Halloween event?

[Boudicia.Dark]

Is it happening again this year? Today? It's the hap-happiest time of the year!

[Glacier Peak]

I'd wager it will happen on a Tuesday when server maintenance occurs. 

[Snarky]

[Clave Dark 5]

17 hours ago, Boudicia.Dark said:

Is it happening again this year? Today? It's the hap-happiest time of the year!

If you hadn't asked it, I would have.

 

[Boudicia.Dark]

6 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

If you hadn't asked it, I would have.

 

I walked so you could fly....or something like that...

[Clave Dark 5]

In preparation for the season, I'm revamping my pumpkin-headed MM King-Pumpkin Spice, who is sadly a Mercs MM.  But still, it has to be done.

[Hedgefund2]

See: 

 

 

[Coyotedancer]

I'm not at all sure we needed EBs added to trick or treating,,, but... BadgesBadgesBadgesBadges

[Jacktar]

Cannot wait for the event start because after last years mind boggling SG set up as a Haunted House I soooo want to see it again along with any changes they may have made.

If you missed it last year DO NOT MISS IT THIS YEAR! It is utterly fantastic…

Bring it on 😀😀

[Clave Dark 5]

12 hours ago, Coyotedancer said:

I'm not at all sure we needed EBs added to trick or treating,,, but... BadgesBadgesBadgesBadges

It's usually just a chaos of bright colors and easy-peasy XP; I've more than once left my desk to grab something from the fridge, to "bio" etc. only to come back and find myself still inexplicably alive*, so I don't have any problem with a bit of grit being mixed in with the grease.

 

*Now if only I could manage to do that all the other times I am still sitting at my desk...

[Coyotedancer]

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

It's usually just a chaos of bright colors and easy-peasy XP; I've more than once left my desk to grab something from the fridge, to "bio" etc. only to come back and find myself still inexplicably alive*, so I don't have any problem with a bit of grit being mixed in with the grease.

 

*Now if only I could manage to do that all the other times I am still sitting at my desk...

 

If you join one of the big Motel of Murder leagues, sure... It's a little different if you're solo/duo or with a small team. 

[Clave Dark 5]

1 hour ago, Coyotedancer said:

 

If you join one of the big Motel of Murder leagues, sure... It's a little different if you're solo/duo or with a small team. 

I've done both (that one area on Sharkhead I think it is was a fave during Live).  You're mistaking what I said as a negative description, whereas I rather do enjoy me some chaos of bright colors and easy-peasy XP.  😃

 

Now it's going to have a bit more of a fight to it, so that'll be fun... funner... fun as well...  

[Generator]

It was stated that these EBs, if they're not engaged, will despawn after 60s.  So if you're not up to taking one on, scoot up the street for a moment or two, possibly while using  bind that yells, "Ahh, mummy house!"

"THAT'S the house!?!?!?"

[roleki]

Oh man.  Halloween Event is live now and I'm stuck earning money so I don't die from starvation or exposure to the elements.  

 

I *knew* I should have transferred my consciousness into a robotic chassis when I had the chance years ago.

[Zhym]

1 hour ago, roleki said:

Oh man.  Halloween Event is live now and I'm stuck earning money so I don't die from starvation or exposure to the elements.  

 

I *knew* I should have transferred my consciousness into a robotic chassis when I had the chance years ago.

Gotta work on your priorities...

 

FWIW, the new badges are quick to get.  Hop to Spookygon Island, join the mob at the Motel of Horror, and you'll have defeated five of each Halloween EB in no time.  I was able to top off my badges in a standard 15 minute break period.  Win!

Edited October 4, 2022 by Zhym

[roleki]

1 hour ago, Zhym said:

Gotta work on your priorities...

 

FWIW, the new badges are quick to get.  Hop to Spookygon Island, join the mob at the Motel of Horror, and you'll have defeated five of each Halloween EB in no time.  I was able to top of my badges in a standard 15 minute break period.  Win!

Agh, you're killing me.  You're supposed to say "Nobody is even ToTing, I think they're respectfully waiting for you to get out of work, @roleki!"  

[High_Beam]

5 hours ago, roleki said:

Oh man.  Halloween Event is live now and I'm stuck earning money so I don't die from starvation or exposure to the elements.  

 

I *knew* I should have transferred my consciousness into a robotic chassis when I had the chance years ago.

Lord Nemesis says you are not meeting your daily performance benchmarks and must attend remedial work efficiency training.  Meet at the O'Gaffney Law Firm after the pact is signed with the Circle of Thorns.  No hero would be foolish enough to disrupt that.

Edited October 4, 2022 by High_Beam

[High_Beam]

On 10/2/2022 at 2:22 AM, Clave Dark 5 said:

 

The layers of creepy in this image are glorious.

[Zhym]

On 10/1/2022 at 2:08 PM, Snarky said:

 

With the new Ancient Vampires all over the place, I keep thinking Peregrine Island is being overrun by Snarkies.

 

[Power Extreme]

Who ever released this lag fest of a patch should have his butt kicked,PI is down with ungodly lag, it's so bad it stops you in your tracks. 64 gig ram, 8 gig video ( turned down to min just to move )with fiber internet, 

[Zhym]

1 hour ago, Power Extreme said:

Who ever released this lag fest of a patch should have his butt kicked,PI is down with ungodly lag, it's so bad it stops you in your tracks. 64 gig ram, 8 gig video ( turned down to min just to move )with fiber internet, 

 

It's just part of the Halloween event and PI having room for all those leagues, monsters, pets, etc.  Learn to love it (or, y'know, go hunt somewhere else).

[Glacier Peak]

2 hours ago, Power Extreme said:

Who ever released this lag fest of a patch should have his butt kicked,PI is down with ungodly lag, it's so bad it stops you in your tracks. 64 gig ram, 8 gig video ( turned down to min just to move )with fiber internet, 

What in the world makes you think having 64 GBs of RAM will make lag occur less? Let alone your graphics card memory...?

 

Latency or ping, is determined by how long it takes for your system to send and receive data to the server that the game is running on. Frame rate is more tied to your personal computer set up, where the timings on your RAM and the clock speed of your CPU, in addition to the frequency of the GPU you mentioned, would have something to do with how often your screen refreshes a new image after it is done rendering.

 

As this is a seasonal event, there are bound to be more people on each server. However, if you are experiencing a "lag fest," perhaps try playing at different times or on a different shard in the mean time.

[MistressOhm]

5 hours ago, Power Extreme said:

)with fiber internet, 

 

Lag is network-related 99% of the time.  the more people in the zone, the more power effects going off, the more mobs being spawned, contribute to lag.  This is because the clients all have to communicate what they're doing so as to coordinate what's displayed.  Turning your graphics to minimum probably isn't helping as much as you think it would.  Reducing draw distance MIGHT help, because even though your game will still be told about everything going on, it can safely ignore more of it rather than trying to acknowledge it and render it. 

 

Also, having fiber 'net is nice in that it eliminates ONE bottleneck between you and the game, but it doesn't do anything for all the ones you have no control over.   Put simply, having a superhighway interchange built as your driveway does nothing to alleviate the traffic jam on another segment of highway someplace else.  

 

All the above considered... if playing on another shard on the same server makes things better, then it's a sign that HC has done a decent job allocating network bandwidth between virtual servers.  The bottleneck is likely at the virtual machine itself.  If switching shards is still laggy, then the physical net connections to the host systems are likely maxed, and you'd probably have to play on another set of VM hosts or even another datacenter.  If EVERYTHING is laggy... then there's an edge router someplace (likely on the network provider feeding the game, something like Level3, AT&T, or Convergys) that's getting a ton of traffic or it's dropping packets at random and needs to be serviced. 

 

The only thing popping up on DownDetector at the moment is Overwatch 2 and Overwatch, apparently they're being DDoS'd.  IF (!) that malicious traffic is flowing over the same network segments as what your connection to CoH uses? Guess what, you're in the jam-up too.  It's unlikely though; the first D in DDoS stands for Distributed, which means the bot clients spamming the service are located all around the world and hosted by different ISP's (often running on systems where the owners have no clue they're there).

 

If you want to see what's contributing to your game being slow on your system, open up Task Manager, and select the Performance tab.  Your network connection (which should be Ethernet, I know there's fast WiFi but it tends to get crowded real quick with all the 'stuff' we connect to it) should look relatively even with a few spikes here and there.  If it's completely pegged at the top, then you're likely exceeding the throughput (up and down) on your network adapter, and it's time to go thru the list of processes and see which ones are hogging the network.  The game really shouldn't be that bad since most of the heavy lifting is done client-side, it's told what to do and it reports what it's doing, it doesn't have to transfer sound or graphic information back and forth.

 

This is what my perf tab / network view looks like in PI right now.  This is on an ultrawide monitor (49") being driven by a GFX 1080 with 8gig RAM onboard and 16gb system.  Note that while there are some spikes to max on the network interface, they don't stick around.  So this is pretty normal. 

 

Edited October 5, 2022 by MistressOhm

[Zhym]

BTW, “lag” means something specific—it’s latency between your computer and the server.  It usually shows up as rubber banding.

 

What's happening in PI seems to be good old fashioned server-side slowness.  There’s too much going on in the zone for the servers to keep up.  So you get things like powers taking a really long time to activate.  It’s not a network thing and it has nothing to do with your processor, memory, or graphics.  It has everything to do with the mayhem going on at the motel.

 

Basically, if the slowness drives you nuts, avoid combat in the streets of PI for the next month.

Edited October 5, 2022 by Zhym

[MistressOhm]

@Zhym thank you.  That's a good argument for the HC crew to spin up another PI instance (so that those who aren't doing big teams have a relatively mellow place to do their thing).