[Redux Interserver Network] The Best Low Rate Classic Conquer Experience

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Originally Posted by Xio. I obviously don't know anything about the source you're using, but have you profiled the memory allocations? It could be a blocking GC on gen2.

Appreciate the suggestion. Between myself and some advice from Fang we THINK we've tracked down the issue.

I have some more efficiency improvements to make across the board but we believe the periodic 'the server is now basically offline' type lag has been resolved. The first set of changes are already on live and will be monitored over the next few days. Assuming that goes well then we will investigate any remaining spikes or inconsistency.

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Originally Posted by pro4never Appreciate the suggestion. Between myself and some advice from Fang we THINK we've tracked down the issue. I have some more efficiency improvements to make across the board but we believe the periodic 'the server is now basically offline' type lag has been resolved. The first set of changes are already on live and will be monitored over the next few days. Assuming that goes well then we will investigate any remaining spikes or inconsistency.

I would think it is safe to assume after this current episode that what ever you changed was not the root cause of the lag.

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Originally Posted by StarBucks I would think it is safe to assume after this current episode that what ever you changed was not the root cause of the lag.

True but the changes involve new logging which is helping identify the root cause.

All steps forwards

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Originally Posted by StarBucks I would think it is safe to assume after this current episode that what ever you changed was not the root cause of the lag.

I can't speak on behalf of Chris, but it seems that we made a hopeful assumption. Regardless, it ended up being a really good step in identifying the problem and relieving server stress, so we're looking further into it.

Ya, the lag seems to be more persistent now. It just began to throw a huge fit again.

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Originally Posted by StarBucks Ya, the lag seems to be more persistent now. It just began to throw a huge fit again.

That would be a coincidence. The changes made to the server wouldn't cause an opposite effect. Anyways, I was just around for the day. Chris is looking into the problem and has good direction, so I'm confident that he'll find the root cause. A problem like this doesn't resolve itself overnight, such as Rome wasn't built in a day. :p

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Originally Posted by StarBucks Ya, the lag seems to be more persistent now. It just began to throw a huge fit again.

That's because we did not reboot it. We let it run with the lag while we ran extensive logs to try to locate the cause of the issue. I have a list of changes to include in tomorrows patch as well and the server has been rebooted to keep things nice and stable until that point.

Last time something similar happened to me turned out to be a fuckton of cache misses.

Well our improved network code has been live for over 24h without issues on triumph and close to that on apex now. We will of course continue to monitor but we feel the core complaints have been addressed and will move on to focusing on other improvements

We will be doing multiple passes of improvements to overall efficiency during the next week which should not only reduce the frequency and severity of small spikes but also allow us to continue expanding the server. We have some cool promotions planned to help fill the server back up and grow beyond what we've ever done


Cosmetic and customization features are coming! We felt garments were not quite enough and wanted to go a step or two further. We now have the ability to override the look of any weapon armour or headgear without changing the actual item ID. This will allow us to add multiple ways to customize your character.

[Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

Weapon transmog: we will be allowing players to trade dragon balls for a random weapon transmog item for the weapon type of their choice. These transmog items include level 15-130 looks for that type of item but also the 130+ version from new conquer and some souls that are not too graphically painful to look at. You can use these transmog items (expire after 30 days once applied to an item) or you can sell them to other players

Permanent transmog will be a donation reward. You will be able to use donations to receive the weapon look of your choice. These items can be sold to other or applied to items. We will be creating new custom looks as well to keep these rewards fresh.

Themed transmog. Holiday events, raids and special quests will be added as rewards for quests and events. This would include things such as tomb stone shields and butchers blades for Halloween. A bouquet of roses for Valentine's Day, etc

We will be testing these internally and when we are happy they are working as they should they will be made available in game . If you have thoughts of feedback on any of this please let us know!

Phase 2 complete!

The WeaponTrader has been successfully online for around 24 hours now and people seem to be really enjoying him. We've gone ahead and added shields to the trader today as well as importing and releasing all the 120+ shield looks to help warriors with more customization options.

We've also gone ahead and enabled our soul system and we wanted to give people a rundown.

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Talking to the KnowitAll in twin city will tell you about how to get souls and allow you to enter the blacksmith map to forge your weapon. Each soul is $20 through our website.

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Once inside the blacksmith map, you can choose to view applicable looks for either your main or offhand weapon slot. It will return a list of every available look and its price and you can choose to purchase or not. Once purchased you will then have a token for that particular soul in your inventory.

You CAN sell this soul to others (we always value our donators and non donators keeping the economy using this sort of trade. We dont want to limit items like this to donators only)

Once you apply a soul item to your weapon, the effect will NOT expire until you replace it or remove it. Unlike the legacy weapons these are permanent.

UPDATE!

Our new client functionality is now online!

We want to make sure our players all get the support they deserve so there's a number of changes in this set of updates to make sure that happens.

#1: We now notify all online MOD/GM players when someone logs in for the first time (tracked based on physical PC to avoid newbie alts spamming us). This lets us greet new players and get them right into the server

#2: We have embedded our live support system into the client. Clicking the ? button in the bottom left area of the client will connect you to any online MOD/GM so you can get personalized support. These requests go directly to our phones so we can provide player support while on the go.

#3: TUTORIALS! We're starting small but we've added the functionality of embedding youtube videos into the client itself. The idea is that as you complete quests or start the server, you will be presented with small tutorials to help you understand how the server works and what you need to do to be successful. All players first connecting from their PC will receive a welcome video and all new characters who choose the tutorial path will get a quick overview of starting quests, items, pvp events, etc.


We're starting small with these features but the ability to embed websites into the game opens up a lot of options for the future. Everything from custom interfaces for server events/tournaments, mini games that you can play from right inside the conquer client and new interfaces for things like cosmetic weapon management.

We hope our players appreciate this new functionality and we appreciate any suggestions our users might have to make the system even better.


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[Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

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Originally Posted by pro4never UPDATE! Our new client functionality is now online! We want to make sure our players all get the support they deserve so there's a number of changes in this set of updates to make sure that happens. #1: We now notify all online MOD/GM players when someone logs in for the first time (tracked based on physical PC to avoid newbie alts spamming us). This lets us greet new players and get them right into the server #2: We have embedded our live support system into the client. Clicking the ? button in the bottom left area of the client will connect you to any online MOD/GM so you can get personalized support. These requests go directly to our phones so we can provide player support while on the go. #3: TUTORIALS! We're starting small but we've added the functionality of embedding youtube videos into the client itself. The idea is that as you complete quests or start the server, you will be presented with small tutorials to help you understand how the server works and what you need to do to be successful. All players first connecting from their PC will receive a welcome video and all new characters who choose the tutorial path will get a quick overview of starting quests, items, pvp events, etc. We're starting small with these features but the ability to embed websites into the game opens up a lot of options for the future. Everything from custom interfaces for server events/tournaments, mini games that you can play from right inside the conquer client and new interfaces for things like cosmetic weapon management. We hope our players appreciate this new functionality and we appreciate any suggestions our users might have to make the system even better. [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...] [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]

:eek: :eek: :eek:

UPDATES!

So this is a bit premature as not all of these are available on the live server yet but I wanted to make a post discussing the direction the server is moving in.


#1: In-game feature integration.

This means that as we add new features, they should be easily accessible from in game. You shouldn't need to exit to go to our website, memorize commands or any other silliness to participate in the server. This will involve some tweaks to the ingame interface as well as some other changes. We will of course do our best to keep things 'feeling classic' but we feel the changes will benefit our players in the long term.

The first batch of these changes will be going live on Monday. This update will include a VIP, Help, Souls and Vote button in the client. No more going to your inventory to use VIPCodex to access VIP options, no more going to our website to preview weapon souls, no more spamming world chat hoping a GM notices you!


#2 Cosmetics

We plan to continue to add exciting new weapon skins, garments and more to help players customize how they look in game. We want this to be as painless and user friendly as possible so we are adding a ingame interface that lets you preview every weapon soul, see whats recently been added, see what souls you already own and in the future you will be able to switch between them right from this interface.

Each weapon listed in the soul shop will contain a animated GIF of what the effect looks like in game so you can make an informed decision of which one you want.


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We will also be adding a new set of cosmetic weapons in this next update. The list of what is being added is still shifting but here's the TL-DR.

Weapons that do not currently have souls for them (scepters, longhammers, hooks, hammers) will be getting either their own new souls, or will have the ability to use souls from other underused weapons (EG: Dagger souls can be used on scepters)


We will also be adding a select few souls for very common weapons (blades and clubs for example) that are significantly different from the souls already in place. We're happy with the first two batches we released but wanted to offer more options in terms of color palate and style.

Here's a few we're working on.

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#3: CONTENT!

We've had a number of requests to create some content that's not necessarily just for 'hardcore pvpers'. Our solution for this is to create a sort of castle defense mini game. Players of the server must work cooperatively to defend a castle against wave after wave of creeps. These creeps have increasing health, speed and other effects as you get to higher end waves and take fixed dmg based on the type of skill they are hit with (EG: Fb might deal 10 dmg where scatter deals 1 dmg and zap deals 3)

This event is planned to run twice a day at various times so everyone can get in on the action.

Note: Castle defense is NOT going to be live in Monday but will be included in the patch for testing and player feedback.

#4 Recruitment

This is something we've wanted to add for a while. We have a fantastic and dedicated player base but we are always looking for ways to grow and expand. Referral type systems are always tricky to implement because they tend to be abused quite heavily by a minority of the player base. We've grown to the point as a server where we feel we can mitigate a lot of those concerns and allow our players to be rewarded for inviting their friends to play.

Players will be able to use recruitment links to send to their friends. If a player signs up with your recruitment link and plays the game until level 15 (aka they logged in and did 1 quest) then both you and the person you recruited will receive a friendship potion which will increase droprates and exp rates for 1 hour. There will be some limitations on who you can recruit and you can only recruit a maximum of 5 players. Once you recruit 5 players, you will get a Friends4Ever garment to show off your popularity and style.


We will be monitoring this system closely to watch for abuse but needless to say you wont be able to recruit your own characters. Because the system is capped at how many people in total you can recruit it should be relatively easy for us to limit the rewards but excessive attempts to cheat the system will result in warnings and in serious cases, temporary bans.

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Wow, insane progress.