Apologies in advance if I’m late to the party on this and for the long post.
Ever since I started playing OrbusVR I’ve had various recurring problems. I’m sure I’m not the only one experiencing these problems because I’ve heard other people on voice chat complaining of them too. I’ve been putting it down to lag.
I have a good internet connection (500/75 Mbps) but I get network lag simply from the time it takes data to go from me (in the UK) to the server (in the US I presume) and back again. The physical distance is one cause and the server processing time is another. This manifests itself as a small delay between, for example, accepting a mission and seeing the mission accepted. This isn’t really a problem on a game like this, with the possible exception of client-side hit detection in PvP.
I think there’s more to this though. The kind of problems I’m seeing suggest that either the server is not replying to the client or the data is getting lost on the way. I’m sure it’s the server response not arriving because the server always seems to know that you’ve done something, it just doesn’t confirm it to the client.
The following problems have happened to me at one point or another. Some happen on a regular basis and some are more frequent than others. I attribute, perhaps incorrectly, all of these to the server not responding:
- Accepting a mission: The number of tokens doesn’t reduce. The server knows you’ve accepted it because accepting another mission reduces your tokens by 2 (see video below).
- Completing a mission: No chest appears in your inventory. The completed mission doesn’t disappear from your list of completed missions. The server knows you’ve handed it in because it won’t let you complete it again. Completing another mission refreshes the display and both disappear.
- Public event completion: No completion sound, no message showing gold/silver/bronze and no chest in inventory. The server knows you’ve completed it because if you move something else in your inventory the chest appears.
- Player house: Sometimes no furniture appears when you change rooms in your player house. You have to go to another room and come back again for it to reappear.
- Level-up: No sound and no glow appears. Your level doesn’t increase even though the experience bar has started from zero again. The server knows you’ve levelled up though because, if you log off and on, you’re the right level.
- Dungeon queue ready check: Doesn’t appear and no sound. The server thinks it sent it to you because a few seconds later you get the message about being removed from the queue for not responding.
- Inventory: Generally items just obtained don’t appear in your inventory even though they are there. Moving another item in the inventory refreshes it and they appear.
- Equipping a weapon: For example, if I have the musket equipped in my right hand and then equip the ranger bow in my left, the bow will equip at the same time as the musket. You character page shows the musket in your right hand and the bow in your left at the same time. The server knows you equipped the bow because you can wield your bow but not the musket.
- Grinding device: Chest doesn’t appear. The server knows it’s there because it appears if you walk away and come back.
- Mage teleport orb: Using mage teleport orb doesn’t move you to your destination but leaves you in the same place but with no mobs. I think a similar thing happens when opening doors. Not sure what the server thinks about this.
- Slide movement: People using slide appear to stop moving, even though they haven’t, and then suddenly jump to where they actually are even though they haven’t teleported.
- Harvesting: Hitting ore or a herb with your harvesting tool. No sound but the item is harvested when you move something in your inventory.
I have to wonder if this problem is also the cause of the following and probably others:
- Shaman orbs not appearing
- Mage spells not registering as success or failure (drawing vanishes but no fizzle and no fireball appears on wand)
- Scoundrel card deck freezing
- Warrior combos not registering or suddenly being on a different combo to the one you were trying to do
- Bard crescendos not activating when you hit the orbs the first time
- Net gun not firing reliably, as in not firing at all rather than just delayed firing
- NPCs not responding to your wave (see video below)
- Mob name and health bar not showing after attacking a mob.
- Combat not finishing (getting stuck in combat)
I’ve recorded a video to demonstrate two of the problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLAoaVJ2Nb0. Firstly you can see me having to wave twice at the NPC to get it to respond. You can also see the tokens not reducing when I accept missions. I close and re-open the window to refresh the token count the first time (two lots of waving again) and the second time I just accept another mission to refresh it.
One major lag problem I see is with public events. The ‘defend the gate’ public event in Highsteppe is usually one of the worst. When there are lots of players there is a pause just before every round of mobs. The game isn’t frozen because you can still look around but all the players are frozen and the mobs don’t spawn. 1-3 seconds later the mobs spawn and everything carries on as normal. A similar thing happens just as the event completes.
It’s difficult to tell whether other people have this problem because they might be referring to graphics lag. I wonder if the public events are related to the problem somehow.
Assuming I’m correct and it’s not just me experiencing these problems, I can’t help but feel that this one problem of the server not responding might be the cause of many others.