Can you reduce max player limit during Beseiged?

[little ninja]

Re: Can you reduce max player limit during Beseiged?

I think if they lower the total amount of players, put a lvl limit on jobs allowed into besieged, and remove inactive players after 3mins. Then this will most likely help with some of the lag issues an make it bearable if anything.

As it stands right now. I'm running a 4k system with a cable modem. I have all my setting off. An still anything higher then 500 in besieged drives me nuts. I highly doubt thats what S.E had in mind for besieged. An if they did. They need to quit making MMO's.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Can you reduce max player limit during Beseiged?

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand why the overload of info coming from all those players around you while on besieged causes connection lag.

No, but a little computer science background would help with making educated guesses. Actual knowledge of how the game is programmed would be helpful, too, commonsense tells me.

The trouble I have with most of the people who ask for a changes like this is that they don't have good reasonings behind the specific caps they propose.

The problem in Besieged is on the connection side and how the game doesn't prioritize important characters over the info from the other 100 players around you who have nothing to do with your party.

This is an example of an educated guess. (Not all that common on this forum. /sigh) But, you stated it as a fact, rather "It's possible that..." Unless you work for S-E, or have done fairly rigorous analysis of the game's network traffic yourself, it is just a guess.

(That said, I, too, thought data prioritization could be a problem--just don't have the means to prove or disprove it. There could be other contributing factors like memory thrashing, network software/hardware bottlenecking, redundant/repeat info, client side CPU overload, etc. None of which I can prove or disprove... )

What is experienced in Besieged by most PS2 users are more than just one kind of symptom exhibited. Everything from a high latency (Receives of over 1,000)

I thought that number indicates the amount of data received in a time period, rather than latency?

You don't need to be an expert or an insider to understand basic fundamental mechanics of MMORPG. One has to just look at the basic kinds of online games, ...

Speaking of other games, let's try a different angle.

There are other MMOPRG's with massive battle fields, right? Has any of them shown significantly better performance (i.e decent frame rate, tolerable lag)? On comparable minimum systems required by FFXI's PC client? I've no first hand experience with other games, but I know many posters here do.

If those games do exist, how do they manage do better?

If we understand how other systems are able to perform well in massive battle fields, then we can make more intelligent suggestions to S-E. (It wouldn't surprise me if a decent 700 people Besieged is possible, with some combination of server re-architecture and client code revision.)

[little ninja]

Re: Can you reduce max player limit during Beseiged?

Well sorry to burst a bubble or two. But its not like S.E will ever clue us in on how anything actually works. Most of what we go off of was basically a bunch of players doing long tests so we have ballpark figures. An even then S.E wont let us in on how close we are. The same thing could be said for the reasons why a player lags in besieged. Or why we lag in other areas as well. By the A.H, Dynamis, god/hnm battles, parting with another party next to us and so on.

To answer your question of whats the problem between this MMO an others. I was playing WoW and FFXI at the same time. I was being booted from the FFXI servers and my frame rate in WoW was always at the same level. So if i had to say what it was Id go with the servers. Its funny now that i think about it. I can only remember 1 time in WoW where i lagged real bad. It was the day 3/4 the Horde population on our server stormed Stormwind.

[Karinya]

Re: Can you reduce max player limit during Beseiged?

There are other MMOPRG's with massive battle fields, right?

Actually, I don't think there are. WoW instances are capped at 40 players maximum, and have no more mobs at one time than Dynamis, probably less. I can't think of any other MMO that allows literally hundreds of players to fight in the same area at the same time. (WoW has massive lag just walking into a city, let alone fighting there...)

I think client side CPU/graphics load can most likely be ruled out as the primary problem (although some players may also have secondary problems with it) because *everyone* gets Besieged lag, no matter how good their system is. That suggests either a server or a communications bottleneck problem. I agree that SE has more tools for analyzing this than we do, but since they're unlikely to share their technical data with us, we have to try to reach our own conclusions or just sit and wait.


Regardless of whether or not it would have much effect on the lag, I think the following would be reasonable:
1. Anyone who doesn't move or take some action within 1 minute after the start of Besieged is moved to Whitegate. (They can try to reenter when they get back from AFK if there's room.) Yes, I know that's really short. People who aren't AFK when it starts get priority over those that are, if there are limited slots.
2. In order for this not to be too harsh on people going to the bathroom or whatever, there is now a log message when the beastmen get close (like 2-3 minutes travel) to Al Zahbi.
3. When you try to enter a full besieged, if there is a player at least 20 levels lower than you, they may be booted to make room for you. If this happens the lowest levels (i.e. level 1 mules that someone somehow got to Al Zahbi) will be booted first, with ties broken randomly. There is no level minimum to enter as long as it isn't full. Level 56+ characters will never be booted this way, but anyone lower might be. A player who is removed this way immediately gets exp and IS for contributions they have made so far. (They can still try to reenter and earn more if the player total drops below full due to afkers being booted, etc., but the amount they received previously is deducted from the cap so they still cannot earn more than the cap total.)
4. Players who take no action (chat does not count) for 5+ minutes are relocated to Whitegate. If they're dead that long they're probably AFK, which can waste multiple people's raise attempts and deny space to other players. Obviously people who are alive and do nothing for 5 minutes are probably AFK. Players receive a warning in the chat log 30 seconds before this happens (in case someone is just sitting waiting for weakness or whatever). Players booted this way *can* reenter - if they come back from AFK before the besieged ends and if there's room.
5. Players who are dead at the end automatically get a raise that must be accepted within 5 minutes or it wears off. If they accept it they get exp and IS for the besieged. If they don't accept in time, they get nothing.


As you can probably tell from the above, I think AFKers are the biggest problem aside from technical problems. Hopefully anti-AFK measures will keep the "boot low levels to let in high levels" rule from needing to be invoked, but if it is still necessary, a high level player who is actively trying to get in will almost always contribute more to the besieged than a player that many levels lower (no matter how hard they try).

[little ninja]

Re: Can you reduce max player limit during Beseiged?

I think booting afk players will be a plus and a minus. In some instances it will lower the total number of players in the zone. In other cases it will just increase the active players thus making for even more clogged battles.

I think besieged is broke anyways, I don't even have to participate for the whole fight. I maybe fight for 5-10mins. Then i run to the second level and hide in the corner and wait out the besiged while chatting it up in ls. an i walk out with no head ache an full points.

As for WoW. My guild leader always complained about lag in places i had no trouble. So in some cases its player side. An the rest is due to server side. I think S.E is the same way. But since its everyone who complains about lag in the simplest of situations. It leads more to server side.

When i started playing FFXI i didnt think id ever have to turn off all effects, reduce how many things load on my screen, and so on. Just so i could lessen the headaches of lag. To me it defeats the purpose of what im looking.