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Get your priorities straight: fix the latency issues
crunchyback
Member Posts: 44
In conclusion to my Alganon stint, i would like to take the time to make a small suggestion to fix the latency issues first, before anything else is done to the game.
There is absolutly no point in doing anything with this game, that may attract new players, if those new players are turned off by rubberbanding mobs and attack latency issues. All that will do is further propagate the sterotype that Alganon is crap.
Im not saying its crap, i think it has potential in some way shape or form, despite its uncanny and almost plagaristic similairites to another well known game.
If you add PVP, and get crowds of people from that double page advertisement, and the servers are full all of a sudden, its only a matter of time before hits not regestering correctly, or delayed actions will turn them away, taking with them negative publicity.
Adding PVP with this issue in game is a suicide wish for the game. You know how emotional (warrented or not) people get with PVP. How do you think the reaction of new players will be when a ranged attack doesnt register damage for 3-6 shots, as a melee character closes the gap and kill the ranged character? Ragequitting will be the result.
Just a friendly suggestion as we need more games not less game, and i hate to see a game die, even if many people are angry at it or the drama behind it.
Quit trying to attract people to a game with an issue like this......Fix the issue THEN attract players. All this does is add bad publicity to game that some would argue cannot have any worse word of mouth pulbicity.
Unless your goal is to tank the game, fix the latency issue, everything else your doing is a waste of time and money.
That is all.
Comments
It has been like that since beta. Yes, some of the rubber banding has been fixed but not enough. Crazy thing is in a lot of spots in the game you can stand there and do nothing and be the only one online and see you frames drop from 70 to 10. That latency issue had been brought to the attenion of the devs many many times.
But alas it has not been fixed. Quite a few players got fed up with the game and left by not having the rubber banding fixed along with the game lag. Game lag for having less then 50 players online at the same time is a bloody joke. Most of the gamers that I knew had some amazing systems and 25meg lines along with being in the U.S and Canada. So it was not like it was a crappy system or slow internet.
As stated along time back the network code for the game is beyond shite. And like you have suggested it would be nice to see the latency issue fixed before more so called "important" features are added to the game.
Sadly I can't see that happen. It is now a huge thing it seems to throw every option into the game to attract players to it. But once players are in and these bugs are still present. Most will leave the game.
But then it might get fixed.........
Pretty sure it's unfixable, and would need a ground-up rewrite of the core code. Good luck doing that on the revenue a couple of dozen players brings in.
No, it is not unfixable. That's just false.
In fact, in several Alganon forum posts as well as dev blogs, I have stated that we are going to look into sorting out some performance issues in the server (completely separate from the client) code itself.
The fact is, everything has been prioritized. Since the latency issue is only an "issue" for some people (depending on their connection, where they are playing from etc) it was very low priority.
In fact, we only have servers on the West coast, yet we have people connecting from all over the world. That, apart from server code that is sorely in need of some tweaking and such, is basically the bulk of the problem. In tweaking and revising the server code, we're also going to be setting up additional servers on the East coast as well as in some international countries.
It is all in my blog.
Game developers are just human beings who happen to make games for a living.
If you want to hold us up to higher standards of conduct, then go ahead
...but don't be surprised if we don't uphold them.
I find that very hard to believe, given the low population numbers and lack of non-english versions.
Since when is Tuesday a direction?
Total users <> concurrent logins. It's possible to have 10's of thousands of total active players, many of whom don't login for more than an hour or so a week at any given time. This also has no bearing on where those players are connecting from geographically.
English is spoken in several countries throughout the world and it's common for international players to play US-only, English-speaking games. To assume otherwise is ignorant.
~Ripper
On a side note, when I was actively playing, I rarely had issues with latency. I had a number of other client and server related issues, such as horrible geography (falling through the world) and mob pathing, but not latency. That's me playing over wireless with a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection (Utah, btw, so within a close geographic proximity).
Well it wasnt server lag, or any connection issue for me (yes i am the OP) it was related to the time it took to register damage on mob.
I could cast several fireballs before the first one even registerd on the mob, which mean i could techincally kill the mob just after i grabbed aggro on it. Didnt always work to my benefit however, lots of times i was killed by a mob, with one fireball worth of health left, as i continually casted into him, it was very fustrating. This was all while having supurb server preformance. When i said latency i didnt mean i was running around with a 500 ms lagging about.
My origional point was that this should be first and formost the issue solved in the game, since it makes any efforts at pvp pointless. Its not all that bad usually when im casually questing, one mob at a time, but when ever thing got hectic, the latency with mobs showed its face, resulting in an unfair advantage for me, or unwarrented death. Take this issue and apply it to pvp, and you will have a LOT of angry people.
So as i saw it, as a new player who typically ignore the anti-game rage on forums and tries it out myself, the most glaring issue with an otherwise decent game. If people cant accuratly battle mobs then how are they suppose to accuratly battle eachother, granted theres enough players on to do so.
I dont beleive i ever saw more than one person int he starting zone, with a max of 8 people in whatever major starting ctiy you have to instance out of.
Oh and the few people i managed to get to try this game all said they had the same issues...no lag but issues with mob latency....perhaps im calling it the wrong thing, but they all said they were not interested in playing a game with that kid of issue.
So perhaps that is the root of the low population?
Still exists. I don't even get full animations for attacks or parries and MOBs rubber band all over the place.. Needs a fix for sure.
There is nothing to fix. This game, like most online games, will have latency and connection issues. Nothing we do about that other than roll out servers in various demographic regions. That is something that I'm looking into this year. Until then, all our servers are located on the West Coast.
Game developers are just human beings who happen to make games for a living.
If you want to hold us up to higher standards of conduct, then go ahead
...but don't be surprised if we don't uphold them.
I am a paying Alganon player and supporter; I love the game.
However, I do agree with the latency issues and rubberbanding. I live in Oklahoma (Central US) with a 25Mbps Fiber connection.
The issue does need to be looked into.
Also, would it not make sense to put a server in Dallas (Central US) so that everyone in the US will have decent latency when the issues are fixed?
Our servers are currently located in Las Vegas and we're currently working on a plan to deploy servers in the central and east coast, as well as internationally (through various partners*)
* this has been in the works for months but as is the nature of such deals, it pretty slow to wrap. But we're on it.
Game developers are just human beings who happen to make games for a living.
If you want to hold us up to higher standards of conduct, then go ahead
...but don't be surprised if we don't uphold them.
One of your problems is in the belief that a 25mbps connection will help you with latency.
One of your problems is not realizing that I am an IT professional by profession. I understand that the bandwidth has nothing to do with latency, however, being central going to the west coast should not result in rubberbanding.
Thanks for your input, though.
Indeed.
Game developers are just human beings who happen to make games for a living.
If you want to hold us up to higher standards of conduct, then go ahead
...but don't be surprised if we don't uphold them.
Sounds good! I can't wait for the central server!
I know you guys have been working very hard on this game and I am enjoying it. I have been with you since closed beta and things really have come a long way. Keep up the hard work!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't rubberbanding a server issue? It sure sounds like the issue is inefficient server code and/or poor server hardware. There are plenty of MMO's that don't have these issues, even when connecting to servers in other countries.
I appreciate that the developers are trying to improve things, but adding US servers isn't the solution. Consolidating the US servers into one is the only logical choice given the anemic populations.
Yah, it has been a LOT of work this past year, but yeah it is coming along. And there's a lot of exciting news to come.
Game developers are just human beings who happen to make games for a living.
If you want to hold us up to higher standards of conduct, then go ahead
...but don't be surprised if we don't uphold them.
Clearly, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Game developers are just human beings who happen to make games for a living.
If you want to hold us up to higher standards of conduct, then go ahead
...but don't be surprised if we don't uphold them.
Hmm, so what do MMO's usually do when they are underpopulated and have multiple servers? They merge them.
What's the most common reason clients getting rubberbanding? It's either routers or servers dropping packets. Traceroute is your friend in determining which. Even WoW and LOTRO have times where their servers rubberband. And yes I say server as whenever I see it happen it tends to happen to everyone on the server. And it usually only happens after an expac is released or a major patch, and goes along with a much larger than normal number of people trying to play.
Alganon is the only MMO I'm aware of that has such ongoing serious server issues with so few people online. If it's happening a lot and for people in the US with good conenctions to you, then yes its your servers.
I'd say you need to figure out how to fix Alganon, as you promised, before questioning the knowledge of others.
I don't think that adding PvP would be a good idea. The game is, same as WoW, in the core a PvE game. WoW had PvP added quite quickly, because the people were happy with the PvE. Adding PvP to a PvE game, where the people are unhappy with the PvE, is asking for trouble. It would just add more mediocre stuff to a mediocre game. They should do some surveys to make the community at least feel they are asked what they want. They should concentrate on the core stuff and improve it, and then add new things to strengthen the strong points of the game even more, instead of leaving some stuff half-working and adding more half-working stuff.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
In my professional opinion, I would have to agree. However, I am not a Game Developer, just a Network Admin.
Hey guys, let's try to avoid baiting others into arguements. Thanks!