Rikti Raid lag-fest

I ran a Rikti raid last night on Guardian, and the use of a single League and/or Incarnate powers turned the event into a slide-show reminiscent of the worst Hami Raids of the past.

While I didn't disconnect - as so many others did - there were times when my FPS dropped as low as 2. However, the lag reduced considerably when one moved outside of the bowl and when, by request, the Destiny powers were reigned in. And this did appear to be actual lag, and not just extreme client-side load, as the synch of power recharge between the client and server was nearly total broken.

If this is not a unique occurrence, then the performance of large leagues in intensive situations like this is unacceptably low.

Anyone else care to share their recent Rikti Raid experiences? I'd love to hear that this was an aberration.

I think the devs should limit the Ship Raid and the Hami Raid to only 24 players. CoP trials (and the new Incarnate trials) have no where near the amount of lag that the Ship Raid and Hami Raids do.

Yesterday's mothership raid on Liberty was similar to what you describe - tons of lag, and we were using the league system and tons of incarnate powers. I'm planning on leading a Hami raid today with a league, and I hope that the lag isn't as bad as it was last night. :/

We managed a full team crash today on a Lambda and ended up, when we all got back in, on a Red side level 20ish mission

This on Defiant.

This is, unfortunately, NORMAL for post-patch ship raids. After issues and big bugfixes, ship raid performance goes to hell in a handbasket.

Usually after the next maintenance, they get all that stuff under control.

HOWEVER, I'm willing to bet that, with the proliferation of new abilities, we're going to see a decrease in performance of the CoH client on 50-player zone raids.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Have yet to lag on a hami raid, but rikti raids are unbearably laggy.

This even hampers the reward significantly.. in two runs, I've gotten 1,300 marks. On that same toon, even with 10-15 mins of "Overtime" on the ship due to lag, I got less than three hundred. Granted, that was the last one I attended, and the lag had been getting progressively worse and worse.

It's to the point now I don't even go, it's just not worth it.


Edit: yikes, lots of replies while I was posting!

The Trials don't lag at all for me, but I have experienced the same... lots of people mapserver out. Seems it's usually MMs with a lot of pets, or people with low-end computers who can't run regular praetorian content. Maybe we could get an optional low-res toggle for the new content? I understand there are higher minimum specs for Going Rogue due to the new city, missions, enemies, etc.. and I'd assume a lot of people who lag in CoV as opposed to regular CoH aren't a small demographic, and now with the Incarnate content spilling over to both sides, people are struggling to keep up..

The only one that I have any issues with whatsoever is the BAF with a full 24. Though that's the same as the Rikti ship - server lag. Even the enemies are slowed by it.

I just ran my first raid league(like 15 minutes ago) on Virtue. I didn't have a private channel except for leauge-I'll get to why that matters later-I didn't take time to move the lvl 50s to leader spots-and instead of hanging back from the fight i decided to pitch in. Simply put, it went to hell and quite quickly. On top of that i am only a lvl 48 and this is my first character.
So next time i try this it will be very different, maybe someone else can avoid these mistakes i made.

1.COMMUNICATION: I put it out that we would start at 1045, when that time came someone from one of the teams said "LETS LIGHT THIS FIRE", and half of the people started flying around the map going to random pylons. Having a separate Channel can allow for the leader of the league to do just that-lead. Others can chat it up all they want on league or team chat channels. This way when you give an order(and i use that term loosely) it is seen clearly and not put together with all the other misc. chat; which can move very quickly when 40 people are on.

2.CONTROL: A full team-8 people. A full League 8 teams(could be wrong).
8x8=64. 63 people are (some what)under your command and will need specific guidance to not get confused or lost. You will do better if you move them with clear instruction-one step at a time-move them from the vanguard building to the war zone, have them gather outside, then have them go to the first pylon. if you want them to split and take different pylons down at the same time then give them specific instruction "Team 1,2,and 3 go left(west)teams 4,5,and6 go east. Circle around and meet up in the middle."
Controlling them could be made much easier if you stay out of the fight. Next time i am going to stay right outside of the fort and have my map at full screen and my chat window up. That should be all I need to control the teams. the league leader DOES NOT need to fight.

3. COMMAND: Pretty much....should not have tried to run this league being a level 48. Level 50s need to be the ones with the stars. The rikti on the ship are level 54 and the best xp comes from level 50 teams. I would highly suggest that a league leader gather the right amount of Level 50s first before inviting the whole world to join. Also the level 50's you get to join, more than likely have a few of there own friends that can join up. With the league menu opened up fully, you can click and drag players from one team to another. making sure you get a good balance in your teams.

Also, during the raid it seems that another league came to the same zone as my league. When that happened we had people dropping accidentally and joining the other league, Including myself (I actually hit the exit league button). It's safe to say i screwed the pooch on that one. That last time i joined a league for the raid the leader actually kept a constant broadcast politely telling people to go to another RWZ as the one we were in was being used for a raid. That also gave her the ability to have a somewhat steady flow of new recruits and most people were nice about going to another zone.

Note: To anyone who joined my league, I would like to apologize for the cluster f**k that happened. I accept full responsibility for it and I am sorry that I wasted time in your life that you will never get back.

Referring to each of your points.....
1) Raids typically use the Request channel (which shows up in a nice distinctive color) and ask everyone other than the leader to stay off that channel.
2) League max size is 48 people. Regarding the pylons, typically the raid leader will identify by number which one is next and entire raid party will attack it together.
3) Yep, having someone below 50 as a team leader is very bad. As for team balance, it really doesn't matter. You're moving and attacking as a huge mob. It doesn't matter much what AT's are on each team. It definitely helps if the raid as a whole has a few AoE defensive buffs like the big bubbles from the Force Field and Sonic sets.

That's my 2 cents, based on having led several raids and attended many dozens more.