General Game Performance

[peegee77]

Up until about a week ago I was seeing a lot of problems, especially in big city fights. Hits not registering, EI appearing out of nowhere, missing visual effects, etc. Then about 6 days ago there was a server restart, and there was a massive improvement. For a couple of days the game was really running smoothly and it was great fun to play. Since then it has gradually degraded until it is back at the point it was before the restart - ie. virtually unplayable.

I'll try to give some examples of the type of problems I experience as performance declines:

* Visual effects such as muzzle flashes, tracer, blood splatters are often missing. In fact, I can't remember seeing a single muzzle flash for the last couple of days. Tracer and blood splatters are probably missing 50% of the time.

* Death delay becomes longer. 2 seconds is probably the average, 5 seconds is not uncommon. This is a real gamebreaker for a shooter as you end up emptying a whole magazine at a target that you almost certainly hit with the first shot.

* Hits don't register. Dispersion and poor shooting on my part can't account for all of this. Against a stationary target at 5m to 10m it is quite common for a full mag from LMG or SMG to not score a hit. I have tested this offline, and it is virtually impossible to shoot a man sized target without getting one or more hits.

* I came across a prone EI facing away from me. I walked up behind so close that my feet were next to his, brought up my rifle for an aimed shot and fired at the middle of his back. No blood splatter. He turned 180 degrees to face me, and I fired a second aimed shot at the same place. No blood splatter. He then fired his SMG and killed me. On the deathcam I then saw a puff of smoke / dirt (the effect when a bullet strikes the ground) come from the middle of his back where I had shot him. The AAR showed I had killed him.

* I was watching a Stug IIIb from about 100m. It had just driven up and parked and it was firing repeatedly, but it was also getting hammered from the rear by a tank or ATG. The Stug gradually sank into the ground until it had almost disappeared, then surfaced again, still firing, before it was destroyed a short while later. The whole submerge and resurface sequence took about 10 seconds. This was clearly not a case of a vehicle that had been sitting idle for ages.

* I was guarding the top floor of a CP. Things were fairly quiet and there were no footsteps. (On my system, if you call the length of a CP building "1 unit" I generally hear footsteps 1 to 2 "units" away from the building). An EI materialised in front of me fully prone and firing a deployed LMG. (Needless to say, I died.)

When game performance is "good" I see this sort of thing maybe 5% or 10% of the time. I can just shrug my shoulders and say "so it goes". When performance is bad, some variety of weirdness like the examples above probably occurs in 90% of the time, which really isn't playable.

I play in the UK and my ping stays pretty much rock solid at around 140ms. My fps tends to be: middle of nowhere, max: 70fps; Around a FB, 40 - 60fps; fighting in a city, 35 - 45fps; crazy big fight in a city, 20 - 35fps.

Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3 (2600.xpsp_sp3_gdr.111025-1629)

Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor, MMX, 3DNow (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz

Memory: 3072MB RAM

DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT

Manufacturer: NVIDIA

Chip type: GeForce 9800 GT

Current Mode: 1920 x 1200 (32 bit) (60Hz)

Driver Version: 6.14.0012.8558 (English)

Description: SB X-Fi Audio [EC00]

Driver Version: 5.12.0001.1201 (English)

Finally, a question for the RATS. What is the position on regular maintenance restarts for the server?

[GOPHUR]

Yes.

We put up a new host that fixed an update issue with other players.

[GOPHUR]

Sorry Peg. Didn't see where it was getting worse. Will re-read.

[peegee77]

It certainly seems to improve after a server restart, so I still wonder if regular maintenance restarts are required. It is still buggy, but I think the general performance has got better the last week. I am now seeing tracer more reliably, and also muzzle flashes. Tracer is still sometimes displaced but at least I see it. To be fair I have confused the bug testing by upgrading my graphics drivers from 6.14.0012.8558 to 6.14.0012.9610 but the previous drivers were fairly recent, so I would be surprised if that explains all the improvements. Apart from the submerging Stug I haven't seen any problems with vehicles. All my issues are with EI appearing out of nowhere, but this is better than it was. I did about 7 hours guarding CPs last night, and I would say 80% of enemy coming into the CP behaved correctly (apart from trying to kill me of course, and not wiping their feet) and 20% killed me before they were visible. This is a reversal of a few weeks ago when it would have 20% correct and 80% bugged. Hits also seem to be registering more reliably with blood splatters and death within a reasonable period, ie. under 2 seconds.

Keep up the good work guys!