How to solve EM Event Lag

Nyre

This was brought up at the Dev Meet and Greet and the problem that exist is the amount of Special effects from the boss monster at the end of the event has which is Causing lag and unplayable situations.   to Solve  this  simply limit the amount of Specials the EMs are allowed to put on their Bosses at the end of the event  Most EMS put several specials on the monsters to make them more challenging which is understandable at the same time but it is causing players who don't multi-box to have a disadvantage to those who do have about 15 accounts there. 

shootgun

I was at the event. Adding my 2 cents:

I believe it was extremely unprofessional of Mesanna to threaten to shut down GM events when somebody complained about the lags during GM events. That was extremely unprofessional and childish in my humble opinion. But by that time, the devs and Mesanna had to go over 5-6 trolls in the meeting, so they might be nearing the end of their patience.

Overall, I'm glad I attended the event.

About the EM events, I just dont do them... Some decoration that will sit at my house is not worth the frustration I get from joining a GM event.

Grimbeard

Shard bound drops fixes everything 

JackFlashUk

mopping up all the mutlibox wraiths hanging around waiting to just hit the final boss will fix everything 

Nyre

I am sure the team is aware of those problems and have taken action in some cases  as you can see in the Newsletter.  Also making it 1 IP per EJ account also helped with people multiboxing  but the overall issue with lag I believe is the Particle effects from the final bosses and the amount of players there (Which this part is uncontrollable)  Every player has the right to join in on an Event  and I do personally enjoy attending them until the final boss which then I am stuck dead until the boss is dead and all of a sudden I can move.  I urge for constructive Ideas on how to fix this problem rather then Complaining about things we dont have any control over. 

JackFlashUk

Nyre said:

I am sure the team is aware of those problems and have taken action in some cases  as you can see in the Newsletter.  Also making it 1 IP per EJ account also helped with people multiboxing  but the overall issue with lag I believe is the Particle effects from the final bosses and the amount of players there (Which this part is uncontrollable)  Every player has the right to join in on an Event  and I do personally enjoy attending them until the final boss which then I am stuck dead until the boss is dead and all of a sudden I can move.  I urge for constructive Ideas on how to fix this problem rather than Complaining about things we dont have any control over. 

I would amend that to read every PAID UP player has the right.........
 EJ players should NOT have any rights to play EM events and certainly not get drops. 

Nyre

I can agree to that actually

Norry

It has alot to do with how the game was programmed.

Anything that checks a players position(exodus) then sends that to the server, then sends that to all players for display.

Anything that dismounts, or pushes, or pulls in. This forces updates to everyplayer on screen.

Those 2 changes should help alot, but EMs love those moves.

 I wasnt playing when exodus first came out, but i dont remember this much lag during dialup days. 

It could also be contracted bandwith.

Pawain

Hmm  I wonder why there is lag at EM events.

They are popular. And that makes what Norry said add up.

Okami

The way to fix this involves multiple possible steps.

1. Events need to be flagged as being "Drop events" or "Story events". While there are certainly people that attend both, they are very different types of rewards and I think not clarifying this brings in people expecting drops, adding to the lag in the situation, and ultimately they have no chance to receive what they are attempting to gain. People that want story stuff are sometimes willing to skip drop events as that's not their focus of play, and this cuts down attendance to both and thus should cut down lag.

2. Implement a different way to deliver rare drops to the player base that seeks those, possibly tied into the recurring events, and spread out over a time frame to allow multiple time zone players to attempt it. THis could be done via pve champ spawns or treasures type events, have a way for them to accumulate participation like current EM spawns and then the drop randomly happens or happens on finishing a spawn. Make them one drop per character, this will make the drops more accessible to those that persistently pursue them.

3. Make drops Shard Bound to cut down on visitor traffic. I doubt this will be done as Broadsword seems to want to encourage server migration with it being a paid service for short term players or a reward for vet players at the level they transfer for free.

I will add, threatening to end the EM program outright put a bad taste in my mouth. The game is already overpriced monthly for the content it provides and one of the unique things UO does offer is the EM/Storyteller type experience to facilitate the roleplay part of MMORPG. If they ended the EM program, I would likely cancel out my accounts. I don't pursue drops myself but I do enjoy the more story focused events and the council meetings, and they're one of the few reasons I log in anymore.

Larisa

It's not the amount of people, at least for me.

In this screenshot, I can hardly move. Saw a ton of ppl complaining about lag and the same, can't move or extremely lagged out, losing connection.

Notice everyone is actively fighting something (Well, not EVERYONE). Spells going off from the mob and players.

In THIS Screenshot shortly after this mob died, ZERO lag. I was running back and forth through all of those people like I was cutting through butter because the mob was dead and no one was casting.

Everyone was just standing around, no graphics, no consecrate weapon, no swarms from the swarm bow, no corp por etc. I was ZOOMING through the hoarde of people there.

So, at least for ME, it's NOT about the amount of people, it's something entirely different.

ForeverFun

This has been a recurring topic for as long as I can remember

See this post here (link) with other discussion on the topic, and suggested areas for broadsword to look at.

In EC, you can turn off all (as well as those not originating from you/party) client side particle effects (link).  In my testing, that doesn't help materially in EM events.

On some shards, the server has literally crashed and reverted during EM events.  That's seems a possible good hint there are some server side "opportunities".

There should probably be a stickied at top of forum post on this, which links to the various historical threads on this change/debugging/fix request.

username

There is just too much data going back and forth and it's pegging the servers: either server hardware limitations or poor/inefficient coding/way the data is being sent/received. While the area affects on these monsters surely doesn't help, they've been in the game for years and years now and it's never been this bad. What's compounding it, and the root of the cause, is that it's a too many character issue. Why are there so many characters? 3rd party clients, once again, the problem. Curiously wonder if these programs flood the servers with packets more than the official clients do? Either way, sheesh, seeing a running theme here...

• PVP? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• PVM? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• EM events? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• Can't wait till neglecting those clients ruin Old Legacy too!

Since @Kyronix @Mesanna and co. refuse to do anything about them, the bandaid solution is to have EMs use the tools they are given and use the split moongates and the groups across more subservers. One group/boss in Malas, other in Trammel, other in Ilshenar, other in T2A, all in non-gate/recall areas. The last part is very important.

Nyre

Mesanna already said  she is not going to allow more instance of the boss   so that isnt a solution to the problem.  I understand her reasoning behind this as the EMs have to load in the monsters at each instance manually and splitting it up into 4  will possibly be too much for the EMs to do in the time frame of their Event.

I hope once they finish with NLS  they can improve on this making it more enjoyable to attend events. 

popps

username said:

There is just too much data going back and forth and it's pegging the servers: either server hardware limitations or poor/inefficient coding/way the data is being sent/received. While the area affects on these monsters surely doesn't help, they've been in the game for years and years now and it's never been this bad. What's compounding it, and the root of the cause, is that it's a too many character issue. Why are there so many characters? 3rd party clients, once again, the problem. Curiously wonder if these programs flood the servers with packets more than the official clients do? Either way, sheesh, seeing a running theme here...

• PVP? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• PVM? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• EM events? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• Can't wait till neglecting those clients ruin Old Legacy too!

Since @ Kyronix @ Mesanna and co. refuse to do anything about them, the bandaid solution is to have EMs use the tools they are given and use the split moongates and the groups across more subservers. One group/boss in Malas, other in Trammel, other in Ilshenar, other in T2A, all in non-gate/recall areas. The last part is very important.

To my opinion, the possible solutions to Third Party clients are 3 : 

1) - Somehow, The Classic Client and Enhanced Clients block these Third Party clients to be able to work with UO (for example, UO shuts down when it detects the 3rd Party client working with the CC or EC)

2) - UO players found using 3rd Party Clients get banned for using them.

3) - UO implements any and all features which these 3rd Part Clients have in the Classic Client and in the Enhanced Client tus making it pointless to use the 3rd Party Clients since anything will be available both in the CC and EC.

That is at least what my opinion, as a UO player, on this topic is.

ForeverFun

One quick suggestion to Broadsword on the server side aspect of the EM event lag:

1. Study what happens when "Poison breath" is triggered by a Boss when many mobiles are nearby.  How expensive is it to enumerate all the entities that are effected by the breath?  Are locks being grabbed on each in range entity, etc?  Are locks being grabbed when the poison ticks, etc?
   

The "forbidden" topic that many people point to is probably mostly a red-herring as it relates to server handling/load, and will only serve to get the thread locked.  Hopefully the moderators will just clean up these posts versus locking the whole thread.

username

ForeverFun said:

The "forbidden" topic that many people point to is probably mostly a red-herring as it relates to server handling/load, and will only serve to get the thread locked.  Hopefully the moderators will just clean up these posts versus locking the whole thread.

Lol. You forgot, "signed an avid 3rd party client user."

And it's not a red herring at all, you should probably look up the definition of that before using it.

Don't try to gaslight me bud.

username

popps said:

username said:

There is just too much data going back and forth and it's pegging the servers: either server hardware limitations or poor/inefficient coding/way the data is being sent/received. While the area affects on these monsters surely doesn't help, they've been in the game for years and years now and it's never been this bad. What's compounding it, and the root of the cause, is that it's a too many character issue. Why are there so many characters? 3rd party clients, once again, the problem. Curiously wonder if these programs flood the servers with packets more than the official clients do? Either way, sheesh, seeing a running theme here...

• PVP? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• PVM? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• EM events? Non-3rd party client players can't compete,
• Can't wait till neglecting those clients ruin Old Legacy too!

Since @ Kyronix @ Mesanna and co. refuse to do anything about them, the bandaid solution is to have EMs use the tools they are given and use the split moongates and the groups across more subservers. One group/boss in Malas, other in Trammel, other in Ilshenar, other in T2A, all in non-gate/recall areas. The last part is very important.

To my opinion, the possible solutions to Third Party clients are 3 : 

1) - Somehow, The Classic Client and Enhanced Clients block these Third Party clients to be able to work with UO (for example, UO shuts down when it detects the 3rd Party client working with the CC or EC)

2) - UO players found using 3rd Party Clients get banned for using them.

3) - UO implements any and all features which these 3rd Part Clients have in the Classic Client and in the Enhanced Client tus making it pointless to use the 3rd Party Clients since anything will be available both in the CC and EC.

That is at least what my opinion, as a UO player, on this topic is.

1. The clients do not block things like this. You would need some sort of client/server check. I know the Everquest EMU community was fighting this forever (probably still is) as the EQ Server/client had some sort of rotating encryption. If it failed on either end your client would just basically disconnect and would happen ~15 minutes after you connect. Now that would be funny, just DC 3rd party client users after they connect.
2. Toss 'em all a 30 day ban.
   
3. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, but would be ideal.

ForeverFun

username said:

1. [clip] I know the Everquest EMU community was fighting this forever (probably still is) [clip].
2. Toss 'em all a 30 day ban.
   
3. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, but would be ideal.

I wouldn't argue with these 3 points.  I'd add:

4. There's a history of many threads getting locked here when the "forbidden" topic is brought up.  Several banned accounts associated with those posts.

5. The Google thought experiment below (spoiler section).

6. The topic of this thread "How to solve EM event lag" - I've seen this as far back as ~1999, when there was only one client: CC. 

The combination of your points and the points above leads me to believe it would be more fruitful to invest in things like:

"Study what happens when "Poison breath" is triggered by a Boss when many mobiles are nearby.  How expensive is it to enumerate all the entities that are effected by the breath?  Are locks being grabbed on each in range entity, etc?  Are locks being grabbed when the poison ticks, etc?"

Circa ~1998-1999 the first "EM-like" event happened on one of the shards I played on.  It was a humanoid boss, that was controlled by a GM/OSI employee.  Many people in attendance, and the fight lasted more than 30 minutes.  Lots of lag.  Everybody lost connection almost exactly when the boss died.  That made it a race for who could login and loot the corpse first.  (no corpse instances back then, and no pack drops).  The corpse had a robe and the below (only 1) named sword (not a traditional vanquishing weapon).  Enhanced Client screenshot ...

The next event a few weeks later was a red demon in hythloth.  It was 1-2 shot killing everybody, and looting player corpses (no insurance!).  Lots of lag.  Eventually, a GM 1-shot killed the demon.  It had over 2000 stone of player loot.  Back then, you could drag any amount of weight on the cursor, and walk through a moongate while dragging it.

www.google.com is an online service, and the server side of that needs to deal with a myriad of web browsers and clients (known versions, unknown versions, and unknown clients) connecting to it.  The need to function with such a diversity of clients interacting with it is a typical design point with any online service.