500+ just not working in MA

[g00b]

Dear HTC,

I have played this game since beta. I played Warbirds before that. Fighter Duel on KALI before that. So I have a bit of experience.

Please don't brush this off as just another whiner complaining, but some honest usefull feedback.

For the last 2 years or so, lag and warpiness has increased. The threshold seems to be about 500 or more people in the server and it starts to fall apart. This is not just my observation but essentially everyone in game. In large furballs it quite frustrating to have bandits over 2k away simply changing direction at random and closer bandits still "blip" from point to point.

I repeat, this is not me or my connect. It is observed by everyone in my squad which also consists largely of old-timers. It is also observed by everyone in a large furball, I'll ask on range vox when it seems to be getting out of hand and get a unanimous from all present agreement that is warpy as heck.

It also manifests in things such as delayed kill and text messages, sometimes 5-10 seconds! Getting shot several seconds after a merge or when you can clearly see the enemy plane shooting or pointing way off target and hitting you anyways.

I know that managing 500+ players connections from all over the world is not easy. And during non-peak hours you system works great. I think your netcode and updating algorithm work well.

May I suggest simply throwing more horsepower and bandwidth at it? If that is simply not an option I can only suggest limiting the arena size to about 400 and starting multiple arenas. Perhaps you could have multiple servers world-wide with prioritized connections to the main server?

I think that this is seomthing you folks are really going to have to fix if you ever want to get more folks playing. i.e. currently the more playing, the worse the gameplay, meaning less new players. I doubt you will ever see 1000+ players in the current MA simply because the gameplay will be awfull.

Thanks for listening,

g00b

P.S. I have plenty of video showing people flying backwards, sideways, teleporting, etc... I'd be happy to provide these as well as pings and/or tracerts if that would help.

[rabbidrabbit]

I think the answer to your problem is better hardware or connectivity at HTC if this is the case.  I'll toss in that I commonly see folks warp all over the place too.

[LeadDog]

I agree too.  If I play early evening I fly with what seems to be almost no visible lag.  I shoot planes die, no warps, if I get shot down I can see in the film planes shooting me.  If the numbers get big I kill people and sometimes never get an assist or kill message, I see warps and occasionally get shot down and go NO way is he able to shoot me on from his 6 o'clock position in a fighter.  I fully understand occassional net warps but about the 500 mark these issues become fairly consistent no matter what my tracert says.

BTW I love the game and think for the most part the code is great.

[wrag]

I have a slow dialup connect with considerable line noise.

At times I'm watching the con on my 6, or even my 12, or just in my area at under 1.5k, and take hits that seem impossible.

The nose of the other guy doesn't even seem to point at me.......

It seems to be at it's worst when 500 or more are online but can also be as little as 400 for me.

Very rare but has happened under 150.

My connect sux.......

[bustr]

g00b,

What kind of a connection do you have?

I have DSL and my ping is 63 at 11-12 hops. My PC is a 3Ghz 1G ram and my FPS in the game are max 120 and  min 60. This holds true for me at 500+ players. When there are 500 or more players I begin to be able to identify which players have dial up or a high ping time. When my squad flys in formation at these times, the members who have dial up or a long ping time are the ones warping forwards and back into position while holding still in formation.

[g00b]

I've had DSL for 6 years now. Ping around 70-90 with I think 15 hops. I'll double check when I get home. I used to be a network engineer so I know my connect is solid.

The flying in formation thing happens to us too. We'll be flying along in a nice tight formation then all of a sudden 1 or more of us starts warping up to 500 yrds forward and back. And this is in straight and level flight, no wild manuevers.

Come on HTC. Please stop ignoring this issue. Eventually something HAS to be done.

g00b

[bustr]

g00b,

I seem to remember a thread when I first started AH about 2 years ago which suggested if your hops are over 11 that you may start experiencing some of the issues we are talking about. I live in California and 12 hops has been my max. On rare occasions when something has caused my hops to increase to 15 or 16, my game starts getting like you have described. I have been fortunate with this being twice since I've been with the game.

I could venture at 500-550 of 700 connections to the server we are seeing an acceptable variance in client server interaction. You have to realistically expect issues since we both have, or do work in IT. Although I can sympathise with you that it would be better if the variance was more like that at 400 connections. I also suspect you know personaly that HTC cannot discuss the state of their environment with us. I will say that back before the ENY limiter when one of the Rook JSO nights got the number of connections over 600, I had all of the issues discussed here in spades.

So limiting 100+ players from signing on is the solution in the face of issues that are not game stoppers, but irritations? Or then you want HTC to suddenly make a capitol investment in beefier hardware, rather than on I assume an investment schedual they have worked out so we can keep paying the very equitable cost of $14.95 a month? How many players would be lost if they went "Ok n00b, you got it! And drop $250K-$400K in hardware and pass the upgrade cost on to us?

As you stated, you having been a network engineer, you know you either plan a long term investment cycle to stay in your budget, or,,,get a cost center number to bill back to. So maybe this spring is HTC's new hardware upgrade cycle....

[Blue Mako]

Or just limit the two week trialers access to the MA.  Let em in the CT, DA and TA as much as they want but only in the MA when numbers are sub 400 maybe?

[Flit]

Just so you know, there are known issues with Savvis that are being worked on.Just the fact they are one of the biggest backbones in the US has a bit to do with it.
 Also, anyone who dl's music , video,etc. and or uses bit torrent are also part of the problem, as they are choking up the 'net.

[GreenCloud]

i really dont have the problems of thsi warping that you call too...


im on dial up..i ping 200s..


i kill

//i hav eworse problems with my frmae rate

[g00b]

1st off.

bustr

1/4 million dollars for a server? Um... no. Try around aound 20k depending on how crazy HTC wants to get. I built the servers that nsync.com and backstreetboys.com ran on during their peak years ('99-'01). Think 10 million hits a day plus.

Number of hops has NOTHING to do with your connection. I do however, get routed through that chicago savvis router so if that's the problem maybe it's time HTC started kickin bellybutton and takin names. I used to do some work at Exodus in San Jose, home of Yahoo, EBAY and other major web sites. Most companies would simply not tolerate sub-standard connections if their companies livelyhood depended on it. There are channels to go through to get this stuff resolved.

It really feels like server overload to me though. Otherwise it wouldn't be a fairly consistent problem at 500+ users. It would just be screwy whenever savvis' connection got saturated.

My point was, that it is margineably playable at peak hours now. If HTC want to attract new customers they should really make an effort to fix it.

It's a real problem.

g00b

[bustr]

Sorry n00b,

I work for BofA in San Francisco in it's west coast data center. The numbers I quoted are rather standard for most of our projects. We are a littel bigger than most IT companies due to the global nature of our company and data requirments. I'll remember to lower my cost estimates to just the hardware and none of the hidden costs in future threads....... I'm used to calculating the TCO as the final numbers I quote.

[bustr]

Sorry n00b,

I work for BofA in San Francisco in it's west coast data center. The numbers I quoted are rather standard for most of our projects. We are a littel bigger than most IT companies due to the global nature of our company and data requirments. I'll remember to lower my cost estimates to just the hardware and none of the hidden costs in future threads....... I'm used to calculating the TCO as the final numbers I quote.

[g00b]

Bustr,

Would appreciate you not calling me n00b. Your 1/4 million estimate is not far off if you are counting paying a couple of engineers to do the migration and setup on top of hardware costs. Since HTC does all that stuff themselves costs are definately mitigated.

My main point still stands, gameplay at peak hours is marginal, and getting worse.

g00b