Issues with Incarnate Trials - Monitoring Issue 4/8/2011
By
Arkyaeon,
Posted on: 2011-04-08 19:21 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Doing a BAF with more than 16 people - cause lag so bad you can not get the AV's down together. They repower - even withing a REAL WORLD two seconds of each other.
Power take a very long time to fire (cicrles last longer around button)
Incarnate power take even longer to fire.
The reinforcment timer - passes time at a real world rate. And reinforcements show up at a normal rate...but it takes 2 to 3 times as long to drop them.
You can move at what seems a normal pass...but powers firing and recharge at an extreme slow rate.
This is all after the last patch.
LvL 50 Dark Dark, Emp/Rad Defenders
LvL 50 Inv/Axe, Fire/Fire, Stone/Stone, Mace/Shield Tanks, EM/Inv
LvL 50 Spines/DA Scrapper
LvL 50 Ice/Storm, Ice/Rad, Earth/Rad, 2 Fire/Kin, Ill/Rad, Grav/FF, Controller Elec/Storm
LvL 50 Bots/FF, Merc/Traps, MM Thugs/Traps, Demon/Thermal
My Good vs Evil Jump Pack and my "rental" 30-day Jetpack do not work inside Incarnate Trials anymore. And I specifically bought that jetpack to use during Lambda on a non-flying, non-jumping character. It used to work just fine in there. They both used to work just fine; they stopped working after the last patch.
I got Dc'd out of a Lambda last night on Champion.
Look, I like the game. Mostly do to the communitty, character generation, etc. i like your continuous updates to the game. However, this is like the giant lag spikes in ITF valley. They will never be fixed. IMO.
I crash on entering trials about 1 out of every 10 times. There are giant lag problems with any league over 16 in the BAF. The warehouse room in the Lambda has giant lag/slideshow/lockup problems with it. I can barely help get one crate there in 5 minutes, some cannot go there without full system crash.
Every one of these issues has been brought up to the Devs. Like the lag in the ITF valley, I fully expect this to never be fixed.
Need another example? Ritki mothership raids.
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Thanks for your non-help. That will definitely get the problem fixed faster.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Look, I like the game. Mostly do to the communitty, character generation, etc. i like your continuous updates to the game. However, this is like the giant lag spikes in ITF valley. They will never be fixed. IMO.
I crash on entering trials about 1 out of every 10 times. There are giant lag problems with any league over 16 in the BAF. The warehouse room in the Lambda has giant lag/slideshow/lockup problems with it. I can barely help get one crate there in 5 minutes, some cannot go there without full system crash. Every one of these issues has been brought up to the Devs. Like the lag in the ITF valley, I fully expect this to never be fixed. Need another example? Ritki mothership raids. |
I ran on a couple of Lambdas yesterday. It was laggy for me all over, but especially inside the grenade collection phases (either one). No crashes, though.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
Look. I am seriously not trying to be snarky. Lets keep it real. Take one programmer. Have him run 5 Lambdas, 5 BAFS, with varying machines, high end to low end. (low end being 2gig ram, moderate fast processor, older graphic card) BAM, problem identified. Then, have him fix it.
I have worked in problem solving offices for over 25 years. If you want to know what a problem is, try doing what your customers are doing. If you want something to work and it has to be right, no mistakes possible, then build it that way. If you have to correct something built wrong, look at the problem very carefully, and try figure out the simplest solution that fixes the maximum amount of the problem. This, literally, is not rocket science.
This thread is nice, touchy feely. But, lets keep it real. The Devs have shown a gigantic willingness to let stuff like monumental server side lag in the Hami raids, Ritki Mothership raids, ITF valley go on for years, basically since each event/trial was added to the game. There is no evidence I have seen in the game that they are willing to address past errors. Fixing Positron TF was the only thing I can recall that addressed any problems from previous issues. That specifically was not fixing a technical problem, but a game design choice. I suspect the Devs have no ability to fix these problems without a ton more resources than they have. No doubt, all programming resources are now being devoted to i21. Any i20 problems are like random rat meat in sausage, too bad, but you either eat it or don't.
If you think they are going to fix the BAF and Lambda you believe every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings. Sorry Clarence, it ain't happening.
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Well, try harder, because you failed.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
I am seriously not trying to be snarky.
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It should be pretty apparent that if the solution were as simple as having one dude do all the testing and fixing himself, they'd have done it. Also, it would apparently be the early 1980s, and the game would be on an Apple IIe or Tandy. Nobody in the current industry has the necessary expertise to fix every cause of this slowdown.
It's very likely a problem with intricate ties in AI, mapping, networking and hardware. You show me a video game programmer who's an expert in all that and can extrapolate a solution from just seeing this "issue" five different times on wildly different hardware, and I'll show you a dude who's about to end up in a government think tank with a 6+ figure salary.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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This will be my last post to this thread. Let me be extremely clear. There is a gigantic amount of lag in the Hamidon raid. There is an unbelievable amount of lag in the Ritki mothership raid. There is very bad lag in the ITF valley. In every single one of these situations there have been uncountable bug reports sent, unknowable community threads started, and unbelievable requests/demands/begging to the Developers to fix it. Not a single one of these problems have moved an inch towards being solved. Based on this evidence, provided to me by the Developers and the community, it spells out very clearly that the Lambda and the BAF either cannot, or simply will not, be fixed. Getting mad at me for pointing this out is as silly as getting mad at snow falling on you after ignoring the freezing temperature, the snow clouds, and the barometer.
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Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
Well, try harder, because you failed.
It should be pretty apparent that if the solution were as simple as having one dude do all the testing and fixing himself, they'd have done it. Also, it would apparently be the early 1980s, and the game would be on an Apple IIe or Tandy. Nobody in the current industry has the necessary expertise to fix every cause of this slowdown. It's very likely a problem with intricate ties in AI, mapping, networking and hardware. You show me a video game programmer who's an expert in all that and can extrapolate a solution from just seeing this "issue" five different times on wildly different hardware, and I'll show you a dude who's about to end up in a government think tank with a 6+ figure salary. |
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I experience next to no lag on a Hamidon raid. Seriously. It runs absolutely fine for me.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
There is a gigantic amount of lag in the Hamidon raid. There is an unbelievable amount of lag in the Ritki mothership raid. There is very bad lag in the ITF valley. In every single one of these situations there have been uncountable bug reports sent, unknowable community threads started, and unbelievable requests/demands/begging to the Developers to fix it. Not a single one of these problems have moved an inch towards being solved.
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I get "lag" on Rikti Ship Raids, but mostly it's not network or server lag, it's graphics slow-down. If I turn down my graphics, it runs pretty cleanly too, especially considering that there are upwards of 100 enemies nearby attacking the 30+ players and their multitude of AoE attacks.
And the ITF "lag valley" actually HAS improved, considerably, since the task force was released in Issue 12. Most teams I run with these days actually charge up the path, rather than the tradition of pulling back to the bridge and then group-TPing over the valley to the computer. Controls are responsive, there's very little rubber-banding, and only about a second or two where powers say they're recharged but still won't fire. It's not 100%, but it's unarguably improvement over the slideshow that i12 ITFs were reduced to in the valley.
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| Getting mad at me for pointing this out is as silly as getting mad at snow falling on you after ignoring the freezing temperature, the snow clouds, and the barometer. |
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I can almost assuredly tell you why Lambda trials get laggy in the grenade phase: too many enemies (AIs) requesting server instructions at the same time. The common tactic is to run from object to object as quickly as possible, while leaving the enemies behind. These enemies become "active" on the server, and begin to request server instructions on what to do. Furthermore, ambushes get summoned when the destruction starts, and ambushes don't stop and wander off after a while the way regular mobs do--they hunt down the party until they've been defeated or the event is over and they despawn.
There are two "easy" ways to improve this: 1) force players to deal with the spawns, or 2) remove the ambushes and limit the enemies' aggression timer. The second option would make the challenge negligible, so that's off the table. And players would complain if the grenade phase suddenly became a kill-all, so that's not really a solution either. There are no other simple solutions.
As for the BAF, I'm not really sure why it's so laggy during the escapee phase--the only time I personally experience server lag. (There's sometimes graphics slow-down during the AV fights.) I would assume it's also an AI-related problem, but since they have no attacks and should only be operating on a simple path-following algorithm, I don't understand why that would cause problems...
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Guess that was not my final post. Okay, if you do not "send a guy (or gal) to fix it", how would it get fixed? I have never seen a problem that magically fixes itself. If you do not send someone to fix it, exactly how would this get fixed?|
Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
I'm not mad, I just think you're being childish. You don't seem to have any idea how things work, yet imply that everything would be fixed if we just listened to what you were saying: "Send a guy to fix it."
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Besides which, if you read my posts you will see that I actually think these kinds of problems probably cannot be fixed. It would appear that the game has been coded in such a manner that the hardware cannot handle it, and the Developers either do not have the budget for a hardware upgrade to fix the problem, or that hardware actually does not exist that can run this.
Again, I circle back to the very plain evidence staring at all of us. There is lag in the Hamidon Raid, the Ritki mothership raid, and the ITF valley. You no longer experience any/most of it. Good for you. Gratz. Talk to some other players, it still exists. Since the lag exists, and has for years, it establishes very clearly a pattern of the Devs ignoring these types of problems. This is simply the truth.
P.S. stop the anti-disestablismentarians.
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The point I've apparently failed to make without blatantly saying it is this: no one person can fix these issues. It's something that has to be handled by a team of people. And the specific people who would be best able to work on a lag problem are also those who are most important in current development projects. It's also not something that can be banged out in an afternoon, so those important developers will have to devote serious time that will impact the timelines designated by the lead developers and (more importantly) the investors in the parent company, which directly affects their funding. Arguably, they think more dollars come about from "moar stuffs nao!" than fixing some issues.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Guess that was not my final post. Okay, if you do not "send a guy (or gal) to fix it", how would it get fixed? I have never seen a problem that magically fixes itself. If you do not send someone to fix it, exactly how would this get fixed?
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Any potential fixes have to go through rigorous testing with the QA department, because "fixing lag" is almost certainly going to be something that could have complicated and completely random effects throughout the rest of the game--changing a bit of AI here means that suddenly Vahzilok zombies suddenly stop closing into melee range, and /Device Blasters find themselves stuck in their own caltrops and web grenades!
And since the developers are all connecting locally, the support team is not likely to see the lag that a player across the country does in the first place, which makes it even harder to pinpoint the issues.
I don't think the issue is entirely hardware-related the way you do, either. I'm sure a super expensive server upgrade couldn't hurt, but they do upgrade the hardware occassionally. Do you really think we're still on the exact same hardware that CoH launched on in 2004? Or CoV in 2005? I recall hearing something about a pretty major upgrade around the time of Issue 17, a few months before Going Rogue... aka a year ago.
I think the major reason players are experiencing lag has to do, again, with them mistaking graphics slow-down for lag, and with their personal internet connections. It's not like Paragon Studios in California can call up an ISP in New York and complain that their network pathing to reach the servers is too slow. And again, a system slowing down from too much graphics processing can be handled by limiting the features, or by upgrading one's personal hardware.
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Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
The point I've apparently failed to make without blatantly saying it is this: no one person can fix these issues. It's something that has to be handled by a team of people. And the specific people who would be best able to work on a lag problem are also those who are most important in current development projects. It's also not something that can be banged out in an afternoon, so those important developers will have to . And pulling those devs from other projects will impact the timelines designated by the lead developers and (more importantly) the investors in the parent company, which directly affects their funding.
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Chad, we seem to be agreeing. In my second post I said this:
I suspect the Devs have no ability to fix these problems without a ton more resources than they have. No doubt, all programming resources are now being devoted to i21. Any i20 problems are like random rat meat in sausage, too bad, but you either eat it or don't.
k, logging out of this thread until the conversation moves round quite a bit.
P.S., seriously, stop the anti-disestablishmentarianists.
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Except that we disagree in that I think they will work on the problems as solutions arise, and when time tables allow. More work is actually being done for i20.5, which will contain the raid on Antimatter's Reactor. I20 isn't in the grave yet.|
Originally Posted by Blue_Centurion
Chad, we seem to be agreeing. In my second post I said this:
I suspect the Devs have no ability to fix these problems without a ton more resources than they have. No doubt, all programming resources are now being devoted to i21. Any i20 problems are like random rat meat in sausage, too bad, but you either eat it or don't. |
But I also think the lag problem for the most part lies less on their end and more on the situations that individual players find themselves in between their personal systems and their internet providers. I've certainly experienced mapserver disconnects--as recently as two weeks ago, I was mapserved 4 times in one night--but that was a problem with my ISP losing a bridge to the CoH servers, including these message boards. Nobody else got booted, no one else was unable to reach the CoH web page, so I knew it had to be something on my end.
We'll see how things go after Friday the 27th, when they have as many people as possible log in to Freedom. They're planning a server stress test, the results of which may directly affect the issues being complained about in this thread.
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| P.S., seriously, stop the anti-disestablishmentarianists. |
Main Hero: Chad Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1396 Badges
Main Villain: Evil Gulzow-Man (Victory) 50, 1193 Badges
Mission Architect arcs: Doctor Brainstorm's An Experiment Gone Awry, Arc ID 2093
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Anti-disestablishmentarianists? Well, obviously they are the ones trying to halt the work of the disestablismentarianists... (I knew that you knew that I knew what it meant.)
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Originally Posted by Chad Gulzow-Man
You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.
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I ran the Verify and there were no problems with the installation.|
Originally Posted by Tex
FredrikSvanberg and anyone else experiencing crashes, can you try running with '-verify' on the command line?
In the Launcher, right-click on the game and select 'Properties' and put the '-verify' (no quotes) in the "Extra Command Line Parameters (Advanced)" box. If you are using CohUpdater, add '-verify' (no quotes) to the end of the 'Target' field in the properties of the shortcut to CohUpdater you use to start the game. |
I'm experiencing crashes in both trials on a regular basis. If I don't quit and restart the game after every trial, I almost invariably experience a crash on the second trial. The type of crash varies: I have experienced all of the following:
- A crash with a dialog that asks me to describe what I was doing which sends the report to NCsoft.
- A crash that sends a report to Microsoft.
- A sound loop crash.
- A crash that has a dialog that tells me that it's about to crash and asks whether I want to continue or exit.
- A dialog that tells me there is a corrupt .pigg file (not always the same one).
- (Rarely) Windows tells me a bad instruction was executed.
- The game exits straight out to Windows without any warning at all.
I have updated my drivers. I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SE (driver version 270.61, and the nVidia site tells me it's at the most recent version).
I notice (with Task Manager) that the memory footprint of the game increases over time, and I also notice that right before the crash the game begins to slow down, as if thrashing.
These things and the wide variety of crashes make me believe that the game client is running out of memory. The .pigg files are probably being reported falsely as corrupt because the game is running out of memory reading them in.
These are all indications of a memory leak, perhaps in one of the powers that's used over and over in the trials by one of the Praetorian clockwork.
I haven't really experienced crashes in other content, including regular TFs and missions. It's certainly possible that the leak is always there, but is especially bad during trials because the large numbers of players and power invocations.
However, the crashes seem to happen more often in Lambda than in BAF. I've been involved with several attempts for the Master of Lambda, which makes it take much longer than normal. Most of those attempts have ended in crashes.
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This is almost dead on to what I have been experiencing. If I want to run more than 1 trial, I have to log completely out of the game, then log back in. Any attempt to run back to back trials result in a "Lost Connection To Mapserver" when I try zoning into either Trial after doing 1 already. Occasionally I can get away with it on Lambda, but BAF never lets me.
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Originally Posted by Rodion
I ran the Verify and there were no problems with the installation.
I'm experiencing crashes in both trials on a regular basis. If I don't quit and restart the game after every trial, I almost invariably experience a crash on the second trial. The type of crash varies: I have experienced all of the following:
I have updated my drivers. I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SE (driver version 270.61, and the nVidia site tells me it's at the most recent version). I notice (with Task Manager) that the memory footprint of the game increases over time, and I also notice that right before the crash the game begins to slow down, as if thrashing. These things and the wide variety of crashes make me believe that the game client is running out of memory. The .pigg files are probably being reported falsely as corrupt because the game is running out of memory reading them in. These are all indications of a memory leak, perhaps in one of the powers that's used over and over in the trials by one of the Praetorian clockwork. I haven't really experienced crashes in other content, including regular TFs and missions. It's certainly possible that the leak is always there, but is especially bad during trials because the large numbers of players and power invocations. However, the crashes seem to happen more often in Lambda than in BAF. I've been involved with several attempts for the Master of Lambda, which makes it take much longer than normal. Most of those attempts have ended in crashes. |
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This is exactly what I have experienced, and still continue to experience.
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Originally Posted by Rodion
I ran the Verify and there were no problems with the installation.
I'm experiencing crashes in both trials on a regular basis. If I don't quit and restart the game after every trial, I almost invariably experience a crash on the second trial. The type of crash varies: I have experienced all of the following:
I notice (with Task Manager) that the memory footprint of the game increases over time, and I also notice that right before the crash the game begins to slow down, as if thrashing. These things and the wide variety of crashes make me believe that the game client is running out of memory. The .pigg files are probably being reported falsely as corrupt because the game is running out of memory reading them in. These are all indications of a memory leak, perhaps in one of the powers that's used over and over in the trials by one of the Praetorian clockwork. I haven't really experienced crashes in other content, including regular TFs and missions. It's certainly possible that the leak is always there, but is especially bad during trials because the large numbers of players and power invocations. However, the crashes seem to happen more often in Lambda than in BAF. I've been involved with several attempts for the Master of Lambda, which makes it take much longer than normal. Most of those attempts have ended in crashes. |
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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I experience the same issues. I can say I get the same problem with a different area too. |
Originally Posted by Rodion
I ran the Verify and there were no problems with the installation.
I'm experiencing crashes in both trials on a regular basis. If I don't quit and restart the game after every trial, I almost invariably experience a crash on the second trial. The type of crash varies: I have experienced all of the following:
I have updated my drivers. I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SE (driver version 270.61, and the nVidia site tells me it's at the most recent version). I notice (with Task Manager) that the memory footprint of the game increases over time, and I also notice that right before the crash the game begins to slow down, as if thrashing. These things and the wide variety of crashes make me believe that the game client is running out of memory. The .pigg files are probably being reported falsely as corrupt because the game is running out of memory reading them in. These are all indications of a memory leak, perhaps in one of the powers that's used over and over in the trials by one of the Praetorian clockwork. I haven't really experienced crashes in other content, including regular TFs and missions. It's certainly possible that the leak is always there, but is especially bad during trials because the large numbers of players and power invocations. However, the crashes seem to happen more often in Lambda than in BAF. I've been involved with several attempts for the Master of Lambda, which makes it take much longer than normal. Most of those attempts have ended in crashes. |
After 3 hours or around 80 uses of Destiny Total Core Invocation, the game crashes for me. This happens on both my desktop and my laptop. The laptop reports that it has run out of virtual memory when it does.
Triumph: White Succubus: 50 Ill/Emp/PF Snow Globe: 50 Ice/FF/Ice Strobe: 50 PB Shi Otomi: 50 Ninja/Ninjistu/GW Stalker My other characters
I am running the game on Windows 7 32-bit.
To be specific, I always experience one of the following crashes when running trials:
1. A dialogue box saying there's a corrupted .pigg file (in Lambda, it's usually a stupid taxicab that have bad pigg files -- in BAF, female characters apparently have corrupted boots), which then, upon pressing OK, freezes and sets a dialogue box allowing me to type in a bug report.
2. The game just freezes completely and gives me the dialogue box to send in a bug report.
3. The game just freezes completely, the window closes without any warning at all, which forces me to go back to the launcher to restart the game.
Let's not forget that I also have a great amount of lag in these trials.
This is weird because I actually didn't start having these problems (the crashes and the lag) until after the patch was put in to apparently make the reward tables be more random. (Though, that only lessened my chances of getting anything better than an uncommon, but that's for another story/thread altogether.)
I pray they get these resolved in the near future. Otherwise, there may not be any trials in my future, considering there's supposed to be another one (the reactors in Keyes Island?) upcoming... Who'd really want a trial that's laggy and crashy? 
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I experience these issues in Lambda, BAF, and when zoning the different mission in Praetoria.
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Originally Posted by Rodion
I ran the Verify and there were no problems with the installation.
I'm experiencing crashes in both trials on a regular basis. If I don't quit and restart the game after every trial, I almost invariably experience a crash on the second trial. The type of crash varies: I have experienced all of the following:
I have updated my drivers. I have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SE (driver version 270.61, and the nVidia site tells me it's at the most recent version). I notice (with Task Manager) that the memory footprint of the game increases over time, and I also notice that right before the crash the game begins to slow down, as if thrashing. These things and the wide variety of crashes make me believe that the game client is running out of memory. The .pigg files are probably being reported falsely as corrupt because the game is running out of memory reading them in. These are all indications of a memory leak, perhaps in one of the powers that's used over and over in the trials by one of the Praetorian clockwork. I haven't really experienced crashes in other content, including regular TFs and missions. It's certainly possible that the leak is always there, but is especially bad during trials because the large numbers of players and power invocations. However, the crashes seem to happen more often in Lambda than in BAF. I've been involved with several attempts for the Master of Lambda, which makes it take much longer than normal. Most of those attempts have ended in crashes. |
Has anyone tried runnin in safe mode? I did and did not disconnect. Exited safe mode and lowered my ultra settings, only DC once in Lambda after multiple runs.
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Originally Posted by Icantres
Has anyone tried runnin in safe mode?.
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I did. And my client froze/crashed right upon entry to the zone after log in - not even involved in a trial at all.
I've had freeze/crashes while zoning, with the "progress bar" at only about 50%.
It is a hard thing to track down.
I solved my freeze/crashes by rolling back my video drivers (Catalyst 11.4 from 11.5). But that isn't the only issue. Tonight during a Rikti Mothership Raid, I tried scaling sown my graphics to alleviate the lag. I went from "Quality" on the slider down to "Minimum" and the lag was worse.
So, I am inclined to believe it revolves around graphics... But I can't claim with certainty it is NCSoft/Paragon side, or User/Player side.
I bet it is some combination, with a sprinkling of OS coding thrown in there. ((Windows does not always react the same way to the same circumstances across different machines.))
And today on Champion. very laggy Lambda and dc'd at end so no reward.