Fixed Internally Reproducible Hitching: NPC Load-Ins & Multi-game-instance Zoning

These are examples of loading-induced hitching which are not able to be fixed through memory.ini. Whatever the culprit of hitching due to texture/memory/HD thrashing needs to be fixed. The below is how it can be reproduced 100% of the time:

NPCs Loading into World (NPC "pops") causes hitching:

1. For obvious and dramatic results:
2. Navigate to either of the three Sarnak/Syldon forts on the west side of Frontier Mountains.
3. Kill the entire fort in 2-3 minutes.
4. Wait for respawns.
5. Once respawns begin, start mouselooking continuously in circles (or mouselook any direction without stopping).
6. Each NPC "pop" or load into the world will cause a 200-400ms "hitch" (framerate stoppage), causing your entire game and mouselook to stutter, skip, and become completely unresponsive.

Multiple game instances loading causes hitching:

1. Load up two instances (two characters) of Everquest simultaneously.
2. Place both characters into Guild Lobby.
3. Keep one character in the guild lobby (character A).
4. Zone one character into Plane of Knowledge (character B).
5. Character A will begin hitching continuously as result of character B zoning, until character B has completed zoning.
6. This particular issue did not exist under DirectX 9.0.

About half the time I'm playing, but not always, if I'm zoning multiple toons (3-box), if one character finishes zoning it will completely freeze (can't move, can't click anything, can't type anything) until the other characters have finished zoning.

This NEVER happened with DX9. The first time it happened after the update, I thought EQ had actually crashed. Now I know it's just the way zoning works with DX11 and it is annoying AF.

Thanks for confirmation. The important takeaway for the devs, is the likelihood that the same cause of this issue is also causing other hitching. My hypothesis is that the fix for this specific and obvious reproducible hitching issue can be applied towards other texture-related hitching issues on DX11. If devs can understand why this specific example is happening, then hopefully it can be applied towards other texture/loading/thrashing/hitching issues that are clearly happening as well.

Thanks Lodestar for continuing to provide data.

Hopefully they have permission to spend the time replicating then finding the issue.

Lodestar's description of the issue and method to replicate are accurate and probably the best example of this problem and its impact. It "feels" like the textures are being reloaded every time a player or mob spawns and each reload causes a hitch. I don't know if it's textures or the data that's being sent to the client when a spawn occurs.

I only reply here because I want to make sure that the devs are treating this as a distinct and separate problem from the framerate issues that have been impacting folks - not to detract from those problems but players can sometimes lump framerate, game hitches, loading times, server latency and other issues into the "lag" descriptor but this is an easily replicated *game hitching* issue that has identified correlation to mobs or players loading into the zone/area of another player - I can watch track and know that 1 second after I get a hitch, a new mob name is going to appear at the top of my track window.

Issue has been confirmed to occur in Sathir's Tomb as well. It's reasonable to assume this is happening across the game world.

1. Clear the entire zone, killing one mob every three seconds.
2. Wait for respawns.
3. As every individual mob respawns in adjacent rooms, the game will hitch/stutter for 200 to 400 milliseconds.
4. Therefore it's only a requirement for the mob to be in proximity, and not physically on the screen (rendered) to cause the hitching/stuttering.

This was absolutely not occurring on DirectX 9.0.

Any update on when this will be patched, especially NPCs/textures loading in causing hitching? It's monumentally concerning because:

• NPCs and textures being loaded in is a continuous and fundamental part of the game.
• This is 100% reproducible to every single individual NPC spawn.
• Memory.ini settings improvements do not solve this hitching.
• Potentially implicates other types of texture/entity loading that aren't as easily identifiable as an NPC spawning.

There is a change (improved deferred texture/animation loading) on Test server this week that should mitigate this issue somewhat.

Appreciated! Is this change included in the upcoming patch? Fine if not, will just be good to know what to be on the lookout for pertaining to troubleshooting/feedback. Thanks Cairbrae!

Yes, it was part of the Feb 13th Test update. The (second part of the Memory.ini) note has been corrected. Thanks.

When is the next server going to open up?

Still an issue after today's patch. No change.