Proper thread for 255 server issues
Mavick
Join Date: 2012-11-07 Member: 168138Members
Join Date: 2012-11-07 Member: 168138Members
Since the other was closed for an admittedly poorly worded OP, I'm going to post what I see firsthand in terms of performance, as there was some misinformation posted by the usual people about 20+ player servers.
Pre-250 my 24 player server on good server hardware stayed pegged at a 30 tickrate. Yes, there were a few occasional drops to 20 or less, but they were few and far between. Yes, people experienced lag on their client machines because that many people is more taxing on a pc. But on the other hand, many regulars were used to that and I rarely saw complaints like I do now.
Since 250, and especially now, the tickrate is all over the place. It generally stays above 20 but it's much less stable. There's a definite hit on server performance regardless of player slots. Probably less pronounced in smaller servers, but not everyone likes smaller servers. And that's just all there is to that, and there's absolutely no point in putting other players or server admins down because of doing what they like to do (dePara).
Hopefully UWE will look into this going into 256 along with their client fixes for input lag, etc.
Pre-250 my 24 player server on good server hardware stayed pegged at a 30 tickrate. Yes, there were a few occasional drops to 20 or less, but they were few and far between. Yes, people experienced lag on their client machines because that many people is more taxing on a pc. But on the other hand, many regulars were used to that and I rarely saw complaints like I do now.
Since 250, and especially now, the tickrate is all over the place. It generally stays above 20 but it's much less stable. There's a definite hit on server performance regardless of player slots. Probably less pronounced in smaller servers, but not everyone likes smaller servers. And that's just all there is to that, and there's absolutely no point in putting other players or server admins down because of doing what they like to do (dePara).
Hopefully UWE will look into this going into 256 along with their client fixes for input lag, etc.
Comments
Yes, it must be a bug that decreases the performance, but instead of lowering the slot count until it gets fixed, these servers just stay the way they are.
Who cares if it's unplayable, right?
That's more a comment I'd expect from dePara, but not shocking from you either. You guys honestly should get over your hate on 20+ player servers. I actually tried running an 18 player server and, as per usual, you can't keep it full. If UWE set 16/18 as max players, you 2 would have nothing to say. But since it's not, you decide to direct your ire at server admins who set up 24 player servers and frankly after months of all the undisguised insults it's fucking old by now. If you're going to be pissed off about it be pissed off at UWE, not us.
1) you are way too easily offended
2) don't tell me it's just "decreased performance". If you keep rubberbanding back and forth and your shots do not connect even though you see blood splattering all over the place, there is no way you can play this game properly. At fast speeds you just get warped back facing a wall next to the marines. FUN!
3) I'm not blaming you. I'm blaming the stupidity of the players in general. It was one thing to play on high slot servers prior to the patch(es), but now it's just retarted. Instead of playing on a smaller server until these problems are sorted out, they just keep playing there like nothing is wrong. It's beyond me.
I'm not easily offended really. I let the first several jabs you and dePara made go months back. You basically just said any player playing on a high slot server is "retarted" and you wonder why I might be offended? As I said, it tends to get old. But I'm not going to carry this on in the thread because it's pointless with you two. Your real issue is with UWE, as I said, not the server admins who run servers within the defined, supported player counts that UWE set. But you'll keep taking your shots at our servers anyway and then call us easily offended when we respond to it, which is poor.
And no, it's not at all unplayable like you're making out. Yes there's moments of extreme lag which almost never happened before, at least not on my server. Much of my server's issues currently actually have to do with the balls data center that ns2servers has in Chicago. But that's being fixed at the end of the month. The tickrate fluxuation, however, is all on UWE. And for the most part it doesn't drop past 20, which is still completely playable and not a source of "rubberbanding". My point is that before my server, yes even my horrible horrible 24 player server ran every bit as good as any 16-18 player out there and I know it for fact because I ran one of those as well and hardly ever dropped below 30. Now, it does. And it needs to be sorted out.
There were only two people last night that complained about lagginess on the server. One of them openly admitted their computer gets laggy on a 10 man server or more because his PC hardware is probably not that great. There was a tiny bit of rubber banding approx once to twice a match but went away after 30 seconds or so.
yes I will say it could use some optimizing on client level the most, server second. Plays smooth for me for the most part. My friends have less spec rigs than I do and they don't have too many issues either
my server box is 4.2 ghz CPU with 8 gigs DDR3 & server 2012 os. Not the biggest beast but runs the 32 slots pretty well. I'd like to see ns2 server optimized to have steady 25-30 tick on full 24 player load. If it can get to that point I think everyone will be all set and satisfied.
Pretty well?
I think this graph is telling another story:
http://www.fastshare.org/download/32_slot.png
3 ticks=unplayble rubberbanding, not a "tiny bit"
On 3 ticks the server is nearly dead.
And btw. 30 ticks on an full 24 slot server is possible since ages. Thats not the point.
http://ns2servers.devicenull.org/servers/273849/130.194.4.241:27018
Maybe the problems of your hoster are the reason of your server issues? Who knows.
And btw. if you want a "proper" thread you should stop with fingerpointing.
I smell another thread-lock coming.
Their hardware certainly is and always has been *capable* of running a 24 slot at 30 ticks, but for some reason now they can't sustain that like they used to after the last few patches. How many times should I re-type this for it to sink in for ya?
The graph means nothing... why would I post what I did if it were not true regarding the gaming experience, I have much better things to do and I'm not going to fabricate the game play on my server or my client machine. If people don't play my server box I don't give a crap. If they do I hope they enjoy it and have lots of fun. I have a job, I buy nice hardware and upgrade when I want to, simple as that.
I have been running game servers since 1999 and have been playing video games since before the Atari 2600 came out. I love gaming and sure as shite wouldn't play a game or on a server that was all choppy and had a crap experience.
What totally kills what you are saying in the graph you posted is the player count. Why would they all stay and play if it were as horrible as you claim? Also in your little graph you'll notice the player counts are the lowest when the tick rate is high. Why would the player count be highest with a lower tick rate you ask yourself while staring at the so called evidence you produce??? Simple... the game is playable and they are staying on the server.
I ran a 24 slot server for quite some time and my server box was not being taxed so I hexed it to 32 slots. CPU is at 80% on full server load.
I'm not saying the NS2 server and client doesn't have it's hiccups and certainly needs some more ironing out. It only became rubberized a couple of times last night and it was gone pretty quick. In addition, a lot of the people I spoke to last night in game all seemed to have pretty expensive PC's and not trying to run the game on a 3 or more year old POS.
You called me an ego admin in another topic for no good reason and now you are telling others to stop the "finger pointing". Your nothing but balls deep with your own "holier than thou attitude" and should just zip it.
Mavick can make a post and keep it civil, why the hell can't you?
This thread shouldn't be locked just because you come in here and dump all over it... the forum mods should just ban your arse so others can discuss without some fire starter lurking in the background of topics like freakin where's waldo!
More like optimized to run reasonablely on a normal server cpu, especially with proper multicore usage, not relying on overclocked CPUs with crazy per core performance.
Currently I don't OC my server CPU but I do assign the NS2 server process to 1 affinity at high priority and when server is about 20+ players I notice the turbo boost stays on because the NS2 dedi server is so hefty.
The tickrate is high on low playercount?
Wow, what a surprise.
And if people dont see the constant rubberbanding @ 3 serverticks i think UWE can stop optimizing the game cause its waste of time.
To repeat again: Why would people stay on if the server is "nearly dead" as you say when it is at such a low tick? C'mon if it were bouncing like a rubber ball all over the place people would just leave... hell even I would leave. I can deal with 15-30 seconds of stutter right now and it is playable but YES it needs to be remedied. It is not however grinding this title to a halt and making totally unplayable.
I'd love to see the server and client get a huge performance increase because I love games that play and run like liquid butter. For those wondering, the reason I have not lowered it to 24 or 20 is because I get the exact same performance at the server level with any of aforementioned player counts on the current build.
The players are not staying. It's a constant rotation of players joining and leaving. Sure, it appears full, but I bet there is not a single round where at least 30% of the players aren't exchanged. They join, because there are free slots and then they play for some minutes untill they realise it sucks and leave frustrated.
@Mavick
You are not even trying to read nor understand what I'm writing.
Did I ever say "everyone who plays on high slot servers is retarted"? No I didn't. I wrote it's retarted to play on high slot servers considering the current circumstances.
Did I ever say "you and your high slot server are responsible for the lags"? No I didn't. I wrote that it has to be a bug, that affects every server, but is more severe on high slot servers.
Everything I write you interpret wrong or respond to completely out of context.
Maybe you are not easily offended, but you are definitely incapable of having of discussion.
And I say it again, it IS unplayable. As soon as the tick rate drops, even if it's just to 20 ticks for a second every minute, you still do notice it! It can completely change the outcome of game. A Fade might not die, that actually should have, but didn't because he was warping around in the exact same second you took the shot.
It goes both ways, because you might also just get warped back as a Fade and die, because you lost all your speed in the middle of a group of marines. It's terribly frustrating for everyone.
I never read so much nonsense in 1 post.
@SeeVee
You try to tell me that you have the same serverperformance with 20 and 32 slots?
Uh, i forgot, you hosting gameservers since 1999.
And to answer you question "Why would people stay on if the server is "nearly dead", just read what bicsum posted before:
"3) I'm not blaming you. I'm blaming the stupidity of the players in general. It was one thing to play on high slot servers prior to the patch(es), but now it's just retarted. Instead of playing on a smaller server until these problems are sorted out, they just keep playing there like nothing is wrong. It's beyond me."
And if you cant see the performance issues of your server in my graph, you should stop hosting any server.
And as far as you're concerned Bicsum, calling someone "retarted" (it's actually retarded, btw, and highly insulting as well) and saying they're doing something "retarted" is pretty much saying the same thing. I've seen 8 year olds try to make the excuse that it's not but most people know it is. And saying it's unplayable when I have yet to ever see you on my server making a statement such as that is just absurd, so please don't, and keep it in the realm of reality. A momentary lag spike or stutter does not make anything unplayable, that's just silly because I don't think I have ever played on any game server of any kind that never had a stutter or lag spike at some point in time.
Now, my server has had the network lag spikes that freezes everyone for several minutes and that, indeed is unplayable. But that's also not a UWE problem, that's the aforementioned datacenter issue. The drops in tickrate? No, not unplayable. Annoying probably but unless it were happening every few seconds then nowhere near unplayable. Now, if you're one of those types that want to rage and scream and kick your legs against a table because something outside your control happened (gee that never happens does it) then perhaps you could call that "unplayable", but probably most people who play online shooters knows that lag happens sometimes and deal with it. It still certainly is an issue, at least on that we agree, and needs to be fixed.
I leave you alone now with this thread (cause its going to nowhere), with your smooth serverbox (noone is playing on) and with the fact that you have no clue of hosting a ns2 server.
@Mavick
Its pretty stupid to open a "This need to be fixed" thread TWO days before an new patch is announced.
The forum is full of posts about rubberbanding servers.
Obraxis and others from the dev team know this and they are working on a fix.
"rage and scream and kick your legs against a table"- yep, thats what this thread is about.
You two are immune to facts and im immune to this thread now. Have a nice day.
It's perfectly OK to disagree with someone but when you do it I notice you have to throw some sort of degrading comment or insult in there which is not the proper way to debate any topic. Never think anyone is an A-hole or beneath you because they have a different opinion. That's just plain dumb.
You have a great day yourself