Stutters on a Non-Dedicated Server After 100's of hours of Gameplay

[jam]

Running on Windows 10, I5-8500 CPU, 16GB RAM and a GTX 1080-TI.

I have S+ Structures installed and Dino Tracker installed as the only 2 mods

The game ran pretty flawlessly within the first 100 hours of The Island with 2 other friends, but now the game has started stuttering for like 2-3 seconds every minute or so and it feels as if it's getting worse overtime.

I'm not quite sure what could be causing the lag but I hope it's not any of the DLC I've downloaded, my settings are on Medium-High by now and I've verified the integrity over 100 GB's of data twice by now, i've pretty much permanently been running the game on -lowmemory and i'm just not quite sure what the issue is at this point, I'm even having severe stutters in caves. Unless it really is an issue with having built too many structures on the map at this point or too many tamed dinos, that's the only other possibility I could think of.

[Rio]

Try the DestroyWildDinos console command. It will delete the wild dinos in the world that may be behind the lag. And respawn new wild dinos.

[jam]

Originally posted by ⛧Coeur du diable⛧:

Try the DestroyWildDinos console command. It will delete the wild dinos in the world that may be behind the lag. And respawn new wild dinos.

Tried that as well, my bad I didn't mention it in the original post, also am trying the game with all cores running, haven't ran it yet on d3d10 but I am running the game on only medium now. I'm think it's probably an issue with too many things on the map at once but not 100% sure.

[Rio]

Does it stutter if you go to another ark or is it only the island?

[jam]

Originally posted by ⛧Coeur du diable⛧:

Does it stutter if you go to another ark or is it only the island?

I uninstalled all the DLC's so I can't really verify this as I only play on The Island, however this wasn't an issue 3-4 days ago about 3 sessions ago, I do have a mobile base on a bronto which i built a 7 days ago but i don't think it could possibly lag my game out this bad.

My only hypothesis I can think of is one of my friends who's stopped playing is currently asleep on another part of the island far away and maybe it's lagging cause it's loading his sleeping body, dunno, but the lag started when I was close to his body, as opposed to when I initially built the base far away from him at first. my other friends pretty much always stick by me close by.

[jam]

I'm open to try as many lag reducing methods as possible, i've done a couple of methods already and it has reduced the problem slightly but not 100%. So i'm tracing the issue down to something related to the amount of memory the game is taking up, since the game uses around 70-80% of my cpu and ram.

[Liralen]

The only thing I can suggest is try a dedicated server, which my understanding generally makes better use of multicore CPUs. You sound as if you have the tech skiills to handle it (basically just being able to port forward your router and copy files into a different directory, if you want to import your non-dedicated game.)

My family has used Ark Server Manager for years, which basically provides a graphical interface for specifying the server's parameters, as opposed to manually typing them to make the necessary *.ini files. https://arkservermanager.freeforums.net/thread/379/move-non-dedicated-server

Another alternative is to rent a server from a third party.

In my experience, RAM is only an issue for the server running multiple maps simultaneously. At one time, we could run 2-3 maps simultaneously plus an Ark client on an i7-6700k, with 16 GB RAM. That is no longer true, which is probably mostly due to us building a lot of structures and taming a lot of dinos.

A bigger issue in Ark, is the amount of drive storage required, which has become huge over the years. While an SSD isn't required, it can improve loading times dramatically.

[Liralen]

Originally posted by jam:

I'm open to try as many lag reducing methods as possible, i've done a couple of methods already and it has reduced the problem slightly but not 100%. So i'm tracing the issue down to something related to the amount of memory the game is taking up, since the game uses around 70-80% of my cpu and ram.

RAM might well be an issue now. All of my household's PC's have 32 GB or more now. But it's certainly worth trying a dedicated server before spending any more money.

Edited Note: As well as removing any unnecessary bases and dinos. Cryopods help a lot.

[jam]

Originally posted by Liralen:

Originally posted by jam:

I'm open to try as many lag reducing methods as possible, i've done a couple of methods already and it has reduced the problem slightly but not 100%. So i'm tracing the issue down to something related to the amount of memory the game is taking up, since the game uses around 70-80% of my cpu and ram.

RAM might well be an issue now. All of my household's PC's have 32 GB or more now. But it's certainly worth trying a dedicated server before spending any more money now.

I do love ARK but the game is definitely plateauing in interest for my friends and I, If anything, I might try renting a server out as a worst case scenario since $15 isn't the worst investment for a month.

I did try my own dedicated server beforehand with ARK and another game as well but unfortunately the internet provider I have is extremely limited when it comes to port forwarding and I've spent a good week trying to set it up with no avail. Although an upgrade would definitely not hurt for my PC i'm very comfortable with where it is now aside from maybe more RAM so that's definitely something to think about.

This is definitely an issue I've searched through steam forums and other forums a ton and I haven't really seen any good answers so I've had to resort to asking myself and going through the rounds everyone else has to see if they're going through a similar situation as I am. Just seems that non-dedicated servers aren't the best way to play the game.

[Liralen]

Originally posted by jam:

Originally posted by Liralen:

RAM might well be an issue now. All of my household's PC's have 32 GB or more now. But it's certainly worth trying a dedicated server before spending any more money now.

I do love ARK but the game is definitely plateauing in interest for my friends and I, If anything, I might try renting a server out as a worst case scenario since $15 isn't the worst investment for a month.

I did try my own dedicated server beforehand with ARK and another game as well but unfortunately the internet provider I have is extremely limited when it comes to port forwarding and I've spent a good week trying to set it up with no avail. Although an upgrade would definitely not hurt for my PC i'm very comfortable with where it is now aside from maybe more RAM so that's definitely something to think about.

This is definitely an issue I've searched through steam forums and other forums a ton and I haven't really seen any good answers so I've had to resort to asking myself and going through the rounds everyone else has to see if they're going through a similar situation as I am. Just seems that non-dedicated servers aren't the best way to play the game.

You're right about non-dedicated servers.

If you are using a router supplied by your ISP, when I first tried running a server in another game, I found that it did not support NAT loopback. You might try a dedicated server using an internal IP. If that works, and you want to play with people outside of your LAN, buying your own router, and returning the ISP router, which if you have one, they are probably charging you extra for it. In the US, where I live, their profit motive is to both make it difficult for you to run a server, as well as charge you a monthly of fee for a crippled router that can't run a server using an external IP.

However, if your ISP is using the IPV6 protocol, years ago I remember problems with it, but haven't read anything recently on Ark about it. That's mostly a European thing, where it seems "what's best for all" weighs more heavily than profit motives.

[jam]

Originally posted by Liralen:

Originally posted by jam:

I do love ARK but the game is definitely plateauing in interest for my friends and I, If anything, I might try renting a server out as a worst case scenario since $15 isn't the worst investment for a month.

I did try my own dedicated server beforehand with ARK and another game as well but unfortunately the internet provider I have is extremely limited when it comes to port forwarding and I've spent a good week trying to set it up with no avail. Although an upgrade would definitely not hurt for my PC i'm very comfortable with where it is now aside from maybe more RAM so that's definitely something to think about.

This is definitely an issue I've searched through steam forums and other forums a ton and I haven't really seen any good answers so I've had to resort to asking myself and going through the rounds everyone else has to see if they're going through a similar situation as I am. Just seems that non-dedicated servers aren't the best way to play the game.

You're right about non-dedicated servers.

If you are using a router supplied by your ISP, when I first tried running a server in another game, I found that it did not support NAT loopback. You might try a dedicated server using an internal IP. If that works, and you want to play with people outside of your LAN, buying your own router, and returning the ISP router, which if you have one, they are probably charging you extra for it. In the US, where I live, their profit motive is to both make it difficult for you to run a server, as well as charge you a monthly of fee for a crippled router that can't run a server using an external IP.

However, if your ISP is using the IPV6 protocol, years ago I remember problems with it, but haven't read anything recently on Ark about it. That's mostly a European thing, where it seems "what's best for all" weighs more heavily than profit motives.

I appreciate the advice and will keep it in mind in the future, but if anything I'm just looking for some more short-term, maybe temporary fixes before I go out of the way and start buying routers and trying to make a dedicated server.
In the mean time I'll start removing things in-game that may be resource intensive but I do want something that can possibly reduce it further, it seems as if this game is an enigma to people running it as a non-dedicated server and I just want some good lag reducing fixes unless someone knows exactly why 3-5 second freezes are happening every minute or so and can pinpoint a miracle fix.

[Liralen]

Originally posted by jam:

I appreciate the advice and will keep it in mind in the future, but if anything I'm just looking for some more short-term, maybe temporary fixes before I go out of the way and start buying routers and trying to make a dedicated server.
In the mean time I'll start removing things in-game that may be resource intensive but I do want something that can possibly reduce it further, it seems as if this game is an enigma to people running it as a non-dedicated server and I just want some good lag reducing fixes unless someone knows exactly why 3-5 second freezes are happening every minute or so and can pinpoint a miracle fix.

I dunno if you need to buy a new router. I was just trying to say you might need to run your dedicated server using your internal IP, if your router does not support NAT loopback.

Edited Note: If you find a fix for being able to continue to play non-dedicated, please let us know. Non-dedicated has been notorious as heck.