In the city of tir there are 3 areas of lag. I'll start with arena.
1. Arena
-Placement
When it comes to architecure, don't hire the animals. This arena was the worst placed thing i have ever seen. It's small width and length makes it extremely prone to lag;
Think of the box-shaped arena it is, fly up with a yalm and look down on it. Both the southeast and southwest parts of it are engulfed in lag by the people standing on the line or sitting on the arch, simply going afk, looking for buffs, waiting to gank, looking for duels - at times this is VERY populated, and lag is extremely bad that people don't even bother fighting sometimes. The North parts arent even any better. People say 'go to the back, less lag' but the fight drags on further than 1 meter of range for some profs. The Northwest part is lagged by people pulling missions from the mission terminals and, most of the time this is often, PLUS the people standing at the subway mission entrance can sometimes be viewed creating a barrage of lag. The northeast part is somewhat less laggier, it does get lagged by the people on the way to the superior general store and this is often as many dont know about the southern superior general store in tir.
The solution to this would be to expand the city of tir, or kick out a few of those 'useless' areas in the NE most part of tir, such as the former tir grid area, and hell, we don't need that 'karsten klikk's hangout' and miir shop. I'm sure we'd all prefer a better arena over that stuff. It might require overlapping the city's rectangular look, but who cares. Old athen's been in ruins for how long now?
-Zoning
And there's one thing that pisses off everyone no matter how good your computer is, it's the fact there is 3 zones RIGHT next to the damn arena which stops counterganking with the ease to run away. Also no duel is considered 'good' if someone just runs to zone because they can.
-Suppression
Not to mention the suppression is still borked, people use the 75% suppression exploit to heal up and stop themselves from recieving hostile nanos or specials damage. This is a problem in camelot too, and is eliminating team pvp from everywhere except NW zones which has the disgrace period - which also should be implemented in every pvp zone. This bug has been reported NUMEROUS times and nothing is being done about it, atleast tell us if its intended, but if you are being attacked in 75% suppression, releasing combat will make the user of roots, nukes, debuffs, and specials unable to fire them. People with HoTs or trying to run away after a gank or two eat this up like candy and then make up some story as to why its 'not an exploit.' Another thing is that with specials recharges people will only enter combat to use those specials and keep out of combat until they recharge, thus the person attacking is forced to release too.
-NPCs
The guards that get pulled there NEED to be fixed. I understand tir is a clan city, but the arena is for pvp, and pvp includes everyone. It's ridiculous when an omni friend of mine comes to tir for a duel or a chat and some roleplayer idiot trains a mob shouting fictional babble that kills them instantly. If this is a multiplayer game that requires interaction between people i can tell you that not doing anything about mobs like Field Commander Wickham is only creating a communication block and giving people a bad day. 'Reporting' these issues is almost futile as either the ARK doesnt respond and or yells at you for petitioning with 'im stuck', or they say 'we're on it' and nothing ever happens!! Make the guards have a scripted patrolling range, and a 'crowd control' style method that warps them back to their original position like a 'rubber band' effect when it comes to leaving their area.
-Size
The fact this thing is a damn cage is very disadvantaging to professions who rely on their roots. It would be nice if this was expanded a bit in size, it would also prevent people from reaching the back of the arena from the beginning of 0% suppression by means of ganking. It is approximately 38-40m meters in circumference meaning rifle users can still street sweep the place.
-Reputation
Making these fixes would drastically improve tir arena. As it is in the RK1 pvp'ing community, arenas are looked at in two ways. There is the omni ent arena which is considered 'civil' because you can't just waltz right in undetected, you have to use a button, and its much larger as well as no lag surrounding it. There's not many zones close by either, and you have to run a distance to do so. Tir arena is considered the epicenter of lag, contreversy, personal forum flame threads, whining, ganking etc.
-One more! View bugs.
There seems to be a view/range bug here, even having view distance and char sight to fully maxed can make you lose sight, LOS, aggro and firing ability if you move out a certain distance.
2. Fair Trade
-Shop
Since launch, this has been a HUGE problem. Characters used to have to create chars over again because their other ones were stuck in shops for days. Thankfully this doesnt happen anymore, but going full graphics on a decent computer with mild char view is a linkdeath waiting to happen. I don't even look for groups there anymore on my alt because that place is just a ticking lag bomb. The shop is visited by so many people, high levels and low levels, it takes several seconds of standing like an idiot in the doorway to zone in as well.
-Save/reclaim/bank
Most high level players use backyards for banks, but being that fair trade is DOMINANTLY a congregation for low levels and people new to the game, these 3 terminals are used extensively still, people go afk here too. Now, there is a general store at the SW corner of tir. If i want to get there fast, i could cut through the middle and make my way there right? Nope. Gotta go around, because of the amount of people hanging out at this place combined with the other 'landmarks' of this area. Same with the west gate. You have to practically get in your yalm and cut corners over the water if you want to avoid lag.
-Tents/mission terminals
Some people sit here to be cool, some people sit here to find groups, hell some people sit here to 'set up shop' and spam the shopping channel but combined with the amount of people hoarding the mission terminals, its a nightmare! this is indeed the worst part of fair trade.
3. The Grid (most dreadful topic!)
The original grid spot was always bad, yeah, but most clanners will tell you they like the original grid better than the place it is in now. An accurate description of a grid-in now is a 'non-laggy' landing, but i grid in to tir only to go to the city. So i basically have to blitz through the 5,000 people that are LFG, on the way to the grid, going afk there, waiting to meet someone, pulling missions, saving, reclaiming, banking, going linkdead hell your game your name it's just the worst possible place it could ever be put in. What needs to be done is something similar to meetmedere, the grid drop is significantly farther away than the grid terminal in that zone. A suggestion might be putting NOTHING but the grid terminal outside of the city's south gate, and making the drop-in point at the northmost point where one of the mission areas and 2 new terminals are, or the patch of green. Or perhaps making the drop-in point where the old arena would use to be if it was moved? or the CoT? There are MANY options here. Utilize them. I still do not believe tir's dragging problem will be solved in 14.7.8.
Finally, something a bit general about this game's textures. I go into metal areas like missions, dungeons like the TLR (at some points, like exiting a cave and entering a green metal wall room, its like exiting a poisonous gas-filled room into a purified one) and i get ZERO lag, the omni med labs as well. But with the mud-brick texture tir has, i notice a little more lag being produced by these textures. Caves too, everyone says 'dont blitz caves,' why? because rock textures lag, the more natural they are. Some real work needs to be done to these graphic textures so they can be at the same time diverse but not lagging more than it would in an area with metal walls. The 'mud brick' problem may also be the reason why there is so much lag in broken shores. I see cities in this game have metal buildings and don't nearly lag as much.
I hope you guys will consider some of these points, tir is a very avoided city for its vets with all the lag and problems it has.