why have the updates to fix game lag stopped

[UwS-Harledir]

Let's go to the Ettenmoors for a LotRO client Live Stream of some very exciting news:



Update: due to unfortunate technical difficulties, many "outliers" ... er, "players" are reporting that the Live Stream from the Ettenmoors appears to be a single, frozen, still image. Although this can only be due to a problem with your computer or ISP, you are all encouraged to submit detailed bug reports!

hahahahahah nice one! (if the topic wouldn´t be sooo sad).

[kickman77]

Let's go to the Ettenmoors for a LotRO client Live Stream of some very exciting news:



Update: due to unfortunate technical difficulties, many "outliers" ... er, "players" are reporting that the Live Stream from the Ettenmoors appears to be a single, frozen, still image. Although this can only be due to a problem with your computer or ISP, you are all encouraged to submit detailed bug reports!

Did the person doing the stream file a detailed buig report Of not... turbine is not aware of the issur <end sarcasm>

[Teldra]

We are and will continue to work on resolving the issues some of you are seeing. One thing we would like to point out is that for everyone here saying they are submitting bug reports, we get no more than 5-10 reports per day on lag or disconnects. This number is actual detailed bug reports and not posts to the forums here. We also read the posts here on the forums, but in many cases just telling us it is happening, does not really help us narrow down the issue or issues. This is why we ask for detailed bug reports, rather than just post telling us to fix it. If the solution was something simple, the team would have fixed it by now so everyone playing could have a good experience. However since it is not simple, we need as much information as we can get in these bug reports.

Per bug report:

02/15/16 12:31 PM

In order to provide the best resolution to your issue, you will need to contact our Technical Support department. That team is better equipped to handle your inquiry, as the In-Game Support team does not have access to the necessary information. To contact Technical Support, please visit support.turbine.com . Click on the “Support Center” tab and then select “Submit a Ticket”. While filling out the ticket submission form, select LOTRO as your game, and “Tech Support” as your Support Team.

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So I have to do it twice? I thought a /bug was a real report and not posting on the forums.

Teldra

[UwS-Harledir]

Per bug report:

02/15/16 12:31 PM

In order to provide the best resolution to your issue, you will need to contact our Technical Support department. That team is better equipped to handle your inquiry, as the In-Game Support team does not have access to the necessary information. To contact Technical Support, please visit support.turbine.com . Click on the “Support Center” tab and then select “Submit a Ticket”. While filling out the ticket submission form, select LOTRO as your game, and “Tech Support” as your Support Team.

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So I have to do it twice? I thought a /bug was a real report and not posting on the forums.

Teldra

Must be hard to forward a ticket to the next department. LOL that Turbine can´t even communicate within their own company.

[Vyvyanne]

Per bug report:

02/15/16 12:31 PM

In order to provide the best resolution to your issue, you will need to contact our Technical Support department. That team is better equipped to handle your inquiry, as the In-Game Support team does not have access to the necessary information. To contact Technical Support, please visit support.turbine.com . Click on the “Support Center” tab and then select “Submit a Ticket”. While filling out the ticket submission form, select LOTRO as your game, and “Tech Support” as your Support Team.

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So I have to do it twice? I thought a /bug was a real report and not posting on the forums.

Teldra

This is an automated response that is there in case a player is using /bug to report an issue that they may need GM help to resolve in the short term, like a quest that is broken or a loading issue, etc. For cases like the lag reports a /bug (and I want to thank the many of you that submitted them this weekend) does give us the information we need to put together a pattern of reports. Thank you!

[BOBYOURUNCLE]

Will someone from Turbine acknowledge whether or not they will actually get in the game and experience it for themselves? Preferably in the moors.

Perhaps tell us that they will or have come out during prime time from multiple computers and locations to see first hand what's happening?

It's been suggested a ton of times already and would be the best way to get data first hand.

All of these posts yet nothing from them saying so.


I'm starting to think that these issues are unfixable and they are too afraid to admit it for fear of losing most of their customers.

[Beaniemooch]

This is an automated response that is there in case a player is using /bug to report an issue that they may need GM help to resolve in the short term, like a quest that is broken or a loading issue, etc. For cases like the lag reports a /bug (and I want to thank the many of you that submitted them this weekend) does give us the information we need to put together a pattern of reports. Thank you!

Does this now change the idea that "it's greatly improved" and those with problems are outliers? Because it really hasn't greatly improved.

[Teldra]

This is an automated response that is there in case a player is using /bug to report an issue that they may need GM help to resolve in the short term, like a quest that is broken or a loading issue, etc. For cases like the lag reports a /bug (and I want to thank the many of you that submitted them this weekend) does give us the information we need to put together a pattern of reports. Thank you!

Which doesn't answer the question: do you want us to use the in game bug system for lag or drop out of the game and use the Turbine support page?

Teldra

[Feraxks]

Which doesn't answer the question: do you want us to use the in game bug system for lag or drop out of the game and use the Turbine support page?

Teldra

For cases like the lag reports a /bug (and I want to thank the many of you that submitted them this weekend) does give us the information we need to put together a pattern of reports. Thank you!

Seems pretty clear to me.

[ertr]

Does this now change the idea that "it's greatly improved" and those with problems are outliers? Because it really hasn't greatly improved.

Things HAVE greatly improved since the first days after the data center move. Doesn't mean all problems are fixed.

[Wibz]

Things HAVE greatly improved since the first days after the data center move. Doesn't mean all problems are fixed.

Yet are still worse than pre-data center move

ie. never got stuck on loading screens pre-move, but I write this post while waiting/hoping I actually manage to get passed the loading screen that I have been stuck on for the last few minutes.....

[Wibz]

Will someone from Turbine acknowledge whether or not they will actually get in the game and experience it for themselves? Preferably in the moors.

I think Moors lag has joined the growing list of topics that Turbine refuse to discuss or answer, along with EU data centre, buff/debuff lag and appalling client performance in new areas.

[Thorgrum]

I think Moors lag has joined the growing list of topics that Turbine refuse to discuss or answer, along with EU data centre, buff/debuff lag and appalling client performance in new areas.

I disagree, Ive done extensive testing it is my PC.

When I shut it off there is no lag. So its not Turbines fault. The EU data center? You are implying they lied?

Turbine would never lie to their fans, they are powered by them !

[Warmutkan]

Does this now change the idea that "it's greatly improved" and those with problems are outliers? Because it really hasn't greatly improved.

Lord I hope so. The reaction to the notion that "If there aren't bug reports, then there isn't a problem" has gotten about the same reaction as the "10% raid/pvmp" comment. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt as much as the next guy, but dismissing real concerns (in the Moors and elsewhere) due to a lack of reports in a system that's difficult enough to use (or see results from) when the game is working properly... it doesn't exactly build confidence.

[Leopoldio]

I'm starting to think that these issues are unfixable and they are too afraid to admit it for fear of losing most of their customers.

Unfixable - doesn't exist in PC/programming world. So its all about the money they don't want to invest. Because it will be a quite long run, till this fix will bring more money then they have invested into fixing this, because other updates will have to be delayed, since rewriting protocol/rendering (aka core) parts of such huge engine will require a lot of additional testing + at the begging will produce more likely even more problems.

In the end of course, it all will be paybacked - by returning players, who suffered from lags for a long time and just rage quit the game + more new players who'll be invited by coming back/current players to play NORMAL pvp (doubt new comers will come for this boring pve). This can bring even more VIPs + store buffs/features/quick lvling (bov, gov, virtues, tomes, etc).


But thats a hard way. It is way easier to copy/paste BBs, increment version of update +1, and get for that 20-50$ per expansion/update, by fooling current customers, who still believe something is gonna change and they have to be patient.

[Kunae]

We do get those, but what about everyone who is complaining about lag and delays. If the client does not crash, it does not automatically send us logs, hence why we want the bug reports.

Seriously, man. These are server-side issues not client side. This is fact. Our crash reports are irrelevant.

Are you telling us that you have no way of monitoring server/area performance?!

Here's a hint, for your troubleshooting, as you seem to not be able to grasp the whole concept: Log in a toon, yourselves, or multiple, and park them in and around the Pelennor. Move them around on horses. Fight things.

Same thing for the issues that people in the Moors are reporting.

Bottom line, do some hands-on testing, that way you have first-hand knowledge of the problems.

[Macdui]

They maybe tried to check Pelennor but as they entered the Westenmet the whole landscape attacked because of the level difference?

[Lord.Funk]

Teldra: Per bug report:

02/15/16 12:31 PM

In order to provide the best resolution to your issue, you will need to contact our Technical Support department. That team is better equipped to handle your inquiry, as the In-Game Support team does not have access to the necessary information. To contact Technical Support, please visit support.turbine.com . Click on the “Support Center” tab and then select “Submit a Ticket”. While filling out the ticket submission form, select LOTRO as your game, and “Tech Support” as your Support Team.

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So I have to do it twice? I thought a /bug was a real report and not posting on the forums.

Teldra

Vyvanne: This is an automated response that is there in case a player is using /bug to report an issue that they may need GM help to resolve in the short term, like a quest that is broken or a loading issue, etc. For cases like the lag reports a /bug (and I want to thank the many of you that submitted them this weekend) does give us the information we need to put together a pattern of reports. Thank you!

Teldra, You might, just like me and possibly some others, have automatically used "Ticket" rather than "Bug Report".

I too got that automated reply and made a thread about it.

https://www.lotro.com/forums/showthr...et-All-Reports


Got some replies and got pointed towards using another button on the whole /bug /help screen at the bottom right "Bug Report". That only loaded a white field within the window for me before but I have now manged to get that to load a bug report form.

You need to go into "System" and "Help" to open the whole window with more buttons than just tickets to chose from.

I have now resubmitted some of my "Tickets" as "Bug Reports".

[Macdui]

EU peek time evening on Evernight.

Took various toons through the cisterns and southern dailies (my usual routine these days), ride down the road to south didn't hitch so much, speed indicator stayed at 16.0 and didn't occasionally drop to zero several times along the way. I didn't get skill lag/delay in the public instances as say the last few evenings. Turbine will know how many were logged on the server so it's either numbers were down or I saw an improvement.

My customary scholar node farm along the pelennor wall was also less laggy, so again either improvement or not many peeps online. Don't know if tweaks have been made as a result of all the /bug reports yet, Turbine could tell us if they have or just that numbers are declining. At one point I was thinking someone had taken my reports and fixed all the /locs I had reported so I should vary my route for the next evening.

Ended the night with a few Thorog runs. We didn't have a full 24 and only the odd LM but although my skills were delayed somewhat they didn't totally lock up. Again this could be improvement or a lack of numbers.

Will see if tomorrow brings a different story or someone can tell me if the server was down on numbers this evening.

But I won't get my hopes up just yet as it's not the hoped for performance increase over Needham.

Mac

[Zachski]

Bug reports contain more data than simply what you type in.

So it's not a case of "no bug reports means no problem" as so many of you seem to be leaping to the conclusion of (as no GM has said that as far as I've read)... but rather, "we need more bug reports to gather more data from multiple computers in multiple locations so that we can find out exactly why there's so much lag there."

As far as "why don't they just log in themselves?" Well... you don't know that they aren't. There's more devs than the ones posting in the forums. And unless you've memorized every GM username, I doubt you could tell who's a GM and who isn't in the game.

Remember that working on the lag has to be done at the same time as working on future content. And if Turbine's downsized for any reason, that means they have less people and resources to work on things, and those people might have less time to work on things as well.

This is why I say hostility doesn't solve anything. You're yelling at people who are trying to do their job, particularly the people trying to remain diplomatic on the forums.

Fact is, yeah, they were probably sure that moving would increase server performance, and aren't sure why it isn't. Computers and servers are funny like that - sometimes an upgrade performs worse than what you upgraded from. Buying yet another new server simply isn't in the budget yet - the move was too recent. So they're trying to work with what they have.

They're not malicious. Their bosses might be, but the devs are not. They don't deserve this hostility. It's good to be angry about the state of affairs, but there's no excuse for insults.

[BBChild]

This is an automated response that is there in case a player is using /bug to report an issue that they may need GM help to resolve in the short term, like a quest that is broken or a loading issue, etc. For cases like the lag reports a /bug (and I want to thank the many of you that submitted them this weekend) does give us the information we need to put together a pattern of reports. Thank you!

Our Moors raid made a point to tell everyone to send in a /bug report when experiencing lag, if it was convenient (usually after dying; "send in a /bug report before you come back to the fight"). We encouraged others to do this in the OOC as well. Unfortunately we can't always send the report in right where the lag was experienced due to the nature of PvP.

Things HAVE greatly improved since the first days after the data center move. Doesn't mean all problems are fixed.

Yet are still worse than pre-data center move .....

I do have to agree. It has improved since the datacenter move, but it still has a ways to go before it's an overall upgrade (or *gasp* fix). Before the move, I would not have lag or Reduced Awareness anywhere around the map in the Moors unless I was near a raid. When I transferred to a bigger server, there would be short lag spikes around "map edges" (imagining the place like a quilt, it's where one patch ends and another begins) and during larger raids, but still nothing unmanageable.

This past little while, however: constant Reduced Awareness debuff + spontaneous lag. Today I even had trouble flipping the Arador's End outpost because I was getting intense skill lag, despite there being absolutely no other players around. I also get random bits of lag all across the map, without any real rhyme or reason (in contrast with the "map edges"/quilt lag that was easy to predict). This is just when I'm on my own. When it comes to raid vs. raid action, the situation is dire: we can either just barely get skills off (but not in the right order due to lag), or we cannot get any skills off at all. There are times when we can't even move. Everyone just freezes and starts spot-running on the map, and we start staring each other to death. (This also happens when selecting a player that has more than three rows of buffs/debuffs/effects under their portrait.) We know it's not our rigs or internet, because we're all in Teamspeak talking normally, on a variety of different computers, in vastly different locations (Canada to America to France to England to Germany to Switzerland to Australia and more) and we all get the lag simultaneously.

On Evernight in the Moors, the worst spots seem to be Lug hill to Lug backdoor; inside and around TA; the GTA mapping point to the Thristlehide (sp?) herd; inside and around Tirith Rhaw; the space between TR and before the GV trees (strangely, GV trees and right close to GV has hardly any lag); and anywhere in the Sundering of Osgiliath. If there's some common design with those locations, that may help the devs track down some of what is causing the lag. The rest of the map, for the most part, seems manageable (unless we get some insane raid action going with 50+ people).

[Lordeamon]

And still no news about moving the EU regions servers to Europe?

[blackwitch]

Minas Tirith is almost unplayable. I have been playing there since before the new servers, its the worst it has ever been. Was doing deeds yesterday, lag, and rubberbanding. The worst is the pauses, the game stops and I can't hit anything, but sometimes
they can hit me. Great, the camps are hard enough without this and it was constant the whole time I played, finally gave up. This is by no way fixed.

[Kunae]

Bug reports contain more data than simply what you type in.

So it's not a case of "no bug reports means no problem" as so many of you seem to be leaping to the conclusion of (as no GM has said that as far as I've read)... but rather, "we need more bug reports to gather more data from multiple computers in multiple locations so that we can find out exactly why there's so much lag there."

As far as "why don't they just log in themselves?" Well... you don't know that they aren't. There's more devs than the ones posting in the forums. And unless you've memorized every GM username, I doubt you could tell who's a GM and who isn't in the game.

Remember that working on the lag has to be done at the same time as working on future content. And if Turbine's downsized for any reason, that means they have less people and resources to work on things, and those people might have less time to work on things as well.

This is why I say hostility doesn't solve anything. You're yelling at people who are trying to do their job, particularly the people trying to remain diplomatic on the forums.

Fact is, yeah, they were probably sure that moving would increase server performance, and aren't sure why it isn't. Computers and servers are funny like that - sometimes an upgrade performs worse than what you upgraded from. Buying yet another new server simply isn't in the budget yet - the move was too recent. So they're trying to work with what they have.

They're not malicious. Their bosses might be, but the devs are not. They don't deserve this hostility. It's good to be angry about the state of affairs, but there's no excuse for insults.

Never said they were malicious. It's my opinion that they are simply not up to the task. You're reading hostility and anger, where there's only contempt and disappointment.

Many posts and pages have been already written on the topic of the DC move, and how it was messed up, but that's done with. The situation is what it is, now, and belaboring would'a, could'a, should'a's isn't going to help anymore.

With the current situation:

1. The game sends out notifications to the client for "reduced awareness"... this *must* be tracked and logged on the server somewhere. They should be using that as their indicators of where to look.
2. From the forums and the bug reports that they do get, they should have a pretty clear idea of where to do further testing. As I stated in my previous post, the Pelennor and the Moors are the areas to focus on. 99% of the time, you ride out from MT front gates, and follow the road to the south-wall, you'll see plenty of examples of the lag that they can test with and see.
3. Their database performance appears to be worse post-move than it was previously. This should be able to be investigated and deciphered through the logging on the database.

Many of the problems that we've been experiencing since the DC move point to them not allocating enough RAM/CPU to the various servers, especially their database servers. These are all virtual servers now, so that could easily be rectified with just a few clicks. It should be readily apparent from server performance logs on the various servers, especially the database server.

Bottom line, in my opinion, is that they need to bring in an external consulting firm to identify and correct the problems that they're having. It does not appear that their current IT staff are experienced enough to solve the issues before them.

[Aldeld]

I just don't get the disconnect between Turbine staff and the moors players. People who play in the moors have stated the repro over and over again: go out in the moors during prime time, find a group of creeps and freeps fighting, and try to play. It's that simple. There should be no need for bug reports. That IS the bug report - LAG in the MOORS, repro: GO PLAY IN THE MOORS. This thread alone has people telling Turbine to do just that, and the staff's response is to remain oblivious and request bug reports.

I haven't bothered logging in a few weeks after MT update, due to CTD and massive lag. I see that not much has changed after all this time. So ironic that I felt like the approach to Mordor would be more difficult, only I didn't anticipate the difficulty would be due to Turbine's inability to release updates that weren't so broken it made people quit in droves. Sauron won, and he hasn't even been threatened by a single player yet. GG.