Hellgate: Global - plans for 2012

[thegreatcthulhu]

To be fair, I've had those kinds of frame rate drops to less than 1 fps even under the old 1.0-1.2 DX9 clients. Heck, with how much they toned down the graphics quality in Global, I get these considerably less frequently now than I did in HGL.

Hmm... now that you remind me, I MAY have had those frame rate drops in the old HG's DX9 myself. I guess that goes to show how often I used that thing. The only time I had bad frame rates in DX10 HG was when I made the foolish mistake of leaving "DX10 Smoke" turned on whilst stumbling into the Necro Fall. Very... bad...  idea...

[NiKKeZ]

I also used to get the < 1FPS bug in the original Hellgate. But only ever in the Wild. No amount of lowering settings would stop it happening.

I only get it rarely now in Global although I don't know why that is. When it does happen it's very brief. Oddly enough a few weeks ago it got worse when T3 cut the number of channels down. At that point it was the worst it had ever been for me with complete freezes lasting 10-20 seconds instead of the usual slow-mo slide show.

I have wondered whether this is at least partly a server issue rather than strictly a game engine issue.

[thumper]

I believe it is a combination of problems with the DX9 client and the servers themselves.

I noted (on a thread here somewhere) that the FPS drop in SP more or less went away when using the DX10 client - it was replaced by a pause at the start of the game due to (I assume) the larger textures being loaded (not a graphics guy, so that really is just a SWAG). But the game ran smoother/prettier and the memory leak seemed to be not as pervasive - i.e., I could play longer before I hit the 4G cap.

When T3 'optimized' the server farm (i.e., cut the instances by 2/3) the problems with lag shot way up. Recently with the drop in player population it has somewhat abated due to a lessened load on the farm itself. I have been checking to see how many players are in each available instance and pick the one with the lowest number (last night it was 1 - me  ). This seems to help the daily runs/grinds.

[NiKKeZ]

When T3 'optimized' the server farm (i.e., cut the instances by 2/3) the problems with lag shot way up. Recently with the drop in player population it has somewhat abated due to a lessened load on the farm itself. I have been checking to see how many players are in each available instance and pick the one with the lowest number (last night it was 1 - me  ). This seems to help the daily runs/grinds.

I noticed that without fail, I was starting off on channel 4 (not chat channel) when I logged in from 7pm onwards UK time. The lag on 4 is always horrendous. Within seconds of logging in my ping indicator drops right down to 1 red bar or nothing at all, and the game is unplayable. Even navigating my inventory is nigh on impossible. I usually find that 1 or 3 is best for me.

Tonight there was no 4. Just 1,2, 3 and 5. I got dumped on 5 no matter what. The result was exactly the same as being on 4. High ping and unstable play.

Ever since the game was re-released I have had terrible problems spawning at Parliament Square. At least 75% of the time I will get the endless loading screen of death, whether it be from using a PRD, station travel, or just logging in for a new game. I really don't know what causes it, but switching instances to a more playable number is an excercise in sheer frustration. If I'm at one of the Catacomb stations it's fine though. It's just Parliament Square, meaning that getting the first part of the Daily Quest event done has me grinding my teeth in furstration.

Yesterday I completed all of the Catacombs without getting disconnected. Except for when I had to go back to Parliament to hand in each stage of the quest. That's not so bad as getting to the Catacomb stations to continue on is easy. At least I managed each 5 instance hop without getting disconnected, which is nothing short of a miracle 

Tonight I managed it again. There was just one 7-8 minute spell where my ping went up over 250,000ms and stayed that way. I got killed by something that I couldn't see but sat it out as I was almost finished on level 14. Thankfully I never got disconnected and the game came back and started working again. I've been disconnected on level 14 (and all the others) many times before