The latest on game performance

[TroggyTrog]

I've always wondered if the timer on the champ chests and remnants and the night revel's chests now too, contribute to lag and performance issues. I never liked the change, as I like my loot, and sometimes I'm flower sniffing or slow to catch up and miss out on thingies in the chests (cuz they despawned) or thingies on the floor (again cuz they despawned). I also wonder if tracking so many buffs and debuffs with their own timers causes issues for the player or even the server. This would include the stacking type buffs and debuffs, like vulnerability or stacks of dots for example. You just gotta wonder how much those things contribute to lag or hitching or performance issues. But that's all I can do is wonder, and type this to share my wonderment. lol

 

[TroggyTrog]

I've always wondered if the timer on the champ chests and remnants and the night revel's chests now too, contribute to lag and performance issues. I never liked the change, as I like my loot, and sometimes I'm flower sniffing or slow to catch up and miss out on thingies in the chests (cuz they despawned) or thingies on the floor (again cuz they despawned). I also wonder if tracking so many buffs and debuffs with their own timers causes issues for the player or even the server. This would include the stacking type buffs and debuffs, like vulnerability or stacks of dots for example. You just gotta wonder how much those things contribute to lag or hitching or performance issues. But that's all I can do is wonder, and type this to share my wonderment. lol

I had an idea, if this timer tracking stuff was an issue, could be a way around if it was: track buff spells like Bless and Haste as Long-term and Short-term respectively (perhaps change the SP costs up/down depending on the value of each spell). So, instead of a timer, it'd just be a buff that would last until you rested or exited a quest or what not. Bless would work this way as it is a Long-term buff, so would last until shrining or dying or exiting or what not. Haste would be a Short-term and would continue to have a timer, and could still benefit from the Extend metamagic. So, basically this would just cut down on a lot of buff timers being tracked. Also I'd take away the time-out on champ chests and the like, and just see how that plays afterwards. If something good comes of it yay, if not, revert back to current. Hmmm, and oh yeah, do away with dungeon alert in another test. Just remove it. All those buffs and debuffs dungeon-wide can't be good for the server to constantly calculate and readjust as it ramps up and down. Again, just try it out. See if the game is better off without it peformance-wise. If not, revert back. Things that SSG should at least consider at this point in fixing the problems we face daily in this game.

tldr over, thanks for your patience

 

[Mornyngstar]

I've always wondered if the timer on the champ chests and remnants and the night revel's chests now too, contribute to lag and performance issues. I never liked the change, as I like my loot, and sometimes I'm flower sniffing or slow to catch up and miss out on thingies in the chests (cuz they despawned) or thingies on the floor (again cuz they despawned).

Specifically for the chests having timers that was instituted because having a large number of chests that did not despawn and were tracked by the server was contributing to lag. There was instances of "Chest farming" where 100's of remnant chests were farmed by having hireling fight respawning champions over night (hours). If you then had 50+ (guessing on the #) people doing it that caused significant lag. It was the same with people that had 1k+ of in game mail in their mailbox.

(If anything, with the new 64-bit servers could we increase the # of auctions and in game mail limit?)

 

[Deathdefy]

I agree, spawns absolutely cause lag. Including toon entrance and exit of quest. And end of quest lag. And chest spawn lag.

Agree, and there are commonalities here; every one of these is a data lookup or update.

I swear that at least the non-pathfinding (i.e. when one mob dies it doesn't instantly fix everything) lag is an indexing issue.

https://www.commitstrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Strip-Probl%C3%A8me-dIndex-650-finalenglish.jpg

 

[Frantik]

Specifically for the chests having timers that was instituted because having a large number of chests that did not despawn and were tracked by the server was contributing to lag. There was instances of "Chest farming" where 100's of remnant chests were farmed by having hireling fight respawning champions over night (hours). If you then had 50+ (guessing on the #) people doing it that caused significant lag. It was the same with people that had 1k+ of in game mail in their mailbox.

(If anything, with the new 64-bit servers could we increase the # of auctions and in game mail limit?)

Interesting to know, but how can you know, without doubt, that it "was the same with people that had 1k+ of in game mail in their mailbox"? Have you any evidence of this?

 

[Thumbed_Servant]

NONE of all of the above speculations should cause lag. This is an old ass game and the graphics are old and any decent new server should be able to handle it. Either SSG didn't buy enough server resources or they do not know their own code enough to get it to work on the newer 64-bit hardware, or most probably both. The problem is SSG, not the end of quest loot generation, not the end of quest favor awarding, not anything else but SSG failure. When next you speak of "What causes lag?" all you need to spout is "SSG".

 

[woq]

Well yea, if people don't log in and do things, no lag.

There's the kind of hitching we saw years ago when a DM text or narration is about to play, when a reaper is about to spawn, when a block loads its mobs in a slayer area (often much longer hitching and rubber banding for that).

And then there's the random 5+ minutes of complete lockup that can occur in town, in a quest, in a slayer area, when there's nothing around, when there's tons of stuff around, when you're just trying to drag an item into your bank.

Gotta guess there's different things going on. The player base has largely gotten used to the former. The latter is when folks get spun up.

Absolutely, I wasn't denying the veracity of the claims. I was joking that DDO is such a lag monster that just about everything in DDO lags and causes lag.

 

[TroggyTrog]

Specifically for the chests having timers that was instituted because having a large number of chests that did not despawn and were tracked by the server was contributing to lag. There was instances of "Chest farming" where 100's of remnant chests were farmed by having hireling fight respawning champions over night (hours). If you then had 50+ (guessing on the #) people doing it that caused significant lag. It was the same with people that had 1k+ of in game mail in their mailbox.

(If anything, with the new 64-bit servers could we increase the # of auctions and in game mail limit?)

Agree about the auctions and game mail, and might as well toss in gold/plat limitations (especially the f2p level limit on that), because nearly everyone at this point is capped, and we have to jump through hoops to give gold/plat to new players that are f2p, just to help them out.

Just spit balling here, but another idea that could be implemented to deal with champ chests and all that, is just to not have them spawn at all, same with remnants. But, at the end chest of the quest, add an additional new champ chest that could perhaps be set up with an average remnant and loot reward based on the average time it takes players to complete the dungeon. It could scale on the quest difficulty completed. Again, this is assuming what we are told about the culprits of lag being actually what they are. Because, purple bags never got changed, afaik. They persist and last the duration of the instance and can even be looted by folks entering the instance later. Hmmm. So many things I wonder about with this game.

 

[Mornyngstar]

Interesting to know, but how can you know, without doubt, that it "was the same with people that had 1k+ of in game mail in their mailbox"? Have you any evidence of this?

If it was saved in the old forums by someone then yes. There was a whole up roar and a few "I am quitting because they are taking away my extended bank space (ie the mail box)!". Cordovan even stated ~ "There is even one person who played and posted everything to the Auction house but NEVER checked their mail.". That person had more than 20k.

If anyone knows if that thread was archived please post it here.

 

[Yndrofian]

We will be curious to read your experiences from Shadowdale and Thrane after today's work to add additional resources to these worlds.

after a week of playing:

maybe just another drop in the bucket or old news, but in my experience (during peak hours +/- 3 hrs on each end) the game is not notably better. there are always a couple/few/several instances a night where im laglocked for several minutes at a time. a 3-4 min quest took 15 to complete a couple days ago. this is normal.
sure, most of the time its not laglocked, but when its not, almost every (if not *every*) quest has noticeable lag that causes rubberbanding, missed melee attacks, misfired spells, mobs seemingly teleporting around the room, and/or momentary stuck in place-edness. releasing mabar does not help either.
i suppose if we did actually and literally get a 15% increase to server performance, then id say we need another 50%... to start. please keep in mind that IF yall get these servers running the way they should, that the 900-1000 average peak time population will very likely increase by at least a couple hundred. the mabar event itself has been showing 1100+ population during peak times on shadowdale. so basically your 15% increase just disappeared/got used up with mabar.

 

[Elladan The Bald]

Have not tried to log yet (post today's downtime), but can certainly report there were issues with lag in normal play on both Thrane and Shadowdale after 5pm yesterday (10/8/2025, CDT). There was also SOME lag at 2AM this morning on Moonsea -- but I was able to connect using less "login cycles" than some recent experiences. . .

[Yes, I have toons on all four 64b DDO servers...]

 

[oTarUX]

after a week of playing:

maybe just another drop in the bucket or old news, but in my experience (during peak hours +/- 3 hrs on each end) the game is not notably better. there are always a couple/few/several instances a night where im laglocked for several minutes at a time. a 3-4 min quest took 15 to complete a couple days ago. this is normal.
sure, most of the time its not laglocked, but when its not, almost every (if not *every*) quest has noticeable lag that causes rubberbanding, missed melee attacks, misfired spells, mobs seemingly teleporting around the room, and/or momentary stuck in place-edness. releasing mabar does not help either.
i suppose if we did actually and literally get a 15% increase to server performance, then id say we need another 50%... to start. please keep in mind that IF yall get these servers running the way they should, that the 900-1000 average peak time population will very likely increase by at least a couple hundred. the mabar event itself has been showing 1100+ population during peak times on shadowdale. so basically your 15% increase just disappeared/got used up with mabar.

What did u expect? Big brains at SSG decided to launch an event on the already saturated/laggy servers without fixing anything or communicating what is their roadmap to fix lag and/or stuck in transfer characters.

 

[Ungermax]

If it was saved in the old forums by someone then yes. There was a whole up roar and a few "I am quitting because they are taking away my extended bank space (ie the mail box)!". Cordovan even stated ~ "There is even one person who played and posted everything to the Auction house but NEVER checked their mail.". That person had more than 20k.

If anyone knows if that thread was archived please post it here.

This problem could easily be solved by saying in X amount of weeks we will introduce unconfirmed/aucton returned mail having a 2 week auto delete. Complaints? Of course. Exploit? Not any more.

I would say if mailbox storage is causing any sort of server based problem then tough crud to those who are doing it, fix your mail fast and do it quietly or lose it, zero tolerance. I want to say it is laughable that auction mail doesnt already have an expiration built into it, I suppose it could have to do with real money having been spent on astral shards and the chance to loose items bought there would annoy a lot of people. If someone really had 20k I'd say just wipe them and dont even tell the person. Cant complain about losing an exploit without admitting to it.

I didnt even know people used mail for storage until Cordo mentioned in on stream not that long ago.

 

[Mornyngstar]

This problem could easily be solved by saying in X amount of weeks we will introduce unconfirmed/aucton returned mail having a 2 week auto delete. Complaints? Of course. Exploit? Not any more.

I would say if mailbox storage is causing any sort of server based problem then tough crud to those who are doing it, fix your mail fast and do it quietly or lose it, zero tolerance. I want to say it is laughable that auction mail doesnt already have an expiration built into it, I suppose it could have to do with real money having been spent on astral shards and the chance to loose items bought there would annoy a lot of people. If someone really had 20k I'd say just wipe them and dont even tell the person. Cant complain about losing an exploit without admitting to it.

I didnt even know people used mail for storage until Cordo mentioned in on stream not that long ago.

They did fix it where there is a 50 mail limit with overflow. If you try to post on Auction House with 50 mail already (I think) it will not allow you to post. This solved the issue at the time and more than a few people said they were quitting due to this change. There was someone I knew personally that was using it for Platinum storage. He estimated he had around 1500+ mail. He may had underestimated it since he was cycling the mail between his toons at the time. He was at max toons and it was per max for me.

It was funny that when I was transferring my toons from other underused servers to the new ones I came across a toon that had the mail anouncing the new Epic Gianthold. (So a little guilty here, but that toon only had 4 mail total.)

 

[woq]

Minutes long lockups again on Thrane.

(Standard): You are on server 17 at r1 lx496 ly72 i2049 cInside ox-242.10 oy31.02 oz-200.00 h218.0. Game timestamp 14192263.926.

 

[Techurek]

make that a 20 minute lag/latency on Thrane

 

[Ying]

As a result of the changes, objects created and left unattended fully out of sight in some landscape regions now expire after approximately 2 minutes, such as Bigby's Guiding Hands, Dimension Door entrances, or Hirelings left guarding an area by themselves. In the case of Hirelings, the Hireling will disappear from the party but can be re-summoned if you still have their contract available.

It's comical they believe Bigby Hands are the reason for lag locking.

 

[Cordovan]

It's comical they believe Bigby Hands are the reason for lag locking.

You are confusing halo impact with motivation, Bigby Hands have nothing whatsoever to do with the work being done.

 

[Ying]

You are confusing halo impact with motivation, Bigby Hands have nothing whatsoever to do with the work being done.

Can't blame players for coming to their own conclusions when the comms around this are sparse. It's been three months since Lagapalooza 2025 started. Seems like the team is chasing shadows.

 

[Stellsbelles]

Can't blame players for coming to their own conclusions when the comms around this are sparse. It's been three months since Lagapalooza 2025 started. Seems like the team is chasing shadows.

I have to agree with Ying on this, in 3 months we got more lag, dissapearing rocks, transfer failures, communication failure from SSG. Not knocking i=on you Cordo, you do the best ya can on relaying what you can, but the heads above you should at least be open and communicate better. As I stated in another post, if this game was any otherm and not have the loyalty of the players it still has, this game would have closed shop a while ago. In todays standards almost every company I know of would be on the forums at minimal to basically apologize and prioritize fixing at minimum the lag issues and playabilty. Hell After you all gave me the code for Chill, I actually spent the money I was going to use to buy it on 3 month sub, and a lot of DP. I spent the same value as what it would have cost me. I had already had a sub running, but added that as a thank you.
Out of last 3 months though since all of the mergers and Chill launch, it has progressively gotten worse and worse, and Cordo you have basically been the person saying anything. We had 1 maybe 2 little tiny sentences from an actual DEV in 3 months. Now why wouldn't the player base start making up their own thoughts and hypothesize about whats going on there? If the company I work for pulled any shenanigans like that, our games would be DOA. We keep a constant feedback and are always tweaking things, but we actually listen and communicate with our players, hell we even play with them sometimes.
Just please stop everything else you are all doing, all other content etc can wait, if you wanna keep your players from leaving just focus on the effectiveness of your server issues. If you are running both DDO and LoTR on same severs, or even the store platform, I would seperate them and isolate. It may cost a bit to begin, but it will make it back in the long run.
I'll even offer to start up a fund for you all to get DDO at least on a better server setup. Ill pay for all fees, all equipment etc. I am sure most of the community that can splurge a bit would add just to have a game we love actually work. Here is the catch to said deal, Listen to your community, fix servers first and then stuff that is broken, before moving to new projects. I understand you need to produce and show off for the higher ups, but seems to me they just want their money. If you keep at the way things are, people will get fed up and leave for good.
The 2 companies I am contracted with now are huge in the game world, they could just throw money at these issues, you all can't. I was kinda sad when I watched that episode of the Tavern Tales with the game designer for Chill, when he said he wanted to make things different but you all didn't have the money to do it. IF your Devs would communicate better and actually do as I suggested, fixing the main issue first and foremost, I do think you all could get a chance to win the player base back. Which in turn would helpout with finances. I'm serious though, all resources you have on new creation or content should be shoved to back burner to fix the massive issue now.