CEO, Goblinworks
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A lot of folks talking about these issues so I thought I'd provide some clarification on what is happening that will make it a bit easier to understand what you're seeing, and how to report things to us as "bugs".
There are neither "teleport" nor "rollback" bugs in the game (that we know of :) ). What you are seeing is the manifestation of the server becoming overloaded and becoming desynchronized from the client. So you're seeing a symptom not the problem.
Here is what is happening.
The logical "server" is a large number of physical server units, each of which is responsible for running the game in a number of hexes. The servers keep track of every moving thing - all the characters and monsters and NPCs. They are also responsible for the inventory and local vaults for the characters in the hexes they are responsible for managing.
The servers cache a lot of the game state data in RAM, and they periodically write that data to persistent storage (hard drives, basically although things are actually a bit more complex than that). The more often they write out the game state, the more overhead they consume. So the programmers make choices about frequency of these writes vs. performance. During the time they're doing the writing you may see more things like framerate drops, characters skipping from point to point across the landscape, delays in logging in or accessing vaults or inventory, etc.
The client cannot be trusted - it is in the hands of people who would like to cheat by manipulating the client's data. So the client and the server have to be kept "in synch"; periodically the server tells the client what its actual data should be and the client resets itself to reflect that update from the server. The server never trusts that something has happened just because the client says it has. Your client only has to process what you are doing. The server has to do exactly that same work, but for every client. So the load on the server is the multiple of the number of clients connected to it.
As the number of entities in a hex increases, the load also increases on the physical server that is running that hex. As more monsters are spawned, and more characters enter, the load increases. As those entities interact, like in combat, the load increases. At a certain point, the server becomes overloaded and it cannot process data fast enough to keep up with the game world.
That is the point where Bad Things Start To Happen. This is not a binary state where all entities are working or no entities are working. Instead, some, but not all, of the interactions are being processed by the server. So different people might see different effects of the server load impact them differently.
The clients and the servers begin to get more and more "out of synch". The server has to send resynch data to the clients more and more often, which consumes more server capacity. Eventually, the server determines that a client has become unresponsive and it disconnects.
Right now we don't have a smooth disconnect process, and instead of just being dumped back to the login screen with some kind of error message, the clients enter some very strange conditions. Sometimes the character just falls through the ground, on an endless loop. Sometimes everything else in the world vanishes and the client is left alone in the geography with no other entities. Sometimes the system hangs and sometimes the system crashes with a crash report.
Once disconnected, people try to reconnect. But the server they're trying to log back into has overloaded (which is why they disconnected in the first place). The overloaded server might start to long in the client, and fail, putting the client back in one of the failure states described above. Sometimes the server thinks the client was not disconnected in the first place and that there was just some network interruption and it tries to restore the client to a previous known good state. And sometimes it just crashes out again. These are all symptoms of the server being overloaded.
Sometimes the server tries to log you in, determines that it is overloaded, and tries to hand you off to another server. That server might have the capacity to accept and process the login and it will do so. However, the hexes that new server is responsible for managing are not the hexes that your former server was managing. The new server picks one of its hexes and spawns you into the game - you appear to have "teleported" across the map.
Sometimes after you are reconnected, the server determines that it can't trust the data you sent it while it was overloaded. In those cases, it dumps the transactions of your actions it was holding in RAM back to the last point where it knows it was safe to write to disk. When that happens your character is essentially "rolled back" to that previous state. This can result in Very Bad Things like item duplications and coin duplications and this is a classic attack vector against MMOs which we're well aware of.
We are attacking these problems in two directions.
First, the team is working to increase the server capacity. Basically we're finding ways to make the system work more efficiently so that the physical servers can handle more entities before they get impacted. We have a theoretical idea of how much load they can handle, and we're trying to find and fix problems to get closer and closer to that ideal.
Second, we're talking about how to have the client "fail more gracefully". The best, worst case scenario is that when the system can't handle the load it simply returns you to the login screen with an error message and until that physical server has had its load reduced (by other characters leaving the hexes it is managing and monsters despawning) you'll be unable to log in again. Yeah, lots of obvious problems we know all about, but perhaps better than randomly being teleported across the map.
These two issues are linked by programmer time. There are a lot of either/or choices here and we're trying to map out the best way to move forward.
This is the whole point of the Alpha Stress Test - to see how the server behaves under real world loads, to see how it fails, and then to come up with plans on how to address those failure modes and reduce those loads. So while it sucks that folks are falling through the sky, having to re-train Feats and re-earn Achievements, and be teleported all over the map, we are gathering really important data that will help us fix these issues.
New and Unusual Bugs: After the foregoing, you can see why it doesn't help us when you submit a bug about these basic failure modes. However, there are potentially things you can help us with that can look like these modes, but aren't.
If you find an actual hole in the terrain - a place that you can consistently walk to and fall through the ground - we want to know about that. There should not be any such places but if there are, we need to find them. (Falling "into a hole", a dip in the ground that you don't fall through but just can't walk or jump out of is important to know about too.)
If you are able to cause the system to reproducibly duplicate coin or an item, we want to know about that. This is more than "I got a duplicate". It means "if you follow these precise steps, x, y, z, etc. a duplicate is created." The former is probably a desynch problem. The latter is a bug.
If you are seeing monsters stand around and not attack you, no monsters, very laggy response to any input, repeatedly falling through the world, or teleports, the servers are stressed and no bug you report under those conditions will be particularly useful.
Our best advice if you are experiencing these desynch issues, is to log out and play later. Running out of the hex you are in may help, but you may not be able to tell for some time if you have actually gotten to a less-loaded server or if you're going to experience what appears to be a rollback.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Awesome stuff - thanks for the behind the scenes detail - I think it really helps and it's really interesting.
I was so sure that when I read "So while it sucks that folks are falling through the sky" that you were going to write "but the sky is not falling."
Because I'm curious, I have one quick question regarding
Sometimes the server tries to log you in, determines that it is overloaded, and tries to hand you off to another server. That server might have the capacity to accept and process the login and it will do so. However, the hexes that new server is responsible for managing are not the hexes that your former server was managing. The new server picks one of its hexes and spawns you into the game - you appear to have "teleported" across the map.
Does that new server eventually notice that you don't belong and send you back to the server for your proper hex? Or is the handoff itself a bug?
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Goblin Squad Member
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A bit of advise to people having these problems.
If you get "teleported" randomly the best solution for getting back where you were previously seems to be to log out immediately, do not move around or interact in any way just log out.
Then wait a minute or two and log back in.
This procedure seems to give the best chance of getting returned to where you last were in a playable state.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Speculation: if you log off immediately and wait, the server sometimes catches up and saves your most recent state so that when you rejoin it catches you. If you stay in, expect that the new server that has you will save your new position.
Caveat: all of that is speculation based on incomplete information.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Does that new server eventually notice that you don't belong and send you back to the server for your proper hex? Or is the handoff itself a bug?
What should(*) happen is that the transfer should be permanent.
What can happen is the the new server is close to max load, you get logged in and relocated, then that server too goes into an overload condition, desynchs, and eventually dumps its transaction log.
If you exited, and came back later, you might find yourself back in your original location - the "last known good write point".
(*) I hate to use words like "should" for an obviously not-good mechanic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A bit of advise to people having these problems.
If you get "teleported" randomly the best solution for getting back where you were previously seems to be to log out immediately, do not move around or interact in any way just log out.
Then wait a minute or two and log back in.
This procedure seems to give the best chance of getting returned to where you last were in a playable state.
This has been my experience in every case.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Now that we've identified the capacity and failure mode of the servers, making sure the servers don't regularly reach capacity should be a mostly-solved concern, right? I would be very surprised if scaling up required much more than bringing more hardware online.
Never worked for EVE.
Maybe we need TIDI :P
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps slowing down the escalation cycle will alleviate some of the cause of this problem?
Yesterday I must have passed through 20 escalation hexes, all at 100%. Escalations may needed some tweaking to grow based on server population, and the frequency in which players are actively engaging in escalations.
The fewer the players (low population) and the less frequent the activity, the slower escalations grow. Maybe they should also reach a critical mass, and begin to decline over time (all on their own), and return later as a new mob type. This last point will also change it up a little bit. I'm sure everyone will eventually grow tired of always being surrounded by Skeletons.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Perhaps slowing down the escalation cycle will alleviate some of the cause of this problem?
Yesterday I must have passed through 20 escalation hexes, all at 100%. Escalations may needed some tweaking to grow based on server population, and the frequency in which players are actively engaging in escalations.
The fewer the players (low population) and the less frequent the activity, the slower escalations grow. Maybe they should also reach a critical mass, and begin to decline over time (all on their own), and return later as a new mob type. This last point will also change it up a little bit. I'm sure everyone will eventually grow tired of always being surrounded by Skeletons.
Actually I have already come across Risen, Broken Men and those Nature's Wrath dudes all within the same couple of hexes.
However - I think the point is if the local settlements are slacking off and letting them escalate (for example the area between Hammerfell, Phaeros and Keepers Pass where the spawns are almost all purple or red with the occasional yellow) it is actually meant to be a total PITA and working as expected.
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Twice tonight I dropped through the world and followed GW Tester's advice: Close the client, wait a minute, then re-open and log back in. Worked both times. I logged back in exactly where I was. Another player I was with experienced the same thing. I told them to do that, they did it, and it worked.
My previous experience taught me this: If I get "teleported" and keep player the game from where I get sent to, when I next log in I am almost certain to loose all of my progress and be back at th point I got dumped through the world at. So continuing to play after a teleport, in my experience, is a recipe for a 'rollback.'
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Goblin Squad Member
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Twice tonight I dropped through the world and followed GW Tester's advice: Close the client, wait a minute, then re-open and log back in. Worked both times. I logged back in exactly where I was. Another player I was with experienced the same thing. I told them to do that, they did it, and it worked.
My previous experience taught me this: If I get "teleported" and keep player the game from where I get sent to, when I next log in I am almost certain to loose all of my progress and be back at th point I got dumped through the world at. So continuing to play after a teleport, in my experience, is a recipe for a 'rollback.'
That is my experience as well. If a teleport happens do nothing log off instantly. Then wait a few minutes and log back in.
Assuming you get back to where you got zapped from it is then a good idea to leave that hex without sprinting or fighting as if you hang around it may happen again.
There are people not playing the game because of the teleport bugs but they can be worked around.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And what would you base that on? From the information given to us it sounds like mobs from the escalations running rampant might be the biggest part of the problem but load balancing in General is something that any MMO deals with CONSTANTLY. Additionally this stress test I believe is still running on Zog not the permanent servers which I would imagine have more processing power? Now for any of the GW team TEO battled an escalation home for 2 hours yesterday with 2 full groups and it went fairly smoothly. There was one occasion where it DID melt down on all of us and on death sometimes we wouldn't be released to a shrine properly or it would load us to a shrine and when we started to move it ported us to another slightly farther shrine.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This tells me the game is failing the stress test.
The stress test is working as planned.
Is the game failing? Too early to tell. It depends if GW is able to fix the issue or at least reach an acceptable level or if I can't do this in time for EE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If I'm in a hex with no escalation and no obvious other people and I get teleported out, then it is not dealing with those processes properly.
I spent 3 hours on Saturday with 2 full groups in a monster hex and it went fairly smoothly. That tells you nothing.
I have 20 years programming experience, I know about stress.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This tells me the game is failing the stress test.The stress test is working as planned.
Is the game failing? Too early to tell. It depends if GW is able to fix the issue or at least reach an acceptable level or if I can't do this in time for EE.
Whether the application passes the test or not, the stress test would be working as planned.
I didn't say the game was failing, but it would appear from what Ryan has said that it is failing the stress test.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Your professed experience doesn't mean much without context. The explanation at the start of this thread noted that physical server units were handling multiple hexes. They probably spread those into fairly even divisions with maybe some exceptions like TK or Brighthaven where they might have anticipated higher player density. So again this is not a failure of the stress test and as I noted this is AFAIK still running on the test server which might be just about maxed out now and which might not make sense to modify at this point. The stress test would however give GW a much more precise reading of the mapping for the live servers. That is a stress test working as intended at this stage of development.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@TEO Malvius - If the current server configuration cannot handle the processes, it is failing the stress test. Ryan even says "This is the whole point of the Alpha Stress Test - to see how the server behaves under real world loads, to see how it fails, and then to come up with plans on how to address those failure modes and reduce those loads."
It doesn't mean they can't do more load balancing during the test. Some hex clusters might need splitting up, but until we stop seeing the problem, it is failing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Your mixing up your meanings to the point that they do more harm than good. Have we seen issues that are failures of the server, yes. However this being the PURPOSE of the stress test and having seen improvement in the last few days AND having seen a major patch that added major game mechanics it is not correct to say the stress test is failing. It would be failing if they were making no progress on fixing the issues as they arise which is not the case.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you'll find you are the one mixing up your meanings. You are confusing "the stress test is failing" (which I didn't say) with "the game is failing the stress test".
The current configuration does not pass the stress test. They re-jig the configuration and test again. Rinse and repeat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My first thought...
We are not idiots. Of course the teleporting and rollbacks are being caused by something that is not teleporting or rollbacks. Yeah... We are seeing a symptom and not the cause. Of course it is being caused by the server choking.
It is still teleporting and rollbacks. I am sure this was written because there has been a flood of bug reports on this.
Kradlum is absolutely correct. The stress test is in full swing and the server is failing. Bludd has a short term answer to help the problem but it will not solve the problem. Optimizing the code is probably the only way to solve this.
Was the code written in 32 bit and DX9? I am sure the answer is yes... That WoW factor Bludd was talking about in another thread for me would be that PFO is or will be converted to 64 bit and DX10+ code. I personally do not understand why anyone is making games in old tech.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The ex-engineer in me is a little disturbed by the talk of failing the stress test.
In a stress test you deliberately apply strain until the system fails. You want it to fail, it is meant to fail.
You then map the points of failure and this forms, to use aviation parlance, the performance envelope within which the system can be counted on to perform reliability.
If normal operaions will not step outside that envelope all is good. On the other hand if operation outside those limits will be a common occurance the system is going to be unstable and needs adjustment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The ex-engineer in me is a little disturbed by the talk of failing the stress test.
In a stress test you deliberately apply strain until the system fails. You want it to fail, it is meant to fail.
You then map the points of failure and this forms, to use aviation parlance, the performance envelope within which the system can be counted on to perform reliability.
If normal operaions will not step outside that envelope all is good. On the other hand if operation outside those limits will be a common occurance the system is going to be unstable and needs adjustment.
As a current engineer I can say that it is failing. You are correct, push it till it fails. Lets just say, and I am over exaggerating it, that we have 5,000 people in the game now... That is a pittance compared to what is planned.
The stress test is failing because the game cannot handle what is planned for EE.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am not an engineer so I can not speak to what aspect of the server or game is "failing" the stress test.
All I can say is that based on player response their stress test is failing, and that is not a good thing!!
WE can all go through the semantics, the verbal jujitsu, the "this is alpha", "this is MVP", "we can wait" claims and disclaimers that we want.
The bottom line is that once this game goes subscription based with EE, it will be judged as if it has launched. There is supposedly 7 days left until EE.
Goblin Works better be careful not to bend down and pick up pennies, allowing dollars to fly over their head.
This game is not ready for EE in 7 days. Goblin Works should not use target dates for its roll-out, but rather content / mechanics packages for it.
Example:
"We are planning to go into EE after patch / build 14."
That way there is no date, no constraints on adding or taking away from build subsections. No more having to address questions on delays, or when will it release.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A thing I can't remember at the moment but bugging me right now:
Once EE starts, we have to pay for training time. (I, like most of you, have some months attributet to my account thanks to the Kickstarter campaign.)
Can I log into the game for a month and then not play for 2 months then play again for a month then wait some more?
How will I know that the month is starting/ending?
Right now the GW homepage doesn't even tell me how many months of gametime I have...
(If I missed / don't remember that info, a link would be appreciated.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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A thing I can't remember at the moment but bugging me right now:
Once EE starts, we have to pay for training time. (I, like most of you, have some months attributet to my account thanks to the Kickstarter campaign.)
Can I log into the game for a month and then not play for 2 months then play again for a month then wait some more?
How will I know that the month is starting/ending?Right now the GW homepage doesn't even tell me how many months of gametime I have...
(If I missed / don't remember that info, a link would be appreciated.)
They are supposed to be 1 month "tokens" that you activate. Not sure if that's in yet, tech wise. If you got the $100 package, you should get 4 of them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Stress test or not, is this process going to change anytime soon?
If the area I'm in cannot handle me then just dump me out with an error please.
Make me wait in a queue.
Stop putting me in another part of the world.
PLEASE, stop putting me in another part of the world.
Why was this even a part of the design choice?
What is the logic behind passing us off to another server that ALSO cannot handle us? How is it beneficial in any way? Why was this method chosen?
No matter what is done to prevent the load threshold I would prefer this entire process to change before EE. Please put in a queue system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would say as the Escalation system seems to be one part of the problem, it should be cut back somewhat to allow for actual play, instead of the computer playing with itself as is doing now.
There is no chance in BLEEP that the few that plays right now are going to cut back the monsters, thus making the last two weeks more or less useless for bughunting.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why is there no queue system in this game?
Doesn't EVERY mmo have a queue system?
Isn't the real issue here that we're even being ALLOWED to log in when we shouldn't?
ANYTIME the server can't handle us and has to pass us on to a server that doesn't control the hexes we're in then please log us out and make us wait.
Logging out for a minute or two many times does not work. My characters are sometimes 50+ hexes away from where they started.
I am effectively waiting in a queue but I have no idea when to log back in. Please install something that monitors server load and makes players wait to log in. Only log us into the servers we belong to when those servers can handle their characters.
Please stop sending us to other servers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Our best advice if you are experiencing these desynch issues, is to log out and play later. Running out of the hex you are in may help, but you may not be able to tell for some time if you have actually gotten to a less-loaded server or if you're going to experience what appears to be a rollback.
How long do we wait before we should be returned to our original hex?
I've been waiting for half an hour this morning. In some cases I'm 50 hexes away from my starting point.
At what point is this no longer 'working as intended' and an actual bug? An hour? A day?
Please change your intentions here. Please. This sucks. Please recognize this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why is there no queue system in this game?
Doesn't EVERY mmo have a queue system?
Isn't the real issue here that we're even being ALLOWED to log in when we shouldn't?
ANYTIME the server can't handle us and has to pass us on to a server that doesn't control the hexes we're in then please log us out and make us wait.
Logging out for a minute or two many times does not work. My characters are sometimes 50+ hexes away from where they started.
I am effectively waiting in a queue but I have no idea when to log back in. Please install something that monitors server load and makes players wait to log in. Only log us into the servers we belong to when those servers can handle their characters.
Please stop sending us to other servers.
If they have to queue in less than 200 players at any given time, OH MY!!!!
Yes, 200, which would be about 10% of the total population and that is assuming that 80% of the alpha invites are actually being used.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the meantime my point which was made several times that AFAIK we are still on the test server and not the live servers has been ignored. And anyone who funded the kickstarter gets 'free' months so your not 'paying' for anything at the start of EE anyway. Fear mongering is all most of these posts accomplish regardless of their stated aims.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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First, paying in advance isn't "not paying". It's, well... Paying in advance.
Secondly, not everyone got in the KS.
I am amazed to see how many people are ready to pay for nothing, waiting for nothing, happy with what they get, whatever it is.
That is very very bad news for the future of videogames.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the meantime my point which was made several times that AFAIK we are still on the test server and not the live servers has been ignored.
We haven't been on Zog for a while.
Server
- We have transitioned from a local server to a larger off-site server
The servers we're on might not qualify as "the live servers", depending on what you mean, but I kind of expect the server we're on right now is the server we'll start Early Enrollment on.
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Goblin Squad Member
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First, paying in advance isn't "not paying". It's, well... Paying in advance.
Secondly, not everyone got in the KS.
Your second point has some validity, but the first has none. Kickstarter funds are not a purchase. They are a donation toward helping someone acheive something, in return for which, they offer a reward. Add-ons are different. They are a commitment in exchange for a specific thing, and can be construed as a purchase.
All of which aside. No one is telling anyone that they have to use their free months (or any other months) to play in EE. Everyone is perfectly welcome to hold back on playing until they feel the game is ready. Until the time comes when GW tells us that we must use our free time tokens now, no one has any claim on not receiving value for their money.
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Goblin Squad Member
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From what I have seen, there is most definitely more than 200 people playing at any given time. I have been "teleported" to a place where 50 people are standing trying to get out of the sky.
Escalations seem to be adding a great deal of stress on the server, and that actually brings me to a suggestion I have been thinking about for awhile now.
Why not scale back most of escalations on the board and re-balance all the monsters in the game, so that there is less NPCs in the game. Instead of having mobs of half a dozen to a dozen monsters, why not remove half those monsters and just increase the defenses or hit points of monsters. Make it a tad more realistic, at least realistic within the Pathfinder universe. When you are out adventuring, you come across the occasional bandit, alligator, bear, or you stumble upon a pretty big goblin or ogre tribe, not this thousands upon thousands of monsters that I see just running from point A to point B.
If you made them harder, increased their drop rates, you could do a lot of fun things with them. Like your currently Home Hexes, could be a place where a specific bandit organization musters, or a goblin tribe, or Ogre tribe. In the surrounding hexes you find them few and far between. This would help travel greatly, but also increase the need for groups to tackle escalations and monsters in general.
Near starting locations, or the occasional hex could still have abundant fast spawning low level monsters, with the decreased drop rates, and easy to kill for new players.
Removing 50%+ of the monsters on the server, I wonder how much stress that would remove from the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks for that Nihimon, I must have missed that transition, but that means there should be plenty of opportunity to tweak systems. And Audoucet we get it, you spent money without knowing what you were spending on. We were not 'paying in advance' we were using our dollars to support the development of a game we thought we might want to play for which we received perks further on in the development process. Your attempts at being in activist investor would be comical if you were not so busy causing strife with every post.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why not scale back most of escalations on the board and re-balance all the monsters in the game, so that there is less NPCs in the game.
This is an excellent point, the wilderness is an awfully busy place. It may require too much work to maintain balance for low level characters, but if it can be managed, it should make for a better experience.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In the meantime my point which was made several times that AFAIK we are still on the test server and not the live servers has been ignored. And anyone who funded the kickstarter gets 'free' months so your not 'paying' for anything at the start of EE anyway. Fear mongering is all most of these posts accomplish regardless of their stated aims.
There would be no point stress testing on the test servers, that's why I ignored it.
Who is fear mongering? We're just stating the fact that the configuration is failing the stress test at the moment. It would be expected to fail at some points. It's worrying that we are only 8 days from EE, but that doesn't mean they can't fix it.
Cheatle - when you are floating in the sky you see multiple copies of yourself, so it might not have been 50 chars.
I have just logged on after ~9 hours logged off to find myself the other end of the map, with a different weapon than I had 19 hours ago, and the maneuver I learnt this morning unlearnt. This seems to indicate that I had been desynched for about 10 hours at some point over night.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am amazed to see how many people are ready to pay for nothing
We're paying for experience. The first month of EE will get me the same amount of experience as the last month. The xp I pay for in Month one won't be gone six months later, and I'll have accumulated some influence so that my friends and I can do some stuff.
I've mentioned it before that I feel like a lot of gamers have an inflated sense of what they should get for their money. Outside of internet delivered content, there is almost no entertainment industry on earth where the customer imagines they deserve so much for $15.00. A couple of movies (Maybe one if it's AVX). One or two books. A few drinks. An afternoon at the museum. It certainly won't get you in to see a decent fair, let alone an amusement park or a live play.
If I can amuse myself for two hours a month, that's acceptable value for my $15. Any time on top of that is bonus. So far, I'm not finding it hard to get two hours a month of entertainment out of the alpha.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Its not really fear mongering. Its just stating the facts. There is a problem that GW needs to take care of, and they will.
It is not the end of the world, they can fix it. A good start would be to block out escalations in a large number of hexes until some permanent solution can be created. Maybe it will work and maybe not.
But lets not pretend that everything is ok.