Weird Qeynos Harbor Crash

[Harbringer Doom]

Exiled Guild A on PvP Server X is hanging around Qeynos Harbor.

Several Qeynosians start wandering into Qeynos Harbor to challenge Exiled Guild A.

When a bunch of Qeynosians are in the Harbor, ready to fight, a target is called and the attack begins.

A SECOND after the first shot is thrown, a bunch of the Qeynosians immediately crash/go linkdead.

I've been involved in a lot bigger fights in Qeynos Harbor than one opposing group vs. about ten Qeynosians without crashing. 

My question is:  Why does this happen?   How does a fight this small result in a bunch of Qeynos crashing immediately upon start of the fight, and exiles proceeding as if there was no problem.

I'm not one to quickly prescribe to conspiracy theories, so I've got to wonder, is there something inherently broken about exile mechanics in pvp that the devs are missing?

Alternatively, I wonder, of the 20 people in the Harbor that day, how many of the Q's and how many of the exiles had massive spell or CA macros queued, and how many queries went to the server in the course of that one second.  But even then, why do the Qs crash, and not the exiles (in this instance at least).

Can a group, spamming endless CA marcos cause a crash?

I'm seriously starting to believe there is something broken about exile mechanics.

Are there exiled guilds running around on Venekor?  Do people experience stability/lag problems when fighting them?

I think it would be interesting to have a full group of Qs and a full group of freeps meet in Qeynos Harbor, and parse their fight about 20 times, taking note of pings and such.  Then, have one group exile and parse 20 more fights, all in the same gear, same group, same everything, and see what the results for parses and zone performance look like.

Don't bother posting here if you just want to vent about a guild you don't like.

[Abstract]

used to hear about it all the time, then DoM left Venekor.

i have'nt heard ppl talking about it since.

[eu]

I was in the exiled group and your facts are incorrect.

Two of our six crashed as well. One of them got back in without dropping group and we had to reinvite the other.

Our thoughts are much like Froglegg posted in another thread are it has something to do with charming the tank and who the tanks avoidance was on because that is who crashed in our group as soon as the tank got charmed. That was an isolated incident and havent even looked at it the MANY other times Ive been in an exile group and people have crashed.

I certainly don't have any facts or data to back this up but letting you know what happened on our end and also stating that this has happened sporadically throghout the server history but there are certainly a much larger amount of charmers out there now than in the older days of the server.

Also could just be that people crash in already laggy zones. Q harbor is definately one and I know for certain I have crashed multiple times flying into alot of pvp at Terans Grasp another semi laggy area.

[Harbringer Doom]

Stating that the exiles went on as if nothing happened was an assuption on my part based on the scene when I got back into game (a bunch of dead bodies, Qs with immunity ticking down, and exiles standing around covered in blood).  So based on your information, I stand corrected. 

My question remains though, why does this happen?

I do not buy the charm explanation, or the laggy zone explaination.  First, I was solo, and I crashed to desktop upon attacking.  I wasn't involved in any charming of anyone, I wasn't targeted by any exiles (as far as I could tell) and I didn't have any group member's buffs on me.  At the word "go" I threw one shurkin, and crashed to desktop.

I still wonder whether something is awry with game mechanics which arise when exiles lock horns with city members.

[eu]

I certainly dont presume to know the answer either just throwing some stuff out there but it definately happens to us as well.

Does anyone have any evidence of this happening when Q and freeport guilds fight? I guess it could be something that is buggy with the exile faction but I don't know if I buy that either.

[eu]

Just to echo another thing Horknut said this wasnt an extremely large fight. I have been involved in just about every mass pvp fight on the server and see people crash in those all the time. This was like he said our group of 6 and maybe an x2 of Q around and I dont even think all of them attacked us. (although now hearing the other side maybe they all did and crashed)  It was certainly nothing large scale and we even ran all over q harbor so don't even think there were a large amount of people in zone that weren't around us. It was definately odd.

[Harbringer Doom]

Yeah, I don't know either, but here's what I believe:

I believe there are exiles that "cheat."  I believe there are Qeynosians that "cheat".  I believe there are Freeps that "cheat."  Whether those cheats are frontloading CAs, or track hacks, or speed hacks, or whatever-the-made-up-complaint-of-the-week is, idk.

I don't know much about the details, because I don't really care to learn.

And "believe" is probably too soft a word, for all intents and purposes, there is no doubt in my mind people from all three factions "cheat".

But I don't think whatever people are doing to cheat is the sole basis for what appears to be forced crashes, or intentional lag.  It seems to me that it could be a combination of outright cheating (frontloading?) and questionable tactics (huge spell/CA macros), from all sides, combined with some broken game mechanics involving the interaction between exiles and city factions.

This explanation could easily result in the ensuing and constant back and forth between exiles and city factions about who is cheating.  And why no one can prove that anyone is doing anything different than anyone else is:  the missing coponant is the broken game mechanics.

There's a post somewhere in one of the threads about the fighter changes where a GM comments about spell/CA macros.  Someone argued that if they made the fighter changes, all the fighters would combine, in the best order, all their taunts into one gigantic macro and would just have to spam the hell out of that macro.   The GM commented on how if everyone started doing that, that many queries to the server would probably cause lag problems, and have to be changed.

That was the gist of it that I recall anyway.  Don't quote me.

So, if a full Qeynos group is fighting a full Freeport group, spamming their insanely long spall/CA macros, does a crash occur?   I don't remember ever experiencing game crippling lag against a solo group or even a x2 of Freeport, or being crashed one second into vs. Freeport fight.

I can recall these events against exiles though.

Despite the now prevalent bellyaching to the contrary, I don't think the exiles are prone to cheat more (on the whole, we all know of specific examples), but rather, I continue to wonder is something is awry with exile game mechanics.

[Harbringer Doom]

I looked for the post I was talking about above but... was the entire thread on the fighter changes from In Testing Feedback deleted?

That seems weird.

[Kiara]

Keep on topic please.  This doesn't need to devolve into guild drama.

[Neskonlith]

The thread and Rothgar's post are still there:

So what you're saying is we need to limit the number of spells you can put in a single macro.  I'm already seeing people do similar macros and this can't be good for server performance, spamming it with so many commands in a short period of time.  Obviously we don't want to throttle casting commands, but these 'spam' macros are not good.  If the trend moves more towards this type of play style we will be forced to limit the number of spells and command steps you can add to a macro.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...443913&#4947562

...death to superspammers?

[Harbringer Doom]

Ah, thats the one, thanks.

[Harbringer Doom]

With the thoughts from that post in mind, what is the effect (I wonder) on the zone and the opposing group if a full group is rocking supermacros?

[Magius789]

IMO, They should make it so that you can put one chat txt command and one spell/combart command into a macro.  This way peopel can still make macros that inform group members when certain debuffs or buffs are cast but at the same time removing the ability to make one macro with nine attacks in it so all they have to do is spam one button.  IMO it would make the game more challenging and perhaps be a solution to this possible lag/LD problem.

[ulleulle]

Im thinking loads of proc gear and big azz macros could def have something to do with the lag experinced when fighting curtain ppl.

Would actually be nice to see some restrictions on how many spells one single macro could hold.

Not only for the sake of less lag but also to stop some of the super ez mode playstyles they provide.

Proc gear is another story.

Some of them are abit buggy with their zonewide effects and all,altho not sure how much credit i wanna give it for producing noticeable lag.

Cheers

Jabib

[Grayspirit]

I was in that group, our necro and one other went linkdead within 3 seconds of the time the very first debuff landed on us leaving us with 4. As stated one person logged in after we said they were both linkdead and he was able to "reclaim" his toon before he logged out and the other one had it's toon go all the way out of game and had to log back in.

I've seen it happen a few times and the randomness of it doesnt make sense. The first time it happened was when I was with DoM on venekor and we were fighting a Darkshine Initiative and my entire 6man group crashed directly to desktop in the middle of the fight--as if all closed our game window at the same time.

Another time was fighting a old purity group in commonlands and 5 of my group went linkdead. While we were talking in vent about it, our 6th said to shut up he was still in game. We asked him what happened and he said the purity group all ran off in a random direction then slingshotted back to the area of the fight and 5 of them were linkdead too.

I can count at least 4 times that I personally have crashed directly to desktop while charging into the masses of city people on KP docks, it seems always right as the fight begins. There's like a 1 in 5 chance that dacampzer crashes either mid fight or on the way into a fight. It's rare when it happens but it does. I dont have an explanation for it, just my experiences with it.

I also blame bards for the lag in the game as well. Their T2 shard BP that increases the proc % of the entire group's gear by 30% everytime they either CoB/PoM... the game has to recalibrate everything everyone is wearing instantly and make it's checks vs other people's gear, and then when it wears off it does it again.. etc etc. And of course if they have their mythical it applies to the entire raid's gear etc etc.

In my experience i've noticed the lag usually comes more so when you're not the aggressor (you're being rushed/attacked). Also if if somebody not on your screen yet either. When it's raid time or you're at lagstorm docks... stare at a wall or the ground or something and look at your frames per second. Then look spin your camera/zoom out quickly to the fight or your raid during raid time... if you're computer's like mine you drop a good 20 frames pretty quick and I play at horrible graphics. All my toons look like burnt GI Joes.

I also blame SoE though, I'd be willing to bet money they haven't upgraded the servers since the game was first created, I mean look how long it takes to get a simple answer to easy questions from them. If they're not willing to advertise one of their products to help it sell, I'd imagine they wouldnt put up money to help support said product's stability either.

[Greggthegrmreapr]

I've seen it happen before and I have been on both ends.  I really doubt it has anything to do with hacking and more or the less the game giving a massive Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and saying screw it.

[Faenril]

2 of us crashed after we zoned in LS on our way to ward of element and engaged onyx yesterday. I guess what we see is just the consequence of terrible client / network code implementation.

[Ibunubi]

I just hope Nagafen could be upgraded before the merge. Otherwise there's almost no point.

[Faenril]

Ibunubi wrote:

I just hope Nagafen could be upgraded before the merge. Otherwise there's almost no point.

Depending on how their server architecture is designed, it could be that they reassign some resources to nagafen, that are currently used to run venekor. That would be some sort of upgrade for free. Just speculating here.

[Winter12345]

I have experianced LARGE lagging issues and usually loss of connection whenever I engaged a paticular person, (I can't remember his name) just when he was going to die. He was exiled but lower teir, and when he gets to red, I knew I didn't lose my connection because when I was kicked to my desktop, I could still easily log back in. Minute I'm back on my character..I'm dead, from an unfair fight.  What angered me the most though was that I was suspicious why he even attacked me in the first place. I was lv 24 and he was 16, and he didn't even attempt to use the majority of his CA's. I just hit him down to red with one nuke, and BAM i go LD for no reason at all..

Still kinda [Removed for Content] about it, never saw him again either.

[Razgriz]

I've had the same thing happen on Venekor a few times, and been on both ends of it. Once I was grouping with my boyfriend and a few guildies and all of us went linkdead at the same time (we were on Vent). Our clients closed instantly, and sitting next to my boyfriend I could see his had done the same at the same exact moment. A few weeks ago we were fighting Demron's inquis and his group in the tunnel near TG, and suddenly they just stopped putting up resistance. I thought it must have been CC on the healers, but a few minutes later they came back and said they'd all gone LD. It's wierd, but it seems random.

Edit: Typos ftl.