Server Lag due to final wipe player increase

As I stated before, you would receive a large influx of players and you needed to be sure you had sufficient server hardware to handle it or you would have lag issues... you are having them now.

7P's

Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

Fix your hardware stability to handle twice what you think you need.

If I am paying money (as are all) to play a game I want to play it not sit waiting for the server to respond.

You focus players into small areas having crafting/banking/vendor/trainers in one central location add more to the cities... I understand small towns only having one but cities should all have a few.

I would have made several market/crafting/bank areas in Adoris north south east and west (just one example)

It's nice to gather people in one area to promote social aspect of game but in order to do so you need a stronger server hardware setup.

The lag is not occurring in low pop areas its occurring when in a city in market areas.

Buy more hardware, stronger... you have the money. Rough guess at your budget...30 programmers $50k a year... thats $1.5million a year... been around what? 3 years... thats $4.5million for payroll so far... according to main page you've received twice that... $4.5million for hardware... you should have some of the best and baddest hardware around. Of course my numbers are probably off but thats just a quick guess at what you got... spend it.

Need me send more money? We will take up a pool and all send you some more if you promise to buy better hardware.

 

For me the only place I found impossible to enter and walk about is Owls Head. Brittany central to my surprise is running fine. That is me playing from the uk

 

I'm feeling a bit awkward in saying this because so many people are saying that they have lag, But....

"I live in the center of Thailand were there's only busses in or out"... and thus far,

"I've never had lag"
Odd but true ...
~Time Lord~

 

It's so much more than just hardware. Optimisation takes time. Need I remind you (and it seems like I do), the game is still in development. Also, your perception of their budget doesn't take into account so very many factors (building rent, for one). Also, the big cities do have more than one designed area of congregation. Everyone and their mother knows about high population lag issues. It's an issue that gets optimised over time. I've backed a few early access games now, and something I've learned is server optimisation takes time, hard work, and creativity. Sometimes it is even necessary to take a step back before you move forward.

The huge influx of players stressing the servers is all part of the development process. And for the record, I actually don't have lag issues in either of those cities.

Maybe you should upgrade YOUR hardware.

 

Hardware? In today's world this is all done via virtual boxes... instances of servers that "spin up" when the demand (IE players) dictates it... and ramps down when the demand decreases.

It's all handled automagically. There's no concept of "buy more hardware!" these days.

That said... Owl's Head is the only town I have a tiny bit of an issue... but that's because everyone has made their lawns look like the living room of a 65 year old with an obsession for knick-knacks.

It would be helpful if you shared what kind of PC you are on... processor, memory, graphics card etc. Odds are you could use an upgrade somewhere.

 

@r-DotPhunky could be very right!

I play from the remote center of Thailand,
"And I've Never Had Lag"
Odd fact but true...
~Time Lord~

 

Yeap, sorry youre so laggy, and sorry for you that aggressive language, fear mongering, and baseless accusations are the only way you choose to get your point across.

No lag whatsoever here! There is some client side lag in the big cities (which has always been the case), and that is really noticeable on Linux and not nearly as noticeable on Windows. Packet-wise, theres no more lag than there is doing anything else I do on the internet. Also, my ISP sucks. No problems whatsoever communicating back and forth with Port's game servers.

 

Virtualisation is irrelevant. It's still all hardware in the end. I wasn't aware that Portalarium had outsourced to a server farm. Is it Amazon's? In either case, it costs money to spin up extra servers. If you own them, then the cost is of the equipment and energy. You also have to take into account the lifetime value of the hardware. Sometimes it's better to rent the hardware, rather than buying it outright. If a farm owns the servers, it is still going to cost money to spin up additional servers. That is why optimisation is very important.

 

None of what you are experiencing is Server Lag. Our servers are consistently operating at below 10% capacity. No amount of hardware will solve the issue as you suggest.

It is all client side and networking messaging issues which we are patching literally daily. As noted in the release notes optimizations are ongoing.

 

Great Work Portalarium Guys! Thanks !'

~Time Lord~

 

Don't engineer me bro.

 

From what I've seen the worst lag is lots. For instance Soltown, I apear at the entry and run no problem. But the last 2 turns as players lots start loading is where a major LAGfest begins. The folks with the lot next to the village walls is a major factor as they have loads of junk just laying out and the computer goes nutz trying to load it all.

As to it not being server, hmmm? I've done multiple trace routes from my PC and I never get above 35 ms delay on a 150meg connection. So if it ain't your servers it might be your provider or your load balancing hardware/software.

 

@Chris could you also check Celetis while you're at it. Several players have experienced severe lag to the point that the client froze up to minutes. I suspect it may be related to NPC path finding since they started to run at lightning after players regain control.

 

Could be the rendering on the client side. The server does not send polygon in binary in the packet. Instead, it sends the info on what items need to be rendered and the client is responsible to render it.

Regardless of the root cause, there are still many things that need to be optimized.

It would be more productive if players report the areas that give them lag as many have already done. Trying to point finger wheter it's server or client isn't helpful when it comes pinpointing the problem and fixing it.

 

Makes sense, but why does it take SOTA so much longer then EQ2, MWO and others that I just don't have near as bad issues with?

 

in the end it's Unity and how it pans a lot of stuff over to the CPU some of these issues should be resolved once they switch over to Unity 5.4 which brings cpu usage down and frames up quite a bit. Also a lot of areas stop bed heavy optimization like Owls Head and Brittany. I get like almost 60 fps in bright bike pass but in some of the major cities it's crap like 15 fps. Also i have huge frame drops caused by something local in the town's I'll be at 30 fps and drop to 5 I'm really hoping they figure out what's causing that age fixing it.

 

Because all of those are more finished products and have been optimised, also to my knowledge they dont have customisable housing within a town. Put simply every object on a lot has to be syncronised and the info sent to your client and loaded.
The more housing and housing decos the more youll have to load.

 

Those games cost like $100 Million Dollars SotA has $9.5M in funding but needs way more.

 

Because those are complete games that have been optimized. As we have clearly stated multiple times we are still optimizing