Thread: Efforts towards fixing the lag

I'm starting to believe that a major trigger for lag is proximity to other players, as has been hinted at before.

I do have experienced skill lag and freeze-ups when being completely alone however so it's not the whole truth. Yesterday I was running around finishing up some deeds in Trollshaws, and according to /who I was alone in the zone. Still had a couple of skill lags and some stuttering.

But, today I've been crafting a lot, running around in Galtrev and other towns with plenty of other players around. It's been a lot worse - stuttering when entering and exiting buildings, rubber-banding while running around. Almost as if the game client is unable to load textures quickly enough and goes down to a crawl while they're loading. But I do run the game off a fast SSD so that should be a non-issue. It's not "fragmented" or degraded either, I've run some benchmarks on the drive and it's at its peak performance. Not to mention that I never had these issues pre-U6, on the same hardware.

I usually run the game at Very High settings at a stable 60fps (vsync on). Tried playing with settings, from Low to Ultra and found no difference except dropping to 40-50fps sometimes on Ultra, which reminded me why I turned it down a notch.
I run at 1920x1200 resolution by the way.

Tried removing, not just disabling, add-ons (CombatAnalysis, Buffbars) - no difference.

Tried repeatedly running in and out of the same building to see if I still had stuttering, and I had. That should eliminate disk I/O as a bottleneck I would presume, since textures would've been cached?

System specs:

Core i7 6-core CPU @ 3.9GHz
EVGA X58 mobo with built-in Realtek network adapter
12GB RAM
Dual AMD 5870 1GB (tried both with and without Crossfire), Catalyst 12.3 drivers
2x Intel Gen2 160GB SSD, one for OS and apps, the other dedicated to games.
Windows 7 64-bit, up-to-date.
Clean install - no apps, no antivirus or firewall used (this is a dedicated gaming PC now, got a new work machine that I do all internet stuff on)
My ISP is a cable company (Comhem) and I'm rated at 100Mbps down, 10Mbps up. No issues with internet connectivity.
Internet speed tests while experiencing lag in-game show up fine, close to my rated speeds.
Location: Sweden

My PC
Radeon5800
processor quad core
Graphics are at medium
8GB ram, with a raptor drive

My PvP experience.
In the moors I am getting 100fps. When I "lag" my fps and latency is unchanged.

Every player around me will freeze and then return to their actual positions. My character does not lag, only the other players.

If there are lots of creeps and freeps within visibility it tends to lag when a creep approaches melee range and not while they are far away. This is not always the case, but when it is there will be no "lag" until I reach melee range, then it releases once they are out of range. This is the case the majority of the time I experience "lag". I do not always lag if 1 creep is in melee range and no other players are in sight.

The other majority is when I am riding horseback with freeps. I am not in melee range, but around 10m from freeps.

My PvE experience. Unlike pvp, my fps is volitile here. I can't confirm if the lag is the same as in pvp because my fps does drop. We usually aren't moving that much so I can't confirm that the "lag" is exactly the same. What I see is a tank go from full health to dead. Skirms/acid were never a problem before U6 for me at these settings.

I am at around 40-60fps in pve, when I lag in pve my frames are dropping to 10 or lower on medium graphics. I lag (fps lag) more in skirmishes.

I always lag in acid wing boss. We all lag, $2500 computers going from 60fps to 9fps as soon as the boss fight starts.

We had a lot of problems last night in Orthanc. Twice, the whole raid had a good 2-3 second lag at the same time during the Fire & Frost boss fight. Two of our group got stuck in inductions while out of combat and had to relog. One of our guards lost the ability to put protection on another player.

It takes SO LONG to log in, like at least 5 minutes on my 75 lm. Lower level characters are better but still take a few minutes. Maybe it's because they're outside the great river area, idk, I can test this later. But when I'm logging, the little glowy circle above the 'loading...' screen will freeze and if I click the window it will say 'not responding' but then recover after a few seconds.

My lower levels don't lag as much but I still have problems with skills not going off. It's very frustrating. My 75, I can't even move hardly. I just get frozen in place. It was okay last night but the second I walked into Stangard, I started getting hitching and rubber banding and the NPCs weren't showing up. I had to leave and return for them to appear. But even when I left that zone it didn't get better. Sometimes I'd be able to walk but the NPCs would freeze, other times I'd be frozen but everything else still moved and if I was in combat, I'd still be taking damage and therefore die because it would take so long to recover, 5+ seconds every time.

Stable horses are awful, like everyone else said. As to windowed vs full screen, I play in windowed move and have lots of problems.

I can't raid or group at all anymore so I haven't really been playing. =/

I did submit a tech report and got a response but just wanted to add my experience to the thread.
Thanks Sapience for helping track this down.

Hi Guys.

Please don't laugh at me or insult me because of what I am writing here now. I am not that technical superman that has enourmous insight in all the details but I just want to share my experiences with you.

I had huge lag problems after U6. I am a player from Germany and I had some delay before that update, too, but they weren't as severe as they are now.

First some detail regarding my system:

Intel I5 2500k 3,30Ghz
MSI C45-B3 Board
8 GB Corsair Vengance 1600MHz
Zotac 570GTX Amp!
Intel 510 Series SSD 120GB
Win 7 professional 64 bit

All at standard clock - no overclocking. All drivers up to date

The reason why I chanced something today was that my Windows Index only gave a 6,8 for my SSD drive. So I did a little research (google is great) and I read something about AHCI-mode. So I check up in my bios and I had to realize that there was IDE mode set. So I changed a registry entry within my windows and changed the sata-mode to AHCi in bios.

Now my Windows index gives a 7,8 to my SSD and strangely enough my lags in Lotro are gone. I will observe this the next time. But there was no lag since nearly 2 hours.

As I already said: I am no technique guru. So do not take this too serious. Just sharing my experiences.

Regards
Vescran

Originally Posted by Arodion

It takes SO LONG to log in, like at least 5 minutes on my 75 lm. Lower level characters are better but still take a few minutes. Maybe it's because they're outside the great river area, idk, I can test this later. But when I'm logging, the little glowy circle above the 'loading...' screen will freeze and if I click the window it will say 'not responding' but then recover after a few seconds.

I get this too on my level 71 character, long loading time plus "client not responding" a few times till I get in. I also get the "lotroclient not responding" message every time I exit the game since Update 6. Windows looks for a solution and then tells me to just close it. I've got the in-game problems as well.

Sapience, thanks for telling us about the "halo" effect - I can appreciate the difficulty of pinning down the cause(s) of the problem.

Originally Posted by Rainothon

A stutter is essentially the same as a freeze, it's just that those with slow setups experience a freeze, and those with fast setups experience a stutter. The stutter lasts as about long as the glitch, the freeze lasts longer as your setup works frantically to catch up. Anyway, that's my guess so far.

That sounds about right.

Originally Posted by enginekid

I notice this too. When i walk around a town, or ride around any area, the game stutters, or hitches, as some call it. This never happened to me pre-U6. Now it happens no matter where I go. I even reduced my GFX settiing in an vain attempt to fix it. Apparently it has nothing to do with settings. It simply hitches and stutters for no apparent reason when you travel.

I tried the same thing. My stuttering/freezing does not appear to be a graphics issue. I did have a similar problem before U6, maybe at RoI launch, but it went away I think after the first follow-up patch. The problem resurfaced with the Great River patch.

Originally Posted by Mirarian

The other thing someone mentioned was they play in windowed mode not full screen. I too play in windowed mode and have very few problems with lag comparatively to what is described in this thread.

I normally play windowed, and I've tried full screen as well. Both ways are equally affected.

Originally Posted by Osgril

I'm starting to believe that a major trigger for lag is proximity to other players, as has been hinted at before.

I don't believe so. I was harvesting Dwarf-iron ore by myself in the deserted Trollshaws the other night and I was still getting the lag. So there goes your theory

Just before U6, I got a brand new gaming rig:
AMD Phenom II 3.8 GHz
16 GB Ram
GeForce GTX 560 Ti
120 GB SSD + 1TB Data drive
850W PS
Win 7 Pro 64Bit

For a couple weeks after I got the new pc, the game would load my level 75 in about 30 seconds, lower toons in about 15 seconds. I was getting ridiculously high FPS in static settings like my house, averaging 150 FPS on the landscape, ranging 60-100 in Galtrev. Latency steady at between 79-83.

But after U6 went live, I noticed a hitch or odd kind of rubber-banding. The effect was like moving my character a half step to the side. At first I thought it might have to do with the new dismount animations, but then I noticed it happened every time I came to a stop - whether riding, running or walking. The effect is like snapping my character to another location on the grid.

I've only had the stable mount freeze issue once - on an alt in Moria, going from 21st Hall to Orc Watch. The freeze lasted about 10 seconds, long enough to really see this issue other people were talking about, mouse over the latency alert panel and figure I was going to lose the connection. But it didn't crash and the mount kept going until it reached Orc Watch. Latency didn't change during the freeze and neither did FPS.

These days it takes several minutes to load any of my characters.

Originally Posted by ChromiteSwiftpaw

I don't believe so. I was harvesting Dwarf-iron ore by myself in the deserted Trollshaws the other night and I was still getting the lag. So there goes your theory

Yes, I had the same problem as I said. Just meant that proximity to other players seem to make it happen more frequently. If I'm reading Sapience right it seems they're on that track too (the halo effect he mentioned).

Originally Posted by Osgril

Yes, I had the same problem as I said. Just meant that proximity to other players seem to make it happen more frequently. If I'm reading Sapience right it seems they're on that track too (the halo effect he mentioned).

Actually halo effect is more like the butteryfly effect. A butterfly in chicago flaps its wings and a Tsunami takes out Charlie Sheen's beach house in Malibu. Seemingly unrelated things that impact each other in almost mystical ways. That's a halo effect.

Originally Posted by Sapience

Actually halo effect is more like the butteryfly effect. A butterfly in chicago flaps its wings and a Tsunami takes out Charlie Sheen's beach house in Malibu. Seemingly unrelated things that impact each other in almost mystical ways. That's a halo effect.

So Ashton Kutcher was in the movie butterfly effect. I'm just saying...I smell conspiracy....

Originally Posted by Sapience

Actually halo effect is more like the butteryfly effect. A butterfly in chicago flaps its wings and a Tsunami takes out Charlie Sheen's beach house in Malibu. Seemingly unrelated things that impact each other in almost mystical ways. That's a halo effect.

I don't think it means what you think it means.

Originally Posted by FormulaTroll

I don't think it means what you think it means.

Inconceivable!!



...but I digress...

Originally Posted by FormulaTroll

I don't think it means what you think it means.

Nope. Sorry, you're wrong.

And we now return you to the proper context.

Originally Posted by FormulaTroll

I don't think it means what you think it means.

Agreed. The usage with which I'm familiar refers to bias (and cause and effect only within that limited context), not general cause and effect.

I have seen on another game ( cant remember the name) where the number of spawns ( items the player could interact with or event triggers not just mobs) on the land block would cause lag.
when a large number of them would spawn or despawn it would lag. also when crossing land blocks you would lag as the client would have to swap out the items for new ones.

it seems sometimes the lag is bad and sometimes I have none. I've been trying to keep track of it by taking note of the spawn density around me and the amount of lag.

is there some sort of trigger or event involving spawns that is on a timer that is supposed to be synced to all clients in proximity(same land block)?

Originally Posted by Sapience

I apologize if you were offended. Let me try to explain what "client side' means. It certainly does not mean 'your fault' as it seems you took it to me. It means the game client itself seems to have some sort of issue. Because this is an MMO and grouping requires cooridination of clients to some extent, grouping will actually make the issue more pronounced, causing all clients in the group to react the same way. So in fact, if you were not seeing a whole group suffer the same issue at the same time then the more likley culprit would be something unique to those player suffering the issue and not the client, or even possibly the server.







In short, correct.





That's pretty close, and why tracking it down is hard. Lag means specific things. Unfortunately anything impacting game play is usually listed as lag or 'server issues' by player, even when it's something else. You'd be surprised how many times we get 'lag' reports from people who are running 7 year old machines on HIGH and have massive hitching. Turning down the graphics settings to medium immediately makes it go away but they report the 'lag' is back as soon as they put the game back to HIGH.

Clientside networking issues (especially packet handling) can cause hitching locally as well with no apparent cause or impact anywhere else in the connection (thus why we are looking at servers that are performing as expecting with no issues, but users are experiencing the issue).




The client side networking code is part of what we're investigating. There seem to be several changes that together are impacting performance in very unexpected ways. What we call "halo" effect.

Halo effect can be pretty crazy sometimes. Imagine someone down the road from you plants an apple tree and your toilet backs up. The two things shouldn't be related, but somehow they are. That's halo. trying to find what connects the two things is not an easy task.

With how the lag is so greatly affecting MOST of you paying customers i sincerly hope that turbines tech's are working weekends to get this issue resolved asap.......i know many people who are going to be dissapointed to the point of not loggin in anymore when 6.1 does not fix the lag

These things can be hideously difficult to track down, and it's not uncommon that efforts to add more logging or to instrument the client will alter the timing sufficiently to make the problem disappear. Or even manifest in a totally different way. Every experienced developer usually has a few war stories along those lines, and one I was involved with some years back wound up taking approximately 500 hours of engineering time to track down. Real time, it sucked about 3 60-hour weeks out of my life. Ouch.

The following from Asheron's Call was actually a relatively simple problem, yet because it was so difficult to quantify... it was also difficult to track down to a root cause (and fix). Took a couple of years, actually. Sorry for the length, but it's illustrative of just how hard it can be to get to a solution sometimes:

For those of you who don't know what the Wi Flag means, a little history. From the beginning of AC, some players have complained about unbelievably bad luck. When the swarm of Lugians spawn in the citadel, they will go after certain players--every time. The player's level doesn't seem to matter, nor does the number of other players in the room. What does seem to matter is that this player is cursed with that most unfortunate of distinctions: the Wi Flag.

For some players, the flag came and went. For others, it was a perpetual nightmare, present in nearly every monster experience. To live a Wi-Flagged life meant to be hunted at every turn. Perhaps other adventurers could know peace in a BSD or a Citadel, but there was no rest nor respite for one under Wi.

Our developers at Turbine initially answered these complaints by saying that they could find no such bug. Occasionally, a senior Turbine engineer could be found who would admit that perhaps there was something “not quite right” with the system, but they still could not identify a cause, if one even existed. Easy culprits, such as a malfunctioning random-number generator, were eventually dismissed.

But our search went on. For there were people even at Turbine convinced that the Wi Flag existed, and that they had it in spades.

And then one day, long after most people had learned to either forget or ignore the Wi Flag, the answer was found. Here in the report from Sandra Powers, AC Live's Lead Engineer, on the nature of the Wi Flag. We warn you in advance that it is a very technical explanation, but we hope it is of some interest to those of you who have long been afflicted with this terrible burden.

“Many of our players have complained for a long time that their character are `Wi-Flagged'--that is, that creatures attack them a much greater proportion of the time than random chance or distance should dictate. After looking at the code in depth, I believe I have found out why this might happen.

Generally, a creature chooses whom to attack based on who it was last attacking, who attacked it last, or who caused it damage last. When players first enter the creature's detection radius, however, none of these things are useful yet, so the creature chooses a target randomly, weighted by distance. Players within the creature's detection sphere are weighted by how close they are to the creature -- the closer you are, the more chance you have to be selected to be attacked.

The actual algorithm for selection looks like this: We roll a random number within a certain range--say between 0 and 1. Each player is given a portion of the range based on how close they are to the creature. The closer you are, the larger a portion you get. The player who owns the portion into which the random number falls is selected to be attacked.

This algorithm is sound. The problem comes up when we are assigning portions of the range to various players. If we wanted distance from the creature to be proportional to your chance to be selected--that is, if the closer you are the *less* chance you have of being attacked--then we would assign this range by taking your distance from the creature over the total distance--the distances of everybody under consideration added together. But we really want the inverse of this ratio--so that the closer you are, the *more* chance you have of being selected. So we invert this ratio by subtracting it from 1 to assign you the size of your portion.

An example:
A is 5 meters from the creature.
B is 2 meters from the creature.
C is 3 meters from the creature.
D is 10 meters from the creature.
Total distance is 20.
The size of A's portion is 1 - 5/20, or 0.75.
The size of B's portion is 1 - 2/20, or 0.90.
The size of C's portion is 1 - 3/20, or 0.85.
The size of D's portion is 1 - 10/20, or 0.50.

So we assign these people these portions of the total range:
A has between 0.00 and 0.75.
B has between 0.75 and 1.65.
C has between 1.65 and 2.50.
D has between 2.50 and 3.00.

Notice, however, that while the original ratios added to 1 (.25 + .1 + .15 + .5 = 1.0) that the inverted ratios -- and thus the total range from which we should have rolled the random number -- no longer add to 1. Instead, they add to 3. (Some algebra will convince you that the assigned portions always add to n-1, where n is the number of people under consideration.) So in order to randomly select some portion of this total range, we should roll a number between 0 and 3.

But in the existing AC code, we always roll a number between 0 and 1.

You can easily see in this example that if the random number is always been 0 and 1, only A and B have any chance at all of being selected, and A has the majority of the chance. And the reason that these two have all the chance is simply because they are first in the list, and so were assigned the low parts of the range. Normally--if we had rolled between 0 and 3 in the example--your order in the list should have no effect on how likely you are to be chosen. But because we only rolled between 0 and 1, the earlier you appear in the list, the more skewed your chance of selection is. And as it happens, in AC code, your position in this list is determined by the InstanceID of your character, which is assigned when you create the character and never changed. (Note that the InstanceID is hashed--mutated by the system into another number--to determine position. So it's not a simple relationship like the older the character, the earlier in the list they will be. It is, however, a static relationship--an ID that hashes to an early position will always hash to an early position, although it's exact position will depend on what other ID's are also under consideration.)

So what does this mean? The way this random targeting algorithm is implemented right now, if you happen to have an InstanceID that hashes to an early position, you will tend to be attacked more than your fair share when the creature is using random targeting, regardless of your distance from the creature. In other words, you are Wi-Flagged.”

We're glad we were finally able to fix this bug. With the July 2002 Event, may you know peace in the fast-spawning dungeon of your choice!

Khafar

I work as programmer and it's clear that Turbine developers broke The First Rule of our Order.. :-)

Don't change source code that is already working however bad that code looks or how good is your idea to improve it.. :-)

Originally Posted by shann81

I work as programmer and it's clear that Turbine developers broke The First Rule of our Order.. :-)

Don't change source code that is already working however bad that code looks or how good is your idea to improve it.. :-)

I also do programming. The rule I have to follow is: Do what your managers tell you even after you warn them that changes will break stuff.

I mainly notice the "rubberband" effekt, when I have my shared storage open and will drag items into it or over to my own vault from my bags.

a nother thing, i also noticed that sometimes the game thinks that i doubled click on my mouse, when i try to drag things to the vault.

It is primery in Galtrev, and when deconning in "new world" when i approch a old vault keapers i dont have the problem.

ohh so much food has been eaten og potions consumed because of this

Originally Posted by Nostake

With how the lag is so greatly affecting MOST of you paying customers i sincerly hope that turbines tech's are working weekends to get this issue resolved asap.......i know many people who are going to be dissapointed to the point of not loggin in anymore when 6.1 does not fix the lag

Since they haven't found the problem and the patch notes don't mention the lag, why would anyone expect it to be fixed when 6.1 is released?

Originally Posted by PerinStone

Since they haven't found the problem and the patch notes don't mention the lag, why would anyone expect it to be fixed when 6.1 is released?

The more important question is will they still release 6.1 knowing they have a huge existing problem that they can't figure out how to fix?

Does the halo effect mean that 6.1 will be an Xbox360 exclusive?

Looking forward to my True Heroics bubble being permanent and recharging when I don't take damage for a few seconds. Since I already dual-wield, I'm excited that I'll soon be able to quadruple-wield. Also excited about being able to play a brute in the 'moors. My one concern is that I might not use the word "bro" enough in voice chat, so I guess I'll have to work on that in order to be prepared for 6.1's release.

Originally Posted by Mark_J

The more important question is will they still release 6.1 knowing they have a huge existing problem that they can't figure out how to fix?

The answer to that is almost certainly "yes". Not everyone is impacted by this (or at least impacted by it much), and it's just foolish to suspend all other work because one problem is proving intractable. "All hands on deck" to solve some problem is rarely useful, and if they do have a client packet handling issue... content developers, artists, game systems designers, etc can't do a thing about it.

I actually have a problem like this going on right now where I work. Myself and one other engineer have been assigned to work on an intermittent resource contention problem that's manifesting in a variety of ways and is proving quite difficult to track down to a root cause. We've been doing nothing else for a week now, but the rest of our team is moving along on their tasks, making progress toward a release coming up this summer. That's as it should be.

Khafar

Originally Posted by Khafar

The answer to that is almost certainly "yes". Not everyone is impacted by this (or at least impacted by it much), and it's just foolish to suspend all other work because one problem is proving intractable. "All hands on deck" to solve some problem is rarely useful, and if they do have a client packet handling issue... content developers, artists, game systems designers, etc can't do a thing about it.

<snip>

Khafar

I wasn't talking about the development of 6.1 but the release of 6.1. Of course they should continue developing it but they should NOT release it until they are convinced it won't make the current problem worse.

As for the issue not impacting players 'much', I strongly disagree. I've been in several instances where it made the game completely unplayable and caused fellowship wipes. If the 100+ combined pages related to the issue along with the non-stop GLFF chatter and Turbine's acknowledgement that they are working on locating the source of the problem are any indicator at all, it's a widespread issue that negatively impacts large numbers of players.

Originally Posted by Mark_J

As for the issue not impacting players 'much', I strongly disagree.

What I meant was that it isn't having much impact for some of their players, which is undeniably true. The problem I'm working on doesn't have much or any impact for some of our customers either - yet it's quite important to the ones seeing it most. Push come to shove, though, we'll do our next release whether we have a fix for this or not (although I'm going to be one miserable engineer if we don't!).

Khafar

They won't delay any other patches or stuff because as the person above says they can't stop everything they are doing to deal with the one issue, but i wonder how long people will feel comfortable paying for a broken game. Im right to the end game content and i can't play right now because the lag is that bad. I know and am aware that they are trying to fix it but all the effort in the world doesn't change the fact that many of us can't play. I might be alone in feeling that if i pay for a product / service that i should at least be able to use it but somehow i don't think so.

Originally Posted by PerinStone

Since they haven't found the problem and the patch notes don't mention the lag, why would anyone expect it to be fixed when 6.1 is released?

One thing to always remember about patch notes on Bullroarer is that they are NEVER final. Just because it doesn't show up in Bullroarer patch notes doesn't mean anything. It may mean that whatever was being worked on wasn't part of that specific build.

Originally Posted by Mark_J

The more important question is will they still release 6.1 knowing they have a huge existing problem that they can't figure out how to fix?

We believe we've figured it out. A great deal of effort was put towards understanding it in time to make a fix part of 6.1.

Originally Posted by Mark_J

As for the issue not impacting players 'much', I strongly disagree. I've been in several instances where it made the game completely unplayable and caused fellowship wipes. If the 100+ combined pages related to the issue along with the non-stop GLFF chatter and Turbine's acknowledgement that they are working on locating the source of the problem are any indicator at all, it's a widespread issue that negatively impacts large numbers of players.

So let's be clear. There's a difference between pages and posters. In terms of actual posters, there are less than 300 in this thread (unique posters). We've had a tiny handful (less than 50) actual reports to CS/Tech support. So in terms of factually measurable volume of complaints, this is a very small number of players (as related to the overall population). Now, that's not to say that those being impacted aren't being impacted in a significant way because it's clear they are. To put it another way, Mark_J's posts account for nearly a page alone, as do mine and our posts are half of what the most frequent posters to this thread have contributed.


With all that said, we do believe we've found the issue behind both the Horse travel route problems and the hitching/stuttering on the client. The fix (it's one issue that caused both problems, and it was within the client) has been tested and confirmed and will be included in Update 6.1.

Originally Posted by Sapience

One thing to always remember about patch notes on Bullroarer is that they are NEVER final. Just because it doesn't show up in Bullroarer patch notes doesn't mean anything. It may mean that whatever was being worked on wasn't part of that specific build.



We believe we've figured it out. A great deal of effort was put towards understanding it in time to make a fix part of 6.1.



So let's be clear. There's a difference between pages and posters. In terms of actual posters, there are less than 300 in this thread (unique posters). We've had a tiny handful (less than 50) actual reports to CS/Tech support. So in terms of factually measurable volume of complaints, this is a very small number of players (as related to the overall population). Now, that's not to say that those being impacted aren't being impacted in a significant way because it's clear they are. To put it another way, Mark_J's posts account for nearly a page alone, as do mine and our posts are half of what the most frequent posters to this thread have contributed.


With all that said, we do believe we've found the issue behind both the Horse travel route problems and the hitching/stuttering on the client. The fix (it's one issue that caused both problems, and it was within the client) has been tested and confirmed and will be included in Update 6.1.

Excellent post Sapience. This should really be the end of this until 6.1 rolls out but I bet it won't be ^^

Originally Posted by Sapience

With all that said, we do believe we've found the issue behind both the Horse travel route problems and the hitching/stuttering on the client. The fix (it's one issue that caused both problems, and it was within the client) has been tested and confirmed and will be included in Update 6.1.

This is all I needed to know. I'mahappycampernow or I will be once the fix is in place.

Happy about this.

Less happy about no hunter updates for a year.

Originally Posted by Sapience

One thing to always remember about patch notes on Bullroarer is that they are NEVER final. Just because it doesn't show up in Bullroarer patch notes doesn't mean anything. It may mean that whatever was being worked on wasn't part of that specific build.



We believe we've figured it out. A great deal of effort was put towards understanding it in time to make a fix part of 6.1.



So let's be clear. There's a difference between pages and posters. In terms of actual posters, there are less than 300 in this thread (unique posters). We've had a tiny handful (less than 50) actual reports to CS/Tech support. So in terms of factually measurable volume of complaints, this is a very small number of players (as related to the overall population). Now, that's not to say that those being impacted aren't being impacted in a significant way because it's clear they are. To put it another way, Mark_J's posts account for nearly a page alone, as do mine and our posts are half of what the most frequent posters to this thread have contributed.


With all that said, we do believe we've found the issue behind both the Horse travel route problems and the hitching/stuttering on the client. The fix (it's one issue that caused both problems, and it was within the client) has been tested and confirmed and will be included in Update 6.1.

Great news. Thank you.

But one thing about the # of CS/Tech reports...you do know that compared to the in-game ticket tool this tech support ticket website is particularly hidden and unlikely to ever be used much at all, right?

In fact, I'd suggest most people don't even know where to go to file a Tech report, and when they're given the link, most Devs/green names give the link to the top page (http://support.turbine.com/ ) that has pages and pages of tips/tricks/and how toos and isn't even the link to the ticket tool. You have to search around quite a bit to find it at the top of the screen not as one of the obvious links (http://support.turbine.com/ics/support/splash.asp), and even THEN it's labled as submit a ticket to Customer Service team...you have to click THAT link to then find that you can select Tech Support ONLY AFTER selecting LotRO.

Definitelly not a click this link and file a Tech Support ticket kinda process. Which would STILL be relatively underused unless the player base was educated about the need to do that instead of using the in-game help tool. Which I think it's no stretch to believe that most players believe that is how you log a ticket, for Tech Support or otherwise.

Originally Posted by Sapience

So let's be clear. There's a difference between pages and posters. In terms of actual posters, there are less than 300 in this thread (unique posters). We've had a tiny handful (less than 50) actual reports to CS/Tech support. So in terms of factually measurable volume of complaints, this is a very small number of players (as related to the overall population). Now, that's not to say that those being impacted aren't being impacted in a significant way because it's clear they are. To put it another way, Mark_J's posts account for nearly a page alone, as do mine and our posts are half of what the most frequent posters to this thread have contributed.

It's really amazing how Sapience always finds a way to say exactly the wrong thing.

Most people won't file a ticket if they know that others have already filed one. I know for a fact that every single person in my kinship experiences this problem and I know for a fact only 3 of us have posted to this thread. I think it is safe to assume that those affected are probably 1-2 orders of magnitude larger than those that actually post. Moreover, your assertion defies all logic, because if the problem is actually in the game code you would think that its impact would be incredibly wide spread.

agreed with the above poster. if you want people to submit bug reports, make it easy for them to do. Most people when they find a bug while playing the game will use the ingame tool to report the bug, which is what happens most of the time I'm guessing.

maybe in a future update adding a bug reporting tool to the game client itself should considered.

As aside note, when tech support gets what are unknown issues and obviously meant to be bug reports, what is done with the ticket info? All we see is that the ticket is closed without ever hearing from a support agent. Should those unknown issues not be escalated?

Originally Posted by Aedfrith

Happy about this.

Less happy about no hunter updates for a year.

Did you forgot RoI hunter upgrades?

Give the widespread nature of the issue -- it's a lot more than the 300 here based off of glff chatter on the 3 servers I play on -- and the fact that Turbine insists that a very small portion of the player base uses the forums, shouldn't something this important to your customer base be announced in the launcher? Something like "thank you for the reports regarding rubber-banding and stable mount failures, we have identified the issue and are working to get a fix in place, hopefully by next update."

As for only 300 posts -- I know a lot of players who won't post if someone else already has. They are here to play the game, not regurgitate symptoms.

It also didn't help when Turbine's first official response to the matter was to insist there was nothing wrong with their stuff, it must be something with the player's ISP. That is hands-down the stupidest thing a company can say to a customer in this day and age. Internet users on average are just more insightful than that. Those of us in the technical world (yes I know Turbine likes to paint themselves as BIG technology, but believe me you are very small and safe compared to the operations some of us work/contract for) immediately lose whatever remaining respect and trust we might have had, and that bleeds down to the less tech-savvy players. If there is a change to the game (significant update) and then immediately afterwards my raid group of players located in eastern USA, western USA, western Canada, Australia, New Zeland, and Mexico all have persistent issues, experiencing the exact same symptoms...well, it's fairly unlikely that all of our ISPs spontaneously developed the same problem at the same time.

Own your stuff, respect your customers, and be honest.

Originally Posted by Sapience

***snip***
So let's be clear. There's a difference between pages and posters. In terms of actual posters, there are less than 300 in this thread (unique posters). We've had a tiny handful (less than 50) actual reports to CS/Tech support. So in terms of factually measurable volume of complaints, this is a very small number of players (as related to the overall population). Now, that's not to say that those being impacted aren't being impacted in a significant way because it's clear they are. To put it another way, Mark_J's posts account for nearly a page alone, as do mine and our posts are half of what the most frequent posters to this thread have contributed.
***snip**

I was about to write a long answer but someone already beat me to it:

Originally Posted by Thane9

Great news. Thank you.

But one thing about the # of CS/Tech reports...you do know that compared to the in-game ticket tool this tech support ticket website is particularly hidden and unlikely to ever be used much at all, right?

In fact, I'd suggest most people don't even know where to go to file a Tech report, and when they're given the link, most Devs/green names give the link to the top page (http://support.turbine.com/ ) that has pages and pages of tips/tricks/and how toos and isn't even the link to the ticket tool. You have to search around quite a bit to find it at the top of the screen not as one of the obvious links (http://support.turbine.com/ics/support/splash.asp), and even THEN it's labled as submit a ticket to Customer Service team...you have to click THAT link to then find that you can select Tech Support ONLY AFTER selecting LotRO.

Definitelly not a click this link and file a Tech Support ticket kinda process. Which would STILL be relatively underused unless the player base was educated about the need to do that instead of using the in-game help tool. Which I think it's no stretch to believe that most players believe that is how you log a ticket, for Tech Support or otherwise.

On top of this, please do not forget the transferred accounts from CM. There are LOTS of people playing LOTRO that do not speak English. Many of them don't even know this forum, and it's safe to assume that less than 10% even know where to file a Tech Support ticket. If you really want "measurable" input to Tech Support, make it available via ingame ticket - at least in German and French.

And just to make things a bit clearer: EVERY member of EVERY fellowship I took part in since U6 experienced this issues. Sapience - please don't get me wrong, I really appreciate your efforts to solve this issue and the open and frequent communication. But the logic behind your reasoning sounds a bit like Mr. Prosser from The Hitchhiker's Guide:

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."

"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."

"But the plans were on display ..."

"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."

"That's the display department."

"With a flashlight."

"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."

"So had the stairs."

"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"

"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

Originally Posted by Fortinobrand

<snip> ...

If there is a change to the game (significant update) and then immediately afterwards my raid group of players located in eastern USA, western USA, western Canada, Australia, New Zeland, and Mexico all have persistent issues, experiencing the exact same symptoms...well, it's fairly unlikely that all of our ISPs spontaneously developed the same problem at the same time.

Own your stuff, respect your customers, and be honest.

Great post. Unfortunately, you are asking Turbine to act on a professional level that they have proven again and again that they are unable to do.

What professional company leaves incorrect information on their FAQs and website documentation about their game for years when it has been pointed out to them? I am sure they are trying, but just cannot get communication with their customers right. The real problem is that they probably think they are doing a great job, so no one in the company feels a need to improve this. Time and time again, there is miscommunication about new product, or little communication about bugs, and people complain about this and ask for better communication, but nothing changes. Sorry to be negative, but calling it as I see it.

I am glad the lag issue is being fixed. Thank you.