Connection between Lag/Crashing and Hero Chest?

[Mystix123 60]

So, I've been testing something over the past few days, and I think I've arrived at a some sort of a conclusion.

 

A few days ago, I noticed that there was a significant increase in lag for my game. I was playing offline without an active internet connection (wireless turned off and Ethernet cable unplugged from the system), which I find usually helps decrease the amount of lag compared to being connected to the PSN while playing offline.

I thought this as strange, but kept on playing until yesterday, when my game froze while I was shopping with a newish (level 17) character. I haven't had many game crashes, yet alone any while shopping. Most of my crashes have been from overloading the system (excessive amounts of Radiant Pillar + Hallowed Restoration Heal Over Time, or Clustering Maelstrom + Levin Array on a large crowd of enemies).

Prior to this crash (as well as after), I noticed that saves were taking a very long time to process, trees/bushes which didn't need to load before were taking their sweet time to appear... Well, basically, a lot of stuttering and slow-down.

 

I knew my Hero Chest was starting to get full (and have been trying to clear it out recently), but when I checked it this morning, I had a weight of 18XX stored (definitely near the cap). I've never had that much in my Hero Chest before, and at the same time I never had that amount of lag.

I noticed that a lot of my storage were runes, so I converted a bunch of runes to Grand Invigoration and used them on a new HE (level 7). I'm now at a weight of 1529 in the storage.

 

The result: Very little lag, little stuttering, less loading required, quicker save times.

While I can't quantify the lag and stuttering, I had been doing Kobold Chieftain runs with the level 17 character and noticed a lot of lag, even against 2-3 enemies. I did the same run prior to clearing out the chest with my level 114 Seraphim and noticed more lag than normal, even when compared to the video that I recorded for the quest (which has a little more lag than normal as it's going through the Game Capture). When I cleared out the chest, I did another run and noticed spurts of slow-down only when I gathered a horde (around 25 enemies), and even then, it was barely noticeable and didn't affect the gameplay.

In the run prior to clearing out the chest, I noticed that 6 trees/bushes along the way to the Kobold Camp were noticeably late on loading, while the run after clearing out the chest had no initially missing trees (all trees/bushes had loaded prior to appearing on the screen).

As for save times, rounded averages across a collection of 25 saves: Before clearing the chest = 6.3 seconds, After clearing the chest = 2.9 seconds. All saves were done on "Start Island", after buying a potion from the merchant.

 

I don't know what the magic number is for the amount that should be held in the Hero Chest to prevent lag, but it seems to be threshold based. I'm not assuming that less is better, as with 1529, the gameplay quality is about the same as it is with my Hardcore Challenge account (which currently has a weight of 187 in the hero chest...again, mainly from stored runes).

However, I also don't know if this can be explained by the amount of runes in the Hero Chest (rather than overall weight stored), or even if it's an issue of sheer number of items (regardless of weight...so the lag issues could potentially be replicated by filling the Hero Chest with rings, amulets, books and damage type converters).

 

However, whatever the causation, it seems that overloading the Hero Chest leads to degraded gameplay quality.

[essjayehm 58]

Well, I've never gone into explaining it in that much detail, but I will confirm that a laden player chest makes some Area of Effect toons completely unplayable on the consoles. BT Elf, CM Inquisitor, SW Temple Guardian, etc... I do also think that runes are the main culprit.

 

Typically (ie 4 times for me), these lags also indicated that my PS3 was about to die.... hope that's not the case for you, Myst... :crossed fingers:

[czevak 57]

Well, I've never gone into explaining it in that much detail, but I will confirm that a laden player chest makes some Area of Effect toons completely unplayable on the consoles. BT Elf, CM Inquisitor, SW Temple Guardian, etc... I do also think that runes are the main culprit.

 

Typically (ie 4 times for me), these lags also indicated that my PS3 was about to die.... hope that's not the case for you, Myst... :crossed fingers:

 

That also happens on PC to lower extend. If you are carrying around a lot of stuff your current character cannot use because of mismatching class will lead to higher loadtimes and lag at the beginning of a game session and after teleporting and such.

[Mystix123 60]

Typically (ie 4 times for me), these lags also indicated that my PS3 was about to die.... hope that's not the case for you, Myst... :crossed fingers:

I was thinking that this might be an issue, but when the game returned to normal after clearing out the runes, I'm guessing it had to do more with the chest than anything else. I've been playing other games also (disc-based and off the hard drive) and haven't noticed any differences in those games, so I can't imagine it to be a hardware issue.

Perhaps if the game is played under this amount of stress though, it might cause eventual hardware failure...which would be an even better reason to clear out the chest.

 

I forgot to mention: I originally worried that it might be overheating again (because my PS3 was overheating when the apartment was reaching 28+ degrees Celsius, though it wasn't causing lag, it just made the fan reach the highest speed quickly...at which point I turned off my PS3), but I have a powerful portable air conditioner unit now cooling the PS3 and the area around it, and the PS3 was still cool to the touch (when it froze while shopping).

 

Thankfully I keep constant back-ups of my save files, as well keep System Restore back-ups on a 1.5 TB external drive (which I, somehow, formatted entirely to FAT32).

 

Anyways, after reading your post, I'm beginning to think that it might be a "sheer number of items" issue, rather than an actual "weight value" issue, which may or may not be specific to runes. The easiest way to test this would be to store a large number of rings/amulets.

I'll give this a shot later.

 

That also happens on PC to lower extend. If you are carrying around a lot of stuff your current character cannot use because of mismatching class will lead to higher loadtimes and lag at the beginning of a game session and after teleporting and such.

I'll give this a try on the PS3 version and see if it does anything.

 

Now that you mention it, the only runes which I had cleared out were Seraphim runes (while I was using a Seraphim to do all of this testing), so I don't know if this is a factor for the Hero Chest issues. I still have a large amount of runes for other classes. I haven't done a count, but I'd imagine that my Runes make up at least 50% of that 1529 (as a lot of my spare, unused equipment is on a mule account). Seraphim runes are now a minority of that count though.

[Mystix123 60]

Update: The issue seems to be based on the number of items in the storage chest, not based on weight.

It is also not caused by runes alone (as I was able to replicate the lag using rings and amulets).

 

I haven't gotten a chance to try Czevak's PC-based observation as yet, so I'll update again when I do.

[lujate 575]

It seems reasonable to me that the number of items in the chest would be a bigger factor than the weight. Runes are also lighter than other things, so you could cram more of them in your chest. My chest normally ran close to full, but I never really noticed any issues (except when I actually had it open). I had some runes, but my Seraphim went through 800+ with Battle Stance and Divine Protection, so they probably took up a smaller percentage of my capacity.

[Mystix123 60]

Nice question in your sig there Lujate. I couldn't help but click the link.

Can't help you unfortunately, but I thought you should know that it's effective.

 

Throughout the night, I've been trying to find the threshold number of items to recreate the lag. I've given up though, as I don't know for sure whether or not I'm close to said threshold and I'm only adding 1 ring at a time.

It's a lot of items necessary, let's put it that way. (lol)

[czevak 57]

Also take into consideration the number of stuff in your shared players chest. That has proven to be an even bigger lag creator in my tests so far. Again esp. stuff that your current character cannot wear because of class difference (mainly Sets for other classes atm., but Runes maybe also).

 

I think somewhere about the last few updates sth. went wrong with the procedure how the game checks for the weargroups. It keeps producing errors in the debug.log like hell, while the game is lagging during loadtime at the start of a new session. I think with previous versiond this was not producing errors but correctly passing over these non-wearable items.

 

These errors look like this:

....

11:16:48.612 - [DATA ERROR] Wearer (itemtype=3) cannot equip item (itemtype=5654) because they have different wearergroups!

11:16:48.612 - [DATA ERROR] Wearer (itemtype=3) cannot equip item (itemtype=5649) because they have different wearergroups!

....

or

....

11:16:48.633 - ERROR: slot EQUIP_ID_BATTERY not usable for item:type=8642 blueprint=3109(tset_tg_battery),wearer:type=3 creature=93(SC_Schattenkrieger)

....

 

Have a look at your debug.logs when experiencing these lags. There may be several pages of this in there.

O.O

[lujate 575]

FYI, consoles have only a shared chest.

[essjayehm 58]

Good stuff, czevak... I think that settles the issue... mostly

 

Now to identify if it is the weight or # of items... I'd vote # of items, as I mostly only stored runes and jewellery.

[Mystix123 60]

That's some interesting things to think about Czevak. Unfortunately, we can't access the debug log on the consoles.

My mule account has most of my non-Seraphim equipment right now, so I'll see what the lag looks like on that account.

I tried buying and carrying around a lot of non-Seraphim equipment (with a Seraphim character), but haven't noticed any additional lag. There might have been slightly longer load times, but it wasn't enough to be problematic or noticeable (as you stated: the increase in load time is minor).

 

Essjayehm: It's definitely "# of items". I tried using fewer items (equipment) to make up the same weight as a collection of rings/amulets, and the lag issues disappeared. As soon as I swapped the equipment for the rings/amulets, the lag issues came back.

However, I don't know what the threshold for "# of items" is as yet. I was trying to find this out, but it involved adding 1 ring to the stash using a mule character, switching characters, Kobold Chieftain run, switching back to the mule character, repeat. Long and tedious. (lol)

[essjayehm 58]

Essjayehm: It's definitely "# of items". I tried using fewer items (equipment) to make up the same weight as a collection of rings/amulets, and the lag issues disappeared. As soon as I swapped the equipment for the rings/amulets, the lag issues came back.

However, I don't know what the threshold for "# of items" is as yet. I was trying to find this out, but it involved adding 1 ring to the stash using a mule character, switching characters, Kobold Chieftain run, switching back to the mule character, repeat. Long and tedious. (lol)

Good to know it's # of items.

 

Heh... 1 ring at a time would be waaaaay to tedious for me... 10 at a time should give a good idea of the threshold you are looking for.

Then, you will want to find out if it's toon-specific runes or exactly what the ratio of useable:unuseable runes would be for the lag issue. Jewellery is not char=specific so I wouldn't spend too much time there.

[Mystix123 60]

Then, you will want to find out if it's toon-specific runes or exactly what the ratio of useable:unuseable runes would be for the lag issue. Jewellery is not char=specific so I wouldn't spend too much time there.

Thus far, I haven't found any convincing evidence that unusable items are an issue (when it comes to the storage chest) on PS3.

There was a small difference when I loaded a mule down with Set Items for other classes, but not as large as when the storage chest is full. Actually, come to think of it, I never actually tested whether this was specific to "Items for other classes" or just "Items in general". I'll run that in a few.

 

However, for actual evidence:

A) My original observations were also after I converted only Seraphim runes (while on Seraphim again) to HE runes, at a 2:1 ratio (2 Seraphim Runes for 1 Grand Invigoration). Despite the ratio being skewed towards higher unusable items, the lag stopped.

 

B) I put the game back into the lag zone last night while shopping for rings and amulets. The lag was still active this morning (I was originally testing to see if leaving the power off for a while would clear the RAM and prevent the issue). To fix the issue, I used Dashing Alacrity, Divine Protection and Hallowed Restoration runes (removing them entirely) on a few characters that could use the boost in those respective CAs. That was enough to stop the lag, despite there being many more unusable runes in the box than usable runes.

I'm down to 121 Seraphim runes now, and I stopped counting when I hit 120 unusable runes while only in the Reflective Emanation section (meaning that I still had to go through the Astral Lord section, and all sections for HE, Inquisitor, TG and Dryad). It's easily a 7:1 ratio of usable to unusable runes, but there's no abnormal lag.

 

I'll run that "Items for other classes on character vs Items in general" test after dinner.

[Mystix123 60]

Update: So it seems that the minor lag from having a loaded inventory occurs even with equipment that's usable also.

I did a quick run through with a Seraphim carrying 168/169 in Set Items. By the time I got to the bridge exit from Sloeford (towards the Kobold Camp), I had noticed that the same objects struggling to load as I noticed in the "Set items from other classes". As soon as I returned the set items, there wasn't any struggle to load the objects.

 

It seems that -any- item can create the lag, so long as there's an excessive amount.

[essjayehm 58]

Good work, Justin!

 

That'll take all of the confusion out of the issue... and explains perfectly to me how the game can lag like crazy even when playing offline.