Time for a Serious Server upgrade ?
By
Alphane,
Posted on: 2008-07-20 19:04 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Everyone's powers are 4-5 sec delayed, the game can run smoothly graphic like, but the servers is so overheating you can go make a sandwich and come back just in time for your next attack.
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I'd say that sounds more like network lag than server lag, and network lag can't be solved by upgrading the hardware.
I've never had a problem with the mothership raids - it would get a little jerky sometimes, but only for a second or two.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Looks like server lag to me. It's as if the server cannot keep up at times. Specially when several AoEs are going off at once.
This weekend has been very laggy overall.
Just look at the Roman TF. the 3rd mission has so many patrols, mobs and etc. it's super laggy doing nothing. And the netgraph shows no network lag there.
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Just look at the Roman TF. the 3rd mission has so many patrols, mobs and etc. it's super laggy doing nothing. And the netgraph shows no network lag there.
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Well that's graphics lag then, which is your local machine, so nothing to do with the servers either...
THe biggest part of the problem is that the game was designed to be able to do stuff over a 56K modem, so when things are really busy it "Lags" because it dropping information deliberately.
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Just look at the Roman TF. the 3rd mission has so many patrols, mobs and etc. it's super laggy doing nothing. And the netgraph shows no network lag there.
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Well that's graphics lag then, which is your local machine, so nothing to do with the servers either...
THe biggest part of the problem is that the game was designed to be able to do stuff over a 56K modem, so when things are really busy it "Lags" because it dropping information deliberately.
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No its server lag.
Reasoning, iot's not a case of your client freezing up.
the entire game stops, including server side stuff like mobs.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
You find an advert in the Sunday Times...
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I don't really have a problem with lag. I don't experenice much lag at all. It might just be me but I agree it must be your comp because I'm having no problems. And I regularly go onto TFs, mothership raids, etc. Not much lag at all. If it is server lag I must be lucky.
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Just look at the Roman TF. the 3rd mission has so many patrols, mobs and etc. it's super laggy doing nothing. And the netgraph shows no network lag there.
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Well that's graphics lag then, which is your local machine, so nothing to do with the servers either...
[/ QUOTE ]Nah, there's no FPS drop. I'm not sure whether it's a problem with the server not keeping up, or a bandwidth problem in the datacenter that for some reason doesn't show on the netgraph, but it's definitely not client-side.
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You find an advert in the Sunday Times...
GET YOUR FLAME WAR LEAFLETS HERE! 35 COX FORUMS STREET! ALL FOR FREE!
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That made me laugh 
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Just look at the Roman TF. the 3rd mission has so many patrols, mobs and etc. it's super laggy doing nothing. And the netgraph shows no network lag there.
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Well that's graphics lag then, which is your local machine, so nothing to do with the servers either...
[/ QUOTE ]Nah, there's no FPS drop. I'm not sure whether it's a problem with the server not keeping up, or a bandwidth problem in the datacenter that for some reason doesn't show on the netgraph, but it's definitely not client-side.
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What MaX said. There's nothing wrong on my end with graphics or such, i get *no* drops in fps. And when we mostly cleared the map with the two AVs left, there's barely any lag, since they all dead now.
It's as if the requests aren't handles fast enough. Click powers taking a long time to fire off, but chat and such work fine. Also *everyone* in the team reported the same type of lag at the same time. I don't think the odds of eight people getting the exakt same client side lag at the exakt same time for the exakt same duration are very high. So it kind of has to be server side.
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Just look at the Roman TF. the 3rd mission has so many patrols, mobs and etc. it's super laggy doing nothing. And the netgraph shows no network lag there.
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Well that's graphics lag then, which is your local machine, so nothing to do with the servers either...
[/ QUOTE ]Nah, there's no FPS drop. I'm not sure whether it's a problem with the server not keeping up, or a bandwidth problem in the datacenter that for some reason doesn't show on the netgraph, but it's definitely not client-side.
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What MaX said. There's nothing wrong on my end with graphics or such, i get *no* drops in fps. And when we mostly cleared the map with the two AVs left, there's barely any lag, since they all dead now.
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Fix and cause.
Neato, might make ITF more enjoyable 
Hopefully they do the fix more in depth to fix the cause, not just symptoms. Cause the lag appears outside ITF as well, specially with heavy AoE involved.
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It's as if the requests aren't handles fast enough. Click powers taking a long time to fire off, but chat and such work fine.
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Well, that would suggest it's not network lag (at least not network lag outside of the server park -- and network lag internal to the server park should be fixable.) I'd still be surprised if it was CPU bound though -- I'd expect a more even degradation then.
One type of lag I did notice a couple of time during the weekend was loading screen lag; that usually zips by in a few seconds for me, even for large zones, but there were a couple of instances on Saturday where it took several minutes just to enter a misson. It did seem to hit the whole team, although some more than others.
Experiment: next time you get significant lag and netgraph is green, try whacking graphics settings down to minimum and see the difference. This isn't so much of a trial because you can now save you existing settings and revert once done.
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Fix and cause.
[/ QUOTE ]Well, that's fairly nice.
It would be good if they could increase the capacity of the servers to handle such things though, because it does occur at times in other missions as well. AoE knockback especially tends to cause it (at least, when the mapserver is busy in general), due to mob ragdoll.
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One type of lag I did notice a couple of time during the weekend was loading screen lag; that usually zips by in a few seconds for me, even for large zones, but there were a couple of instances on Saturday where it took several minutes just to enter a misson. It did seem to hit the whole team, although some more than others.
[/ QUOTE ]Was the holdup during the actual loading process, or at the very start before the bar was moving? If it's the latter, it's usually (AFAIK) because the shard is unable to find a mapserver for you. Which is understandably quite common on DXP weekends.
It's not a graphics problem...
Dunno how often it needs to be said.
Also chat is on diffrent servers, and thus why thats not lagging when the rest of the game is.
Being that the basis for the client is 4 years old now are we sure that it's a server problem could it not quite as easily be that the programming isn't efficient enough to process the ever greatre demands on it. I've heard that US servers are older tech than ours and at least three of them run a greater population than ours surely if it was a server issue this would not be feasible.
Actually, the US servers got an upgrade not too long ago, so are now a little higher specced than ours. The problem, though, isn't the actual servers themselves. I've always suspected the netcode the game uses isn't that efficient, and it's known that the internet infrastructure, at least between the UK and Germany where the datacentre is located, sucks big time. So the problem is likely a combination of iffy netcode, and [censored] network.
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Actually, the US servers got an upgrade not too long ago, so are now a little higher specced than ours. The problem, though, isn't the actual servers themselves. I've always suspected the netcode the game uses isn't that efficient, and it's known that the internet infrastructure, at least between the UK and Germany where the datacentre is located, sucks big time. So the problem is likely a combination of iffy netcode, and [censored] network.
[/ QUOTE ]This problem isn't between the UK and Germany though, because it also applies to those of us outside the UK, and on the US servers as well.
Then it comes down to the shoddy netcode. Time to throwaway the 56k limitations perhaps? I know there are still one or two people on dialup in the US as I've seen their posts; but to quote Spock & Kirk... "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one..."
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Was the holdup during the actual loading process, or at the very start before the bar was moving? If it's the latter, it's usually (AFAIK) because the shard is unable to find a mapserver for you.
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It was the latter type, so yes, that sounds like a reasonable explanation.
(On that note, I'm still annoyed at the stupid decision to overlay loading screens over everything, including the chat window.)
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This problem isn't between the UK and Germany though, because it also applies to those of us outside the UK, and on the US servers as well.
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so updating the "servers" would make no difference then. glad we go that settled.
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I'd still be surprised if it was CPU bound though -- I'd expect a more even degradation then.
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Leif, I'm dissapointed. Most performance curves due to almost anything to do with computers tank at some point, generally catastrophically, and quite often with no sign of degredation until the failure point. It also need not be actually CPU, but physical RAM. Use up all of that and start paging and you get a sudden drop in performance.
The other thing to consider is that the server, as such, is not to blame, but the software on the server is. All it would take is one point in the event chain to be less than optimal and the system as a whole starts messing up at high load. Throwing hardware at this is quite possibly not going to fix the problem. It would require a review of the algorithms used in the software.
I have noticed more lag this weekend than the week before, but I put that entirely down to DXP Weekend. I pity anyone trying to do anything more intensive than levelling normally over the last couple of days, but surely they knew what they were getting into. 
I don't think the servers are going to get massively upgraded, personally. Take Hamidon: The original Hamidon raid was farmed, so it was changed to make it harder. Rather than come up with new tactics, the players just got bigger teams to fight Hami until a typical raid was 100 people, which regularly crashed the server the raid was on.
Chosen solution: rewrite Hamidon to need a maximum of 40 players. Personally, I think it was a good choice, and my hat goes off to the people who used to farm old Hami; your tolerance for boredom must be stratospheric.
Anyway, big server upgrades need big money and the CoX players rejected any more paid-for expansions to the game. "We pay our subscriptions and we don't want to pay for anything more," we said (apparently). Well, we get to live with that choice.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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Anyway, big server upgrades need big money and the CoX players rejected any more paid-for expansions to the game. "We pay our subscriptions and we don't want to pay for anything more," we said (apparently). Well, we get to live with that choice.
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We did?
I don't recall saying that myself 
I quite liked the wedding pack and would not mind paying a little extra for more costume options.
Hello everyone.
I would just like to hear other people's and maybe even a moderaters opinion on this.
We pay alot of money to play this game, and i know there is people to get payed, electricity and stuff to pay.
But, what i find a little annoying is the acturly lack of Server power.
An event like the Mothership raid, has been implanted, great it's a fun event and the idea is awesome.
The problem comes when you do the event, when that amount of people gather, and that amount of enemies spawn, NOONE, can play the game, not because our PCs graphics makes it lag, no because the servers simpley cant keep up.
Everyone's powers are 4-5 sec delayed, the game can run smoothly graphic like, but the servers is so overheating you can go make a sandwich and come back just in time for your next attack.
So, now i would like to hear if anyone else agrees with this.
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Just think of all the good things there would come out of better servers.
-Events could be played without server making everyone nearly crash.
-Servers would be able to think faster, there by increasing the speed limit of powers like fly and SS.
-New and bigger events would be able to be made.
And so on.
This game has LOTS of potential, the only problem is that it's "crappy" servers are holding it back from using that potential.
Well anyway, let me hear your opinion on this matter.
-Insanitor.
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