Why is there raid lag?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Deckerd Smeckerd, Nov 25, 2021.

  1. Deckerd Smeckerd Augur

    Is there raid lag because of the amount of information being shared? Is it the routing?

    It seems like the most important thing a player needs to be updated on, as close to real time as possible, is the player's target and what has targeted the player and AOEs. If those don't lag but everything else lags, the game still plays.If the player switches targets, that target is the new priority. Is that logical?

    Perhaps healers might need real time HP updates as a priority.

    So the concept of foreground and background information. Background can tick slower. Maybe...

    What is more important to tick faster?
    Player and npc location?


    What else can tick slower?
    Player mana pool?
  2. Svann2 The Magnificent

    I blame TLP
    Sissruukk, Andarriel, Sancus and 3 others like this.
  3. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Two words: Game Engine.
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  4. Kazint Augur

    No. Those are silly answers. There's likely too much processing/db calls happening on the server which is why they mentioned caching as a possible improvement once they have more memory to work with. Slowing things down would just make the raids even less playable so just hope they figure out a way to fix things without changing how the game works too much.
    Jennre likes this.
  5. Svann2 The Magnificent

    IDK if this will carry over to live but it seems to me that there has been much less lag in ToL raids on beta than there was in CoV on live.
  6. Sancus Augur

    CoV Beta didn't have lag either, so I wouldn't expect the lack of lag to carry over. Beta did lag in years before CoV, which does make me wonder what changed to eliminate the lag there and if that change is in any way instructive as to how to reduce/remove the lag on live.
    Yinla likes this.
  7. Bigstomp Augur

    Disclaimer, totally made up guesses here.
    Bad luck you sometimes get stuck on a busy vm.
    I assume lag on beta has not been horrible because they're just spawning more vm's on the same systems as live and there is currently no real difference. (again, this is just a wild guess)
  8. Coagagin Guild house cat

    For one thing memory management works much differently in 32 bit than 64. You probably aren't using any 32 bit software to notice the difference in say 32 bit MS Word vs 64 bit Word even though they are both just word processors the speed is remarkable. I expect memory management to be much better under the new client/server architecture as any swap file should be all but eliminated if at all possible. Few read/write cycles means far better performance. Time will tell.

    Second, rewriting existing code to cheat CPU cycles by way of QoS or Quality of Service is a fool's errand. In software terms we are talking huge code bloat and while it sounds good would only exasperate the problem when not if things go wrong. You start jacking thread priority to favor say healing over caster damage and you might as well forbid nothing but tanks and healers. Again, wrong direction to pursue in any case but suspect someone did try this in the past only to abandon the idea due to spectacular failure.

    DGB has already destroyed on class (Wizards) to help raid lag don't destroy other classes at the altar of your personal raid pleasure as well. (*A well deserved rude gesture from the Wizard class*) Don't see the need to continuously devolve raids to suit a few complainers as it stands today. We need better long time fixes not small doses or band-aid level fixes.

    Want a better answer? I suggest you learn to code, then develop games yourself, land a dev job at DGB and fix it yourself while anticipating the negative feedback headed your way.

    -Coag
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare and Qelil like this.
  9. Tucoh Augur

    I blame swarm pets, attack counts and procs. Berserkers/beastlords et all are swinging like Jojo's wild adventure, casters are chaining Ultra Instinct level combos everytime they twiddle their fingers and bards are dumping swarm pets out like wolf spiders.

    [IMG]

    [IMG]

    [IMG]
    Juniare and Waitwhat like this.
  10. Waitwhat Elder

    Also game design decisions made the game to be very "spammy". People have meaningless spam keys... It wasn't always like this, and IMO the game may also be fun without this modern "improvement".
    Dre. likes this.
  11. Deckerd Smeckerd Augur


    I wouldn't be able to say whether QOS makes sense for this game or whether it would add much bloat because I don't know how their code works. Logically, it makes sense that I don't need updates about some things as often as I do about others, but it does add complexity to the logic of the code. Maybe the upgrade from 32 to 64 bit will help a lot.
  12. Metanis Bad Company

    I also have noticed that Beta raids have been lag free. And that was when they were still 32-bit.

    That indicates to me they CAN allocate enough resources to solve the lag problem and that they can't or won't do it for regular servers.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  13. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Maybe the beta server is less affected by lag, because it isn't as populated as the "real" servers?
    Could be that the server code doesn't scale that well with large populations.
  14. Metanis Bad Company

    Actually, it's been well known all along that they bought the blue light budget hosting plan and expected player attrition to "fit" us into it. You know, like a self-fulfilling prophecy!
    Fenthen likes this.
  15. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    So they could solve raid-lag just by upgrading the server hardware?
    Wouldn't that be a much profitable solution than gambling on player attrition? I would expect additional subs would make up for the increased hardware expenses...:confused:
  16. Febb Augur


    Most likely beta is on its own hardware server, it doesn't share resources with any other server. The other servers however are most likely VM's all grouped together on one or two hardware servers. When something goes wrong on the hardware, you'll see a group of servers go down.

    The hardware can handle the loads easily, however for what Daybreak is paying for, they are only alloted a tiny percentage of the resources the server can handle. So its like having a giant water hose that can put out a ton of water but only turning the spigot on to barely drip the water out.

    I doubt you'll see any improvements server side with 64 bit because of this. It will just help alleviate the crashing issues due to memory problems. I hope I'm wrong but I have a feeling I'm right.
  17. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Haha yeah, Columbus Nova was definitely not about investing into its products. Bunch of Mayong loving vampires at that investment firm.
  18. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Or perhaps lag in raids is there as a test for raiders. Sort of a "Suck it up and see if you can handle it now" kind of thing intended to help limit progress by raiders. Either that, or there is just a ton of information being transmitted from a lot of players in near proximity to each other and the pipeline isn't either efficient enough or large enough to handle the data. Kind of like the difference between a fire hose and a garden hose.
  19. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    I thought I had experienced raid lag when I raided on Xegony in a large guild on a Sunday night.

    But I hadn't.

    I had not experienced raid lag until there were about 250 people trying to kill Trakanon at the same time.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  20. Andarriel Everquest player since 2000

    Once we go 64 bit all the problems will simply go away! haha

    Andarriel