EM Events and Lag

AmberWitch

A while ago at one of the streams I brought up how EM events were becoming non-events due to lag. Let me describe for you my experiences a bit. Hopefully others will do as well as Mesanna asked us to do during that stream. If nothing else, do it to help support your EM. The abuse heaped upon Baja's EM last night and last month by *thinks of all sorts of not zenlike words* players was more than any one person should have to endure under any circumstance. 

The last 2 major events on Baja, The invasion of Moonglow and then again last night, The Invasion of Trinsic, the event mechanics were broken. Broken? I don't know if that's the correct term but it fits.  From my seat I don't think the issue is client sided as this affected most players. Most? Don't know, no way to quantify other than hearing the # of the rabid vocal angry masses in GC. I expect that the EM was also experiencing issues that prevented her from doing what she needed to do when.

For me this has been an issue with severity the last 6 months. The pevious 6 months I noticed an increase in lag but I could still cast a spell,  command a pet, take a step, see changing images. The small spawn doesn't seem to be causing any issues that I can see. When the number of spawns starts to increase it doesn't get any worse.

And then the BIG BOSS happens. The world stops right then and there. I can hear what's going on, I can see some things moving but most stuff is stationary. Last night's red elemental spun beautifully but I haven't the foggiest idea if my pet attacked it or not. People said their commands lagged forever or never happened.  A few folk said they were having no issues. If that was true I don't know.

One thing to note. Last weekends event - The Rescue, did not cause me to lag nor did I hear complaints about lag. What was the difference in these 2 events?

I am jumping to the conclusion that it started when the new EM toolkit was introduced. That shoe fits in my mind. Something is broke somewhere.

During this time I play on an ASUS ROG or a omen laptop with no difference. If you want more detail on the video cards, cores etc please pm me.

Draike

I think the problem you described caused issues for the whole world. I was at that time in tram jhelom, in EC client, pincos, cashing out bod rewards, right at the time of the boss or whatever final encounter you guys had, i was using organizer to put bods in the book. It stopped, just hanged there, with message you need to wait to apply action some other time or something like this. I stopped organizer and tried to transfer bods manually but couldnt even pick them up inside the backpack. The general chat was moving along without delay i think and latency showed same as in normal times. So not sure if its described as lag, its like time stopped

McDougle

I quit going long ago shard bound the rewards would cut down on the off shard vultures in my perfect world it would be an event over a week or two where you had to do task a,b and c in order to qualify for reward...

Drakelord

McDougle said:

I quit going long ago shard bound the rewards would cut down on the off shard vultures in my perfect world it would be an event over a week or two where you had to do task a,b and c in order to qualify for reward...

I hate to agree with you, as that where I make most of the gold I used to buy those vet rewards today, ever since the change to IDOC vet rewards have going thru the roof, and in the past those rewards were far cheaper.

The Baja event was like I was swimming in a sea of honey, only I would also bounce back.  I gave up trying to get to the healer for a res and waiting for the mountain of lag to stop crushing me

McDougle

Drakelord said:

McDougle said:

I quit going long ago shard bound the rewards would cut down on the off shard vultures in my perfect world it would be an event over a week or two where you had to do task a,b and c in order to qualify for reward...

I hate to agree with you, as that where I make most of the gold I used to buy those vet rewards today, ever since the change to IDOC vet rewards have going thru the roof, and in the past those rewards were far cheaper.

The Baja event was like I was swimming in a sea of honey, only I would also bounce back.  I gave up trying to get to the healer for a res and waiting for the mountain of lag to stop crushing me

Tis sad i normally go for the beginning but bail as soon as the waiting gargoyle armys arrive..

Khyro

There are more than likely many contributing factors to this, however the EM is partly to blame for the Baja issues and I will explain why below.

First, the issues that compound the lag:

1. The amount of people that are attending the events, especially when it's a known drop night. 
   
   
2.  The amount of scripts being used (you can see scripts messing up when someone running one dies, because they will all of a sudden start casting Forul Solum or Obsu Vulni dozens of times a second, the chat log literally floods with it). Now multiply that by dozens of scripters at these events.
   
   
3. The location/sub-server of the event. 
   
   
4. The amount of effects the boss has going on. Death Vortices, area effect, pulls, reflects, etc. all will create huge amounts of lag.

So why is the Baja EM to blame for these issues? Because they have been repeatedly asked to mitigate these issues and have repeatedly done nothing about them. It's been the last 3 drop events on Baja that have come to a complete standstill and here is why:

1. The EM doesn't split up the enormous group of people like other shards. There is a reason other EMs will put up a gate and separate the group into 2 groups in a less busy subserver like Ilshenar. 
   
   
2. The EM will spawn the boss far away from everyone, causing hundreds of people to suddenly try to move into range at the same time, which absolutely kills the server.
   
   
3. The EM keeps choosing extremely busy subservers to fight the boss on. Last night, the Baja event was outside of Trinsic. Take a look at the subserver Trinsic is on and see how large it is and now think about how much housing and other things are part of it.

While splitting up the group is not guaranteed to eliminate 100% of the lag issues (Great Lakes had a similar server freeze last night as well and they did split up the group; however that lasted a couple minutes and then subsided, whereas the Baja sever freeze lasted until the boss died).

While I agree the EM doesn't deserve the vulgar language that was thrown at them last night, they are most definitely partly responsible for the issues and it is within their power to mitigate it like other shards do. It has been brought up to them multiple times, but they choose to ignore the issue. Is it a lack of training? A lack of caring? A lack of understanding? I do not know.

AmberWitch

Draike said:

I think the problem you described caused issues for the whole world. I was at that time in tram jhelom, in EC client, pincos, cashing out bod rewards, right at the time of the boss or whatever final encounter you guys had, i was using organizer to put bods in the book. It stopped, just hanged there, with message you need to wait to apply action some other time or something like this. I stopped organizer and tried to transfer bods manually but couldnt even pick them up inside the backpack. The general chat was moving along without delay i think and latency showed same as in normal times. So not sure if its described as lag, its like time stopped

Yes, I think your description is much more accurate, its like time stopped.

ForeverFun

AmberWitch said:

Draike said:

I think the problem you described caused issues for the whole world. I was at that time in tram jhelom, in EC client, pincos, cashing out bod rewards, right at the time of the boss or whatever final encounter you guys had, i was using organizer to put bods in the book. It stopped, just hanged there, with message you need to wait to apply action some other time or something like this. I stopped organizer and tried to transfer bods manually but couldnt even pick them up inside the backpack. The general chat was moving along without delay i think and latency showed same as in normal times. So not sure if its described as lag, its like time stopped

Yes, I think your description is much more accurate, its like time stopped.

I wonder if the scripters eluded to in this thread are deliberately causing this, to their benefit?  Is "time is stopping" for the scripters, for instance?

Sounds like the devs may want to get dumps/logs/etc of the EM event in question, or turn such capabilities on for the next such event, if no such data exists.

McDougle

Are EJ accounts able to get EM drops?

Jepeth

McDougle said:

Are EJ accounts able to get EM drops?

No.