I've been thinking a long time about how to phrase my wishes on this post, to make it understandable both to the developers who need to work on it, and the players who suffer from the consequences of what I am about to describe. As a programmer and former (I got tired of it, OK?) tech support slave, I've long since learned the value of breaking down information into parts that even a monkey can understand. No insults intended towards either devs or players, of course.
Now, as a player who is currently not able to get broadband connection (Not all of Norway has DSL connectivity yet) I am playing by an ISDN connection, and I suffer greatly from having only a 64 kbps connection (I can get 128 kbps, but in Norway there is no such thing as free Internet connections. The phone bill would be twice as high, and it's already huge). The reason for this is that the amount of data transmitted from the servers to my client is at times too vast for my connection to keep up. The result of this is lag, high ping, and frequent deaths.
Let me give you an example... Camelot, Avalon. We're talking Tarasque raids here, of course. Imagine running from the safe 100 suppression gas area down into the PvP area. First, you run from the 100% area into the stairs that leave down. Then you go through a door into a four-way room, with morgan LeFay to the right. Then continuing straight ahead, you go through a door leading into a long passageway with two doors on the left, one leading towards Lord Ghasap's domain, and the other into a spiral stairs towards what is popularly known as the box room (Or just box).
Going through that last door I mentioned, into the long hallway, is one of the most common LD causes on Rubi-Ka. Especially during PvP clashes in the dungeon. The cause? Well, let's say that at any given time, 50% of a person's Internet bandwith is used by AO to broadcast player data, player movement, player buffs, player emotes and chat channels. Then imagine that two rooms away from the hallway there are fourty players of the opposite faction waiting to defend the Tarasque pathway from invading players.
What happens when you enter the hallway then is that the servers attack the client with information about 40 players, because two rooms away is the in-doors limit for map and visibility range. The client gets info about player names, guild names, avatar size, avatar armor, avatar buff effects, avatar movements and avatar emotes.
Want me to tell you what happens when I run into that hallway in such a situation, on my ISDN connection?
Try pouring 2 gallons of water into a funnel with a quarter-inch opening at the bottom, and you understand what it's like.
The servers suddenly send my client so much information that all other network traffic gets stalled for a long time. I receive so much information that it sometimes takes over 30 seconds to get avatar info, avatar names and such for every new player that suddenly comes within range. And what happens during those 30 seconds? Easy to explain. More network traffic. While my client is waiting for information about what avatars X and Y look like, avatars X and Y move around a bit, cast a few buffs, they shout on the vicinity channel. And so do a lot of other people. I can get attacked a second after entering the hallway, and die five seconds later, but because the messages get queued up to my client, and the subsequent messages become lagged, I can run around, trying to fire off nukes or attack foes for a minute, while all the time, I am dead! Towards the end, I get ten "You were killed by..." messages, and respawn at my insure location.
In other words, the amount of network traffic in such an occasion, and in many other situations, is way too heavy for many clients to handle.
Take the old Tir grid area. A hundred people gathered in one 40x40 square. Or the old area around the Broken Shores Home bank. That one was bad. Real bad.
Or an even better, and more up-to-date, example, the grid. While outdoors areas are separated into 40x40 squares and the client receives information about actions within a limited amount of squares, and indoors areas and missions are limited to two rooms away, the grid is like one big indoors room, thus allowing every client to receive information about every other player there. And the grid is always crowded more than your average 40x40 outdoors square. Movement, buff visuals, names etc. Of course, the grid has simplified graphics, so less information seem to be channeled, but the grid is still one of the laggiest places in the game. Try connection on ISDN and tab'ing through hostile players while moving. Lag city, here I am.
My conclusion is quite simple... Network traffic either need to be reduced in quantity (Hey, programmers, ever heard about semphores? Use your imagination, folks!), or compressed on the server side to allow for less lag on the clients. Compressing data shouldn't be much of a problem if your servers are powerful enough, and compressing a few kB of data every second is nothing to any client computer above your minimum specs.
Please, please, please try to look into this. And soon.
Before we all go LD out of the game.
-Tharyki
