Smooth Sailing Time

[tennozan]

An observation and a question: After playing pretty often over the last week or so and at various times, I've noticed a pattern in game performance and wanted to ask about it. It seems to me that when I play in some off-time of day like 5 AM my game seems to run quite well with steady FPS. However, if I play at 10PM on Saturday night, which I assume to be a peak time for many players, then my game performs noticeably slower - lower FPS and general lags in movements to all areas of the game.

So could someone with more experience than I answer why that may be? Because I can't help but wonder if being always connected to the UBI master servers isn't somehow adversely effecting my game during very heavy game usage times.

If this is a possiblity then I'll work around it by playing at more off-peak times. I know that I'm leashed to my UBI master server but if I have to wear the leash then at least I can be a good boy and not be gasping for air if I don't need to.

[Nisgeis]

Do you have anything scheduled to run, like an internet backup program, or a download or anything else, like an anti-virus scan?

[mcarlsonus]

There's no doubt in my mind that performance suffers due to the number of players who happen to be connected to Ubi's servers at peak times! The WORST experience I had was a Friday evening when I was continually interrupted by the game's being put on hold due to losing the connection.

[tennozan]

Nisgeis: I checked to see if there is anything scanning, etc. but couldn't find anything. I also try and close down everything I can that's not vital prior to playing.

Again, it was just a speculation on my part about being connected during heavy traffic effecting my game. Still, if the game (somewhere down under the hood) is checking in with the server constantly but the server is bogged down - wouldn't that have an effect on our games? I wonder how often our PC's send and receive signals that we are all connected and doin just fine?

I can just imagine that PC to server discussion: {My PC (Neo) Just having fun playing here. UBI MS (Agents) By day you seem to be a respectable personal computer but in your other life, we believe you to be breaking virtually every computer crime they have a name for. My PC - look I have a receipt...}

Anyway, I do still get occasionally booted off ( CTD ) or can't connect due to not having an internet connection ( my connection is fine but their's obviously isn't). And this weekend my saved game - not the auto but my own - vanished.

Well, back to trying to walk beside my UBI master without getting tangled in the leash. Woof, woof - just throw me a fat tanker bone!

[Hartmann]

Probably yes

Perhaps is monitoring the state of the game and is sending information to ubi. this could work as a backgroung program, in case of bad connection the game will suffer a slowdown to wait the packets of data go up and down from ubi. This could be more noticieable in low end computers .

DRM is the worst bug of SHV and with not know implications yet, who knows what is doing this connection while connected...

[tennozan]

Hartmann, again there are folks here with much more tech savy than I but I just had this thought; if I hit Control+Alt+Delete during the game and brought up the task manager (OS: Windows 7 32 bit) could I look under processes, services or applications and find out at least how much resources the UBI installer / connector / chaperone program is using? Or is it something the casual (honest-hard workin-gamer type) user is not going to even see? But then would that even matter since there is nothing to compare non-connected use to - since we are all connected to the SH5 UBI master server and always have been since playing? Anyway, maybe I should just stop asking these questions, take the blue pill and wake up in my Captain's bed - on patrol and happy with what I have.