GhostRaptor_EU

If this thread continues to be so off-topic, I'll close it.

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"It's your router/network etc" - it's an issue that does NOT affect every character on an account played on the same pc under the same conditions. This alone shouts SERVER SIDE to me!

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Some people have verified fixes using changes in configuration at a local level. We're at a loss to understand why it only affected some characters and not others, however we have verified that local config changes have fixed the issue for some players.

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"It's a UK ISP issue" - what about all the reports from the US? Maybe it is more prevalent in the UK for a certain ISP but that's like saying that the only people who speak Japanese live in Japan.

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Again, I've never said that it's a UK ISP issue. I have stated that we are seeing a very large proportion of reports from a single ISP in the UK, and that the UK is seeing a larger number of reports than elsewhere in Europe. Those are the facts present in the data we have received so far. Whether or not that ISP is causing the issue for those players or not remains to be seen, however we know that this ISP has recently begun conducting some deep packet sniffing and monitoring of user traffic and that this sort of activity by ISPs has caused problems with CoX traffic elsewhere in the past.

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As I have stated earlier in this thread, we have already verified that for some people the problem has been solved through changes in local configuration. Solved, not bypassed or worked-around. If asking a player to change a firewall config, change an antivirus config, change a router config, update network drivers permanently solves the problem for that player ... well, that's a solution and not a workaround.

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GR is saying that this is a permanent fix rather than something that temporarily makes the problem better. The implication is, therefore, that firewall/antivirus/router/network issues are the problem for some people - whereas the KNOWN symptoms of this issue (both EU and US, not affecting all toons on an account etc etc) firmly point to it being server side as I stated before.

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I said that for some users we have found verified solutions, and that if those solutions are permanent then we have found a viable solution for that specific player. Those are the facts present in the data we have so far. I am not implying that these possible fixes will work for everyone, and I am not denying that there may be a more deep-seated problem: we simply don't know, at this stage, because we have not been able to reproduce the problem.

All we know is that some players affected are no longer affected after making config changes on their PC (as verified by at least one person in this very thread).

I'm very well aware that this problem is particularly nasty for those affected. The numbers affected are quite small, however, and we would expect to see a much larger number of affected players if this was a server-side issue. Unfortunately, as I've said earlier in this thread, the data available to us so far is not pointing to anything specific as a cause.

We're continuing to gather data and investigate, and as indicated by myself (earlier in this thread) and Lighthouse (on the US forums) there are measures intended to help being worked on for a future build.

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I think the client is meant to check synch with the server when you zone anyway (would be pretty darn awful if it didn't), but in all likelihood there is a packet loss somewhere (very interesting that it's affecting so many people at once) in the process that means that the client thinks it's synched, but the server doesn't.

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This is pretty accurate. The reason why a teleport fixes the problem is because teleport includes a resync command.

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Don't let them persuade you that you did something wrong.
Can't so many people done something to their computers the exact time when I12 come out.

It is preferable to fix the problem on their end, than hoping that everyone with the problem will contact support and "tweak their pc" to eliminate the problem.

Most people will just leave the game instead contacting support as they aren't like us.
Hopefully they will use us to find the problem they caused instead of just giving us instructions to bypass the problem ourselfs and leaving the rest to get tired and abandon the game.

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As I have stated earlier in this thread, we have already verified that for some people the problem has been solved through changes in local configuration. Solved, not bypassed or worked-around. If asking a player to change a firewall config, change an antivirus config, change a router config, update network drivers permanently solves the problem for that player ... well, that's a solution and not a workaround.

There's no pattern in the solutions achieved so far, however, and we're still investigating potential causes for the problem. We're not suggesting that this is solely a local configuration problem and implying we are does both us and the community a disservice. I'd really appreciate that we not see posts that imply our support staff are incompetent and that we're trying to sweep the issue under the rug. We're well aware that that the possible solutions identified so far do not work for everyone and that there is a noticeable increase in this problem post-Issue 12. I will continue to make updates in this thread as I can.

We're also continuing to investigate the possible link with a UK ISP. The desync bug is far more prevalent in the UK than other EU countries, and this increase in numbers is almost solely with players on a specific ISP. Beyond that we are investigating as far as we can what other possible causes there are. Without a verified method for reliably reproducing the problem, however, it is extremely difficult for something like this to be traced, isolated and resolved. The more affected people who contact us about this issue, the closer we get to pinning it down.

Further, the suggestion with regards a temp TP power to assist those affected has been taken on board by the team at NCNC.

Threads that go so badly off-topic tend to get locked. Please refrain from spamming threads in this manner.

(edited for clarity )

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So many people have talked the talk, but no one has yet implemented effectively.

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Well i think its not really possible in the MMO genre to create something that will become an e-sport in terms of competition. Mainly because the developers are interested in capturing variety of player groups and view them in the traditional way of PvE and non PvE.Very few MMO's have dared to pull a pure PvP MMO and ones that did didnt have enough backup to go all the way through ---> Fury.

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I worked on Fury as the Community Manager . While I won't go into specifics, it wasn't a lack of backup that resulted in Fury's failure to sell and achieve a sustainable player base. There were other, much more fundamental failures that happened there.

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As far as esports tho dont think MMO is possible to make it all the way there just yet mainly cause MMO still rely on the roll dice element rather than tactical skill or twitch and micro skill that FPS requires.

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I think we're much closer than you might think. I spent some time in the past chatting with some very prominent and well known players from WoW and GW's competitive teams/guilds. The key is within your statement, in a way, and revolves around MMO designers taking the time to learn from successful e-sports games before they write their competitive PvP design docs. Ignoring the actual gameplay involved in RTS and FPS games, what is it that fundamentally makes a game suitable for e-sports? Competitive MMO PvP combat systems that fit those fundamentals already exist ... they've just been disguised behind a bunch of MMO staples that have no place in competition; largely related to timesinks.

Anyway ... I'll stop writing this here and go back to writing the blog post .

I've been rather slow getting my second post written. I think I'll commit to getting at least some of it transferred from mental draft form into digital written form during lunch today.

I have a few definite thoughts about what needs to happen before an MMO genuinely breaks into e-sports (GW and WoW have both made efforts in that direction, but neither have ever come close to the success of StarCraft or CounterStrike). It can and will happen someday, I'm convinced of that - it just needs an MMO developer who stops designing PvP as an addendum to the rest of the game and starts considering what it is that is required in competitive gaming. At the simplest layer, that's a level playing field from day 1. So many people have talked the talk, but no one has yet implemented effectively.

It's a PvP zone ... so it's up to you. By entering they signal their willingness to risk attack from another player.

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I thought I wasn't affected until I logged in with a character tonight, that I had to use since I11, and desynced almost everytime.
It seems I12 caused this as I haven't changed something at my end.

/petitioned

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Thanks, Saxtus.

I've removed the character name from the original post.

I'd like to remind everyone that the name-and-shame rules do not allow you to post character names or any other identifying information when discussing these sorts of issues.

Update time:

We have still not been able to duplicate the issue internally. As indicated yesterday, we have been getting reports from players who have successfully resolved the problem through a variety of means. This is a complicated issue. As noted by Cloney, the issue does not always affect all characters which would tend to indicate it isn't local network (or even route network) related, however we know that several people have successfully resolved the problem through changing local router or anti-virus settings, installing updated network card drivers and similar.

Further, a large percentage of the tickets received by support so far are from the UK and the vast majority of those are on a single, specific ISP. This may or may not mean anything, however it is the only frequent common factor we have been able to identify so far.

If you are affected and have not yet sent a petition to the support team, please do so immediately. If support ask you for further information, such as connection details, please provide that information as soon as you can. This will help us immensely in building up a better profile.

Welcome to the nominations for May's Creative Genius!

Please use this thread to nominate submissions for the Creative Genius award for the month of May 2008.

Please be sure to familiarise yourself with the guidelines for the Creative board and the Creative Genius competition before making any nominations - you can read them here.

These nominations will remain open until 6pm GMT on Friday, 20th June. The winner will be announced on or before Friday, 28th June.

To nominate a submission, please post a link to the appropriate post.

There are some important rules to bear in mind when making nominations:
<ul type="square">[*]You may only nominate one submission. If you nominate more than one submission, only the first one will count.[*]You may not nominate your own submissions.[*]Nominated submissions must have been originally posted to this board during May 2008.[*]All original submissions first posted to these boards in May 2008 are eligible for nomination, regardless of what form they take.[*]Only nominated submissions will be considered for the Creative Genius award.[*]If no nominations are received, there will be no Creative Genius award for May 2008.[*]If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, please post them to The Creative Board and Creative Genius. This thread should only be used for nominations, and any off-topic posts will be removed.[/list]Happy nominating!

Please stop spamming in this thread.

I have edited several posts in this thread.

Please see the post that has been made in the Announcements forum this afternoon.

Also, please note that inviting other forum members to quit and/or go play another game, or similar comments, are not valuable contributions to this forum and are covered in the forum rules.

The harrassment and personal attacks stop now, from both sides.

Any further public posts accusing others of paid-for power levelling will be treated as what they are: harassment and name-and-shame posts.

I would also like to remind everyone that there is never any justification for making personal attacks and using inappropriate language.

If you feel that a post is objectionable and in violation of the forum rules, all posts have a "notify moderator" icon: it is to both your benefit and our benefit for you to use that button.

We're continuing to collect data from those affected. If you are affected please make sure to petition our support team. A post to these forums is not sufficient to ensure that we get all of the information we need from you.

In a few cases the problem has been resolved by bypassing a router (if present), disabling antivirus or identified as being caused by packet loss at a local ISP. Unfortunately these solutions do not work for everyone, and we are still searching for why the problem has become more severe and is affecting players who were previously unaffected.

At this stage we really need to filter out which players are affected by a resolvable problem with their local internet access (eg firewall, antivirus and router configurations or an ISP that is having issues they need to resolve) and which players appear to have an issue that is not resolved by the normal trouble-shooting steps.

This filtering cannot be done via the forums, so if anyone reading this thread is affected and has not yet contacted support please do so at your earliest convenience.

And the winner for the month of April is...

EternalKnights for his CoH orchestral theme Summon the Heroes.

Congratulations!

The nominations thread for May will be opened on Monday.

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Having been a software developer for several decades I can also confirm it's a classic troubleshooting technique when you're trying to pin down intermittent problems that don't occur on all systems.

Once you've worked out what all the systems with problems have in common, you can focus your investigations much more usefully.

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Which is exactly what we are currently trying to do.

As a specific example, on one of my past projects a bug manifested itself that caused severe gameplay problems for some users. The cause was eventually tracked down to a popular third-party program installed on some PCs; in fact, a specific version of that software. It was only through gathering what many players would consider "irrelevant" data that a pattern was found that pointed to the cause.

When trying to isolate a bug such as this, that has not yet been reproducible for us internally, it is important to gather as much data as possible in order to be able to datamine for potential commonalities between affected players / characters. Much of that data will prove to have been not needed once the bug is isolate, however until that occurs every piece of data we gather has the potential to hold the key to finding the cause of the problem and therefore a solution.

The only update I can give with regards the current desync problems is that it is a high priority for the teams involved, however a definite cause has not yet been isolated. There are some potential leads that are being investigated.

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I expect them not to release an issue that is so obviously bug-laden in the first place.

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As I posted in response to a similar complaint yesterday, when the decision was taken to release Issue 12 the team at NCNC was confident that the Issue was ready. Further, the issue with the desync bug was not known at the time the decision was made. This problem was only discovered after Issue 12 was launched on the live servers.

rpgguy,

I would hazard a guess that your issue is completely unrelated to my opening post. That post refers to issues with unchanged PCs that worked fine with I11 but not I12, and the specific symptoms I mentioned. As far as I am aware driver crashes are not related at all.

I would suggest you try completely removing your graphics card driver and installing the latest release driver from scratch as a first trouble-shooting step.

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... and the problem seems to be at IP address 195.66.224.167 (cr02.ldn01.pccwbtn.net).

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Unfortunately that's a server outside our control but located quite close to the datacentre.

I see nothing wrong with the back-and-forth over the merits of this achievement. I do see, however, that some of the posts have stepped across the line of banter into an area I'd rather not see this thread go. Not far over, but there are some posts that could be taken in the wrong way and I want to remind everyone that personal attacks are not allowed.

Many players have reported problems with becoming de-synced from maps. Symptoms of this bug include receiving an "out of range" message when using powers when you should be within range, being unable to interact with the environment (such as doors) and being unable to zone. A common workaround for this bug usable by players is to have another player teleport the affected character.

This bug is known variously in the community as the "Twilight" bug, "Door" bug, "Empty World" bug, "Ghost Map" bug or "Out of Body" bug. We will be referring to this bug as the Map Desync bug, as this describes what is actually happening.

Unfortunately it appears that for some players this bug has become more prevalent / severe since the Issue 12 launch. If you are affected, we request that you contact support and include some additional information:

* How many characters on your account are affected?
* How many characters are not affected?
* What are the affected character names?
* How severely are you affected? Are you affected occasionally, or is the character becoming desynced every time you zone into a new map?

edit to add: If you are affected please make sure to petition our support team. A post to these forums is not sufficient to ensure that we get all of the information we need from you.

I'm posting this as a central thread to gather together what we have learned so far this week with regards some players experiencing poor graphics/client performance since patching to Issue 12. We have identified two potential causes for the issues witnessed, which are detailed below. Before reporting a problem with reduced client performance please read through the below and try the suggested solutions.

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[Problem] Some players are experiencing extremely poor client performance after patching to Issue 12 that they did not experience before the issue.

[Symptoms] Extremely slow alt-tabbing, inability to steer with the mouse, reduced frame rates.

[Causes] There are currently two known potential causes:

1. Issue 12 includes significant changes to how the game stores graphics, chat and other settings found in the Options menu. There are cases of players’ settings being changed from what they had previously used. On some systems (especially older systems) the new settings are overloading the system. Specifically, players are finding that the “Water Effects” setting has been changed to “High Quality” when it was previously set to Low or None. Other potential settings that may cause this issue are Desaturation Effects and Bloom.
   
2. Third party apps such as Hero Stats and CoHLCD appear to be incompatible with changes made with Issue 12. These apps appear to be having problems and sucking up large amounts of memory, and thus starving the client of memory. This then causes the client to perform poorly.

[Solutions] Pretty simple for both issues:

1. As a first diagnosis step, launch the client using the Safe Mode option. If this results in playable performance, open the Options panel in-game, then go to the Graphics tab and enable Advanced settings. In the Advanced settings area, try gradually turning on each option until you identify which caused the poor performance.
   
   In most cases it appears that the issue is caused by Water Effects being set to High. Resetting this setting to Low or None has successfully resolved the problem for many.
   
2. if the above did not resolve your issue and you are using a third party app while playing CoH, try switching off the app(s) while playing.

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I do have a t mobile mobile usb broadband internet connection i was hoping it was my location but after trying to play the game in 3 different areas (Work,Parents and own house) i still get the same 20-40 secs game time before experiencing lost connection to mapserver.

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Do you have a wired connection you can try instead?

If you haven't already, please send a petition to our support team.

In the meantime, it will be easier for people to assist if you provide further information:

* Do you use a wired or wireless connection? (Wireless connections can be affected by interference and result in game disconnections while leaving the rest of your internet appearing to work fine)

* Who is your ISP? (Your ISP may have a fault affecting CoH even if the rest of your internet appears to be working fine)

* Where (roughly) do you live? (It may be a fault with infrastructure in your region)

* Do you use a firewall? (It isn't unknown for a firewall to randomly decide it doesn't like a specific program despite having been happy with it for months)