Where is the producer's letter?

[8skyfaller]

That seems so counter intuitive to me. I would think older games like lotro would be easier to play over time, not the reverse! It must be the servers, because the graphics in this game, while quite pretty at times, are no where near the level of newer online (and singleplayer) games than run fine and dandy on my machine.

Intuition is not all it's cracked up to be.

In Rohan, lag is worse when I'm riding the war-steed than when I'm on foot. (I expect that's the most prevalent lag/rubberbanding/warping most affected people are complaining about.) War-steed movements arguably have a greater computational burden, because you move faster, the acceleration factor is more pronounced, and so position and collision calculations need more (computational and transmission) throughput from LOTRO's systems, which they apparently cannot consistently meet. So I think this is an instance of a new feature performing poorly due to the extant architecture.

Mounted combat is fun, but also frustrating in its current systemic state. I do hope the producer's letter explicitly names it and pledges to fix it.

[Cindir]

... It also seems there have been lots of threads here in the forums about it that, as per Turbine's totalitarian streak, conveniently disappear or are moved into obscurity.

The point is, I have heard absolutely NOTHING from Turbine on this ...

Agree, they seem to be wishing any performance problems will go away, with a token excuse put into the dev chat. There was an excellent post be a player who has been here since beta. He asked Turbine to please comment on the bugs in the game. They quickly deleted the thread.

I guess that is the strategy: keep selling new content, suck as much money out of the game, and don't talk about any of the game problems. It doesn't make me think they have any confidence that they they can fix these issues. If they were taking it seriously, and thought they could fix things, why would they not tell us that?

[OnyxSoulbane]

I wouldnt do the happy dance just yet on this subject either. I just read the other day that the guy who has been in charge of WB's home entertainment division which includes games is now the new CEO of WB, so i wouldnt expect or be very hopeful of changes many of us are looking for in LOTRO, and i will be very surprised if this letter will reflect anything much different. Jus' a heads up.........

[Wanderv]

That seems so counter intuitive to me. I would think older games like lotro would be easier to play over time, not the reverse! It must be the servers, because the graphics in this game, while quite pretty at times, are no where near the level of newer online (and singleplayer) games than run fine and dandy on my machine.

It would be if Lotro hasn't any updates. Every update means rebuilding the game, more and more code on the old engine. So unfortunately every old game with a lot of updates become more and more heavy for PCs and servers even faster than new ones.

And actually Lotro has better graphics (in Rohan) than most MMORPGs released.

[Mirarian]

on the lag thing

I am running an a nearly 3 year old machine with an ancient HD5750 video board. I don't lag at all in the new Bree. I admit I have not been to Rohan yet (it will likely be another year before I settle down to just one character and get her there).

The only times I see lag are either net problems on my end, stupidly overcrowded areas, or days when even Turbine admits things are not right.

I am not saying anyone is fibbing about experiencing it. I am just trying to add in that hardware probably isn't the entire issue since I see many of the people complaining of Rohan lag also complaining of lag in the new Bree. My machine is ancient tech and can handle bree so it can't all be hardware.

[guguzza71]

I only get ocassional rubber banding but am very interested in knowing what is causing it to be so bad to others.
When I played SWG years ago that game had horrific lag and rubberbanding to me, so much so that I left.

[Cindir]

...
I am just trying to add in that hardware probably isn't the entire issue since I see many of the people complaining of Rohan lag also complaining of lag in the new Bree. My machine is ancient tech and can handle bree so it can't all be hardware.

The last sentence is not right. The fact that an old machine can run without lag says nothing about whether other PCs should be able to run the game (or whether it is "all hardware"). It IS hardware - the problem is that the game is not optimized to run on all types of PC hardware (unlike most games released today).

What we are seeing is some PCs can run the game well, and other PCs that are much better gaming PCs cannot run well. It IS about hardware - just there is no simple logic to it - like all machine better than your should be fine. With so many report from players, we know some very good machine cannot run well since RoR, and it is due to a lack of optimization. Somehow, they did not build RoR and Bree graphics correctly so it will run on most PCs (or all that meet basic specs).

So no, its not the internet, or people's PCs, or inherent lag, or anything - it's just problems with the game that cause it to not run well even on very good gaming PCs. Only Turbine can fix this - if they put enough resources into fixing it. I wonder if they have given up though - and so are not saying anything to players because they don't have any good news for us on these issues.

[Painting]

It IS hardware

This statement is not right. It is not necessarily hardware at all. There is NO EVIDENCE of whether it is hardware or software that I have seen.

the problem is that the game is not optimized to run on all types of PC hardware (unlike most games released today).

Citation needed. The world of x86 systems is - and has been for some decades - nasty to develop for. There are all kinds of variables that must be taken into account, and no one - I mean NO ONE - can test every permutation. It is too time consuming and too expensive. I work on software that runs on Linux and we can't even hope to keep up with the released versions of one Linux distribution across multiple vendor's hardware (with 3 GPU vendors and 2 CPU vendors). So you release with risks.

It IS about hardware .... Somehow, they did not build RoR and Bree graphics correctly so it will run on most PCs (or all that meet basic specs).

Again, Citation needed. Do you have any evidence Turbine is at fault here? I experienced some time ago issues with patterns not filling in, so after a load screen, I'd be walking on invisible (or gray) floors with very boring rocks, and often floating trees (where the hills should be drawn). It would finally fill in after 10-20 seconds, and things from there were 50-75 FPS smooth. Know where the bug was? ATI's driver. No change in LOTRO code required to fix it.

In reality, the entire code stack goes from Turbine code to DX9/DX10/DX11 code then into a graphics driver and throughout is interacting with various forms of firmware (both in the CPU and GPU) as well as the operating system. If drawing an object only went through code from 3 companies I'd be shocked. If it was more than 10 it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Is there an issue with LOTRO? Absolutely. That is what the customer experiences. ...but while that means Turbine needs to put some attention into the issue, it doesn't absolve the responsibility of the rest of the folks in the stack. It's also why it's critically important for folks to file an appropriate technical support request with the information about their hardware and firmware levels... so Turbine can get the information it needs to reproduce and diagnose the issue. Forum posts don't help.

p.s. Still hoping we see a producer's letter in January.

[Mirarian]

The last sentence is not right. The fact that an old machine can run without lag says nothing about whether other PCs should be able to run the game (or whether it is "all hardware"). It IS hardware - the problem is that the game is not optimized to run on all types of PC hardware (unlike most games released today).

What we are seeing is some PCs can run the game well, and other PCs that are much better gaming PCs cannot run well. It IS about hardware - just there is no simple logic to it - like all machine better than your should be fine. With so many report from players, we know some very good machine cannot run well since RoR, and it is due to a lack of optimization. Somehow, they did not build RoR and Bree graphics correctly so it will run on most PCs (or all that meet basic specs).

So no, its not the internet, or people's PCs, or inherent lag, or anything - it's just problems with the game that cause it to not run well even on very good gaming PCs. Only Turbine can fix this - if they put enough resources into fixing it. I wonder if they have given up though - and so are not saying anything to players because they don't have any good news for us on these issues.

Nice job at missing my point. What I was illustrating is that hardware is not the WHOLE problem. I have seen many many people upset on the forums because their brand new super gaming rig is lagging and plenty of folks like me with ancient machines that don't lag. The problem is a mix of issues. Hardware is probably part of it but certainly not ALL of the the problem.

[Celestrata]

Hey guys, let's keep it on topic here: the Producer's Letter. While this other discussion is interesting, there are other threads for that discussion. This one is about the Producer's Letter. Thanks! :3

[Stanimir]

What would REALLY help the lag is if people knew the right term to refer to their specific kind of lag. I've heard it called everything from graphical lag to "rubber banding" and from what I can tell anything "that makes my game don't work too good" is called lag.

You can learn most of what the producer's letter will say in other avenues, as well, if you are keen to know more about the future of the game.

[Khafar]

What would REALLY help the lag is if people knew the right term to refer to their specific kind of lag.

From what they've said, it may not be one of the typical sorts of "lag" at all. Most of it isn't server-side lag, because they can see that easily on their end, and there would be all sorts of down times for reconfiguring the servers or network infrastructure, applying server patches to address issues, etc. Those problems are the most in their control, and the easiest to diagnose and fix.

It isn't framerate lag, because people with all sorts of different video cards have seen it, but not consistently even with the same type of card.

It may not be bandwidth lag or latency either... people who report seeing this lag in LOTRO don't see it in other games, and they're seeing good trace routes to Turbine's game servers. (Note that this isn't always going to be true - games do use different protocols or protocol mixes in their traffic, so it's at least possible that they can behave differently).

What does that leave? Differences in client hardware, bugs in the client LOTRO code, plus bugs in or strange interactions with other client software. In other words, it's the type of problem which can be the hardest to reproduce, isolate, and fix. I would presume that they're working in their NDA program with people who are seeing this, perhaps giving them instrumented/debug clients to run which can shed more light on the problem. Don't know that for sure, but it seems a logical step.

Having done some of that sort of thing myself on the products I develop, I can testify that it's often incredibly slow and frustrating to work toward root causes (and then fixes you can be confident in). Sometimes simply turning up logging or adding new instrumentation to the code can acutally make the problem disappear. But you don't want to tell other customers to do that, because clients in that mode tend to run quite a bit more slowly.

Edit: Oops, sorry Celestrata. I didn't notice your post until after I posted my response. I'll keep it on topic from here on out. Bring on the Producer's Letter!

Khafar