I have never liked this response on this particular issue. EQ is, indeed, a 16+ year old game, so the claim that one needs a "top of the line gaming rig" to prevent lag is odd and inaccurate to say the least. Mine is certainly not such a rig, not even close, yet I rarely lag in the lobby. As to your problem with lag causing you to drop down on a parse, that is hardly cause to advocate having players booted from the game because they AFK in a non-combat zone. I shall repeat myself. There are numerous remedies available already which can reduce lag. Use them. The insistence on placing responsibility on someone other than the player and advocating that players should be booted from the game because your rig is sub-par is amazingly selfish not to mention ridiculous.
No argument from me. I was just pointing out how no other MMORPG out there, as far as I know, handles buffs like EQ does.
If you have a decent rig Bamboom, then you need to change some settings. The most likely being have your antivirus or windows defender set to NOT scan logs in real time. Or if for some reason you never use a parse/gina, do /logoff. I have a decent computer, but not over the top. I spent 700ish for all the parts and put it together myself and this was about 2 years ago. I never lag and I run right through the middle of the lobby/pile of people if I'm in that zone for some reason. I have all in game settings maxed. (which I need to change, because super dense particle effects are annoying, but I always space it.)
I am not a proponent of kicking players. Still, the game engine is old and vastly inefficient. My basis for that? New games run smooth. EQ doesn't. New titles tend to be optimized. There probably is room for improvement, but if segments of the player base believe it is on them (the players) and not the developers to either work with or around the problems, than there is going to be no incentive to do better than the current unoptimized status quo. It is what it is, right? Fanboi's will always take the stance that either nothing is wrong with the game or the problem lies at the feet of who ever has the gripe and it is on them to get over it. Or some mix of the two. Again, we all get it. Not much changes so we probably all know who has the bigger dog in the fight. As for what I can do to fix lag, there has not been much discussion about what can be done to solve it other than asking in guild and getting the same canned "you need to buy a new computer" reply. As if being a gamer mandates a 6 month upgrade in order to keep your gamer card current. I get it, but EQ is the ONLY title that causes issues and that says quite a bit. To repeat myself, new games are optimized. EQ isn't, with so much of it being legacy and adhoc. I will look into antivirus settings. Otherwise I don't have much to go on. Its been a while (years) since I did a system format. I might just start there.
I never advocated booting players. I don't know whose bright idea that was but it wasn't mine. I just want mercs and mounts gone. Despite all the naysayers of what I posted, no one has yet given me a good reason why you need a mount in the GL. The particle issue is a problem with the old engine of the game. In my experience, it doesn't matter if you set particle effects to low, medium, or high, you get the same overkill. I turn them all off, and I have a Nvidia 670 card. It's ridiculous when the particles of EQ are worse than Call of Duty. I could put a Titan X card in my PC and it would still be lagged.
EverQuest depends way more on your CPU than your graphics card. As for mounts, the lag they cause (that you are contributing to, btw) literally makes you take a few more seconds to get from one end to the other. They have bigger fish to fry. This is also a case of be careful what you wish for, because the most efficient way of giving you want you want is to make countdown timers only stop in the guildhall.
Something which would cut down on the lag without changing much would be to redo the wall around the center of the lobby where everyone gathers. They could make the wall solid with smaller archways to enter/exit, so you don't have the big open gap between 'the pile' and the guildhall/magus area, and people could run around the perimeter of the lobby without ever having to take on the lag of 'the pile.' 'Lag' is a subjective phrase. I use a 60hz monitor and consider anything < 60 FPS to be 'lag.' Many EQers are older and back in the day 30 FPS was considered good and they're happy with that. I run vsync and triple buffering on EQ, so my only possible FPS values are 15, 30, 45, and 60. In 'the pile,' my FPS is 30 and I consider that lag. I have a 4.6 gHZ CPU and while it's old, it's still close to the best setup you could have for EQ, @1080p. FWIW, I always run anti aliasing but it seems to have no impact on FPS. Higher resolutions indeeds make EQ better and they should put time into making 3k and 4k EQ more feasible, via better multithread optimization and UI scaling.
All they would need to do is flag the GL as an indoor zone. No more mounts. And no more snow and rain, either. Never could figure that one out.
For myself, they could close in 3 of the 4 walls, leaving just the east side open to the center of the lobby. Since most guilds will have a housing guild hall, they can zone in, run the west way and to the magus/guild halls or housing zones without seeing the opening where the lag is. Leaving east for those who truly want to help with rezzes, buffs, etc.
Guild Lobby was the answer to 300-400 people in POK all day. Except now you have most of them people in the guild lobby so it didnt work. At least POK was bigger so they were spread out more. If you lag in the guild lobby its your issue upgrade your 15 year old PC Even your avg gaming PC will never lag in the GL.
No offense, but you really come off as The Third Reich of the Guild Lobby with all your posts. Just saying...
Players hate change, and modifying the physical layout of the zone could easily be interpreted as annoying. I don't think you need to quarantine the AFK folks, but rather hide them. The shadowed man illusion that the AFK flag places on you only goes so far because of unique weapon/shield graphics and the multitude of people who don't set AFK. Instead, let's block seeing them in the first place. You could set opaque screens in the arches (like the not-so-secret entrance to Plane of Fear caves in the Feerrott or the illusory walls hiding the exit from the garden in Arx Mentis). That way you can walk through them to join the lag buff pile if you want to, or never see all the AFK models to have to process them. The screens would be an opportunity to dress up the Lobby a bit. You could go for a static image, or change them once in a while to coincide with announcements or events (like EQ's anniversary).
Offense taken. Really, a analogy? Can't believe this thread is being Godwin'ed but nothing should surprise me any more.
Yeah, I guess it wasn't the most reasonable reply I ever made - but honestly, it pales in comparison to your posts. This is what I see, I see someone with the attitude of "do as I say, don't do as I do", hence my analogy which I found to be quite accurate. If you don't like the idea that people may disagree with you, or you could possibly be met with resistance from an idea (whether comedic or sarcastic), perhaps you shouldn't sail on the open waters of writing on these dangerous forums because you do have to be thick skinned to take some of the criticism that floats about. Now lets get to the issue... You are complaining about other people who are AFK in the lobby that may have an extra graphic that is attached to their toon (be it a nimbus, mount, pet, etc) - when you yourself are also AFKing in the lobby, using up resources as that extra graphic (extra graphic being your own toon) loading up on someone elses screen while benefiting from someone doing an MGB. Well, here is a news flash - you are not at your keyboard the entire time you leave your toon AFK sucking up system resources; and when you do come back from being AFK - its what...a few minutes of inconvenience? How hypocritical. If its such a problem for you, go to your graphics options in EQ and lower particle effects or outright turn them off, turn off pc names, pet names, disable advanced lighting, or whatever may be causing your slowdown. Suggesting a change on a global scale just because a few people lag in the GL is not the answer. More often than not, its end user related and can be fixed on the player's end.
