Can we fix the lag instead of just "addressing" it?

Here's a great but not serious idea: make it so that mobs get a stat bonus whenever the server has lag. This will help motivate players to play in offpeak hours.

How about a premium service where guilds can pay like $100 a month for some dedicated resources for raids?

4% might be a good guess. It's not a small amount that most would be ok with losing.

And immediately admit they have a problem they cannot handle?

So 4% of 1.9 million is 76k. Which would have brought my parse down to 1.824 million.

I dunno. If losing 76k off my parse meant that the entire raid has no lag... I mean, are players that concerned about their parse they would whine about a 76k loss on a 1.9 million parse? And if no lag, maybe my normal and RS pets get more hits in. So that could make up the 76k damage in and of itself.

And going big picture, if a Shei raid takes 7 minutes to do and they do 25 million damage as a guild and you disable magicians using Host AA.... what exactly are we discussing? An extra 1-2 seconds longer for the guild to.defeat Shei?

I guess I would sacrifice 4% of my parse in order for the raid to have a lag free zone *if* it was visibly proven that Host AA (and similar) cause lag in raid zones. Obviously there is more to raid lag than just swarm pets- procs, hardware, time of day, etc. But I guess I would rather a lag free raid zone than an extra 76k damage on my parse.

This is of course assuming that pets and swarm pets are where the majority of lag is coming from which I don't think we have any evidence to suggest that.

The majority of lag is not coming from any one source. Numerous people on this thread have alluded to that fact. Dev's have also collected multiple events of parse data from multiple guilds, mine included.

A fix would include changes to multiple game design elements, with some of the previously mentioned being the number of spell calculations and swarm pets occurring in raids.

I agree and I said that as well in that last paragraph. I think procs have to be combined while still maintaining the work and effort players did for the older proc augs. I think hardware needs to be upgraded. And I am sure there is other things that also contribute. But I am willing to sacrifice in order to help lag. I would be disappointed if others also did not have the same outlook

And what happens with a raid next year that can be done twice as fast as Shei and it's closer to 10%? Is that still ok too? For someone who seemed so anti-nerf you have the opposite stance on this topic for some reason.

I just disagree that pets and swarm pets should be the first target for lag reduction over all the melee/proc/spell calculations that happen every tick that outnumber swarm pets by a decent margin.

I'm also a bit puzzled. Bc he has been a main mage for 22 years.. Instead of looking at just the % think about what it does for the period of time when you need a little more burst dps. I also am confused by 7 min shei with 25 mil dps as a guild. Feel like 7 minutes would be a lot higher. Are you basically saying you would take the dps loss if it was proven that swarm pets were a major cause of lag?

If making adjustments to swarm pets is lower hanging fruit from a design/implemention aspect, then I disagree with you. If it’s not, then I agree.

Yes. Let's do a little thought experiment shall we?

Which is far less coding work and is more compartmentalized?

1. Everything that goes into every single melee swing/proc/spell.

2. Replacing every swarm pet's spawning a 3d model and requiring pathing calculations, with a single nimbus on the mob for the whole 'swarm'.

And if it creates unforeseen problems, which is the easiest change to back out of and return to the way it was?

It's obvious, and those calling for #1 before #2 are not being genuine in their position. The concept makes no sense when you understand how software and development work.

All I am saying is those adjustments won't give results that people are expecting and they will still be complaining about lag even after the swam pet adjustments.

-Lag isn't a single thing.
-Procs have been adjusted and caused balance issues already.
-The only way to 'fix' not-a-single-issue is to incrementally fix each element of not-a-single-issue.
-Each incremental fix may cause side-effects that un-balance classes, change age-old mechanics, and more.
-If lag is so important to you, you'll have to suck it up and wait through changes like body types consolidation, and much more consolidation.
-If you believe hardware/network infrastructure is a 'switch' they can just flip by only spending money, be aware. A hardware upgrade was budgeted for and executed a number of years ago. When do they get the next budget to buy more hardware? Do you think JChan gets to decide to spend a chunk of money like that?
-Software changes are far cheaper than hardware fixes.

I know this hurts to hear, but who else is going to say it but me?

No sudden fix is coming. There has been plenty of money floating around to fix hardware, but that goes to EG7 not DarkPaw.

Also crying about "But the DPS I'll lose!" over a theory crafted idea, that hasn't been done yet, and may or may not even be something feasible, is just crying, you're not helping. Plenty of people are going to be losing or gaining all kinds of things before lag is fixed.

Overhauling tradeskills and collections to reduce storage space would make a much more significant improvement. Everything pre-modern style tradeskill should just be on a vendor. Collections should be able to be consolidated into a set.

Make David Tennant relevant again, the collection/quest item issue was already solved during the Bush’s 2nd term.

Why does this game regress so much from past ideas?

I have always been puzzled about storage space optimizations...The devs admitted that storage space for characters IS a bottleneck for zoning times and server load. The devs also implemented a solution where storage space IS NOT a bottleneck: Dragons Hoard.

The the Devs then choose to lock Dragons Hoard behind a paywall in marketplace, where players can choose to buy a few extra storage-slot for DBC.

Why not instead use Dragon Hoard tech to replace current bank and housing storage? I think a lot of players would accept that the "find"-feature only works AT the bank, if it meant we had significantly faster zoning and less server load...

Isn't that a low hanging fruit?

I agree with this, I was shocked to see how limited that feature was and how much it cost to increase it by a small amount. Seemed to me that this could have helped a lot with reducing the amount of items that had to be kept track of when zoning. Of course things like the banker vet AA don't help as they make it so that every zone has to keep track of items in a bank because it can be accessed from any zone.

Deleting the banker-AA is much less intrusive than deleting all swarm pets or procs.

Maybe the issue is "lore-checks"?

Dragon Hoard extra slots are not locked. Use your monthly $5 and you can buy more. So they are basically free.

I don't bother with Dragon Hoard but I do have a full neighborhood of alt houses. That is close to 70 houses with 300-500 storage each. I do not see them ever making Dragon Hoard large enough to replace that.

I cannot speak for the lag since for some reason it does not affect my computer or playing since about 2015. Knock on wood.

But I know it is not the storage on characters as they have said. I did an experiment where in I moved anything my main owned into other alts etc. There was no difference.

And how would that account for my main having no lag or zoning issues just like many of my alts that have nothing because they were just created to own a plot for more storage. They do not own any thing else.

So I think all this talk of storage or pets or whatever being the reason is just grasping at straws. I wish we knew the answer but its not what has been put forth yet since it has not fixed it.

How is it possible to have so many contradictions in such a short paragraph.

Your anecdote is nice, but there has been dev feedback saying large storage inventories are causing issues.