Overseer lag - problem with too many agents.

Yes, I didn't do his task but a single time. Plus, they also sold the entire set of Frostfell Agents in a set on the Marketplace, and in order to complete the achievement you must do all of the quests. So if you want to get the reward from the achievement, but had bought the set of Frostfell Agents, then you are forced to get a second Santug that cannot be used at the same time as the other and cannot be retired or exchanged. Additionally, if I had gotten it from doing a quest, then there is exactly zero reason for me not to be able to retire it like you can retire any normal elite character which has a recruit quest specifically for them. For that matter, if I had already completed that quest once, then why was I given that quest a second time when I would have already had Santug and cannot accidentally get rid of him?

The fact that the entire client freezes solid anytime you do anything with overseer is ridiculous, but, apparently in some people's opinion, not a bug!

It's not a bug in the sense that it's a synchronous database operation that is carried out in the main loop. The same stalls happen with Mailbox, Find, Dragon Hoard, NPC merchant inventories, Achievements, Adv Loot, Quest Rewards, etc. ... and well even zoning.

It would take some re-architecting to make these operations asynchronous from the main game loop. I bet it's in the Dev's backlog to make these improvements someday, since it's sensible to want that performance back.

Zoning obviously takes time.
I've never seen any of those other operations take anywhere near the time that overseer takes.
And while it may not technically be a bug, since it does work, eventually, I'm sure it wasn't designed to completely lock the entire client for several seconds every time anything is don in the overseer window.

The TS depot even has a brief message saying it's loading items, but I don't recall and noticible freezing of the client.

I too notice that TS depot performs better (newer implementation) and is a hint that those things are being worked on.

In the last few days I did many boring agent conversion quests and the lag is much less now. It seems that more agents do create progressive (non linear) lag. Boosting the CPU frequency and the core voltage to its recommended maximum limit (no real overclocking) had helped much.

Went down from 3,100 agents to 2,300. Still lag but much less than before.
Went down from 2,100 agents to 1,300. Not much lag. More than double as fast than with 2300 agents.

Level 120 character

has 516 total agents.

One house half full. Very few bags in bank, nothing in tradeksill depot or Hoard thingy.

Have set the clock

I can zone or port in less than 20 seconds.

All zones it has been tried in have the same result

It shows 10 sec when I look at the Common Conversion but after I auto fill and start quest it goes to 1 min 59 seconds.

UI update may help solve these issues.

Why can't they just do Agent x5 or whatever, no need to list the same Agent 5 times.

Also, I'll have 3 of the same elites, one is questing, I get another quest which they are best fit, I have 2 more not questing, I can't even use them.

So their only purpose is to retire?
Then retire the others until its common, can you retire commons?

Should be a convert button, higher tier better the conversion.

I get varying times on conversions too but I chalk it up to system clock variance, just like having it set too far off can mess with AA timers.
When the conversion is DONE I have 1 that takes another 5 seconds to say it's done too, that's lag.

Which CPU and server ? When the server is busy the quest timer does go up and the long zoning time is an indicator for a very crowded server/zone and/or to ambitious EQ graphic and memory settings. The hardware could be to weak.

Because the overseer concept and it's code are misbegotten and nobody does fix the well known issues since years. A big revamp is needed for all aspects including the code, complexity, logical structure and the UI.

Elite agents are usefull for back-conversions when new agent packs do get released. 1 Elite = 3 Rare or 9 Uncommon or 27 Common agents. All Elite agents are iconic which is similar to lore items. Iconic agents cannot be used for several quests at the same time because it is basically only one unique "named" agent. Lag-wise it is better to hoard elite agents instead of others. 3 of the same common agent are currently enough and only 1 iconic agent for each type is needed when having enough copies of elite agents.

Overseer isn't that old....

3 years.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/EQ:Overseer

I have more than one computer. My main one downstairs on which I do nearly everything was a nearly absolute top of the line Asus gaming laptop with a just released CPU (which caused a delay in the laptop's delivery, it was so just released) from 2012. My second computer is upstairs and just got an updated motherboard, CPU, graphic card, et. al, but is not top of the line, but 'pretty good', nor is that computer intended or optimised for gaming (I do real life tradeskills and it's my Youtube and movie PC mostly *laugh*). I have roughly the same number of applications and browser windows/tabs open when I access the game from either computer.

With zero change to the number of agents on my accounts (and I have vastly too many but conversion really takes too long at this point), the amount of time it takes to do Overseer on the two computers is exponential. It can take nearly 30 mins for 3 accounts on my laptop downstairs and less than 10 mins to do all three on the computer upstairs. The length of pause when collecting rewards or starting new tasks is negligible on the newer hardware. Thus, a lot of the lag in Overseer is client side and not related to the number of agents. It could be due to the build up of kruft on the computer itself, hard drive speed, RAM speed, CPU, vid card, etc. (neither I nor my sweetie recalls if the computer upstairs is spinny or solid state for the hard drive, the laptop is solid state).

On client (player) side, all what matters for Overseer is the CPU speed. The total amount of agents does matter because the whole bunch does get processed by the CPU for nearly each overseer action. There is the unconfirmed rumor that a crypto-mining code is adapted to it but I think that it is just bad code.

Not all is the number of agents. That was my point. Client-side matters significantly. I suspect a lot of us with significant Overseer lag are using computers more than 5 years old. Most people don't upgrade their computers that often because it can be a hefty investment. Unless someone is running the latest releases of the most graphic intense 3D games (or is into graphic design), they likely don't upgrade to the top-end gaming PC or laptop every year or two (but I would love to have the money to be able to!). Long past are my own days of upgrading components on my PC every couple of years (the PC upstairs was last upgraded pre-2010, it was due).

I have a question regarding Elite Iconic agents - I'm free to play and haven't bought any overseer packs or whatever - I'm unclear if I have reached the maximum amount of Elite Iconic agents and should just stop converting to try to get more - what's the max number of Elite Iconic agents you can have without buying packs and excluding holiday Agents does anyone know?

Thanks

Omg, no it is bad code.

Overseer has a lot of issues - performance, UX, bugs.. its definitely something we have plans to work on. However, each time we do it is often more time consuming than expected, and often causes new bugs. The system ended up becoming very complicated. Not trying to make excuses, just explaining why more issues with it haven't been fixed.

I think all in the normal (i.e. not Marketplace or Event-related) agents are in the Achievements. My F2P (Silver) has all the agents for the achievements except the Orc Arsonist! (uncommon)

17

https://www.bonzz.com/overseer.htm#eliteiconicageents

And that's old in a 25yo game?