GvG Lag - "tile 38,75"

[rickssavage]

"tile 38,75 was fought over by both guilds especially hard and due to local rendering issues neither of us could see things working in real time"
The above statement is just one example of the many battles we face trying to GvG at calc and not the battles we should have to fight daily.

There was a time where our world was comprised of guilds that would fight everyday and then proceed to Global Chat for a good round of smack talk. Most of it was innocent and rarely was a real issue caused.

These days, we're relegated to discussing the GvG issues, such as lag, freezing and about half a dozen errors and bugs we're encountering while trying to figure out how we can at least have a fighting chance of...well fighting. These issues have been reported repeatedly over the past few years and nothing changes. These lag and glitch issues are in the "on a daily basis" stage and have escalated to making GvG 90 % unplayable in the last 2 days. Everyone has tried clearing cookies, cache, history, switching back to flash, back to HTML, trying Mozilla Firefox, The "New" Chrome, IceDragon, Opera, WaterFox and then back to Chrome. And everyone has tried closing all other tabs, shutting down background programs, being wired directly to the modem, using wired mouse and keyboard, having a dedicated graphics card, using a tower over a laptop, resetting one's system etc etc etc. We have done everything Inno has told us to do and then some. Again nothing has changed and it just gets worse.

How long does this have to persist? We've been loyal players, even more loyal customers, when will we actually have a say in the performance of the servers and how they along with your network and storage infrastructures impact our daily gaming. As much money as we've contributed, we've ALL invested time, hours to days, weeks to months building up our cities, attack boost, troops, maps, etc. We've done our part with this game and now we're asking you to do the same.

New
I see no reason why this cannot be fixed,

 

[Bowbender]

I have also been having the same issues as mentioned here. I put in a support ticket earlier this week and got the usual blow off response. They are still trying to forward it to someone that cares. I refuse to spend another dime on this game until there is some resolution. As stated in another post, fix it or at least come clean on your intentions.

 

[qaccy]

Sounds like a personal problem. Guild I'm in is incredibly active in GvG in several ages daily and, on my end, the worst I experience is timing issues due to the sector being lost/taken or the siege being broken. In fact, even though we've since had the addition of being able to auto battle (which hardly counts as 'fighting', by the way) from army management, I've noticed that GvG performance has actually increased since before it was added.

Also, what the heck is this thread? Seems like someone dragged some friends over from one of their guilds/servers who are now trying to create some sort of echo chamber in what I thought was the bug report forum. What's the bug here, exactly?

 

[Goth Almighty]

Everyone has tried clearing cookies, cache, history, switching back to flash, back to HTML, trying Mozilla Firefox, The "New" Chrome, IceDragon, Opera, WaterFox and then back to Chrome. And everyone has tried closing all other tabs, shutting down background programs, being wired directly to the modem, using wired mouse and keyboard, having a dedicated graphics card, using a tower over a laptop, resetting one's system etc etc etc. We have done everything Inno has told us to do and then some. Again nothing has changed and it just gets worse.

Ditto.

 

[DeletedUser37819]

I have submitted a ticket about the worst lag ever. Can even sip coffee in between battles while waiting for battle result to pop up, that's how bad it is. Soon, I will be able to have breakfast in between, if no improvement is done. Problem is Inno introduced too many fringed activities, in order to get players to spend, which is understandable, BUT you have to MATCH it with Super High-End Servers & Tech to eliminate lag, otherwise playing FoE is no longer fun, and it will only drive players away from the game.

 

[Goth Almighty]

We've been loyal players, even more loyal customers, when will we actually have a say in the performance of the servers and how they along with your network and storage infrastructures impact our daily gaming. As much money as we've contributed, we've ALL invested time, hours to days, weeks to months building up our cities, attack boost, troops, maps, etc. We've done our part with this game and now we're asking you to do the same.

I have spent A lot of $$$$ on this game are starting to get frustrated

Alot of the players who spend $$$$ on this game are starting to get frustrated by Innos lack of commitment on fixing an issue which has been ongoing for too long. If they want to continue to keep tenured players who spend a good amount of money in helping the game, It would be in their best interest to invest that money and finally put a fix to GVG.

for all the money we put into the game (according to InnoGames Financial statements, easily found on google) asking for a part of the game to work properly hardly seems like an unreasonable request in any capacity. If it was the payment function for diamonds lagging and not working, rest assured they'd have spent a few hundred thousand on servers by now.

The point here is that we are loyal and paying customers. As such, we are entitled to a product that is not defective. Clearly, lag time is a defect. Therefore, we have a right to a remedy or refund. All we need is unity and resolve amongst ourselves. The majority of us are GvG fighters but we aren't "enemies", per se. As teams, we fight each other to win championships but, as individuals, whether you're successful or not, has no bearing on my own success. This issue puts all of us players on the same side. We just have to realize we have a common goal to get what we paid for! Let's make our voices heard!

 

[RazorbackPirate]

Not that this helps, but it makes sense that GvG lag will be worse with Carnival having a neighborhood component. In order to maximize my florins potential, whenever I'm not doing something else in my city, I open the event window and leave it open in my browser. This opens and keeps open a dedicated connection to the server. This allows us to see others in our hood playing the carnival games in real time, gives us the opportunity to play against them, and maybe steal the accumulated florins out from under them.

I have 2 cities that I keep open in a separate tabs, the event window open in each. That's 2 full time connections to the server for the duration of the event that would not normally be there. Multiply that by a few hundred thousand players with more cities than just my 2. Being an event and the importance of the 'real time' neighborhood aspect of the event, I'm sure these event data calls get priority over all other data calls, including GvG.

I know a logical explanation as to why the lag problems have become worse and will likely remain this way for the duration of the event doesn't help, but there you go. I can sympathize with your plight, but I don't see a fix until the event concludes when it will resolve on it's own. I'll agree that it sucks as I see no resolution to your issue, no matter how many friends and guildies complain.

 

[DeletedUser18851]

but I don't see a fix until the event concludes

How about disabling the event window for an hour during recalc time? Granted, that will not fix the issues. The issues in GvG happen regardless of events, they are merely compounded by them and up until this point we've all begrudgingly dealt with the problems, albeit filing tickets and being ignored, but now it's just gotten insane. As I said before, this event has made the lag 3x worse than it's ever been, even with similar style neighborhood events. So it seems like something else must have changed. While I reckon you have a piece of the story explained with the hood-event server connections, I don't think it's the whole story.

I'm not sure it's been made clear yet, but this "new horrible" level of lag only happens at reset and about 30-60 mins thereafter... the most important hour of time for GvG players. At that point once the action dies down, it's back to "normal" (which is still badly messed up) for the rest of the cycle.

 

[DeletedUser37832]

This is the worst it has ever been, Can even talk in guild chat in between battles while waiting for battle result to pop up, that's how bad it is, sometimes you cant even get in a battle, or fill any defense in while under siege. Fix this so we can have fun again

 

[BruteForceAttack]

Often when you fill DA, you get kicked out too

 

[Resipsa2]

InnoGamesTV stated in the December broadcast it would address GVG. But it seems that they are moving towards more city development (including settlements - which take more server space - for individual play); and constant events for more non-GVG guild participation. Additionally, FoE Innogames stated months ago it would remove inactive players that have not played in more than a year - could be 20% x worlds (EN alone 8,500+ pages or x10 players of which less than half are active). In 2013 FoE reached 10M players and by now their are millions of accounts on server that could be deleted to free up space. Note, INNO - there is a significant number of players, and thus percentage of payers, that play for GVG as much as the rest of the game; and as the lag increases the game-play decreases at some proportion.

 

[DeletedUser]

In 2013 FoE reached 10M players and by now their are millions of accounts on server that could be deleted to free up space.

I don't know why people don't get that the issue is undoubtedly bandwidth and not server space.

 

[Volodya]

I see @athena9 will get all the guild members out once again. Well done.

Why is that a bad thing? Why shouldn't a guild coordinate their response to an ongoing issue of mutual interest? I don't do GvG (for reasons unrelated to lag!) so I have no personal stake in this, but I've been friends with Athena for a very long time and I know what a dedicated and conscientious player she is. (And no, she didn't solicit this comment!) Asking Inno to correct a longstanding problem--one that's apparently getting worse not better--is entirely reasonable. At a minimum they should clearly and unambiguously spell out their intentions vis-a-vis GvG going forward.

 

[Colb777]

I don't know why people don't get that the issue is undoubtedly bandwidth and not server space.

Server space isn't the issue, I work in IT and I happen to know that it definitely isn't space, to be fair though it isn't bandwidth either.

The capacity of the servers "space" would refer to hard drives and those are not even close to full. If they were we wouldn't be able to bring in new players, release new ages or change pretty much anything.

The servers are the issue and I'm willing to bet they're out of date and the processors do not contain the ability to withstand hundreds of players, playing the game on our respective GvG maps. Processing power, RAM and quite likely some bandwidth issues.

For those of you who aren't getting what I'm reading I'll make it as easy as I can.

The Servers need to be replaced with better, more robust models that are equipped to handle the needs of GvG. They're presently ill-equipped because when this game was created the most computer power "demanding" feature of the game was when the tournaments opened and closed (we had lag with that too, as some of you 2013/2014 players may recall).

Why can't the servers just be upgraded with new processors or have more RAM added? The video cards (or graphic processing units) are not able to handle upgrades beyond a certain point, same for their respective motherboards. You can change a transmission between ford models but not add a brand new one to a Model T.

Considering the revenue of the game (especially all those people buying diamonds to improve their attack boost, observatory levels for GvG etc etc), it would be a wise investment on their part to stop focusing on all the events and new features for mobile players and bring us something we can actually use.

I happen to know a lot of players who used to spend thousands a year stopped buying anything because of the poor performance of the game. Where did they go? Oh they still play but they build 20 other stupid cities that they littered with wishing wells to save money and keep accumulating diamonds for their main world so they could continue to buy expansions. What replaced them? A bunch of idiot Apple players whining all the time spending a fraction of what some of us used to spend

 

[Agent327]

How about disabling the event window for an hour during recalc time? .

That would be fun. Only a few play GvG. Let's just put the event on hold for them. Nobody will know, or find out.

 

[DeletedUser28361]

I have also noticed the lag has been worse in the last 3 months than previously, and particularly bad the last 3-5 days. Fights are now almost like watching a slide show, with things locking up for several seconds at a time. GvG while always a numbers game, has become almost entirely dependent on bodies that show up and strategy and good timing no longer matter. I also work in IT and pretty much agree with Dylan that this is likely has much to do with servers not being able to keep up with requests especially at night when everyone is playing at the same time.

 

[DeletedUser]

The Servers need to be replaced with better, more robust models that are equipped to handle the needs of GvG.

Considering the revenue of the game (especially all those people buying diamonds to improve their attack boost, observatory levels for GvG etc etc), it would be a wise investment on their part to stop focusing on all the events and new features for mobile players and bring us something we can actually use.

Even assuming you're right, which I'm not conceding, why would Inno spend so much money on such a minor part of the game. And it is minor now, whether you want to admit it or not. Maybe not minor for you, but minor in the grand scheme of things. With the majority of players now using mobile rather than PC, along with the addition of GE and more events, it's just not economically sensible to spend much money improving infrastructure simply to make it better for GvG.

I happen to know a lot of players who used to spend thousands a year stopped buying anything because of the poor performance of the game.

That may be true, but Inno's revenues haven't taken a hit, meaning that the...

bunch of idiot Apple players

...have apparently made up for any revenue shortfalls from GvGers who quit spending.

Incidentally, the views expressed in this post are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect Inno's view or attitude.

 

[DeletedUser35603]

Someone once said: "If as a teacher i tell my students a lesson and they do not learn it, and i tell them again and they still do not learn it, then perhaps it is the way the teacher has failed to teach correctly." Perhaps we can look at it in a different light. I left playing a farmville type game because it would freeze up just because i would log into the game. Someone suggested that no matter what I did on my end, game makers have to learn to program in a language that does not result in errors. Old codes, old programming, and old ways of making games have to be modernized so that errors no longer exist simply because a person logs into the game. HTML, HTML-5, machine language, etc abound in all formats. I have always been under the assumption that a product that one buys should not break simply because its used. I have played games that have portals where access to a browser is not necessary. Those portals work like a charm and rarely, rarely have errors, lag, etc simply because one is logged into it. Perhaps it is time for game designers to address the issue of error-free games.

 

[DeletedUser6219]

I'm highly skeptical as to whether the recent increase in lag issues with GvG is purely due to bandwidth, and not something else like changes related to html 5 migration, etc for a variety of reasons. For example, subtle changes in siege or tile / troop loading behavior.

I don't know if this helps as a clue towards isolating performance issues.. this is purely a user/tester observation offered from ignorance of flash architecture. What I have observed, and likely others have also...
Have you ever logged into the foe server and everything runs fast /smooth, you load cities, add to GBs, do your GE, then flash crashes (try manual polish and motivate if you want to try and make this happen btw, but we've all been there), so you reload, but it's a "bad" or "soft" reload?... by this what I mean is you don't have to re-enter your login data as its in cache, but after you reload off the cached login, you are back in game, and you scroll thru guild roster or friends list, but the speed of the scrolling is as though your video card was struggling with frame rate. ? So, typically you reload again and everything's fine again. I've not seen this happen anymore with scrolling through these lists, but with GvG, the rendering is ALWAYS behaving that way on ANY login. Yes, tiles don't get backlogged with graphical updates and appear to drop packets when there are fewer users hitting tiles on the same map (ie you are far from 8 PM EST) , but it's as though the client is permanently stuck in this impaired state in all circumstances now. That's how I might describe the quality of the lag now vs.the more casual commonplace complaints of the past, and this change was abruptly introduced sometime ~ 4-5 events ago later in 2018. Just as the flash crashes in slightly different places as the code grows in length, it's as though there's a phenotypical change in the build which landed on GvG in particular.. but perhaps something as fundamental as process de-prioritization. Purely speculative there, but this is how I would describe what I am experiencing now vs. before.

 

[DeletedUser16277]

Can anything be done about the lag, especially during GvG? My hard drive crashed a few months ago so I bought a new "gaming" computer, however, during GvG the response is still so slow that sometimes I can't get a single battle in even while Auto-fighting, and/or my screen freezes up and I have to refresh, or even reboot. Also, several times each day I have to refresh when the screen freezes while NOT in GvG, and about once a day my computer completely locks up and I have to reboot. NONE of this happens with any other program I use on this computer. I certainly would not recommend this game to my friends if they were looking for online gaming. This is the MAIN problem that leads to a LOT of frustration and anger. If I hadn't made so many friends and invested so much time I would probably have already quit playing. PLEASE help us and fix the lag problem. Thank you for considering my post.