Internet lag 120 ping over seas. vs Bad code in the games makes a 12900K with a 3090Ti look weak, fresh installed Win 10 x64 0 virus etc etc etc. PoK still gives bad frames.. other newer zones 144fps@hz on monitor. If the devs has a magic wand and can put a spell on the code that gives solid FPS I might return to the adventure.
I hope they will someday upgrade the gfx-render engine too. A good framerate does have an effect on overall playability. I do think latency is a more pressing problem though.
Regarding the loading of player plot items on zone in you need to create a separation of character things that need to be loaded automatically and those that need to only be loaded on request.
Game performance is something we work on continuously and is very challenging to solve completely. EQ has a lot of complex systems, and at least 25 years of code. More than 50 different programmers have come and gone over the years. One of the many challenges of working on EQ is understanding what someone was trying to do when they wrote the code we now are modifying, and doing so correctly without breaking existing things. It is common that we do break things (despite thorough testing), and we fix them as soon as we can. Okay, so there's no logs or notes left in the code or physical documentation that would hint at what they were thinking? How about this, you know their names and most likely keep in contact with a few of them. Get on your knees like your player base is and beg them to shed light on what they were trying to do so you can finally fix something. Or just break it completely and write something new. It's not like huge changes really shock Live servers anymore imo and you can keep the old code on TLP servers as you mentioned they don't have the latency issue yet. We need to see a Roadmap 2022 of your plans to fix this, not just a dumbed down explanation of why their is latency issues with a promise that small unnoticeable changes will eventually fix everything you guys inherited.
How likely is it that they remember all the details from things they worked on several years ago let alone a decade or two ago.
I remember projects that I worked on from a decade ago and I have notes on certain things that I deemed important enough to keep. Not saying they would remember but making calculated (random guesses) changes to the code until it's fixed isn't really a great idea of how to move forward either.
DBG seems to like the idea of TLP and Live servers sharing the same code base(its easier to maintain that way). It looks like Latency is already an issue with expansion-launches on TLP's, There is a reason we recently got a Plane of Tranquility port(and buyable clickies in marketplace). People clicking on pok-ports at launch was enough to ruin server performance. Besides, most TLPs will eventually reach the expansions where game-mechanic complexity do affect latency.
fun fact, all ISPs privilege traffic to/from speedtest.net. Its tests can't produce false data, but they're best case scenario, sometimes substantially different than what's regularly experienced. Instead use fast.com . The numbers might not be hella different, they running the same tests in the same ways, but it's hosted by Netflix so ISPs can't give it favorable treatment without providing that same special pipeline to Netflix streaming itself.
Daybreak made the decision to purchase this game and that comes with a responsibility of due diligence. Meaning, you already knew the problems existed. The players who understand programming and IT have understood everything said in this post for years, this is not new news. You've ignored it, stacked additional bloat on top of it, and are now asking the laymen to ignore your arrogance with a lengthy post blaming the previous owners and employees for your woes. Pathetic.
One of the problems is due to fact that the base game was designed way back in the mid 90's before object oriented programming and the fact that the data in the initial game was indeed based on a linear data file and not a real relational db. game developing has changed imensly since then, and I bet without knowing any details of all the complex systems in EQ's backbone servers that a lot of time has been used over the years, slowly fixing and converting old game coding to be nore manageable with modern development tools. Pretty sure not many of the original devs would even have thaugh this game would still be running nearly half way thru its 3'rd decade
That is 99% surely not caused by EQ/Darkpaw's servers. I have been playing this game right since release, and yes I am lucky to play from scandinavia which has some of the best backbones available. I do get lag spikes at times where the lag is much higher than the actual ping to the server.This kind of lag is usually happening along the way by overloaded segments your route goes thru and/or your local isp and is usually temporarely. Like others said, if you do use wifi at home make sure you have a decent router and if possible sit right beside it. If you have wireless isp, get a dsl 2 or better connection. I have never really had issues with dsl, tho here most of the wired isp providers is fasing out dsl as most users want Gb solutions if they can get it. I would never game thru a wireles isp hotspot or even a shared wired hotspot as you can never predict your connection performance at any given time.
I'm sure if you paid them a consulting fee, they'd be happy to turn over any notes or documentation they may have held on to. I've still got notes and memos and printouts and ideas scribbled on scraps of paper that I made when I worked for companies years, even decades ago.
The whole "Player housing" system they mocked into EQ is pretty lame anyway. The game was never designed with this in mind and is not very good coded to put it mildly. I would not mis it if it was removed or completely changed to an "offline" service accessible from the web only. I would be happy to just have the Achievement system (including classic acchievements) .. /hides They could also delete the Player Studio while their at it. I'm pretty sure it adds loads of overhead in assets that needs loading too everytime you zone, and lots of its items is not in line with the rest of the games graphics ... please don't shoot me
Well I thank you for the post and the insight to this issue. It sounds like to me the answer to raid lag is already found, it just needs to be done. Let us be a little more clear on the some raids have bad lag and others don't as much issue. It's not a small difference were talking about here. It's NIGHT and DAY difference for the most part. Yeah their is some in-between but not much. Either the lag is horrible, which it is 95-98% of the time and it takes like 30 clicks to get a single disc to fire off, rubberbanding, ect. OR their is 0 lag what so ever and it's nearly perfect! Sounds like to me you already found the answer to the problem, you just need to make it happen now. You just need some kind of Load-balancing system implemented. I don't know how many raids are going at once on a Sunday night for example, but is it possible to have only 1 or 2 raids going on each server/instance? This seems to me to be the "Big game changer" we/you have been looking for. That's not to say that other small changes need to keep being done to reduce the amount packets / requests / calculations being made but even without a single other change being done, when we do get a raid on a non-bogged down server, it's nearly perfect. If you can find a way to make that happen every time, then problem solved.
Uh no... Daybreak didn't purchase the game. Daybreak Games was formed by Sony when Sony decided to divest itself of SoE (they no longer wanted to be in this particular industry). Daybreak Games was spun off as an independent entity because it's still profitable, and found a new financier in Jason Epstein. The people that worked on EQ (devs) were the exact same people, their paycheck just came from a different source. Then, back in 2020, Jason decided to get involved with EG7 and sold us. The studio (now called Darkpaw Games) is still the same people in San Diego that have been working on the game for the last 27 years, though the owner is now EG7 (Jason is still involved, listed as part of the Board of Directors). During such a long lifespan, which was unanticipated during it's creation, it's natural that employees have come and go, moving on to different projects and employers and to be replaced with new ones. As the engineering team has pointed out on numerous occasions, the most recent being Niente's post here, Why not use the community rather than breaking things?, humans have learned a lot about how to code since the mid-90's, and unfortunately, the documentation more recent projects require, isn't found for everything because nobody bothered to write it down decades ago. As a result, we've got a 27 year old spaghetti code mess that needs cleaning up and updating. Changes were often neglected through the years as the money from EQ went to fund other SoE / Daybreak projects instead of being reinvested into our game. This has changed, and now EQ is being reinvested in - with proof such as the changes to 64 bit, such as the UI changes to the target/buff/song/pet windows (the UI changes so far may seem small to us, but on the back-end it's probably significant preparation towards the new UI and Graphics engines that JChan mentioned in one of her update posts this year), and the changes to NPC body types. While some of these changes (like the body type thing) are kind of annoying for us, the players, in the short-term, they're of benefit to us in the long-term as now that part of the code is cleaned up, easier to maintain, easier to develop new content, and likely now has the necessary documentation to go along with it for future people working on EQ. I applaud the team for communicating with us (more please), I applaud them for doing the work to fix the game, even if it's a long and difficult process, and I'm happy to see that lag is still one of the top issues on everyone's radar. I'm not happy with the current state of lag, and would love to see more information on what they plan to do about it, but I'm happy that they took the time to respond to us and show us they are listening, they are prioritizing it, and they are trying to fix it. I'd also like it if both design and code sat down to talk to each other since some of the complex issues (like lag) are impacted by both teams - if design keeps designing stuff that just adds to the problem, it'll be impossible for the code team to ever catch up. Things need to be approached from both sides.
I believe the artists who submitted items to player studio are still receiving royalties (buy those robes!!!) so might not be possible to delete that. While I understand you don't like housing but many of us do and there would be quite a revolt if it were taken out of the game. Yes it is lame compared to EQ 2 since we were the prototype for them but it serves its purpose for many players who are hoarders. If it were changed to an offline service it would soon die just like LON did. Overall I am not unhappy with the game, which is why I keep playing. Yes there are annoyances which for some might be like a mosquito bite while to others its like a shark bite. Hang in there!
