Warning to players physically far from server locations

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1

Just a quick word of warning based on my play testing of the online flavour of LE.

If you are physically far from a server location, be prepared for some unpleasant behaviour, rage enducing problems and irritating bugs that all seem to be timeout related.

Playing locally in offline mode has none/very little of the same problems and the game is great and I would recommend it to anyone without a moments hesitation - I am a fan, as proven by my 2000+hours before 0.9 dropped.

I have levelled one char up to level 64 online and entered Monoliths and my experience is based on testing play with it. I have tried to differentiate issues that could be bugs vs timeout problems as much as I can. This is not about bugs, its about timeout issues that dont seem to occur on offline play.

I live in South Africa, which is as the sparrow flies, depending on specific location about 5500 miles (8800km) from the UK. Due to physics, the ping times for anything between SA and most locations in the UK & Europe are roughly 160ms at BEST for normal consumer users - even someone lucky enough as me with symmetrical 200mbit Fibre & gigabit wired networking.

Beyond the “normal” lag that one expects from playing games on servers so far away, there are a lot of issues that are far worse imho.

  • Progress & items are lost due to what seems to be timeouts and server connection lost issues.

    • when logging back in after a connection failure and finding a quest was rolled back or echo was recorded as failed even though you completed the objective.
    • when you cannot pick up anything that has dropped but can still use a portal.

  • Maps paritally load

    • without mobs, who then magically appear later as you have moved a screen or two away from the start
    • Quest Echos that dont load quest objectives/triggers so they cannot be completed and require logging in and out multiple times in the hope they do load in.
    • Minions that dont load in on new locations and have to be resummoned. E.g. Manifest Armor.

  • Strange Ping & server locations - personally I have always been allocated to EU West but others are reporting being sent to odd servers further away than their nearest ping. I have also experienced bizzare ping reports from LE saying I am getting 40ms ping - which would be physically impossible for EU based servers from SA.

  • Load times are very long. I realise that there is a lot of debug happening but its really painful waiting for the loading screen. Thank god the wormhole animation was removed.

  • Network traffic. Not sure on the netcode side but I have noticed some things:

    • I dont specifically care about the bandwidth needed - I can usually get 120mbit+ when testing download speeds to the UK on my link even from here and I dont pay for bandwidth (unlimited package). But I have been monitoring things and there are 2 to 3mbit/s spikes when loading maps and even during play it seems like it can spike up to over a 1mbit/s for no apparent reason - at least not that I can see. Not sure how much of an issue this is but it could be a problem when multiplied by thousands of concurrent users or users with smaller pipes.

    • I also monitored the network traffic vis Resource Monitor and it seems like a there is a lot of traffic to US based servers (at much higher ping rates 250ms) even tho the game is saying I am playing on EU. The bulk is definitely going to the EU but it still seems to be calling home to the US with much higher ping rates. No idea if this is potentially causing problems but it seems illogical to me.

Anyway… Those that know me, I am a fan and recommend LE without any reservation.

But playing it online right now with a high ping seems to be incredibly painful.

and no, while I would like local servers (come on Amazon), I would prefer that these issues be addressed rather than “hidden” by removing the delays.

2

So, what you’re saying is, if you live a long way from the servers (I’d be surprised if there weren’t any in SA) that you get lag.

Are people not aware of this in this day and age?

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3

Have you tried playing with another player online? Because let me tell you, being near a server doesn’t matter on that score, its bloddy awful.

4

Smart arse. :stuck_out_tongue: Yeah you get lag, but theres lag and then there is LAG (with repercussions) which is what I am concerned about.

I compare it to other online games (of various genre) where lag is a common problem for those of us who dont have local servers but where the netcode is such that the game recovers state and remains stable irrespective of the lag. i.e. it doesnt bork out like LE currently does.

I realise that LE has a ways to go with the netcode portion of the game, but right now its more than painful to play when the issues I mentioned happened as it presents frustration… this is especially noticeable when the offline mode has no such problems so comparitively it seems worse.

5

Havent even tried to yet - from past experience with other online multiplayer games, playing with others with these problems just makes it worse. At least when you are on your own, the issue only affects you.

6

My point still stands. Nobody is the current day and age should need to be warned about lag. It’s like being told to hold your breath if you put your face under water. Or that freshly made coffee is hot. Not a thong that should be needed. :wink:

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