I just noticed that a couple of people mentioned poor forum performance recently. For me, it was awful over the weekend but then picked up on Monday, and our theory was that it might be due to some out of control bot behaviour that vometia had observed evidence of as an admin, but which seemed to have died down.
But it sounds as though some people are still having issues.
Can you let me know here if you're experiencing poorer than usual performance of these forums, and if it looks as though it's widespread then I'll see if someone can do a bit more digging to work out why.
Cheers!
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
It’s been bad on and off for me for longer than just a few days. At least a week. The website takes quite a while to load initially now, and some features like trying to quote are extremely sluggish. Seems to be working fine at the moment.
Thanks, folks. I’ll ask if there’s anything that can be done about performance.
I guess traffic might have been up a few hours ago as a result of the new trailer, but this is still a relatively quiet corner of the internet so I’d be surprised if that were enough to bring things to a crawl! And it doesn’t explain the slow load times a few days ago anyway.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
Thanks, folks. I’ll ask if there’s anything that can be done about performance.
I guess traffic might have been up a few hours ago as a result of the new trailer, but this is still a relatively quiet corner of the internet so I’d be surprised if that were enough to bring things to a crawl! And it doesn’t explain the slow load times a few days ago anyway.
I've mentioned to our admin, vometia, who says she'll have a word and see if someone could take a proper look at what's going on.
Performance is terrible for me again today after having been okay when I've logged on over the past few days. I know these forums tend to be a bit janky anyway, but it's seemed even worse than usual over the past week
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
Was very slow this morning (GMT). Also could not log in as my VPN ip was on some banned list. Never had that problem before. Possibly the two are related?
Was very slow this morning (GMT). Also could not log in as my VPN ip was on some banned list. Never had that problem before. Possibly the two are related?
I’ll pass on the possible connection with VPN issues. Cheers!
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
It is not and will not get better. A new more modern forum after about 20 years would also be really appropriate... I don't know any other forum that a) has been outdated as long as this one and b) has problems with stability since 2003 https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=100902 Could there please be a final solution?
I note forum performance is very poor again today.
I think probably Lotus Noctus is right that there is a limit to what can be done with this creaky old platform, and one of these days Larian are going to have to decide whether to continue to support the forums and so invest in upgrading them, or to kick the last of us remaining holdouts onto Discord and close them completely (I have no special insight into their thinking on that front). But still, given the forums aren't always horribly slow or timing out, I hope it might be possible to at least make them better.
I'll follow up after the weekend to see if anyone's had a chance to look at this. If there is anything that can be done, feels like it would be good to do it before August when we may get busier again!
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
This forum has always taken longer than other sites to load for me. Sometimes just a few seconds longer, and sometimes dozens of seconds or not loading at all. (Currently it's taking ~30 seconds for even the "preview reply" to show up).
I agree with @Loctus above that it's probably inherent to the outdated-ness of this forum and can't be changed until (if) Larian updates their forum. Which they almost certainly won't do, as these types of discussion hubs seem to be (unfortunately) moving to discord.
Closing a forum completely would be a shame and already a bit stingy for a company. Even P-Servers have a more appealing forum with links e. g. Discord.
One would like to read e.g. at work in the break comfortably the one or other thread, fill the bugtracker etc. pp. There are also people who work all day in a call center, they are happy if they then only have a forum to read.
If we are going to migrate to Discord ... i think at least half of us (most likely more tho) will not migrate at all.
I agree. Some people are substituting forums by Discord but it isn't the same use at all. On Discord, lenghty and serious discussions can be ended in seconds by some other less serious discussions. You just can't concentrate on a single topic, it is more a flow of thought than anything else.
I have to believe whomever is watching your servers for activity could easily see if there are increased requests being made to the server. Any modern SIEM should be able to identify what's going on. I have to assume it's just not a priority for Larian.
I'm not a fan of DIscord or Reddit either, and though I have joined both the BG3 subreddit and Larian's Discord and intermittently take a look at them to see what's being discussed I've never actually posted on either. Discord in particular I struggle to follow given the way everything is mixed together in each section, but then you have to dip separately into each section to get an overview of what's happening. Though I confess I've never really spent enough time with it to find my way around properly.
Personally, I really hope that Larian will find reason to upgrade and maintain the forums.
And, just to make extra, extra clear ... I have absolutely zero special insight as a moderator into Larian's plans for the forums and have no more idea than anyone else what their thinking is. I only theorise that they might be considering whether it's worth investing in the forums as frankly it's what I'd be doing in their position. It would take time and money to get them up to scratch and with much of the community seeming to prefer Reddit or Discord, if they're looking to avoid community fragmentation, then the forums are probably the prime candidate for cutting. Though of course it's a vicious circle, as if they don't invest in the forums and they're slow and unreliable then of course many folk are going to go elsewhere. I'd speculate (and it is total speculation) that what happens when BG3 releases in August might help determine their future, and how busy we get and whether more folk hang around and prefer being here. Not that I'm not happy with the select group we have posting here regularly now .
(Oh, and btw, the favoured hypothesis about recent intermittent poor performance - as opposed to just general creakiness - is still that it's caused by badly behaved bots. There seems to have been a correlation between some of the recent slowdowns and increased presence of crawlers that our admin vometia is aware of as having reputations for bringing websites to a grinding halt. Unfortunately, they also tend to be the kinds of bots that won't respect officially specified boundaries, but vometia is following up to request some additional blocks to try to keep them away.)
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
As clunky as these forums are I much prefer them to either Reddit or Discord. Reddit is mostly hornyposting and fans trying outdo each other with their displays of fandom. And Discord is just a group chat on steroids - I can't stand it.
These forums, on the other hand, host Master's thesis level feedback threads and some deep insights from filmmakers.
As clunky as these forums are I much prefer them to either Reddit or Discord. Reddit is mostly hornyposting and fans trying outdo each other with their displays of fandom. And Discord is just a group chat on steroids - I can't stand it.
These forums, on the other hand, host Master's thesis level feedback threads and some deep insights from filmmakers.
The constant performative horniness on Reddit wears quite thin quite quickly.
I don't want to shut down valid comparisons and discussion, but will just ask everyone explaining why they prefer these forums or don't like reddit/discord to be wary not to go too far and slip into being insulting about the communities there, who might also be here or at least watching.
As always when criticising something, perhaps in front of the very faces of people who are part of it, it's not so much about what you say as about how you say it and trying to make it as little about people or their intentions and as much about content or tools as possible.
(I'm not saying we've already been too rude about the reddit community here, but I think we might be teetering on the edge of it and would rather forestall tipping over if I can!)
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
They’ve been terrible, haven’t they? Vometia has put in a request for some actions to try to restrict bot access to the forums. I’m not connected to the technical side of things and I don’t know Larian’s typical turnaround for changes to their live internet settings (I’d imagine it’s not something they jump into without testing!), but fingers crossed. Even if the bot activity turns out not to be responsible for the recent even-worse-than-usual performance it would be good to exclude that so other possibilities can be considered.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
We can always rely on Icelyn to find the positive .
And I agree, one of the things I scroll through reddit for is the fanart and there are some really talented people posting that.
In the interest of balance, and now Icelyn and LostSoul have made adding a third voice feel less like a pile-on (thanks, folks!), I should also admit that while I try not to judge and am glad that we're all different and all that, I do find some of the more ... voracious ... posts about NPC relationships that seem to pop up more frequently on reddit than elsewhere a bit disturbing .
EDIT: Btw, the forums seem okay for me right now. Which I'm sure unfortunately won't last but recording here in case of future diagnostic utility.
Last edited by The Red Queen; 19/06/2312:44 PM.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
Well, I don't want to go off-topic to much, so I'll make a "brief" comment on the various platforms, just in case this could have any value (which I doubt).
Like many who posted above, I don't really like the other platforms (Discord, Reddit), and I much prefer the official forums.
Reddit is ... mostly decent ?
It has a couple of formatting options, which is a good thing, although it doesn't have not as many as the forums.
Once a thread is opened, it can then evolve in kind of the same way as here. I don't think the non-linearity is a particularly valuable feature (if your post C is a reply to post A, your post will go underneath it, and a post B that was chronologically second will not be displayed between A and C). We can handle that sufficiently well in linear threads (what we have on this forum) by quoting the bits we are replying to.
But Reddit (I mean, the BG3 subreddit) does not have sub-forums, to keep General, Suggestion & Feedback, Tech Issues, News, etc, together. I mean, it has tags, but it's not the same. And there isn't one for Feedback.
Overall, I feel it's harder to search for things on Reddit.
And while I don't want to bash too much on the crowd there ... I'm quite impressed (negatively) by the number of people who prefer spending 2 minutes typing the question they have in mind, straight from stream of consciousness to Reddit post, when a 2 minutes search would have yielded the answer. There's a fair share of posts you can help answering by simply providing a link to the FAQ. I guess RTFM has become endangered mindset.
Also, I'm really not fond of the upvote/downvote feature. Possibly, there are subreddits out there, that are not named somethingsomestuff.stackexchange, where posters ask questions to a crowd of individuals with varying levels of expertise (and varying amounts of spare time to write answers), and in the end the best-quality answers get pushed to the top of the thread. But I suspect that in most subreddit communities, some sort of group rule emerges, and posts that irk the majority get downvoted to oblivion, regardless of value.
As for Discord ... no thanks.
Well, firstly, I think Larian set up their Discord server with some specific security settings. Discord wants my phone number before I'd be allowed to post there, so I can't post on this Discord server, Just lurk.
For a while, The Composer was maintaining a nice policy on the Feedback channel : all posts are from player to Larian. You can see what feedback other players are sending to Larian, but you're not supposed to reply to these other players. This probably make feedback just as good and the moderation much easier. I don't know how much this is still the rule. But this is a matter of community and policy, not a platform-related feature.
The Feebback channel was turned from "chat mode" to "forum mode". Which overall is a better way ot organise things.
A major issue with Discord is that its made for chat/messenging. I don't expect that it's particularly good for writing posts longer than a paragraph or two.
A related issue is that, in all the channel that have the original "chat mode", well, good luck following a discussion. I mean, it's possibly for some semblance of discussion to take place. Probably during the night when there are fewer users.
So yeah, forums have their place, in my view. It's not because of the particular community that cristallised here, over the video game BG3, on the BG3 forum. It's mostly because of functionalities.
Although, obviously, these functionalities better support a certain style of posts, and tend to create communities with a certain kind of people.
But for a video game company seeking feedback on their game, I think forum is the best platform/tech to use.
Anyway, digression aside, I'll echo what some have said above.
The forum has always been noticeably slow to open pages.
Some days it's really bad, and pages don't open (timeout, connection expired sort of thingies). But even when it's not really bad, it's really not great.
Well, I don't want to go off-topic to much, so I'll make a "brief" comment on the various platforms, just in case this could have any value (which I doubt).
I definitely found your comments interesting. I've never given either Reddit or Discord what I'd consider a fair chance, and I absolutely acknowledge that forums are what I'm used to so they're comfortable, so it was good to read feedback that articulated many of my impressions of those other platforms better than I could!
Bringing it back to forum performance, my impression is that it has remained pretty good (for these forums at least) for a while now, with the exception of a few minutes on Wednesday evening when I was getting timeouts. There have also, usually, been far fewer instances of the bots that we were provisionally blaming for the slowdown. So that is consistent with our hypothesis that they were responsible, but given the number of variables it's a long way away from confirming it.
I'm going to continue to keep a closer eye on bots and on performance so we can highlight problems to Larian. Feel free to continue calling out here if you're experiencing unusually poor response times.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
Yes, it's been awful for much of the day. I was even going to post here but couldn't as it kept timing out.
There has also been more dodgy bot activity than there has been over the past few days, though not at the levels we were observing back when the forum was like this a week or so ago, so that remains a possible though not certain culprit. I know vometia was intending to follow up that possibility further, so I'll check in with her.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
Well ... Today especialy i would be willing to forgive its poor performance, since there is probably record amount of people watching it ... but yeah, its bad. :-/ Quite often i get "the service is not available" response, rather than slow loading.
I still dont understand why cant we change Race for our hirelings. Lets us play Githyanki as racist as they trully are!
I live in the states, not sure if that matters. Since day one of my account creation, my loading times are horrible the worst I've ever experienced. From the moment I click the forum on my google bar it can be up to or more than a minute before the page opens. Then... any sub category I try to go into its a minute or so and then each thread it really is horrible.
I have high speed internet not dial up or anything like that. All links on this computer load instantly, Larian forums is the only one I struggle with.
Last edited by Doomlord; 30/06/2302:00 AM.
DRAGON FIRE-AND DOOM Dragons? Splendid things, lad-so long as ye look upon them only in tapestries, or in the masks worn at revels, or from about three realms off... Astragarl Hornwood, Mage of Elembar - Year of the Tusk
I live in the states, not sure if that matters. Since day one of my account creation, my loading times are horrible the worst I've ever experienced. From the moment I click the forum on my google bar it can be up to or more than a minute before the page opens. Then... any sub category I try to go into its a minute or so and then each thread it really is horrible.
That definitely is not normal for me. Usually, for me loading the main Forums list takes 5-10 seconds, whereas refreshing the Active Threads feed or clicking through into a thread or editing a post takes 2-5 seconds I'd guess. So not super speedy, but personally I'd be okay if it was like that reliably.
Unfortunately it isn't, and lately has been particularly bad, hence starting this thread a couple of weeks back. It seemed okay for a little while, but as you can see from scrolling back there have still been a number of instances when things have ground to a halt.
Yesterday was particularly awful, and the timings you give are probably what I was experiencing then, at least when it didn't timeout completely which it frequently did. For me this morning it seems a little better, at least not timing out but still taking longer than normal. At least it was, now that I'm focusing on it and decided to actually time how long pages are taking it's loading practically instantaneously. I know that's not going to last, though!
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
It's pretty telling, and frustrating if I'm honest, that we have a single volunteer moderator that is heroically trying to do the work of an entire forum team, meanwhile we have cruddy forum performance for days at a time, over MONTHS, bad performance that should show up immediately if ANYONE is actually watching the traffic, and complete no shows from actual paid admins.
I get that we're not the twitter/tiktok/reddit audience, but we're paying customers too, I have to wonder if Larian would let their tiktok go down for days at a time? I'm guessing no.
Feeling a bit 2nd-class user over here is all I guess.
It's very difficult to participate in the forum with the loading times like they are. It seems like things are bad more often than they're good when it comes to the site loading.
It's very difficult to participate in the forum with the loading times like they are. It seems like things are bad more often than they're good when it comes to the site loading.
I agree. Every now and again it wakes up for a while, but it feels more often than not over the past few days it's just been painful.
Hopefully now the final PFH has been dealt with, there will be more capacity at Larian to deal with this. (I am an eternal optimist!)
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
I wasn't able to even load the site the last few days. I went to discuss the news on reddit, though I'd rather discuss with you guys and gals.
❤️
Sometimes I go to Reddit out of curiosity but I always make a pretty abrupt about-face.
As bad as it was yesterday, today the forum is smoother for me than it’s been in a long time.
On Reddit, you get downvoted, if you are not of the hive opinion. I was expressing, that I was sad that Helia was booted in favor of the Dark Urge and got downvoted. Not much fun tbh. I'd rather discuss here with people of different opinions, so hopefully, this forum will work better soon.
"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
I'll chip in and say that it's been pretty tough refreshing for most of the day.
Crawlers have been mentioned and my limited knowledge says it's not necessarily malicious intent, but a good deal of traffic from search terms that lead here. And, well... as a Steam top seller, it makes sense for a lot of people to be interested and look up information.
I'll also add my voice in that I'd dislike seeing this forum go. It's arguably the most moderate place to read opinions and does not go by at break-eye speed.
Unless otherwise specified, just an opinion or simple curiosity.
On Reddit, you get downvoted, if you are not of the hive opinion. I was expressing, that I was sad that Helia was booted in favor of the Dark Urge and got downvoted. Not much fun tbh. I'd rather discuss here with people of different opinions, so hopefully, this forum will work better soon.
This really is huge. Not gamifying things really keeps conversations open to uncommon positions.
On Reddit, you get downvoted, if you are not of the hive opinion. I was expressing, that I was sad that Helia was booted in favor of the Dark Urge and got downvoted. Not much fun tbh. I'd rather discuss here with people of different opinions, so hopefully, this forum will work better soon.
This really is huge. Not gamifying things really keeps conversations open to uncommon positions.
To add on to what both of you are saying, even the most agreeable people on this forum would be downvoted to oblivion for even slightly deviating from the generally accepted opinion of a small group of core individuals. Here, your points have to stand on their own merit and argument for people to agree with you, as opposed to how many people to whom you can pander to get enough upvotes and fewer downvotes. It's a giant circlejerk.
Having said that, this forum has been atrocious for more than a week in its performance. I want to talk about the game (mostly to distract myself from my dissertation because anxiety), but the performance is SHOT.
Remember the human (This is a forum for a video game):
I wasn't able to even load the site the last few days. I went to discuss the news on reddit, though I'd rather discuss with you guys and gals.
❤️
Sometimes I go to Reddit out of curiosity but I always make a pretty abrupt about-face.
As bad as it was yesterday, today the forum is smoother for me than it’s been in a long time.
On Reddit, you get downvoted, if you are not of the hive opinion. I was expressing, that I was sad that Helia was booted in favor of the Dark Urge and got downvoted. Not much fun tbh. I'd rather discuss here with people of different opinions, so hopefully, this forum will work better soon.
My experience has been that you get downvoted for how you express your opinion or because you didn't read the room correctly. If you hijack a post about some aspect of the game that people are happy about to tell everyone all the ways you think the game sucks you gonna get downvoted and you deserve it.
Language matters, and how you frame stuff matters. Reddit is a great teacher of how to be politic.
Oh and the forum is really struggling right now. Is somebody attacking you guys?
I wasn't able to even load the site the last few days. I went to discuss the news on reddit, though I'd rather discuss with you guys and gals.
❤️
Sometimes I go to Reddit out of curiosity but I always make a pretty abrupt about-face.
As bad as it was yesterday, today the forum is smoother for me than it’s been in a long time.
On Reddit, you get downvoted, if you are not of the hive opinion. I was expressing, that I was sad that Helia was booted in favor of the Dark Urge and got downvoted. Not much fun tbh. I'd rather discuss here with people of different opinions, so hopefully, this forum will work better soon.
My experience has been that you get downvoted for how you express your opinion or because you didn't read the room correctly. If you hijack a post about some aspect of the game that people are happy about to tell everyone all the ways you think the game sucks you gonna get downvoted and you deserve it.
Language matters, and how you frame stuff matters. Reddit is a great teacher of how to be politic.
Oh and the forum is really struggling right now. Is somebody attacking you guys?
I think that is only true to an extent. No matter how diplomatically you express yourself, there will always be people on Reddit who downvote you because they don’t agree with what you have to say.
I really hope they figure out this forum soon. It’s so difficult to use right now.
The biggest issue with Reddit is, that is have very little with how well you can express yourself, If your part of a large community, or get one of these against you, it dosent matter how well you write or express yourself, at that point its just about who has the most friends... so no, Reddit is a echo chamber, i dont care how unpopular a voice is, it should never be down voted, if it sticks in some peoples eyes, let it... it still a opinion and even bad opinions, just make us remember and aprchiate the good ones... subjectivly speaking ;P
When either likes/dislikes or algorithms enter the discussion - it becomes pointless in its core. Discussion is not the same as the vote poll. Like is not an argument and dislike is not a counter-argument.
Looks like it's more of the initial establishing of a connection with the server the forum is hosted on and less the forum itself being slow, if I'm reading the dev tools timeline correctly. But yeah, it sure does feel a lot like loading a modern website through a dial up modem.
The thing is, once the connection is established, the loading is reasonably fast. It's just that getting to that point can take 20-30 seconds or more. Could it be that there's a cap on how many connections the server allows and bots are swamping it in order to crawl as many pages as possible in as short time as possible? Doesn't sound unreasonable to me but it's not like I'm a web dev.
Oh, and the Reddit thing, it's an echo chamber. Stuff that gets voted up gets attention. Stuff that gets voted down gets burried. It's also a place where the owner wants to monetize the user activity while doing very little himself to actually pay back users for their activity by providing a good forum experience. That job falls to volunteer moderators that the owner doesn't give a damn about. Pardon my French, but fuck that shithole sideways. In my opinion, anyway.
When either likes/dislikes or algorithms enter the discussion - it becomes pointless in its core. Discussion is not the same as the vote poll. Like is not an argument and dislike is not a counter-argument.
I had problems yesterday and today loading topics, but in the last hour or so I opened two or three threads at once and it might happen that one doesn't load and times out due to connectivity issues or some stuff.
When either likes/dislikes or algorithms enter the discussion - it becomes pointless in its core. Discussion is not the same as the vote poll. Like is not an argument and dislike is not a counter-argument.
+1
Now I'm not sure whether to take that as agreement or a joke
Personally, I think upvoting and downvoting can be really useful for factual Q&As and helping people find helpful answers to questions, but are awful when people are discussing opinions. I'd probably not mind just "likes" as much with no downvoting. But would not be a fan of introducing them here!
And thanks folks, for comments on potential sources of poor forum performance. I'll see if I can get any updates on the issues here from Larian in the course of this week. I'll admit I'm thinking if it's bad now, imagine how much worse it could be come August
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
I wasn't able to even load the site the last few days. I went to discuss the news on reddit, though I'd rather discuss with you guys and gals.
❤️
Sometimes I go to Reddit out of curiosity but I always make a pretty abrupt about-face.
As bad as it was yesterday, today the forum is smoother for me than it’s been in a long time.
On Reddit, you get downvoted, if you are not of the hive opinion. I was expressing, that I was sad that Helia was booted in favor of the Dark Urge and got downvoted. Not much fun tbh. I'd rather discuss here with people of different opinions, so hopefully, this forum will work better soon.
My experience has been that you get downvoted for how you express your opinion or because you didn't read the room correctly. If you hijack a post about some aspect of the game that people are happy about to tell everyone all the ways you think the game sucks you gonna get downvoted and you deserve it.
Language matters, and how you frame stuff matters. Reddit is a great teacher of how to be politic.
Oh and the forum is really struggling right now. Is somebody attacking you guys?
That is not what happened. It was an open discussion about PfH and I was polite. My experience with Reddit is, that you get downvoted to hell, if you have a different opinion from the majority. I see it Happen in other Reddit forums too. People don't engage, they just downvote 🤷.
"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
My experience with Reddit is, that you get downvoted to hell, if you have a different opinion from the majority. I see it Happen in other Reddit forums too. People don't engage, they just downvote 🤷.
That's Reddit in a nutshell, it's just a toxic echo chamber.
That is not what happened. It was an open discussion about PfH and I was polite. My experience with Reddit is, that you get downvoted to hell, if you have a different opinion from the majority. I see it Happen in other Reddit forums too. People don't engage, they just downvote 🤷.
I dunno, I read this and started looking for the downvote button :P
Have you tried putting mustard on your face? You might get more Meow-Meow beans.
That is not what happened. It was an open discussion about PfH and I was polite. My experience with Reddit is, that you get downvoted to hell, if you have a different opinion from the majority. I see it Happen in other Reddit forums too. People don't engage, they just downvote 🤷.
I dunno, I read this and started looking for the downvote button :P
Have you tried putting mustard on your face? You might get more Meow-Meow beans.
No, I don't like mustard 😛. Tbh I don't care about those downvoted, it was the first time, that happened to me and I was just surprised, because it wasn't something controversial.
"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
The forum on my end is still running slow, it also takes a little long to connect to a page. Sometimes I will get a white screen with a connection error.
The forum on my end is still running slow, it also takes a little long to connect to a page. Sometimes I will get a white screen with a connection error.
Welcome to my world since 2019
Im in the states /Colorado
I dont know why that would matter. I have high speed internet.
DRAGON FIRE-AND DOOM Dragons? Splendid things, lad-so long as ye look upon them only in tapestries, or in the masks worn at revels, or from about three realms off... Astragarl Hornwood, Mage of Elembar - Year of the Tusk
Yesterday was unbearable, wasn't it!? I had to give up yesterday evening, so I'm just catching up on what went on since.
My latest update I have is that the issues are believed to be at ubbcentral, impacting all forums powered by ubbthreads rather than anything local to here, which unfortunately means there's little to be done short of upgrading the software completely. Which obviously needs to be done, but is a bigger task than changing settings here.
Not that it can hurt to do things like restrict certain kind of bot if we can, but it's unlikely to fix everything.
On the plus side, I see our banner has finally updated!
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
Yesterday was unbearable, wasn't it!? I had to give up yesterday evening, so I'm just catching up on what went on since.
My latest update I have is that the issues are believed to be at ubbcentral, impacting all forums powered by ubbthreads rather than anything local to here, which unfortunately means there's little to be done short of upgrading the software completely. Which obviously needs to be done, but is a bigger task than changing settings here.
Not that it can hurt to do things like restrict certain kind of bot if we can, but it's unlikely to fix everything.
On the plus side, I see our banner has finally updated!
How peculiar! It definitely says Aug 3 PC/Sep 6 PS5 for me.
PM me if that doesn't self correct within the next few hours, or if you do a full refresh of the page (sometimes I have to actually close the tab and reload the forums to get new posts showing in the Active Threads feed for some reason - other times it is fine).
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
How peculiar! It definitely says Aug 3 PC/Sep 6 PS5 for me.
PM me if that doesn't self correct within the next few hours, or if you do a full refresh of the page (sometimes I have to actually close the tab and reload the forums to get new posts showing in the Active Threads feed for some reason - other times it is fine).
I had the same issue, but once I cleared the browser cache (images) and reloaded the page, the new banner with the correct date appeared.
The forum performance is still perfect for me - fingers crossed it will stay that way.
I mostly read in the subreddits of topics, I'm interested in. Funnily enough, the Horror and Lovecraft subreddits are the most wholesome.
Yeah, I am a big fan of Lovecraft myself - weird Xenophobe that he was. The author and book subreddits are all very civil. The least civil are the video game and television show subreddits.
I mostly read in the subreddits of topics, I'm interested in. Funnily enough, the Horror and Lovecraft subreddits are the most wholesome.
Yeah, I am a big fan of Lovecraft myself - weird Xenophobe that he was. The author and book subreddits are all very civil. The least civil are the video game and television show subreddits.
RIF
The forum performance is much better right now.
I agree, the book reddits are very enjoyable in general.
"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
It all depends on the subreddit yes. There are plenty of great ones. But go to the BG3 subreddit on any given day and sort by controversial, and you’ll find posts that simply shouldn’t be controversial.
Remember the human (This is a forum for a video game):
How peculiar! It definitely says Aug 3 PC/Sep 6 PS5 for me.
PM me if that doesn't self correct within the next few hours, or if you do a full refresh of the page (sometimes I have to actually close the tab and reload the forums to get new posts showing in the Active Threads feed for some reason - other times it is fine).
I had the same issue, but once I cleared the browser cache (images) and reloaded the page, the new banner with the correct date appeared.
The forum performance is still perfect for me - fingers crossed it will stay that way.
After generally good performance for much of today, the forums are timing out for me again. I assume other folk are having problems too.
Your assumption is correct.
I'll take the time to mention that there are easy ways to test individual internet connectivity, from the trusty old ping to simply taking samples of page refreshing on the tested site versus some other known site. Once it has been established that local connectivity is fine, it gets a little trickier, as one could move on to a tracert to the forum's IP address and see where it fails, since the failure could be regional (in a wider-reaching network node) or at its source (i.e. the forum server).
And judging by the information we have so far... yes, the forums need software updating. Picking a good time for that is beyond me, but I'd suggest sooner rather than later.
If I've helped one person out there, my goal was achieved
Unless otherwise specified, just an opinion or simple curiosity.
After generally good performance for much of today, the forums are timing out for me again. I assume other folk are having problems too.
Yes, they worked fine for me until about 4:30 pm (16:30 h) UTC+2, then getting a lot worse. I had network timeouts around 5 pm (17:00 h) UTC+2, now it works again but is still extremely slow.
After generally good performance for much of today, the forums are timing out for me again. I assume other folk are having problems too.
Yes, they worked fine for me until about 4:30 pm (16:30 h) UTC+2, then getting a lot worse. I had network timeouts around 5 pm (17:00 h) UTC+2, now it works again but is still extremely slow.
This really is the Ketheric Thorm of Slow Forum performance
Remember the human (This is a forum for a video game):
Yes, they worked fine for me until about 4:30 pm (16:30 h) UTC+2, then getting a lot worse. I had network timeouts around 5 pm (17:00 h) UTC+2, now it works again but is still extremely slow.
SWEEET, forums are moving at light speed right now for me. Small victories lol
DRAGON FIRE-AND DOOM Dragons? Splendid things, lad-so long as ye look upon them only in tapestries, or in the masks worn at revels, or from about three realms off... Astragarl Hornwood, Mage of Elembar - Year of the Tusk
I'm seeing ancient threads getting necroed by what look like ad bots, sigh. So forums are probably getting hammered by bad actors, making lie for the rest of us miserable. And unless Larian devote real resources to mitigation, this will be a problem for the foreseeable future. Sad-face.
It's crazy. Half the time I can't quote someone's post. So I'll start typing without the quote being there, and then halfway through my typing, the quote suddenly appears in the middle of what I'm writing.
It's crazy. Half the time I can't quote someone's post. So I'll start typing without the quote being there, and then halfway through my typing, the quote suddenly appears in the middle of what I'm writing.
Yeah, I really don't like how quoting is implemented. It looks like when you press the button, it phones home to get any changes to the text since when the page rendered, and that works fine under normal circumstances, but isn't ideal when everything's stuck in molasses
Yeah, I really don't like how quoting is implemented. It looks like when you press the button, it phones home to get any changes to the text since when the page rendered, and that works fine under normal circumstances, but isn't ideal when everything's stuck in molasses
You can also quote manually by just copying and pasting the text if you don't want to wait. You can also copy and paste usernames.
Remember the human (This is a forum for a video game):
I’m imagine that under the basement at Larian there is an old server room sub-basement, filled with lose cables, Tesla coils, and a great many wondrous and whimsical steam-powered contractions of spinning over-sized gears and whizzing electrodes, and that is why we can’t have a functional forum.
I think I know why the forums can sometimes get slow, if you take a look at this page : https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=online You can see that there are robots crawling the forum. This is expected since those are used to index content for search engine. However, at the time that I write this post, there are 86 instances of the Aspiegel PetalBot crawler currently indexing pages in this forum. This one is known as a very aggressive Chinese crawler that can hog a considerable amount of bandwidth of a server, see : https://www.grantforrest.me.uk/index.php/software/16-petalbot-another-pain-in-the-bot If the forums slow down to a crawl again, Larian might consider to blacklist some misbehaving bots.
I think I know why the forums can sometimes get slow, if you take a look at this page : https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=online You can see that there are robots crawling the forum. This is expected since those are used to index content for search engine. However, at the time that I write this post, there are 86 instances of the Aspiegel PetalBot crawler currently indexing pages in this forum. This one is known as a very aggressive Chinese crawler that can hog a considerable amount of bandwidth of a server, see : https://www.grantforrest.me.uk/index.php/software/16-petalbot-another-pain-in-the-bot If the forums slow down to a crawl again, Larian might consider to blacklist some misbehaving bots.
That was our theory. Unfortunately badly behaved bots are the ones that tend to ignore the robots.txt files, so they can be hard to get rid of, but our admin vometia had requested a number of steps that should help. Unfortunately she's off at the moment so I'm not sure exactly where we are on that.
I've also been (somewhat casually, I admit) tracking forum performance against bot presence and though there's some indication that it could be a contributing factor, the correlation isn't really strong enough to blame it for all our woes. Aspiegel PetalBot is my top suspect, with Yandex a runner up, but there are times we've had 60 instances of it crawling around the site and performance has been fine, and other times when there have been 20-30 and it's been terrible. But I agree bots could be behind at least some slowdowns, so protecting against them as best we can could help.
I'm not sure when vometia will be back, but I'll see if there's a way to get a progress update from someone else.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
More precisely, I'm still noticing the same delay the first time I access the forums (new session); it may be when the server has to create the 'ubbt_mysess' cookie. For example, accessing the site in anonymous doesn't have this particular problem.
It takes something like 10-20 seconds before the page loads, but sometimes there's no delay. This particular delay seems to point at the authentication code, which is usually heavier because of asymmetrical key algorithms, but it shouldn't be that much of an overhead (and the verification part is usually optimized). Perhaps it needs to create a key for the TLS session, too - Is this part performed by a different server? I doubt it but I'm not a specialist. Are bots registered (impacting the authentication system)?
Other than that, I occasionally have very long access delays for every page and time-outs when the US timezone is active and more people are there. I'm not visiting the forums regularly enough to tell whether this is always the case, or only around particular events like a PfH or a release. So that's probably a balancing issue or simply a capacity issue. I've seen a clear difference between 6:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC, several days. Are bots following a specific hourly pattern (impacting the servers in general)?
EDIT: interestingly enough, it just timed out a few times when I tried to post this.
its not just one bot... lots hit the wall and get blocked, other get through to 'index' and some just plant spam because with game about to drop more people are here
even a bot that gets blocked still puts load on the cms and once it hits peak any other traffic can't get in
Luke Skywalker: I don't, I don't believe it. Yoda: That is why you failed.
its not just one bot... lots hit the wall and get blocked, other get through to 'index' and some just plant spam because with game about to drop more people are here
even a bot that gets blocked still puts load on the cms and once it hits peak any other traffic can't get in
Bot you didn't see that coming.
Remember the human (This is a forum for a video game):
It's a difficult situation, if you close the forum to anyone but registered members then you won't get search traffic if people are looking for answers to specific questions. However it does block the bots.
They are crawling all over our messages digesting all the info they can with their filthy little robot hands.
It's a difficult situation, if you close the forum to anyone but registered members then you won't get search traffic if people are looking for answers to specific questions. However it does block the bots.
They are crawling all over our messages digesting all the info they can with their filthy little robot hands.
I guess. I just don't understand, though. This doesn't happen on other forums, and don't bots go around other forums, indexing and doing whatever bots do?
The forums are run on third party software UBB Threads, and I think might even be hosted by that third party (though I might have got the wrong end of the stick there). It’s been the platform for ages now and is clearly creaking and performance levels are unacceptable, and what is needed is a complete upgrade probably to a new package that is run on infrastructure able to cope with the modern world. But that’s not a small job, especially if there’s a desire to migrate all the historic or in-progress discussions to the new platform.
I don’t know how likely it is to happen soon, but I’m hoping that once BG3 is out, Larian might have a bit more attention to spare for us suffering forumites!
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
I really don't see this forum being usable at all after release, the sheer volume of new posters will make is basically inaccessible because of the infuriating slowness.
I really don't see this forum being usable at all after release, the sheer volume of new posters will make is basically inaccessible because of the infuriating slowness.
The problem seems to be a combination of antiquated software and bots rather than user load but certainly the release of the game will not help things.
The forums are run on third party software UBB Threads, and I think might even be hosted by that third party (though I might have got the wrong end of the stick there). It’s been the platform for ages now and is clearly creaking and performance levels are unacceptable, and what is needed is a complete upgrade probably to a new package that is run on infrastructure able to cope with the modern world. But that’s not a small job, especially if there’s a desire to migrate all the historic or in-progress discussions to the new platform.
I don’t know how likely it is to happen soon, but I’m hoping that once BG3 is out, Larian might have a bit more attention to spare for us suffering forumites!
The state of the forums is one of the main reasons I stopped giving feedback during Early Access.
Will we have to use those forums for the support of BG3, or will there be another, more appropriate way?
PS: Even posting this single message was quite the struggle. It's so slow I don't know if I have to click Reply or Quote or both... And it times out when I click on 'Post Reply'. x_x
Are there any plans to fix the forums before launch?
It's not a good look if you have an influx of folks trying to post bugs on the official forums when the game launches and they are unable to get the forums to load.
I've only been a member for a couple of weeks but performance seems to have really worsened in that short time.
Is the site attracting more bots as release date approaches?
Out of curiosity I visited the UBB.threads website a couple of nights ago to check what the latest version of the software was and their site took forever to load. The latest software version was the same as this site's - v7.7.5.
Just tried the UBB site again and it took 55 seconds from 'Open Link In New Tab' to the page appearing. Pretty shoddy whichever way you look at it.
I agree that the forums seem worse than ever at the moment. Though I’m away from home right now with patchy internet connectivity and that’s probably making it even worse (and is why I’m not around as much as usual).
The latest update I got from Larian’s community management team is that the main problem seems to be with UBB Threads and not something Larian can directly influence, so it’s interesting to see that backed up by Beechams’ research. The bad news about that is there’s no quick fix, and what’s really needed is replatforming the forums. And that isn’t going to happen before release.
And as Alodar says, that’s going to be really frustrating both for new users and all of us when we want to talk about our first experiences playing the game.
Unfortunately all we can really do is cross our fingers. Though I’ll ask if there’s any discussion with UBB Threads about the shoddy service.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
It is really worse the last days. I would like to participate more, but since the loading times are so frustrating, I only look into a few threads anymore.
"We are all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
I've had this same issue intermittently, going on like 3 years now.
They really should have migrated their boards in anticipation of the EA. Failing that they should have migrated their boards in anticipation of the actual launch. How much does it cost to get some decent boards? I thought we were raking it in here lol. I mean low hanging fruit.
It takes me roughly 90 seconds to load a topic on these forums bookmarking straight to the BG3 section. Loading the main forum directory can take like 3 minutes sometimes just spinning wheels. Often it feels like I'm in a cabin in the woods waiting for a satellite to pass overhead, not chilling in suburban Cali with the fiber and a cable plugged straight into my rig from the wall. Pretty middling. I guess we got a couple custom emojis and a grip of legacy from their previous titles, but I'd rather have boards that could handle image attachments without relying on 3rd party hosts, and some flavor that's like specifically BG3 oriented, cause I really don't care about Divinity or DOS or DOS2 or the German language versions of each, which all load simultaneously. Bookmarking directly to the BGIII forums categories helped a bit, but this always seems to happen whenever there's a new patch or something that pulls a big influx of traffic. like say the release of the full game hehe. I mean seems like something we could have seen coming hehe
The fact that a simple PHP forum such at this one is still that slow after months is mindblowing to me. This is the kind of task that would take any competent sysadmin a couple of hours max to fix.
I don’t care if it has extra features as long as it loads normally. I have never been on a forum that is so slow all the time.
This is me as well. I don't need all the fancy features, I just want it to work. In fact, I'd rather NOT have all the newer forum features like emote reactions for comments, upvotes, etc. Keep It Simple Stupid.
My worry is, if the forums are this bad, and for me its Horrible,
I hope this isn't a reflection how the game will play.
DRAGON FIRE-AND DOOM Dragons? Splendid things, lad-so long as ye look upon them only in tapestries, or in the masks worn at revels, or from about three realms off... Astragarl Hornwood, Mage of Elembar - Year of the Tusk
Echoing everyone....things are quite annoying at this time and have been for the whole day. One would think there would be some effort to fix this so close to release. Or they're just keeping it as it is to keep the toxic spammers away. That might actually be worth it.
I’m impressed that so many people have managed to post today as I’ve barely been able to log in due to timeouts.
Forum performance is definitely no indication of game performance, though, but unfortunately is not something that Larian can easily fix as, from what I’m told, it’s a third party service. It’s clearly totally terrible, but the only viable solution seems to be to completely replatform the forums.
It is disappointing that if they’re still like this come launch then they’re going to be basically unusable for help and support. I can only suggest that people try Larian’s Discord (link on their home page) instead when these forums are crawling.
"You may call it 'nonsense' if you like, but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!"
I’m impressed that so many people have managed to post today as I’ve barely been able to log in due to timeouts.
Forum performance is definitely no indication of game performance, though, but unfortunately is not something that Larian can easily fix as, from what I’m told, it’s a third party service. It’s clearly totally terrible, but the only viable solution seems to be to completely replatform the forums.
It is disappointing that if they’re still like this come launch then they’re going to be basically unusable for help and support. I can only suggest that people try Larian’s Discord (link on their home page) instead when these forums are crawling.
And in a fine bit of Forum irony it took me about 30 minutes to load and respond to this post. If Larian chooses not to get a new service before launch that's on Larian.
Regardless,if Discord is the best place, they need to communicate that information officially, otherwise they are going to compound the frustration of people who are having issues post launch.
Would be great to either fix these forums, or properly moderate the Steam ones.
It's really not Larian's speciality though and I get that.
I used to own an Audi, great engine, amazing stick shift, but the cupholders were just garbage. Audi can make one of the best performance Engines in the world but asking them to design a cupholder is a bridge too far.
Larian is the Audi of gaming companies is what I am saying :P
These forums should be preserved as an archive, for the BG3 EA and for all their previous titles, then set up new boards for the full BG3 release.
In about a week all the EA material and discussions are going to be outdated anyway, and there's a pretty good chance that internal links and 3rd party image hosting will end up busted sooner rather than later, making what's here a lot less useful. Currently the search function doesn't really work, the boards are slow, and I'm sure there are security issues from trying to keep it running well past it's expiration date lol. If the goal is to keep things cozy and avoid spambots, they could easily have a "Public" section for perspective buyers and an "Owners" section for people who actually purchased the game. This would cut down on people who only show up to play provocateur or who want to bomb the forums with wedge issues and vitriol. Not that it wouldn't still go down, but probably not to the same extent we've seen on say the Steam boards hehe.
Just seems like something they should try to get ahead of, because I'm sure there's going to be a big influx next month. Discord is cool and all, but it's really not the same. It's not archival and doesn't work well for long form discussions of the sort that Dungeons & Dragons players often delight in. I like the new emojis and the new banner header and such, but they could do a lot more.
Better today than yesterday, but I imagine it's related to the overall traffic right? I think that's why it's intermittent for me, cause sometimes it loads instantly, sometimes takes several minutes.
If they do set up new boards, I think they should allow upvotes since that would probably take some of the pressure off thread bumping during high traffic periods. I would avoid passive downvotes though, since most forums have that feature anonymous. I think that anonymity can encourage pettiness and mean spirits in the tit for tat, with little benefit to the overall discourse coming from the -1.
ps. I also think they should pay their moderators, cause that's work, and often unglamorous work lol. Battling spam and torching out trolls all day can be dispiriting. Mainly though I think they should do it to ensure they have a Flaming Fist moderator in each major timezone. To catch stuff as it's happening or before it gets unseemly, lock threads when it makes sense, and then trash compact those threads in another section, so they aren't sucking up all the oxygen in the room. Thinking more about the steam situation there, though it sometimes bleeds over.
Mostly though I just wanted kick around boards that are about BG3 specifically, as a Dungeons & Dragons game. You know with BG3 themed avatars, sections related to the Nexus for Mods. Maybe an RP category or Power gaming category. That sort of stuff. I would ditch "General" as a forums category, since it's far too general hehe.
My worry is, if the forums are this bad, and for me its Horrible,
I hope this isn't a reflection how the game will play.
Only if you don't have an SSD.
Had one for many years
DRAGON FIRE-AND DOOM Dragons? Splendid things, lad-so long as ye look upon them only in tapestries, or in the masks worn at revels, or from about three realms off... Astragarl Hornwood, Mage of Elembar - Year of the Tusk
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