Exponential Zone Lag

W

Wurmus

Dalayan Beginner
Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one!

I have an issue whereby entire zones, or sometimes just pockets of zones, cause a continuously worsening lag such that what I see on the client is behind actual game play by more than several minutes. This means I try to cast a spell, and am then locked out of all controls for several minutes until the client resolves it. Chat, and other features lag behind by the same amount. Other players pop in and out of existence, and warp all over. Obviously this makes these zones completely unplayable.

I can simultaneously have another client logged in on a non lagged zone and be completely unaffected. When boxing I have also sometimes had one client lag behind slightly, while another is fine (ROFC, RSM) . Which is quite odd to watch.

I play from Australia, and have an average ping to server of ~300ms. I have had friends who also live in Australia play here and there, and they also experience lag in the exact same zones, or parts of zones, as I do.

Affected Zones:
Mansion of Portals - Completely unplayable - trying to move through here with a high level character is a guaranteed death.
Runnyeye - Completely unplayable - delay ramps up super quick
Yclist - Completely unplayable - delay ramps up super quick
Emberflow - Completely unplayable - delay ramps up super quick (have only been around entry so may clear further in)
Remnants - Zone in area is fine (from murk), but if I move down to the river area it ramps up very quickly. Moving back to tunnel seems to clear it up eventually.
Greater Faydark - Can run through ok, but certain parts of the zone ramp up the delay hugely
Crags of Tarhyl - Completely Unplayable - Only in the section with mobs near SWOT zone, moving up into town it clears eventually
Ruins of First City - Can sometimes get delays around the castle area
Red Sun Mines - Can sometimes get delays near lesser fire imps/bridge area
Greenmist Jungle - Only happens on rare occasions, and seemed to effect my other Australian friends more so than me.
Azzerach, the Forsaken Realm - Only in friendly city, specifically ledge near Captain of the Gate i think it was

There are still a bunch of zones I've either never been to, or just forgot to mention, so this is by no means an exhaustive list

What I've tried:
Logs off
Spells and environment particles off
Relogging
Refreshing
Player/NPC Names off
Countless combinations of different graphical settings
Different PC's
Different internet connections (even a 400/400 commercial fiber link) - no change!

My suspicions based on pure speculation and no understanding of the client/server comms:
Scripts with tight timings, that are near to or less than 300ms with retry on time out would potentially cause this delay blow out for my client because they just keep requesting and never get responses before the next request/retry...

I would be more than happy to arrange a troubleshooting session with dev's to try any number of suggested remedies or fixes.

Really I'm at a loss for how to be able to play in these zones, and some of them I feel a pretty important for progression, so I want to open it up for discussion, suggestions, sympathies, and all that...

Thanks

TLDR: Zone lag make sad!
 
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I have been having similar lag issues lately.. but it seems to only be on one client while boxing... Also I'm pretty sure it's a local connection problem not server side. I have had one toon killing something just fine the other the mobs HP is super delayed spells/cm hotkeys not working and such. Typically closing discord making sure no one else is on wifi maybe possibly resting the router and reloading and restarting computer clears it up for me
 
See if it happens like on a raid.. and then see if it's everyone or just one or 2 people. If I had to guess your pc might be trying to do something in the background. Also if it wasn't a problem on just your side I think the whole community would be complaining about it
 
I don't believe its an issue on a particular network, or PC because I have tried all different combinations of these. And the lag always occurs in the exact same zones/areas. Surely it would effect all zones if it was pc/network related?
I'll concede that some of the lesser effected zones that don't always lag could very well be put down to network or pc issues. But for all the zones that are completely unplayable, to be completely unplayable no matter the network, and even for every single other person in Australia I've had try out SoD is too much of a coincidence, which is why i'm here suggesting that the root cause may in fact be something out of my control.
 
I wish I could offer you some insight but even before 2.5 there was always some really weird fucking issue with red sun mine, certain areas of the zone (especially near emberlord) would cause your client to desync or something horrible for no reason I could ever understand. When I last actively camped that place post 2.5 it STILL happened in these spots if I lingered long enough. A few other zones had this issue but I cannot remember them off hand.

Have you tried playing sod through a VPN? I doubt its likely to fix much but sometimes it will fix atrocious routing issues for some players in some games.

Great SOD mysteries.
 
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I haven't tried a VPN, but have tried several different networks. Worth a shot though, will report back :)
 
I don't know for sure but I've seen server issues when your ISP can't keep up with server responses. What generally happens is this desync you speak of. I've typically seen this when
1) There's a lot of underwater pathing mobs that do some kind of aggro range calculation checking land mobs which is apparently really slow.
2) Mobs that are constantly checking for closeby mobs.

I'd be curious if you could find internet with lower ping, like at an internet cafe or something if the desync would be gone completely.
When I'm less busy I could maybe do something like removing all npcs from a trouble zone and adding them back in to see what the trouble mobs might be. Aside from getting less ping, I don't see an easy fix on the horizon unfortunately.
 
What you are suggesting sounds about right to me. I definitely suspect its linked with certain mobs, or effects that clients just cant keep up with when latency is up near 300ms. Unfortunately there really is no way for me to get that time down, East coast Australia to Canada (trace puts it up there somewhere?) is always going to have latency in that vicinity. As I mentioned I have tried it from a commercial fiber link and still come up against these same issues.

The real question is, can anything be done to mitigate it given that my latency will always be in the vicinity of 300?

I would love to arrange a time to do the testing you suggest. I'm usually in the discord when i'm around (gwrex/midji). PM me when you have some time and wouldn't mind testing out some of these assumptions.

I would also be interested to see if you experienced the same desync issues if you artificially inflated your ping to server by using a VPN exit node in Asia or Europe that puts you up near 300 similar to me. Then just try to get through MoP or zone into Emberflow and feel the pain...

In the meantime I am still yet to try out connecting to a VPN to modify the route and see if that changes anything, so that's something I can try on my own.

Thanks Rymy!
 
I can add to this the friendly city part of Azzerach, the Forsaken Realm (same mob models as emberflow maybe?).

My client started to desync massively when in this area. But after moving away and refreshing it returned to normal.

Something I also noted when testing last is that when i try to send a tell from the desynced client, it is received immediately by the recipient, even though my client will not pop up the window and display the message for some time (minutes later when its really bad)
 
I have the exact same issue in runnyeye and remnants. Other zones are just fine, zone out and I can play just fine. Zone into either of those 2 zones and even though the in game lagmeter shows ping and PL as just fine, I am a minute or two behind.

I've turned off logs. I've added the SoD folded as an exception to windows defender. I've deleted the trakanon's teeth files and redownloaded them. I've fully reinstalled. Still get this crazy lag as soon as i leave the zone in area in remnants :(

Just to add, I started getting the same desync when fighting Tlisthil the Risen in cmal after he spawned many torches. It seems to be custom scripts in zones that does it?
 
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Elc said:
I have the exact same issue in runnyeye and remnants. Other zones are just fine, zone out and I can play just fine. Zone into either of those 2 zones and even though the in game lagmeter shows ping and PL as just fine, I am a minute or two behind.

I've turned off logs. I've added the SoD folded as an exception to windows defender. I've deleted the trakanon's teeth files and redownloaded them. I've fully reinstalled. Still get this crazy lag as soon as i leave the zone in area in remnants :(

Just to add, I started getting the same desync when fighting Tlisthil the Risen in cmal after he spawned many torches. It seems to be custom scripts in zones that does it?
Click to expand...

Hi Elc, Sorry to hear that! But perhaps we can learn something from both of us having issues.

What is your normal ping to server?
Where in the world are you playing from?
Do any of the zones I have listed as having issues in work fine for you? Emberflow, Yclist, MoP being the worst offenders probably...
 
I play from Japan, normal ping is 2-low 300s on a fiber-optic line.

I haven't been to emberflow or Yclist, but I do have issues in MoP with rubber banding and it makes autofollow there impossible.

It certainly seems to be the script heavy zones/areas that do this.
 
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Elc said:
I play from Japan, normal ping is 2-low 300s on a fiber-optic line.

I haven't been to emberflow or Yclist, but I do have issues in MoP with rubber banding and it makes autofollow there impossible.

It certainly seems to be the script heavy zones/areas that do this.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my ping is roughly in the same range from Australia. Every other person I know from Australia who tried to play on this server had the same issues as I describe, so latency to the server impacting scripts for some mobs/zones/effects seems the most likely culprit at this stage.

I really would like to get the ear of a Dev to discuss, or even have one of them route through a vpn exit node outside the US to get their latency up in our range to see exactly what we're talking about...

Any volunteers, Devs? ;)
 
I tried a few VPNs from different regions to see if the lag got worse or better but it was the same in those zones unfortunately.
 
To add a bit to this, when I try to box in these zones, I can see my characters moving on each other's screens. They warp back and forth visually on the other characters screen from where they are on their own screen to where they used to be. It's the weirdest desync lag ever and makes these zones completely unplayable :(

Had this again tonight in red sun mines trying to do the bounty, had to give up. Zoned back out to the peaks and it was completely fine. Very frustrating.
 
Elc said:
To add a bit to this, when I try to box in these zones, I can see my characters moving on each other's screens. They warp back and forth visually on the other characters screen from where they are on their own screen to where they used to be. It's the weirdest desync lag ever and makes these zones completely unplayable :(

Had this again tonight in red sun mines trying to do the bounty, had to give up. Zoned back out to the peaks and it was completely fine. Very frustrating.
Click to expand...

I had found that it was only a very small part of RSM that I desync'd in. Left of the zone in, over the bridge where the imps are...
 
Unfortunately I'll have to toss my hat in the ring on this one - same issue in Runnyeye and it is beyond crippling, literally takes 1 minute+ to loot a corpse. Click and wait, click item and wait, hit done and wait, and it just gets worse and worse. Zone out to Mountain Crags and it's perfect again!

I'm West Coast US and on a pretty darn fast internet connection, game-ping via the latency meter shows 100ms pretty much constantly, and it doesn't change at all when this happens.

More importantly, I don't believe this is purely a matter of traditional network lag - if I run in and attack a mob I will start swinging LONG before my client realizes I am fighting and I see combat messages, there is clearly something that is wonking up what's happening on the server and what the client is seeing and things are getting disconnected weirdly.

I'd be happy to help provide some troubleshooting or test if it' be helpful.
 
Man I hope "we" find the source of this problem, it might just fix great many lag issues.. Here's to hoping :)
 
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