game lag/freezes [Archive] - The Settlers Online

lulu10093

02.04.17, 10:02

I have been getting the same the past few days for sandycove and north isle servers
yesterday was the worst so far to the point the game was stuck trying to load after me being booted for over 3 hours even after usual clean cache log out 15 mins then back in etc just nothing was working apart from me being locked out the game and stuck on loading page
i am hoping today will be better
as if the above isnt happening with the lag/freezing/booting locked out i also been getting the chat server OMG how many times have i lost that and had connecting to chat server message sometimes for up to a hour only to get chat for it to go off again :(
it seems like the game struggling for me atleast since friday

edit

nope game still doing all the above and brakes the same time on sandy and north for long times and as can see on the north side when i do get chat back the global chat is all blank :(
http://image.prntscr.com/image/481f531fa6bc4befbae01cbc0d8b5045.png

spot the times the same both servers
http://image.prntscr.com/image/9257e16bfbed49f78ed56b4e5fcb81b8.png http://image.prntscr.com/image/2dda3dea5c6e448ca0f08d458671f40b.png

MarkG

02.04.17, 10:19

not so much a lag problem for me, rather the hammer man (connection lost) screeen popup every 20-30 seconds, gave up many times during event and went do something else for few hours, happening again when just logged in, took me 30 mins to collect all mails from explorers today and in process of collecting and the man popped up again removing the mail window from my screen, wait few secs for connection to connect, click mail icon and screen goes dark mean having to reload again, 30 seconds after reload hammer man pops up again, repeat..... is not just on home island, its on adventures and friend islands its happening. things that normally take few mins taking upto an hour, not fun :/

and yes cleared caches. using chrome, also tried the app version and firefox all same. done a speed test on my internet connection and thats fine, so it definetely the tso server problem

Madorosu

02.04.17, 11:10

not so much a lag problem for me, rather the hammer man (connection lost) screeen popup every 20-30 seconds, gave up many times during event and went do something else for few hours.... things that normally take few mins taking upto an hour, not fun :/

I have not had things that bad during this particular event. However, I have felt that kind of pain during a few previous events and there is just no point submitting a ticket to support as all that I ever get is instructions to clear caches, try a different browser, yadda yadda, followed by a message that the problem has been submitted to the devs for consideration as/when those procedures make no difference. The only thing that ever seems to fix the problem is the ending of the event.

This time round, I am finding I am having issues with switching zones, particularly switching back to my home zone. The longer I am logged in, the slower it gets until finally the game locks up on the loading pop-up and I am forced to refresh. I find that I have to be very selective about whether a zone switch is actually necessary, else I find myself having to refresh increasingly frequently, some times after as little as half an hour. I am not looking forward to doing "Where Easter Eggs Come From" five times for achievements. I expect that I shall need to refresh the game after each one.

Xibor

02.04.17, 22:08

Ah! It's not just me then! I've been logging information planning to send it all to support, but it seems I'm not alone. Same thing - frequent chat disconnects and hammer man. It seems if I disconnect from the Internet (leaving the game running) and then reconnect it helps (but doesn't solve it completely).

I've also noticed this happens only when I'm on my mobile broadband (never at home on land line) and only in the NZ morning (09:00 NZ to 12:00 NZ, right now thats 21:00 GMT to 00:00 GMT). I suspect the timing actually more than my connection. Would that be about the same time for everyone else? Funny enough, another hammer man right now that cleared it self after a few seconds.... quite annoying.

Durin_d

03.04.17, 08:25

I've also noticed this happens only when I'm on my mobile broadband (never at home on land line) and only in the NZ morning (09:00 NZ to 12:00 NZ, right now thats 21:00 GMT to 00:00 GMT).

I think that there's the reason for your problems. Mobile broadband. Depending how your operator has configured their network it can cause those connection error by dropping the connections between your browser and the server to balance the usage of the network during peek hours. This has nothing to do with xx MB/s or ping ms. Operator just cuts the virtual pipe that is built between your browser and the server and you see it as a connection error in the game and the error disappears when a new virtual pipe has been built.

Salem_Warrior_1

03.04.17, 09:26

most has this issue, 1 because islands buffed, 2 constant play, 3 server loaded, BB don't care simples
getting told to clean your cash box, eat a cooky or await game reset 24 hour is beneficial to them who don't speak codes, but some of us do and know this isn't all effecting game
flash and nodes are burning

EasyTarget1

03.04.17, 09:48

Seems to be more when a leader camp goes down for me. I've given it some thought so things are prolly as good as they can be without having more cluster sites being spread around the world. That's not going to be simple either as they all need to communicate with each other and have everything live on each node - doable but prolly cost a few bob.

BB_Saqui

03.04.17, 10:01

Thank you for the reports guys - I've forwarded them on and we'll find out what's going on!

Xibor

03.04.17, 21:33

I think that there's the reason for your problems. Mobile broadband. Depending how your operator has configured their network it can cause those connection error by dropping the connections between your browser and the server to balance the usage of the network during peek hours. This has nothing to do with xx MB/s or ping ms. Operator just cuts the virtual pipe that is built between your browser and the server and you see it as a connection error in the game and the error disappears when a new virtual pipe has been built.

I can see some logic in that, however this wouldn't be peak time I wouldn't think (my 09:00 to 12:00, then abruptly stopping almost exactly at noon). The timing is a little coincidental for me. That being said, I am sure it's something about the mobile connection because although there is the odd occasional hiccup at home on the land line they are far and few between.

I was wondering if it was possible BB (or some layer of infrastructure) was doing some kind of maintenance/backup/diagnostics from 21:00 to 00:00 (and more of a problem Sun - Tue GMT)?

BB_Saqui

04.04.17, 08:23

I was wondering if it was possible BB (or some layer of infrastructure) was doing some kind of maintenance/backup/diagnostics from 21:00 to 00:00 (and more of a problem Sun - Tue GMT)?

There was nothing from us during that time period, but there are a few stops between our servers and the end user that could've been affected. We're still trying to identify it, but if you keep getting lag then keep the reports coming in!

jonno697

04.04.17, 08:26

Hi Bb, still getting lag/freezes, just had one few moments ago, and others in my guild are suffering same(sandycove server)

maryam1

04.04.17, 10:23

yes, getting lag and screen freeze....mostly when on adventure, game does not seem to be able to cope with one 'command' (click) issued right after another and I am needing to pause constantly.

When returning to own land there are mail reports, Trade notifications etc and the game freezes for some time as it seems unable to cope with several pieces of info arriving at the same time as my arrival back on home land - and yes, done all the usual stuff....twice already in this event!
There is also an issue on adv maps...getting booted as soon as someone else arrives on the map. Again, it feels like there is info overload for the server.

TheVictorious

04.04.17, 11:12

There was nothing from us during that time period, but there are a few stops between our servers and the end user that could've been affected. We're still trying to identify it, but if you keep getting lag then keep the reports coming in!

Well, just trying to help you , but the issue is exist even when players sleeping, like inactive times, but getting worst in peak times, I logged in to game like 2 am, and 6 am and between, the lag was still there, as I reported to you before, I was getting lag before event, but when event started, it is now really so bad, and worse.

Just if you do some house keeping stuff with your servers (clean temp, check if there is any memory leaks, or processes stuck specially http threads, your firewall behaviors), and maybe a reboot with cool-down time like a 5 min or 10, also if you just upgrade your servers.

Seriously with avg servers these days, you can handle tens of hundreds requests per second, I don't understand what the really problem with your servers, are they so old? did you ever moved this game from first day that you implemented it until now to better environment?

as a developer here (with kind of DevOps understanding), i really will understand any tech details that you would say if you did.

EasyTarget1

04.04.17, 14:55

I doubt the bottleneck is hardware related, I think it is down to connection. So many people from around the world and maybe only 1/2 pipes.

qawpaw

05.04.17, 12:01

have been using chrome x64 for month now ,with having to restart browser severel a times daily.
today i tried edge after 1 hour still no lag. :)

after 1 1/2 hour edge laged again

gibbletz

06.04.17, 03:50

Freezes are happening more frequently the longer I stay logged in and get worse until the game becomes unusable.
plugin-container.exe + Firefox use more and more virtual memory over time until I guess there is none left to use until I close the browser and clear cache etc.
Loading game after a restart earlier today took 17 minutes.

qawpaw

06.04.17, 12:12

indeed gibbletz as i experience it to:
we use more and more time to clear everything,
and less and less on adv itself ;)

Thejollyone

06.04.17, 15:37

some very, very odd stuff happening. I sent a block to a camp and as I did so the screen froze, no movement etc; out of frustration i clicked on the other attack regardless and lo and behold the drums sounded as if to denote he was on his way. I had to refresh the game as the graphics stayed frozen.

On re-entering the adventure, the block had worked perfectly and the sector was down, so the secondary attack had indeed been sent even though the graphics earlier were showing it hadn't..

Now this is not lag as I have ever experienced, and after nearly 5 years of playing, believe me when I say I know how lag normally affects the game ...

Also, the chats keep re-setting for no reason and as my guildie complains "everytime there's any notification, chat drops out and I have to click in the chat box ".

If these are server overloads then I have to ask if there is anything BB can do to sort this out before it goes critical? :/

Xibor

06.04.17, 21:43

Some additional data from observations over the past several weeks: Hammer man and lost chat seems to happen only Mon-Wed. Thu and Fri I don't tend to have the problem at all.

sanadar

06.04.17, 23:09

I generally have pretty good luck with lag, but today it is very bad. Getting hangups, lockups and general lag. Game is almost unplayable today. Appreciate that you are looking into it.

unicornlinzy1

07.04.17, 13:56

I generally have pretty good luck with lag, but today it is very bad. Getting hangups, lockups and general lag. Game is almost unplayable today. Appreciate that you are looking into it.

Yes my game is crashing a lot today and freezing, it has been like this since the event started :(

SeVeN_K

07.04.17, 15:28

its like this every single event the amount of Money investet in gems are certenly going elsewhere

cliff60

08.04.17, 07:07

i was having the same prob. its flash player causing the prob. its corrupted. u need to uninstall flash and reinstall it. If u have more than 1 browser make sure u havnt got flash on all the browsers as that causes a conflict. 1 copy should run on all browsers not 1 per browser.

whats happening is flash is crashing but not always warning u its crashed. So it locks up the browser making u think its the game.

EasyTarget1

08.04.17, 08:36

Could well be flash but I was getting the same thing while using the slim browser/standalone version. Switched back to google as faster to reload/refresh

maryam1

10.04.17, 10:04

chat is a pain atm....friends and guildies lights going off and me told they are not on line when in fact they are...they unable to see my chat at times and I unable to see theirs.

TheVictorious

10.04.17, 13:37

Could well be flash but I was getting the same thing while using the slim browser/standalone version. Switched back to google as faster to reload/refresh

the standalone version is flash player as well, but running outside browser, with a slim container, could be embedded web viewer or something like that.

Helpful to avoid browser blocking, but this will skip the browser optimizations on the connection, so BB should do that maybe for their client, maybe if this is possible .

qawpaw

10.04.17, 14:25

i found that one 1 pc 2gb memory a lot of lag,
pc 2 8gb memory less lag.

Xibor

10.04.17, 23:18

Tuesday morning in NZ. And again, chat reset, hammer man, repeats over and over, sometimes every 2-3 minutes.
I noticed I was at home yesterday during the same time frame and didn't have this problem so now it's impossible to tell where the issue is, and why it only happens on NZ Mon-Fri at the same times, and only on my mobile connection. I assume the other people reporting problems are not all on mobile broadband...

Frustrating.