is it smart to relog or restart the game every now and then? Or simply superstition?

I really don't know much about computers so it's likely that some of the things I say may sound ridiculously stupid!

But I've been gaming for a long time, longer than some player even exist ^^, anyway in many (usually online) games, where people spend many hours playing at a time, players may encounter memory leaks (and similar events not related to memory but that work in a comparable way).

It's usually indie games where the coding isn't really perfect.

What happens is the longer you play, the more the game uses your RAM, GPU and CPU. So if you play for too long, your PC may start heating up a bit, but more to the point, your FPS will drop and the general performance also.

I have a few friends who, like me, may play "marathon" sessions sometimes, ranging from 4 to 10 hours straight of gaming.

Most of them swear that they have to log off at least once every 2 hours, preferably once every hour to insure optimum performance.

That isn't my experience, I have played 10 hours straight without the slightest drop in performance (that I could tell).

(maybe it's cause I got a really could rig?)

Anyway, here's the question and :


TLDR --> Does playing for a long time without logging off or restarting the game reduce the performance after a while? Or is that just a myth?

(for PlanetSide 2 specifically)

I had some issues a couple months back. Nasty performance dips and whatnot.

I setup a perfmon data collector set among some other things and ran the problem into the ground. I do this stuff for a living. The root cause was unrelated to planetside.

But.. the whole exercise gave me a good look at the application's performance over the course of a game session. It seems a bit sloppy with resource cleanup but it doesn't have any leak that I see. What I mean by sloppy is the working set will grow as new assets are loaded but the game seems overly reluctant to let them go. I don't need lots of esamir assets when I warpgate to hossin for example. So overall it has a memory footprint a bit larger than it should.

Again though, no obvious "leaks". Handles, threads, memory. Nothing particularly stupid happened that I could see. I do not think restarting your client would offer any benefit. I'm certainly not doing it with mine.


Odd exception:
I use NVidia's built in utility to screen record. I find that if the game exits due to an idle player, it doesn't do so gracefully. The NVidia tool seems to latch on to an orphaned game session. If the game is restarted it won't record. Hamfisted workaround: Logout and login to have the session manager in windows clean **** up. No need for a full reboot.

Some have reported having hit detection issues when deep in a session.

Games have become very complex, and no code (or PC) is perfect, so something will fall out of place given time. It's never a bad idea to reboot any game every now and then.

Theres a current hitching and slowdown that happens when youve been on for a while, seems to be explosive, killing & dying, teleporting, pretty much anything in game causes this lag, and it gets worse and worse as you continue to play.
Re-logging solves this.
the devs have even addressed it and attempted a fix in the last patch.
You're very lucky if youve played 10 hours lately and not seen this, its gamebreaking and cannot be missed.
It affects hit detection, ROF, movement, pretty much all apsects of the game will see a problem with this hitch, lag, freeze, stutter, whatever its called.

So yes, atm with planetside 2 it absolutely helps.
Also bugs like ASP not working after an alert require a logout, not performance related but the game breaks and requires a reboot.

Hm. Have experienced not of these issues myself. Not doubting you have, but that just means it's something environmental.... aka something happening on your machine.

Defo not.
It happens to me, everyone in my outfit, my brother, people on yell chat moaning about it, tells from friends on other empires, etc etc etc.
There are reddit threads about it, videos of examples, forum threads, and like i said before - DEVELOPER ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of the problem.

Not sure how youve made that about me tbh, but whatevs.

If youve never seen this problem then youve either not played long enough for it to happen, are extremely lucky to have a PC build that is unaffacted, or simply havent noticed it.
Its impossible to not notice as you freeze for at least 2 seconds when dying.

Like i said the devs attempted a 'fix' during the last update:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps...me-update-8-16-fanning-the-fire-teams.250101/
Code Changes

We've made numerous changes to the code base that should not only remedy many of the performance issues found in the last major update, but should positively impact other areas of the game moving forward.
Developer Note: This is a very long road we are following towards getting the game more performant. This is a step in the right direction we hope, but still a long way to the finish line.

Here is someone on the issue tracker with the exact same problem, so not just me is it?
https://dgcissuetracker.com/browse/PS-3647?jql=project = PS AND text ~ "lag on death"
See the comments at the bottom for more 'proof' its not just me......

Do me a favour, if you actually do play the game (leaning towards not believeing you do tbh) when you next log in ask on yell chat about the lag problems lately, specifically lagging on death. Watch the responses, they will not be 'its all your end' i guarantee it.

Apparently the game has a RAM leak although it’s very small. Don’t take my word on it though. My game does get a few extra frames after a relog tho!

Reboots show your computer you care and you appreciate the need for a power nap.

Yeah there are definitely issues happening to the game after being logged in for a while. For me it's mostly issues with hit detection. My dot is dead on and my shots are hitting their mark because I can see the enemy character model flinching but no hits register.

In my case I have to do a full client restart every 1.5 to 2 hours for it to go back to normal. Some friends and outfit mates of mine with more powerful machines can go longer but will eventually have to restart as well as long-game-wonkyness sets in.

Really bro? Don't be so defensive. I said outright that I don't doubt you are having issues. So why can you not reciprocate?


So again, I believe you have had an issue but get this: At least one other person is not. It would be nice to discount that data point, but we can't do it and still be precise in our description of this.

On person (or more) is having issues. One person (or more) is not having issues.

Same application code, two environments, two results.

It's environmental.

Now that environmental factor may be uncovering a bug in the application that is otherwise latent in the other environment. Maybe there are driver issues. Maybe someone has the new Windows memory manager that came out some weeks back while someone else doesn't. Who knows.

I'm not guessing when I say it's not causing me an issue. It's not a hunch or a feeling or my subjective observation. I actually grabbed data and confirmed that there is no obvious resource leak that surfaces over a 4-5 hour period.

So the guidance on "restart your client every few hours" is not one I can blindly recommend. If you experience issues, sure, try it out. Be VERY wary of subjective observation and confirmation bias though. Restarting a client makes a hell of a placebo. I collected data while I monkeyed with it and I'm sure few others will do the same. Just your Process*.* (not processOR) counters in perfmon would give a great picture.

If I had the issue? I would be taking a look at my environment. My rig. I mean you can get mad at the dude that troubleshoots for a living, or you can recognize he's spoken accurately and maybe start whipping out some fresh drivers and doing some looking.

Some resources if you're interested. This is probably easiest:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...mance-monitor-to-find-a-user-mode-memory-leak

If you don't find a leak, you may find that normal resource consumption is bumping heads with something else on your system. In my case I had some background stuff that was misbehaving but going unnoticed....until planetside got multiple continents worth of assets loaded. I fixed the background stuff and PS was fine.

Yong did a good one for handles (in our case this would most likely flare up with network handles). https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/yongrhee/2011/12/19/how-to-troubleshoot-a-handle-leak/

And if you know what the following means...
"procdump -ma n 3 -s 90"
Then the following will be handy..
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/wi...er/using-umdh-to-find-a-user-mode-memory-leak

I didn't read all the links, but I did read the posts, and I was wondering @Trigga;

--> "performance issues" can be a lot of thing.

Is it specifically a memory leak?

Or to be precise; is it "performance reduction over time that resets when the game relogs or restarts" ? (cause that is quite specific isn't it?

I have similar experience with regards to hit detection, although to be precise (again lol) I find it relates more to the population than anything else; my hit detection worsens in high populated fights.

Oh most definitely, but performance worsening with population is normal, having hit detection wonkyness in a 12-24 fight after playing for an hour an a half however is not.

There is an increase in stutter and latency the longer the game is open. The most noticeable (and easily measured) side-effect is the delay between de-cloaking and when you are allowed to fire your weapon. It increases dramatically with long enough sessions (we're talking a couple of hours.)

This has happened consistently on every computer I've played Planetside on over the years, which totals six different machines.

i7-2820QM, Radeon HD 6750m
i3-4330, GTX 660
i7-4770K, GTX Titan
i7-4770K, GTX 780 x2
R9-1800x, GTX 1080
i7-7700HQ, GTX 1060

Slightly ironic that you only quoted my last sentence, yet accuse me of being defensive.
Kettle pot black??

Its normal to defend yourself when attacked, and despite what you and forum warriors try to claim, doing so is a good thing, unless you like being oppressed:

Here is another example, youre not giving an opinion, youre not trying to help anyone, youre trying to make it my problem, when it isnt my problem.
You obviously havent asked anyone on yell chat about this huh?
But i suppose it would be all them aswel then huh?

It is absolutely possible for it to be a code issue, especially since the devs have acknowledged it.


Tip #1 for future:
This is a gamers forum, its pretty safe to always assume the person youre talking to knows how to check their system, or as you call it their 'environment', otherwise you just come across as insulting.

Tip #2:
This is the net, anyone can claim anything.
And often do so when its convenient.

Food for thought.

Sorry bro.

Same application, two platforms, two results.
It's environmental.

If you can find the flaw in that logic, do let me know.

Now keep in mind that environmental doesn't preclude there being a bug in the software. It just means that the conditions to expose it do not exist in all environments. Something IS unique about the environment where such a problem occurs.

Thoughts on your tip #1: Most gamers are awesome about updating *video* drivers. The differentiation with common users stops after that though. I assume you know HOW to update your drivers. Whether you know how to spot a TDI driver or know that those are deprecated in windows isn't something I would assume nor assume most folks know the difference between a potentially intrusive lower filter driver vs an upper. Look, the more I learn about computers the more I am comfortable saying I don't know, and admitting that I might just be wrong about things sometimes. Heck, I could be wrong here. Point being: Dont' get mad because someone hinted that you might be wrong. Go find out. Just fricken check your system because that's what the logic says to do....not because some guy on the internet who doesn't know what he's talking about said to do it.

For Tip #2: Users only lie on accident or on purpose. Both have the same result. Trust but verify. That's why I prefer some hard data to speculation. As an example: I've yet to see someone actually demonstrate the decaying hit detection with a video, let alone a video that was gathered alongside logging and perf data so the degradation could be tracked back to some resource shortage or leak.

I'm trying to be factual here which naturally has a coldness to it. I apologize if I'm coming off as insulting. I assume you are a competent computer user and just trying to share my own knowledge and be helpful.

PS2 performance does indeed get worse the longer you play,
the past few patch notes have even had lines were the devs say they've fixed some of the causes.

so it would be smart to relog, if we were allowed to.

unfortunately unless you're a member if you relog you'll be stuck in the stupid queue again,
so a simple relog can mean doing nothing for 20 minutes.

also (unless its changed without me knowing) you'll also lose out on alert participation,
say you've been in an alert for 98% of it and you relog or the game crashes,
it resets your participation to 0 so you're now getting nothing.

so yep, it'd be good if you could relog, you just aren't allowed to. XD

so why is everyone saying it gets worse?

Does it get worse or not?

(for me not really, although I often get disconnected after a long session)