What changed in 4.8 that affected server performance so much?
TL;DRBeausejour suspects behavior changes tied to the Imprint and insurance changes, such as more ships left behind or players favoring loosely configured locations, while Lind can't point to any other gameplay change that explains it.
For me, it's behaviors. So there's one thing about running a game server, which is that it's kind of an organic behavioral system, right? And so you can have a game server with a version of the code and a version of the data running a certain way, and then players start doing something different, and that completely changes the performance profile. And so I feel like in 4.8, most likely, my hunch for these six to eight performance issues that we're looking at is that it's related to some Imprint changes. So the way people use ships, leaving bricked ships behind: are there more claims than before? Are there other egregious issues that showed up that are creating more claims that would affect the amount of entities on the server? Is there a malfunction on, for example, the density manager cleanup that is leaving items in place? Or are people just going to a location that's configured to be very loose on its density, and it's somehow the location that people have decided to go to in this patch? So sometimes the performance profile of the game servers changes just based on behaviors, not on, oh, we changed something.
You're blaming the backers.
No, I'm blaming the features that cause behavioral changes. And so for me, that's what comes out of it. You're talking raw server performance here.
What are you thinking, Jens?
I mean, it's hard not to just parrot what you just said. It does feel like, when I think of 4.8, there's nothing that I can point to and go, yeah, those gameplay changes we made could have caused it. The only thing I can think of is, we did performance improvements, but there is a large change in how we handle vehicles and the lifetime of vehicles.
You mean the changes with the imprinting and the insurance system?
Insurance, yeah.
You're bringing a big chunk of it, not everything, back to the number of ships.
I mean, that would be, based on what I know of what that patch put out there. I just don't recall there being any larger changes on the gameplay side that I feel I could explain it with.