Community Discussion: Resolving lag without plugins

[KoriJenkins]

Recently a couple of proposals were made in Sim chat about possible solutions to the ongoing lag issues that wouldn't require plugins or plugin changes, both of which I'll lay out here to hopefully get some discussion started about whether these are good ideas or could actually make an impact.

1. Make afking on multiple accounts illegal. This one is pretty straightforward, proposed by Yukarion. Afking on multiple accounts is no longer allowed, admins will kick accounts that continue to do it and perhaps temp ban (no longer than a day to a week I'd guess) for repeated offenses.

2. Ban entity cramming in farms. This one is also pretty straightforward, cramming in farms is no longer allowed on Sim, if your farms continue to do this, tanking TPS for everyone else (specifically the pvpers and explorers who have been crushed by these issues lately) the problem sections of them will be broken until you get the hint. Repeated offenses... etc etc.

I don't plan on making my stance on either known because lag doesn't affect me as much as it used to and neither of these changes would affect my gameplay in a positive or negative light, but it would be nice to hear from some community members about it, ideally on a level that is more in depth than "It hurts me, I don't like it" or "It helps me, I like it." Say WHY you like/dislike it, consider the implications of making changes like this going forward.

Even if these two proposals are hated and shot down hard, a healthy discussion can lead to a solution eventually. Let's try to have that.

[MisterStrawman]

Recently a couple of proposals were made in Sim chat about possible solutions to the ongoing lag issues that wouldn't require plugins or plugin changes, both of which I'll lay out here to hopefully get some discussion started about whether these are good ideas or could actually make an impact.

1. Make afking on multiple accounts illegal. This one is pretty straightforward, proposed by Yukarion. Afking on multiple accounts is no longer allowed, admins will kick accounts that continue to do it and perhaps temp ban (no longer than a day to a week I'd guess) for repeated offenses.

2. Ban entity cramming in farms. This one is also pretty straightforward, cramming in farms is no longer allowed on Sim, if your farms continue to do this, tanking TPS for everyone else (specifically the pvpers and explorers who have been crushed by these issues lately) the problem sections of them will be broken until you get the hint. Repeated offenses... etc etc.

I don't plan on making my stance on either known because lag doesn't affect me as much as it used to and neither of these changes would affect my gameplay in a positive or negative light, but it would be nice to hear from some community members about it, ideally on a level that is more in depth than "It hurts me, I don't like it" or "It helps me, I like it." Say WHY you like/dislike it, consider the implications of making changes like this going forward.

Even if these two proposals are hated and shot down hard, a healthy discussion can lead to a solution eventually. Let's try to have that.

I don't think we should really be banning anything, these are a pretty natural way to play the game, even if it interferes with other people. AFKing on multiple accounts isn't really synonymous with lag anyway, so much as doing so while farming is. I would be ok with directly dealing with people who are causing unnecessary lag (in whatever manner that happens to be). First a warning in /servertell, if there's no response within a minute or so, /kick with a message along the lines of "causing lag". I wouldn't want to push this to temp bans, I think it's too much of a slippery slope. I'd only be ok with it if it's apparently repeated intentional defiance after having been kicked more than once, and even then, the term should be pretty low, like an hour/day/week.

[KoriJenkins]

Recently a couple of proposals were made in Sim chat about possible solutions to the ongoing lag issues that wouldn't require plugins or plugin changes, both of which I'll lay out here to hopefully get some discussion started about whether these are good ideas or could actually make an impact.

1. Make afking on multiple accounts illegal. This one is pretty straightforward, proposed by Yukarion. Afking on multiple accounts is no longer allowed, admins will kick accounts that continue to do it and perhaps temp ban (no longer than a day to a week I'd guess) for repeated offenses.

2. Ban entity cramming in farms. This one is also pretty straightforward, cramming in farms is no longer allowed on Sim, if your farms continue to do this, tanking TPS for everyone else (specifically the pvpers and explorers who have been crushed by these issues lately) the problem sections of them will be broken until you get the hint. Repeated offenses... etc etc.

I don't plan on making my stance on either known because lag doesn't affect me as much as it used to and neither of these changes would affect my gameplay in a positive or negative light, but it would be nice to hear from some community members about it, ideally on a level that is more in depth than "It hurts me, I don't like it" or "It helps me, I like it." Say WHY you like/dislike it, consider the implications of making changes like this going forward.

Even if these two proposals are hated and shot down hard, a healthy discussion can lead to a solution eventually. Let's try to have that.

I don't think we should really be banning anything, these are a pretty natural way to play the game, even if it interferes with other people. AFKing on multiple accounts isn't really synonymous with lag anyway, so much as doing so while farming is. I would be ok with directly dealing with people who are causing unnecessary lag (in whatever manner that happens to be). First a warning in /servertell, if there's no response within a minute or so, /kick with a message along the lines of "causing lag". I wouldn't want to push this to temp bans, I think it's too much of a slippery slope. I'd only be ok with it if it's apparently repeated intentional defiance after having been kicked more than once, and even then, the term should be pretty low, like an hour/day/week.

I'm more or less in agreement. MoWobbler mentioned he might work on a plugin that automatically does /checkonline if TPS reaches a certain low level. It would probably have the same effect overall.

[Yukar9]

The nuclear option would be to make it so people can't AFK farm.

[SecretOfMana]

My suggestions :

1. Force any afk account having disabled phantoms, except for new players bringing their first account here since they do need the "Two Birds, One Arrow" advancement.

2. A thing that can be most of the time easily customized in a farm is the collection system, however, each time i try reading what consume the most hardware resources, i see something different : water, minecart(s), hoppers. Any clue on simpvp ? Would be pretty useful.

3. If you limit the number of accounts per player, maybe don't put the limit at 1 but at 2 for farms using nether portals ?

4. Two new commands :
4.a First one allowing players having a list of accounts which would be in chunks detected as laggy.
4.b Second one like a /votekick which would be able targeting only accounts listed with 4.a command

[KoriJenkins]

My suggestions :

1. Force any afk account having disabled phantoms, except for new players bringing their first account here since they do need the "Two Birds, One Arrow" advancement.

2. A thing that can be most of the time easily customized in a farm is the collection system, however, each time i try reading what consume the most hardware resources, i see something different : water, minecart(s), hoppers. Any clue on simpvp ? Would be pretty useful.

3. If you limit the number of accounts per player, maybe don't put the limit at 1 but at 2 for farms using nether portals ?

4. Two new commands :
4.a First one allowing players having a list of accounts which would be in chunks detected as laggy.
4.b Second one like a /votekick which would be able targeting only accounts listed with 4.a command

Phantoms is a small thing that helps, but only a small amount. Regarding collection systems, they're routinely one of the most botched features Sim players make. Moving items is typically a lot simpler than players think, but the methods they go about to do it are frequently overcomplicated and inefficient (and also lag intensive). The least lag intensive methods in order are water, hoppers, minecarts. Saying this of course does nothing to stop someone from using 40 hoppers per item sorted in an automatic sorter. In many cases people will do whatever they perceive as easiest without caring for the impact. Lag on Sim is akin to pollution in the real world in that regard.

Where the issue comes in for us is when is it appropriate to tell a player "hey this farm/sorter/thing sucks plz fix." There's no clear parameter for when that is. In some cases a farm will have a part of it broken and I'll tell the person to stop afking it until they can make the needed repairs, but a broken area is a lot different from something that isn't designed well. Redesigns take time and effort, and the person being asked might not always agree with the request. Typically THEN action is warranted, but only then. As much as people wish for it to be the case, we aren't world editing first and asking questions later.

I don't think we'll be limiting alt accounts or afk accounts as there's no real way to do that. As for the plugin in development, I can probably reveal that it wouldn't target the entire server population like some have speculated, only players who are identified as consistent major sources of lag. Think of it this way. There are two raid farms, one made well with little lag produced outside of what would be expected and the other not. The plugin would target the farm that was poorly made, while ignoring the one that wasn't.

This imo is the best compromise we can make between manual intervention and doing nothing. Players, I'd hope, would be inclined to improve their farms to prevent themselves from frequently being the target of the plugin.

Of course one other point to make is that Sim PvP is historically laggy, the degree to which fluctuates. There will be months of 20 TPS followed by months of 12-14. Yukarion mentioned induced demand as a factor in the server's lag, in that higher TPS will encourage more people to afk, and lower TPS will discourage afking, which leads to these fluctuations over long periods. Currently we're coming out of a period of high TPS into a period of low one. Eventually, as changes are made to select farms (or the plugin is integrated), we will see the high TPS periods return.

[DKC]

I would like to profess that I do not agree with most changes that have been proposed, but I do agree with the idea that we should make players or even tell them to fix their farms. I do not think that going so far as to tempban players who do this should not be allowed, but when an admin is on or if it is reported to an admin so they can view the player in question and kick them off during their afk time. As an avid farm builder and designer I can say that the majority of the lag caused by farms is entity build up. This can be anything from too many trash items building up in which they are present as standing entities, or even just a block misplaced that cause the farm's mobs to not be killed swiftly. All of these things can be solved through fixes in the design of the farm.

I do hope the nuclear option as Yukar proposed and the making afking on multiple accounts illegal are completely jokes, as these will not solve the root problem. Yes they will make afking multiple farms harder, but not impossible. Not only that, but the fact is the most laggy farms on the server are farms that are either constantly in render, gold farms, or minecart based storage systems. The proposed "fixes" will not fix any of these constant problems, besides the method of just telling players to fix it or be kicked off when they afk. This can be put in place by a plugin that allows for players who the admins have applied it to being kicked off when not moving or jumping for 30 minutes. This is honestly even too much, but would allow for us to enforce that laggy farms will not be tolerated.

All in all, I do agree with the point that we need better lag reform on Sim, but most of that is also compounded by selfish individuals who wont allow restarts through and players who don't fix their laggy farms.