Died to Strongbox lag and suggestions so this never happens again

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Rowsol wrote:

Just make the monsters from strongboxes come in at you from the edge of the screen. At least then you have a change to escape.

So...make them basically treasure chests with no risk then?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

If you're actually experiencing this on all boxes, and not only ones with exiles, then this isn't something that can be fixed, or even affected, by your proposed solution, as the lag must be related to creating the monster objects on the client, not the loading of their data.

Have you considered some sort of deferred/delayed preloading so that all the monsters aren't exactly created at the same time, causing an I/O spike? Load them sequentially with a few ms delay as soon as the player approaches their (potential) spawn points, or at least break them down into smaller groups. In case with strongboxes, delay their overall appearance until all of them have been loaded. The objects would be gradually created on the client without taxing its host machine I/O, and hidden until needed. A win/win, no?

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SL4Y3R wrote:

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Rowsol wrote:

Just make the monsters from strongboxes come in at you from the edge of the screen. At least then you have a change to escape.

So...make them basically treasure chests with no risk then?

No, the risk can be there, still.

It's just it will be the damage the monsters do to you while you can do something about it.

Christ, they can even buff the monsters, then.

Currently boxes are a case of 'treasure chests with no risk' unless you are unlucky to get a frame freeze, then, unless you limited your build to one that can survive afk, it's fucking risky.

That's not exactly what I'd call well designed 'risk'.

One suggestion to the players: Use the Lightning Wrap-Gem(without a linked decreased duration), before you open the lag-chests-of-technical-incompetence. Even it got the freeze-affix, you teleport away frozen, but you'll get enough time;)

I have these issuse with chest alot too. Not only with chest but with quest-opponents from masters too. If i'am getting close enough on the map and the marker pops out, i'll get an short lag.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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N0Lif3 wrote:

All of this lag from spawning enemies could be avoided completely if monsters were spawned and rendered far off the level as soon as you enter that area and then as soon as you click the strongbox they simply get teleported from into position. There would be zero lag if that happened.

This would not, in fact, be any different in the general case. Monsters (and other game objects) don't exist on the client until they're close enough to the player to potentially matter - this prevents several easily abusable client hacks that would otherwise be possible. There's no difference to the client between the monsters teleporting in from a long distance away or just spawning on the spot - in both cases the monsters did not exists and have now been created on the client.
Strongboxes spawn monsters based on types that are already in the instance so that they're already preloaded, meaning in both cases the client would react exactly the same.
The only potential benefit is in the case of rogue exiles, for which the base models are preloaded (character models) but may include some nonloaded cosmetic effects.

If you're actually experiencing this on all boxes, and not only ones with exiles, then this isn't something that can be fixed, or even affected, by your proposed solution, as the lag must be related to creating the monster objects on the client, not the loading of their data.

I believe that the cosmetic effects affects the lag immensely. It is directly related to the amount of video that the user (me) has to process. Reducing either the number of monsters or their cosmetics effects will greatly reduce the lag I experience for both the shrines and the strong boxes. Streaming them in would help. Of course it's also a matter related to other factors like AI. But, imo, it is directly related to how much my computer has to process and your servers have to send. And I know that the cosmetic effects are important to you but I really don't like your penalty for dying. And, imo, it's just too often from lag.

I'd like to say, I've actually had a good 3 days of it. Not sure if GGG did anything, but been able to light warp away as I click box, and not just game stop for 5sec and I appear under the box dead...
They actually fun then!


But I will say, I just stopped attacking, or avoiding lighting balls on Piety (map ver). Teleported about 1.5 screens away into the center of all the lighting & died...

It's extra salt in the wound that, you get teleported to somewhere you haven't clicked, haven't SEEN, and you couldn't even fucking make it that far in that time with the movmentspeed your char has!


Anyway, trying not to MADBRO rant. Really been loving the game again. I"m thinking of it when people make me go play other games...
The lockbox's that have been working for me, have actually been a fun feature!


PLEASE give us a 'offline league' where we can't trade/or affect other gamers at all. But where we don't need online checks to see if we cheating every click (or not even clicking)

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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N0Lif3 wrote:

All of this lag from spawning enemies could be avoided completely if monsters were spawned and rendered far off the level as soon as you enter that area and then as soon as you click the strongbox they simply get teleported from into position. There would be zero lag if that happened.

This would not, in fact, be any different in the general case. Monsters (and other game objects) don't exist on the client until they're close enough to the player to potentially matter - this prevents several easily abusable client hacks that would otherwise be possible. There's no difference to the client between the monsters teleporting in from a long distance away or just spawning on the spot - in both cases the monsters did not exists and have now been created on the client.
Strongboxes spawn monsters based on types that are already in the instance so that they're already preloaded, meaning in both cases the client would react exactly the same.
The only potential benefit is in the case of rogue exiles, for which the base models are preloaded (character models) but may include some nonloaded cosmetic effects.

If you're actually experiencing this on all boxes, and not only ones with exiles, then this isn't something that can be fixed, or even affected, by your proposed solution, as the lag must be related to creating the monster objects on the client, not the loading of their data.

That unique map where the final boss raises everything in the final room demonstrated that raising/spawning lots of enemies simultaneously was a bad idea, it caused a huge lag spike for most players. That encounter has since been changed to progressively resurrecting monsters which resolved the issue quite nicely.

Strong Boxes spawn large groups of monsters instantly and similarly produce lag spikes for the same reasons.

The reason you don't notice performance issues as enemies load in to existence while you walk around is because they are presumably progressively loaded. Entire groups of enemies aren't loaded when you get near them, instead the individual members of the group spawn in as you near them one-by-one so the potential performance impact is quite small.

Why not sidestep the whole strongbox lag issue by changing the serverside input recognition method from polling discrete (keyboard or mouse-) key states every frame to key state changes per frame?

As it stands any lag, for any reason, will not only stop the visual representation of the game from updating but also cause any and all inputs that the user makes during that time to get lost. The server receives no new input if the client is being held up by something and will default to make the character do nothing, while possibly taking damage from mobs.

This regularly leads to the death of otherwise capable characters on weak machines due to temporary performance problems (such as strongboxes). It also means that very fast attacks/spells are executed at a lower rate than possible if the client hasn't finished rendering the current frame by the time the skill is ready to be recast (general potato issue).

Just use an incinerator on some crappy integrated graphics* during heavy party play. Others will see you casting at roughly your FPS times multistike/echo repeats if applicable.

So what if the server, instead of assuming a user does nothing unless the client explicitly states he does something, where to assume the user keeps doing whatever he did during the last transmitted packet unless the client explicitly states he's doing something else now?

That way, lagging out on a strongbox while pressing a skill key will cause the character to at least repeat what he did last before lagging out. Due to the nature of most skills having AoE capabilities, the chances of surviving instances of severe performance issues will improve significantly.

Sure, this means that (network-) lag spikes and framedrops might cause my character to repeat a skill I didn't want him to repeat but I think "absolutely zilch" is the opposite of what I want him to do in the vast overwhelming majority of cases.

Just exclude common "single-cast" abilities from that rule to avoid auras turning on and immediately off again due to minor latency spikes.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

We are continually making improvements to how things are preloaded and preventing on-the-fly loading where we can.

If 1.3 brings significant improvements on that front, you will make many, many players very happy. I for one could finally try an HC character. Currently that is really not possible with my mediocre (not bad!) gfx card.
Serial spawning could have the added advantage that monsters aren't all killed by the same single AoE spell.