Please stop developing new content until your severs can handle what's already in game.

The last couple of months has been a ridiculously miserable experience in terms of playability. Constant hitching, fps spikes, latency spikes, hitreg being virtually non-existent, warping, lag, so on. I don't know if it's an influx of foreigners on Emerald or what, but the game is becoming increasingly frustrating to even TRY to play.

Since release you've lost 70% of your playerbase, have lightened the load on your server farm by eliminating 50% of your servers, yet the game plays WORSE than it did at launch.

I know this falls on deaf ears because actually fixing **** doesn't get you more DB$, and that's literally all you guys are in it for anymore, but come on. Hopefully people realize what type of company DBG is and stops giving you money.

My game runs fine.

I love when people blame "the servers" for them having a crappy gaming computer.

I seriously don't see ANY of that stuff happen when I play PS2. Your computer sucks, and/or your ISP sucks.

• If you're not on a hardwire connection, your WiFi signal may not be as strong as you think it is, or there may be interference.
• If you have a decent rig, and you're hardwired, chances are it's your ISP or your location.
• It may actually be the servers, if all of the above are proven false, but usually it's on the user's end.

I have a massive internet speed, but I'm at the end of a line of other houses, so their usage affects mine. Every day at 3:00, the kiddies get on, and my network tanks.

My point is, that it's not always the game's fault, and you should eliminate these other variables before blaming the game.

My game runs fine.

Glad for you. Glad you can dismiss any technical issues other players have so non-chalantly. Doesn't matter if the game is unplayable for other people as long as you run fine.

I get 66/4.4 on my connection from upstate SC to a server farm in VA. I shouldn't have over 130ms at any time.

I get a consistent 80+ frames in 48v48 or larger. I'm sure there are occasional hiccups, but they shouldn't be so pronounced or be every bit as bad in smaller fights where I have over 140 frames.

Really though, I'm glad you dismiss my issues so easily. I should've known better than to questions the almighty DBG when their glorious White Knights are there to blame the end user in 100% of circumstances.

I'm on a hardline, I refuse to use WiFi as I know how it can impact stability in games.

I've run numerous traceroutes and any spikes are directly associated with DBG's servers. I get to VA in ~15ms, but my overall ping is in the 60-70 range on a good day. Lately, it's been over 80 and often hits 130+. I'm in upstate SC, probably ~400 miles from the server. That's absurd latency for the distance.

As for bottlenecks, it's Saturday afternoon, sure, but I've literally NEVER had any slowdowns around this time, and none of my other browsing/streaming seems impacted whatsoever.

Fair enough, just throwing my level 1 tech hat on .

Out of curiosity, what address are you pinging? AFAIK, the actual game servers are behind anti-DDoS frontend servers, so some of the slowdown may just be the anti-DDoS measures, especially if it's a particularly naive implementation.

Not trying to take blame off of DBG, their servers may just be that bad, but I'm guessing it has more to do with their load management solutions that came about from the DDoS waves we had a few months back.

funny how most people here dismiss the server issues as "user-specific". Reddit already had several topics complaining about horrendous server state, high ping/latency and miserable performance/stability in the last weeks. for instance, Emerald has been in an unplayable condition for one month already (constantly "bad" connection, delays on any action ingame). this is not just easily solved by "hurr durr dont play on wifi" or anything user-related for that matter. this is a server-wide user-wide phenomenon.

granted, some users might be more affected by these issues than others, some might not even notice any deterioration. whatever it is, this needs to be solved asap. multiple players have already complained about suddenly worse server performance coming out of nowhere. not to mention, this is bad publicity for potential players and member and in the long run this will hurt the game. but what's definitely worse is people coming to a thread and saying "everything fine on my system, it must be you" or some other ignorant crap. you aren't really doing anything except pushing your own ego here.

Well, the majority of my issues did begin when they added the DDoS protection. I know a lot of other players have suffered similar issues since, as well.

Thing is, tech support is 100% process of elimination. If not all users are having the same problem, then it could be on the user's end. It's not unreasonable to ask users to check their end first.

So, the people saying "It's good on my machine, must be you." are just as useful as those who are complaining about server problems after having checked their end, as bLind has, although, they could post what they've done/haven't done to test it. If nothing else, they're proving that it's not affecting 100% of the user base.

Sounds about the right timing for my own network problems, as well. Either way, good on you for actually checking your end, most people are afraid of terminal magic

I play on the Connery server from NC usually and get a slightly better ping and none of the issues the OP listed. I don't think there's a mechanism on the server that just rolls the dice to see how crappy your experience would be.


So I'd like to see the computer specs he's running. To make sure he's not running on some potato chip or tater tot.

i5 3470 @ 3.2
GTX 660
8GB DDR3-1600

It's obviously dated, but again, it's still more than capable of running at 80+ frames in 95% of fights. Hell, I've run twitch streams on my 2nd monitor in 1080p and can still maintain 60+ frames while playing. My laptop running an i5 and SLI 650M's used to run PS2 better than what I see lately.

The server is definitely handling the current pathetic populations well. We're talking about hardware and software originally prepared for 2000+ players on a continent handling barely 1000 people on entire servers during their peak hours.

Just dropping in to share my experience(s) and show how funky the connections can be (although I can't recall ever playing another game whose connection is so funky for so many players.)

The instant Emerald came into existence I'd get horrendous connection to it. With all this DDoS mitigation and stuff that's recently caused others to say it made the lag worse, that all actually improved my connection and made Emerald playable without having to change my systems' routing or anything. But every time DBG tried to improve server performance in some way, my connection steadily degraded and now it's basically as awful as it used to be.

Meanwhile, I've also been giving Connery another try and it's been absolutely delightful, pre-performance patches and post. Although my latency in large Connery battles is about 10ms worse than my latency in large Emerald battles, the latency feels hundreds of times better in Connery.

So serious suggestion: Try a good server (ping irrelevant), because it can be a server issue.



Also specific examples for anyone who wants something more than "well one is better than the other":
When I get 120ms on Connery that means a semiauto shotgun can hit me from 10 meters away and I'll have a chance to respond to it. When I get 120ms on Emerald that means a pump action shotgun will dump its entire magazine into me in a fraction of a second and I'll be dead before I can react.

When I get 90ms on Connery that means I can look away from the computer, hear that I'm taking damage, look back at my screen, register that a lasher is splashing me a bit, and hide behind cover to barely survive. When I get 90ms on Emerald that means someone with a lasher will run behind a wall, then while entirely concealed behind the wall they ran behind, start hitting me with a lasher and kill me in 0.2 seconds (100% damage) through said wall.

(Those are all true stories that have all happened more than once, by the way.)

Did you try using these settings?




Stuttering and hitching somtimes have something to do with textures being unloaded and reloaded. That could point at RAM (8GB should be enough though), Harddrive (I'm assuming you're using 7200RPM HDD, or a SDD, so that shouldn't be it), or some software issues like needing a defrag or make sure you have enough space for paging file and the like. Either way, that isn't server related.

Rubberbanding however is. But I haven't seen much of this for the last year. And that's playing in the mornings on Connery when the actual pacific islands and orient is playing. Hit detection is a server issue too, but likewise I haven't seen issues with this.

So.. lets rule out two things at once. Play on Connery. You're pretty much down the road from me so you 'should' see similar results as I do on Connery.

Then we can say Emerald is either crowded, or there's some sort of network hiccup between you and the server.

I jumped on Connery to see if it was any better, and no. 120 latency felt like 400, I died in literally one bullet every single time, and it felt like a solid 30% of my bullets didn't register at all.

Combine that with the ...playstyle of Connery players, and no. Never again.

Perhaps all of the negativity on the forums has gotten you halfway to the FU bin

Huh, that sounds a lot like the last time I tried Connery (but something in the past year seems to have changed for me and now Connery's great.) Shame it didn't do the same for you.

Connections sure are strange.

After building my new gaming rig I noticed even on ultra I was getting extreme performance issues. Most people attributed that to shadow quality which helped with a few frames but after process of elimination I found at least for me that terrain quality of all things was causing random FPS drops. So be sure to test various settings even if your rig is top of the line.

The other thing people don't realize is dying to "one bullet" in this game is merely clientside. All hit detection is client based so in all likely hood its your ISP and geographical position vs your opponents.

I play on Emerald which is hosted in Montreal. I live in Ottawa and my ping to the server almost never exceeds 200ms unless its apparent that the server is having issues and its noticeable by all BUT I still get insta gibbed all the time. Its frustrating but there is nothing we can really do.

Other things to note in this game is since its clientside and all, players perceive other player 0.2 seconds behind from where those player perceive themselves. Wrel did a video talking about this where he explains it quite well. But to sum it up if you and a guy meet face to face and you see him starting to ADS know that to him he has already ADSed and is firing meaning he is already hitting you when you ADS in reaction to him.

You either have high latency or you are dropping packets like crazy.

Either way, you can stop blaming "the servers" for your personal problems.