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Eve : Concept a 10, Implementation a 0
fizzle322
Member Posts: 723
in EVE Online
and I don't see it getting better anytime soon.
In other PVP games lag is measured in milliseconds. Having a 300ms ping in Counterstrike is almost a guarantee of getting pwnt.
This is probably the only PVP game in existance where it is considered "acceptable" to push a button and have your ship/avatar respond 3 seconds later.
I do not see the technical quality of the game improving any time soon.
I do not feel CCP/IBM has the technical capability to make Eve playable again for the PVP player.
No I'm not threatening to quit with my 50 accounts and bankrupt CCP.
I'm simply going to practice what I preach about being a SMART CONSUMER and shut down my 1 measly account until I get the game that is advertised on the website. A PVP-centric universe with thousands of other players PLAYING, and not spending most of their time RUBBERBANDING or WAITING FOR MODULES TO RESPOND or LAGBLOBBING in 0.0
I can no longer in good conscience recommend Eve to the new player.
While the concept behind Eve is a 10+, the technical implementation is essentially a botch job.
Comments
Counterstrike servers don't have over 1000 people in a game. Also in a shooter it's way more important to have low ping, than in a point and click based game. Eg in WoW there were times I had over 1000 ping, and the game was still playable.
Additionally lag in EVE depends on where you are. I moved my character out of cladari space, since the lag at the sweet agent systems was unbearable. Now at my new spot I have yet to experience any lag. The problem here are the centralized agents where all the agent runners move, resulting in severe lag in those regions.
Plus CCP is still cleaning up the mess after the dragon code deployment, and in addition a lot of the lag recently can be attributed to the mass bm copying that occued before the recent patch and lagged the server to hell.
And last but not least it's often the unsensiblity of people that produces lag (not necessarily meaning you in this case), not the technical restrictions that all games (including EVE) have. If a system has already 400 people in it then don't go there. If 2 fleets of 100 people each will fight in a system, then there will be lag for sure, no need to whine about it. And ofc the surrounding systems will likely lag too, because of the EVE server's structure.
Yes, because of its one server structure some parts of EVE are sometimes quite laggy, the trick is to avoid those parts. But I rather live with a little lag and give CCP time to clear up things, than a server split.
I give you one point though: CCP needs to do something about lag in fleetfights, especially about the lamers that create lag on purpose to lag out enemy fleets. That is something that bothers me a lot.
So all in all I would say that EVE is well implemented given current technology and CCP's staff size. It may be possible to do it better, yet I wouldn't call it a botch job - far from it.
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Originally posted by Mandolin
Designers need to move away from the old D&D level-based model which was never designed for player vs player combat in the first place.
Azirophos, all of what you said is true. The problem is it still doesnt excuse poor performance when it comes to fleet battles.
Lets be honest here, when people talk why is EVE so good, we all mention PvP and fleet battles. The problem is when there are more then 40 people in the system it start to lag. When there are 200 people in the system my commands work on 30 seconds delay. In a real fleet battle even a second can be enough to deside weather you live or die.
CCP supports over 5k systems at the same time. Only 5% of them are occupied at any given time; 15 - 20% at peak times. So if there is a battle that involves 100+ people I dont understand why cant you possibly loose one of the systems that no one is in and use those resources to help out processing the fleet battle.
The fact of the matter is, fleet battles do lag if they involve over 60 people. Anyone telling you otherwise never participated in one large enough. I am not talking about graphical lag either, we are talking about server lag.
CCP needs to address that issue ASAP, because of all things that has one of the biggest effects on veteran community. It is that community CCP has to thank for keeping their pet project going though all the dark ages they have been through.
Yes, as I said, that is the one point I give to fizzle.
I took part in that fleetfight against RA that managed to kill the server, just before the Hardware upgrade earlier this year. So I know all too well what you are talking about. I couldn't fire a single shot in all the endless minutes of the fight after V, LV and allies warped at the RA fleet at the 1v- station. I never finished a lock, and only managed to keep my bs through sheer luck. That is something I don't want to "enjoy" again, so since then I stood away from fleetfights. Nonetheless that is not gamebreaking for me. I enjoy smaller fights and stay clear of those big orange dots, and I am having funn too.
Though CCP definitely needs something to do about it, in the recent time you could really see they are giving their best to make the game more lagfree - sadly at especially fleetfights, they have failed sofar.
I completely agree Urza, they need to find a solution, but it won't come in a few days or even weeks.
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Originally posted by Mandolin
Designers need to move away from the old D&D level-based model which was never designed for player vs player combat in the first place.
Eve in the last month or so is having some problems dealing with the lag issue. Previous to that it appeared to be running very well when they upgraded their servers to the most powerful gaming super computer on the planet.
Patience ...
there are two main resons that i know of for why the lag has gotten worse lately.
Increase in people [again].
And the replacement of the core code with the Dragon coding.
Major lag has been common in big fleet battles since the games inception. There is no defending it and even among the hardcore 0.0 alliances its a major source of anger toward CCP. I think if they did away with bookmarks it would help but i know there's more to the problem than just that.
Let's face it though, EVE is a beast unto itself. CCP has put their money behind trying to resolve the lag issue. They've spents hours coding and recoding trying to resolve it. CCP might not know how to fix it but that doesn't mean they don't spend everyday trying to figure it out. Really if they get a lag free 1000 vs 1000 fleet battle the game would balloon to 100k online users in a week.
EVE isn't like the other games. That's not a defense to say it's alright. It's meant to bring some understanding to the overall battle that CCP is fighting. It's unique in it's hardware and its vision. It's nowhere near perfect but maybe one day
Make a difference!
Yes, Jhughesy speaks the truth.
It was alluded to that the recent slate of problems was thought to be intentionaly player based in relation to an inundation of stress upon the servers from copying bookmarks. Then you have players who intentionally try to creat lag and disrupt game play for opposing fleets by containing hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of BM's in their cargo holds or storing cans at POS's full of the BM's.
The guys and gals at CCP are losing sleep due the problems they are facing from Bookmarks. I hope they eliminate the need to play with BM's soon.
Yes, Jhughesy speaks the truth.
It was alluded to that the recent slate of problems was thought to be intentionaly player based in relation to an inundation of stress upon the servers from copying bookmarks. Then you have players who intentionally try to creat lag and disrupt game play for opposing fleets by containing hundreds upon hundreds if not thousands of BM's in their cargo holds or storing cans at POS's full of the BM's.
The guys and gals at CCP are losing sleep due the problems they are facing from Bookmarks. I hope they eliminate the need to play with BM's soon.
Maybee one way to go about it is to just disable bookmarks till a solution is found then when the solution comes everyone will be used to not using bookmarks.
The thing is BM's are only a small part of the problem. If CCP really thought that eliminating BM's would have a great effect on the lag then they would end their use in a hearbeat.
Make a difference!
If there is a will there is a way.
Everyone is saying that killing a Deathstar POS with enemy fleet support is impossible because of the lag even if you outnumber them, at least not without large dread losses. Well today we killed one, crashed the node 3 times before we finaly got it. Lost 1 dread who was unlucky enough to warp back to the pos when logging back in after one of the crashes.
Fleet where around 100-150 vs 50+pos.
Lag is bad yes but it can be overcome.
"Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason."
Well if they did away with the bookmarks and made a skill that would enable you to warp closer to objects then 15k it can do nothing but help.
The copying frenzy recently didnt help. I admit im part of the problem i alone have 10k bm's. trouble is they seem to be esential for 0.0 life.
Not stateing they alone are resposable for lag but i cant help but think they are a big problem.
160 in local at peak, but we were all moving in separate groups since it was a POS seige. Lots of folks tied up in their BS and their cap ships so we "support" had to mop up on the entrenched enemy. Ranged from 15-20 per side to 40 per side. Any more than that and the enemy doesn't come out to play. Numbers stayed remarkably even throughout the day.
I can fly a cepter at 2fps stricly as a tackler. No fancy anti-cepter maneuvers, but usually only the defenders can manage it if at all. Next to a POS with no hostiles it is pretty smooth once it loads with only 12fps. I have bad eyes and worse reflexes anyway. Just sit there and spam the buttons.
I'm much more partial to the gank, and the skirmish. I find it more satisfying, and I get to make more decisions and belay more orders that way. Plus there's money in it, and you can make it the organizing function of a merc or fighiting agency. If I was going to induct someone into EVE, I would induct them as an scout working parallel to an empire merc organization and pay them for their trouble. Or I would make them part of a gank squad if they are properly equipped and the other guys allow.
Plus the other major selling point in the game is salesmanship. I love to negotiate with people. Negotiating with them when they are in a pod is pretty easy to organize, if you can keep the newbs from popping the pod or drop the target hull. All you have to organize is your own squad and reconnaisance team. The game lets you go alot farther than this though if you are willing to make yourself available and really really want to make the effort. You can arrange all manner of trades and special relationships with other groups as far as your imagination and wherewithal are willing to reach. There is absolutely no limit for the commited businessman. That's the real cincher for me.
Problem is that before bookmarks you could warp to 0km at gates etc but ccp got rid of this for several reasons
The lag is bad, yes, but has anyone been in anyother MMO and done PvP?? Sure, comparing a MMO to a FPS is wrong, totally different setup, especially Counterstrike which can be played on my old 486 computer with 32 MB of ram. Simple game for simple minded people.
Eve on the other hand isnt simple. You got to think about whats going on. Each player has armor/shield constantly running, you got resisters running, Drones running, missiles/rockets flying, bullets wiaaing by, ships moving in different directions, plus people from different parts of the word with different pings. When you add this all up, Eve is handling all this VERY GOOD.
Then you got to think about the servers themselves. I help run a Gaming Center and plan on opening my own, so servers I know. CCPs servers are not upto par for what this game needs. IBMs?? Naw, get rid of them, bring in some AMD 64bit Dual Cores FX. Add 100-500 GB HDs, and around 10 Gigs of Ram, and things will improve, will this happen, nope. WEll unless we are all willing to pay $50 a month.
Plus, read the Dev blogs, read everything on Eve's website. This is a issue they are working, infact, next year, New graphics, major help in lag.
HAte to see you go, but if your worried about lag, well then there isnt a MMO out there that can be compared to Eve, after you add up everything that goes on in a PvP battle.
RAM, the 10 gigs your using is say PC 3200 or better but its missing something that a server cluster like eve needs, Mainly 3 letters, ECC or EDC. ECC/EDC or Error Detection/Checking(always mess up the middle one so may not have it right but you get the jist) and Correcting RAM. this ram is alot better than normal ram because it will actually check and attempt to fix any errors and is anywhere from 1-2 grand a gig(by my last check).
Proccessor, the AMD 64 bit dual cores would more and likely melt down sieze and crash. While they are absolutely wonderfull in a single proc or dual system, with upwards of 60+ procs load balancing processing needs they just aren't designed for it. But the Blade servers are, Although individually slower they are specifically designed to interface with each other and other hardware servers at a much improved rate. Frankly Blade servers are the best out there for what they do which is why they are used. Don't give IBM a bad rap they pretty much invented the server/mainframe market and they know what they are doing in that department(well for the most part).
Hard drives, Best guess each blade is assigned a 30-40gig hard drive if that. each server doesn't really need that large as its not doing any file services. That said they do have a RANSAM SSD(Solid State Drive) which well there isn't much above that. SSD drives for a simple explination is a high-capacity NVRAM(ram that doesn't lose its information when you power off) chip as such its not limited to RPM for data access and its transfer rates are far higher than any standard drive including "raptors". and well you pay for it well they did at least.
For the most part if you were discussin a server shard like many other MMOs it probably would work, but with a server cluster your choices begin to be limited. Things like ECC RAM, SSD drives, and blade servers start becoming the way you have to look for reasons that are transparent to most people.
That all said they really need to try to optimize there code. limiting BMs copying to a downtime action may or not be possible, and may or not be possible. I trust CCP to fix things and well give it time as they are going to be needing to take time just to get some more information on where the new issues are from. Though they need to hurry up!
It is not handling it all very good. Why are you comparing EVE to Counterstike instead of other MMO's? Everyone has lag, in disreguard of how good your computer is. The major issue of lag is database communication delay, it ise server lag not graphical lag.
Network code optimization and creative solutions can do wanders w/o buying extreemly expensive servers. Just like in any problem you can either solve it by buying better system or you can think of how to optimize the network code so there will be less bottlenecks.
New Graphics is major help in lag? How does that work? One deals with network code the other with 3D models, rendering and DX protocols.
There are a lot of MMOs you can compare to EVE. Since you are not actually running everything on the same physical server. Every system can be treated as a zone, that gets hosted by either a separate server shard or is run on a virtual server. Seeing how that is the case, there is no reason why I cant treat it any differently from zones in EQ or planets in SWG. Based on my expiriences in SWG (pre-NGE) we could have 200 vs 200 battles, yes there were lag, but not as bad as EVE right now.
Note, I am not a hateboi, I am a subscirber and I love EVE with my heart and soul, but we cant let our positive stence towards the game blind our common sence.
It is not handling it all very good. Why are you comparing EVE to Counterstike instead of other MMO's? Everyone has lag, in disreguard of how good your computer is. The major issue of lag is database communication delay, it ise server lag not graphical lag.
Network code optimization and creative solutions can do wanders w/o buying extreemly expensive servers. Just like in any problem you can either solve it by buying better system or you can think of how to optimize the network code so there will be less bottlenecks.
New Graphics is major help in lag? How does that work? One deals with network code the other with 3D models, rendering and DX protocols.
There are a lot of MMOs you can compare to EVE. Since you are not actually running everything on the same physical server. Every system can be treated as a zone, that gets hosted by either a separate server shard or is run on a virtual server. Seeing how that is the case, there is no reason why I cant treat it any differently from zones in EQ or planets in SWG. Based on my expiriences in SWG (pre-NGE) we could have 200 vs 200 battles, yes there were lag, but not as bad as EVE right now.
Note, I am not a hateboi, I am a subscirber and I love EVE with my heart and soul, but we cant let our positive stence towards the game blind our common sence.
The solarsytems are on separate machines in the cluster but the databases are shared through the entire playerbase. This is not something that other MMO's could do. Each shard has a separate database for everything. The amount of transactions that the EVE server has to do on a daily basis is likely exponentially higher than most other MMO's.
As for the Hardware, CCP already has the best equipment money can buy. Each machine in the cluster has 2 Opteron's and I believe 16 Gigs of ram, which is the max that their 32-bit game code can handle. The servers themselves don't have big harddrives because the majority of the database info is stored on a NAS and on the RAMSAN. There's a few kinks with Dragon and once they iron them out the game should start working much better but until they figure out how to implement dynamic load balancing on their system there's not a hell of a lot they can do about fleet combat, and that is not a simple problem to solve.
I wouldn't say implementation is a '0'.
Since you can PVP it has to at least be a 5 or 6.
I loved my 7-8 months playing EvE, but as fun as the PvP was *sometimes, the vast majority of my time in PvP was either:
- super-lagged fleet battles as described by OP
- smaller battles that involved lots of warping (running) away and preventing warping away.
Once I stopped having fun in PvP, didnt really feel like logging in anymore.
Although I will say the 4 or 5 battles that were fun, were some of the most fun and rewarding I have had in any game period. But to spend all those hours planning and moving and building and training...for a few awesome moments..wasnt worth the time or the money.
And for some reason (and I've played Elite / Privateer / Freelancer, EvE was the game I've wanted for nearly 20 years) I felt very little immersion in the game world. The game just boiled down to clicking on / moving around icons, and doing a lot of math.
Again, I have no hate for EvE. I plan on checking in every few months to see what has changed. But the flawed PvP and lack of immersion did me in.
Stikato
UO/EQ/DAoC/EvE/?