Question for the HC folk - Do Giant Monsters cause lag?

[ZacKing]

Hoping someone from HC can chime in on this or maybe one of the GMs can ask around and post a definitive answer here.

 

There seems to be a lot of confusion every week during the weekly Saturday Night Synapse league over on Torchbearer where arguments start over whether or not people bringing a Kronos Titan is a good or bad thing.  Some people seem to think a solitary Kronos Titan "causes significant lag" and/or causes the Babbages to scatter and run off from the main pile where they're being herded to in Skyway.  Others think its fun to bring them into the mix as its a fun to fight different GMs at the same time and a quick way to grab the Master of Olympus badge.  Plus its more merits and monstrous aethers for everyone to enjoy.

 

So can anyone from the HC team confirm whether or not the Kronos (or GMs in general) is or is not a "cause" of lag?  Or is the lag which some experience more due to the 20+ Babbages herded together in one spot spawning Sprockets with at least 3 or 4 full leagues of players on the map firing off every power they have including Incarnate pets/shields/AoEs in a confined area?  Are there GMs that are more or less "problematic"?

 

I can't speak for everyone, however for me personally, I can get quite a lot of lag whether there's a Kronos or not.  There have been times where teams have coordinated at least 20 Kronos Titan spawns on the hill in Talos and there wasn't any significant lag.  I've also seen Babbages run off from the main pile regularly when there's not a Kronos Titan in sight.  From what I can tell, they run off when there aren't enough taunters in the main pile or MM pets in the periphery of the pile start pulling aggro, or the random player just wanting to tag a Babbage for fun pulls it off the pile.  I admit I don't know for sure if the Kronos is indeed a factor or not, so I wanted to ask in the hopes of preventing any future confusion and argument.

 

Lastly, I'd like to give a huge shout out and big thank you to @Kalikamatafor graciously hosting this very fun event every week.  Your efforts don't go unnoticed and are appreciated by a whole lot of us.  Thank you.

Edited October 14 by ZacKing

[tidge]

I don't think any particular Giant Monster is causing lag.

 

For the Torchbearer SNS events, I am convinced it is the players and the large number of power effects that need to be resolved (as well as video effects, ehem Storm). A Kronos Titan's Swarm Missles might contribute more particles than certain other GM attacks, but I don't think that is the issue.

 

I have felt the same sort of lag I've seen from SNS, but not as severe, from Torchbearer's PI Halloween hotel. Simply being in the zone can be a struggle. I used to think it was perception range, but I was getting some click/door/click/attack issues on the far end of the main island.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

4 hours ago, ZacKing said:

Do GMs cause lag?

 

No.  I do not cause lag . . . usually . . . unintentionally . . .

[Glacier Peak]

I know when GMs spawn GMs during events, my lag spikes. I dunno if that's anecdotal, personal bias, or inconsequential to the discussion - either way I typed it!

[ZacKing]

3 hours ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

No.  I do not cause lag . . . usually . . . unintentionally . . .

 

Haha!  Good one!  I edited the post title for clarity there.  All joking aside, would you be kind enough to ask one of the HC folk about this?  Would be great to have an answer.  Thank you!

[Excraft]

I agree, it would be great to have a definitive answer to this.  I'm hoping someone from HC sees the thread and can answer definitively as it's sadly bringing out the absolute worst behavior in some people. 

 

Just last week there was a lot of ridiculous and childish bickering in broadcast over someone bringing a Kronos into the Babbage pile.  There were several people on the main league belittling others in broadcast and essentially demanding players in the league put those people on global ignore simply because they're of the opinion that the Kronos isn't the cause of any of the perceived problems.  My own daughter got some extremely offensive and nasty tells from a few of these people because she said said the Kronos is fun and isn't a problem.  That's definitely not cool for people to behave like that, especially since she was on her tank and was helping to corral the Babbages as she usually does. 

 

18 hours ago, tidge said:

For the Torchbearer SNS events, I am convinced it is the players and the large number of power effects that need to be resolved (as well as video effects, ehem Storm). A Kronos Titan's Swarm Missles might contribute more particles than certain other GM attacks, but I don't think that is the issue.

 

I don't think the Kronos is an issue either.  My daughter was in on the overflow league last week and they were very short on taunters as the main league started exiting.  Lack of sufficient aggro management combined with MM pets close by the gathering area and overzealous players tagging Babbages is what was causing them to wander off.  Not to mention there was one complete ahole there deliberately trying to sabotage the event because they were pissed they couldn't fill a Synapse TF and blamed the SNS for it.  Anyway, Babbages wander whether there's a Kronos there or not and there's lag whether there's a Kronos or not, so the Kronos isn't a problem.  I think you're exactly right in that it's the large number of players in the zone in a concentrated area firing off everything under the sun at once.  That's a lot for the game to render in such a tight space, so there's going to be lag, just like the ToT/Zombie/Banner leagues in PI get laggy due to all the players and FX in one spot. 

 

23 hours ago, ZacKing said:

Lastly, I'd like to give a huge shout out and big thank you to @Kalikamatafor graciously hosting this very fun event every week.  Your efforts don't go unnoticed and are appreciated by a whole lot of us.  Thank you.

 

I second this.  Big thanks to @Kalikamatafor hosting this every week.  It's a great time and fun community event. 

[Clave Dark 5]

19 hours ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

 

No.  I do not cause lag . . . usually . . . unintentionally . . .

I'm not willing to let that slide without corroborating evidence...

[tidge]

I'm sorry this happened.

 

30 minutes ago, Excraft said:

Just last week there was a lot of ridiculous and childish bickering in broadcast over someone bringing a Kronos into the Babbage pile.  There were several people on the main league belittling others in broadcast and essentially demanding players in the league put those people on global ignore simply because they're of the opinion that the Kronos isn't the cause of any of the perceived problems.  My own daughter got some extremely offensive and nasty tells from a few of these people because she said said the Kronos is fun and isn't a problem.  That's definitely not cool for people to behave like that, especially since she was on her tank and was helping to corral the Babbages as she usually does.

 

For better or worse, it feels (to me, can't speak for anyone else) that there is an undercurrent of (different types of) entitlement when it comes to Torchbearer's SNS. It was a fun idea, and a neat player-instigated challenge to the game's mechanics to simul-spawn multiple concurrent instances of the Giant Monster. I really got a kick out of playing the event for the first few months, between "it's not a race", "Our challenge settings are WHAT?", "How about we defeat that Boomtown Babbage for the lulz?", etc. For quite some time it's felt more like "give me my merits!" with a LOT of broadcasting about (a wide spectrum of) behaviors.

 

I got a small number of less-than-polite comments for bringing a Babbage to Synapse before the leagues formed and launched! I did this to break up the monotony. I'm sure those players had a rationale for acting upset, but I was like WTF, we're all here to face this thing right? We would occasionally get player-spawned Kronos before the event too, and I thought that was great fun.

 

38 minutes ago, Excraft said:

My daughter was in on the overflow league last week and they were very short on taunters as the main league started exiting.  Lack of sufficient aggro management combined with MM pets close by the gathering area and overzealous players tagging Babbages is what was causing them to wander off. 

 

While there hasn't been a shortage of folks in the Saturday Night Skyway City zone "making mistakes", and I don't doubt that there are possible griefers, I find it easier to believe that there are some fraction of players that simply don't know how the game works on some basic levels. I know that multi-boxers, despite their own self-assessment, don't really pay attention to everything... I used to see the usual multi-box suspects standing by, occasionally with things like damage auras on, or their pets on defense (and triggering more aggro), etc.

 

The aggro management is tricky, because even Tankers with Taunt only have an aggro cap of 5 targets. I'd want to believe that a small handful of Tankers could keep all the Babbages taunted but as a practical matter I don't know that once there are more than 12 that at least one of them isn't going to actually be taunted. My Tankers have a 6-slotted Taunt, and when one decides to break off, it hasn't been trivial in the past to get its attention.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

On 10/13/2024 at 11:49 AM, ZacKing said:

Hoping someone from HC can chime in on this or maybe one of the GMs can ask around and post a definitive answer here.

 

There seems to be a lot of confusion every week during the weekly Saturday Night Synapse league over on Torchbearer where arguments start over whether or not people bringing a Kronos Titan is a good or bad thing. 

 

Obligatory disclaimer that I am a lowly GM and have limited information.

 

First, you have to define what you mean by lag, as folks use lag to describe any kind of slowdown or glitch.   When your game starts looking more like a slideshow than smooth animations, that is usually a client's (player's) computer not being able to keep up with everything going on around him or her.  When your powers aren't recharging when they should then that is the server-side that is having trouble keeping up.  Server-side slowdowns might also manifest as critters (not players) rubber-banding.  When players rubber-band, that's a data packet loss between the server and the client.

 

Server packet loss can occur anywhere in the chain between the player's computer and the server, starting from the player's wifi and router, to all the hubs in between you and the server and then back again.

 

Having a lot of players and a lot of critters together and using powers generates HUGE amounts of data that needs to be shuttled back and forth between the client and server.  And that can cause problems with the client, the server, and the packet exchange.  All those powers hitting multiple critters have to be calculated and shuttled back and forth while at the same time updating all the player stats from being hit, or buffed, etc.  That's why things that have a lot of players and a lot of critters can make things seem laggy.   MSR raids in RWZ, Hammy raids, and league-sized trick-or-treating does this by having big groups of players and critters.

 

A single giant monster shouldn't cause much lag.  But that's not to say that some individuals might notice some delay due to their hardware or the stability of the signal between them and the server.  Especially if you have a league full of players in an open zone.  You have to remember that in an open zone the server is also managing all the critters just walking around, cars, etc.  So yeah, a dozen Babbages a few Kronos Titan's, and a few leagues worth of player should be a perfect storm of lagginess.  But it's not any single thing, it's everything, right there, all at once.

 

If you are referring to events occurring recently, you also have to keep in mind the damage caused by two hurricanes knocking down wires and power for large portions of the USA.

Edited October 14 by GM_GooglyMoogly

[Number Six]

A Giant Monster causes the exact same amount of "lag" (whether it's server resources, client rendering resources, or whatever) as a Hellion. It's just another critter, nothing special about it except that it has more hit points and is rendered larger on the screen.

[Snarky]

Giant Monsters obviously cause a lot of lag. They are huge.  To sustain this type of weight the entire server is working so hard

[Yumichan]

Thank you Number Six for your post.  Kronos Titan does not cause "all" lag like some people want to blame.  Kronos Titan is not problem.  Too many players in the same small space is the problem.  Those saying Kronos Titan is cause of problems don't know what they talking about.  Babbage monsters run away because too many players not tankers or brutes too close to the Babbage monster gathering area shooting them and drawing attention.  It is not Kronos Titans doing this, it is bad players. 

 

3 hours ago, tidge said:

For better or worse, it feels (to me, can't speak for anyone else) that there is an undercurrent of (different types of) entitlement when it comes to Torchbearer's SNS. It was a fun idea, and a neat player-instigated challenge to the game's mechanics to simul-spawn multiple concurrent instances of the Giant Monster. I really got a kick out of playing the event for the first few months, between "it's not a race", "Our challenge settings are WHAT?", "How about we defeat that Boomtown Babbage for the lulz?", etc. For quite some time it's felt more like "give me my merits!" with a LOT of broadcasting about (a wide spectrum of) behaviors.

 

I got a small number of less-than-polite comments for bringing a Babbage to Synapse before the leagues formed and launched! I did this to break up the monotony. I'm sure those players had a rationale for acting upset, but I was like WTF, we're all here to face this thing right? We would occasionally get player-spawned Kronos before the event too, and I thought that was great fun.

 

I receive so many bad message from very rude and indecent players when I say Kronos Titan is ok and fun to have there.  I agree with you there are many people who are very entitled and who believe server belongs to them.  They are very very rude people and they ruin what is fun time and fun event for everyone.  Very very frustrating!

 

Please forgive any grammatical errors.  English is not my first language. 

[ZacKing]

@Number Six and @GM_GooglyMoogly thank you both very much for your replies and for clarification.  I appreciate it and thank you as this will (hopefully) help clear up any further confusion on the topic.

 

19 hours ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

First, you have to define what you mean by lag, as folks use lag to describe any kind of slowdown or glitch.   When your game starts looking more like a slideshow than smooth animations, that is usually a client's (player's) computer not being able to keep up with everything going on around him or her.  When your powers aren't recharging when they should then that is the server-side that is having trouble keeping up. 

 

As I understand it based on what people have been saying in broadcast during the event, the slowdown and slideshow effect and powers not recharging are what most are experiencing.  The question is always over what's causing it and there seems to be a few people who think that it's the Kronos causing all of the lag.  For me, I get the lag and slow recharging powers whether there's a Kronos there or not.  It's safe to say based on @Number Six posted here is that it isn't the Kronos alone causing all of the problem, it's the combination of everyone and everything. 

 

21 hours ago, tidge said:

For better or worse, it feels (to me, can't speak for anyone else) that there is an undercurrent of (different types of) entitlement when it comes to Torchbearer's SNS.

 

I don't know any of the people who organize this personally so I can't say for sure.  I will say after last week where it was exceptionally bad, I think you're right in that there's a lot of entitlement surrounding the event.  That's sad because this is a fun event. 

 

21 hours ago, tidge said:

The aggro management is tricky, because even Tankers with Taunt only have an aggro cap of 5 targets. I'd want to believe that a small handful of Tankers could keep all the Babbages taunted but as a practical matter I don't know that once there are more than 12 that at least one of them isn't going to actually be taunted. My Tankers have a 6-slotted Taunt, and when one decides to break off, it hasn't been trivial in the past to get its attention.

 

Totally agree.  Every so often if you check the info for some of the players on their tanks trying to corral Babbages, you'll see they don't even have Taunt, and a few that do I would bet they don't even have it slotted.  Most seem to be relying on taunt auras or punchvoke.  That's not always going to cut it. 

 

Again, big thank you to @Number Six and @GM_GooglyMoogly for taking the time to respond.  It's much appreciated!

[tidge]

13 minutes ago, ZacKing said:

I don't know any of the people who organize this personally so I can't say for sure.  I will say after last week where it was exceptionally bad, I think you're right in that there's a lot of entitlement surrounding the event.  That's sad because this is a fun event.

 

I do not think it are the league leaders, or the folks that lead teams on the league that have a sense of entitlement. I've played with enough of them (on and off SNS) that the attitude is fun, with a slight variance around how long do we want to play in any given mission (i.e. difficulty) that shifts from time-to-time. The *only* behavior about the league(s) running the Synapse TF themselves that even borders on entitlement IMO is that while the Babbages are being gathered the zone becomes a lag-filled crawl for anyone who happens to be running missions in the zone for a non-SNS reason. 20+ minutes of filling a zone with players and Giant Monsters is somewhat excessive IMO.

 

I feel like I see shades of entitlement from the folks who swarm the zone (with or without their own private Babbages) who I gotta believe are just there for the reward drops. I've seen enough players drop from a Hami league after a triple bloom to know it isn't the challenge plus reward that engages some folks.

[Excraft]

Thank you @Number Six and @GM_GooglyMoogly for taking the time to respond.  Good to have confirmation that the Kronos isn't the massive problem some are making it out to be.

 

4 hours ago, ZacKing said:

As I understand it based on what people have been saying in broadcast during the event, the slowdown and slideshow effect and powers not recharging are what most are experiencing.  The question is always over what's causing it and there seems to be a few people who think that it's the Kronos causing all of the lag. 

 

That's what I gather from the complaints and league/broadcast chatter as well.  Those on the league who have been saying that the Kronos is a "huge problem" and "causing all the lag" don't have any hard evidence to back that claim up if you ask them.  Their "evidence" amounts to "so and so heard from such and such who spoke to someone who heard from a Dev" that there's "something in the code for the Kronos" that makes it "cause lag" and such.  They believe it because their friend told them, so that must make it true.  Thankfully, having the reply here from @Number Six confirms none of that is true and we have a definitive answer. 

 

4 hours ago, tidge said:

I do not think it are the league leaders, or the folks that lead teams on the league that have a sense of entitlement. I've played with enough of them (on and off SNS) that the attitude is fun, with a slight variance around how long do we want to play in any given mission (i.e. difficulty) that shifts from time-to-time.

 

I agree it's not any of the SNS league leaders, but there were a few of them in the main league last week telling everyone to put people on global ignore (even sharing the globals in league chat) simply because they had they said they didn't believe the Kronos was a problem.  I'm near positive that a few of the "regulars" on the main league were the ones who sent my daughter those very rude tells.  Probably the same players who sent @Yumichan the rude tells.  So it might not be the league leaders themselves, but they certainly don't seem to discourage it or say/do anything to curtail bad behavior like that.

 

4 hours ago, tidge said:

The *only* behavior about the league(s) running the Synapse TF themselves that even borders on entitlement IMO is that while the Babbages are being gathered the zone becomes a lag-filled crawl for anyone who happens to be running missions in the zone for a non-SNS reason. 20+ minutes of filling a zone with players and Giant Monsters is somewhat excessive IMO.

 

There was one player who was exceptionally rude last week who I'm sure the GM staff got plenty of support tickets about.  They were extremely pissed off that they couldn't fill their Synapse TF and blamed the league for it.  Totally uncalled for and rude behavior.

 

4 hours ago, tidge said:

I feel like I see shades of entitlement from the folks who swarm the zone (with or without their own private Babbages) who I gotta believe are just there for the reward drops. I've seen enough players drop from a Hami league after a triple bloom to know it isn't the challenge plus reward that engages some folks.

 

I don't think it's a problem to have others show up just for the Babbage fights.  The SNS is broadcast in LFG and other global channels when its forming and when the Babbages will start getting rounded up, so other people are always welcome to join in on the fun.  If the league leaders didn't want others to join in on the fun, they wouldn't be broadcasting it.

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Excraft said:

I don't think it's a problem to have others show up just for the Babbage fights.  The SNS is broadcast in LFG and other global channels when its forming and when the Babbages will start getting rounded up, so other people are always welcome to join in on the fun.  If the league leaders didn't want others to join in on the fun, they wouldn't be broadcasting it.

 

I think were are going to disagree about this, although I go out of my way to avoid SNS league activity and I don't get worked up about it.

 

Consider that another area of the game that offer tremendous rewards for league-level effort (Hamidon raids and IIRC ISMR) have actual player caps, presumably to make the game experience work better (i.e. play lag-free). I have seen chatter about "addressing leaching", but that would be impossible to prove. SNS is intended to set up a circumstance where much more than one full leagues worth of players (or at least, characters) are present in a zone in a way that would not be tolerated for Hamidon raids.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

While a single giant monster will cause no more lag than a single Hellion, each additional player and critter adds variables that have to be tracked. 

 

I also remember Faultline mentioning that ambushes use a lot of resources to path critters to the correct place.

 

And Kronos has quite a suite of AoEs powers.  (https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=malta.malta_kronos)  Babbage is not an AoE slouch either (https://cod.uberguy.net/html/powerset.html?pset=clockwork.babbage_ranged_powers)

 

Again, lowly GM here who is not a programmer so take this for what it's worth.  From experience we know that the game does not lag under most ordinary conditions with a handful of players battling a handful of critters but can lag when we have several dozen players battling large numbers of critters.  So presumably there is a continuum of data traffic from light to extreme.  I don't know where the needle tips from one to the other but, again presumably, there exists such a tipping point.  At some point, I think, adding one more player or one more critter will tip the scale.  It's also possible that each player has their own unique scale depending on hardware, distance from the server, etc.

 

I don't think that it makes a difference whether it's Kronos Titan or Babbage.  But once the numbers get there, one additional robot may be the straw that breaks the server's back.

[Nerio72]

Or one more pet. "Just had to bring Fifi out didnt ya?"

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 10/14/2024 at 3:46 PM, Snarky said:

Giant Monsters obviously cause a lot of lag. They are huge.  To sustain this type of weight the entire server is working so hard

 

Both Babbage and the Clockwork Paladin cause -end and -recovery, which counts as lag in my books.

[biostem]

On 10/13/2024 at 11:49 AM, ZacKing said:

So can anyone from the HC team confirm whether or not the Kronos (or GMs in general) is or is not a "cause" of lag?

I think you're looking at the wrong thing as the cause of lag, here;  It's not the GM itself that causes significant lag, it's all the people congregating around it and activating all sorts of powers, not to mention any passive/toggle effects they may have going on...

[ZacKing]

29 minutes ago, biostem said:

I think you're looking at the wrong thing as the cause of lag, here;  It's not the GM itself that causes significant lag, it's all the people congregating around it and activating all sorts of powers, not to mention any passive/toggle effects they may have going on...

 

Yes, I understand that.  If you read the rest of my posts here, you'll note that I never suspected a single Kronos is causing of all the lag issues and problems during a player run event.  There are some who seem to believe a single Kronos GM causes all the lag along with a whole host of other issues, which led to some very rude behavior by some people.  Perhaps take a second read through the thread again.  You're not saying anything we didn't already know and has been graciously confirmed. 

[Skyhawke]

Wellllll, isn't the Mapserver event known for a giant monster that (checks notes) does a lot of weird @#$%, with one such @#$% being lag/rubberbanding? Soooooo, technically...

[brass_eagle]

Just a thought, there is a "LAG" toggle macro that has been circulating around Excelsior--

 

/macro_image "originicon_natural" "LAG Toggle" "++noparticles"

 

I do not know who created it or I would give credit. You can click it to turn particles off and on. If this works for folks complaining then with would suggest the density of players and their power effects are to blame. Bring back naked Hami raids!

 

More anecdotally on topic, I've been on leagues that have had more than 10 Kronos spawn in Talos (sequentially) and any lag mostly occurs when the players congregate. Especially stormies! (no hate). Nothing major except stuttering when 24 players are blasting away.

 

Disclaimer: just my experience. There may be something a dum dum like me doesn't know.

Edited October 15 by brass_eagle

[Rishidian]

No drop of rain claims responsibility for the flood.

 

--No idea who said that

[ZacKing]

13 hours ago, Skyhawke said:

Wellllll, isn't the Mapserver event known for a giant monster that (checks notes) does a lot of weird @#$%, with one such @#$% being lag/rubberbanding? Soooooo, technically...

 

Might want to read the entire thread.  😉