Server unplayable - Skyblock Lag

Discussion in 'Discussion' started by Lz, Jul 14, 2019.

  1. Lz
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    Lz Well-Known Member

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    The server was unplayable today. At peak times, the chat had numerous complaints per chat page.

    Nondonors (new players) left, one even saying "ugh I'll just download the offline map".
    The server population hardly grew, even when the chat was filled with "Welcome x to Skyblock" due to the amount quickly leaving. Many complained about having to break a piece of wood 5 times to receive anything.

    What is causing this? Surely it cannot be hardware, it has only gotten better. What piece of code, or rather what missing code which could help reduce this a lot, is causing this?


    Edit: Community feedback; Has the lag decreased significantly? Do you notice any problems?
     
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    Last edited: Aug 14, 2019
  2. Splat1221
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    Splat1221 Active Member

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    Im not sure whats happening, but this has happened to me before I joined the server.
     
  3. Monster_Sparklez
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    Monster_Sparklez Yee yee Bubba Premium Premium

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    Noobcrew said the provider/host is at max specs which is is why can't we get a new and better provider?
     
  4. Timm
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    Timm Well-Known Member

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    There has to be some super inefficient code they are running, other servers get triple the amount of players and run with ease so why .net is unable to is beyond me
     
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  5. needtorename
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    needtorename Content Creator Premium

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    Please fix this problem
     
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  6. Vorty
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    Vorty Well-Known Member

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    mcprohosting.com is great(If noob sees this thats why i said) but yea theres a plan for $50 a month, which they probably easily make even just off me xD, but its unlimited ram and player amount, But honestly sometimes i get off cause the lag
     
  7. Marcy
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    Marcy Apostlé of Falcons Premium

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    I'm pretty sure whenever so many players play at mob arena the lag assembles which means so many mobs in Waves 25-39, also public grinders that can make items drop on the floor with so many stacks of items more than a DC creates a bit of lag before ClearLag clears them,
    With this suggestion what Vortex said maybe it might work, There are some popular servers in this game has McProHosting.com and this server doesn't.
     
  8. Armaganndon
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    Armaganndon Well-Known Member

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    Funny how this was one of the biggest issues of late classic skyblock and its returned again.
     
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  9. corn doggo
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    corn doggo Experienced Member

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    It's a shame. This server has had lag for so long, and it's only getting worse if the server hardware is not upgraded or Minecraft does not get optimized. But... do I smell a mention of MCProHosting?

    Unlimited RAM is false. There's a point where having a lot of RAM will hurt performance due to... Java. Thus, it's not really unlimited and they likely won't give you that much anyways. And if you have a dedicated server, well, you can set your playercount to whatever. Not to mention, that's a shared plan. The servers are hosted on a dedicated machine which they split up to sell lower cost servers. Having a shared server would harm performance, as other servers hosted by the machine could eat up CPU giving less to the other servers.
    MCPH is not used by [server name removed by staff] , rather it is a sponsor.
     
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    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 15, 2019
  10. Timm
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    Timm Well-Known Member

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    They don't tell us the specifications of their servers, most likely the current hosting is better. I think this is a server-side issue not a host issue
     
  11. laini
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    laini Ma'am Premium

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    If there are other servers with much higher playerbases that can actually function, this server is definitely not at “max specs” lol.
     
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  12. Krissy
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    Krissy hyyh Administrator Discord Administrator Premium Premium

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    If it was the host or plugin issues i'm very certain Crew, Matt or Lee could have figured it out by now. I am sure they recheck each plugin they make and optimise the code where they can. What we do know for certain is the way people use the server right now is one big issue however removing part of the issue would cause problems. So the tricky part is how to make people happy and still be able to play the way they are used to without affecting performance.

    We can go ahead and blame the host or whatever but at least part of the issue is how the server is played. I am very sure that is why we have a broadcast asking everyone to cut down on hoppers and things right? They know the cause.

    I hope one day this can get resolved.
     
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  13. Timm
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    Timm Well-Known Member

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    This isn't necessarily hosting related. There current hosting specs are excellent and should run the server at a decent speed with none of these lag sessions (not spikes, in this case a literal lag session). They could buy even more hosting but that would be extremely costly therefore they wouldn't profit so what's the point? Also finding higher spec'd hosting may be quite hard.
     
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  14. laini
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    laini Ma'am Premium

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    Well if the hosting is perfect, then what's with the constant lag that's been going on for literal years? lmao. I can see it from both ways man, but hoppers and spawners can't be blamed for everything when hoppers weren't enabled on classic and that lagged like hell too.
     
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  15. Lz
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    Lz Well-Known Member

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    An important point to consider is that the server will get far less donators if it is plagued by constant lag. Some who play on the server will be less inclined to donate, while most will not bother even playing at all, removing the chance of ever donating completely.

    Even found an example of this today, where one player said he would wait for a sale, as he cannot see himself spending "full price" on a server which lags constantly.
    lag.png
     
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  16. Krissy
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    Krissy hyyh Administrator Discord Administrator Premium Premium

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    The lag on classic wasnt tps influenced like the lag on skyblock. Classic had decent tps but something else caused its crashes and lag. Skyblock tps struggles. The two main fixes for lag attempted is to do with hoppers/spawners and optimising plugins. A supporting fix by improving the host machine was attempted too. So from that it tells me a lot about where the issue really lies.
    Do we lose new players or existing players to fix this lag.
     
  17. lilCupcakeFreak
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    lilCupcakeFreak Well-Known Member Discord Moderator

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    I can't help but notice that since they moved the servers the lag has gotten so much worse. Monday was the day I could play without issues, but today has been awful. Great compared to yesterday but still pretty bad.

    Hopefully they find the problem and are able to sort something out, I'm sure they're working hard on it :)
     
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  18. Monster_Sparklez
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    Monster_Sparklez Yee yee Bubba Premium Premium

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    I feel like this should be discussed here and now every time we brought up lag in the past its always noobcrew just telling us the server is at max specs and it ends there I feel like we should try and form a solution.
    why can't our server use hoppers but others can what is Skyblock missing that isn't allowing that. is it the provider/host of the server has noobcrew looked at transferring the server to a new provider and why don't we remove hoppers entirely now before you disagree with this just think about how much better it would be. classic didn't have hoppers and we all still found a way to make grinders get resources and make casino's.
    this is just what we could do to fix the problem in my opinion
     
  19. RedstoneTrails
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    RedstoneTrails Moderator Moderator

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    There's a couple things at play here. The biggest two being the provider and the plugin optimizations.

    I'll explain both issues in-depth a little bit with the information that I know.
    1. If they're using a modified version of the main Skyblock plugin, ASkyblock (which most things point to this being a heavily modified version of that plugin), there's some trouble. The code of that plugin is a mess, containing multiple redundant even listeners, checks, sorting systems, and more. The whole plugin is an optimization nightmare. The devs of the plugin even acknowledges that the plugin has terrible optimization, as the plugin page brings up that it'll start lagging with high player counts. Skyblock.net may not use a modified version of the plugin, but our Skyblock plugin definitely shares a lot with that one, which forms a dangerous situation. It is very difficult to do everything that plugin does and what our Skyblock server does without causing lag. If you have a beefy enough machine, though, this lag can become less significant.
    2. With the provider we previously had, along with whatever hardware changes were made recently, we're running on a machine that isn't properly equipped to handle all of the processes it needs to deal with. From previous posts I had seen about the specs of the server, the server machine we were running our Skyblock BungeeCord out of would be worth around $1200-$2000, or around $100-$200/month if they were renting access to a machine. Keep in mind that whatever machine this is being run on, I believe Noobcrew has a second one for Mineverse, most likely of equal or greater value than the Skyblock one. Because Noobcrew and the development team want to keep everything fully/mostly under their completely control, they can't go to the popular Minecraft server hosting websites like some servers do. If they wanted a server for Skyblock designed to hold a server cluster of the size we have with the Skyblock servers, they'd need a much better machine. Something like what they need would be ranging around $5k-$15k for the hardware, or $500-$2k/month. If they own the hardware the server is run on, this would be the most damaging. It would require them scrapping most of or selling their current hardware, and then buying an entirely new setup. If they purely rent it and have it from a provider, the main issue would just be cost and time. It would take a while to get all of the data moved, and then take a good bit of time to get everything set back up, and make sure it all works right. Then they'd have to justify the monthly cost, as they'd now be paying at least twice as much as they were before per month, as well as still having all of their other monthly and yearly bills.
    Upgrading the server would bring a small bump of increased income as new people join and stay, but overall, most of the people who would pay have already joined and spent their money, or would still spend their money no matter the lag. So overtime you'd now be paying a couple more hundred per month, while probably only getting a small increase of how much money you're making per month.

    That's why they're focusing on plugin optimization, since that's cheap/free, and doesn't require taking the server down for hours or days and risking losing everything or breaking something. And plugin optimization isn't something that you can easily test like other software. It takes days and months of reading over code and understanding it in just one plugin to find places that could be contributed to the lag.
     
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  20. Bard
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    Bard Active Member

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    RedstoneTrails I see what you mean with the plugin-optimization, but it also cuts into our play-experience sometimes. Though Lee does a fantastic job at grinding out unimportant things and making everything a lot more efficient overall, sometimes it comes at a cost. For example the hopper and spawner limits is something we had to put in place due to the lag.

    However I think that if the server got a bit more revenue, we could maybe save up for high-end servers if we aren't already on one. I think that if we start getting those adcrate keys out, that would be helpful. That's only my opinion though.

    Nonetheless this lag had to have originated from somewhere, and it's quite weird that it didn't start terrorizing the server until yesterday. Hopefully it'll pass soon.
     

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