The Ridiculous Lag

[Zeno]

I'm sorry to say it, but MCSG has become almost unplayable due to lag. I know that the dev team is working on it, but when someone is able to punch you until you have 3 hearts in the span of 5 seconds when you have reasonable armor, you are absolutely unable to hit anybody, people are teleporting everywhere, and you lag back 20 blocks at least twice a game, you have to wonder how much they actually ARE working on it.

I know I am often the one to respond to these kinds of threads with the answer of: They're working on it, be patient. They'll fix it. But I've been giving that answer for so long now that I've begun to doubt it. The lag, issues with NCP, and other problems with the servers, have remained completely unabated for weeks, closing on months. I think the members of MCSG kind of deserve a better explanation for why their servers they know and love have become so terrible, beyond saying that they just have to wait and see.

It doesn't have to be much, just a simple progress report on the dev team's prioritization, what issues they're working on now, and how close they think they are to finishing. Just as long as it's something more than an answer designed to get people to stop complaining without actually answering the question.

I really hope that this thread will actually merit an intelligent, thoughtful reply, with an actual amount of research done as opposed to a copy and pasted (Or similarly monotone) response and a #ReqLock.

Looking for you G33ke, probably my best hope.

 

[Lhos]

I'm sorry to say it, but MCSG has become almost unplayable due to lag. I know that the dev team is working on it, but when someone is able to punch you until you have 3 hearts in the span of 5 seconds when you have reasonable armor, you are absolutely unable to hit anybody, people are teleporting everywhere, and you lag back 20 blocks at least twice a game, you have to wonder how much they actually ARE working on it.

Personally, the issues stem from a few different places.

LAG

• Ping in command prompt: 90ms. Ping in MC: 250-300ms.
• Server response to/Client handling of pings is slow?
• MC just has horrid netcode?
• SSP/SMP merge caused a lot of issues.
• Not all sources of lag can be fixed by the devs, such as problems with MC itself.

NCP

• Forcefield detection seems to be the buggiest feature - also the newest?
• Bukkit might also be making things worse - new version forces NCP updates?
• NCP apparently has a config file that is as clean-reading as most *nix man pages.

The thing that I find the most likely to blame is MC itself. It is an unbelievably awful engine for this. It's hardly anything you could call optimized (lol Java*), even less so when you're talking about its netcode, and yet it's also the best engine available for this thanks to the ease of creating new maps, a large playerbase, and the fact that it is pretty much a world simulator - any FPS engine does that, really, but MC specifically was made to simulate a rather Earthlike reality, and so that lends itself well to Hunger Games style PvP.

*Java is easy to learn and runs on anything that'll run the Java VM, which means Windows/Mac/*nix. It is, however, much slower than languages that don't need their code interpreted on the fly by a VM, such as C++. Choosing to write MC in Java was/is a mixed bag.

Looking for you G33ke, probably my best hope.

/tokenstarwarsjoke


EDIT: inb4 completely out of season April Fools' joke.

 

[iMightTroll]

Well lag is get RIDICULOUS I almost got fisted by a guy and I had a wood axe I had half a heart

 

[Captain Dak]

AMEN!!!!! And the whole Breeze Island/SG4 issue, as stupid as it may be to continue to complain about it, is getting absolutely out of control! All these issues are really making the survival games not fun.

 

[G33ke]

And I'm sorry to say that...I kind of have to agree with you on a few things, which is sad to want to say in the position I'm in...but I want to speak up in this instead of hiding away in an attempt to look good to staff. I don't care if some of these things aren't very staff like things to say - they're true and something I've had on my mind recently.

How long NCP has had it's problems has worried me, too. (although the lag isn't too bad for me, I think part of it is your internet. (although the servers have been lagging a little since yesterday, but that's recent.)) But then, I thought to myself maybe why it's taking so long - maybe it's the fact that Chad was on "vacation" at Minecon and a variety of other issues that later came up, or maybe it's the developers trying to find a new way to detect forcefield instead of tweaking this one, taking time to figure out and develop, while keeping the old system in for now...

I do not know any details myself. All I know is that they are working on these issues, however quickly I'm not sure, but I'm not going to pressure them when I don't have the details...which is why I do have one thing to say: If there is any one thing we need right now, it's for more information - we need to know why it's taking so long, because people will be less and less patient as time passes and nothing is done...honestly, I know I'm not the only staff member right now that thinks MCSG is more "broken" now than ever before, not by a long shot, and as far as we are aware, nothing is being done about it...it really makes you lose faith if you don't know why it's taking so long or what work has been done so far...

I still love MCSG, and I still want to help as a staff member, but seriously, this is getting a little ridiculous. If nothing is being done about the current issues right now, tell us why, and if something is, tell us what. We need as much information as you are allowed to give us, because not knowing is seriously making some community members lose faith that they'll ever be fixed anytime in the near future...I've already locked 3 and deleted 2 threads about removing NCP today...I believe every one had someone say "I'm done being patient, fix it now." It's gotten to that point now where even the most patient community members are losing their patience. We need to know why.

On top of that, even once we know why...we have to be assured it will be fixed soon. Between Illegal move, the EU leaderboards not working, servers crashing and lagging in all regions, especially EU, NCP blocking your hits, the ban checker not working, SG4 and Breeze being picked almost every game, the things that were supposed to be added months ago like tier 3 chests that never have been added, and then hearing "hey, we are going to add a whole bunch of things in January" with no assurance of these other things being fixed...seriously, MCSG needs to go hardcore bug fix mode before it gets any more broken than it is now. At this point in time, the correct answer to keep more users staying and active is to fix the issues they've been complaining about for ages, not adding more features.

As a side note: Zeno, I commend you for making a thread like this without sounding like you're raging and actually keeping calm and mature about it. Out of the million rage threads about this issue, I actually see a calm and mature one. It's a nice change.

 

[Zeno]

Wise and insightful comments

And this is why we all love G33ke.

Thank you for this response.

 

[Billa]

Personally, the issues stem from a few different places.

LAG

• Ping in command prompt: 90ms. Ping in MC: 250-300ms.
• Server response to/Client handling of pings is slow?
• MC just has horrid netcode?
• SSP/SMP merge caused a lot of issues.
• Not all sources of lag can be fixed by the devs, such as problems with MC itself.

NCP

• Forcefield detection seems to be the buggiest feature - also the newest?
• Bukkit might also be making things worse - new version forces NCP updates?
• NCP apparently has a config file that is as clean-reading as most *nix man pages.

The thing that I find the most likely to blame is MC itself. It is an unbelievably awful engine for this. It's hardly anything you could call optimized (lol Java*), even less so when you're talking about its netcode, and yet it's also the bestengine available for this thanks to the ease of creating new maps, a large playerbase, and the fact that it is pretty much a world simulator - any FPS engine does that, really, but MC specifically was made to simulate a rather Earthlike reality, and so that lends itself well to Hunger Games style PvP.

*Java is easy to learn and runs on anything that'll run the Java VM, which means Windows/Mac/*nix. It is, however, much slower than languages that don't need their code interpreted on the fly by a VM, such as C++. Choosing to write MC in Java was/is a mixed bag.


/tokenstarwarsjoke


EDIT: inb4 completely out of season April Fools' joke.

Um, what with your saying about 250-300ms to MC, that's what I actually usually play with when I'm on survival games. Even before the tremendous lag I still have the same connection as before, so I guess I've actually learnt to deal with it.

 

[TaiserRY]

I get no lag on EU servers except NCP problems, everything else is fine to be honest. but yeh they should sort out NCP

 

[Hawk62]

I'm worried for the servers. If the issues continue at this rate and no fixes are made I'm afraid that the servers won't last too much longer.

 

[G33ke]

I'm worried for the servers. If the issues continue at this rate and no fixes are made I'm afraid that the servers won't last too much longer.

I wouldn't quite say that. The servers will last quite a while longer even if these issues persisted for a long time...I just feel that more and more well known users will be newer ones, since all the old users will eventually lose patience in it...I won't be leaving anytime soon, but the same can't be said for everyone.

 

[Hawk62]

It's hard to play when ncp thinks you're the ultimate aimbot

 

[Lhos]

Um, what with your saying about 250-300ms to MC, that's what I actually usually play with when I'm on survival games. Even before the tremendous lag I still have the same connection as before, so I guess I've actually learnt to deal with it.

I can play just fine with the 250-300ms lag that Minecraft reports. My point is that Windows pings the MCSG servers and gets a 90ms response time, which means that whatever MC is doing is taking a full .2-.25 seconds longer to do nothing more than say "HEY SERVER ARE YOU THERE" and get a response to that question. Now stack on everything else the server has to do, aka running a game with 24 connected clients. If it's that bad at a simple ping request, oh lawd I don't even want to know how much lag everything else introduces.