has me thinking. I have a decent internet IMO.

 

I have decent connection; 60down/5up, also generally between 17-25ms latency

 

Yeah, I'm 150 down/8 up. I don't think it's related to our internet connection speeds. I routinely check how my connection performs with a variety of sites as well.

 

It is not related to our network connection. It is related to the client build. I have loads of hitching on Windows 10 and GNU/Linux. QA almost no hitching at all. Live is utterly crap.
Also getting to a point where I just do not want to play as its freaking me out. I play other heavy MMO games with graphics on Max without a single problem.
I do understand that SotA is a separate kind of monster with tons of deco options and so forth. But then the hitching should be only in these scenes and not just normal adventure scenes, where there are only mobs being killed and respawned...

Also to note, the SotA client is pretty verbose. It logs a lot of crap, it broadcasts ALOT of UDP data over the whole network. I have no knowledge about how the underneath photon system works but maybe they should start contacting photon services to see what is going on.

As it seems that Port also has no clue where to search or fix the hitching problems..

 

Again, I'm not super tech savvy, but wouldn't the client build on QA be the one that is being released? If so, why is the performance between QA/Production so disparate? Yeah, the dynamic items do put a drag on the system, but again, most of the items that appear in QA appear in Live. Bottom line, to me at least, is they can obviously get performance at a decent level in QA, but fail utterly when it comes to the production side, at least for some of us. The reason why I mentioned networking is because SOTA uses a p2p setup and there are a lot less players in QA. Maybe there is an issue with server load? Not sure what Photon System is though I found Photon Unity Networking.

 

Server load would mean all players should have the exact same hitching at the exact same time. I dont think that is the case.
And as far as I know we are all nodes with the possibility as being a room master, some algorithm is checking who is the "best" candidate to be the room master node. And all nearby nodes (players) connect to that "better" instance. Probably based on ping, PC performance and resources. This is also why Port does not have loads of game servers, we are doing the hosting mostly.

They probably only have a basic server for us to login into, where also our player data is being pushed to so that they can monitor player generated data. This data is also used to create the API output.

The only thing I could monitor 2 releases ago when the hitching really started was that everytime our client was pushing out UDP data the client froze/hitched. But that bug has never received any comments from the devs.

But yeah, without any resources to really debug their projects its all just theoretic thoughts.

 

Agreed on the Server Load response. All the examples I recorded was as a solo player in Party/Private. Granted, I'm sure the game is still coordinating data with others on my friends list; whether or not I can teleport to them and what zones they are in, whether a friend is logged or not, whether I've received a message,etc. Again, I'm not well versed, but, if I remember correctly, UDP don't require acknowledgement of receipt, and if they don't make it the client server will request the packet again, unlike TCP packets which require acknowledgment of receipt. So, if I'm thinking about this right, which I'm probably not, couldn't UDP packets haven't to be constantly resent cause hitching? Not sure if this would cause a problem or not.

 

The UDP can also be a multicast stream that they are using, the only thing I do not get is why there is so much udp data being sent out. Like you stated and what is correct, there is no way telling if the packets are being received as it will never receive ACK's back. Also UDP is pretty unsecure, that is why they are using TLS encryption for the TCP session to server 208.81.240.51 for the login credentials.

 

Sadly, I can only report for me, the hitching is way way less for me now (its still happening, but not as frequent). I took my secondary character to East Vauban Foothills, of which that place hitches like crazy, it was really bad. Now it’s actually good (hitching still happens just less frequently).

I’ve done nothing different to my computer, other than updating my Nvida video driver to the latest one. But there was no difference in the excessive hitching even with this latest driver on the previous live build. The only other info I can add is both characters use Spears, 2-handed ones. And I am using the stand alone launcher.

User Specs:
OS: Windows 10 (10.0.0) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 0 @ 3.60GHz (8) System RAM: 16303
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 GPU RAM: 8079
SotA.Win.64.823.Date.08.30.18

NVidia 399.07 Driver

 

So last release, I had virtually no hitching when it first rolled out. But as time went by, it got steadily worse. On the last night of R56, it was virtually unplayable for me. So I'm now skeptical that no hitching right after a release means much.