[ QUOTE ]
So, I have been playing this game for a few months, since about october or november 2008. Pretty much only on East Coast servers, mostly Freedom and Infinity. Everything was perfectly fine, I never lagged except on the ITF Laghill, my netgraph constantly showed a green bar with a ping hovering between 220 and 260 (playing from Europe).
Now, since a few days, here's what my netgraph looks like.
There's bursts of lag every second or so. It's still playable, but not very fun - people teleport forward and backward, animations often skip, powers don't activate in time. Using the Market has become tedious ; bids tend to appear for half a second then vanish after I hit enter, I often have to give the same input three or four times for anything to work successfully there.
My connection seems to work just as fine as usual on other websites, games, tests, and so on.
Now, this just happens on East coast servers. I'm still getting a green netgraph on West coast servers - along with a lovely 350-370 ping (which is normal, this was the situation when I joined months ago), and at that point the latency is so bad it's not much more fun than the laggy situation above. The Market works perfectly on West coast servers, too.
I'm not really posting this for help (although, if you've got something that could fix my problem, I'm all ears... 
) as I doubt there's much I can do on my end, just wondering if anyone else has ran into the same problems lately.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yes. I have been having similar issues lately on the Justice Server (I think that's east coast, but I don't really know).
Wavicle, Energy/Energy Blaster, dinged 50 in Issue 4, summer of 2005.
@Wavicle, mostly on the Justice server.
Run a tracert to the servers, or use PingPlotter to trace it and see where it is getting hung up. There is likely a router, hub, switch or other piece of network equipment between you and the East Coast servers that is causing the problem.
Once you have the information, file a support ticket at the PlayNC site so that they can try to work on it from their end and also contact your ISP and let them know what you are finding with the tests. Keep after them to put pressure on whoever it is with the faulty equipment to get it fixed. Your ISP carries a lot more weight than you do, so you really want them to bring pressure to bear.
houtex listed the IP addresses here.
EDIT: Justice is West Coast. Shame on you Wavicle.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
Hi Nihilli, I feel your pain.
I have been talking to NCSoft customer support on this exact same issue for 2 weeks. They can't solve it, I cant solve it out, and network specialists from the New Zealand Defence Force cant solve it.
I have exactly the same symptoms. I'm further away so im getting 450 pings and a graph just like that on the east coast, which is basically unplayable. But stable and playable on the west coast.
I've rerolled a newish toon on Justice and may consider rerolling other low level toons if this doesn't improve.
I have 1300+ character levels on the East coast, so im hoping it sorts itself out.
Crime of Fashion Level 50 Rad/Rad Corrupter
My Toons
My Rad/Rad Corrupters Guide
Mindscape - Reworking
Thanks for your help, Texas_Justice.
I've looked up tracert and PingPlotter ; it's rather confusing for me, I'm not really good with computers or technology in general.
Now, it looks like I'm getting "Destination Address Unreachable" with 100% packet loss on most NCSoft IPs, regardless if it's West Coast, East Coast or even Europe or forum boards.
I've tried a wide range of other IPs, these seem to work just fine.
Honestly though, I've got to apologize, as I didn't want to make you waste your time, but I don't feel like going back and forth with support and/or my ISP, having a hard time figuring out tons of things I don't understand at all just to get a video game working right. I was mostly just looking to see if other players ran into the same kind of trouble lately. Regardless, this is all very good information and your effort is appreciated, thank you again. 
Hey Crime,
Thanks for sharing your experience. It might be somewhat selfish for me to say this, but I'm relieved I'm not alone - if we're enough to have this problem, they might get around to fix it faster. 
On the other hand, if even network specialists don't know what's going on, that's not too reassuring.
It looks like all servers are centralized in Chicago. Check the Ping Plotter results, you'll see they all go there... well, not the EU ones, they come from France. Like Beldar, Primat and Connie
Unless you can find different, of course. So far that's what I've been finding...
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
[ QUOTE ]
Hey Crime,
Thanks for sharing your experience. It might be somewhat selfish for me to say this, but I'm relieved I'm not alone - if we're enough to have this problem, they might get around to fix it faster.
On the other hand, if even network specialists don't know what's going on, that's not too reassuring.
[/ QUOTE ]
One of the advantages of my role is having lots of IT people as friends. They basically said "Its not at your end, it looks like something is playing up with a connection way down the line"
We did everything at my end that you could think of.
NCSoft support were pretty good, but they couldn't help which was a pity
Crime of Fashion Level 50 Rad/Rad Corrupter
My Toons
My Rad/Rad Corrupters Guide
Mindscape - Reworking
[ QUOTE ]
It looks like all servers are centralized in Chicago.
[/ QUOTE ]
They're not. There are two NCSoft co-loc facilities for the CoX servers. They are in California and Virginia.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
|
Theres a program called "TweakCoH" That has a diagnostic tool built in that grabs a list of the server addresses for tracert info and ping info that can be saved into a neat little file... (also helps with changing the graphic quality BEFORE starting the game up...) speakin of, I think its time we had a "Login"/"Exit Game"/"OPTIONS" button available where we could set the global stuff graphics/audio and the ilk don't you people?
edit too,
I get this problem CONSTANTLY... all the time. 24/7 so you are definately not alone... however the CH/BM doesnt seem to be freezing up my computer for 30 seconds as usual... (and I mean freeze, where the screen goes overlay white and askes if you want to quit it or continue waiting... >.>
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It looks like all servers are centralized in Chicago.
[/ QUOTE ]
They're not. There are two NCSoft co-loc facilities for the CoX servers. They are in California and Virginia.
[/ QUOTE ]
Then why do all pings to the servers wind up in Chicago when running a PingPlotter? That makes no sense to me... sounds counter productive... unless the server list is messed up in the Network Tool...
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
I've noticed those last days some small lag issues too, I never had before. It might not be as strong as what you describe Nihilii, but still annoying sometime.
Like powers not activating in time, some animations being skipped... etc. I thought that was probably because the lots of players on Freedom/Atlas/AE.
Not so sure about this, I gonna check my netgraph too during a classic AE team on Atlas/Freedom and edit this post with the results.
Edit : ok, seems the ping is stable around 250 for me tonight.
What you describe reminds me exactly what we used to have on L2 a few years ago (on Ncsoft servers). Sometime an unbearable lag making the game unplayable for a part of the players (that didnt hit everyone, but seemed to concern players on a random base : sometime you were in, sometime not, but it always made a tons of pages on the boards). That usually lasted for a few days then went away. Ncsoft could never fix it or do anything about that, it was maybe a global network issue.
Also, I'm hearing several ppl complaining about lag issues tonight and those last days... but that seems usual unfortunately :/
Southeast Coast with Time Warner on Freedom
here, we are having the same issues too.
I thought it might be my router crapping out
so I switched it with another I had. Also, changed
NIC drivers.
Guess it wasn't the problem.
If this is a NCSoft issue, how do we:
1) Prove it
2) Demand it get fixed?
I can not imagine it being an ISP issue if
people here have different providers.
Gonna run TweakCoH when I get home for the heck of it.
It could be something between your ISP and the CoH Servers. It doesn't have to be a case of your computer, your ISP or te CoH server being at fault. There are a number of other pieces to the connection chain than those three.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
[ QUOTE ]
Most likely it is due to problems that exist between your cable modem and the CoH servers. If it were on the CoH servers it wouldn't be affecting many more players.
[/ QUOTE ]
I'm sure you ment would.
Between this post and the others in the "Really getting sick of Connection to Mapserv loss" thread I'm tired of reading it must be in between your modem and CoH servers. No really? You think?
It amazes me that EVERY other MMO out there has "something between my cable modem and their servers" YET, NCSoft's City of Heroes is the ONLY game acting this way.
Maybe then NCSoft should look at what is between THEIR servers and OUR cable modems in the AREA where this is happeneing more frequently and see if there is a common denominator and fix it. Why should the customer be doing this? We pay for a product and it's support.
And for what it's worth, I noticed this begin happeneing when the Ritki crap started. Not certain if that matters.
/rant off
Yes, you caught my typo. I originally had something else there that the word "wouldn't" went with, but then changed most of it and missed making that change. Also, the word you are looking for is meant.
I'll repeat again what I've been saying in other threads. I have one of the lousiest internet connections possible, barring dialup or satellite. It's a Wireless ISP. Not wireless from my computer to the router or modem, I mean I have an antenna outside my house pointing to another antenna on the water tower that is around 2.5 miles line of sight from me. A tree growing in the backyard has branches that have spread out so that they are between my antenna and the water tower, and when ANY amount of breeze blows, those branches move and interrupt my internet connection.
That being said, I had 2 problems from Friday on, and one of those was loss of internet for over 2 hours. One was a minor disconnect during a Rikti Invasion in AP.
If it were a problem with the servers I'd definitely be affected more.
As far as NCSoft looking at what is between their servers and your cable modems? They do, but only if people report it with enough information for them to find a common pattern.
They've worked with ISP's to get things corrected on the ISP's end, they've worked in conjunction with the ISP's and on their own to get problems corrected on other pieces of network equipment along one of the many routes to their servers.
But, they have to have reports filed that contain useful and solid information and not the rants and whines that are so often all that posts on the forums contain. If you file a polite useful report with specific information that they can use to help troubleshoot the issues and continue to work with them through the problem, they can get something accomplished. If they want to blame it on your system, give them proof in the form of tracert information showing where the problems are coming up or other diagnostic information that shows it isn't on your end. If they try to blow you off ask politely that it be escalated to a Senior Customer Service Rep or Senior GM.
If the game spit out 20 dollar bills people would complain that they weren't sequentially numbered. If they were sequentially numbered people would complain that they weren't random enough.
Black Pebble is my new hero.
So if one or two or 10 or 100 of you have issues out of thousands, then it's on NCSoft's side to fix it. Right, makes perfect sense to me.
/gonna hit 'eject' button now.
//but not before I ask "so what is the threshold number anyway? I'm understandably curious..."
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
[ QUOTE ]
So if one or two or 10 or 100 of you have issues out of thousands, then it's on NCSoft's side to fix it. Right, makes perfect sense to me.
/gonna hit 'eject' button now.
//but not before I ask "so what is the threshold number anyway? I'm understandably curious..."
[/ QUOTE ]
After talking to NCSoft customer support they cant find anything. However, if they get a bunch of tickets with the same issue they may look further afield to see whats happening.
If players are having problems they should inform ncsoft. It helps ncsoft to know whats going on, if they cant fix it because its outside their reach i understand, but i still think its good for them to know
Crime of Fashion Level 50 Rad/Rad Corrupter
My Toons
My Rad/Rad Corrupters Guide
Mindscape - Reworking
[ QUOTE ]
And for what it's worth, I noticed this begin happeneing when the Ritki crap started. Not certain if that matters.
[/ QUOTE ]
Oddly, the old issue we had on Ncsoft servers before in Lineage II (read about it in my previous post) occured exactly and precisely each time they started to run test servers for the next chronicle (= issue)... Yet, they always said it had no connection and the issue wasnt on their side, and I believe they were sincere, at least they looked like. Weird ?
I just got word from folks on the european servers that they get the same kind of lag, and have been getting it for years. The exact same stuff : netgraph with spiky red bars of doom, animations skipping, market being hard to use, people teleporting, and everything else out of the game working perfectly. Support gave them the same answer too : "there's a problem somewhere between your connection and our servers".
Now of course this is secondhand for you guys, but myself I believe these folks and I find it weird there's a network problem not related to NCSoft on different servers located in USA and in Europe, a network problem that doesn't seem to affect any other game or any other site in any location. I'm also rather worried to hear it has been lagging for years over there...
I'm not grabbing my tinfoil hat just yet, I know there's much I don't know about computers, but just saying, that seems to be a strange coincidence to me.
All I know is... CoX ran like a dream for me until the last issue and subsequent patches. Since then, it's been a laggy mess for myself and my SG mates, who are scattered across the globe.
After reading the post above the post above, I came up with this theory:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....=0#Post13802515
I dunno if it'll help or not, but I throw it out there.
August 31, 2012. A Day that will Live in Infamy. Or Information. Possibly Influence. Well, Inf, anyway. Thank you, Paragon Studios, for what you did, and the enjoyment and camaraderie you brought.
This is houtex, aka Mike, signing off the forums. G'night all. - 10/26/2012
Well... perhaps I was premature about that whole 'signing off' thing... - 11-9-2012
Where does Infinity reside? I'm from Florida o.O
Houtex, frankly, I think singling out my post to write this was uncalled for. I'm not claiming this is NCSoft's fault, I'm not asking them to fix this, I've never said I had an über computer, hell I admit I don't know much about computers and have done so multiple times.
I'm just saying, we've got different people with different ISPs having the exact same problem on NCSoft servers located in different geographical locations, and those same people never experience any trouble on any other website, videogame or anywhere on the internet (unless, of course, it's a problem affecting the whole servers). I'm not talking about WoW or BBC.co.uk only, everything else works flawlessly.
When I'm talking about european players I didn't just ask two or three guys either, I'm talking about twelve players with five different ISPs having the same problem - all living in France with french ISPs, though.
I find this weird, that's all.
These are the facts - granted, I'm not providing proof, and if you don't want to believe it you can call me a liar ; but please don't make me look like some whiny dude ranting because his alienware PC doesn't run the game. That's really not what the topic was about.
I am right there with you. Ironically, when I send in a support with follow-up info...the game magically seems to run smooth on the next day. About 2 days later, hello roaming instability...joy. 
The best thing I have read so far is "packet loss" from another post and the way it was described was exactly what I have as well as my friends have been experiencing. I am on Infinity too and play in the Midwest and it has only been recently that the server seems flaky for quite a few of us it seems...
Globals: Johnnykat & Johnnykat2
http://johnnykat.deviantart.com/
So, I have been playing this game for a few months, since about october or november 2008. Pretty much only on East Coast servers, mostly Freedom and Infinity. Everything was perfectly fine, I never lagged except on the ITF Laghill, my netgraph constantly showed a green bar with a ping hovering between 220 and 260 (playing from Europe).
) as I doubt there's much I can do on my end, just wondering if anyone else has ran into the same problems lately.
Now, since a few days, here's what my netgraph looks like.
There's bursts of lag every second or so. It's still playable, but not very fun - people teleport forward and backward, animations often skip, powers don't activate in time. Using the Market has become tedious ; bids tend to appear for half a second then vanish after I hit enter, I often have to give the same input three or four times for anything to work successfully there.
My connection seems to work just as fine as usual on other websites, games, tests, and so on.
Now, this just happens on East coast servers. I'm still getting a green netgraph on West coast servers - along with a lovely 350-370 ping (which is normal, this was the situation when I joined months ago), and at that point the latency is so bad it's not much more fun than the laggy situation above. The Market works perfectly on West coast servers, too.
Note this is completely irrelevant of the place I'm in in game, the server activity or anything except the physical server location. Standing in a solo mission in Triumph (East Coast server) will give me the messy netgraph, while sitting in the Atlas AE building in Virtue (West Coast server) will give me a perfectly smooth netgraph.
I'm not really posting this for help (although, if you've got something that could fix my problem, I'm all ears...