Age of Conan

Just because I am getting sick of repeating myself, I figured I'd drop a thread.

It amazes me how people expect flawless gameplay from a stess test beta in the first few hours it is up.

First off, you're looking at new servers set up specifically for this event. With anything new in this technological world we live in comes issues and break-in problems.

Second off, as you know the client was patched earlier. Very few games, especially beta clients, run flawlessly right after a major patch.

Third, the concept of beta software. I can illustrate this as I did in another thread. if you go to your AoC directory, and start the client directly, instead of through the patcher, you'll notice a little DOS box pop up.

That's a debugger. It also logs all that stuff you see streaming by. That thing is not exactly friendly on system resources.

Also, the beta client uses uncompressed, raw TGA textures. being uncompressed, they are HUGE...roughly 8x the size of the compressed textures that will be used in the retail client. How much more system muscle do you think these things take? The answer is a LOT.

this test also is a bit of a worst case scenario. It is so that these kinds of technical problems and lag / disconnects can be avoided on launch day, by getting them out of the way now, with unoptimised code and servers.

So before you whine about performance, lag, disconnects, etc, remember exatly what the word TEST means.

So you're saying these huge lag spikes I get really frequently are just because of the servers and such? Oh thank god. For a second I thought my 8800 Ultra, duo core and 2GB RAM couldn't handle even low.

Any way to get rid of the DOS box? When I run through the patcher and click Play the game doesn't pop up.

Also, anyway to make the textures compressed so my computer isn't boiling to the point I can cook eggs?

uhhh they can't stress test the servers if they can't get enough people in a single area at a time.  Requiring a monster system to play a stress test is kinda wierd because the concept of a stress test is to get as many people as possible in.  Limiting the amount of people gathering by using uncompressed textures defeats the point.

Its not like they needed all thier textures uncompressed.  20 days from release most of thier art assets should be complete, and can be compressed beyond .tgas.  There is a difference between closed beta and open beta.  It has to do with whats suppose to be tested.  Most of this stuff should have already been tested already.

On Open Beta I am expecting a game near completion that should play near what it will on release, with maybe end-game content still being worked on.  Latency should be expected, and only minor bugs should show that would be hard to find with a limited amount of people.

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

Just because I am getting sick of repeating myself, I figured I'd drop a thread.

It amazes me how people expect flawless gameplay from a stess test beta in the first few hours it is up.

First off, you're looking at new servers set up specifically for this event. With anything new in this technological world we live in comes issues and break-in problems.

Second off, as you know the client was patched earlier. Very few games, especially beta clients, run flawlessly right after a major patch.

Third, the concept of beta software. I can illustrate this as I did in another thread. if you go to your AoC directory, and start the client directly, instead of through the patcher, you'll notice a little DOS box pop up.

That's a debugger. It also logs all that stuff you see streaming by. That thing is not exactly friendly on system resources.

Also, the beta client uses uncompressed, raw TGA textures. being uncompressed, they are HUGE...roughly 8x the size of the compressed textures that will be used in the retail client. How much more system muscle do you think these things take? The answer is a LOT.

this test also is a bit of a worst case scenario. It is so that these kinds of technical problems and lag / disconnects can be avoided on launch day, by getting them out of the way now, with unoptimised code and servers.

So before you whine about performance, lag, disconnects, etc, remember exatly what the word TEST means.

it's hard to test when you can't even walk around in the world :/ and when almost any quest you do gives you an error or drops you from the server :/

i just hope they can fix this before launch but it's not looking good

Originally posted by D3mis3

So you're saying these huge lag spikes I get really frequently are just because of the servers and such? Oh thank god. For a second I thought my 8800 Ultra, duo core and 2GB RAM couldn't handle even low.

Any way to get rid of the DOS box? When I run through the patcher and click Play the game doesn't pop up.

Also, anyway to make the textures compressed so my computer isn't boiling to the point I can cook eggs?

As to compressing the textures yourself...man, I wish.

You'll certainly see plenty of patches during the test period, though, so it can only get better from here. If they can smooth this out in a worst case scenario, then a best-case scenario should be cake.

Beta testers suffer so that retail customers don't have to. (been telling myself this for years through beta after beta).

Originally posted by CleffyII

uhhh they can't stress test the servers if they can't get enough people in a single area at a time.  Requiring a monster system to play a stress test is kinda wierd because the concept of a stress test is to get as many people as possible in.  Limiting the amount of people gathering by using uncompressed textures defeats the point.

Its not like they needed all thier textures uncompressed.  20 days from release most of thier art assets should be complete, and can be compressed beyond .tgas.  There is a difference between closed beta and open beta.  It has to do with whats suppose to be tested.  Most of this stuff should have already been tested already.

Say they have a nice, working set of textures, shaders, etc, that are fairly fast and smooth.

But what if, theoretically, they come up with better ideas....something that if perfected could make the game run even better than the finalised version that went gold...and decided to try to smooth these out before release to have an even better final build??

theoretically....of course.

Actually,

I've saw better and worse in Open Beta but it is still generally not a good sign when you see this type of lag and the devellopers say they can take in 600 000 players. And I do not mean lag when there is thousands at the same place, I've played since it opened and you could see already the lag when you came off the tutorial (which by any mean shouldn't be so when there wasn't that much player on the server at this time particularly when you read low population when you check the server).

What so, launch being in 20 days, if they have to spend more then half their time on the server latency problems, they will have a poor release for anyone their first few days.

And I could had the fact they couldn't keep up their time for the opening of the beta when they had over a week to prepare for it?

That is just some little fact from what I could see until now. From here on, it's an open game and they could as well pull out a fantastic launch with as low issue as they can. Even with a bad start, it won't make the game loose it's alread big fan base (and if some remember, World of Warcraft launch wasn't better, and look where that got them).

Originally posted by D3mis3

So you're saying these huge lag spikes I get really frequently are just because of the servers and such? Oh thank god. For a second I thought my 8800 Ultra, duo core and 2GB RAM couldn't handle even low.

Any way to get rid of the DOS box? When I run through the patcher and click Play the game doesn't pop up.

Also, anyway to make the textures compressed so my computer isn't boiling to the point I can cook eggs?

I occassionally have these lag spikes but they really aren't that bad. i play on the low setting but quite frankly the game looks great. To be honest I've had very few issues with the ocassional lag spike.

My issue isn't so much the lag, I expected lots of lag and wait times, what my issue is that I cannot play the game despite being within specifications for the operation of the game client (2.33ghz C2D, 2GB DDR2 XMS2 RAM, ATI 3870HD (Catalyst 8.4), SATA2 HDD, and etc). The fact that it consistently locks up regardless of settings that I disable or lower it operates poorly for a client. I suspect it is in relation to their debugger, but I can't be sure on that. In the end, the fact that they have a memory leak (which I can log it from my process manager, watching it literally reach the physical capacity of my RAM and not releasing any of it) doesn't make the situation any better.

I think it showed my hopes that Funcom learned from their mistakes on AO to be unfounded; they haven't learned any new tactics as to avoid memory leaks and performance issues. And as such I'm glad I only shelled out 7 USD to test the game before considering a pre-order. When Funcom offers a free trial down the road, I'll try it again. Until then, AoC, regardless of the combat engine (which I did play with and found fun), is off my MMO menu.

-- Brede

Originally posted by Wharg0ul

 

Originally posted by D3mis3

So you're saying these huge lag spikes I get really frequently are just because of the servers and such? Oh thank god. For a second I thought my 8800 Ultra, duo core and 2GB RAM couldn't handle even low.

Any way to get rid of the DOS box? When I run through the patcher and click Play the game doesn't pop up.

Also, anyway to make the textures compressed so my computer isn't boiling to the point I can cook eggs?

You've got to give the game a while to launch after you click play.

 

If on Vista do I run as admin or just normal?