The infernal price of lag.

[Mokpama_rapra 5]

... Before some helpful soul indicts my computer and/or ISP, I use a very current and hot MAC Quad Pro and best cable ISP available in the US ...

The problem is named 'Flash'. This game is built around Flash. This game has been pushed to the limits on this old fashioned technology. The most important battleground for Flash – Windows started its departure with Flash in W8/IE10 by provision of limited support. With Adobe itself abandoning its most treasured creation in development, stopping support of flash for other platforms -*nix, Android, iOS(mobile), and meticulously advertising HTML5 for the future – it is clear – the upsizing of this game has no future, investment in Flash technology is a waste of money and effort. Expect more and more lags. Simply put - the Flash technology met its limits.

Therefore enjoy the last fun of Tanki with Flash, while still there is Flash around to use in your browser.

[Lieutenant_Me 65]

I'm still wondering why I don't get common lags; even when I use our old windows XP computer

It must be the place of residence...

incredible, you still post your nonsense?? what did i said to you? grow up, learn the basic things than speak in public...

 

p.s. you admitted that you have lag and you play with crippled graphics settings...

 

 

and I don't have fog, and soft particles on.

automatic graphics quality is disabled, which means I have turned off dynamic shadows (they give me 20 FPS, which is a little bit to low for aiming correctly)

I have also unchecked skybox.

and I have 40 to 50 FPS in every game except Iran.

[Lieutenant_Me 65]

MD21, please, when you experience lag again just try to load some other site in new browser window (you may try even Tanki home page). i bet that you will be able to load others site but not Tanki becouse their servers lose internet connection. like:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjyNQBl5sfM

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKVJ4qHkJ2k

[CooperO 7,956]

p.s. you admitted that you have lag and you play with crippled graphics settings...

Where actually is that part about lag?

Edited December 29, 2012 by CooperO

[I3loodShot 3,119]

i lag rarely :D

[Daslec 82]

MD21 and Otto

 

This problem has persisted since August. And each day, more players appears with the same problem.

This game did a lot of changes in the gane, but nothing has been done for this problem.

"This is a temporary problem". Ok, by a 5 months ago???

I want to remember, this problem has existed since july 2011.

[splitterpoint 10,986]

incredible, you still post your nonsense?? what did i said to you? grow up, learn the basic things than speak in public...

 

p.s. you admitted that you have lag and you play with crippled graphics settings...

 

Try to act smart somewere else.

 

You're just jealous that I don't have lags and you do.

That I can solve them without experience with computers and even with medium/low quality computers.

 

Sir, It's you that has to grow up. ;)

You're older then me right?

You care about age, then act like an older person.

Edited December 29, 2012 by splitterpoint

[sem13boy 1]

MD21 and Otto

 

This problem has persisted since August. And each day, more players appears with the same problem.

This game did a lot of changes in the gane, but nothing has been done for this problem.

"This is a temporary problem". Ok, by a 5 months ago???

I want to remember, this problem has existed since july 2011.

Couldn`t agree more...

[A_N_F_O 9]

Maddog i cannot agree with you more. This is rediculous. First the rebalance, and now the never ending lags. Lag has always been a major problem, and the devs always stated that they will fix it. Instead of fixing it, they made stupid changes like rebalance. Here is a note to the developers: Why no improve on something that will actually attracted players, not disgust them?

[r_S.Y.R.I.A0 1]

+1 I am disgusted by the poor decisions tank has made and I don't plan on staying with tanki very much longer.

[A_N_F_O 9]

+1 I am disgusted by the poor decisions tank has made and I don't plan on staying with tanki very much longer.

 

Me too, soon enough all the pros are gonna be gone and all the noobs will be left. Honestly, when people invests money on the old tanki, it's not that bad. Now, it is just stupid bcause the devs are getting greedier. The only reason they did rebalance is not to make the game better, but to make more money. :angry:

[Oioslykos 54]

From what I learned after reading the russian forum, your connection to tanki servers is now very sensitive to ping. Tanki will work perfectly fine if your ping to tanki servers is not more than ~200-250 ms.

However, as soon as you start having spikes in your ping (due to poor connection or being located far from the servers), you start losing connection, specially when data transfer is high (in 10v10 drug games). I usually don't lag while playing no-supply games or games with less players.

One of the possible and rather a more expensive solution to this problem is to have servers located all around the world, which I highly doubt will be implemented anytime soon.

A second solution and a more viable one will be to optimize the servers so that users with high ping don't lose connection. And we all know this problem started after one of the crappy updates was implemented. Why not revert back to the previous setting?!

[rudy_na_102 2]

When you are refreshing due to lag, you still get your prize even though you were refreshing. The game only kicks you off after 5 minutes of no activity. So even when you are reloading, your name is still in game, and all you would need to do is ask someone you were playing with how many crystals you earned.

Hope that helps.

NO or at least NOT ALWAYS...

It has happen to me few times that if I had lags at the end of battle and I refreshed site I came back to new battle but not received crystals reward.

After few times I decided record all my "laggy" cases. Here is one sample from my nooby account (unfortunately battle fund is too low to apply for refund - less than 200 crystals):

http://youtu.be/Dn8oT5oNx5c

[The_Ice_Dragon 22]

like skitee did, i changed my storage too "unlimited" and now i almost never have lags. :)

[KiwiZaphod 53]

So called excuse:

Sorry, but this is going on for like hmmmm, I don't know : One year?

Doesn't look like that to me. Instead of spending time & money on updates and "Rebalance"(I personally think they were not necessary), they can invest that time & money to build an alternative server on USA for "Alternativa PlatForm", that will hopefully reduce lags AND/OR increase the so called FPS. Correct me if I am wrong...

I wonder if the rebalance was needed in part for economic reasons; the game has grown very rapidly and I suspect the infrastructure is struggling. To get the investment money for the hardware CAPEX and software upgrades needed for money players online at once - which has to be in Tanki's interests - they had to create a situation where they could generate more money. Its not unusal for a SaaS "cloud computing" play (which is essentially waht all MMOs are) to hit "scalability" issues and need its entire economic and business model to be overhauled.

 

In other words, I suspect they needed the rebalance to get the investment to fix the lag.

[KiwiZaphod 53]

Me too, soon enough all the pros are gonna be gone and all the noobs will be left. Honestly, when people invests money on the old tanki, it's not that bad. Now, it is just stupid bcause the devs are getting greedier. The only reason they did rebalance is not to make the game better, but to make more money. :angry:

Um - I'm guessing that noobs spend more $$ on upgrades than "pros"

Right now there is about 52,000 players online out of 18,000,000; that's under 0.3% of players than can get access. They need to have a huge investment if they are to grow (add more servers, beat lag), and of course offline players don't spend money.

I suspect that, as it stands, the Tanki Online model (like a lot of cloud-computing, SaaS set ups, which all MMOs are) needed an overhaul if it was to continue to grow as it has. Hence the rebalance (which yes, favours new players buying over established ones, and encourages them to stay and spend more.) Most companies that fold do so because they can't "scale up" from thousands, to millions to tens of millions to hundreds of millions. And had Tanki folded, we all lose.

[smokemypole 7]

Um - I'm guessing that noobs spend more $$ on upgrades than "pros"

Right now there is about 52,000 players online out of 18,000,000; that's under 0.3% of players than can get access. They need to have a huge investment if they are to grow (add more servers, beat lag), and of course offline players don't spend money.

I suspect that, as it stands, the Tanki Online model (like a lot of cloud-computing, SaaS set ups, which all MMOs are) needed an overhaul if it was to continue to grow as it has. Hence the rebalance (which yes, favours new players buying over established ones, and encourages them to stay and spend more.) Most companies that fold do so because they can't "scale up" from thousands, to millions to tens of millions to hundreds of millions. And had Tanki folded, we all lose.

 

Only problem is that until they fix lag I'm not spending 1 cent with them.

Are you from NZ KiwiZaphod?

[KiwiZaphod 53]

Only problem is that until they fix lag I'm not spending 1 cent with them.

Are you from NZ KiwiZaphod?

I'm in NZ - makes it easier to play at certain times of the day, but when the US is online you get lagged like crazy.

I've spent a total of maybe US$30 (always with a double-up card!) and under the old scheme used that to get a few toys like the M3 Railgun - that was enough to get me "out of a hole" (which was probably caused by the lack of balance in the weapons/ranks)

Bottom line is that if you take the number of players at my rank or above (~138,000) and assume they drop say $30/year average (US$4.4m) this is pretty low revenues; that might get you running a team of 20-30 people plus infrastructure, but not much left for investment.

On the other hand, if you can get some of the 5-10,000,000 lower ranks drop $5/year average you make five+ times this (US$25-50m); and new players are far more likely to spend US$10 on a game as they get into it.

So - you not spending any money is not as much of an issue as the millions of other, lower ranked players. At least, that's how it looks to me.

If they don't fix it? Games come and go...

Edited December 30, 2012 by KiwiZaphod

[smokemypole 7]

I'm in NZ - makes it easier to play at certain times of the day, but when the US is online you get lagged like crazy.

I've spent a total of maybe US$30 (always with a double-up card!) and under the old scheme used that to get a few toys like the M3 Railgun - that was enough to get me "out of a hole" (which was probably caused by the lack of balance in the weapons/ranks)

Bottom line is that if you take the number of players at my rank or above (~138,000) and assume they drop say $30/year average (US$4.4m) this is pretty low revenues; that might get you running a team of 20-30 people plus infrastructure, but not much left for investment.

On the other hand, if you can get some of the 5-10,000,000 lower ranks drop $5/year average you make five+ times this (US$25-50m); and new players are far more likely to spend US$10 on a game as they get into it.

So - you not spending any money is not as much of an issue as the millions of other, lower ranked players. At least, that's how it looks to me.

If they don't fix it? Games come and go...

 

I think you need to be careful as a lot of those 'low rank' players probably only ever played a few times and quit. I know that a lot of high rankers do spend reasonable money for drugs (even using half price card) . Although now with buying ranks and having M3 equipment available with high ranks heaps of guys will spend in the middle ranks to get the gear - I suspect.

I'm in Rotorua, and lag is a total killer these days. I hardly play now because of getting into a game, having good chance for crystals and then getting dropped out and losing everything.

[KiwiZaphod 53]

I would assume that they look *very* carefully at the "spend demographics" - after all its the heart of their economic model. Google and facebook do the same, but have to do so in public as they are publically traded.

I would also suggest that the "shape" of the rebalance is in part about encouraging low-ranked payers to stay (and pay) - the reduced rates on cheaper protection paints, M0 weapons and hulls, for example.

Either way, I would suspect the "lag" issues are not an easy/cheap fix, or they would have done it; its probably hardware and software related, and hard to test internationally; sometimes what seems like a simple "user story" for a fix actually requires a massive rewrite of the core code/engine, and a lot of companies crash and burn at this point - their sucess kills their original engine, and they don't have the finances to pull off a 2.0 version. (Hmm - sound familiar?)

[The_Ice_Dragon 22]

Jeez. So many complainers these days. You guys are LUCKY that TankiOnline is a FREE game and using your OWN money is optional. The devs need money if they want to improve this game. It's not because they're greedy it's so they can improve this game.

[rambotito1234 0]

I AGREE WITH MAD DOG21 THE LAG IS SOO STUPID ON MOST MAPS YOUR DEAD B4 YOU MOVE DUE TO LAG OR YOU CANT MOVE THIS GAME IS ALL ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY THE OWNERS CAN SCREW FROM US WE CANT COMPLAIN CAUSE YOU GET BANNED FOR MENTIONING THINGS

[smokemypole 7]

Jeez. So many complainers these days. You guys are LUCKY that TankiOnline is a FREE game and using your OWN money is optional. The devs need money if they want to improve this game. It's not because they're greedy it's so they can improve this game.

 

If they want to improve the game then sort out lag. You can't spend your own money when you are just refreshing your browser because of lag. I think you will find the majority of complaints are about lag in this thread and people wanting to play (and most likely spend money).

[r_Otto_I0 0]

nice picture of price of lag:

[r_by880 6]

Quit crying MadDog. Or should I say, SadDog. I never get lag. Ever. It's just you, go buy a new computer and stop using the one they used to test the deciphering method of Czarist Russia.

Edited January 1, 2013 by r_by880