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Age of Conan's Longest Running Issue: Sieges
ShotgunJoe
Member Posts: 120
The one unique crown jewel of AoC, Battlekeep siegeplay , is and has been virtually unplayable since the 1.05 patch over 8 months ago. Sieges will crash and reset awarding the defenders and instant victory, or the servers choke with a 3-5 second delay.
Allow me to demonstrate: www.youtube.com/watch
and example #2 : www.youtube.com/watch
It would be awesome if Funcom would give this feature som attention that it deserves before pushing all this new expac content out, fix the stuff you have first kind of thing. Maybe Mr. Wood or Avery could report on this broken feature and help motivate FC with some critical and honest articles. This isn't new, again this feature has been broken for almost a year with little to no attention. To add some salt to the wound, the siege gameplay has actually progressively degraded over time!
So for all you new players loking forward to the end game bk pvp, don't get your hopes up yet. How about a follow-up article to the *Most Improved MMO* article.
Comments
Maybe they gave up? Like SOE gave up on battle grounds in SWG years ago. Sometimes this happens and development shifts it's focus elsewhere, toward things that do work. I just don't see sieges ever being fixed at least to a point there will be nothing left to complain about. If it were going to happen I would think it would have by now.
Thankfully it's not the only thing there is to do in the game, there will be even more when the xpac hits shelves. Which is what I am waiting for to return, aren't sieges glorified BG's anyway? Never sounded very exciting to me, at least compared to sieging in DAOC.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
What's new here? FC said they are wroking on it, but Towers will be a decent substitute at least for the time being
SWG implemented battlegrounds (battlefields) with GU 10, June 2nd 09. GU 10 patch notes have all the details.
To say that they gave up years ago, is simply not accurate.
@OP: I cancelled my AoC specifically due to that reason, siege performance has been atrocious since that update and I refuse to pay for a product that is only partially working after so much development time has been given.
AoC engine is FUBAR, they are not able to fix it. Beautiful graphics are performance heavy combine it with net code and server infrastructure not design to handle 48v48 fights on any machine in an instanced environment. If you really want playable battles try games like Darkfall or DaoC.
Siege performance could definitely be better
I think their main issue is they are having to focus on the expansion and the powers that be probably consider that better risk versus reward as opposed to putting the resources onto fixing the sieges. Think the GD has acknowledged that it isn't acceptable, just wish they would fix it faster.
The new shrines PVP ideas are cool though (check out the test server) and awesome fun on the test server at least.
Their biggest issue is they are both a PVP game and a PVE game, have fans who like both and probably don't have the resources to support both at the same time.
Yea, I red the post from Acolytes guild on the forum.
The Acolytes have taken the initiative to catalog and report siege malfunction, bugs, errors, etc. We strive to be able to report back to Funcom, to the Devs, to anyone who will listen to us for the betterment of the cornerstone of this game.
We can sit idly by and complain about the siege situation or we can act on it and provide clear and concise information to the Developers at Funcom in hopes of a fix.
With that being said, we need your help. We need the sieging guilds to assist us in creating a list of changes that need to be made, beyond just that of high latency.
I would like to organize a stress test event of the Cimmerian End Border Kingdom to test whether it's the zone itself or just the zone during sieges.
On 1.29.2010 I ask that we can assemble 96 players in the Cimmerian End zone for all out PvP in a mock siege. I will update this thread with a time, to make sure it does not coincide with a siege time frame.
So keep this in mind and help out the game you play and let's improve this problem, since Funcom does not care to expressly address the issue.
Link: forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php
If you take a second to look at the official forums, people have been decrying Funcoms lack of response to a growing number of issues for some time now.
Chief among these is the poor latencies being experienced by a large number of the remaining playerbase.
That, in conjunction with the graphics perfomance problems being observed by players, regardless of their system specs, shouldn't have left anyone with a shadow of a doubt that the seige warfare was going to either fail epicly or be a pure lagfest at best.
Fanbois spring to Funcoms defence, citing that it's simply because AoC is still in its infancy. But really, how long should the average player wait for some sort of statement before writing the game off as 'released too soon' or 'should still be in Beta'?
Broken promises and broken features............people must be really bored if this game is still holding their interest.
Off topic but he's probably referring to the battlegrounds circa 03 when the game was good.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
SWG implemented battlegrounds (battlefields) with GU 10, June 2nd 09. GU 10 patch notes have all the details.
To say that they gave up years ago, is simply not accurate.
@OP: I cancelled my AoC specifically due to that reason, siege performance has been atrocious since that update and I refuse to pay for a product that is only partially working after so much development time has been given.
Back when the game was decent they scrapped BG's. So, yes the OP is accurate.
I am not sure why my threat title was edited by the forum moderators, but what was said is indeed true. Funcom does not want any newer players to come in and ask about the BK pvp, because it is unplayable. It is what FC does not want you to know.
You wrote a very good article about Quality vs. Profit, MMORPG.com. This would have been a great question for that article:
Why are you putting out an expac for increasing profits when the core features are still not working after almost a year?
Guild Video|Forums|Guild Website+New Video|AoC official FAQ|E3'07 Official Trailer
Iam baffled about it too.
They are really adding a lot of features in and releasing expansion soon but the core feature is still not fixed.
I really hope they will fix siege before expanison is release as it will be one of those features when old players comes back and say WTF after all this months they still did not fix it.
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
The topic was changed to direct conversation to the topic of a core game mechanic that is still not working properly.
That's all. Do proceed to make your case however; as it's an interesting topic and definitely worth discussing.
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
They won't - obviously they have problems locating the problem
. And truth be told sieges should be deleted and forgotten about. The whole concept of playing them is boring with no real strategy and or objectives. Shrines sounds like 100 times more interesting feature. Even if lag was not making sieges impossible to play (my record on fury was 3 seconds siege) they would still be a boring zerg vs zerg with every single interesting feature like mercenaries etc. missing.
@shotgun: you must have used that shotgun on your own brains. Accusing a company of trying to make profit in 21st century is hilarious. expansion caters exclusively to PVE players. Most of the promised content is being patched in update cycles.
why isnt it working? maybe 96 is a big number for the server to run. collision detection with each player added reaches to huge number of traffic generation.
(very big number) vs (very big number) on paper sounds very nice but in reality things end up;
you not knowing whats happening 5 meters away,
getting killed in 2 secs,
tab-ing to select targets, not caring what class it is, just nuking, throwing what you have.
dropping visuals do minimum to have it playeble.
its not just in this game, i'm playing aion atm and fortress sieges are one big cloud vs another. if one of the opposing raid leaders tags you, you're dead. They are fun and bigger numbers probably sound "cool"er but if its not working then maybe you have to change it rather than fighting it.
Why not make it divided between instances. Create numerous instances. No player respawns but healer class resurrection possible. Before the siege vulnerability timer starts guild leaders assign online players to their instances. If they dont have the numbers they can hire mercenaries to some instances. Even if they have the numbers they can still hire because of skilled players etc. Once the timer starts its not possible to add new players.
Keep Total Vulnerability Time: 2 hours divided into 4 stages. When a stage ends 5 minutes relocation timer starts. Within this time guild leader can reassign anyone to a new instance if
-both the player and the guild leader is not dead
-the players previous instance is adjacent to newly selected instance
-guild leader is in the same or adjacent instance.
If the guild leader is dead, he can assign a new guild leader who can assign members to locations starting with the next stage.
Opposing team does not have the information where other team is assigning their members before the stage starts.
First 30 minutes; Stage 1
Open Instances:
Left wing - [15vs15] - Left side of the keep with breacheble, climbable points. If attacking team wins they get access to Treasury instance and can move surviving members to that instance in stage 2. If defending team wins attacking teams access is denied. [Adjacent to gate and treasury]
Right Wing - [15vs15] - Same as Left wing, access to Armory is granted instead. [adjacent to armory and gate]
Gate - [20vs20]] - Similar to wings but gate can be opened automatically with the result of infiltrator instance. Access to stairways granted. [adjacent to left-right wing, stairways,armory and treasury]
Infiltrator - [1vs2] - A time run between an attacker and 2 defenders which end up in the same room with a switch to open keeps main gate. Opening main gate does not guarantee win, it just opens the gate. grants access to gate only for the players in the instance. [adjacent to keep for defending team and camp for attacking team]
Keep- [0vs60] - When all defenders in this instance are dead, siege is lost. [adjacent to all instances, when a instance is lost it is no longer adjacent]
Camp-[1vs60] - Defending guild leader can assign one player to this instance which can try and take out the attacking leader (if he/she chooses to stay at this instance) [adjacent to left-right wings, gate and infiltrator instance; and gained access with other instances makes this instance adjacent to those instances also, if any access is lost, its lost to this instance also]
2nd 30 minutes; Stage 2
Open Instances; -
Left Wing - same as stage 1
Right Wing - same as stage 1
Gate - same as stage 1
Infiltrator - same as before, if defending guild leader chooses the same players for the instance, they start the instance at the place they left in stage 1.
Treasury[20vs20] - if attacking team wins they plunder money from defending team even if they cant get the keep. access to stairways granted. [adjacent to left wing, stairways]
Armory [20vs20] - if attacking team wins they remove all the buff defending guild gets from the keep. access to stairways granted. [adjacent to right wing, stairways]
Stairway[20vs20] - if attacking team wins they get access to keep. [adjacent to keep, treasury, armory, left-right wing, gate]
Keep [0vs60] - same as stage 1
Camp [20vs60] - does not end siege prematurely but defending guild can take out all the reserve players of attacking team. 20+60 is high but not likely to happen.
3rd 30 minutes; Stage 3
Open Instances; -
Left Wing - same as stage 2
Right Wing - same as stage 2
Gate - same as stage 2
Infiltrator - same as stage 2.
Treasury[20vs20] - same as stage 2.
Armory [20vs20] - same as stage 2.
Stairway[20vs20] - same as stage 2.
Keep [25vs25]- when all defending members die, keep is lost.
Camp [20vs60] same as stage 2.
4th 30 minutes; Stage 4
Open Instances; -
Left Wing - same as stage 3
Right Wing - same as stage 3
Gate - same as stage 3
Infiltrator - same as stage 3.
Treasury[20vs20] - same as stage 3.
Armory [20vs20] - same as stage 3.
Stairway[20vs20] - same as stage 3.
Keep [25vs25]- same as stage 3.
Camp [20vs60] - same as stage 3.
just a thought and spare time
I need more vespene gas.
Off topic but he's probably referring to the battlegrounds circa 03 when the game was good.
You and Bama are both correct I was referring to the old BG's with working turrets etc.. that were scrapped very early on because they could never make them work. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point FC does the same thing, I see no reason to focus on a game mechanic that you can't make work, move on and create something that does.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Some thing everyone here should consider, and I have been playing in sieges since they started on the Cimmeria server to this present day, and will try to continue to do so. I will present some facts and let everyone here simmer on them for plausable ideas.
Pre-1.05, seiges for a stretch of about 6 months worked perfectly. so they can work. I have no idea what really changed at the core of the game after 1.05, but that is the rough timeline of when issues started occuring consistently with every siege. I have even been in a siege where no defenders showed up, and our attacking force only had 3 groups. That particular siege crashed twice.
Food for thought, and keep on discussing the issues gents. If we make enough noise, maybe.......... the MMORPG staff will take up the cause and get a response from FC. *cough cough*
Guild Video|Forums|Guild Website+New Video|AoC official FAQ|E3'07 Official Trailer
Dont stretch it :P
But I agree Sieges worked, there were some issues every now and then ( like rez pad no spawning ).
The best siege performance we had was back on Wildsoul EU ( before server merge ) and it really worked for 2 months ( and fights were 48vs48)
After the merge they also patched something and then that rez pad issue appeared and it was there for almost a month (but got fixed)
The most weird thing is we had larger fights then 48vs48 in Kheshatta and things worked far better with less lag then we had in siege.
For instance, Cimmerian End ( where our keep was ) was really laggy zone even if you were alone there the performance were way worse then in any other zone. ( after the merge, before it was ok )
p.s. Maybe we could get some answers on twitter from twitter.com/Silirrion
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
Out of curiosity have they tried disabling particle effects while inside a siege instance? I know they have tried toning down graphics and such, I have also seen it said that necros and their pets can cause a headache within a siege. Which would make sense as I've been lagged out by necro pets before inside a BG.
Someone above also pointed out their collision detection could be causing problems, compiling that problem on top of necros and particle effects, it could be all of these things together that cause so many crashes within a siege.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Do AoC sieges still have the issues of being able to glitch through the walls and the mass spellweaving suicides = victory? I know they still crash and always have, but just wondering if they ever cleared those two issues up?
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
There is a whole thread about siege performance on the EU PVP forum where Sil has provided several answers.
http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=139380&page=3
Here are some quotes for the lazy:
8th January 2010, 09:21 #25
Silirrion
Game Director
The performance in Siege gameplay on certain servers (Fury being one of them) is something that we are not satisfied with and is a continued focus for improvement.
The issue is more severe on certain servers, and the solution may be further optimizations or it may be additional infrastructure adjustments, or a combination of both.
There are code updates in almost every major update version (the next being 1.06) that are intended to improve performance there and we will most likely be making some hardware adjustments to improve things as we go through the upcoming merge process. (which should actually allow us to put more physical hardware in certain areas).
So the issue does not go unnoticed and it is an ongoing concern.
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director
8th January 2010, 09:40 #27
Silirrion
Game Director
The hardware can be used to compensate if specific dimensions (what we call server clusters like Fury, Crom etc) generate greater load than others, or specific game-servers (the individual physical machine that is running a playfield). There may be some things we can do there to improve the performance in addition to the code updates, so we will try something there as well.
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director
8th January 2010, 12:09 #33
Silirrion
Game Director
8th January 2010, 12:45 #35
Silirrion
Game Director
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saburolol
So the problem is that complicated that it couldn't be fixed in more than a year by now?
That's the thing, it is not a single, easily identified 'problem' that can be 'fixed'. It is a combination of many hundreds of events that under certain circumstances sometimes cause the server performance to bottleneck.
There have been many improvements to the system over the past year, some have helped and we have already removed many situations where that bottleneck could occur, resulting in less lockups than we had a year ago, so a lot has already been done to optimise this area. However there is definitely more that needs to be done. Certain servers suffer from the issue much more notably than others and that is indeed not satisfactory. We will continue to work on further optimisations so that we can get performance there up to where it should be.
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director
The main issue with this particular area is that it is not one thing that contributes to the issue. There are many interconnecting things coming into play here and that means that a definitive 'resolution' or 'single fix' just doesn't really exist.
The performance issues are most likely caused by a combination of game actions, scripts, player behavior, hardware infrastructure and code infrastructure getting bottle-necked under certain conditions. That makes it much more difficult to just instantly resolve if it was a single bug.
We could also take some more 'mitigating' actions like reducing the number of participants or changing the way certain abilities, spells and combos work specifically in PVP or specifically in sieges, but we have stayed away from that for now as I would prefer we exhaust all other angles first before we compromise anything to accommodate something that we should resolve and improve instead.
So it is an ongoing process.
In the long term, after the expansion, we do have the possible option of revamping the system more comprehensively (so far the resources required to do so has been prohibitive to doing so) and in effect re-write the underlying infrastructure. The original was designed without as much real time data from how players actually approach siege game-play as we have now, so this option may be appealing once the major milestones coming up are done and dusted, but it certainly isn't an approach to be taken lightly and would likely take some time to implement, but it is an option if the currently planned optimisations don't work out satisfactorily.
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director
Originally posted by BishopB:
Are a lot of the trolls just angry kids with old gaming hardware?
Well on Fury EU the problem is that during the siege instance crash (aka everyone get DCed ) and siege is over
Hope they will fix that before expansion.
I also think they should reduce the number of participants from 48vs48 to 24vs24 so if guild can do raids its own so can sieges.
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
Well Funcom knows there are issues and has recognised the feedback. That is good. Now where?
Sil talks about a whole process of troubleshooting.
I would like to see Funcom state we have crossed 'this' off the list and 'this' and we are still working on 'that'.
It is apparent that there are quite a few people that are regularly affected from the DC from server and some that haven't had issues.
Sure maybe certain combination of things causes the issue but there are tons of testers and people willing to work to find the issues to get them on the checklist to be fixed.
There was a pretty big update as part of 1.05, which meant there were some behind the scenes changes in the border kingdoms.
Finally some good news
Some tests to Improve Siege performance
An update this evening on some promising changes aimed at improving the performance of siege game-play.
Performance Updates on the test servers
With tonight's update to the test server we are testing some new infrastructure configurations for our servers that we hope will contribute significantly to improving the stability and performance in siege game-play.
Basically we are testing a new system that should allow for the hardware to automatically support a siege instance much better and ensure that the physical server running a siege is not being taxed by other processes.
So how can you help?
Given the merge downtime it is a great opportunity for us to utilise the increased population on the test server to see how the new settings work.
You don't necessarily have to take part in actual sieges either (although some of the developers will most likely be running some for testing purposes). Just playing the game will provide us with valuable data on the viability of these changes. It will be important for us to see that all other playfield actions also function correctly with the new configuration.
So simply playing as normal on the test server will allow us to identify any possible issues with this change.
What happens next?
That will depend on the testing. If all goes well then we will aim to deploy these changes to the live servers as part of the downtime for one of the early 1.06 updates.
The team believe that this can make a noticeable difference to the performance in sieges. It is though, probably just a step in the right direction alongside the other optimisations that are planned. However, with a little luck, it could be a significant step forward.
__________________
Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison
Game Director
Source: forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]
Yep he heard. The dev's want it fixed up as much as we do. Now we have something tangible to work with to help out.
The truth is it is hit and miss on so many servers on so many random events.
It is a big selling point for the game for many people. The fixes and adjustments here are just going to help out Tower PvP when that comes along. Things should scale down nicely.
Players there want to try Age of Conan should think twice about partaking in the lag-ridden siege. They're better off waiting until this coming test.
Link: forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php
Since the game went live. If you want the quick recap it was buggy and the performance was terrible.. Unfortunately, the only viable solution is for players to crank down the graphics and wait it out.
This also brings up an interesting question regarding graphics versus gameplay, and if current technology can handle a true dynamic PvP mmog.
Age of Conan certainly isn't the first game to have these problems with wide scale player versus player events. Technical limitations and optimization issues have hindered PvP on this scale before in other MMOs like Shadowbane. Is the technology just not there?
Can an intuitive and ongoing dynamic mass scale PvP MMOG with amazing graphical content exist on today's technology or is it simply not feasible?
If you take a second to look at the official forums, people have been decrying Funcoms lack of response to a growing number of issues for some time now.
Fanbois spring to Funcoms defence, citing that it's simply because AoC is still in its infancy. But really, how long should the average player wait for some sort of statement before writing the game off as 'released too soon' or 'should still be in Beta'?
Well it seems test were secessful, siege on test live went great, players confirmed those major lag issues are gone.
( some said that latency was a bit bigger then usually )
I was there but came late so it was full and could not test it my self.
One post about it here.
Futilez[Do You Have What It Takes ?]