rare disconnect/crash due to packet spam
By
Father Xmas,
Posted on: 2012-05-02 16:35 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
Maybe the problem is that I never get disconnected anymore.
I remember getting disconnected, rarely, back in issue 14 and earlier, but, after I came back from a break for issue 18, it never happened anymore.
It seemed they improved the reliability of the game.
But, maybe they didn't really improve the reliability of the game. Maybe they just did something to make it "try harder" to keep or regain connection in those situations that used to cause a "lost connection to mapserver" before, which then ended up causing these crashes after the information being communicated had a severe increase with issue 19 and beyond, or some other error.
I'm just "thinking out loud", but it makes some sense. I don't disconnect ever anymore, despite my connection obviously not being that great. In times when I would disconnect, the game crashes instead, or just stays connected with long blocks of red spikes on the netgraph.
FYI, try rapidly moving any option slider back and forth a few times in game, especially the window opacity slider. The netgraph will go ballistic with lag spikes if you do that, as it does for me.
I have to think that this is related to the lag issues this game has and my uncommon crashes. You would think that the window opacity slider wouldn't have anything to do with the netgraph or amount of lag, but it will undoubtedly affect it very negatively.
Quote:
Oh FYI....|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
Well, one difference right off is the quality of the netgraph between the two screenshots. The first one doesn't look TOO bad, but the second one is just horrible with those solid red patches. This suggests that your connection was way worse at the time of the second screenshot.
|
The netgraph is actually not indicative of my connection.
The netgraph is a measure of the status of the connection to the game servers, which is affected by everything between my computer and the servers all the way in Texas.
My connection can be, and usually is, very stable and fast(as fast as it can be).
The red spikes on the netgraph are just indicative of packet loss somewhere along the route, from my computer to the network card to the wireless dongle to the router to the access point to the tower to the other 8 hops before it reaches the server.
The netgraph is created within the game itself, within the same code. It will show red spikes inevitably when the game code breaks and starts crashing.
Now, if an outside program was tracking my connection and saw the same issue then, yes, it would be a problem with my connection.
But, that could be a problem caused by the game crashing, cramming my connection trying not to crash or because it is crashing. It's like any machine or living thing(biological machines) in the process of failing/crashing/dying; they will inevitably have sputtering and spasms and unusual behavior, that is often more detrimental than what caused the "crashing" in the first place.
It's like "if it wasn't going to crash before these problems, it definitely is now".
So, I think the game causes a lot of strange artifacts in the netgraph, and weird behavior like that popup in one of the pictures, during the process of crashing.
That is probably why I did not crash the latest time that my default power trays blanked out. The game probably had an error that would normally cause a crash, showing the blank default trays instead of just crashing, and was able to stave off crashing at that moment and without the cascade of "spasms" afterward from the resulting errors causing a crash either.
Perhaps, the game is "its own worst enemy" when it tries to avoid a disconnect or crash.
This could be because the developers knew that the increased information(from the alignment system and then the incarnate system and then the new Freedom systems) was adversely affecting connection reliability, so they tried to force reliability instead of reducing the issues that cause the problem with reliability.
Perhaps, that is what causes my crashes. Maybe the coding that tries so hard to force the connection to stay connected and force performance is failing under enough stress or something.
This is all guessing, of course.
I just know that this game used to be a hell of a lot more reliable, despite the rare "lost connection to mapserver", and now I never see a "lost connection" message(unless I completely disable or reset my network connection intentionally to try to improve connection) and see a lot more red spikes and rare crashes.
Edit:
Just look at the /unloadgfx and /sync commands.
How many times have you seen /sync work? It doesn't seem to do anything for me, nor have I seen the bug, where the world is empty and you can't interact, that caused us to get that command at anytime since we got the ability to use that command.
I also crash more times because I use /unloadgfx than I would have prevented by using it. I do that occasionally, thinking it will improve performance, but it can and does cause an immediate crash in high graphics load situations, essentially being information spam I triggered myself.
Like I said, some of the functions in this game are worse than what they attempt to "cure".
Edit 2:
The game really needs to "trim the fat"(reduce the amount of information transfer and load as well as improve graphical efficiency) because it is obviously "having chest pains" for everyone(judging from the amount of lag and frame-rate slowdown and stutter complains from some people, and silent acceptance from most) and "having heart attacks" for me(at least from the network spam and occasional graphics overload when I reload it all using unloadgfx, as well as whatever this crash bug is).
The game used to run so well, but now it runs like an old guy on life-support.
As for Propel, I found out we saw different items back when I first rolled a Grav Defender back in 2004 when I queried my teammates as to what they saw me tossing. Since then they've increased the number of items that can materialize so it increases the likelihood that even duos will see different items.
Hardly consider it a bug T. And honestly who has time in the middle of a battle to type out quips rather than mashing attacks.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
Quote:
Well, there was just enough time when Propel had the longer animation, which says something about how crazy long that animation was.|
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
And honestly who has time in the middle of a battle to type out quips rather than mashing attacks.
|
Edit:
Defenders had a Gravity set in 2004?!
I wish, then maybe corruptors would get such a set as well. That would make an awesome ranged damage set.
Edit 2:
I also had time to make quips because I was playing a gravity controller. The enemies were locked down. Or maybe I was just that good?
Quote:
Possibly, it isn't 'silent acceptance', but more that most people don't actually have these problems when they play.
|
Originally Posted by T_Immortalus
because it is obviously "having chest pains" for everyone(judging from the amount of lag and frame-rate slowdown and stutter complains from some people, and silent acceptance from most
|
Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.
The "knocked down in midair" bug is not unique to you, T_I. I used to get that on some characters, as well as frequent freeze-crashes. I don't really play those characters anymore, and haven't for some time, so I don't know if this still happens with them or not. It doesn't happen with any of my new ones, with one exception: my re-roll of my Elec/WP/Mu brute. The freeze-crash started with her after I started doing the Incarnate Dark Astoria arcs. She had already done Ramiel's arc to unlock the Alpha slot. She has all slots except Lore unlocked, and NO incarnate abilities slotted yet.
I wonder if my issues and your issues are related somehow.
Quote:
It doesn't matter what character I play, and it only happens when teamed and only with certain characters/players on the team and usually when a lot is going on and usually when the others have incarnate abilities active(level shifts especially) and far more often in AE.|
Originally Posted by Lucretia_MacEvil
The "knocked down in midair" bug is not unique to you, T_I. I used to get that on some characters, as well as frequent freeze-crashes. I don't really play those characters anymore, and haven't for some time, so I don't know if this still happens with them or not. It doesn't happen with any of my new ones, with one exception: my re-roll of my Elec/WP/Mu brute. The freeze-crash started with her after I started doing the Incarnate Dark Astoria arcs. She had already done Ramiel's arc to unlock the Alpha slot. She has all slots except Lore unlocked, and NO incarnate abilities slotted yet.
I wonder if my issues and your issues are related somehow. |
The knockdown animation and sound thing doesn't happen that often. The trays or team windows blanking out is more common, and the freezing to crash(or needing force closing) is the only sure thing(though I have seen the trays blank and team window blank very rarely not freeze it or crash it).
I don't know what is causing it, except the "always teamed" and "certain circumstances making it more common".
Quote:
If you think most people do not have "frame-rate slowdown" and/or "high ping at times" then you are not playing this game.|
Originally Posted by Grouchybeast
Possibly, it isn't 'silent acceptance', but more that most people don't actually have these problems when they play.
|
Go join a Hamidon raid or rikti mothership raid or Nemesis Invasion or just go to Atlas on Freedom server or any other heavily populated and/or active area.
You will see your frame rate take a dive and experience lag(high ping) more than usual in those situations.
FYI, that's normal for this game, but not normal for every game and certainly not "impossible to solve".
This game definitely could perform a LOT better, relatively simply.
Well, it seems I have confirmation that the game is getting worse.
I've been using a 5Ghz wireless connection to my router for at least 4 months, which explains the "poor signal" you see in the pictures I have posted.
I switched back to the normal 2.4Ghz of the same router as an experiment the other day, after getting tired of lag spikes from lost packets or other errors.
I now have more noticeably bad lag than ever. My connection is a little more reliable, having less lag, but now I notice every bit of lag is much worse than it used to be.
No, it is not because I now am "less accustomed to lag" so that I notice it more. I'm talking about those little "single line" red lag spikes on the netgraph now being noticeably longer than the single line. They don't register on the netgraph as a block of red, but they definitely slow down the game as if they were.
I think the netgraph lies, and/or the game is a pile of crap as far as the network code.
I really just want to play smoothly. I don't care if there is less to do, less powers and lower graphical quality.
I just want to play without being completely annoyed and frustrated with the poor performance of the game.
When will these developers learn that performance matters more than the shiniest graphics and most sparkles?
Quote:
For you, at least.|
Originally Posted by T_Immortalus
Well, it seems I have confirmation that the game is getting worse.
|
Quote:
|
I really just want to play smoothly. I don't care if there is less to do, less powers and lower graphical quality. I just want to play without being completely annoyed and frustrated with the poor performance of the game. When will these developers learn that performance matters more than the shiniest graphics and most sparkles? |
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Ok, this just got even more weird.
1) I encountered the bug where the knockdown animation and sounds played while the team window went blank. I expected a crash.
2) I immediately said I was expecting a crash and would "brb" after trying to see if leaving AE and reentering would fix it.
3) It fixed it, but within 15 seconds I had the bug again, except....
This time my character played the rocket board animations and sounds, including getting onto the board, accelerating slowly and the sound of accelerating.
Again, the team window went blank and powers trays all blanked, even custom extra trays, though they didn't collapse to one default tray.
4) I attempted the leave and reenter trick again, which fixed the trays and animation and team window, but I crashed about 30 seconds after entering again.
Here is the picture:
http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/7...ardlikebug.jpg
Note the netgraph. The thickest red block was the original knockdown/crash start bug while the next one for the rocket board animation was in the next large red spike area to the far right. The green/yellow spikes were exiting and entering the mission again.
As you can see, I mostly had great connection, and a yellow spike certainly isn't as bad as red. I don't even understand how there can be a green spike over 1000ms ping.
Something is seriously wrong with the game for some people, like me and Lucretia.
Quote:
1) I'm not suggesting that they "gimp the game". I'm suggesting that they work on the efficiency of the game to give us the same graphics using less resources, as they should do and every other game ever does.|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
If you are suggesting they gimp the game to make it work better for you, get real. The game performance is just fine for the rest of us and we very much like our shinies, thank you very much.
|
How do you think we get better graphics over the years while computers stay the same size, lower price and even smaller size?
It's all about "doing more with less hardware and more efficient software".
I'm essentially suggesting they do what common sense says they should already be doing to keep their product running and make it a product that people want to stay with more and more over time as well as new people want to join over time with competing games coming out that have the advantage of hindsight to help them trump CoH.
Nothing can stay the same over time if it expects to last. It needs to change for the better, never for the worse.
2) It's not fine.
Just look at how poor performance can be, and is, with just a bunch of mostly low level players in Atlas Park or Mercy Island. It doesn't take that many players without many powers and with most of them being unused because they are not in combat for things to perform poorly.
I get 60fps in First Ward and 60 FPS in Talos Island with my settings, but Talos Island looks a lot worse. I go to Southeast Cap Au Diable and I see a severe frame-rate drop though due to the inefficiency of that area. Cap Au Diable looks better than Talos Island but is clearly worse than First Ward. Why is it that there is no consistent efficiency throughout this game for similar looking areas?
Here are two experiments that will prove my points:
A) Take note of your frame-rate with "/showfps 1" in a place like Imperial City that is sure to make it obvious when a change occurs. Don't move at all. Open up your options window to the "graphics and audio" tab and look at your frame-rate. It will be cut almost to half the frame-rate, for no apparent reason. One options window can destroy the frame-rate; why?
B) Open options again and go to your window opacity slider. Drag it from the far left side of the slider to the far right and back a few times then release it.
I bet your netgraph will go ballistic, accelerating the tracking of your ping so that it fills with blocks of high ping that even shows yellow when you usually have green netgraph.
Those errors should never happen. That's how "not fine" the game is, and those are just little nuisances that are easily fixed by avoiding doing those things.
Another example is how poorly the game performs in Incarnate Trials with only a maximum of 24 people.
How do you and the developers expect anyone to be able to have a Hamidon raid with 50 people as the maximum hard limit of the zone when less than half that causes severe performance drops.
(Don't deny it. Even your frame-rate and latency drops a lot at those times.)
It probably is, and definitely should be if not, common sense that a hard limit on a zone is there to ensure a certain "adequate performance" threshold above "bad performance".
50 is the "adequate performance" threshold for The Hive and The Abyss and probably other zones, and yet those zones see horrible performance even well below those numbers.
Honestly, City of Heroes isn't very "massively multiplayer" for a "massively multiplayer online game". At this rate, they will have to lower "people per zone" limits a lot more to be able to accommodate all the extra data from new incarnate slots, new IOs and ATOs and everything, new salvage and reward currency, new power sets, new archetypes, new power numbers for each and every new power, new animations and everything else that will ever be added to the game.
Seriously, you can't keep adding and adding and adding while expecting performance to stay the same "just above bad" level of performance.
They need to "cut the crap". No game or product, or life itself, gets away with piling on more accumulated junk year after year without "Spring cleaning".
City of Heroes severely needs reorganizing and "trash" removal.
Do you deny that statement? Do you really think everything in the game is absolutely useful even moderately often and could not work better? If so then even the developers disagree with you because they change at least some things, like the new "looking for group" chat channel that they once had and removed and have now brought back.
Change is the only constant in the universe. The only thing that can be done is minimizing the damage or making that change for the better.
City of Heroes needs to change for the better because it failed at minimizing the damage, which is not a mark of shame as it is harder to prevent issues than to change later to fix them.
"Hindsight is 20/20."
Ok, clarification time.
Yes, it is a problem with "only my setup", at least just me as far as I know.
But, it is a problem resulting from the interaction of my setup with a very specific part of the game.
Therefore, it is a problem with "my setup + City of Heroes" such that either side of the equation being fixed will, at least mostly, solve the problem.
Now, I am unable to change my setup at this time due to financial reasons, so that leaves fixing the part of the game that fails under my setup.
Also, if there really is a part of the game that is failing under my setup then it is likely to fail for other people as well, either now or in the future when some patch or change of server or entire internet conditions makes it more likely to happen for others. That means the best solution to the problem is fixing it in the game so that nobody ever has a chance of it happening ever again.
Does everybody now understand why I am saying "it is a problem with CoH"?
It's not like anything else on my computer crashes or that it happens with other games or even that it happens in other circumstances in CoH or even the same circumstances every time in CoH, but it is tied to something very specific in CoH.
So can you try to help figure this out instead of saying "this issue doesn't exist because only you have it so stop complaining" or "spend more money for a different setup to solve the issue for only yourself and only until it becomes an issue for everyone"?
I had odd behavior again.
I had the bug again where my team window switched to the "not teamed" display mode for just a second and then back and I was stuck with slow movement commands like I was jumping around underwater, jumping higher after a pause from the command and position being incorrect and thus rubber-banded.
I haven't crashed yet.
Maybe they improved things slightly, as this does happen even less often now as I have been teamed for hours and only crashed once without warning and not from this bug yet apparently.
Funny, screenshots didn't work. I pressed the button 3 times.
I think this bug has something to do with the new temporary power tray as well.
I just entered First Ward for the first time since issue 23 launched and gained the temp power tray for the first time. It has the Soul Catcher power used to capture Numina in the Flames of Prometheus SF, I think, even though I am not on that SF.
I assume this tray showed up because of the new temp that allows traveling between Night Ward and First Ward.
I noticed that I can't move temp powers in this tray. It gives the "CantControlServerTray" error that I reported here before when I had the bug and my default power trays collapsed to one without a number that was blank. So, it obviously opened up the temp power tray.
I still have no idea why this bug happens, even when things are performing apparently perfectly.
Quote:
What, what what??? Are you delusional?|
Originally Posted by T_Immortalus
1) I'm not suggesting that they "gimp the game". I'm suggesting that they work on the efficiency of the game to give us the same graphics using less resources, as they should do and every other game ever does.
How do you think we get better graphics over the years while computers stay the same size, lower price and even smaller size? |
Are you seriously claiming that computer games in general use LESS RESOURCES each year to give BETTER GRAPHICS? Computer hardware gets more and more powerful every year. The size and cost have no bearing on this. This is blatantly obvious and common knowledge.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Quote:
Yes, but do you think people stop trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of that hardware?|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
Computer hardware gets more and more powerful every year. The size and cost have no bearing on this. This is blatantly obvious and common knowledge.
|
Also, consoles don't change that fast, neither do user computers unless there is a problem.
Developers have to squeeze more performance out of the hardware that is in consumer hands, not the stuff in prototypes and trade shows, in order to get sales.
So yes, hardware does advance, but they still have to do as much with as little they can to make sure they impress people and can get sales from people who don't "buy the newest car every year" essentially.
Anyway, do you have any ideas for solving my issue permanently?
Spending money on new internet or hardware is not an option at the moment nor is it a permanent solution.
Quote:
We're not talking about consoles, and I believe the average computer upgrade cycle is just under 3 years. So 8 years would see multiple hardware upgrades, in general.|
Originally Posted by T_Immortalus
Yes, but do you think people stop trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of that hardware?
Also, consoles don't change that fast, neither do user computers unless there is a problem. |
Quote:
|
Anyway, do you have any ideas for solving my issue permanently? Spending money on new internet or hardware is not an option at the moment nor is it a permanent solution. |
P.S. I don't see a DxDiag or CoHHelper in this thread. Is any of that posted in another thread?
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
Quote:
boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=4200886|
Originally Posted by Ironblade
P.S. I don't see a DxDiag or CoHHelper in this thread. Is any of that posted in another thread?
|
I still have no idea what causes that error either.
The two seem a bit related though, considering that this error seems to reset my character's movement status(knocked down or riding the rocket board without the board) and cause trouble tracking my movements while the linked thread's error is all about my tracking apparently being off while manually moving such that the mouse cursor appear to be pointign from a different position than my character.
I would like both issues to be solved, but the linked one is far less of a problem. I'm just concerned that the other error could be a symptom of a bigger problem or lead to a bigger problem.
Both issues still occur at random times under the proper circumstances for each.
Odd. Just had a new bug I think is tied to this.
I zoned into Steel Canyon for the first time and a few seconds later noticed the "which team UI would you like? classic or new?" popup come up(though I had already chosen ages ago) and my chat bar wasn't showing tab names(just a blank tot he left of my typing when I hit enter and all blank when not typing into it) while my tabs that were leftovers/renamed default tabs all reset to their default channels inside them.
How is that even possible that the game can reset things on my client to "factory new", especially only partially?
Weird.
It's not active. It's a pinned shortcut.