I also posted there as well, within hours of your post. I remember James posted an angry post. My guess is that Larian got onto him and told him to deal with the situation. But hey, it got results.
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A dev, posting? Updates to code? Bickering in the forums? WHAT YEAR IS IT?
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Perhaps we’re using different terminology. I see it as minor development in service of continuing to operate the game.
That’s very true. It’s also true that the comment above the code, written by the UK team, essentially said “this probably isn’t the best approach; we may need to find a better way”.
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@jon-eric
Any news when you are going to release actual updates?
It’s been like 2years now.
I think stabilizing the game and making it so that they break even is the higher priority.
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Obviously I haven’t seen the code so this is just a guess, but is it possible the update frequency is set so high because certain processing loops can only perform one operation per update? For example, you blow up 200 blocks but the game loop can only destroy one block per tick, so at only 20 ticks/sec it will take 10 seconds for them all to disappear. This would be consistent with what some players are reporting, in that operations which affect multiple blocks take much longer with a reduced tick rate.
The correct way to solve this would of course be to batch multiple operations and perform them on a single tick, but if the original devs were under time pressure I could imagine them just increasing the tick rate as a quick fix.
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It’s possible. That’s a good thought.
It helps me to understand the length of the delay in milliseconds and if it’s possible to make the delay keep growing. E.g., can you hit enough blocks fast enough that you can just sit back at the end and watch blocks break on their own for like 10 seconds? I probably need to figure out how I can test that myself.
My hunch is that the server processes everything it can on each update so the delay won’t grow, it will be constant. I think it might be possible to reduce that constant delay though.
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An AoE hammer can destroy 9 blocks in a single swing, but bombs would be the biggest stress test. I don’t know what the radius of a bomb is, but if it can affect a 10x10x10 volume that’s 1000 blocks in a single hit. If the game really is queuing up one block per tick, that would be half a second at 2000 ticks/sec but 50 seconds at 20 ticks/sec, so the difference ought to be very noticeable.
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The game had various stages of dev and many things that were put in as stop gaps to keep movement forward. Additionally there was a lead dev that did a lot of the design but when he left and we moved more towards actually having to release the game due to Sony and other stuff they shifted into a different phase. There were many things they knew needed to be fixed but various head winds caused them to not happen because of other priorities.
I’m certainly for any change that improves stuff… but for me priority is stability of backup/infrastructure, regular maintenance (we know we have bugs that show up like the weather issue if no reboots happen), ensuring regen stays working, performance, exo stabiltiy, etc… If costs are out of hand or really can impact the game then clearly that should raise to priority after infra/backup are secured. Understanding the context of why things are can help a LOT in going through the code.
Outside of that the community clearly needs very CLEAR EXPECTATIONS set on what is really happening (that is allowed to be disclosed) and the reality of progress forward (if any). This biggest issue probably with this game was always - expectations setting via concise communication that lets people know what is really likely versus just not “soon.” That caused so many problems and arguments that really helped no one.
I was one of the very few that had the opportunity to talk (direct voice) with James and the Devs and am certainly willing to share anything I might be aware of (since I dived a lot into the technicals with them) if needed. It’s been years but just like others I want this game to be a success so will send any thing I know over if asked. There are also a few people that still check the forum that were before me in the very early development that I’m sure would share anything they know on the game systems.
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I don’t think it is doing one block per tick. That would be pretty obvious. You would only be able to break 20 blocks per second. I spent all weekend mining blocks with a speed hammer and a speed brew and I was breaking way more than 20 blocks per second without any issues. When I do see problems the blocks disappear and then reappear multiple seconds later, and it isn’t all of them. I.E. I break 100 blocks, and then 3 or 4 seconds later maybe 9 of them reappear. I don’t think that behavior has increased with the update, though. It was always an issue.
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I was just doing some testing, and I can’t reproduce this. But I have had this happen in the past so I know it does exist.
I tested a max speed AOE hammer with a speed brew and all hammer skills. I went to the planet I have the highest ping on and mined for about 15 mins. I also tested AOE bombs using maxed rift bombs and I just went wild throwing them everywhere. I bombed areas with lots of flowers so they would drop, and the entities would fall and that seemed to be fine.
I think it would help to know more information.
- What planet does this occur on?
- What time did this occur?
- What tools were you using?
- What was your ping?
- Using PC or PS?
- If on PC what specs? Vid card?
All that might be nice so it could be tested and at least rule some things out.
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TLDR please
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Create a character, max out their dexterity, hammer mastery, grab hammer epic, and then grab a topaz hammer and a speed brew.
Meant to say AoE Topaz hammer.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. I meant test it myself assuming I keep my Raw Earthyam equipped. This earthyam has been a loyal travel buddy. I can’t imagine unequipping little Earthy now, after all the worlds we’ve been to… where we immediately died or got stuck in a hole. 
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I knew I wouldn’t be the only one! It might seem a little weak at first but once you get use to it, it’s not that bad.
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I play on a Windows 11 PC with an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-Core Processor, 64 GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Graphics card. I see this happen on all the planets pretty much, and it usually happens when the ping is spiking above 300ms.
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I tried a regen bomb to regen my regen farm. That’s 1728 blocks. The blocks were regenned immediately - as expected. And I could immediately farm them again. I don’t think it has an effect on blocks - but maybe on secondary resources that get regenerated over time (thanks James, dumbest change ever…).
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Always good to check can change allow duping 
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