Closing 14.6 forum? Laggerrriiffiicc

[Jellobiafra]

Ok, I was intent on pummeling the 14.6 forum with me begging for answers regarding the lag issues since the last patch. But now that they have closed that forum, (I guess they figure any further feedback on that patch is useless) I will begin posting here.

I hereby beg the great and wonderful, wise and all powerful, CZ to please offer some feedback, or even recognition that there are alot of people complaining, about the serious lag problems that have crept up in certain areas since the patch.

I will again state that no, I do not have a top end computer. But I have bandwidth to spare. Before 14.6, I had very few problems with lag. At times the frame rate was a bit bumpy around large crowds. But not a fun killer.

Now, in places like trade, and NLC, the lag is horrific. What used to take a few seconds to zone and start moving, is now taking a minute or more. And the problem does not end there. After taking the first step or two, tons of people (including myself) are reporting that after the first step, each step after that, for a good minute or so, takes 15-20 seconds to complete.

It has been brought up that it may be the new advertising boards that were put up in those areas. That very well may be the case. However I have also experienced increased lag in the grid. Frame rate has become quite choppy at times.

Customer support on some issues has been great. They took great strides to make changes to the NPC pets, which a large portion of the people were complaining about.

Now I would like to request to get even the slightest respect that any paying customer deserves, and get just a little feedback on what may be going on. Even to hear that they are looking into it. Even to just respond once that you freaking hear us.

CZ, I know that you are busy. And I respect that. But it has been over a week since the patch, hundereds of posts regarding this issue, and nothing. Not a peep. Please, for those of us who are finding it very tough to deal with this, respond. Thanks.

[_______________Tiran]

I will again state that no, I do not have a top end computer. But I have bandwidth to spare.
-----------

Since you're complaining about frame rate, not actual link-induced lag, there's your problem. (partially)

Frame rate is YOUR COMPUTER, having trouble loading everything up and displaying it.

Until you get to 1400 MHz, and minimum 512 megs memory, with at least GF3 class card, you're going to have slow places.

Heck, with GF4, 1400 MHz, 1 gig memory, I still get 20 fps in cities, mostly.

Now, that said, 14.6 DID change some things graphically... which INcreased framerates for me.

It looks like polygons are being (finally) loaded in closest-first order, so video drivers that do Hidden Surface Removal actually work now.

You don't give your vid card or driver details, but if your drivers are older, might be helped by newer drivers.

[Jellobiafra]

Well, I would tend to agree that my computer is partially to blame that I'm not getting the most out of this game.

That said, before 14.6, I had all gfx options turned to at or above 75%. Since the patch, I have tried turning everything waaaayyy down. No help.

Specifics on my system:
P3 900
512 ram
radeon 7200 (latest drivers as of last weekend)

I must reiterate that before this patch, I only experienced minor lag in very busy areas. Since the patch, it's been evil. The only things other than the patch that have changed, is that as I've said, I turned the gfx options down and downloaded the new drivers. All done days after the patch and in response to the new lag issues.

I am wondering if the new billboards have anything to do with it, which was brought up by someone in one of my earlier posts. I does seem that near those areas is where I experience the worst of it.

I know that I would get better performance with AO if I went out and bought another computer (not an option at the moment). But the decision to upgrade should not have to be based on a faulty patch in a video game. There is an obvious coding problem that is causing this, otherwise I would have been experiencing this from the beginning.

I do however appreciate your reply. It's a hell of alot more than we have received from customer service.

[Greybear]

Voodoo5 (stop laughing)
AMD 1400
512 Ram

Before the 14.6 I had noticed some lag. I played with setting and got this well into playable and still decent graphics.

After 14.6, it appeared to be lagging. Fog mysteriously seemed to work for me. I read in another post they removed something like CLOD(cant remember if this is what someone said or if it was just another fuzzying type function), so when you saw the wall it was actually sharper and crisper and so were some of the further away thing.

I climbed into my Yalm and flew all around ENT, I had FPS of 50-100(it appeared to top at 100.0 sometimes would stay there for 3-4 seconds with out wavering) Maintained above the 75 on average.

In TRADE at the STATUE I droppped down to 17 but oddly enough, graphically froze several time. Got as high as 80 flying around in there.

In Tir, it was a combination of TRADE and ENT, getting the most FPS when climbing in altitude to get above the city.

With the new patch, Fog stopped working for me, but I cant seem to tell much difference from before 14.6 and now other than everything looks Sharper, like a haze or fuzzyness was removed.

I know this doesnt help much, but thought Id toss it in.

[StanimirB]

Well, before the patch I was running AO on an old HP Pavillion 6630. It had a Celleron 500 and only an integrated Intel 810 video chip set. Only had 383MB of ram in it too. It a lagged a little here and there but it was tolerable.

I am on a cable modem and at the time was only on a 10mbs home network with internet connection sharing. My wife was running on a PII350 and an Nvidia M64 32 AGP card with only 128MB still no real lag issue.

14.6 came around and the game became mostly unplayable. Well, expecting to need the upgrades anyway and expecting Notum to be even more intensive, I bit the bullet and upgraded both machines.

I am now on an XP 1700+ 1.5Ghz CPU 700+MB and a Geforce 4 MX440 64 MB vid card. I now crash ever 2 to 3 min.

She is now on a Duron 950 CPU, with the old vid card and ram.

I have Upgraded the network to 10/ 100 and a router instead of the sharing.

So with a faster network work and higher machines performance is reduced? Why?

[___________JagdTyger]

I have a P4 1.5, with 1 gig of pc800 ram, and a G4 tti4400 vidcard with 128ram, I know what hes going through cause I am experiencing the same things when zoning/logging into Omni Trade or New Land City. And this is all since the patch, before that I could just zone in and immediatly start running around, now as soon as I move my camera angle it starts locking up until all the meshes in the zone are done loading. So for some reason we went from fast loading to this lag loading.

Jagdtyger

[___________JagdTyger]

Just noticed something, Gen how come you got the better comp!?!
Its supposed to be ladies first ya know :P

Jagdtyger

[_____________Brandon]

Cz dont like you he wont answer

[_____________Brandon]

Try to prostrate that worked on another thread

[Lestrac]

Hm.....PC Specs contribute to lag? Lets see here..........

PC1

AMD XP 2000+ at 2.0ghz
512 MEG PC2700 DDR
128 MEG GeForce 4 Ti4600
Linksys Cable Modem/Router at 1.5 mbps


PC2

Intel P4 2.0 w/512k L2 Cache
64 MEG ATi Radeon 8500
256 MEG PC2100 DDR
Linksys Cable Modem/Router at 1.5 mbps

I am extrememly more laggy after 14.6 than I was before. Before the patch I could zone in anywhere, even BS and Trade, without as much as a frame skip or chop. Now, I can hardly even go to BS or Trade with waiting for about 10 seconds for the screen to load. Don't give me some junk about my system being too "low end" to run this game lag free. I believe that it is something on your part. So please, patch the patch. How hard can it be?

Lestrac

[__________THEDEACON!]

P4 2.8 GHz
128MB Geforce 4 4600 golden sample (overclocked)
1024MB MUSHKIN DDR PC-3200

T-3 Business line

Running at a low resolution (1024 x 768) just for testing purposes.

(I'm lucky enough to own a computer sales/repair shop, so this stuff isn't actually mine, I'm just doing an 'extended' test)

Lag in the cities, slow zoning. You gonna tell me it's MY comp? Please. Feed me another line of crap.

[_Bonk_]

I think you have serious bottlenecks in your system and this is affecting your performance. Therefore you must eat more fiber and ruffage dewd!!!

[Jellobiafra]

Originally posted by Oldskule / Ternak
Cz dont like you he wont answer

That very well may be the case. You see, there are usually steps in my posts about problems, and they get increasingly insulting as time goes by without a response.

1st - Note that there is a problem
2nd - List any further instances of said problem
3rd - Ask why there has been no response
4th - Search the boards to see if there are any other instances of other players with the same problem. If there is none, I go away. If there are, I return to steps 1-3.
5th - Begging. Lots of begging.
6th - Blood starting to boil now. Start acting childish and flooding the boards with repeated posts about the same issue.
7th - Comment about poor customer service
8th - Comment about CZ's mother

I imagine step 8 will be the last time I am allowed to post to the forum, so I'm saving it up for something special

[speardancer2]

OK, here's something to try, especialy since 14.6 was a large patch...

Run a defrag on the drive you have AO installed on.

I found I had not done this in quite a while, and after the defrag, my loading times decreased dramaticly.

May not fix your exact problem, but worth a try. it's just plain good maintenance on your system anyways.

[Jellobiafra]

Speardancer...Thanks for the idea. I do this every two weeks anyway and have tried that since the patch with no help. But I appreciate your feedback.

[Erikomei]

I had no lag problems before the last patch.

I have DSL, 1 gig prosessor , 512 ram and a 64 meg geforce card

and now I have bad lag all the time in places with people 8(

I play Dark Age too , I have no problems there only in Anarchy.

Funcom , made a error in the code somewhere , Cz , please

ask them to look into it . it makes it hard to get around citys

so I think the code error is in the location/image PC character

updates area ( I am sure they call the subrouten something

else , but the error has to be in that area ). oh I almost forgot

I had character details off before the patach.

[__________Specialone]

p4 1.5
64meg geforce ti4200
512 mb rdram

pre-14.6 minimal lag
post 14.6 lag all over the damn place

[Jellobiafra]

Morning bump for a CZ reply.

[Cyberbob]

System specs :

Amd xp2200
1gb ddr 3200 ram
Hercules radeon 9700 card (cant start the game in windowed mode due to ao crashing then)


Well i experienced a lot more crashes since 14.6 launched this may be due to my graphic card though i dont know. As to zoning getting into trade takes up to 30 sec in some cases it has taken me up to 2-3 minutes to zone.

The crashes i experience are mainly related to zoning into trade or while trying to get into the grid using fixer nanos.

Just my two cents here i hope you can sort it out a bit as this has prob something to do with the graphic card i am running.

[Beartwo]

not just in cities, but in missions and in the countryside.
I cant blame the extra animation of the signs or anything else...

The time from I press "X" to sit until it happens is far to long. My ping is low and my computer is "semi fast" so this is something thats serverside.

AMD XP 2000
GF3 TI200 oc`ed
512Mb DDR333 RAM