OK, this is getting really old

[Andryah]

Look at the IP's in those. Some are definately the Server Ip's. Just because some people do not have the problem doesn't mean it has to be something other than the servers. Also, this problem has been going since the patch, not a specific day or couple days.

 

Actually, a lot of players reporting the problem also report that it is time of day dependent, with evening hours being the most commonly reported time (when consumer traffic is highest.. with all the streaming going on these days) ... which honestly.. smacks of an internet service provider or internet backbone routing issue (like when routes go through a particular path at one point in time, yet are on another path at another time of day).

 

The core issue here I think is the internet pathways are very amorphous and are constantly shifting throughout the day for most people. This actually makes it harder to troubleshoot and often prompts people to just throw up their arms and declare it to be an SWTOR issue and demand remedy from the studio.

Edited April 15, 2018 by Andryah

[Andryah]

I have toons in multiple guilds and one of those is one of the largest in the game (approaching 400 unique accounts). It has multiple members from each of the many outlying regions. ( Australia, Germany, Russia, Ireland to name a few). I believe it is a sufficient microcosm of the game for this discussion. Many in that guild have mentioned the sudden spikes around server prime (as well as the other guilds I am in). Some living in Virginia and surrounding areas with pings in or below the 30's that suddenly spike to the infamous red X. I just find it hard to explain away, that people from all over the world using differing ISP's and routes, consistently start having the same issue at the same time (both date and times) because of something like weather or food pics.

 

None of this in any way indicts the servers though. It could very well be one common backbone route that all these various parties are ultimately passing through on the way to/from the server. But it could also be a configuration issue at the gateway into the server farm, but until someone can demonstrate this categorically... it remains speculation.

 

Nobody is claiming there is no issue, only that it is not obvious and clear exactly what the root cause is...and that includes your subjective conclusions above.

 

If players would stop tossing food at the walls and saying "LOOK!" and would actually sit down and do some actual objective troubleshooting and reporting of facts.... I'm sure a pattern would begin to emerge.

 

Also.. Why has Owen (our local expert on all things SWTOR performance related, and a moderator on the EA support site for SWTOR) not chimed in on this topic in any of the handful of threads about this topic? Why are players not PMing Owen?

Edited April 15, 2018 by Andryah

[kukumburr]

So I should be having noticeably worse lag too, right ... and everybody else?

 

You don't think that there's any possibility whatsoever that something else could have occurred on the same Tuesday that could contribute to the problems?

 

I've been tracking pingplotter all night when I'm on for the last few days and there are distinct moments corresponding to when the lag spikes happen in-game where there's a somewhat gradual rise in latency, stays high for some time with some packet loss, then drops back down to normal. The increase in latency and the packet loss is ONLY on the EA servers. None of the intermediate hops and not my ISP. All night long every hop except for the EA ones remain fairly consistent with zero packet loss.

 

I don't know for sure that it's the EA servers, but all the evidence I've found in my diagnostics says I'm not having any problems on any other hops other than at EA. So unless someone can explain to me how to figure out where the real problem is why wouldn't I suspect something going on with the EA servers? I mean yeah not everyone is having the problem but where else am I supposed to look if the problem is occurring ONLY on SWTOR, it started after a patch (which by itself could be coincidental), and all my diagnostics are telling me that the problems start at the EA IPs.

 

That said the problem hasn't been as frequent lately so I don't know if something is getting fixed or what.

[BRKMSN]

I've been tracking pingplotter all night when I'm on for the last few days and there are distinct moments corresponding to when the lag spikes happen in-game where there's a somewhat gradual rise in latency, stays high for some time with some packet loss, then drops back down to normal. The increase in latency and the packet loss is ONLY on the EA servers. None of the intermediate hops and not my ISP. All night long every hop except for the EA ones remain fairly consistent with zero packet loss.

 

I don't know for sure that it's the EA servers, but all the evidence I've found in my diagnostics says I'm not having any problems on any other hops other than at EA. So unless someone can explain to me how to figure out where the real problem is why wouldn't I suspect something going on with the EA servers? I mean yeah not everyone is having the problem but where else am I supposed to look if the problem is occurring ONLY on SWTOR, it started after a patch (which by itself could be coincidental), and all my diagnostics are telling me that the problems start at the EA IPs.

 

That said the problem hasn't been as frequent lately so I don't know if something is getting fixed or what.

I think the point I am trying to make here is that there has always been some person or group of people that have experienced enough lag to come to the forums and complain about the servers. Just search "lag" and confine it to titles only. You will get the (max) 500 topics found by the search engine limited to titles only. On top of that, you see the same thing in general chat ...

 

"Anybody else having lag...?"

--"Yeah"

--"All day"

--"I haven't noticed any"

--"maybe a little..."

--"game crashed 3 times already"

 

In other words, it's the same thing we always see. Some people have lag. Some don't. There will always be people that assume their lag is related to yours if both are having problems the same day. If you do that thread search I suggested, you will actually see some thread started the week before 5.8 about the same thing.

 

Finally, I just want to remind you that the OP has always experienced lag that is game-breaking to him or her. I just don't feel this is the fault of SWTOR. Making classes less fun, screwing up conquest, etc... that is their fault, but this ... I have my doubts.

[Sareeph]

I think the point I am trying to make here is that there has always been some person or group of people that have experienced enough lag to come to the forums and complain about the servers. Just search "lag" and confine it to titles only. You will get the (max) 500 topics found by the search engine limited to titles only. On top of that, you see the same thing in general chat ...

 

"Anybody else having lag...?"

--"Yeah"

--"All day"

--"I haven't noticed any"

--"maybe a little..."

--"game crashed 3 times already"

 

In other words, it's the same thing we always see. Some people have lag. Some don't. There will always be people that assume their lag is related to yours if both are having problems the same day. If you do that thread search I suggested, you will actually see some thread started the week before 5.8 about the same thing.

 

Finally, I just want to remind you that the OP has always experienced lag that is game-breaking to him or her. I just don't feel this is the fault of SWTOR. Making classes less fun, screwing up conquest, etc... that is their fault, but this ... I have my doubts.

 

I just went through every post made by the OP and found only 2 posts, both in this thread, about experiencing lag issues so not sure what you are going on about.

[BRKMSN]

I just went through every post made by the OP and found only 2 posts, both in this thread, about experiencing lag issues so not sure what you are going on about.

 

I didn't say the OP made 500 threads. I said there has always been someone or some group of people experiencing lag. To verify that, you can search "lag" filtered by title. I pointed out that people were complaining about lag a week before 5.8. And ... I pointed out that the OP has always had lag, not just after 5.8.

 

What am I going on about? That I believe in most cases, player lag is not the fault of the game even though most players with lag expect it to be.

[ItzProficient]

Except all you have demonstrated here is a coincidence. You actually have no idea if patching to 5.8 is the only thing that changed.

 

Keep in mind.. for it to be the servers.. then literally every player would be reporting the same issue and the forums would be melting under the force of complaints. Yet.. what we see is scattered reports.. and there is some indication it is Comcast customers that are having the majority of issues.

 

There are exactly 3 players in my guild reporting this issue (out of more then 60)... and guess what.. we checked and they each are Comcast customers. Yet we also have other members who use Comcast and report no issues. One of the 3 reset their Comcast router (per Comcast Customer Support suggestion) and restarted their computer and has not had issues since. The other 2 have tried this and apparently it did not work.

 

Please note: I am not saying there is no issue.. only that A) it's not affecting everyone.. so it cannot be something as simple as it being the servers. B) there are multiple reports that tend to correlate the issue with being a Comcast customer.

 

It is possible that with patch 5.8, something was changed with the client that may have exposed a weakness in either hardware, drivers, router, gateway, etc... for some users. But as far as I can tell.. there is no clear evidence of this... however I have in fact seen this sort of thing happen with other software applications over the years.. where somehow the TCPIP stack on my computer gets corrupted... and yet when I reset everything it clears up and never returns.

 

It is also possible it is something else completely. And my main point I posting here is to encourage players to get a free copy of pingplotter and actually run some time based audits of their route to/from the server and their PC to see if you can localize where exactly the problem is occurring. Absent doing this.. you are really just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Stop guessing and accusing and actually do some actual troubleshooting.

 

Youve literally gone on MULTIPLE posts having said “oh its not the servers fault its comcast blah blah blah” yet again, like i- and many others- have explained to you that we are bot blaming the SERVERS yet we are blaming PATCH 5.8. The patch itself could have resulted in compatibility issues like you said it could have exposed a weakness. Idk how manytimes i have to say im not blaming the servers you ding bat. I have reset every multiple times like you claimed your guildies did and this resolved nothing. Next.

[BRKMSN]

Youve literally gone on MULTIPLE posts having said “oh its not the servers fault its comcast blah blah blah” yet again, like i- and many others- have explained to you that we are bot blaming the SERVERS yet we are blaming PATCH 5.8. The patch itself could have resulted in compatibility issues like you said it could have exposed a weakness. Idk how manytimes i have to say im not blaming the servers you ding bat. I have reset every multiple times like you claimed your guildies did and this resolved nothing. Next.

How do you explain the people that had the same problem before 5.8?

 

Example 1

Example 2

[ItzProficient]

How do you explain the people that had the same problem before 5.8?

 

Example 1

Example 2

 

1) Seems to me OP is having “rubberbanding” which - as for as i have seen on multiple threads - no one is having that issue. Not the same issue.

 

2) OP states only lagging during warzones. Again, not the same issue.

[BRKMSN]

1) Seems to me OP is having “rubberbanding” which - as for as i have seen on multiple threads - no one is having that issue. Not the same issue.

Really? From post #1:

...and the problem still exists. Bad lag spikes all last week with occasional crashes. Two crashes last night with lag spikes occurring all day... and today 5 crashes. Tell me how a game that has been out this long hasn't fixed this problem already?

... sounds like the same thing to me.

[Andryah]

Youve literally gone on MULTIPLE posts having said “oh its not the servers fault its comcast blah blah blah” yet again, like i- and many others- have explained to you that we are bot blaming the SERVERS yet we are blaming PATCH 5.8. The patch itself could have resulted in compatibility issues like you said it could have exposed a weakness. Idk how manytimes i have to say im not blaming the servers you ding bat. I have reset every multiple times like you claimed your guildies did and this resolved nothing. Next.

 

The same general failure of both logic and actual factual troubleshooting applies for those that are simply blaming this on the 5.8 patch.

 

Now.. if you go back and read my earlier comments on this.. I also covered the patch "coincidence" and again... it's not everyone having an issue... it is some people having an issue.. and those reporting the issue are all over the map on what they state, blame, or speculate. If you can't be bothered to go back a page and read my comments specific to the 5.8 patch as possible culprit.. then I can't be bothered to take you seriously on this topic at all.

 

To recap.. it is entirely possible that something was changed in the client in 5.8 (we get new clients virtually every patch) and it may have in fact exposed a weakness in some players hardware, drivers, OS, etc... such that what was not a problem earlier is suddenly a problem for them, even though such a change may have been completely rational and valid on the part of the studio (just like some players having graphics issues from time to time when the client is updated). This can and does happen and as I stated I have seen it myself on other software applications. But since nobody is providing machine specs, driver release levels for their Lan/Wan/Wireless, internet service provider, geographic location, which server the problem is encountered on, router model and spec, etc. etc. etc... the forum debate here is NOT going to get to the bottom of this, nor is sufficient information being provided such that the studio could actually detect a common point of failure that could be investigated. Nope.. instead what we mostly get are rants, complaints, and declarations absent of fact.

 

People need to learn to actually do some troubleshooting on their end and then compare factual information together to create a tangible profile of what elements exist when players are having this issue. Absent that.. this thread is yet another drive by complain and demand thread. Further.. this thread topic belongs over in the EA support forum for STWOR .... IF you actually want some attention on the issue.

Edited April 16, 2018 by Andryah