Lag during boss fights during EM events

Riner

Tonight on Great Lakes I was unable to move at all during the boss fight. Not even to dismount my pet and order him in. This is a common occurrence during EM events, especially at the end of the month when they tend to have drops. I know heavy congestion can cause server lag but this didn't occur until the boss fight even though only half the people involved in the event are at that location. I have a 60 ms ping with 50 meg up and down connection, running on a 32 meg ram, I5 processor computer. I doubt it is being caused by either my connection or my computer being slow. Oddly enough I am not the only one that this is happening to. Many people complained during the event that they were frozen in place and unable to move. Again this doesn't happen until the Boss appears. I'm not sure if the same pattern is happening on other shards or not as I only play on Great Lakes. Please look into what's causing this as it take all of the pleasure out of the events for many people. For myself I'm not going to bother doing EM events as it turns out to be a waste of time. 

Larisa

The only thing they can do is remove the spell spam. I think that has a LOT to do with it. Not only the flapping wings of gargoyles and dragons and the players casting spells, but the bosses too.  When the screen is so full of spell/effect spam that you can't see what you're fighting, something is wrong!



The second picture, that event actually crashed Origin and caused a shard revert.

Arnold7

Does not happen to me all that often on Great Lakes but it does happen.  Can be very frustrating especially when you get killed because you can barely move.  Pretty sure problem is on UO’s end since it only happens to me once in a while.  UO’s server appears the last couple of weeks to have been having problems with this more than usual. 

Riner

I keep all spell spam - flapping wings - chat spam and mobiles off so that's not the cause. I had suspected that as well until I started to turn them off. And only running one character so not the reason. 

Lord_Frodo

Multiboxing, illegal programs, illegal clients, in other wards CHEATING.

Skett

good times ?

they push the limits to the edge ?

looks fun right ?

dvvid

I went to one of these kinds of events on ATL and it was the most frustrating thing I ever experienced in the game. I’ll never go again. 

Seth

Maybe they need to split the crowd to different locations and have more boss.

McDougle

Shard bound em rewards it will fix itself 

Larisa

McDougle said:

Shard bound em rewards it will fix itself 

I have been wishing and hoping for this for a LONG time....but it will never happen. Too much revenue from buying/selling/trading EM Items.

But I will still wish and hope until the day the game dies lol...shard bound EM items would be AMAZING!

Riner

Agreed shard bound EM rewards would make a huge difference! 

Seth

They are already shard bound on my shard for a long time, and the lag and crowd just got worse.

Immediately after an event, Someone even posted to buy it for X million on the Gen chat for a tall mirror EM drop, and it’s SHARD bOunD… yay…

Seth

Anyway, EM drops are decor, so I don’t care even if it’s character bound 

ForeverFun

For starters, the UO server probably shouldn't be sending all these animation updates to clients when there are so many entities present in a small area.  There's a point where I don't care about seeing the animations/etc of 20+ people spamming greater heal.

It really just requires a dev to spend the time to sit down, attend an EM event, and look for areas of improvement.  Where is the server spending cycles, waiting, etc....

Larisa

Riner said:

I keep all spell spam - flapping wings - chat spam and mobiles off so that's not the cause. I had suspected that as well until I started to turn them off. And only running one character so not the reason. 

Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there. It's still happening whether you can see them or not. 

Seth

It should help to stop the client from showing them, and because it does not have sound, extra graphics effect etc, it should saves cpu resource. If they don't save computer resource then the client is bugged or has problems. It's like you turn off car headlights and the light is still on and eating your battery, it's a defect.

McDougle

Seth said:

It should help to stop the client from showing them, and because it does not have sound, extra graphics effect etc, it should saves cpu resource. If they don't save computer resource then the client is bugged or has problems. It's like you turn off car headlights and the light is still on and eating your battery, it's a defect.

What our game has bugs *gasp* 

ForeverFun

Seth said:

It should help to stop the client from showing them, and because it does not have sound, extra graphics effect etc, it should saves cpu resource. If they don't save computer resource then the client is bugged or has problems. It's like you turn off car headlights and the light is still on and eating your battery, it's a defect.

The UO developers should start by looking at the server code.  Why send all the "In Vas Mani" animations, etc to start with in a high density EM event?  That's not free for the server to do.  It's network traffic, processing on the server across many players, etc.

As somebody else noted, even if you turn off these animations in the client, it doesn't help with the perceived lag.  The benefit dropping the animations client side is marginal.  If that worked, we would no longer be complaining about this.

Seth

Recently I tried a game vpn called mudfish and pay by data used, the app shows that the data size transfer is very small for a mmo game. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the client side, and does not rely on the data transfer. So I think the freeze should be related to the client side.

ForeverFun

Seth said:

Recently I tried a game vpn called mudfish and pay by data used, the app shows that the data size transfer is very small for a mmo game. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the client side, and does not rely on the data transfer. So I think the freeze should be related to the client side.

I run a very fast client system with fast network.  Dialing down the animations, etc in the UO settings does not help at EM events.

It's probably on order of 80% server side, 20% client side -- lag influence wise.

Think about when there are 50 players in a small area, and 1 person casts "Greater Heal".  That message has to be sent (by the server) to all 50 players.  That's just a basic example.  We don't know how much CPU processing time the server spends calculating various things -- sure, a server could send a small network packet to 50 players, but how much time did the server take to calculate or process the side effects?    Area effect things could be very intensive server side - area posion, howl of cac, etc.

Seth

I mean, can’t the client just be coded with option to ignore the message. It’s like how it stop gargoyle flying animation, the server need to note it’s flying that is all and allow me to move at fly speed. But there is no hopping into the sky, and flapping wings. 

The code sent is just a number 0 for not flying, and 1 for flying. 

ForeverFun

Seth said:

I mean, can’t the client just be coded with option to ignore the message. It’s like how it stop gargoyle flying animation, the server need to note it’s flying that is all and allow me to move at fly speed. But there is no hopping into the sky, and flapping wings. 

The code sent is just a number 0 for not flying, and 1 for flying. 

If you do a thought experiment and assume the server is overly taxed during EM events, the answer to your question is no.  The client can ignore animations all day, but it's still going to be effectively waiting longer for messages or responses from the server.

Overly taxed may be 100% cpu usage, 100% network usage, waiting on locks, etc, etc, etc.  Something a developer looking at the server in operation (during an EM event) could determine.

Cinderella

Usually the only time I lag, is when there are lot of stuff locked down on the ground.
but this last EM Event, the flashing lights really started causing very bad lag.

My hubby was laughing at me, because I had to play the game with my sunglasses on.
The flashing lights really bothered my eyes, even with the sunglasses on.


i wasn't able to catch much of the light
but it ended up worth it, because I got a turkey on my anniversary hehe