Game is unplayable after the update

[Doraemon]

Frequent freeze and insane FPS drop make the game impossible to play. Are they forcing us to quit this game or what?

[Calcinha]

XignCode destroyed this game.

[Yatosama]

I haven't had many issues, so many it's a computer issue or client sided?

[KylaraFrost]

4 hours ago, Yatosama said:

I haven't had many issues, so many it's a computer issue or client sided?

I'm going along with the assumption that you meant maybe instead of many. (Just for clarification, auto corrupt probably struck again.)

 

For most people it's not computer or client side. I'm one of the people that has been effected by whatever has been going on and I very rigorously tested everything.

What I found was there was absolutely nothing wrong with my machine. Disabled everything but the game and tested, and not a single change. Also while I was just sitting around my ping to the server was normal.

Somewhere along the way I noticed a few things, first off in spite of my game repeatedly freezing my fps was staying normal. The 2nd thing was my ping was changing based on how many people were in the channel and doing something. 3rd my ping changed based on what I was doing. 4th everyone else was acting normally on my screen, without delays. And 5th the game was becoming unresponsive where I couldn't click keys and the like even when I didn't have a massive ping spike.

Now just in case people don't know (everyone probably does) ping is the delay between you and the server.

 

So when I took a video of resource manager when it was on the network tab (which displayed the clients ping to the server) I did a set group of actions, sitting still not doing anything for 15 seconds, then moving for 15 seconds, then hitting a combat skill (impact in this case) over and over for 15 seconds.

And what do you know, it showed normal ping for ~15 seconds, then it bumped up double for another 15 seconds, then it hit over 500 during the last 15 seconds.

I've been talking with other people and the exact same thing seems to be happening to a number of people, but not that many.

And anyone that went and checked their computer over hadn't found any issues with that either.

Just for the record, first thing we all did was check internet and it's fine and sufficient to play a MMO and the ping to the server while doing nothing already shows there isn't a blockage or something.

 

What I think is happening is fairly simple, the server is simply not accepting some client information requests. The servers can only accept and send a certain amount of information at any given time, it can only process just so much information as well. I think it's just overloaded. And instead of everyone lagging the server responds to people based on a priority system. Simple way to test this out would be to make some new accounts and test it out, which I did. Results were 2 of the 3 new accounts didn't lag at all.

 

Just in case anyone suggests it, I already sent in a ticket to NCsoft to tell them what's going on and it's been responded to. I doubt anything's going to happen but they probably are already aware.

 

 

[Yatosama]

5 minutes ago, KylaraFrost said:

 

You would be correct. It's a typo.

I'm not sure what the problem is then; I play two other games that use this (terribly useless) anti-cheat [S4League and CLOSERS] and have had little to no issues with them.
The problems I'm having ingame currently are problems I've had from the very beginning, so I really haven't noticed any differences here or there following the update 
that implemented XINGCODE. 

 

However, I do see where you're coming from, seeing as so many people are having countless issues with mere movement now, much less other things happening inside the game. 
The only real question I have is: what would be better? NCSoft making their own anti-cheat or reverting to GameGuard? 

[KylaraFrost]

9 minutes ago, Yatosama said:

You would be correct. It's a typo.

I'm not sure what the problem is then; I play two other games that use this (terribly useless) anti-cheat [S4League and CLOSERS] and have had little to no issues with them.
The problems I'm having ingame currently are problems I've had from the very beginning, so I really haven't noticed any differences here or there following the update 
that implemented XINGCODE. 

 

However, I do see where you're coming from, seeing as so many people are having countless issues with mere movement now, much less other things happening inside the game. 
The only real question I have is: what would be better? NCSoft making their own anti-cheat or reverting to GameGuard? 

Reverting, both would be useless but GameGuard would probably end up being cheaper since otherwise they would have to hire a team for the sole purpose of creating the anti-cheat and keep them on for updating it. (Putting together a software team from scratch is a major undertaking.)

I don't think anyone wants a really long explanation so I'll give a short version, blade and soul can never be protected with any form of anti-cheat that will be effective because it's based on the unreal engine 3. First and foremost unreal engine 3 doesn't fully compile stuff.

 

I don't know how much most people know about compiling but in essence it's not just a translation of a human created code to machine code, it optimizes it and changes the structure to fit machine code. One of the things that has to happen when something is compiled is it "links" stuff, created parts of the code which go to specific sections of the code, this is important because if you take a block of something then insert something into it, it shifts everything behind it over and makes all the instructions to go to an exact spot go to the wrong spot then. (In other words it breaks the code.) The UE3 runs an interpreter instead, when it compiles script code it saves external sections (stuff that you call that's in a non native language to UE3 like C++) is kept in a chunk, the rest is changed into a format that the interpreter is able to run quickly. However there is no static linking, the structure is still fairly normal, and variables still exist. (An interpreter is something that takes in a script and does actions that a program would do, where as a compiler creates a separate program.)

It's basically still a script in a binary form.

 

Now what's important about this is people have made tools that can very easily decompile UE3 stuff, not so much with binary programs. It takes so much effort to decompile a normal program it's not funny, it takes years for small programs. UE3 on the other hand people could make a decompiler for it in a week if they know how.

In fact they don't even need to do that, because the lack of most if not all linking and the structure of the code is known, people can just insert stuff into it. (So long as they know how.)

 

This ends up so people can make cheats in a few hours of one person doing something, instead of several people spending weeks doing it. No anti-cheat will ever be able to stand up to this, a constant barrage of software being created.

 

The way the game is protected over in the Asian regions is completely different, they have the anti-cheat programs, except it still doesn't do anything. What actually does something is that to play the game they have what is in effect the players social security number. I know both China and south Korea do this. So if someone reports another player and they get banned, they cannot create a new account, they cannot get back into the game outside of buying another persons account.

Pretty much ends up as a one strike you're out system.

 

[Fatalito]

24 minutes ago, KylaraFrost said:

Reverting, both would be useless but GameGuard would probably end up being cheaper since otherwise they would have to hire a team for the sole purpose of creating the anti-cheat and keep them on for updating it. (Putting together a software team from scratch is a major undertaking.)

I don't think anyone wants a really long explanation so I'll give a short version, blade and soul can never be protected with any form of anti-cheat that will be effective because it's based on the unreal engine 3. First and foremost unreal engine 3 doesn't fully compile stuff.

 

I don't know how much most people know about compiling but in essence it's not just a translation of a human created code to machine code, it optimizes it and changes the structure to fit machine code. One of the things that has to happen when something is compiled is it "links" stuff, created parts of the code which go to specific sections of the code, this is important because if you take a block of something then insert something into it, it shifts everything behind it over and makes all the instructions to go to an exact spot go to the wrong spot then. (In other words it breaks the code.) The UE3 runs an interpreter instead, when it compiles script code it saves external sections (stuff that you call that's in a non native language to UE3 like C++) is kept in a chunk, the rest is changed into a format that the interpreter is able to run quickly. However there is no static linking, the structure is still fairly normal, and variables still exist. (An interpreter is something that takes in a script and does actions that a program would do, where as a compiler creates a separate program.)

It's basically still a script in a binary form.

 

Now what's important about this is people have made tools that can very easily decompile UE3 stuff, not so much with binary programs. It takes so much effort to decompile a normal program it's not funny, it takes years for small programs. UE3 on the other hand people could make a decompiler for it in a week if they know how.

In fact they don't even need to do that, because the lack of most if not all linking and the structure of the code is known, people can just insert stuff into it. (So long as they know how.)

 

This ends up so people can make cheats in a few hours of one person doing something, instead of several people spending weeks doing it. No anti-cheat will ever be able to stand up to this, a constant barrage of software being created.

 

The way the game is protected over in the Asian regions is completely different, they have the anti-cheat programs, except it still doesn't do anything. What actually does something is that to play the game they have what is in effect the players social security number. I know both China and south Korea do this. So if someone reports another player and they get banned, they cannot create a new account, they cannot get back into the game outside of buying another persons account.

Pretty much ends up as a one strike you're out system.

 

I like this explanation. The whole thing with SS numbers on Korea and China is a sure way to prevent cheating. But here in the West and I'd assume in EU as well, too many people would be complaining about privacy issues and they'd be doing so with fair reason. Hard to trust your most sensitive identity information to just a game company. If corruption and ID theft has happened in banks and even government installations, where there should be more security, imagine if MMO publishers started asking for SS numbers and the like just to join their games...

 

So yeah. Sadly, there's little NC can do in terms of anti cheating with the current system, and since programs and code throughout history have a tendency of not working on every PC setup out there, there will always be a group of people ending with the short stick. On the other side, the issues with Game Guard must have been very big for them to decide to do such a change, well knowing that some computers that were able to play the game before, won't be able to play it properly now. So the change must have had some real weight behind it for it to happen.

[Spacenick]

Since XINGCODE has been implemented, I have big fps drop and by checking all my computer I found something interesting: my GPU don't enter "gaming mode".

My GPU consider the game as if it is my desktop -> FPS drop whenever I do something...

If someone has an idea how to solve that, it could help lot of people I think :)

[XenMegami]

16 hours ago, Calcinha said:

XignCode destroyed this game.

^ This x a million

[KlausFlouride]

18 hours ago, Yatosama said:

I haven't had many issues, so many it's a computer issue or client sided?

There only needed to be one person say they were not having issues and the dev's won't fix any issues.

[Yatosama]

1 hour ago, KlausFlouride said:

There only needed to be one person say they were not having issues and the dev's won't fix any issues.

eeexcept I'm not the only person that's said so? and even if it were just me or whoever the other person/people was, there's a majority count. 
I'm not sure what you're basing your facts or counting on to come to that conclusion. 

[KlausFlouride]

ToI is a good example; endless bugs, that a few didn't have, so none have been fixed.

[Saksoy]

My ping has rocketed to 300+ today with god knows how many d/c. Hopefully its temporary.

[KlausFlouride]

Another CB field boss and another crash mid-fight. You guys should sub this game out to a company that knows what they are doing.

[StrawberryCarnage]

My ping goes up to 250ms now, never less than 190 even in a single instance like the CB ritual chambers. thats up 70-130ms from pre patch. There is only one thing to explain it, and the devs have heard about it. I play SF and BD, rather ping reliant, so i only log on to help clanmates atm. The free hard drive space from uninstalling is looking like a good incentive to do so atm.