Author Topic: If you've not been playing lately (Read 6185 times)

Xev · « **on:** July 12, 2013, 02:41:17 PM »

Heard last night in game that the reason MC was crashing recently was due to emote spamming by a single dead player in MC.

Emotes are disabled until they figure out what to do.

dwturducken · « **Reply #1 on:** July 12, 2013, 02:47:13 PM »

I haven't seen a lot in the way of details, but what I have seen didn't mention a "dead" player. There have been grumblings about players being banned, possibly permanently, but I haven't seen anything to substantiate that. Is it "dead," or dead, do you know?

DJMoose · « **Reply #2 on:** July 12, 2013, 04:01:30 PM »

All I have to say is What?

Brou · « **Reply #3 on:** July 12, 2013, 04:31:50 PM »

Someone found a way to lag the server out and make it crash by stringing together some emotes on a script and mashing it while KO'd. We don't know any more.

Hyperstrike · « **Reply #4 on:** July 12, 2013, 04:31:55 PM »

Pfft.

Well, they've disabled emotes and randomly banned people.
The emotes are "temporarily" disabled.
Probably the same way "taxes" are temporary.

I'm about *THIS* close to just packing it in and shuttering my CO account.

blackjak · « **Reply #5 on:** July 12, 2013, 07:27:17 PM »

Makes sense to me. I mean, if one game's emotes are lagging our three game server, we should totally just cut out those pesky game mechanics until both of our programmers can figure it out.

You know, cuz it can't be the over taxed server or several patches we shoved in there in the last 4 months.

dwturducken · « **Reply #6 on:** July 12, 2013, 09:35:42 PM »

That's been bugging me. Servers are "cheap." Why do they have all three games running on one physical machine?

blackjak · « **Reply #7 on:** July 12, 2013, 10:17:19 PM »

Is it really one machine or one "farm"? Either way. Each game deserves it's own servers, be it one or a several dozen.

Xev · « **Reply #8 on:** July 12, 2013, 10:25:16 PM »

If nothing else good comes out of this at least it is now fairly undeniable that they are having issues and something needs to be done. Felt like I was shouting into the wind when trying to get some help when my connection problems started. Now everyone is shouting.

I've had some pretty good connects lately. And some weird things, and some disconnects... but lately it at least feels like something behind the scenes is being done,

When's that new crew supposed to get started, anyway? Flying Monkeys or Labs or something like this. Seems like getting connectivity sorted would be on top of their list. That's what I'm hoping anyway.

SARobb · « **Reply #9 on:** July 12, 2013, 10:47:32 PM »

Quote from: Xev on July 12, 2013, 10:25:16 PM

When's that new crew supposed to get started, anyway? Flying Monkeys or Labs or something like this. Seems like getting connectivity sorted would be on top of their list. That's what I'm hoping anyway.

I've heard both that they've already started working on the game and haven't said anything to anyone and that they've only just opened and really haven't gotten started on anything. Truth be told, they've really only just been announced - we don't even know if they've been fully set up as an operating studio because they haven't said anything.

I'd say we're currently in hurry up and wait mode. The recent release was prolly done by someone at Cryptic proper using what was on the PTS. But... even that's a guess at this point.

blackjak · « **Reply #10 on:** July 12, 2013, 11:07:44 PM »

I will say the last few times I've logged was not awful. No DC's, but then again I was not playing "hard". Mostly flitting around chatting and going to the store and such.

JaguarX · « **Reply #11 on:** July 12, 2013, 11:14:52 PM »

Now is it actually like 1 uno, solo server? Or more like a server system which consist of a bundle of servers like EQ set up where each named server (about 20 or so) with each named server actually a bundle of 40 which in actuality EQ runs on about 800-1000 or so actual servers.

Plus isnt it the bandwidth that actually cost the most?

blackjak · « **Reply #12 on:** July 12, 2013, 11:25:38 PM »

I don't think it's physically (or would that be virtually) possible to run 3 MMORPG's off of a single server. Even a huuuuge one would stall out and fry. It is surely a cluster of servers. I would just hope it is a cluster of servers each. And no sharing. Bandwidth brings up the catch. They are most likely in the same physical space with the same connections to the outside world. COH ran great with older gear because they were separate from any other projects and only suffered when absolute throngs of people were online like in the case of AP33 and Sunset.

dwturducken · « **Reply #13 on:** July 13, 2013, 12:11:22 AM »

Look over at some of the threads in the Plan Z discussions. The way Cryptic has the client doing most of the work, plus PWE handling authentication, one box running virtual servers can handle one fine. I'm pretty sure someone "in the know" (basically, i can't remember if it was actually someone at Paragon) said that CoH was actually running on a single physical box with virtualized Windows servers for its various server functions.

blackjak · « **Reply #14 on:** July 13, 2013, 03:35:26 AM »

That's crazy when you can rent space on server farms. Of course, you don't have physical control of your servers then, but the farms ~~are~~ should be redundantly backed up.

Codewalker · « **Reply #15 on:** July 13, 2013, 03:44:21 AM »

Quote from: dwturducken on July 13, 2013, 12:11:22 AM

I'm pretty sure someone "in the know" (basically, i can't remember if it was actually someone at Paragon) said that CoH was actually running on a single physical box with virtualized Windows servers for its various server functions.

Not even close. Available evidence suggests COH ran on a farm of about 50 physical servers just for the maps, and a virtual cluster (think 10-15 servers that can migrate virtual machines between them as needed for load) for the global stuff. Not sure about databases, but I'd wager those were physical as well.

Xev · « **Reply #16 on:** July 13, 2013, 04:20:11 AM »

It's hit and miss for me when it comes to a good connection lately. Tonight, it's lag spikes again but for the first time they are generally under 1k. Generally under 500ms even. Still sucks but those long 1k+ spikes are not fun at all.

Hey for what it's worth I didn't mean to make fun of Flying Labs or their name. Looked kinda rude when reading that quote. I just never can remember their name.. Flying Monkeys always springs to mind for some reason.. From what I read when scouting new to me online games to play awhile back - Flying Labs did good stuff for the online version of beloved Pirates!. So, they can't be all bad.

blackjak · « **Reply #17 on:** July 13, 2013, 04:30:50 AM »

Hey now. Flying Monkeys would be a great name for a game studio.

Kistulot · « **Reply #18 on:** July 13, 2013, 08:34:37 PM »

I ended up playing again a bit due to feeling starved for RP and missing Argent Girl.

A dev posted they already have a fix ready but want to give it more testing, but the emote issue does show just how miserably CO is maintained. I think they've had more temporary and removed content than they have content. With pretty much the only reason i came back being for rp and not even /em working I admit it does try my patience somewhat.

That and the constant random disconnects that send me rubberbanding back to where I was 10-15 minutes ago.

It'd be really nice if the new developers actually do something besides more lockboxes. Releasing a new bit of content named Fatal Err0r seems a bad idea given the game. A friend of mine joked the 0 is soley so it'll come up in google searches before all of the posts relating to fatal errors in the game itself. Hard not to agree.

blackjak · « **Reply #19 on:** July 13, 2013, 09:49:31 PM »

Welp....thought I would try out STO....got through the tutorial and was running around the starbase and guess what....

DC.....DC......DC......DC.....DC.....DC.....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC....DC

I would say that the emote problem was a non-problem unless they are "fixing" it right now and doing a "bang-up job".

Xev · « **Reply #20 on:** July 14, 2013, 02:02:38 PM »

General Idiot · « **Reply #21 on:** July 15, 2013, 01:15:59 AM »

Personally I stay subbed mostly for access to freeform characters but also because the more money they're making off the game, the more incentive they have to continue supporting it.

blackjak · « **Reply #22 on:** July 15, 2013, 04:52:21 AM »

After logging onto STO a couple of times I am beginning to think it's a bandwidth problem. I DC way more there than in CO. Probably because it's busier. I was in spacedock #11 at one point. Haven't seen RenCen hit double digits yet.

Xev · « **Reply #23 on:** July 15, 2013, 07:06:07 AM »

Had a nice solid connection early in the morning and everything was working great. Went to take care of some chores and afterwards when logging back on (as more people logged on......? *burns CO tech support hat*) things steadily went downhill. The familiar red flashing bars were back on the top and bottom of the screen when logging a toon in or zoning, the lag spikes were back although they weren't as bad as they have been. And now Xev is stuck in MI and I can't get him out. I tried all the regular tricks and I keep getting booted out of the game with the texture file error whenever I try to load him. 2 steenking levels to go to 40 with him..

Quote from: General Idiot on July 15, 2013, 01:15:59 AM

Personally I stay subbed mostly for access to freeform characters but also because the more money they're making off the game, the more incentive they have to continue supporting it.

If I'd been subbed for awhile and didn't wanna lose access to my FF's and I really liked CO enough.. I might be tempted to stay subbed - and more power to anyone with a sub. No offense meant, for sure.

They sure aren't going to attract many new subs the way things are lately, though. I wanted to save up for a LTS and now I start to wonder why I spend so much of my fun time being frustrated for 'free' (ok, I've bought zen..). I wanted to try STO and now I'm thinking I don't wanna go through the whole process of getting invested in another game by the same people just to find out it's unplayable. As far as that goes... I wanna play NWN too! After all, I played the original. Seems a shame not to try the update.

CO is a great game when it works. I bet STO is too. They have to be consistently playable though. That's just a bare minimum requirement to me and I'm thinking, to other people with new sub money too.

Anyway.. : /

I hope they get stuff sorted out soon and am rooting for them. It was way more fun reading/writing about & enjoying the fun things in game.

- Bleh I still can't get Xev out of MI.. "Fatal Error.."

General Idiot · « **Reply #24 on:** July 15, 2013, 03:05:48 PM »

Texture file errors tend to more frequently be caused by a corrupted file somewhere rather than anything on their end. If it states a filename when the error happens, delete that file and relaunch the game and the launcher will download a new copy of it. Alternately, reinstall the game entirely though that'll take much longer.

As for STO, it's received a lot more attention and it does show. If nothing else it's at the bare minimum always playable in my experience. Even better, it hardly penalises you at all for not subscribing. Neverwinter I'm still not sure about. The combat is fun but does get a bit repetitive after a while because Cryptic's encounter design never managed to evolve beyond 'Beat on a big sack of HP while dodging a million adds'. Seriously, literally every boss fight in Neverwinter is that without any variation beyond slight but ultimately insignificant differences in the boss's attacks and the number and abilities of adds. And as someone who loved the customisation in all their previous games, the whole 'appearance is determined by the gear you're wearing' thing that was outdated a decade ago really irritated me. Especially when all the gear in 20 level ranges has almost the exact same appearance, and then they go even further and let you copy appearance from one piece to another but charge through the nose for it. A little thing in the end, but enough that I don't feel like playing it anymore.

...wow, that ended up being more of a rant than I'd intended. But meh.

Xev · « **Reply #25 on:** July 15, 2013, 04:10:02 PM »

I've had two things fix these Fatal Errors. Setting the video down, and replacing texture.hogg and texture2.hogg with saved backups and letting the game update them when logging back in. This latest Fatal Error appears to be with one of the texture hogs. They don't really tell you directly what file to go and find and delete and re-download.

I'm logging in in safe mode with backed up hoggs copied over from another drive and it's just not happening. If I had unlimited bandwidth I'd just DL the entire client over (and over) again..

Had this Fatal Error problem a few months into playing CO and it didn't show up again until Fatal Err0r.

Monday's are my Sunday and I've already spent a day's worth of bandwidth just trying to get things to work : /
2...steenking...levels... to 40! Then he finally gets his shield (The Mind AT) and can do some Gravi's..

CO is not the game for the internet gimped. ~ 40mb an hour in bandwidth on average for playing, and then there's the special times like these with the Fatal Err0rz.

therain93 · « **Reply #26 on:** July 15, 2013, 05:17:28 PM »

That sounds like a weird issue that CoH had for a while too, where the game would crash trying to load some odd texture, like for a glove. Eventually it went away, but my memory is way fuzzy on how it came about.

dwturducken · « **Reply #27 on:** July 16, 2013, 12:15:03 AM »

Quote from: Codewalker on July 13, 2013, 03:44:21 AM

Not even close. Available evidence suggests COH ran on a farm of about 50 physical servers just for the maps, and a virtual cluster (think 10-15 servers that can migrate virtual machines between them as needed for load) for the global stuff. Not sure about databases, but I'd wager those were physical as well.

Weirdly, while you were not the person I was thinking of, I thought I remembered you arguing, in a different discussion, in favor of maximizing the virtualization of servers. It seems like, with the bulk of the assets resident on the client side, and the three games sharing a good portion of the back-end mechanics, as well as a few graphical elements, that running everything from one physical box (well, really two for redundancy) should be possible.

My experience with servers is limited to a Windows office environment and, to a much lesser extent, a Linux hosting environment, though, so don't take me too seriously.

Codewalker · « **Reply #28 on:** July 16, 2013, 01:02:17 AM »

It would take a huge server to do so. I don't know about Neverwinter and STO (though I'd wager they're similar since Cryptic's engine is derived from the COH engine), but COH processes player physics serverside. That means the server has to not only use a lot of processing power, but needs a massive amount of RAM in order to load the full geometry for all of the zones.

Brou · « **Reply #29 on:** July 18, 2013, 02:53:07 AM »

As of tomorrow's patch, the emotes will be fixed. There will also be new looping variants of superdance, spacewalk, and the spinning intro of spacewalk.

There could be another surprise. Stay tuned.

Xev · « **Reply #30 on:** July 18, 2013, 06:23:12 AM »

/em cheer!

DJMoose · « **Reply #31 on:** July 18, 2013, 02:30:37 PM »

Yay!

blackjak · « **Reply #32 on:** July 18, 2013, 04:36:12 PM »

Hope it does the trick. I still think it's a bandwidth problem. Made my second account in STO on the Klingon side and went through the tutorial that ends up on Quo'nos that has lighter traffic than earth spacedock (think RenCen in CO or AP in COH). That is where I DC'd a lot before, but Klingon side has lighter traffic and I never DC'd. I did get some rubberbanding during the last space battle, but I play in a OSX wrapper so some of that is to be expected. Who knows though. It would be great to solve some of the problems in CO at least.

Brou · « **Reply #33 on:** July 18, 2013, 06:34:00 PM »

A dance pack has just been released.

DJMoose · « **Reply #34 on:** July 19, 2013, 05:51:10 AM »

Quote from: Brou on July 18, 2013, 06:34:00 PM

A dance pack has just been released.

Progress? Actual developer involvement?

For the record, all the animations are great. And Air Guitar is just good fun.

News:

Author Topic: If you've not been playing lately (Read 6185 times)