Would getting rid of useless NPCs speed things up?

[Neo Omni]

I feel that if we were to have only the essential or minimal amount of NPCs then Rift would feel quite empty - from a roleplaying perspective this would be horrendous. Rift can already feel a little barren at times without us removing NPCs. I want cities to feel like a bustling population hub and towns to feel like they do have inhabitants. I don't want NPCs removed because they serve no "purpose" in the game, leaving only under-populated ghost areas.

Is the load on the server caused by the number of NPCs really that significant to warrant such a change? Perhaps you are noticing the NPCs loading now simply because of the green bubbles that have been introduced whilst in the past they were invisible during these "several seconds" of loading and you were none the wiser. A several second delay upon loading is hardly a significant period of time and it doesn't have any effect on your gameplay considering you can interact with the green bubbles as if the NPC model was present anyway.

Also, on Ember Isle they are travel stones not porticulums. One could assume that these work differently from a lore perspective.

Perhaps a switch to enable/disable these non-essential NPCs. Frankly, my whole "immersion" is destroyed with green bubbles everywhere as is. Looks more like people are beaming down to the planet à la Star Trek. I would rather have the ability to turn them off.

[Ajax1114]

Perhaps a switch to enable/disable these non-essential NPCs. Frankly, my whole "immersion" is destroyed with green bubbles everywhere as is. Looks more like people are beaming down to the planet à la Star Trek. I would rather have the ability to turn them off.

So it's more immersive to have NPCs be totally invisible on your screen and then 10 seconds later just "appear"? If you want to really be immersed, you need a top-end machine to run the game.

Removing a few NPCs will not kill lag. It could, arguably, reduce lag but it also might not do anything. The reason that cities get so laggy is because they're packed with players, which means there's a huge number of queries and checks with the server happening every second. Note how the same thing happens in Ember Isle when people are waiting for Ochrin. Is it NPCs making the lag there? No, it's the people.

What will improve performance is finding and removing memory leaks, or just modifying a code structure so that it requires less resources to run.

[Not Listing It Here]

the one thing i do like about the green condoms is that you can click and interact with them, where before when the NPCs werent there, you just had to wait, at least thats how i remember it

I used to be able to interact with them, but have noticed the last 2 days that I have to wait until they are fully rendered to do so. Seems to happen on all my toons, on both factions. Hoping this isn't a trend and just lag related.

[TheGrinnz]

I used to be able to interact with them, but have noticed the last 2 days that I have to wait until they are fully rendered to do so. Seems to happen on all my toons, on both factions. Hoping this isn't a trend and just lag related.

Also noticed this

[Roflopagus]

but 40 green condoms attacking Orchrin is funny as hell

more like 400

[Shinkirou]

Rift has a significant fps problem for me, because of throughput, Rift is a cycle wh-... it leiks dem cycles long teimz.

Rift uses about 40% of my cpu, 90% of my GPU on MAX settings (I play on low), about 200mb of my VRAM, almost none of my RAM and only about 100B/s of my network.. I get a little over 20fps in the middle of nowhere doing nothing.

NOW THIS STATEMENT IS FROM A LOGIC PERSPECTIVE, NOT A LITERAL TECH PERSPECTIVE.

Rift is trying to do to much at once, it's like it thinks it only needs a bit of your hardware, and then massively overloads that small amount. ( If you want a tech perspective, I'd guess Rift utilizes CPU too heavily in base operations causing a huge bottleneck for those with out monster core speed)

I can play Skyrim on this computer, almost all settings maxed + HD texture and lighting mods, nice and smooth. My computer's not great, but it can sure as hell play games.

[Drigr]

Skyrim is a single player game. It has a lot less to deal with, though probably more intensive vidcard wise. Also I'm curious what kind of processor you're running. I don't know exactl specs (mostly going off my cpu meter on my comp) but I have an AMD hex core and rift uses maybe 20-30% of my processing power, with no more than 40% in two cores at a time (in the middle of sanctum

[Shaidar Haran]

Yes. Remove all "useless" NPCs. Also, make direct ports to all instances from each factions main city hub.

You had me going there until..

Give us / commands to summons the mobs we want to fight, and remove the rest from the game. Make it so rifts wont spawn in the world unless it is directly on top of someone, and have them locked in a circle instance of where they were to solo the rift. Cause all this extra fluff is making people lag.

lol, then I knew for sure you were being sarcastic

you mad bro?

I mean, seriously?

My suggestion was to take some of the load off, not to completely gut the game. Can't you tell the difference?

If fluff NPCs were removed...no one would notice since they really dont add to the game, but add to the lag.

I'd notice. The whole Faeblight shard would notice. Eventually, people like you would find something else to gut because it serves no purpose. Just because you don't find it valuable, doesn't mean it isn't. Removing characters from a world that is based on story and not just load, kill, reload, kill is destroying the feel of the world; Thereby, making it self-defeating. Find another way to fix the problem, don't destroy the world because you are inconvenienced.

[Shinkirou]

Skyrim is a single player game. It has a lot less to deal with, though probably more intensive vidcard wise. Also I'm curious what kind of processor you're running. I don't know exactl specs (mostly going off my cpu meter on my comp) but I have an AMD hex core and rift uses maybe 20-30% of my processing power, with no more than 40% in two cores at a time (in the middle of sanctum

Yes i know skyrim is single player, a lot less ect ect, there still shouldn't be such a huge gap, legacy render min settings 25fps or so. And my CPU is a dual core intel 3GHz, the most I've seen it get to was 60% while running rift.

[Drigr]

Yes i know skyrim is single player, a lot less ect ect, there still shouldn't be such a huge gap, legacy render min settings 25fps or so. And my CPU is a dual core intel 3GHz, the most I've seen it get to was 60% while running rift.

I know I'm not the MOST tech savy person, but isn't a dual core like 4 years out of date?

[Kanabull]

I dont know if it's just the way things have progress, but I recall Rift being alot speedier (graphics-wise) about 8 months ago when I joined.

Lately I'm suffering from "green-condom syndrome" where I am constantly surrounded by green-condoms when I enter a new area for several seconds. Most of these are NPCs that really serve no purpose other than immersion fluff.

So my suggestion is to get rid of all these extra demands on graphics and connection resources. Porticulums should not need an NPC character to run them either. The ones in Ember Isle dont (as far as I know).

Or.......you could upgrade your PC...although im sure you think your P4 is killing it!

[Shinkirou]

I know I'm not the MOST tech savy person, but isn't a dual core like 4 years out of date?

Out of date yes, still viable if you're not wanting top of the line gaming. A lot of MMOs still only use a single core, unless there's been a huge change in the last year i didn't care to find out about.

(I'm working to build a new pc, mine is crappy yes, but should be able to handle an mmo, hell my onboard graphics handle most mmos at high settings just fine.)

[Drigr]

Out of date yes, still viable if you're not wanting top of the line gaming. A lot of MMOs still only use a single core, unless there's been a huge change in the last year i didn't care to find out about.

(I'm working to build a new pc, mine is crappy yes, but should be able to handle an mmo, hell my onboard graphics handle most mmos at high settings just fine.)

Considering that, according to Laeris, the only way to run Rift "lag free" is to use a server grade processor, I think that's the main cause of your lag issues. From what I've heard, rift also falls into the "top of the line gaming" category. Don't ask how.. I personally think GW2 looks much better, and even in beta I lag less than in Rift.



Was lagging less than an EI event on MIN settings. AND everyone was loaded.

[Lienda]

Lately I'm suffering from "green-condom syndrome" where I am constantly surrounded by green-condoms when I enter a new area for several seconds. Most of these are NPCs that really serve no purpose other than immersion fluff.

I thought of them as watermelon bubbles, but that's interesting to.