I know that at the moment, the Agents feature just released, and everyone is suddenly flooding the servers with Actions, equipment changes, and so on.
But even when there’s no specific event ongoing, this game is surprisingly very laggy. What’s going on? Are the servers too expensive to upgrade? Is there a one-threaded database somewhere that can’t be rebuilt in another way? Is there some other backend code that makes it so bad?
And even if the game is laggy because of some ancient code, well, why is the wiki laggy as well??? Can’t it be hosted separately and be practically unaffected by the number of current players? Is this because the wiki is using some values pulled directly from the game server? But in that case, why don’t cache at least the pages that don’t do that?
I’d like some explanations because it’s seriously discouraging to me. Even day-to-day casual playing requires so much waiting for some reason. I don’t remember it being that way a few years ago. I don’t get it. : (
Yeah, it’s been bad in recent months. I think this has been happening in irregular intervals over the years. There have always been periods where lag was a significant issue and it was usually resolved when Failbetter migrated to a bigger server or something like that. I mean, the game is constantly growing, more games are being developed in the background and Failbetter are probably always paying for about as much server capacity as they need. Right now I think it’s definitely time for another increase of that capacity.
About the wiki, I feel like it’s only laggy when a lot of editing is happening, i.e. just after something new has been released. Otherwise I usually find its sites quicker to respond than the game. I think the wiki is hosted separately, it’s not on Failbetter’s servers unless I’m misinformed.
FBG pays for the hosting, but I don’t think that’s the same as being hosted on the same servers. For example, I don’t recall there being any game issues concurrent with the major wiki crash that happened a few years back.
I’m just spitballing here, but I’d assume it was unrelated. A crash is a result of some severe malfunction. Lags are just a result of all things working as intended… but slowly.
Around the time you posted is the time when USA, where their largest player base resides, starts waking up. I imagine some/most of them rush to waste AP on a regular basis and new updates attracts more people than usual.
It happens at all times of the day though. And I have superfast internet. Often, when Fallen London is slow, I check other sites and they load in a blink.
Also, it happens both at home and on my computer at work. In both Firefox and Opera. So I really do think it’s an issue on their end.
Like I said, when I posted a new update dropped, so it’s not surprising there was much more traffic than normally. Let me just note an opinion that generally the servers should be able to handle even highly increased traffic, because well, that’s their d__n job ; ). (To manage that, some webapps use tools called load balancers, which increase and decrease server “power” automatically based on current traffic, so that you don’t have to pay for a “stronger” server 24/7, only at specific moments when it’s needed.)
But ignoring today, even on regular days, the lags seem to happen at random times. Time to response fluctuates wildly from ~0.1s to ~1s during the day, and it’s not my internet connection. So besides the fact that I’m a customer and I’d like to complain, it also leaves me genuinely curious what’s going on.
Only 1 second? I regularly get periods where the game takes upwards of 10 seconds to process an action or an equipment change, and quite often will stall out and fail to complete it at all; or have a little seizure and fail to display the results page, skipping directly past it as if I had clicked the “onwards” button.
And I have consistently blazing-fast internet for other sites, so I agree, the problem has to be on FBG’s end.
Hey all, if you’re experiencing lag regularly but haven’t told us about it, would you mind telling us when you feel it’s a significant episode?
We monitor servers and add capacity for feature releases, story drops, festival kickoffs and that kind of thing, but given that we’re (for the most part) not on the same timezone as the vast majority of our players, we will certainly miss instances of lag. If it’s cyclical and we’re missing it then maybe there’s something more permanent we can do. I’ll pass this thread on as a starter!
Hi, Hannah,
Can confirm it’s been bad for about three days now (and I’m on GMT/BST). Right at this moment (20:22), I’m in Risen Burgundy and the card I was playing failed to close, then re-opened, then closed but was still in “play me” mode. I had to refresh the page to get it to go away. Lags are 10-15 seconds.
I’ve been consistently playing during the past hour and it’s not been as bad for me as for ragnardegenhand above, but I experienced some 3-5 second lags on many actions, or equipment changes, or deck loads. This is more or less normal for me now, I’ve become used to it. 3-5 second waits after every second or third action is the norm, I’d say. I can handle that. When the lag gets longer than 5 seconds several times, I sometimes stop playing.
What also sometimes helps is logging out and back in again, or even closing the browser.
What I would like to add is that I’m using many of the player-created add-ons like the FL One-Click Wiki etc. I think I have 4-5 of them installed. So I’d be interested to hear from players who don’t use Fallen London add-ons if they also experience lag?
Hi Hannah! Just moved and can confirm it’s not just internet because it happened on 5G through the entire western United States and continues in my super high speed internet home. Often upwards of 10 seconds to load a next page or action, on mobile it can be over 30 seconds and 2-3 page reloads. I might just hit busy times because sometimes it’s under 2 seconds (although always a bit of a lag), so at least in the United States there’s a somewhat significant lag. I always assumed it was just the older servers and a known issue. It’s been this way since I started playing again in mid 2023.
EDIT: I came to this post partially because I just had a particularly bad lag in Far Arbor haha, so ongoing
