Feedback on cross-server presence system in testing on BG

[HEEGZ]

I like the idea of sending cross server tells, but the notifications are too much spam for when DMing. I turned off the notifications because of this, but look forward to the /tell system. Thanks.

[Basilica]

Do you find that redirecting the login/logout notifications to the combat log (#notify combatlog) is sufficient or is that still too noisy?

[HEEGZ]

I simply do not want this information while in game. I can check the website or IRC for it, if I really need to know.

[Swift]

I like the idea of sending cross server tells, but the notifications are too much spam for when DMing

I would agree with this. When you are DMing, it is a very rare situation where you actually need to know that players are logging into other servers. I know for TSM it could get annoying at peak times, as we already have numerous automated messages coming into the DM channel from scripts.


As a player, I find the notifications great, especially if friends are playing on different servers at the time.

[HEEGZ]

Maybe the server notifications could default to off for DM clients and on for player clients? Dunno. It is nice to have the option. Doesn't bother me because I can turn it off. As a player I will probably use the server notifications if I remember to turn them back on.

[Basilica]

The settings are saved per-character, so as long as you don't re-use the same character for DM'ing and playing, the configuration should be distinct.

[rorax]

I get 2-3 seconds lag each time the message appear when someone logs off or on in one of the servers. Is it fixable ? i guess it's client related since the few people i've asked did not have such problem.

[Basilica]

There shouldn't be any more lag than with any other chat or combat log event, so I don't have a good explanation for why that would be happening. (These are just regular combat log and chat notices internally.)

Is this local lag (game freezes) or something that appears to be network related? Can you elaborate on the symptoms further?

You can also try turning notifications off to see if that changes anything, but I wonder if there isn't something else really going on here that is the real cause.

[rorax]

There shouldn't be any more lag than with any other chat or combat log event, so I don't have a good explanation for why that would be happening. (These are just regular combat log and chat notices internally.)

Is this local lag (game freezes) or something that appears to be network related? Can you elaborate on the symptoms further?

You can also try turning notifications off to see if that changes anything, but I wonder if there isn't something else really going on here that is the real cause.

Well , it's always happening when i see the notification "server: someone logged...." i don't get lags in MS or TSM. It's always happening when there is global announcement when someone logs off or on...

I can try to set off notifications....how do i do that?

[Zelknolf]

#notify off
to turn them off
#notify on
to turn them back on
(they'll default to on)

[Basilica]

There will be a #help in the next update that lists internal commands.

[Basilica]

I've made a minor adjustment to the chat messages sent for character join/leave: Now they will break out of the enclosing gray text color tag in case having a nested color tag was sometimes causing performance issues. While I generally don't see anything noticible performance-wise on my system for these messages, I'd be interested in telling whether this makes a difference for you, rorax.

BG hasn't yet rolled out the change, I'll (or paazin might) post when that has happened.

[Brokenbone]

I hadn't experienced the "possible lag" issue Rorax noted until last night. There was a pretty huge string of TSM "leaves and joins" (probably reflecting something like 9 people DC and rejoin) maybe before midnight last night Eastern. Sometimes I gather it's not an actual crash / rejoin, more like "this presence monitoring thing loses touch, but regains it quick", almost like an IRC netsplit.

Anyhow, it was all during a conversation type time, not combat, but I'm going to guess that a huge amount of orange message clutter broke up some talks we were having with an NPC, then again, it was also 10+ people on our end as well. Basically a pretty brief chat window seeming overwhelmed kind of spike. I know a couple of us noticed it, couple people I was at least able to share the #notify off command with, which I did after that little oddity.

[maxcell]

Today also was seeing a pause when the cross server log ons log offs were occuring. Just a slight blip for me, not more than a second. I also tried other commands like #users but things like that did not have any lag for me.

[rorax]

I turned off the notifications and it seems to solve the problem.