"Hide buff numbers" functionality and crashes in high-latency connections.

Way back in 2008, when the Real Numbers were added to the game, they caused a noticeable increase in network traffic for the game. Players with good connections wouldn't notice, but those of us with high latency connections (I'm in South America, so 400ms of ping is normal) or in slow connections (less than 512kbps) were unable to stay in places like Dark Astoria or join Hamidon / Mothership raids without overwhelming the connection with data and crashing the client.

I bugged pohsyb about this for quite a while during Issue 12 beta, and this led to the "Hide Buff Numbers" option. In case you don't know about it, it's located in the General settings, and prevents the game from sending you the buff numbers, or any buff data at all.



The improvement was very drastic; with the options enabled, network usage in a combat situation went from 30KB per second to a mere 5KB per second. Even players with 56k connections could handle that, so everybody was happy. Over the years, every time someone complains about a red netgraph, I told them about those helpful but not well known options, and it always had a positive effect. If you find yourself staring at a red netgraph often, go ahead and enable "Hide Buff Numbers"; you'll be glad you did.

Unfortunately, Issue 20 screwed this up a bit.

See, the option is available in 3 locations: "Status Window" (the panel under your own health and endurance), "Group Window" (for teams) and "Pet Window". By default, the League window still transfers all the buff data and numbers to your client, and there's no way to disable it.

This is particularly bothersome because the League window doesn't even show the buff icons while all the teams are selected; it only shows them when you select a specific team. So all that extra data is being sent for no good reason.



All that extra data being crammed on a high-latency connection greatly increases the chances of packets missing or being mixed up too much, which causes the client to crash. This has been a major source of frustration; while the League system is more than welcome and I can't wait to use it for Hamidon Raids and Mothership Raids, the extra data being sent (data that most players aren't going to see anyway because the League window won't show the icons by default) prevents me from using the feature if I want to stay away from crashes.

I've sent /bug reports about this, but I have a hunch that they're hitting someone at Customer Support that doesn't understand the problem, so the reports are just being dropped before they reach someone who can enable "Hide Buff Numbers" for the League window. I'm hoping that this topic will get more attention.

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You may want to PM The Television about this. Since pohsyb is no longer working for Paragon Studios (have fun at Apple C.W.) and The Television is Lead Programmer, he'd likely be the first person needing to see this.

You may also want to PM TheNet (QA) or Alpha Wolf (QA Lead) about it as well. Possibly Arbiter Oates or Arbiter Hawk.

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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.

Excellent points Leandro! I have been struggling with play since i20 release. I have tried adjusting about everthing in the options under graphics to try to resolve this issue and have had no luck. I hope someone at PS looks at your post.

I am able to play some archetypes with less mapserv's, but on an AoE toon, such as a firetank, BAF becomes unplayable, especially during the prisoner escape.

The continual mapserv's are ridiculous at this point, and with all the issues over the last two weeks, I am seriously considering cancelling all 4 of my families accounts after 1 and a half years of playing.

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This actually seems to be a pretty big issue - a few people I've (tried to do) done trials with and pointed it out to said this probably has a lot to do with their inability to do the trials.


I mean - really, why do we need to see all those buff numbers?

I didn't even know until this post that you could see buffs on other teams within your league.

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Doh! *That's* why the network traffic goes up so insanely in a trial. I have a beastly system and a broadband connection, so I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out why my client gets overwhelmed. Thanks for the tip, and here's hoping the programming team gets around to adding the functionality you've requested.

Will help me in another way, too. I'm on a 5 gig per month account, and trials chew through that limit at an alarming rate. I am sure I am not the only one with that problem, either.

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Oh wow, I didn´t know that! I hope they´ll add this funtionality to leagues too.

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Ayla Dunkelbann
Monstrum
Exterminsel MK VI

Please implement this.
Currently i DC/Crash if i'm on a league during MSR or Hami when people start spamming destiny buffs. I do not DC nor crash if im solo or if im on a non league team.

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