How’s your lag experience, is it...

Join us when we stress test the Longtooth spawn event on Planet Calypso, March 10 2015, 17.00 UTC

In December and January Planet Calypso held performance stress test events to gather data for improvements to the Entropia Universe platform. Analysis of one part of these datasets has raised a few new hypotheses that needs to be examined further.

In order to investigate these hypotheses we would like to invite you to a new 3 stage Longtooth spawn event on March 10, 2015 at 17.00 - 18.30 UTC. Stage 1 will start at 17.00 UTC, stage 2 at 17.30 UTC and stage 3 at 18.00 UTC. Each stage will spawn the same variants of Longtooths on the same locations.

We appreciate the help, and your assistance here will help go a long way towards a smooth experience inside the game!

UTC
17:00 - Stage #1 - Start
17:20 - Stage #1 - End

17:30 - Stage #2 - Start
17:50 - Stage #2 - End

18:00 - Stage #3 - Start
18:20 - Stage #3 - End

How’s your lag experience, is it...

Stage #1: Better
Stage #1: Unchanged
Stage #1: Worse
Stage #1: Other

Stage #2: Better
Stage #2: Unchanged
Stage #2: Worse
Stage #2: Other

Stage #3: Better
Stage #3: Unchanged
Stage #3: Worse
Stage #3: Other

Please vote AND write about your experience on each of the events, this will help us significantly in finding the lag issues the players are experiencing inside the game.

For details about the event see https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?271726-Longtooth-performance-test

Will you have any use of input about the differences in stages?

I have not been at the previous tests, hence I will only be able to give feedback about how the various server settings work out compared to each other.

Or should I just not comment after the event?

--//--

Okay, here is my feedback;

Do not put any weight at all on the user survey. Why!? During Stage 2 people started to crash and could not get back in. This should mean less stress on the servers, and the players experiences during Stage 2 and 3 will be skewed due to the fact that the servers was running with lower population than during Stage 1.

Stage 1 was playable (sort of), but not very enjoyable. Another bug that came up was that the freds went unreachable. Not first time I see this, and it is quite disturbing as there are no objects around to block them.

Joakim|Calypso said:

Please vote AND write about your experience on each of the events, this will help us significantly in finding the lag issues the players are experiencing inside the game.

Click to expand...

I can't tell.

Pretty much:
1) When I first arrived at Fort Argus, I noiced I had almost 200 carried item Points (as I'be been hunting), and I wanted to dump loots in storage Before moving on. Storage didn't work (Always showed 0 items and occasional "Internal Error" message), so I had to go to Twin Peaks to move carried loots to storage.

2) At returning, after about 5 minutes shooting (after having returned), my weapon amp broke. Then I wasn't able to detatch it. After trying to TP (probably aborted because of hits), I did "T" to get to Fort Argus/TP. On arrival, I got an immediate CTD.

3) After the CTD, I wasn't able to login.

The few minutes I was shooting I didn't notice any bad lag; but I got the feeling that the problem in this case is on the server side (servers handling things like terminals, storage and teleportation).

For next stress test event, it would be nice if it would be possible to "Catch" the login errors that typically appears in cases like this, and give an option to login to Another server.

(The weapon amp I had on my gun was "crappy" eamp14; so normally if it breaks during a hunt I just detach it, or I put the weapon in my portable repair terminal to fix it up. Unfortunately if a weapon amp breaks, it's not possible to use the base weapon at all.)

Experienced lots of lag especially loot lag. Also experienced revival lag where I would die and instead of reviving back in Argus I'd revive on the battlefield. Then, after a few minutes of playing, I would suddenly teleport to the revival in Argus.

TP'ed to Argus spawn 5 minutes after the event started, was lucky to fit into the limit (?) on the first try.

Stage 1: ~200 people (10 pages of nearby), 5 fps, crazy freezes now and then for 5-7 seconds.
Stage 2: ~160-140 people, 5 fps, no freezes, though hard to say was it because they adjusted something or just because of fewer people.
Stage 3 (until 18:30): ~160-180 people, roughly the same as with Stage 2.

At 19:00MA when the Stage 3 was technically over, Old Freds were still spawning and even more people arrived. Until 20:00MA when I left there were 200+ people all the time and, although there were no freezes, tools and weapons become barely responsive. Switching from one weapon to another was taking up to 30 seconds, and after then another 30 sec before it started making actual damage on auto-use.

Partially that could be because by that time the field was covered with tons of fantom weapons hanging in the air and permanent death bubbles.



Overall, Stage 1 was much worse than on Jan, 27 at PA, when it was almost normal with 300 people, even if fps was down to 15 from usual 100-120 for me. Stage 2-3 were roughly same as back in January. Crazy loot lag (up to several minutes), especially at Stage 3, was about the same.

On a more positive note, I haven't had a single disconnect for the whole duration.

I wasn't there when there was anything like stages happening but at the big fred spawn i had a brief period (maybe 5 minutes) where anything entered into chat gave an error message after a minute or two and the comment never showed up. There was some moderate lag on weapon switching and especially damage done and received but not any worse than i've seen other days recently.

I didn't vote because I didn't participate in the other events, but I went to old fred spawn west of argus yesterday and tehre was roughly 75 people there and I had ZERO lag while playing on very high settings. Great job MA!

Rubberbanded for my first time ever at Icarus during this latest test event (Stage 3).

My rig runs EU on very high without issue.

IF it was worth logging in I would tell you, but instead of 90% ammo+crapnell, I would make it 98%.. then your lag problem will be fixed forever

During and after the event I experienced above average lag and malfunction (CTD/client freezes/errors) on other Calypso servers. Wasn't anywhere as bad as September 2013 "stability update" though.

15 votes so far

Well, after adding stuff like shrapnels, explo bp and so, it seems, players care less and less.

Hello!
I have voted worse although for me some things were better and some were worse than before but more things on the worse part.
As compared to first test it was better, comparing with the previous one before this, it was worse.
During this event:
- i was disconnected shortly after login
- tp from Nymphtown to fort Argus was a pain (made it only after lots of operation failed due to internal error)
- in fort argus and event area usual things were in slow motion (using terminals, equip and un-equip, etc.)
- shooting mobs was better than any other test (once i start shooting a mob everything goes fine and at normal speed)
- new mob spawns delayed (I was able to see the mobs and start shooting only 20 or 30 seconds after the spawn - they were not visible until then - this was calculated based on the sounds of the weapons from other people and their movement)
- Loot was delayed (i guess this is called loot lag)

Regards,
III Dusk MMM

I found the first stage to be the best performing, things got worse in the latter stages. Its definitely not my machine however what I am concerned about is the fact I have the most backward internet connection since the history of time (currently only on a 1 meg line .) I think this is potentially to blame for the hideous amount of usage failures and usage delays.

I'm continuing to have the problems even now, after the event. It would be handy if MindArk has a network tool designed to communicate solely with their servers, simulating participant experience, where it analyses packet losses and packet delays. This would be helpful to either rule out my side of things or their side of things, and I'm sure this would be helpful for others also.